# How the West supported the Nazis: finance, appeasement, and Cold War bargains

Western support for the Nazis was not one coordinated plot. It was a documented chain of credit, corporate technology, ideology, appeasement, neutral banking, and postwar recruitment that helped Nazi Germany at different stages.

*This story parallel: The corporation*
*This story parallel: Fascism: rise and fall*
*This story parallel: Media, propaganda, and influence*
*This story parallel: Eugenics and scientific racism*
*This story parallel: The central bankers and the road to war*
*This story continues: NASA and the space age*
*This story parallel: Curriculum, programming, and propaganda*
*This story continues: The Cold War*
*This story continues: The Nazi bargains: Paperclip and the recruitment of the enemy*
*This story parallel: Eugenics and forced sterilization in America*
*This story parallel: Swiss neutrality: the vault and the wartime record*
*This story part of: Capital and the totalitarianisms: who funded Stalin and Hitler*
*This story parallel: Reichsbank: independence, hyperinflation, and Hitler*
*This story parallel: Nazi ideology was not unique: race myth, empire, and extermination*
*This story part of: Money and finance*

## 1920 — Henry Ford distributes The International Jew to schools, 1920

Gatto states that in 1920 the Henry Ford Publishing Company distributed 2 million free copies of The International Jew to all libraries and schools in the nation.

> "in 1920, the Henry Ford Publishing Company distributed 2 million free copies
of its recent best seller to all libraries and all schools in the nation."
> — The Underground History of American Education, p. 179-180

*Source: Antisemitism and Henry Ford's "The International Jew"*

> The first channel was ideological. American antisemitic mass media gave Nazi leaders usable myths about Jewish finance and conspiracy.

## 1920 — Henry Ford spreads the Jewish finance myth in America

The carmaker Henry Ford used his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to publish The International Jew, a series that recycled the Protocols and blamed Jews for controlling banking and corrupting society. Millions of copies spread the lie across the United States and abroad, and Ford was later praised by the Nazis for it. The claim that Jews control finance is not a fact with two sides; it is a debunked libel that Ford knowingly promoted.

*Source: Antisemitism and Henry Ford's "The International Jew"*

> Race science was transnational before Hitler. US eugenics law and research gave Nazi racial hygiene a precedent it openly studied.

## c. 1 January 1922 — Harry Laughlin's Model Eugenical Sterilization Law

Eugenicist Harry Laughlin, of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, published a "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law" intended as a template for state legislatures. Virginia's 1924 sterilization act was drafted using Laughlin's model, and it was later cited by German officials drafting the Nazi sterilization law of 1933. Laughlin was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Heidelberg in 1936 in recognition of his eugenics work.

*Source: Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883 - Present)*

*Source: War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race*

*Source: Eugenics*

## 1924 — House of Morgan issues the Dawes Loan

The House of Morgan participated in issuing the Dawes Loan in 1924, which later became central to debt negotiations with Hitler's Germany.

> "the celebrated 1924 Dawes loan and 1930 Young loan"
> — The House of Morgan - An American Banking Dynasty and the

*Source: The Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, German Reparations, and Inter-allied War Debts*

> Finance rebuilt capacity before Nazism held power. US-led credit stabilized Weimar Germany and helped restore the industrial base the Nazis later captured.

## 1924 — The Dawes Plan loans to Germany

The book quotes Quigley describing the Dawes Plan of 1924 to 1929, largely a J. P. Morgan production, under which Germany borrowed and owed more at the end than the start. It frames this as a debt trap that rebuilt German industry.

