The LIES of The Nuremberg Trial WHO escaped Justice. Why Was Josef Mengele’s Mentor Otmar von Verschuer Never Charged.

“After all, the victor will not be asked whether he told the truth or not.”
— Adolf Hitler, remarks to German military commanders on August 22, 1939, as quoted from the Nuremberg documentary record by Robert H. Jackson.

The history of Nuremberg stretches back nearly a thousand years, but the city became forever linked to Nazi Germany after Adolf Hitler transformed it into the symbolic center of the Nazi Party. Between 1927 and 1938, the massive Nuremberg Rallies showcased military spectacle, propaganda, and the consolidation of power, while the 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of their citizenship and laid the legal foundation for racial persecution. In this episode, we trace Nuremberg’s evolution from a medieval imperial city to the stage for both Nazi pageantry and, after World War II, the world’s most famous war crimes trials.

The Nuremberg Trials (1945–1949) remain among the most significant and controversial legal proceedings in modern history. This episode explores the International Military Tribunal and the subsequent Nuremberg Trials, examining the prosecution of Nazi political leaders, military commanders, physicians, judges, industrialists, and the executives of IG Farben. We explain why the Allies selected Nuremberg as the trial venue, how the proceedings introduced new concepts into international law, and how the judgments influenced later war crimes tribunals, crimes against humanity, genocide prosecutions, and international criminal justice.

The discussion also examines the enduring controversies surrounding the trials, including documented allegations of coercive interrogations, debates over the reliability of confessions, claims of “victor’s justice,” and legal arguments involving aggressive war, crimes against humanity, conspiracy charges, and ex post facto law. Rather than accepting any single narrative, we distinguish established historical evidence from disputed claims and revisionist interpretations while exploring why these debates continue to shape public understanding of World War II, the Holocaust, international tribunals, and the limits of justice after war.

The story does not end in 1949. We follow the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials through the breakup of IG Farben into Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst, examine how questions of corporate responsibility evolved during the Cold War, and discuss Bayer’s later acquisition of Monsanto. From Nazi propaganda and industrial power to medicine, law, politics, and multinational corporations, this episode explores how decisions made in Nuremberg continue to influence legal systems, corporate accountability, historical memory, and global debates nearly eighty years later,

Clip:   What Happened at the Nuremberg Trials? | History

Music:  Leonard Cohen – Everybody Knows (Official Audio)

TAYLOR SWIFT & TRAVIS KELCE’S SECRETIVE SATANIC ILLUMINATI WEDDING IN NYC ON 33RD STREET!

1961 MOVIE: Judgment At Nuremberg

LIES YOUR TEACHER TAUGHT YOU: The Farce of Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg trials from 1945 to 1949 and the “confessions” under torture – Front National Suisse

The Legally-Flawed Nuremberg “War Crimes Trials” Did Not “Prove” the Holocaust

Les Problèmes de la Baltique: Finland in the Eye of the Storm. Erkki Hautamäki’s book

Freemasonry, Bolshevism and Dirty Little Secrets You Weren’t Supposed to Know: The Stalin-Churchill Pact | Justice for Germans

Erkki Hautamäki – Wikipedia

Goebbels Accuses Churchill of Lying

Joseph Goebbels: 1933-1945

How a Psychiatrist at Nuremberg Got Inside the Nazi Mind | HISTORY

The Secret Art Bunker of Nuremberg

Aspirin Contributed to Mortalities of 1918-1919 Spanish Influenza, and More | Winter Watch

The Tokyo Trial Explained

How they use hormones to flip sex:  Hormones 

Do you have a psychopath in your life?  The best way to find out is read my book.  BOOK *FREE* Download – Psychopath In Your Life4

Support is Appreciated: Support the Show – Psychopath In Your Life

Download Pods here:   TOP PODS – Psychopath In Your Life

My old discussion forum with last 10 years of victim stories, is back online.  Psychopath Victim Support Community | Forums powered by UBB.threads™

Google Maps My HOME Address:  309 E. Klug Avenue, Norfolk, NE  68701   SMART Meters & Timelines – Psychopath In Your Life

Harald Quandt is one of those remarkable historical figures whose life intersects with several major stories at once: the Nazi leadership, the Battle of Crete, Monte Cassino, postwar German industry, and the modern BMW fortune.

