Pertinent Historical Question: Which Country Really Rules the World? (Part III)

  Sunday, June 21, 2009 

  By Ivan Simic

"The United States of Germania"

The "United States of Germania" is a term that should be used to describe United States of America since the 20th century. For the past hundred years United States has been under strong influence from Germany and German industry, and that same influence and number of German-Americans living in the US made the United States to become the biggest German State.

Germans started arriving in the United States in 1608, but they were not important at that time as they became later. The largest number of arrivals came 1840–1900, when Germans formed the largest group of immigrants coming to the US, out-numbering even the Irish and English. German- Americans and those Germans who settled in the US have been influential in most every field, from politics, economy, science, architecture, entertainment and the commercial industry. Today, they account for 50 million people, or 17% of the US population

Germans have contributed to a vast number of areas in American culture, military, economy, journalism, and technology, among others. Some of the contributions were: John Peter Zenger, who came to America in 1733 as an indentured servant from the Palatinate region of Germany, and founded a newspaper: The New-York Weekly Journal. In 1742, Christopher Saur, a German printer in Philadelphia, printed the first Bible in America. 

The Baron von Steuben, a former Prussian officer, was inspector general of the Continental Army; he led the reorganization of the US Army during the War for Independence and helped make the victory against British troops possible. In 1821, the Germanic custom of having a specially decorated tree at Christmas time was introduced to America by Pennsylvania Dutch in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Later in the century, the Pennsylvania Dutch version of St. Nicholas (Sinterklaas), evolved into America's Santa Claus, popularized by a German immigrant and influential political cartoonist, Thomas Nast. The Easter bunny and Easter eggs were also brought to this country by German immigrants.

The Studebakers built large numbers of wagons used during the Western migration; Studebaker, like the Duesenberg brothers, later became an important early automobile manufacturer. Carl Schurz, German revolutionary and American statesman, served as the United States Senator (1869-1875) and the US Secretary of the Interior (1877-1881). In 1856, Margaretha Meyer Schurz, wife of Carl Schurz, established the first kindergarten in America at Watertown, Wisconsin.

Maybe the most interesting thing is that both countries have experienced the ideology of white supremacy. When the Congress of the Nazi Party met in 1935 to pass their Nuremberg Laws (racist and anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany), they were in many ways modeled on the Jim Crow Laws (state and local laws in the US. They mandated “de jure” segregation in all public facilities, with a "separate but equal" status for black Americans and members of other non-white racial groups) which were in place in the USA from 1877 to 1965.

However, German real influence in the US started to build with John Jacob Astor. He left his village of Waldorf in Germany and arrived in the United States in 1784. He amassed a fortune from real estate dealings and the fur trade, and at his death was by far the richest man in the country and the world, worth an estimated $20 million ($110.1 billion in 2006).

Years later, German influence in the US was seen with J.P. Morgan (German student), John D. Rockefeller (of German ancestry) and Theodore Roosevelt (of German ancestry), Herbert Hoover (of German ancestry), Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower (of German ancestry). Germany became very interested in the US steel and private banking.

John Pierpont Morgan also known as J.P. Morgan next to the Rockefellers was the most powerful individual and hegemon in American banking system, owner of Moran House and J.P. Morgan Company. He had very close ties with Germany; his father, who also had close ties with Germany, had sent him to the University of Göttingen in order to improve his German. 

J. P. Morgan and Elbert H. Gary founded the US Steel in 1901. Elbert Henry Gary was an American lawyer and corporate officer. He was a key founder of the United States Steel Corporation in 1901, bringing together partners J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and Charles M. Schwab. Schwab was born into a German Catholic family.  After the buyout, Schwab became the first president of the US Steel Corporation, the company formed out of Carnegie's former holdings.

In the spring of 1903, Carl Duisberg, the chairman of Bayer (German chemical and pharmaceutical company, 3rd largest in the world) had traveled to the US to meet with J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, to establish cooperation between two industries, and visit their trusts such as Standard Oil and US Steel. Carl Duisberg told his counterparts that Germany needs one more steel industry to control; therefore in 1903 Charles Schwab left the US Steel to form the Bethlehem Steel Company in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Under his leadership it became the largest independent steel producer in the world. In 1904, after having returned to Germany Duisberg proposed a nationwide merger of the producers of dye and pharmaceuticals.

