Union Banking Corporation
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The Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a banking corporation in the US which was seized, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, during World War II in October 1942. The corporation, for which Prescott Bush was the managing director, was alleged to be a Nazi organization.
Adolf Hitler's financiers, the Thyssen family, formed UBC to manage investments in America. The US congressional report described Union Bank as an "interlocking trust" with the German Steel Trust. UBC was also involved in raising funds for Germany and illegally transferring aviation fuel technology to the Luftwaffe.
The company was established in August 1924 with George Herbert Walker as president. His son-in-law Prescott Bush, the grandfather of current US President George W. Bush, was on the board of directors from 1934 to 1943 with E. Roland Harriman, H. J. Kouwenhoven, Johann G. Groeninger, Harold D. Pennington, Cornelis Lievense, Ray Morris, and E. S. James.
Prescott Bush and Roland Harriman, both also served as Vice Presidents at investment firm W.A. Harriman & Co, both along with another employee, Knight Woolley, ex-Yale-class-of-1917 from Yale and members of the same exclusive Skull and Bones fraternity. George Walker was employed by Roland's brother W. Averell Harriman to run the business, which had been given him by railroad baron father E.H. Harriman.
A July 1942 New York Tribune front page article about the bank was headlined "Hitler's Angel has 3 million in US bank"; ("Hitler's Angel" being Fritz Thyssen). This prompted the congressional investigation which closed UBC. At roughly the same time Prescott Bush's son, George H. W. Bush joined the Navy and perhaps deflected some criticism of his father's role in trade that helped the German war effort.
U.S. National Archives contains Vesting Order number 248 signed by U.S. Alien Property Custodian Leo T. Crowley, which records the seizure of the company. On October 20 1942 the Alien Property Custodian seized the assets of the UBC and liquidated its assets.
In August, under the same authority, Congress had seized the first of the Bush-Harriman-managed Thyssen entities, Hamburg-American Line, under Vesting Order No. 126, also signed by Crowley.
Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation (Vesting Order No. 261) and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (Vesting Order No. 259). By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized. [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html) The company allegedly profited from slave labor at Auschwitz via a partnership with I.G. Farben, Hitler's third major industrial patron and partner in the infrastructure of the Third Reich. [2] (http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_Link)
External links
- Heir to the Holocaust (http://www.clamormagazine.org/issues/14/feature3.shtml) by Toby Rogers, Clamor Magazine Issue 14 May/June 2002
- How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html) by Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington, The Guardian September 25, 2004
- Bush - Nazi Link Confirmed (http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_Link) by John Buchanan, The New Hampshire Gazette Vol. 248, No. 1, October 10, 2003fr:Union Banking Corporation