Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949

by Charles Higham

From the inside dust jacket:
"For almost forty years the facts behind the extraordinary true story of Nazi-American wartime business relations have been buried in government files. Now at last Charles Higham, drawing his account from thousands of documents just released under the Freedom of Information Act, has given us a full-scale picture of the American businessmen who dealt with the Nazis right through World War II. Among those who traded on both sides of the war were certain executives of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Chase Bank, the Texas Company, ITT, Ford, and Sterling Products. And helping them with their dealings were such government officials as a secretary of commerce, an assistant secretary of state, and ambassadors to France and Great Britain...."

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, The United States Of America, Historical

277 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Charles Higham was an author and poet. Higham was a recipient of the Prix des Créateurs of the Académie Française and the Poetry Society of London Prize.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to go really crazy read a book called Trading with the Enemy by Charles Higham. It will take your breath away.

It's one of those books that sat on my shelf since the mid-80s for some reason. Every notable industry -- General Motors, Shell, Standard Oil, Ford, Chase, ITT, National City Bank, DuPont etc, etc., were all feathering their monetary nests and shipping vital arms and machinery of war to Nazi Germany while the Axis powers killed our soldiers and the US state department and Roosevelt turned a blind eye.

Ball bearings, without which airplanes could not fly and tanks could not run, were sent to Germany in a round about way while the US military waited and fewer of our planes could fly for lack of them. There was a ball bearing company in Sweden that shipped their bearings to Germany. The Norwegians thought this was a bad idea and, one night, destroyed their factory. You can add them to the short list of who your friends are.

Commodities were sent to Germany while Americans stood in line, counted their ration stamps and saved all material possible to help with the war effort.

Money was funneled from many nations through Swiss banks. The Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland was supposedly to finance war-torn countries after the war. Money was also sent to Germany to finance the war during the war. Germany sent money to its account and then sent tons of jewelry and gold teeth. If you guessed that last came from the concentration camps, you would be right.

There was very little done to make corrections in this banking and industrial world known as The Fraternity.

It seems to me that if this kind of thing was happening in World War I and World War II, that it never quit. I wonder who we are funding and selling arms to today and how many of our soldiers died and still die from allied-made bullets shot and bombs detonated by enemy powers.

The one thing that seems to be a mystery, at least to me, is that most of Higham books are biographies of movie stars. Only one other book, American Swastika, published in 1985, had a political theme.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book looks at the duplicity practiced by the Rockefellers and Henry Ford among other capitalists who helped put Hitler into power. The Rockefellers actually got a presidential order allowing Standard Oil of New Jersey to sell to the enemy. Read it and find out what other companies were involved and what they were selling to the enemy during WWII

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can you be in bed with the enemy in the middle of wartime? According to this book very easily if you write the 'trading with the enemy act' into your constitution. Then you can supply them with all the materials they need to kill your allies and make a tidy profit doing so. I'm afraid not a lot has changed since then. War still equals profit for someone. Difficult to get hold of - I got my copy used from a used bookstore in Hawaii but hard to put down and it will make you very angry whilst you are reading it. But read it.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent expose of how nearly every major US corporation that's been around for at least 100 years did business with the Nazis during WW2, and how many of their leaders were ardent fascists. From the Rockefellers via Standard Oil and Chase Bank, to the Fords, to the Du Ponts and General Motors, to ITT (forerunners of most of the major telecoms in the US), businesses in every field eagerly worked with the Third Reich and were loathe to stop even after Pearl Harbor. Their actions were protected at the highest level, with none of the top leaders facing any form of justice. And even the giant trusts in Germany that funded the rise of the Nazi Party were protected after the Allied victory and their remnants remain today. There's no such thing as "progressive" business, when their profits are threatened, they'll turn fascist every time.

[Michael Scharen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent research here. So much of these crimes were done openly with the tacit support of people like Roosevelt that people need to take a new look at behaviors of the 'dollar a year' men who were so highly praised. Of course, they could work with no pay. They were lining their pockets along with their counterparts in Nazi Germany during the war along with so-called neutrals in Sweden and other places. It has come out that Allied bombing of Germany was maybe 1% effective. It did, however, succeed in murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians. Messerschmidt shot down containing ball bearings from Pennsylvania? Oil sold through Mexico to the German navy? The list goes on and one. Find out what your high school and college instructors decided not to tell you and read this book.

[Rastislav · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The tycoons were linked by an ideology: the ideology of Business as Usual. Bound by identical reactionary ideas, the members sought a common future in fascist domination, regardless of which world leader might further that ambition."

Well, it seems the sacro-saint fight against communist or socialist ideas, coupled with the usual wish to do business and make money helped the rise of fascism and strengthened it. Many things appear in a different light, if you care to consider this

[James Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting account of who profited during WW 2. While millions died some got rich or richer and never had to pay any consequences. There is no patriotism in the business world.