> "Germany paid reparations for five years under the Dawes Plan (1924–1929) and owed more at the end than it had owed at the beginning"
> — Tragedy and Hope 101, p. 70-72

*Source: The Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, German Reparations, and Inter-allied War Debts*

*Source: Lords of Finance*

## 26 May 1924 — U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 enshrines eugenic quotas

The Johnson-Reed Act set immigration quotas designed to favor northern Europeans, shaped by eugenicists who claimed some nationalities were biologically inferior. The law later trapped refugees, including Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

*Source: Eugenics*

*Source: Madison Grant*

## 1925 — IG Farben becomes the industrial engine of the Reich

The chemical giant IG Farben, formed in 1925 from firms including BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst, grew into a pillar of the German war economy, producing synthetic fuel and rubber the military needed. It later built a plant at Auschwitz that used concentration-camp slave labor. After the war its executives were tried at Nuremberg and the combine was broken up.

*Source: The Role of Business Elites*

*Source: The I. G. Farben Company Presents its Synthetic Rubber (Buna) (1936)*

*Source: A Troubled Chapter in German Industrial History: IG Farben*

*Source: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy*

*Source: Industry and Ideology: I. G. Farben in the Nazi Era*

## 2 May 1927 — Buck v. Bell upholds forced sterilization

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that states could forcibly sterilize people deemed unfit, with Justice Holmes writing "three generations of imbeciles are enough." The decision led to tens of thousands of sterilizations and was cited by Nazi defendants at Nuremberg.

*Source: War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race*

*Source: Buck v. Bell*

> Technology transfer mattered. Patent pools and corporate agreements moved fuel, rubber, and chemical knowledge across borders before the war.

## 1929 — Standard Oil and IG Farben share synthetic-fuel patents

Standard Oil of New Jersey and IG Farben struck agreements pooling patents and research on synthetic fuel and rubber. The ties continued into the late 1930s and drew sharp scrutiny in the United States during the war, when critics said they had slowed American synthetic-rubber development. The cooperation is documented in the companies' own records and later Senate hearings.

*Source: Imperial Standard: Imperial Oil, Exxon, and the Canadian Oil Industry from 1880*

## 1930 — Morgan banks issue the Young Loan

Morgan banks participated in the Young Loan of 1930, another major German reparations financing that would become problematic under Nazi default threats.

> "the celebrated 1924 Dawes loan and 1930 Young loan"
> — The House of Morgan - An American Banking Dynasty and the

*Source: The Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, German Reparations, and Inter-allied War Debts*

> Foreign-owned subsidiaries became part of German production. Control during wartime varied, but the factories and output served the Reich.

## c. 1931 — Ford and General Motors build vehicles inside Germany

Ford ran a German subsidiary at Cologne, and General Motors owned Opel, the country's largest carmaker. Through the 1930s their German plants turned out cars and trucks, and after 1939 those factories produced vehicles for the German war effort. The parent firms' degree of control during the war has been argued over, but the production is documented.

*Source: Antisemitism and Henry Ford's "The International Jew"*

*Source: General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe's Biggest Carmaker*

## c. 1932 — Fritz Thyssen bankrolls Hitler and later writes 'I Paid Hitler'

The steel magnate Fritz Thyssen was one of the earliest big-business backers of the Nazi Party, giving money and lending his name in the years before 1933. He broke with Hitler over the war and fled Germany. The memoir published under his name, I Paid Hitler, describes that funding; Thyssen later distanced himself from parts of the ghostwritten text, so its details are attributed to him rather than taken as gospel.

*Source: The Role of Business Elites*

## 1933 — German business pays into the Adolf Hitler Endowment

After Hitler took power, major companies paid regular contributions into a fund known as the Adolf Hitler Endowment of German Industry. It channeled business money to the Nazi leadership on an ongoing basis. The arrangement bound German industry to the regime and bought a measure of quiet cooperation.

*Source: The Role of Business Elites*

## 1933 — Gustav Krupp backs Hitler and German rearmament

After Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 Gustav Krupp supported the regime and the firm profited from large-scale rearmament. Krupp became a pillar of the Nazi war economy.

