I have that one sitting in my Zotero but never started it. I’ll have to read that chapter now. Sounds like the boys were trying to keep all their WWI fun going.
Young Donovan is very interesting to me but all his biographers are so vague especially about his early career. I remember on of them dropped that he met Hitler in like 1922 and then never explained why or provided a source. Are the documents showing his involvement in FCC documents publicly available?
“As Forgan, a banker and key agitator within the American Bankers Association would write, looking backward from 1922, "It is a well known fact that the banks have been and are carrying many industries which would have been forced to the wall, injuring our whole credit structure, had it not been for the fact that the banks in turn have been able to obtain needed currency from the Federal Reserve Banks by rediscounting notes." On top of this, he writes, it "is difficult to see how we could have weathered the storm of the War."”
Had no idea of his connections beyond being a member of the American Bankers Association.
I feel dumb because now I cannot find the link to the documents that showed Donovan's work for the FCC (it is also referenced in newspapers), but I believe it was contained in either an OSS or FBI file, something to do with Donovan's work history for getting a security clearance. Luckily I nabbed + tweeted a screenshot of the FCC contacting the State Department to do passport extension request for Donovan: https://x.com/EBBerger/status/1740774195423043637?s=20
I will hunt around and find the documents & send them to you when I locate them. I hadn't heard the Donovan + Hitler story! This would have fit the timeline for when Donovan was traveling in Europe for the FCC, so it would be mighty curious if the meeting look place under the auspices of one of these Morgan-led ventures...
This article you've done for the Infrared Wiki is incredible, holy cow! Awesome work, gonna be taking some time to digest this for sure.
If you feel like following the Forgan thread, J. Russell Forgan ultimately became the chief of OSS operations in Europe (operating out of London), taking over from David K. Bruce. One of his notable aides in this period was none other than William Casey. So clearly an incredibly important guy... he was partner in Glore Forgan, the big investment bank, which was one of the initial investors in the WCC, so he was on the board to rep their interests no doubt. He also sat on the board of Italian Superpower, the Italian utilities company that was owned by American Superpower, itself a Morgan stronghold. Beginning in 1936 Floyd Odlum's Atlas Corporation began investing heavily into Italian Superpower, and Glore Forgan did a lot of investment work on behalf of Atlas... and Atlas was a WCC investor... circles and circles. But if we look at Forgan and his connections in light of what his uncle was getting up to, it's a pretty damn interesting picture to say the least.
As for the Hitler thing it was actually 1923. Dunlop writes this:
“The Adolf Hitler that Bill Donovan met that March evening in the Bavarian Alpine resort confided in him as people were likely to do throughout his life. ... The evening was a monologue. Hitler told of his injury by a gas attack in 1918 and said that his eyes had never been right since. He talked about music: He disliked the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms and preferred to listen to Wagner. He sipped his beer and whistled the "Swan Song" from Lohengrin, breathing in and out in a strange way so that the whistle never ceased. He was, Hitler said, like Christ driving the Jewish moneylenders from the temple. He was damp with perspiration when he finished talking. When it was time for the sympathetic American to leave, Hitler clasped Donovan's hand and shook it warmly. Was Adolf Hitler merely a strange young man twisted by a sordid childhood? Donovan did not think so.”
Dunlop has been hoarding all Donovan’s papers, so there’s really no way to follow up. But on the other hand it isn’t likely that he would make this up or be wrong about it. Presents it basically as an odd coincidence. Would definitely fit into the Anglo financial funding of Hitler angle if Donovan is meeting with him at this early date at a time when he is running around Eurasia as Morgan’s private intelligencer.
As for the Infrawiki article I am mostly happy with the history but I think the theoretical framework I have is very primitive. The whole thing is adapted from a book I’m trying to write reconciling Marxism Leninism with Hudson and the history of central banking. I’m not satisfied with the frame I take here especially now that I’ve been reading Marxists like Brunhoff who have a far more sophisticated way of dealing with credit.
Also, totally understand if you don’t want to respond but I did send you a message on here with a question about petrodollar negotiations which I am trying to write about.
Thanks for the Forgan lead as well I will definitely have to pursue that when I have time although for the next couple weeks I will be living in the 1970s
Thought you would find that angle interesting! I was shocked when I read the paper because it’s not a connection I’ve seen anyone else make or even acknowledge, and there’s the obvious historical overlap.