In 1907, in addition to steel and private banking, Germany became interested in the US Coal and Iron industry and in control of the US monetary system. As a result, Germany’s already well known partners are causing Panic of 1907, a financial crisis that occurred in the United States when the New York Stock Exchange fell close to 50%. The 1907 panic eventually spread throughout the nation when many state and local banks and businesses entered into bankruptcy.

In 1907, The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI), a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations collapsed. J.P. Morgan exploited turbulence on the financial markets by procuring a majority stake in Tennessee Company shares from a troubled New York brokerage firm. Subsequently, the TCI merged with US Steel, making the US Steel multibillion dollar company.  The US President Theodore Roosevelt also known as “trust buster” endorsed this merger. Roosevelt was of German ancestry. Throughout his Presidency Roosevelt distrusted wealthy businessmen and dissolved forty monopolistic corporations; however Morgan and Rockefeller were safe.

In 1908, in response to the Panic of 1907, the US Congress enacted the Aldrich-Vreeland Act which provided for an emergency currency and established the National Monetary Commission to study banking and currency reform. Nelson W. Aldrich was largely responsible for the Aldrich-Vreeland Currency Law, and he became the Chairman of the National Monetary commission.

Aldrich was a prominent American politician, a leader of the Republican Party in the Senate and chief of the bipartisan National Monetary Commission. He had close ties with J.P. Morgan and Rockefellers, his daughter, Abby, married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the only son of John D. Rockefeller.

Nelson Aldrich set up two commissions; one to study the American monetary system in depth and the other, headed by Aldrich himself, to study the European central-banking systems and report on them. Aldrich went to Europe opposed to centralized banking, but after viewing Germany's banking system came away believing that a centralized bank was better than the government-issued bond system.

By the late 1908 Germans were controlling almost all production of steel and coal, and banking system in the United States.

In 1910, Aldrich and executives representing the banks of J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb & Co., secluded themselves for 10 days at Jekyll Island, Georgia to draft the basic plan for the US Federal Reserve System. The executives included J.P. Morgan,  Paul Warburg, a naturalized German representing Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, associated with the Rockefellers; Henry P. Davison, senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company; Charles D. Norton, president of the Morgan dominated First National Bank of New York; and Col. Edward House, who would later become President Woodrow Wilson's closest adviser and founder of the Council on Foreign Relations; Benjamin Strong, representing J. P. Morgan.  

In 1910, J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller did not agree on plan to control Federal Reserve System, as a result in 1911 the Supreme Court of the United States found Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and held that Standard Oil, which by then still had a 64% market share, originated in illegal monopoly practices and ordered it to be broken up into 34 new companies. Former President Roosevelt was unable to protect Rockefeller this time.

In 1913, US President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Federal Reserve Act creating the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States of America. Jack Morgan, son of J.P. Morgan was one of the signatories to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913.

In 1913, J.P. Morgan testified before the Pujo Committee, a subcommittee of the House Banking and Currency committee because his intervention in Panic of 1907. The committee ultimately found that a cabal of financial leaders was abusing their public trust to consolidate control over many industries. To protect his wealth J.P Morgan started investing in Europe, however, J.P. Morgan died in 1913 leaving all connections and wealth to his son J.P. Morgan Jr.

In August 1914, just at the beginning of the WWI, Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner, traveled to the UK and made a deal with the Bank of England to make J.P. Morgan & Co. the monopoly underwriter of war bonds for UK and France. The Bank of England became a fiscal agent of J.P. Morgan & Co. and vice versa. Germany was largely excluded from international financial markets at that time, industries, university endowments, local banks and even city governments were the prime investors in the German war bonds.

During World War I, German Americans, especially those born in Germany, were sometimes accused of being too sympathetic to the German Empire. Thousands of German Americans were forced to buy war bonds to show their loyalty to the US. One man was hanged in Illinois, just because he was of German descent (the hanging was called an act of patriotism by a jury).