*Source: The Role of Business Elites*

## 1933 — The Nazis weaponize the Jewish finance lie

Nazi propaganda made the myth of Jewish financial and world control a core message, casting Jews as the hidden power behind both banking and communism to justify persecution. This lie helped pave the road to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered. The trope of international Jewish finance is not a harmless exaggeration; it was central to the deadliest genocide of the modern era and is false in every part.

*Source: Nazi Propaganda*

> Domestic capital then fused with dictatorship. German business money helped consolidate Hitler after he promised rearmament and the destruction of labor power.

## 20 February 1933 — German industrialists back Hitler at a private meeting

Three weeks after Hitler became chancellor, some two dozen leading German industrialists met privately with him and Hermann Goering. Hitler promised to crush the labor movement and rebuild the military, and the businessmen pledged large sums for the coming election. The meeting, arranged with Hjalmar Schacht, tied big German business to the new regime.

*Source: The Role of Business Elites*

## c. 1933 — IBM's German subsidiary supplies punch-card machines

IBM's German subsidiary Dehomag leased and serviced Hollerith punch-card tabulating machines used in German censuses and record-keeping. In his book IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black argues this data technology helped the regime identify and track victims. Black's charge of knowing complicity is his interpretation; the machines and the business relationship are documented.

*Source: IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation*

## c. 1 January 1934 — Nazi Eugenics Officials Praise the California Model

Nazi officials and eugenicists publicly credited American sterilization laws as their inspiration. Dr. Falk Ruttke, a Nazi legal official, and Dr. Fritz Lenz both praised California's program, and a German eugenics researcher wrote to Human Betterment Foundation co-founder Paul Popenoe that his organization's work "had been studied with great interest by the National Socialist Government." Historian Stefan Kuhl documented extensive correspondence and personal exchanges between American and German eugenicists in this period.

*Source: War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race*

*Source: Eugenics*

## c. 1934 — Standard Oil fuel additives reach German aviation

Through joint ventures tied to the tetraethyl lead process, know-how for high-octane aviation fuel additives passed into German hands in the 1930s. The additive was important for military aircraft engines. The arrangement is documented in corporate records and later investigations, and is a business-history fact rather than a claim of intent.

*Source: Imperial Standard: Imperial Oil, Exxon, and the Canadian Oil Industry from 1880*

> Appeasement was support by permission rather than cash. Elite diplomacy gave Hitler time, legitimacy, and room to test how much he could take.

## 1935 — Lothian meets Hitler

Lord Lothian held a long conversation with Hitler in which Hitler reportedly proposed an England-Germany-US alliance giving Germany a free hand on the Continent. Quigley treats Lothian and The Times as advancing Anglo-German fellowship.

> "In January 1935 Lothian had a long conversation with Hitler, and Hitler was reputed to have proposed an alliance between England, Germany"
> — The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 266-268

*Source: Chamberlain and Hitler 1938*

## 1937 — Cold Spring Harbor distributes Nazi eugenics film

generate offspring for crime or let them
starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly
unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are
enough.'”137
In 1937, Laughlin and his Cold Spring Harbor office became the U.S.
distributor of a two-reel Nazi euge

> "generate offspring for crime or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind"
> — War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, p. 449-454

*Source: Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883 - Present)*

## 1937 — Halifax's conversation with Hitler

Acting Foreign Secretary Halifax met Hitler and, Quigley says, left the German government convinced Britain saw Germany as a bulwark against communism and would accept the peaceful liquidation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

> "As a result, Halifax had a long conversation with Hitler on 19 November 1937 in which, whatever may have been Halifax's intention, Hitler's government became convinced of three things:"
> — The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 272-274

*Source: How Europe Went To War In 1939*

## 1938 — Chamberlain meets Hitler at Berchtesgaden

On September 15, 1938, Chamberlain decided to visit Hitler at Berchtesgaden. After enduring several hours of Hitler's ranting about mistreatment of the Sudeten Germans, Chamberlain agreed to dismember Czechoslovakia, ceding all districts with populations more than 50-percent German.

