Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

On December 13, 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) amended
the meaning of the act in such a way as to permit a measure of discretion to the secretary
of the treasury in deciding what could and could not be considered to be trading under
the terms of the act. This led to abuses of the discretionary power by those whom the secretary
during World War II, Henry J. Morgenthau, Jr. (1891–1967), deputized to act in
his name. Among the firms alleged to have derived benefit from this while the war was in
progress were Standard Oil, the Ford Motor Company, and the International Telephone
and Telegraph (ITT) Corporation. Furthermore, the Union Banking Corporation was
seized by the U.S. government in October 1942 on the grounds that it was a front organization
for Nazism. Vesting Order 248, signed by the U.S. Alien Property Custodian,
records the seizure of the company, which took place on October 20, 1942. All of Union
Banking’s assets were subsequently liquidated. This development has, in recent times,
attracted attention owing to the fact that one of the bank’s directors and leading shareholders,
Prescott Bush (1895–1972), was the father of U.S. president George H.W. Bush
(b. 1924 ) and grandfather of U.S. president George W. Bush (b. 1946).
During World War II, disregard of the Trading with the Enemy Act permitted U.S.
companies to continue engaging in business with Nazi Germany, its allies, and occupied
areas, supplying the means for aiding the Nazi war machine through licensing agreements
and the exchange of information. In at least one case, business dealings even related to
the future of gold bars that had been made from dental work, wedding rings, and jewelry
looted from Jews sent to Nazi death camps. This gold was held in Swiss banks.
Ultimately, the Trading with the Enemy Act, which had motives stemming from patriotism
and financial security during one world conflict, was abused for reasons of personal
or company profit during a second war; and those losing out were most frequently the victims
of Nazi genocide.
Trail of Tears. This was a term generally given to the process of forcible deportation of
certain Native American peoples in the 1830s and 1840s from their ancestral lands east
of the Mississippi River to territories further west. In 1830, U.S. President Andrew
Jackson (1767–1845) signed the Indian Removal Act, a piece of legislation designed to
remove the entire population of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes of the American
southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole peoples. Although
these nations had adapted to Euro-American ways through the use of an agriculturally
based economy, the establishment of towns, representative democracy, and (in the case of
the Cherokee) a written alphabet, their efforts to find an accommodation with the whites
had come to little owing to the value of their land to an expanding United States that
gobbled up such land with little to no concern for those who had lived on and used it for
centuries prior to the whites’ arrival.
By the Indian Removal Act—which the U.S. Supreme Court found to be invalid—
Jackson ordered military forces to evict the Indian nations from their territories throughout
the 1830s. All of the evictions were characterized by hardship. Federal funds for the
removal campaigns were unsatisfactory, leading to a woeful lack of food, warm blankets,
and the means to transport the people to what would be their new homes in the
Oklahoma Territory, many hundreds of miles away. For the Choctaws, at least a quarter of
the population died en route. The Creeks suffered a debilitating civil war over the issue
of whether or not to resist the demands of the U.S. government; of those electing to
undergo the perilous journey, over one-fifth died of disease and exposure to the harsh
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