My bad haha, I read it as AI but pondered as I was hitting publish if that was accurate. It will be corrected in future posts for sure!
Have you ever looked at Henry Klein's 1921 book "Dynastic America and Those Who Own It"? It's a pretty fascinating text, snapshot of its time, but it does discuss the AIC in it. There's one section I've been rather enamored with, titled 'American Foreign Banking Interests', which opens with a discussion of the Foreign Commerce Corporation (FCC) that was launched by Edward Stettinius Sr. of J.P. Morgan & Co. and Grayson M.P. Murphy of Guaranty Trust. Klein describes the FCC as a Morgan-led "scheme for financing world trade" in the wake of WW1. Section is here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dynastic_America/q8xon-JGVl0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA117&printsec=frontcover
This definitely resonated with me due to the studies we did of the post-WW2 World Finance Corporation, of which William Donovan, our founder of the OSS, and Edward Stettinius Jr (son of the above) played a key role in organizing and steering. I've subsequently found documents showing that a young William Donovan actually acted as an overseas agent for the FCC, so it seems quite obvious to me that the WCC was directly modeled on this early Morgan-organized entity. Plus part of the rationale of the WCC was not merely to facilitate world trade (and likely due covert intelligence-type activities in the gap between the closure of the OSS and the formation of the CIA), but specifically to supply dollars in areas where there was a critical lack of the currency.
What makes this even more curious that one of the WCC's prominent board members was OSS veteran/investment banker J. Russell Forgan (who would have an oversight role in the development of the CIA), the son of David Forgan of the Rockefeller-aligned First National Bank of Chicago. David Forgan, in turn, was the brother of James Forgan, who was so central to the story of the formation of the Federal Reserve.
Klein also describes another entity, called the Foreign Trade Financing Corporation, organized in 1920 with a capitalization of $100,000,000, whose board members and executives included
—Herbert Hoover
—Paul Warburg
—James Forgan
—Edward Stettinius Sr. (as president)
So here's a big set of interlocks with the FCC, but also with the Federal Reserve gang. So there's an interesting thing happening here that should be probed more!
I have that one sitting in my Zotero but never started it. I’ll have to read that chapter now. Sounds like the boys were trying to keep all their WWI fun going.
Young Donovan is very interesting to me but all his biographers are so vague especially about his early career. I remember on of them dropped that he met Hitler in like 1922 and then never explained why or provided a source. Are the documents showing his involvement in FCC documents publicly available?
I actually read an article Forgan wrote in 1922, used his comments in the page I wrote on the fed for Infrared Wiki. https://wiki.infrawiki.us/index.php/InfraWiki
“As Forgan, a banker and key agitator within the American Bankers Association would write, looking backward from 1922, "It is a well known fact that the banks have been and are carrying many industries which would have been forced to the wall, injuring our whole credit structure, had it not been for the fact that the banks in turn have been able to obtain needed currency from the Federal Reserve Banks by rediscounting notes." On top of this, he writes, it "is difficult to see how we could have weathered the storm of the War."”
Had no idea of his connections beyond being a member of the American Bankers Association.
I feel dumb because now I cannot find the link to the documents that showed Donovan's work for the FCC (it is also referenced in newspapers), but I believe it was contained in either an OSS or FBI file, something to do with Donovan's work history for getting a security clearance. Luckily I nabbed + tweeted a screenshot of the FCC contacting the State Department to do passport extension request for Donovan: https://x.com/EBBerger/status/1740774195423043637?s=20
I will hunt around and find the documents & send them to you when I locate them. I hadn't heard the Donovan + Hitler story! This would have fit the timeline for when Donovan was traveling in Europe for the FCC, so it would be mighty curious if the meeting look place under the auspices of one of these Morgan-led ventures...
This article you've done for the Infrared Wiki is incredible, holy cow! Awesome work, gonna be taking some time to digest this for sure.
If you feel like following the Forgan thread, J. Russell Forgan ultimately became the chief of OSS operations in Europe (operating out of London), taking over from David K. Bruce. One of his notable aides in this period was none other than William Casey. So clearly an incredibly important guy... he was partner in Glore Forgan, the big investment bank, which was one of the initial investors in the WCC, so he was on the board to rep their interests no doubt. He also sat on the board of Italian Superpower, the Italian utilities company that was owned by American Superpower, itself a Morgan stronghold. Beginning in 1936 Floyd Odlum's Atlas Corporation began investing heavily into Italian Superpower, and Glore Forgan did a lot of investment work on behalf of Atlas... and Atlas was a WCC investor... circles and circles. But if we look at Forgan and his connections in light of what his uncle was getting up to, it's a pretty damn interesting picture to say the least.
