Prescott Bush was appointed as a director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation. This in turn controlled the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, that owned one-third of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland. Friedrich Flick owned the other two-thirds of the operation.
Flick was a leading financial supporter of the [NSDAP] and in the 1930s donated over seven million marks to the party. A close friend of Heinrich Himmler, Flick also gave the Schutz Staffeinel (SS) 10,000 marks a year.
[…]
In 1934 Prescott Bush sent W. Averell Harriman an article that appeared in the 19th March edition of the New York Times. The article claimed that the Polish government intended to take action against the Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Company because it was controlling 45% of its steel production.
The newspaper reported that “two-thirds of the company’s stock is owned by Friedrich Flick, a leading German steel industrialist, and the remainder is owned by interests in the United States”. This of course was Bush, Harriman and Walker. The Polish government complained that the owners of the Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Company were guilty of tax evasion. They were also responsible for using Poland’s raw materials to provide for the military needs of [the Axis].
BBH’s association with the [Fascist] industrialist Fritz Thyssen, which continued even after the start of World War II, would taint its reputation. Similarly infamous was the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), a BBH asset managed by Bush that transferred funds, bonds, gold, coal, oil, and steel to [the Third Reich] during its military buildup.
In 1942 the U.S. government, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, seized UBC and other [Axis]-affiliated BBH assets, but Bush was never found guilty of a crime, and the affair would neither prevent Averell Harriman from becoming the Democratic governor of New York nor have lasting political ramifications for Bush or his progeny.
World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia:
In October 1942 the U.S. government seized all assets of the Union Banking Corporation of New York, which was accused of operating as a front for “enemy nationals.” A federal government investigation concluded that Union Banking was in fact a cloak operation, laundering money for the Thyssens, who were helping to finance the [Third Reich]. One of the partners of the Union Banking Corporation was Prescott Bush, grandfather of U.S. president George W. Bush.
While Prescott Bush (probably) did not personally identify with fascism, his and many other capitalists’ willingness to financially support Fascism anyway is strongly indicative of liberalism’s structural defects. For a more extensive look at his (among many other antisocialists’) ties to Fascism, see Glen Yeadon’s & John Hawkins’s The Nazi Hydra in Fascist America.