Trading with the Enemy

By Charles Higham

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

Do you want to read a book that will really rock your boat? Then pick up “Trading with the Enemy” The Nazi-American Money plot 1933-1949.

Since I have taken up as a research project for myself, the investigation of World War II, from the philosophical perspective of ‘The Just War’ notion or concept, I find myself being led down many a strange alley.

After reading much of the conventional literature on the rise of Adolf Hitler, the obvious question occurred to me; Where did Adolf get his money? Nobody gains political power, EVER, ANYWHERE, without money. Anybody who thinks that even our soft spoken, country gentleman Jimmy Carter jumped out of a peanut patch, or Harry Truman out of a Haberdashery store in Missouri, or Abe Lincoln out of a log cabin, or Sun Yat-Sen out of a rice paddy, or even Fidel Castro out of a sugarcane field, is very naive to say the least. Without money, nobody goes nowhere in politics - anywhere in the world - nor throughout the annals of History. It just doesn’t happen - ever.

So as an adjunct to discovering the moral righteousness or immoral iniquity of World War II, I have been led to investigating also, the financing of the Third Reich, and the personal backing for Adolf and his buddies. This is without any doubt a story yet to be written, of unbelievable proportions.

The first name that stands out in this investigation is Henry Morgenthau, who seems to be, very rapidly, turning into a real American hero. You will find his name written all over older American paper money. He has over a thousand volumes of his files stored at the F.D.R. library. This should be some interesting reading. (If you read, sometime in the near future, of the sudden disappearance of the Margenthau files, remember you read it here first.) He had a plan for the demobilization of Germany - forever. Germany was to be stripped of all industry and manufacturing and the entire nation reduced to farmland, raising grapes, sauerkraut or schnitzel.
Morgenthau was also in charge of compiling files on American business and individuals suspected of aiding and abetting the enemy in time of War - treason. The British have similar files and after the war there was a movement accusing the entire upper crust of England of treason. Winston Churchill in his “The Gathering Storm” out-right accuses the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, of acting insensibly and certainly against the proper interests of his Country. I have no doubt that in this book, Winston challenged future historians to an investigation of the true motivations of the Prime Minister Nevelle Chamberlain. I have yet to see anything on the subject in print. And I am told that Neville had refused all offers and resisted all endeavors by biographers.

In “Trading with the Enemy” you will find the names of many well known manufacturers, Industrialist, and bankers suspected, if not known, to have been “trading with the enemy” not before and up until the bombing at Pearl Harbor, but through the entire war. Mister Higham’s accusations are point blank, no pulling punches in this book. I am still shocked and disappointingly amazed.