Today, there are few people who haven’t heard of the Bush family. George Herbert Walker Bush served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Director of the CIA, and eventually President of the United States. His son, George Walker Bush, was Governor of Texas before becoming President himself, serving from 2000 to 2008. During both presidencies, numerous covert operations were launched—ranging from regime changes to full-scale wars. While the elder Bush armed Saddam Hussein, the younger Bush overthrew him by launching the invasion of Iraq shortly after occupying Afghanistan. Personal freedoms and civil rights were also significantly curtailed following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most notably through the introduction of the Patriot Act.
However, this article focuses on a lesser-known member of the Bush family whose past has only recently come to light—Prescott Bush. New insights into how the Bush family amassed its wealth and influence have emerged thanks to documents obtained by The Guardian in 2004, lawsuits filed by two Auschwitz survivors against the Bush family, and the declassification of various U.S. government records.
These revelations point to two particularly damaging aspects of Prescott Bush’s past:
- His involvement in financing the Nazi rise to power
- The rapid increase in the Bush family’s wealth and political influence.
The Bush Family
Prescott Bush, the founder of the Bush political dynasty and a U.S. senator, was once considered a potential presidential candidate. He studied at Yale University, where—like many of his ancestors and descendants—he was a member of the secretive and powerful Skull and Bones society. A captain of artillery in World War I, Prescott married Dorothy Walker, daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
His father-in-law, George H. Walker, a prominent investment banker from St. Louis, helped Prescott establish himself in New York’s financial sector in 1924. Walker introduced him to Averell Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E.H. Harriman, who had also ventured into banking. One of the first positions Walker secured for Bush was running the Union Banking Corporation (UBC). Prescott was not only a director of UBC but also listed as one of its seven founding members. He officially owned one share of UBC stock valued at $125.
The Thyssen Family
August Thyssen, founder of the Thyssen industrial empire, was one of Germany’s largest donors during World War I. He and his son Fritz established a transnational network of banks and companies in the 1920s to ensure their wealth could move in and out of Germany safely in times of instability. By 1926, when Fritz inherited the family business, Germany was still struggling to recover economically.
After hearing a speech by Adolf Hitler, Thyssen became captivated by him. He joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and made an early donation of $25,000 to Hitler’s cause when the party was still seen as a marginal group of radical nationalists—something Thyssen later admitted in his autobiography I Paid Hitler. He financially supported the Nazis on multiple occasions. In 1928, Thyssen purchased the Barlow Palace on Brienner Street in Munich, which Hitler then converted into the Brown House, the Nazi Party’s official headquarters. The funds for this transaction came through the Rotterdam-based Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart.
According to several historians, Thyssen was impressed by Hitler’s public speaking skills and his ability to mobilize the masses. But what impressed him most was the military-style discipline and order displayed by Hitler’s followers at rallies. However, after clashing with Hitler over the deportation of Jews and opposing the war, Thyssen fled Germany in 1941. He was captured in France and imprisoned until the end of the war.
How American and European Banks Participated in Building the Nazi War Machine
George Herbert Walker, Prescott Bush’s father-in-law, organized the merger in 1919 between W.A. Harriman & Co. and the British bank Brown Brothers—at the time considered the world’s largest investment bank. The merger took place in 1931. Averell Harriman, son of a railroad tycoon and a banker, together with Fritz Thyssen in 1923, decided that Union Banking Corporation (UBC), founded in New York in 1924, would manage funds organized to channel money through Thyssen’s Dutch bank for American investments and operations.
The Thyssens already owned several financial institutions that enabled them to transfer money from Germany to the Netherlands and then to the U.S.; specifically, these were August Thyssen Bank, based in Berlin, and Bank voor Handel in the Netherlands. George Herbert Walker was appointed president of UBC. Prescott Bush, who had worked as a clerk at W.A. Harriman since 1926, took over leadership of UBC in 1924 and served as its director from 1934 to 1943. That same year, he was also appointed vice president and partner at Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH).
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman—then considered the largest investment bank in the world—and Union Banking Corporation had purchased and sent millions of dollars, gold, oil, steel, coal, and U.S. government bonds to Germany, thus helping Hitler build his war machine. According to U.S. government documents, all shares of UBC were held for the benefit of members of the Thyssen family. Both companies enabled Thyssen to transfer money from Germany to the U.S. via the Netherlands.