1921

• Harald Quandt is born.
• His father is Günther Quandt, one of Germany’s wealthiest industrialists.
• His mother is Magda Quandt.

1929

• His parents divorce.
• Magda remains part of Berlin’s wealthy social circles.

1931

• Magda marries Joseph Goebbels.
• Harald suddenly becomes the stepson of one of Hitler’s closest associates.

1933

Hitler comes to power.

Harald now grows up at the center of the Nazi elite.

He spends time with:

• Adolf Hitler.
• Joseph Goebbels.
• Hermann Göring.
• Other senior Nazi leaders.

Unlike many children, he personally knew the people running the Third Reich.

1932–1940

Magda and Goebbels have six children together.

Harald becomes their older half-brother.

The family is frequently photographed as the “ideal Nazi family.”

Hitler reportedly had a warm relationship with the Goebbels children.

1939

Harald volunteers for military service.

Despite his family connections, he receives no exemption.

He joins the elite Luftwaffe paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger).

1941

• He fights in the invasion of Crete.
• The battle becomes one of the bloodiest airborne operations of the war.
• Harald survives and receives decorations for bravery.

1941–1943

He serves on the Eastern Front.

Later he serves in Italy.

By now he is a commissioned officer.

1944

• Harald fights at the Battle of Monte Cassino.
• The German Fallschirmjäger become famous for their stubborn defense.
• He is seriously wounded.
• British forces capture him.
• He is sent first to hospital, then to a prisoner-of-war camp near Benghazi, Libya.

April 1945

• While Harald is in captivity, Berlin collapses.
• His mother, Magda, writes him what amounts to a farewell letter.
• She explains she sees no future without National Socialism.
• The letter is one of the most haunting surviving personal documents from Hitler’s bunker.

May 1, 1945

• Magda poisons all six of Harald’s younger half-siblings.
• Joseph and Magda Goebbels then kill themselves.
• Harald becomes the only surviving child of Magda Goebbels.

1947

• Released from British captivity.
• He returns to Germany.
• Instead of entering politics, he joins the family businesses founded by his father.

1954

• Günther Quandt dies.
• Harald and his half-brother Herbert inherit enormous industrial holdings.
• These include major interests connected with what became BMW and other industrial firms.

1950s–1960s

• The Quandt family becomes one of the richest industrial dynasties in West Germany.
• Harald generally avoids public political discussion.
• Unlike Albert Speer or others, he writes no major memoir.

1960

Harald’s half-brother Herbert Quandt plays a decisive role in rescuing BMW from financial collapse by increasing the family’s investment.

Without Herbert’s intervention, many historians believe BMW might have been absorbed by another company.

1967

• Harald dies in a private airplane crash in Italy.
• He is only 45 years old.

After 1967

His daughters inherit substantial wealth.

The broader Quandt family fortune continues growing through BMW and other investments.

2007

A German television documentary draws renewed attention to the family’s wartime history.

It examines the use of forced labor in Quandt factories during World War II.

2011

An independent historical investigation commissioned by the family concludes that Quandt companies used more than 50,000 forced laborers during the war and that the family’s wartime activities were more deeply intertwined with the Nazi system than had previously been acknowledged.

What makes Harald historically unique?

He occupies an unusual position in history.

He was:

• The biological son of one of Germany’s richest industrialists.
• The stepson of Joseph Goebbels.
• Personally acquainted with Hitler.
• An officer in an elite combat formation rather than a political official.
• A British prisoner of war when Berlin fell.
• The only surviving child of Magda Goebbels.
• Heir to one of Germany’s largest postwar industrial fortunes.

Harald never chose to become Joseph Goebbels’ stepson. He entered that world at age ten when his mother remarried. He then lived through the collapse of the regime, lost his mother and six half-siblings in a single day, spent years as a POW, and returned to inherit an industrial empire whose wartime legacy remains the subject of historical scrutiny. Few individual biographies intersect with so many of the defining themes of twentieth-century German history.

Günther Quandt built and expanded the industrial empire.

Herbert Quandt inherited part of it and rescued BMW.

Harald Quandt inherited the other major branch while carrying the extraordinary distinction of being Joseph Goebbels’ stepson.

The startling part is that Harald left a British prisoner-of-war camp in 1947, returned to Germany, and within several years became one of the richest men in the country because his biological father’s industrial empire had survived the war and denazification.

Italy did have trials, but it never had a single international tribunal like Nuremberg or Tokyo. Most large-scale prosecutions simply never happened. Your transcript lays out the reasons quite well.

The major reasons were:

Italy switched sides before the war ended.

This is probably the biggest reason.

• Mussolini was overthrown in July 1943.
• Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943.
• The new Italian government declared war on Germany.
• Italian troops fought alongside the Allies for the remainder of the war.

That allowed postwar Italy to argue:

“Yes, we were fascist, but we also helped defeat fascism.”

That was an argument Germany and Japan could not make.

Italy became both defendant and victim.

After September 1943:

• Germany occupied northern Italy.
• Italians fought Italians in a civil war.
• German troops committed atrocities inside Italy.
• Italian resistance groups fought the Germans.

So Italy could say:

“We committed crimes, but we also suffered under Nazi occupation.”

That complicated any attempt to stage one giant international trial.

Mussolini was already dead.

On April 28, 1945:

• Mussolini was captured.
• He was executed by Italian partisans.
• Several senior Fascist officials were executed with him.

Italy later argued that much of the principal leadership had already been punished by Italians themselves.

The Cold War intervened—again.

By 1947:

The Western Allies were increasingly worried about:

• Soviet influence.
• The powerful Italian Communist Party.
• Keeping Italy in the Western camp.

Britain and the United States lost interest in prosecutions.

Yugoslavia wanted hundreds of Italian officers extradited.

Ethiopia wanted Italian commanders tried for poison gas, massacres, and colonial atrocities.

Instead:

• Britain slowed things down.
• The U.S. withdrew support.
• Extraditions largely failed.

Many suspects simply remained in Italy.

Italy declared a broad amnesty.

In 1946, Justice Minister Palmiro Togliatti issued a sweeping amnesty.

Although intended to exclude the worst crimes, in practice it was interpreted broadly.

Out of approximately 218,000 cases reviewed during the defascistization process, only 738 resulted in convictions.

Some officials were politically inconvenient to prosecute.

One striking example in your transcript is General Mario Roatta.

Yugoslavia wanted him tried.

Instead, he escaped with assistance from Italian police and British intelligence, eventually living freely in Spain before returning to Italy.

The larger pattern

One thing you’ve probably noticed over the past few days is that the same theme keeps appearing:

• Germany: extensive trials initially, then rapid reintegration as the Cold War intensified.
• Japan: selective prosecutions, immunity for Unit 731 personnel, preservation of the emperor, alliance with the United States.
• Italy: limited prosecutions, broad amnesties, reluctance to extradite suspects, reconciliation prioritized over extensive trials.

The specific circumstances differed, but by roughly 1947–1948, Western governments increasingly emphasized rebuilding allies and containing Soviet influence over pursuing every alleged war criminal. That shift is well documented, even though historians continue to debate whether it was justified or whether accountability should have remained the higher priority.

Ancient and Medieval Origins

The exact origin is uncertain. Soft, brimless caps resembling the fez were worn around the Mediterranean and North Africa for centuries. The city of Fez (Fès), Morocco, became associated with the hat because of its production of the red dye used to color felt hats, although historians debate whether the hat itself originated there.

1400s–1700s

Similar brimless felt caps were common throughout:

• Morocco
• Algeria
• Tunisia
• Egypt
• The Balkans
• Parts of the Ottoman Empire

At this stage it was simply regional headwear.

1826

A turning point.

Sultan Mahmud II abolished the Janissaries and modernized the Ottoman military.

He ordered the fez to replace turbans as standard military and civil-service dress.

Why?

• Easier to manufacture.
• Symbolized modernization.
• Allowed Muslims to touch their forehead to the ground during prayer because it had no brim.
• Created a uniform appearance across the empire.

This is when the fez became internationally recognized.

1830s–1870s

The fez spread across the Ottoman Empire.

It was worn by:

• Soldiers
• Police
• Judges
• Bureaucrats
• Postal workers
• Government officials
• Merchants

For many people, wearing a fez meant loyalty to the Ottoman state.

Late 1800s

European colonial officers and travelers frequently encountered the fez throughout:

• Turkey
• Egypt
• Bosnia
• Syria
• Lebanon
• Palestine
• Libya
• Tunisia

It became one of the visual symbols of the Ottoman world.

1878–1918

Bosnia came under Austro-Hungarian rule.

The Austrians kept Bosnian Muslim regiments wearing fezzes because they respected local religious traditions.

Those Bosnian regiments became famous throughout Europe.

This explains the Waffen-SS connection decades later.

1914–1918 (World War I)

Fezzes were still worn by:

• Ottoman Army units.
• Bosnian Muslim regiments.
• Many civilians throughout the Middle East.

1925

• Mustafa Kemal Atatürk banned the fez in Turkey under the Hat Law.
• He regarded it as a symbol of the old Ottoman Empire and wanted Western-style hats instead.
• The ban dramatically reduced everyday use in Turkey.

1930s–1945

The Nazis recruited Bosnian Muslims into the:

13th Waffen Mountain Division SS “Handschar.”

• Those soldiers wore the traditional fez with SS insignia.
• It looked strange because the SS is usually associated with black peaked caps.
• Historically, however, Himmler was willing to preserve traditional dress when recruiting foreign units.

1870s–Present (Shriners)

The Shriners International adopted the fez in the late nineteenth century.

Why?

The organization borrowed Middle Eastern imagery because its rituals and symbolism were inspired by romanticized ideas of Arabia, North Africa, and the Ottoman world—not because it had any historical connection to those governments.

The fez became their most recognizable symbol.

It usually bears:

• The scimitar.
• Crescent.
• Sphinx.
• Chapter name.

Today

The fez is still worn:

• By Shriners.
• During some ceremonial military occasions in the Balkans.
• In parts of Morocco.
• During cultural festivals throughout North Africa.
• By a few traditional religious groups.

Who has worn the fez?

• Ottoman Sultans.
• Ottoman Army officers and soldiers.
• Ottoman police.
• Ottoman judges.
• Civil servants.
• Bosnian Muslim regiments under Austria-Hungary.
• Ottoman officials throughout the Middle East.
• 13th Waffen-SS Handschar Division.
• Shriners.
• Various North African civilians.
• Some Sufi religious orders.

One interesting historical irony is that the fez has represented very different things depending on the era:

• In Morocco, it reflected regional tradition.
• In the Ottoman Empire, it symbolized modernization and state service.
• In Austria-Hungary, it identified Bosnian Muslim regiments.
• In the Waffen-SS, it marked a foreign volunteer formation.
• Among the Shriners, it became a ceremonial emblem inspired by an imagined “Oriental” aesthetic.

It is one of those rare pieces of clothing that has crossed empires, religions, military organizations, and fraternal societies while retaining its instantly recognizable shape.

Fez

• Ottoman officials.
• Military officers.
• Judges.
• Police.
• Bosnian regiments.
• Shriners.
• Later, the Handschar SS division.

Top hat

• Bankers.
• Industrialists.
• Politicians.
• Diplomats.
• Wealthy businessmen.
• Freemasons in some ceremonial settings.
• Victorian and Edwardian upper classes.

One irony is that the Nazis persecuted the Roma under racial laws while simultaneously recruiting Bosnian Muslim SS troops who wore fezzes. So during World War II you could have:

• Roma civilians in the Balkans wearing fezzes as traditional local dress.
• Bosnian Muslim Waffen-SS soldiers wearing fezzes with SS insignia.

The same style of hat had completely different meanings depending on who was wearing it.

So if you’re researching symbolism, I would be cautious about assigning a single meaning to the fez. Historically it has been worn by:

• Ottoman officials.
• Muslim civilians.
• Christians in some Balkan regions.
• Jewish merchants in Ottoman cities.
• Roma in Ottoman territories.
• Bosnian regiments of Austria-Hungary.
• The Handschar SS Division.
• Shriners.

That’s one reason historians generally treat it as regional and cultural headwear, whose meaning changed depending on the time, place, and wearer, rather than as the emblem of one particular people or organization.

The Roma were a mobile people whose communities spread from the Indian subcontinent into the Byzantine Empire, the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, Central Europe, and eventually Western Europe. Because they often adopted aspects of local dress while retaining elements of their own culture, they became one of the groups through which clothing styles could be seen across multiple regions.

For example:

• In Ottoman Bosnia, a Roma blacksmith might wear a fez because local Bosnian Muslims did.
• In Bulgaria, Roma musicians often wore the same headwear as other local men.
• In parts of Turkey, Roma communities also wore fezzes.
• By contrast, in Spain, England, or France, Roma communities generally dressed more like the surrounding populations and did not typically wear fezzes.

One thing that makes the Balkans fascinating is how mixed the population was. In the same town you might have:

• Bosnian Muslims wearing fezzes.
• Orthodox Serbs.
• Catholic Croats.
• Sephardic Jews.
• Ashkenazi Jews.
• Roma families.
• Ottoman officials.
• Austro-Hungarian administrators (after 1878).

“How did one piece of headwear become accepted by so many different peoples across the Ottoman world?”

The fez crossed ethnic, linguistic, and even religious boundaries. It was worn by Muslims, Christians, Jews, and some Roma communities. Later it appeared on Austrian Bosnian regiments, the Handschar SS division, and eventually the Shriners in the United States.

That makes the fez less a symbol of one people than a symbol of a shared cultural sphere that stretched from North Africa through the eastern Mediterranean and deep into the Balkans. That’s one reason it shows up in such unexpected places when you start following its history.

Today, many Americans associate Islam primarily with the Middle East or with terrorism because of the events of the last few decades. That was not always the dominant public perception.

Here’s the timeline.

1700s–1800s

Most Americans had very little direct contact with Muslims.

Islam was known largely through:

• The Ottoman Empire.
• North African Barbary states.
• Biblical history.
• Travel literature.

The biggest early American interaction came during the Barbary States conflicts (1801–1805 and 1815), when the young United States fought piracy in the Mediterranean.

Late 1800s

America developed a fascination with what people called “the Orient.”

You saw:

• Shriners wearing fezzes.
• “Arabian Nights” themes.
• Turkish smoking rooms.
• Belly dancing at world fairs.
• Moorish architecture.
• Ottoman-inspired decorations.

Muslim imagery was often viewed as exotic or romantic rather than threatening.

1870s–1920s

This is probably the era you’re noticing.

Many American fraternal organizations adopted Middle Eastern imagery.

Examples:

• Shriners International
• Moorish Revival architecture.
• Crescent symbols.
• Fezzes.
• Arabic-inspired names.
• Camel imagery.

These groups were not Islamic organizations. They borrowed symbols because Americans found the Ottoman and Arab world mysterious and fashionable.

1920s–1945

The Middle East was still not a major focus of American public life.

Attention centered much more on:

• Europe.
• Japan.
• The Great Depression.
• World War II.

1948–1970s

Several events gradually increased attention to the Middle East:

• Creation of Israel.
• Arab-Israeli wars.
• Oil discoveries.
• OPEC.
• The 1973 oil embargo.

Americans increasingly associated the region with geopolitics rather than romance.

1979

A major turning point.

The Iranian Revolution and the U.S. embassy hostage crisis dominated television for over a year.

For many Americans, this was their first sustained exposure to modern political Islam.

1980s

Additional events reinforced that shift:

• Lebanon.
• Beirut barracks bombing.
• Airline hijackings.
• Libya.
• Palestinian terrorism.

1990s

The perception hardened further.

Events included:

• 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
• East Africa embassy bombings.
• USS Cole attack.

September 11, 2001

This was by far the largest turning point.

After the attacks, Islam became strongly associated in the American public mind with terrorism, security, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the broader “War on Terror.”

That doesn’t mean Americans viewed all Muslims that way, but public discussion changed dramatically.

Why are there so many Islamic-looking symbols in America?

Because many of them arrived before Islam was widely viewed through a security lens.

The Shriners adopted the fez in 1872.

Moorish Revival buildings were fashionable.

Arabian Nights stories were enormously popular.

None of these were seen as controversial.

So the same fez that looked perfectly ordinary on a Shriner in 1920 might today surprise people who associate it primarily with the Ottoman Empire or Islam.

In many ways, the symbolism stayed the same, but its cultural meaning changed because the public’s perception of Islam changed over the twentieth century, especially after 1979 and even more after 2001. That’s why Americans today often notice symbols that earlier generations simply regarded as exotic, decorative, or fraternal rather than politically or religiously significant.

The Marshall Plan Myth 

The 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan provided another occasion for the media to celebrate the government’s good works. The U.S.’s headlong plunge into global welfarism (nearly $100 billion in current dollars), they said, saved European economies after the Second World War. One reporter, Garrick Utley of NBC, even theorized that Marshall aid explains why East Germany was poor and West Germany rich.  

As economist Tyler Cowen has noted, the countries that received the most Marshall Plan money (allies Britain, Sweden, and Greece) grew the slowest between 1947 and 1955, while those that received the least money (axis powers Germany, Austria, and Italy) grew the most. In terms of post-war prosperity, then, it eventually paid to be a political enemy of the U.S. instead of a “beneficiary” of international charity.  

But this truth is only news if you think that the Marshall Plan was genuinely intended to help foreign countries. But as with all government programs, it pays returns to look beneath the surface. So what exactly was the point of the Marshall Plan, named for General George Marshall? It’s been well-described in the works of historians William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, Stephen Ambrose, and Alan Milward.  

Marshall himself played the role of a patsy, delivering prepackaged speeches written by the players behind the plan. His original pitch, given at Harvard, was for money to end “hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” But the real upshot of the Marshall Plan was a political maneuver to loot American taxpayers to keep influential American corporations on the government dole. The Plan’s legacy was the egregious and perpetual use of foreign aid for domestic political and economic purposes.  

After the war ended, Harry Truman’s popularity in the polls began to plummet, as did the prestige of government generally. The American people had made huge sacrifices to fight the war and now wanted curbs in government, which had been administering a centrally planned economy. Most of all, they wanted the foreign policy recommended by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson: trade with all, entanglements with none.  

In the mainstream of thinking was Republican Senator Robert Taft, a hero of all free-market activists at the time. He demanded tax cuts, spending cuts, and an end to “constantly increasing interference with family life and with business by autocratic government bureaus and autocratic labor leaders.” The Republican party swept midterm elections in 1946, taking back the Congress on a hard-core, anti-big government platform.  

Truman had to do something big and he knew it. As Charles Mee reports, he needed “some large program that would let him recapture the initiative, something big enough to enable him to gather in all the traditional factions of the Democratic Party and also some middle-of-the-road Republicans, and at the same time, something that would hamper the Republican phalanx,” and establish him as a world leader.  

The issue was right before him: foreign aid, funneled through the corporate establishment and cloaked in the rhetoric of opposition to foreign (but not domestic) communism. Cynically, he would make good use of Russia, which only the day before had been our gallant ally in the war, and transform it into a monster that had to be destroyed. By stealing the Republican’s anti-socialist rhetoric, Truman hoped to frazzle his opponents and make himself a hero on the world stage.  

Truman had plenty of co-conspirators, men who have gone down in history as the architects of the original New World Order. Fabled establishmentarians Averell Harriman and Charles Kindleberger were central figures. But it was Dean Acheson, undersecretary of state and the most menacing statist of the immediate post-war era, who concocted the plan to make the wartime empire permanent. Acheson persuaded Navy secretary James Forrestal and domestic fixer Clark Clifford to show Truman how he could elevate a political scam like foreign aid into a mighty ideological struggle on the global stage.  

A little-known business group, founded in 1942 and called the Committee for Economic Development, was elevated into a think tank for a new international order—the economic counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations. The Committee’s founders were the heads of the top steel, automotive, and electric industries who had benefited from the New Deal’s corporatist statism. Its membership overlapped with the farther left National Planning Association, which was unabashedly national socialist in ideological orientation.  

These groups understood that they owed their profit margins to government subsidies provided by the New Deal and wartime production subsidies. Faced with post-war peace, they feared a future in which they would be forced to compete on a free-market basis. Their personal and institutional security was at stake, so they got busy dreaming up strategies to sustain a profitable statism in a peacetime economy.  

Corporate economic interests, then, overlapped with Truman’s political interests, and an unholy alliance between business and government was born. They would use Europe’s miseries to line their own pockets in the name of “rebuilding” and providing “security” against trumped-up threats to American security.  

The test case came in 1947 with aid to Greece, where a communist party was making electoral advances. Truman saw the main chance, and demanded $400 million in foreign aid, which Congress approved as a swipe against Russia. Just as the money was being channeled to special-interest groups, however, members of Congress learned that the “Russian connection” to the Greek communist party had been phonied up. As it turned out, Greece, like every European country, just wanted the cash.  

Even so, the political success of the Truman doctrine of global giveaways had been demonstrated, and the script for billions in future giveaways had been written. Over the next five years, “Marshall money” would corrupt nearly every Christian democratic party in Europe, turning them into carbon copies of the U.S. Democratic party. Those political parties in turn worked to create monstrous welfare states and regulatory controls that continue to hinder European economic growth today.  

On the heels of the success in Greece, Dean Acheson formed an ad hoc committee to find “situations elsewhere in the world” that “may require analogous, technical, and military aid on our part.” With no effort, the ad hoc committee was able to classify most of Europe as in need of economic aid. The committee found shortages of just about everything, and, in particular, dollars to buy goods from corporate America. A mythical “dollar shortage” (as if trade is only possible with a world awash in paper) was the crisis of the moment.  

But beneath the surface, the true objective was the internationalization of the New Deal, a bureaucrat’s dream. As Julius Krug, secretary of the interior, said in his memoirs, the Marshall Plan, “essential to our own continued productivity and prosperity,” was a Tennessee Valley Authority on a world scale. “It is as if we were building a TVA every Tuesday.”  

Yet even after the Greece vote, polls showed tremendous public opposition to any foreign giveaways. In one meeting, the Republican House Majority Leader Charles Halleck told Truman flat out: “You must realize there is a growing resistance to these programs. I have been out on the hustings, and I know. The people don’t like it.”  

The Truman gang had already thought of that. Months before the vote, he brought together the heads of major corporations to enlist them in the cause. Members of this organizing committee, drawn from the Committee for Economic Development, included, most prominently, Hiland Vatcheller, president of the Allegheny-Ludlum Steel Corporation; W. Randolph Burgess, vice-chairman of National City Bank of New York; Paul G. Hoffmann, president of Studebaker Corp. (and later administrator of Marshall funds), as well as the secretary treasurers of the AFL and the CIO.  

Leading the corporate charge for secure profits was Will Clayton, the Texas cotton impresario whose business was about to experience a remarkable tax-subsidized boom. The last world war had already made his company the second largest cotton-trading company in the world. Unlike his competitors during the New Deal, while working with FDR to wreck the American economy, he was smart enough to move his operations to Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, and Egypt. By the Second World War, he was selling 15 percent of the world cotton crop.  

As the war ended, he reenlisted in the campaign for the home front. As undersecretary of state for economic affairs in 1947, Clayton too saw the main chance. “Let us admit right off,” he said in defense of the idea of foreign aid: “We need markets—big markets—in which to buy and sell.” Here is the core truth of all such aid. The intent is not to help foreign countries; it is to reward home-based multinationals who actually get the cash as the government purchases political influence abroad.  

Nothing was left to chance. Acheson worked with the established corporate elites and the State Department to create a supposed grass-roots organization called “Citizens’ Committee for the Marshall Plan.” As many as one thousand speakers representing the group toured the country to whip up support. It also ghost-wrote Congressional testimony from other organizations on behalf of the aid package. As Averell Harriman told several European ambassadors during a visit to the British embassy, they haven’t seen anything compared with the “flood of organized propaganda which the Administration is about to unloose.”  

It was left to Will Clayton to make the economic case. Perversely, he touted the Marshall Plan as the triumph of “free enterprise.” Moreover, he said, if communism comes to Europe, “I think the situation which we would face in this country would be a very grave one.” We would “have to reorder and readjust our whole economy in this country if we lost the European market.”  

In the days before the vote, the claims became more extreme and, with the media-corporate-banking- government elite on board, the propaganda became ever more hysterical. We were told that a depression would come. The U.S. would be bombed. We’d be in another war if the aid package failed. The situation is as bleak as it was for France in 1938. American life as we know it would end forthwith.  

When the plan passed, as it easily did (with even Taft’s vote), the ink was hardly dry on the legislation when the ships full of goods hit the high seas. At any given moment over the next few months, 150 boats were carrying wheat, flour, cotton, tires, borax, drilling equipment, tractors, tobacco, aircraft parts, and anything else big domestic manufacturers could get their hands on.  

As with most goods shipped under the Marshall Plan, American producers had the advantage: 50 percent had to be sent on American vessels. Oil exports to Europe exploded even as imports from Europe were cut by one-third. In aid distribution, there was bias in favor of finished goods, to prevent European businesses from competing with American producers on down the production line.  

Taking a leaf from the Roosevelt playbook, Truman bypassed the usual bureaucracy and established a new bureau—the Economic Cooperative Administration—to distribute the aid. It too was staffed by the heads of major industrial-corporate interests who stood to benefit at public expense. Paul Hoffman headed the group and passed out billions to well-heeled corporate pow