Above tyranny on German people in the US and Treaty of Versailles made Germany to revenge on the US. Therefore in late 1920s, Germany, with help of its distinguished friends initiated the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

The key figures of the Wall Street Crash included Morgan’s and Rockefeller’s associates: Thomas W. Lamont, Owen D. Young, Albert Henry Wiggin, Charles E. Mitchell, Richard Whitney, Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, Montagu Collet Norman, Benjamin Strong Jr., Paul Warburg, among other smaller participants.

Thomas William Lamont Jr. was an American banker, acting head of Morgan Bank, and representative of the United States Department of the Treasury on the American delegation during the Treaty of Versailles. Lamont, who was a close associate of Morgan Senior and Morgan Jr., also was in committee of the Young Plan, a program for settlement of German reparations debts after World War I.

In addition, creator of the Young Plan in 1929 was Owen D. Young, an American industrialist, businessman, lawyer and diplomat at the Second Reparations Conference (SRC) in 1929. Owen Young was a key figure of General Electric and creator of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). In 1928, he was appointed to the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation. As a reminder, In 1892 J.P. Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thompson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric.

Albert Henry Wiggin, close associate of Rockefeller’s, was an American banker and the head of the Chase National Bank. The largest stockholder of Chase National Bank was John D. Rockefeller Jr. With Rockefeller inside, it became the largest bank in America and indeed the world. In 1923 Wiggin opened a Chase National Bank representative office in London, which began lending directly to governments and businesses throughout Europe. He was responsible for bringing in members of the Rockefeller family as investors in Chase National Bank.

Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York, was an American banker whose incautious securities policies facilitated the speculation which led to the Crash of 1929. He was a close associate of Morgan family.

Richard Whitney was an American financier, vice president and later president of the New York Stock Exchange from 1930 till 1935, and a convicted embezzler. His uncle had been a partner in J.P. Morgan & Co., and his brother George was in high position at the Morgan Bank. He stole funds from the New York Stock Exchange Gratuity Fund as well as from the New York Yacht Club where he served as the Treasurer. Following his indictment by a Grand Jury, Richard Whitney was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a term of five to ten years in Sing Sing prison.

All above actors including J.P. Morgan Jr. and Otto Kahn (born German, and partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co) were investigated under The Pecora Investigation.  In 1931, the Pecora Commission was established by the US Senate to study the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The testimony of the powerful banker J.P. Morgan Jr. caused a public outcry after he admitted under examination that he and many of his partners had not paid any income taxes in 1931 and 1932.

Montagu Collet Norman was an English banker, best known for his role as the Governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1944. Norman was Germany’s strongest ally in England and one of Europe’s most influential persons in monetary system. His close tie with Germany was seen trough close friendship with German Central Bank president Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht, later Hitler’s finance minister.

Benjamin Strong Jr. was an American banker. He served as Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was one of the important creators of the Federal Reserve System. Strong was J.P. Morgan’s closest ally, head of J.P Morgan's Bankers Trust Company and his emissary to the secret Jekyll Island expedition in 1910 to form Federal Reserve System.

Paul Warburg, born German, was a major player in German banking system and real power behind the Federal Reserve System. He was appointed a member of the first Federal Reserve Board by President Woodrow Wilson. Warburg was a partner in the New York banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Kuhn, Loeb & Co was the principal rival of J.P. Morgan & Co, and was joined in a partnership with Rockefeller in 1911, to gain control of the Equitable Trust Company, which was later to merge and become the Chase Bank.

Even, US President Herbert Hoover, who was of German ancestry, and friend with Morgan Jr., managed to get support for a one-year moratorium of the reparations payments. A moratorium had been placed on the war reparations payments in 1931 and a year later the delegates to the Lausanne Conference realized that the deepening world financial crisis in the Great Depression made it nearly impossible for Germany to resume its payments. However, Britain and France and other Allies had borrowed heavily to fight the war and in particular. They borrowed substantial funds from Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co. and Morgan, Grenfell & Co. (In 1990 Morgan Grenfell was acquired by Deutsche Bank).

Germany succeeded in its plan, the financial system had collapsed and Germany made no further payments. By 1933 Germany made World War I reparations of only one eighth of the sum required under the Treaty of Versailles.

