The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

A NEW REICH BEGINS 23charges of plotting a revolution caused Roehm and hundreds of BrownShirts to be fatally purged and the SA quietly faded away. The Germanmilitary began pledging their allegiance not to their nation but to Hitler.With the German population firmly under control due to massive propagandaand fear of government retaliation, Hitler was free to launch invasionsinto former German territories as well as Poland.It is instructive that Hitler did not invade Poland without pretext. A“false- flag” operation was accomplished first. SS men dressed in Polishuniforms fabricated an attack on a German radio station at Gleiwitz, whichallowed Hitler to announce that a counterattack had been launchedagainst Polish soldiers who had invaded German territory. Germany wassimply making the world safe for National Socialism. World War II ensued.WI T H T H E DE AT H of the eighty- seven-year-old Hindenburg on August2, 1934, Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor and proclaimedhimself commander in chief of the armed forces, the absoluteleader—fuehrer—of all Germany.He found a huge and powerful industrial base geared for war productionalready in place and awaiting his command. It had been put in placeat the end of World War I thanks to an influx of Western capital investment.“This build-up for Europe an war both before and after 1933 was ingreat part due to Wall Street financial assistance in the 1920s to create theGerman cartel system and to technical assistance from well-known Americanfirms . . . to build the German Wehrmacht,” noted financial investigatorand author Antony C. Sutton, who added, “The contribution madeby American capitalism to German war preparations before 1940 canonly be described as phenomenal.” (For example, in 1934 Germany producedonly 300,000 tons of natural petroleum products and synthetic gasoline.In 1944, thanks to the transfer of hydrogenation technology fromStandard Oil of New Jersey to I. G. Farben, Germany produced 6,500,000tons of oil, 85 percent of which was synthetic.)The intertwining of American capitalism with German corporationsbegan following World War I, with two programs: the Dawes Plan (1924)