> "Chamberlain decided to end the tension on September 15 by visiting Hitler. Hitler showed his disdain by choosing Berchtesgaden as the meeting place"
> — Diplomacy

*Source: Chamberlain and Hitler 1938*

## 1938 — Chamberlain meets Hitler at Godesberg

On 22 September Chamberlain carried the Czech acceptance of partition to Hitler at Godesberg, where he found the Führer in a vile temper receiving reports of alleged Czech atrocities; Hitler then raised new demands.

> "The next day, September 22nd, Chamberlain took the Czech acceptance to Hitler at Godesberg on the Rhine. He found the Führer in a vile temper, receiving messages every few minutes about the atrocities being inflicted on the Sudetens by the Czechs."
> — Tragedy and Hope, p. 534-536

*Source: Chamberlain and Hitler 1938*

## 1938 — Lothian defends appeasement in the Lords

Quigley describes the man he calls the Group's leader, Lord Lothian, speaking in the House of Lords in support of appeasement and in defense of the removal of the anti-appeasement official Vansittart.

> "In February 1938, Lord Lothian, "leader" of the Group, spoke in the House of Lords in support of appeasement."
> — The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 275-277

*Source: How Europe Went To War In 1939*

> Munich handed Hitler territory and Czech defenses without war. Czechoslovakia was excluded from the decision and forced to accept it.

## 1938 — Munich Conference dismembers Czechoslovakia

On September 29, 1938, the four leaders (Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, and Mussolini) met in Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi Party. Chamberlain and Daladier accepted Mussolini's draft containing Hitler's Bad Godesberg program, with Czech representatives left languishing in anterooms while their country was being dismembered.

> "The four leaders met on September 29 in Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi Party, the sort of symbolism victors reserve for themselves."
> — Diplomacy

*Source: How Europe Went To War In 1939*

## 1938 — Nazi Germany awards Henry Ford the Grand Cross, 1938

On July 30, 1938 the Hitler government presented Henry Ford with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle.

> "On July 30, 1938, the Hitler government presented Henry Ford with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle."
> — The Underground History of American Education, p. 179-180

*Source: Antisemitism and Henry Ford's "The International Jew"*

## 1939 — Occupation of Bohemia and Moravia as a turning point

Quigley marks Germany's March 1939 occupation of Bohemia and Moravia as the point where the Milner Group turned against appeasement, while the Chamberlain group did not.

> "The German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939 marked the turning point for the Milner Croup, but not for the Chamberlain group."
> — The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 287-289

## March 1939 — The Bank for International Settlements handles Reichsbank gold

The Bank for International Settlements, the Basel clearing house owned by central banks, transferred gold belonging to Czechoslovakia to the German Reichsbank after Germany seized the country in 1939. During the war it went on accepting Reichsbank gold, some of it looted. The transactions later became a case study in how a neutral financial body kept dealing with the Reich.

*Source: Searching for Records Relating to Nazi Gold: Part I*

> Neutral finance kept channels open after conquest. The BIS and Swiss banking system became paths through which Reichsbank gold moved.

## 21 March 1939 — Transfer of Czechoslovak gold through the BIS

After Germany occupied Czechoslovakia, the BIS acted on instructions to move gold held for the Czech National Bank into an account controlled by Germany's Reichsbank. The episode became the most documented controversy about the bank's wartime conduct.

*Source: Searching for Records Relating to Nazi Gold: Part I*

## 1 January 1940 to 1945 — The BIS keeps operating under wartime pressure

With American Thomas McKittrick as president, the BIS stayed open throughout World War II while much of its board and business were tied to Axis powers. Critics later charged that it handled looted gold and served German interests, while defenders said it preserved a neutral channel among central banks.

