Nazi Nexus
Edwin Black's seventh non-fiction book Nazi Nexus published in 2009, in which he again returns to exploring Holocaust connections. This time, Black has woven together five major American corporate giants into a web of pivotal corporate complicity in the Holocaust. The book makes clear from the outset that Adolf Hitler was completely responsible for the Holocaust. But, says Black, Hitler had indispensable help that virtually shaped the size and scope of the Holocaust itself. In five succinct chapters, Black details the role played by Ford Motor Co., the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, General Motors and IBM.
Zealous Nazis, says Black, were motivated to wage war against an imaginary generation-to-generation Jewish conspiracy based on the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, distributed chiefly by Henry Ford and Ford Motor Co. Hitler studied the Protocols, and acknowledged them and Henry Ford as his "inspiration." Hence, Nazi antisemitism was escalated to an international political dynamic. The Ford section is taken from Black's earlier work The Transfer Agreement and other research.
The concept of the Master Race is shown to be not a German idea but an American one propounded by American eugenics decades before the Third Reich and proliferated across the United States and into Germany by the Carnegie Institution. It was American Eugenics that declared that all unfit persons--those not conformed to a blond-haired and blue-eyed ideal--should be eliminated either by marriage restriction, concentration camp, forced sterilization, or gas chamber. All of these solutions were subject to American legislation during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Hitler studied American eugenics, hailed the work as his "bible," wrote fan mail to leading American eugenic racists, and then implemented American ideas and legislation, albeit with ruthless and fascist vigor. The Carnegie section was based on Black's research for War Against the Weak.
Continuing on the topic of eugenics, Black shows how the Rockefeller Foundation joined the Carnegie Institution in spreading eugenic theories. The Rockefeller Foundation in particular funded Hitler's leading Nazi doctors, including his top eugenicist Otmar Verschuer. Of particular interest was Verschuer's fascination with twin studies. Verschuer's assist Josef Mengele was sent into Auschwitz to complete the twin research, performing ghastly experiments, all documented in clinical reports sent back to Verschuer. This section was also based on War Against the Weak.
Moving to the topic of mobility, Black points out that when the German military smashed across Europe with lightning speed in heavy Blitz trucks, bomb from the air in advanced JU-88s, and created havoc on the seas with deadly torpedoes, they did so because General Motors motorized the Third Reich. In an extensive section, Black shows how General Motors from Detroit, operating through secret international executive committees, ramped up its Opel subsidiary. Eventually, Opel became Germany's largest car and truck maker, primarily servicing the military and joining the strategic preparations for war. This information was taken from Black's syndicated series "Hitler's Carmaker," and other research.
Finally, Black returns to his theme of information technology. He shows how the Reich was enabled to identify the Jews everywhere in Europe and then systematically pauperize and destroy them. He explains in great detail, quoting from IBM corporate memos, how IBM directly from New York and later through its Paris and Geneva offices, organized and co-planned all six phases of the Holocaust: identification, social expulsion, asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation and even extermination.
Black concludes that taken together, the five companies created a Nazi Nexus without which the Holocaust would have been a very different tragedy of a very different dimension.