George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

enterprise took "the right to participate in 50 percent of all business originated in
Hamburg" ; and for the next twenty years (1920-1940), the Harriman enterprise had
"complete control of all activities of the Hamburg line in the United States." @s1@s7
Harriman became co-owner of Hamburg-Amerika. The Harriman-Walker firm gained a
tight hold on its management, with the not-so-subtle backing of the post-World War I
occupation of Germany by the armies of England and America.
Just after Harriman's public statement, the St. Louis press celebrated Bert Walker's role in
assembling the money to consummate the deal:
"Ex-St. Louisan Forms Giant Ship Merger"
"G. H. Walker is Moving Power Behind Harriman-Morton Shipping Combine...."
The story celebrated a "merger of two big financial houses in New York, which will
place practically unlimited capital at the disposal of the new American-German shipping
combine...." @s1@s8
Bert Walker had arranged a "marriage" of J.P. Morgan credit and Harriman family
inherited wealth.
W.A. Harriman & Co., of which Walker was president and founder, was merging with
the Morton & Co. private bank--and Walker was "[p]rominent in the affairs of Morton &
Co.," which was interlocked with the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Co.
The Hamburg-Amerika takeover created an effective instrument for the manipulation and
fatal subversion of Germany. One of the great "merchants of death," Samuel Pryor, was
in it from the beginning. Pryor, then chairman of the executive committee of Remington
Arms, helped arrange the deal and served with Walker on the board of Harriman's
shipping front organization, the American Ship and Commerce Co.
Walker and Harriman took the next giant step in 1922, setting up their European
headquarters office in Berlin. With the aid of the Hamburg-based Warburg bank, W.A.
Harriman & Co. began spreading an investment net over German industry and raw
materials.
From the Berlin base, Walker and Harriman then plunged into deals with the new
dictatorship of the Soviet Union. They led a select group of Wall Street and British
Empire speculators who re-started the Russian oil industry, which had been devastated by
the Bolshevik Revolution. They contracted to mine Soviet manganese, an element
essential to modern steelmaking. These concessions were arranged directly with Leon
Trotsky, then with Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet dictatorship's secret
intelligence service (K.G.B), whose huge statue was finally pulled down by prodemocracy
demonstrators in 1991.