*Source: Lords of Finance*

## c. 1941 — The Swiss National Bank buys looted Nazi gold

Through the war the Swiss National Bank bought well over a billion francs of gold from Germany's Reichsbank, providing hard currency that helped Germany pay for war materials. Much of that gold had been looted from the central banks of occupied countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, and some came from the possessions of Holocaust victims. In the 1946 Washington Agreement Switzerland paid 250 million francs to the Allies without admitting wrongdoing; historians divide over whether the trade was active complicity or the pragmatism of a cornered small state.

*Source: RG 84: Switzerland*

*Source: Searching for Records Relating to Nazi Gold: Part I*

## 1945 — Operation Paperclip brings the Nazi rocketeers to America

The United States secretly recruits von Braun and hundreds of German scientists, whitewashing their Nazi records, to win the coming missile and space race. The man who bombed London for Hitler would soon build America's path to the Moon.

*Source: Project Paperclip and American Rocketry after World War II*

> After defeat, utility beat justice in specific cases. Scientists and intelligence assets with Nazi records were absorbed into the Cold War.

## c. 1945 — Operation Paperclip begins

The United States secretly recruited Wernher von Braun and hundreds of German rocket scientists at the end of World War II. Their knowledge fed the American missile and space programs.

*Source: Implementation of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act*

*Source: Project Paperclip and American Rocketry after World War II*

## 1946 — Hitler's spymaster goes to work for the CIA

Reinhard Gehlen, the Nazi army's chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front, is put in charge of a US-funded spy network against the Soviets, which becomes West Germany's intelligence service. The West rebuilt its Cold War espionage on a Nazi foundation.

*Source: Organization of Soviet Intelligence Work Against the West German Intelligence Target in the Early Post-War Years*

## c. 1 January 1947 — Nuremberg Doctors Cite Buck v. Bell in Their Defense

At the Doctors' Trial, defendants and defense counsel invoked Buck v. Bell and American sterilization law to argue that Nazi Germany's sterilization program had followed an accepted legal and scientific precedent set by the United States. The tribunal rejected the comparison to Nazi mass murder and forced experimentation, but the episode underscored how directly American eugenics law had shaped Nazi policy a decade earlier.

*Source: Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race*

## 1967 — Von Braun builds the Saturn V Moon rocket

As director of NASA's Marshall Center, von Braun leads the design of the Saturn V, the giant rocket that would carry astronauts to the Moon. The line ran unbroken from Hitler's vengeance weapon to the Apollo program.

*Source: Project Paperclip and American Rocketry after World War II*

## 20 July 1969 — The Nazi rocketeer's rocket reaches the Moon

Apollo 11 lands on the Moon atop von Braun's Saturn V, the culmination of a career that began with Hitler's missiles. One of the twentieth century's greatest achievements rested on one of its darkest bargains.

*Source: Project Paperclip and American Rocketry after World War II*

> The record supports many separate collaborations. The stronger claim of one coordinated Western plan is the contested part and should be labeled as such.

## 1976 — Sutton extends the thesis to Hitler's rise

In Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Sutton argues that some of the same Western financial and corporate interests also helped bring the Nazis to power. Taken with his Bolshevik book, his claim is that a single set of interests backed both communism and fascism as instruments of control. This coordinated-plan reading is Sutton's own, and it is the part historians reject.

*Source: Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler*

## c. 1980 — Historians answer Sutton with a profit-not-plot reading

Mainstream historians accept the underlying record Sutton assembled: Western firms and banks did trade with and equip both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. What they reject is the idea of one coordinating hand. They see many separate companies and financiers chasing profit and markets, often in rivalry, not a single group steering both regimes as an experiment.

*Source: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy*

## c. 1980 — The 'same money funded both sides' idea is turned to propaganda

The claim that the same financiers backed both communism and fascism has been misused to revive the antisemitic charge of a secret Jewish banking conspiracy. Historians and Sutton's own finance-focused account give no support to that reading. The documented story is one of banks, firms, and states pursuing profit and advantage, not any ethnic or bloodline cabal.

*Source: Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler*