The Swedish Tiger’s Repressed Memories
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@MarcusLjunggre4
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Prologue
Our idea with this article is that once and for all, report not only what interests lay behind the two World Wars and the outbreak of the Cold War, but also the root cause, based on an operational strategic planning horizon extending throughout the last century, a planning that more than anything else has defined our world in modern times.
This is a multifaceted subject of course, with many more events and people involved than we can account for, but we have chosen to focus on the most prominent names to demonstrate different networks and connections, as well as historical events that happened both parallel and sequentially from a geopolitical perspective over the past two centuries. We want to create a comprehensive understanding for the reader why we are at this point today. To best know the direction of the future, we must first orientate ourselves in the past.
Before continuing, we want to thank Carl Norberg from whom we have borrowed some of the texts in this article. Over the years, despite great opposition from both individuals as well as the establishment, he has filled in the gaps of our forgotten past. Without him and the solid knowledge he possesses in economics, geopolitics, history and emotional understanding, this article would never have been produced or even conceived.
We will begin with something that most have heard both once and twice, but as they say, repetition is the mother of all knowledge.
In 1913, the US created the Federal Reserve through the interest of the international banking conglomerate. The Federal Reserve Act was passed during the Christmas week when most of the US state administration celebrated Christmas with their families, a bill that President Woodrow Wilson promised to immediately enact, as a consequence of the same banking interests funding him for the presidential post for that very purpose. This he only at a later stage understood the meaning of, when it was already too late, something he also regretted in writing.
— Woodrow Wilson, after signing the creation of the Federal Reserve.“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst governed, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
One of these creators and the designated architect behind the central bank was named Paul Warburg, and it is with this family that our story begins.
The Warburg family is believed to have Italian origin, then called Del Banco, but after settling down in the German city of Warburg, the family took its name from there in 1559, and then branches of the family settled in the United States, Scandinavia, and England.
The spider in the net
The American-German branch
We’re about to begin with a biographical sketch of Eric M. Warburg’s life, in which he, as a transatlantic commuter with an extensive personal network, became connected to key institutions, organizations and important individuals. Although Eric M. Warburg never pursued a political post or a career in politics, he remained close to the influential and powerful members of these circles. In the United States, John J. McCloy, the former US High Commissioner for Germany, was one of Warburg’s most remarkable high-profile contacts. In Germany it was Helmut Schmidt, Chancellor of Germany 1974-1982, with whom he maintained a close friendship from the 1960s, sharing a passion for sailing, and it was to Eric Warburg that Schmidt would turn to about advice for German-American relations, but then Eric’s uncle Paul Warburg and his cousin James Warburg were advising on financial matters to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others. However, the friendship with Allen Dulles should be considered the most remarkable, at least from a Swedish perspective.
Eric M. Warburg (1900-1990), a central figure in the geopolitical events of the 20th century.
Investment banker Eric Warburg was a German-born Jew with an American passport, who became a commuter between the United States and Germany. Warburg’s name is first and foremost associated with banking, and the family banking company Warburg has been in Hamburg since the late 19th century. Eric Warburg also earned a reputation as a political and economic adviser, with significant diplomatic skills that he often used beyond the eyes of the public. Furthermore, he was a decisive force in the negotiation of the Jewish debt conference after the Second World War. He was part of a transatlantic business and social elite, whose networks during the 20th century may be considered to have been one of the more extensive of their time.
The Warburg’s transatlantic network
Eric Warburg was born in the Wilhelmine era and experienced his father Max Warburg’s success with the family firm, the bank MM Warburg & Co. Warburgs had prominent figures among his business partners and friends such as Albert Ballin, the architect of modern cruise travel and general manager of the famous Hamburg-America line, but also Prince von Bülow, former Chancellor of the German Empire.
Max Warburg (1867-1946)
Max Warburg also belonged to a circle of advisers to the German Emperor Wilhelm II. After the First World War, Max Warburg participated in negotiations on the Versailles Treaty as a member of the German delegation, but he declined the offer to chair the Finance Committee and instead proposed his partner in the Warburg Bank, Carl Melchior.
Max Warburg’s financial success was particularly evident in the ever-increasing number of board seats he held before the 1930s. In the mid-1920s, he served on 27 corporate boards, although his first intention was to limit them to the one at Blohm & Voss, Germany’s largest shipyard at that time. The last board he ended up on was at IG Farben, and although Warburg was forced to give up these chairs after the Nazis came to power, to uphold confidence for the ongoing arising process, they are, to say the least, an expression of MM Warburg & Co’s prominent business position. Finally, this also laid a foundation for his son Eric’s successful maintenance of these business connections during and after World War II.
In addition, the Warburg family had established a significant branch of the family in the United States around the turn of the century through the marriage of two of Eric’s uncles, Paul and Felix Warburg, but also in Sweden where a third brother, Fritz Warburg, lived during both World Wars. The first Paul, identified as the architect of the US Federal Reserve, married Nina Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb, a founder of the The Wall Street Bank house Kuhn, Loeb & Co., while the latter, Felix, married Frieda Schiff, the only daughter of Jacob H. Schiff – the train magnate – a senior partner in the same company. Both Warburg brothers eventually joined as partners in Kuhn, Loeb & Co, the second-largest private bank in the United States before the First World War.
Apprenticeship on Wall Street in the 1920s
Eric Warburg graduated early from high school to voluntarily enter military service in 1918. After the war, he worked as an apprentice within the banking sector in both Frankfurt and Berlin, and then at NM Rothschild & Son in the city of London as well with his uncle Paul Kohn-Speyer’s company Brandeis, Goldschmidt & Co, the largest non-iron metal retailer in England. His training as an international banker finally came to an end in the United States where he spent three years. For the most part, he lived with his New York relatives, Felix and Frieda Schiff-Warburg, in Woodlands near White Plains, NY.
Eric Warburg worked at the International Acceptance Bank (IAB), which had been set up by his uncle Paul Warburg after serving with the Federal Reserve Board. IAB sold commercial paper to finance the reconstruction of European countries after the First World War, and since Eric was a close friend of his cousin Fredrick Warburg, Fredrick’s circle of friends soon became Eric’s. Among them were McCloys, Frank Hatch and George Brownell, all ambitious Wall Street lawyers and bankers. Eric’s timing was excellent as his family at that time advanced rapidly in the upper society of the American establishment on the East Coast.
While apprenticing on Wall Street, Eric Warburg also did business with law firms, including Sullivan & Cromwell. The company was involved in US-German business long after the Nazis took power, the Dulles brothers Allen and John Foster worked there, who would later become head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and US Secretary of State under President Eisenhower. In summary, his time as an apprentice in New York laid the foundation for many of the networks and connections that would support his future transatlantic career.
To get his family’s business in order, Eric went to Germany in 1938 and immediately became a partner in the family’s banking firm. The Aryanization process, that is, when Jewish property was confiscated in Nazi Germany, had been going on since 1933 and it was no longer possible to conduct a banking business in a credible way, since from an opinionist perspective it was no longer possible to conceal the fact that one of the largest German banks was run by Jews. So in 1938, they did what all major companies did at this time and tried to relocate their operations to a third party in a neutral country, with the right of repurchase after the war.
The choice fell initially on the Swedish financial family Wallenberg, which tried to redeem the bank with shares in a particular parent company, the business conglomerate IG Farben. The same company that Max Warburg only a few years earlier had been forced to leave in accordance with the above explanation, a company that was also the single largest supplier to Hitler’s war machine. These shares, which would constitute the purchase price, were also stored in the German Central Bank, where Max was also currently on the board under Hjalmar Schacht. However, the deal never went through, the bank was instead acquired by another party.
When the overall situation was resolved in Nazi Germany, Eric and his parents relocated to the United States. Fortunately, Eric already had a permanent resident status, which allowed him to quickly become well-settled. As an American citizen, he was able to get his parents, Max and Alice Warburg, permission to stay as well. The following year, Eric started his own company, EM Warburg & Co, where he re-employed former employees of Warburg companies in Europe who also succeeded in immigrating to the United States. Among its customers were “the lucky few” who managed to bring capital from Europe and especially from Germany, however luck can also be regarded as when circumstances arise for the prepared…
Warburg’s wealth and the existing family ties to the United States allowed a relatively smooth transition compared to the experience of many other immigrants. In 1938, it was estimated that 300,000 German citizens wanted to emigrate to the United States. However, the entry rate was as low as 27,000 per year. Eric Warburg felt much more at home in the United States than Germany. Even before his actual departure from Nazi Germany, Warburg had chosen the United States as his preferred country for resettlement. This is because he had spent three of his youngest happiest years there and he knew he would probably feel much more at home there than in, say England, Holland or Sweden, according to his memoirs.
In addition to running his newly established business, Eric Warburg teamed up with several aid committees that sought to “help refugees stranded in New York to find homes and work in the country,” as it was usual for these interests to portray themselves as humanitarian advocates. As chairman of the National Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Doctors belonging to the National Refugee Service NRS, he assisted several hundred German and Austrian doctors to settle in the United States. In addition, Eric Warburg lent money to help people in financial hardship to leave Europe during the war. In 1941, he deposited money into the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Transmigration Bureau to get three people to emigrate to the United States.
At the outbreak of the war, Eric Warburg again lined up for military service. At the age of 42, he was recruited by the US Army Air Force. Like other family members and many emigrants, he was assigned to the US intelligence service as an information gatherer and analyst on various projects, because he had the necessary language skills as well as an intimate knowledge of foreign countries and economies. Warburg became the supreme interrogator and contact person between the US and British military intelligence services, which may well be considered remarkable in this context if we allow ourselves a little modesty. According to historian Ron Chernow, Warburg’s war service secured him entry into both Washington and Whitehall, where he gathered powerful friends to help deepen his “post-war career,” and, quite right, Eric Warburg successfully expanded his contact network both during and after the war.
Postwar
In May 1945, Eric resumed his old acquaintance with Allen Dulles, which, of course, was more likely to have been continuous throughout the war. Dulles was now responsible for the German branch of the US intelligence service, as head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of CIA, in Switzerland and later occupied Germany. Through Dulles, Warburg became acquainted with survivors of the German resistance in the summer of 1945, including Fabian von Schlabrendorff, who later became a judge of the German Constitutional Court. They developed a friendship but soon found each other on opposite sides of the negotiating table. When the conference on Jewish material claims and the negotiations against Germany and German companies took off to compensate those who were put into forced labor in former labor camps – for example, Auschwitz Birkenau, where IG Farben was a major owner – Eric Warburg was contacted and asked to act as a neutral broker.
Factory belonging to IG Farben in Auschwitz
The officials who sought compensation chose Warburgs as a negotiator because curiously enough, he was familiar with a number of dealers who represented IG Farben, not the least those for Krupp, Siemens, and Flick. Eric Warburg also provided offices in the Warburg Bank in Hamburg for meetings between claimants and lawyers from the respective companies. For example, when it came to Dynamite Nobel AG, an ammunition producer where Friedrich Flick held 82% of the shares, it was Fabian von Schlabrendorff who Warburg met and most often corresponded with between 1962 and 1967. Despite the close relationship between the two men, the negotiations ended most unsuccessfully for the claimants, where Friedrich Flick after several years of skilfully drawn-out negotiations stated that he lacked funds for.
Since Warburg had no intention of joining the US military and even, amusingly enough, refused to participate in the Nuremberg Trials which began in November 1945, he resigned from active duty and returned to New York. During the following post-war years, Warburg’s priority was to revive his New York company for obvious reasons. Still, he was loyal to the Air Force Intelligence Community and throughout the 1950s he gave frequent lectures at CIA to train future interrogators. As a civilian, he also joined the Council of Foreign Relations, the United States’ most prestigious and influential foreign policy think tank in the post-war era, that sought a bold internationalist agenda.
Warburg had established contact with the family’s old banking company in Hamburg, now under the name Brinckmann, Wirtz & Co., shortly after the war. In 1949, an appropriation was made, which led to the Warburg family represented by Eric M. Warburg again being part-owner of the company – what a surprise! From then on Eric had good reasons to travel to western Germany and especially to Hamburg quite often, thereby becoming a frequent transatlantic commuter. It wasn’t until 1956 that Eric finally resigned from the bank’s management. Since 1970, the bank has been renamed to M.M. Warburg again.
However, Eric Warburg did not just try to recover the family bank in Hamburg. His broader goal was to “participate in building a bridge between the old world and the new, especially Germany and the United States, because he had spent so many years on both sides of the Atlantic” was the officially stated reason, but the reason was more likely to implement the post-war NATO doctrine, which was to keep Germany down through Deutsche bank, by way of the Federal Reserve, to maintain US interests – actually the international banking hegemony interests – and keep Russia out of the European market by directing the strategic flow of natural resources. He helped establish two organizations in his pursuit of that goal: Atlantik-Brücke and the American Council on Germany (ACG). Although he only sat as the ACG treasurer, he always “sponsored” and “assisted on both sides”. The larger objective he hoped to achieve through the two organizations’ activities was to integrate West Germany into Western societies and construct a strong anti-communist position. On whose mission, is a question to be reminded of.
Apart from his involvement with such transatlantic elite organizations, Warburg showed his connection to Germany in several other ways. Warburg was an open opponent to the Morgenthau Plan and criticized all allied dismantling of industrial plants in western Germany. He arranged a meeting with his old friend John J. McCloy, who recently installed the US High Commissioner for occupied Germany in 1949, where Warburg argued against the Allied dismantling program. McCloy finally gave in and asked Warburg to draw up a list of factories that should be saved from dismantling, which included August Thyssen’s steel mill and Krupp’s synthetic gas plant.
By the late 1950s, Eric Warburg had started his family business management as a head partner and decided to return to Germany for good. Despite his wife’s initial opposition, the entire family settled in Hamburg and their children attended German schools. However, the family maintained strong ties to the United States through relatives and companies. In addition to the many American cousins, there was Eric’s youngest sister Gisela who had married the federal judge Charles E. Wyzanski. In 1966 Lionel Pincus went to EM Warburg & Co. and despite the company changing its name to Warburg, Pincus & Co. Eric was still a partner in the company he had established in 1939. Shortly before his definite return to Hamburg, Warburg joined the American Jewish Committee’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AJC), and in Germany he then kept a special eye on anti-Semitism in German media, ie. a German counterpart to Sweden’s Expo, whose task is to control the opinion corridor and maintain the status quo ruling order.
Although born in the Wilhelmine era, living through the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, it was the confrontation with Soviet communism that shaped Eric Warburg the most. Shortly after the ceasefire in 1945, Warburg lobbied General Eisenhower to give up Berlin and in turn retained large parts of central Germany that held “10 million people – human capital – and vital industries potentially intact, crucial to maintaining a balance between East and West”, which was the goal. He was convinced that “if only the Allies followed his advice” it would be highly unlikely that the Communist German Republic could ever be created.
He applied a similar argument when he persuaded John J. McCloy to stop dismantling the German industry: “Without a strong economy the German people would fall to communism.” Given his strong anti-communist attitudes and his diligence for the reconstruction of Germany, as well as his good relations with the United States, it is difficult to interpret these efforts other than that Eric had a vested interest in establishing what would be called the Cold War.
With his multifaceted network, Erik connected business and industrial communities in western Germany and the United States. His involvement in Atlantic-Brück’s business and the US Council in Germany connected him with political circles, media, and academia, as well as family contacts. Eric M. Warburg, as a representative of a transnational elite that re-emerged in the post-war era, helped shape the Cold War. There are good reasons to suspect that Allen Dulles was in the background all the way, for example, described in the book “Containing Communism”, where Allen Dulles, now as chief of CIA, is said to have expressed himself in terms of “President Eisenhower surrendered all his power to me.” The same Eisenhower as in his farewell speech in 1961 as president warned for the military-industrial complex.
So what kind of entity was it that seemed to be hidden from sight, whose affairs Eric conveyed before, during and after the Second World War? To answer this question we must first take a look at one of the more successful companies in Swedish history.
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