That would be very cool!
As for the Hitler thing it was actually 1923. Dunlop writes this:
“The Adolf Hitler that Bill Donovan met that March evening in the Bavarian Alpine resort confided in him as people were likely to do throughout his life. ... The evening was a monologue. Hitler told of his injury by a gas attack in 1918 and said that his eyes had never been right since. He talked about music: He disliked the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms and preferred to listen to Wagner. He sipped his beer and whistled the "Swan Song" from Lohengrin, breathing in and out in a strange way so that the whistle never ceased. He was, Hitler said, like Christ driving the Jewish moneylenders from the temple. He was damp with perspiration when he finished talking. When it was time for the sympathetic American to leave, Hitler clasped Donovan's hand and shook it warmly. Was Adolf Hitler merely a strange young man twisted by a sordid childhood? Donovan did not think so.”
Dunlop has been hoarding all Donovan’s papers, so there’s really no way to follow up. But on the other hand it isn’t likely that he would make this up or be wrong about it. Presents it basically as an odd coincidence. Would definitely fit into the Anglo financial funding of Hitler angle if Donovan is meeting with him at this early date at a time when he is running around Eurasia as Morgan’s private intelligencer.
As for the Infrawiki article I am mostly happy with the history but I think the theoretical framework I have is very primitive. The whole thing is adapted from a book I’m trying to write reconciling Marxism Leninism with Hudson and the history of central banking. I’m not satisfied with the frame I take here especially now that I’ve been reading Marxists like Brunhoff who have a far more sophisticated way of dealing with credit.
Also, totally understand if you don’t want to respond but I did send you a message on here with a question about petrodollar negotiations which I am trying to write about.
Thanks for the Forgan lead as well I will definitely have to pursue that when I have time although for the next couple weeks I will be living in the 1970s
Thought you would find that angle interesting! I was shocked when I read the paper because it’s not a connection I’ve seen anyone else make or even acknowledge, and there’s the obvious historical overlap.
Name is AL btw haha
My bad haha, I read it as AI but pondered as I was hitting publish if that was accurate. It will be corrected in future posts for sure!
Have you ever looked at Henry Klein's 1921 book "Dynastic America and Those Who Own It"? It's a pretty fascinating text, snapshot of its time, but it does discuss the AIC in it. There's one section I've been rather enamored with, titled 'American Foreign Banking Interests', which opens with a discussion of the Foreign Commerce Corporation (FCC) that was launched by Edward Stettinius Sr. of J.P. Morgan & Co. and Grayson M.P. Murphy of Guaranty Trust. Klein describes the FCC as a Morgan-led "scheme for financing world trade" in the wake of WW1. Section is here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dynastic_America/q8xon-JGVl0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA117&printsec=frontcover
This definitely resonated with me due to the studies we did of the post-WW2 World Finance Corporation, of which William Donovan, our founder of the OSS, and Edward Stettinius Jr (son of the above) played a key role in organizing and steering. I've subsequently found documents showing that a young William Donovan actually acted as an overseas agent for the FCC, so it seems quite obvious to me that the WCC was directly modeled on this early Morgan-organized entity. Plus part of the rationale of the WCC was not merely to facilitate world trade (and likely due covert intelligence-type activities in the gap between the closure of the OSS and the formation of the CIA), but specifically to supply dollars in areas where there was a critical lack of the currency.
What makes this even more curious that one of the WCC's prominent board members was OSS veteran/investment banker J. Russell Forgan (who would have an oversight role in the development of the CIA), the son of David Forgan of the Rockefeller-aligned First National Bank of Chicago. David Forgan, in turn, was the brother of James Forgan, who was so central to the story of the formation of the Federal Reserve.
Klein also describes another entity, called the Foreign Trade Financing Corporation, organized in 1920 with a capitalization of $100,000,000, whose board members and executives included
—Herbert Hoover
—Paul Warburg
—James Forgan
—Edward Stettinius Sr. (as president)
So here's a big set of interlocks with the FCC, but also with the Federal Reserve gang. So there's an interesting thing happening here that should be probed more!