[Darryl Tahirali · Rating 1 out of 5]

Beware this book. It is not trustworthy. It is sensationalistic, abysmally sourced, and atrociously written. This has nothing to do with Charles Higham's subject, which is the collusion between US and Nazi German industrialists and financiers before and during World War Two to carry on "business as usual." This actually happened. This was known about as it was happening. There is good literature available on this explosive topic. Higham's "Trading with the Enemy" is not part of that.

Higham was a tabloid journalist before he became a Hollywood biographer. His unfounded allegations about Errol Flynn's fascist sympathies spurred his research into US-Nazi German business collusion. But he is not a scholar. He lists general sources in appendixes but he does not footnote his assertions. Readers have no way to verify his claims except to do their own research. I have and it is shocking how inaccurate and amateurish his account actually is.

For example, "Trickery in Texas," his chapter on the oil company the Texas Company--he doesn't even bother to note that it was better-known as Texaco--is an utter fiasco. He completely misstates how Texaco and Standard Oil formed two joint-venture companies (one became Aramco) to do business in Saudi Arabia, then later tried to get financial help from the Roosevelt Administration.

Compare the same account (including the identical FDR quote) in Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" (which won the Pulitzer Prize) to see how badly Higham gets it wrong. All he has on his US-Nazi subject is Texaco chairman Torkild Rieber's well-known Nazi affinities, but Rieber got turfed out of Texaco by 1940, at the start of the chapter, leaving Higham with hysterical hand-waving that stoops to dragging in that reliable pro-Nazi punching bag the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem--who had nothing to with Arabian oil or American business.

I do believe that Higham uncovered genuine documentation, and he might have had sincere motives, but he lacked the academic training, interpretive abilities, background education on his subject, and the patience and discipline to make his book even remotely credible.

Which is a damned shame because there is not enough reliable literature available on this subject. James Stewart Martin's "All Honorable Men" (which is from 1950 but I found it in PDF online), Christopher Simpson's "The Splendid Blond Beast," and Max Wallace's "American Axis," much of which covers Henry Ford's formative influence on Hitler and his company as an "arsenal of Nazism" for Germany, to name three, are much more professional and reliable sources on many of the US companies profiled in "Trading with the Enemy."

Higham's follow-up "American Swastika" is an improvement, and his topics have been covered by many more credible sources, but "Trading with the Enemy" is as big a crime to factual accuracy as the fascist business crimes it tries to illustrate.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Higham documents the trading of the American financial elite with Nazi Germany before and during WW2.

Ford provided tanks to Hitler, Standard Oil fueled U-Boats in the Atlantic, ITT built rocket bombs for Goering, and Chase Bank financed Nazis in Paris. And all the while Allied troops were dying, killed by the resources financed by US companies.

This book reads like a thriller and I was gob-smacked at the corporate greed of American companies and, let's not pretend, their sympathies with the Nazi cause. It is not surprising that Nazi salutes still pepper white supremacist rallies in America, it has ever been thus.

Nasty stuff and necessary reading for anyone who believes in American exceptionalism.

[Darlene Torday · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting and sad to read how US companies were more interested in lining their pockets with money from Nazi Germany and the USA during WWII. Seems making money/profit is all some companies wanted to do even if they were supplying weapons to Germany and gas for their planes so they could bomb England and kill our soldiers. I'm not sure much has changed today.
The America I grew up believing did the right thing then did not exist except in the movies.

[Mike Downs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for research on my current novel. Higham I feel had a point to make however I do think there was a much larger picture he chose to ignore.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly an interesting and needed expose of companies and banks that were double dealing during the war but the telling of those shenanigans was a bit dry.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couple this with Hitler's American Model to blow your friend's minds

[Asails F · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a few years much was published about American Corporate collusion with the Nazi government during World War 2. After reading about Coca Cola's entrenchment in Germany I look back with confusion to 1972 when many Jews I knew wore buttons that said "Coke not Pepsi." At the time Pepsi Cola was the first to gain market share in Russia. This was an important issue that disturbed many of my friends. At the time Russia had some strong antisemitic tendencies. It seems strange that U.S. Corporation activities can be so opposed to US policy while at the same time can so strongly influence political outcomes.

How can we the U.S. Citizens gain control of their government when the power is so influenced by Companies that can't even follow U.S. rules and laws?

[Roger Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now that corporations have rights similar to humans, shouldn't we execute a few of them for treason?
We should at least make them add little swastikas to their logos.

Readers will be happy to learn that while millions were dying in World War II, Money Disneyland and its priesthood were not disturbed in the least bit.