Thyssen, American Capital, and the Rise of the Nazi Industry
In 1931, Thyssen joined the NSDAP and became one of the most influential members of the Nazi war machine; at the same time, he led the German Steel Trust, a steel industry consortium founded by Clarence Dillon, an American financier and one of Wall Street’s most influential figures. One of Dillon’s most trusted associates was Samuel Bush—father of Prescott Bush, grandfather of George Herbert Walker Bush, and great-grandfather of George Walker Bush.
It was neither unusual nor illegal to do business with Thyssen throughout the 1930s, and many top American investment endeavors focused on supporting the recovery of the German economy. However, everything changed after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Even then, one could argue that Brown Brothers Harriman were “within their rights to maintain business ties with Thyssen,” as the U.S. remained technically neutral until the end of 1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Hitler’s Angels in American Banks: Investigation, Suspicions, and Seizures in 1942
Trouble for American businessmen doing business with Germany began on July 30, 1942, when the New York Herald-Tribune published an article titled “Hitler’s Angels Have $3 Million in U.S. Banks.” Large amounts of gold purchased by UBC raised suspicions that the bank was a front for Thyssen and other Nazi leaders. There is no dispute that the U.S. government seized assets controlled by Brown Brothers Harriman—including UBC and the Silesian American Corporation (SAC)—in the fall of 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act. What remains contentious is whether Harriman, Walker, and Bush did anything beyond being paper owners of these companies.
Erwin May, a U.S. Treasury Department official and officer at the Office of Alien Property Custodian, was tasked with investigating UBC’s operations. The first discovery was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush, and other directors were not the actual owners of UBC shares but merely “held” them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Surprisingly, no one, including UBC’s president, knew who owned the bank in Rotterdam.
“Union Banking Corporation, incorporated on August 4, 1924, is wholly owned by Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. of Rotterdam, based in the Netherlands.” The investigation failed to determine who owned the Dutch bank. Mr. Cornelis Lievense, one of UBC’s presidents, stated he had no knowledge of who might own Bank voor Handel, but he believed that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, could be the ultimate owner.
May claimed the bank served as a place where the Nazis stored their wealth. He described a network of companies and banks that stretched across Europe, America, and Canada via UBC, and how funds from Bank voor Handel were transferred to other company accounts through UBC. By October, May had traced the non-American board members and discovered that Dutchman H.J. Kouwenhoven—who had met Harriman in 1924 to found UBC—held multiple roles in various companies. In addition to being a leading director at Bank voor Handel, he was also a director at August Thyssen Bank in Berlin and a director of Union Steel Work, a holding company founded by Fritz Thyssen, which controlled Thyssen’s empire of coal and steel in Germany.
Within weeks, Homer Jones, then head of the Office of Alien Property Custodian, sent a memorandum to the office’s executive members recommending that the U.S. government seize and freeze UBC and its assets. Jones also listed the names of the bank’s directors, including Prescott Bush, stating that “the shares of the above bank are held by the named individuals on behalf of Bank voor Handel of Rotterdam, Netherlands, which is owned by one or more members of the Thyssen family, citizens of Germany and Hungary. 4,000 shares are held by persons considered enemies of the U.S., and are thus under the jurisdiction of the Office of Alien Property Custodian.”
Famous American companies financed Nazis
Hidden Details of the UBC–Nazi Connection
The U.S. federal government did not stop the operation of financing Hitler and the Nazis by Bush and Harriman until 1942. After the war, a congressional hearing revealed that German Steel Trust—the largest industrial corporation linked to Fritz Thyssen—had, in collaboration with UBC, contributed to the sharp rise of the German GDP and the production of metal goods and explosives.
An authorization signed by the Office of Alien Property Custodian—found only sparsely in government archives and books, and kept out of the media spotlight—said nothing about the Nazi connection; it merely stated that “Union Banking Corporation is operated for the benefit of the Thyssen family of Germany and for nationals of Hungary and other designated enemy countries.”
Author: Ivan Toth
Ivan Toth is a distinguished Croatian lawyer and analyst of social affairs.