German enormous influence in the US was also seen with the US President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States, who was of German ancestry. He also served as the 1st Military Governor of the American Occupation Zone in Germany from May 8, 1945 – November 10, 1945, and 1st Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from April 2, 1951 – May 30, 1952. After the Petersberg agreement West Germany quickly progressed toward fuller sovereignty and association with its European neighbors and the Atlantic community. With Dwight Eisenhower in Supreme command, Americans quickly called for the rearmament of West Germany. Whit Eisenhower as the US President, in 1954 The London and Paris agreements restored most of the German state's sovereignty and Germany formed Western European Union, in 1955 West Germany joined NATO. Eisenhower was close associate with Konrad Hermann Josef Adenauer, first Chancellor of West Germany from 1949–1963.

German influence after the WWII is more or less well known. What is less known is that in 1945, Germany’s industrial powers formed political party; The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), a major player in setting German influence throughout the world.  Some of the key figures of the CDU were Konrad Adenauer, first Chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963; Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998; Angela Merkel, the current Chancellor of Germany. Above named, among many others, were and still are considered to be the most influential persons in the world. The CDU always had a close relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Current head of the Roman Catholic Church is Pope Benedict XVI, German.

Later, Germany continued its influence in the US with Richard Nixon, of German ancestry. Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, and also Vice President during Dwight Eisenhower’s Presidency.

When elected, Nixon introduced Henry Alfred Kissinger, German born, who served as the 8th United States National Security Advisor and the 56th United States Secretary of State. Kissinger was close associate with Rockefeller’s; he became an advisor to Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York, who sought the Republican nomination for President in 1960. After all this years, he still has a greater influence on the US foreign policy. He was the frequent visitor of the White House and George W. Bush (of German ancestry), and is in close relationship with Obama administration. At present, Kissinger continues to be the most influential German in political scene in the United States.

Today, Germans are still influential in the US monetary system, industry and politics. The current CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, Duncan L. Niederauer, is German. Duncan became the CEO on December 1, 2007. Timothy Franz Geithner, of German ancestry, is the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury. Well known as Kissinger protégé, he worked for Kissinger and Associates in Washington, D.C., and in 2002 he joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In 2003, he was named the 9th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Strangely, but as previously arranged, Germans were and still continues to be in key financial positions when recession strikes the US (1907, 1929, 2007, 2008, and 2009 (even the AIG which is one of key factors for financial crisis in the US has close relationship with Kissinger and Rockefeller’s)).

The Council on Foreign Relations was established by Rockefeller in 1921. The CFR, among others, was established to protect German interests in the US. Since its establishment, many US highly officials were and still are associate with it, such as; Henry Alfred Kissinger, Owen D. Young, Paul  Warburg, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, George W. Bush, among many others.  The CRF can be credited for the Marshall Plan and NATO, all of which Germany advantaged from.

The CRF Corporate Members, among others include: AIG, a major American insurance corporation. Alcoa, the world's third largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa’s CEO and Director is Klaus Kleinfeld, German. The Boeing Company, founded by William Edward Boeing, son to a wealthy German mining engineer named Wilhelm Böing. Deutsche Bank, a major bank. Google Inc., an American public corporation. Eric Emerson Schmidt, of German ancestry, is Chairman and CEO of Google Inc. H. J. Heinz Company, American food company founded by Henry John Heinz, a German-American businessman. Pfizer Incorporated, a pharmaceutical company, ranking number one in sales in the world. Pfizer was founded by Karl Pfizer, a German chemist.

The list of German influence in the US never ends: Walter Percy Chrysler, Chrysler automobile developer. Walt Disney, film producer, director, animator and entrepreneur. Harvey Firestone (Feuerstein), founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. John Kluge, television industry mogul. Adolph Ochs-Sulzberger - newspaper publisher and former owner of The New York Times. Steve Schwarzman, owner of the Blackstone Group. Neil Armstrong, astronaut, first human on the moon. Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense. Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Königsberg), an actor and film producer. Wolfgang Petersen, film director, among many others.

Even the US President Barack Obama can thank German-Americans who voted for him in the 2008 presidential elections. Obama won 90% of the states were German-American lives, such as: Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, among others.

Looking at the above facts we can easily say that Germany was and still continues to be the most influential country in the world. There are no secret societies, conspiracy theories and secret governments; there is just German sense of supremacy and Germany’s desire to rule the world.