Banks and WII

You know how we're taught the Nazis were pure evil fanatics who came out of nowhere, built a war machine from nothing, and tried to conquer the world?

Yeah, textbooks make it sound like Germany just bootstrapped itself into tanks and planes through sheer hatred.

But what if I told you the real story isn't in Berlin, it's on Wall Street?

A dozen American banks and corporations didn’t just do business with Hitler — they built him, funded him, armed him, and kept the checks flowing even after American boys started dying.
And the kicker? Some of them got richer during the war than before it.

Stick around, because by the end, you’ll see why your history teachers skipped this chapter — and why the same companies profiting from genocide are still running your world today.

The Beginning

All right, let’s rewind to 1933.
Hitler just seized power.
Germany’s economy is destroyed.
The Treaty of Versailles crushed them with reparations.
Hyperinflation in the 1920s wiped out savings.
Unemployment’s at 30%.
People are starving.
The Reichsmark is worthless.

And Hitler’s promising to “make Germany great again.”

But here’s the thing nobody tells you:
You can’t build a military with speeches.
You need steel.
You need oil.
You need cash — mountains of it.
And Germany in 1933 had none of those things.

So, where did it come from?

Enter Wall Street

Picture this: Wall Street, 1920s.
American banks are flush with cash.
They’ve been lending to everyone — especially Germany.
Because even though Germany lost World War I, even though they owed billions in reparations, American banks saw an opportunity.

The Dawes Plan of 1924 — J.P. Morgan, Dillon Reed, Chase National Bank — restructured German debt.
They floated bonds and made Germany dependent on American capital.

Over $475 million flowed from the U.S. to Germany between 1924 and 1931.
That’s over $8 billion today — not charity, loans at interest, with strings attached.

American bankers literally managed Germany’s economy through the Dawes Committee.
And when Hitler took over, he inherited the entire system.
Did American banks pull out?
No. They doubled down.

Standard Oil and Synthetic Fuel

Here’s the mind-blower: Standard Oil, owned by the Rockefellers, made a deal with I.G. Farben, the German chemical giant that later made Zyklon B for the gas chambers.
Joint ventures. Technology sharing.

And the big one — synthetic fuel.

Germany had no oil. None.
They were landlocked, no colonies, no access to Middle Eastern fields.

So how did the Luftwaffe fly?
How did Panzer tanks roll across Europe?

Standard Oil gave them the technology to make synthetic fuel from coal — the hydrogenation process.
Without that, Germany’s military would’ve run out of gas in six months.

Standard Oil knew exactly what they were doing.
They had reps in Germany, got reports, and kept the partnership running — even after 1939, even after Poland, even after war was declared.

Let that sink in: the company that became Exxon gave Hitler the fuel to wage war.

IBM and the Machinery of Death

IBM. Yeah, the computer company.
They didn’t just sell punch-card machines to Germany, they customized them for tracking Jews.

Every concentration camp had IBM machines processing data:
prisoner numbers, transport schedules, death counts, work assignments — who lives, who dies.
All processed on IBM equipment.

IBM’s German subsidiary, Dehomag, maintained the machines throughout the war.
They sent technicians, provided updates — and IBM headquarters in New York collected royalties.
Every punch card sold. Every machine leased. IBM got paid.

An American company profited from organizing genocide.
They didn’t pull triggers — they just made mass murder efficient, industrial, and trackable.

And after the war?
No prosecution. No consequences.
They’re still one of the biggest tech companies on Earth.

Ford, GM, and the Engines of Fascism

Ford Motor Company.
Henry Ford — a raging anti-Semite — published the Dearborn Independent, blaming Jews for everything: communism, banking, war.
He even published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a known forgery.

Hitler loved him.
Kept Ford’s portrait on his desk.
Called him an inspiration.

And Ford’s German factories — Ford-Werke — didn’t stop production when war broke out.
They ramped up, building trucks for the Wehrmacht and engines for German vehicles using slave labor from concentration camps.

After America entered the war, Ford-Werke was classified as a “critical military contractor” by the Nazi government.
And here’s the insane part: after the war, Ford demanded compensation from the U.S. government for Allied bombing damage to his German factories — factories that built Nazi trucks.

The audacity is breathtaking.

General Motors, their German subsidiary Opel, made trucks and aircraft engines.
By 1939, Opel was producing half of all German trucks and a third of all armored vehicles.

The Blitzkrieg that destroyed Poland and France rolled on GM wheels.

And when America entered the war, GM claimed they “couldn’t control” their foreign subsidiaries.
Translation: we’re making too much money to care.

After the war, GM sued the U.S. for $33 million in damages to their German plants — and won.

The Banks and the Money Trail

Chase National Bank — now JPMorgan Chase.
After the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, Chase’s Paris branch froze Jewish accounts and helped the Nazis liquidate them.

The bank operated in Nazi-occupied France until 1944 — three years after Pearl Harbor.
An American bank helping Nazis steal from Jews while American soldiers died.

Documents later showed Chase executives knew exactly what was happening — and kept the branch open because it was profitable.

DuPont sold chemicals.
Union Banking Corporation, run by Prescott Bush (George H.W. Bush’s father), held Nazi assets and financed German steel production.
ITT sold communications equipment directly to the German military.

And these weren’t rogue employees — they were boardroom decisions.

The Scale of Complicity

I.G. Farben used over 80,000 slave laborers from Auschwitz alone — worked to death making synthetic rubber and fuel.
IBM’s machines tracked every one of them.
Ford produced 78,000 trucks for the Wehrmacht.
Opel made 29,000.

Together, that’s over a third of German military logistics.

Without American trucks, the Nazis don’t conquer France.
Without IBM, the Holocaust isn’t industrialized.
Without Standard Oil, the Luftwaffe can’t fly.

After the War

After the war, none of these companies faced real accountability.
Some German industrialists were tried at Nuremberg, but the American partners? Protected.

The Marshall Plan needed industry. The Cold War needed manufacturing.
So Ford, GM, and IBM got contracts — and the files were buried.

In 1998, survivors sued.
Documents surfaced — letters, memos, contracts — proving executives knew.
Settlements came in 2000: German industry paid $5 billion total; Ford and GM chipped in a mere $20 million.
IBM paid nothing.

The Pattern Continues

And it’s not just history. The pattern never stopped.

American corporations are still doing business with regimes committing genocide — today.
China. Xinjiang. Uyghur concentration camps. Forced labor.

Apple, Nike, Tesla — all manufacturing there.
They lobby against sanctions, claim “supply chains are complex.”
Same excuse. Different century.

Tech companies build censorship tools for dictatorships.
Facebook enabled genocide in Myanmar.
Oil companies fund wars in Yemen.
It’s the same moral equation: profit over principle.

The Brutal Truth

Corporations don’t have morals.
They have shareholders.
And shareholders want returns.

If genocide is profitable, they’ll find a way to rationalize it.

“We’re creating jobs.”
“We can’t compete otherwise.”
“It’s complicated.”

They’ll fund museums and hospitals to polish their image, while their other hand funds oppression.

What You Can Do

1. Know the truth.
   World War II wasn’t just fought with bombs, it was financed.

2. Understand accountability is rare.
   Executives died rich. The pattern persists.

3. Watch where your money goes.
   The products you buy today fund exploitation abroad.

4. Demand transparency.
   This isn’t conspiracy, it’s documented.
   Congressional investigations, lawsuits, declassified files.

If this makes you angry, good.
Because this story doesn’t end in 1945, it repeats.
Different countries. Different products.
Same greed.

History isn’t over.
It’s just better at hiding.
And the same families that profited from Hitler?
They’re still running the world, different names, same people.