Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933–1949

For almost forty years the facts behind the extraordinary true story of Nazi-American wartime business relations have been buried in government files. Now at last Charles Higham, drawing his account from thousands of documents just released under the Freedom of Information Act, has given us a full-scale picture of the American businessmen who dealt with the Nazis right through World War II. Among those who traded on both sides of the war were certain executives of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Chase Bank, the Texas Company, ITT, Ford, and Sterling Products. And helping them with their dealings were such government officials as a secretary of commerce, an assistant secretary of state, and ambassadors to France and Great Britain. The Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, was Nazi-controlled but presided over by an American, even in 1944. At one of its yearly meetings, the bank’s president sat down with his German, Japanese, Italian, British, and American executive staff to discuss shipments of 378 million dollars in gold sent to the bank by the Nazi government for use by its leaders after the war. This was gold looted from the banks of Austria, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia, or melted down from teeth fillings, eyeglass frames, and wedding rings of murdered Jews. But that is only one of the stories. Standard Oil of New Jersey executives shipped the Nazis oil through Switzerland while Allied forces endured restrictions of supplies and shortages abounded. Ford Motor Company trucks were built for Nazi troops with authorization from Ford directors in the U.S. The chairman of ITT supplied much of Hitler’s communications system. The list of those who chose Business as Usual—even when the business was with their country’s enemy—is long and shocking. CHARLES HIGHAM, biographer and former New York Times writer, presents a meticulously documented, dispassionately told behind-the-scenes picture of American involvement with the Nazis before, during, and after World War II.