Sunday, April 29, 2012

LOTTERY SCAM





FAST WAY COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE


UNITED KINGDOM HEAD OFFICE
E.COURIER House,Pier Road
Feltham,Middx TW14 OTW
United Kingdom.
Date:28/04/2012
ORDER NO.: OBC55617
Dear Henry F. Kroll,
Compliments of the day to you.

I have been notified that you have been officially cleared for payment by the Verifications Dept. at the headquarters of the UK International Lottery.

Fast Way Courier Delivery Services Limited is a freight forwarding company with a commitment to provide you, the customer, with the finest possible service tailored to your individual needs.We are highly experienced customs clearance brokers, enabling us to customs clear your shipments quickly and efficiently through the complicated customs procedure. We also offer an excess baggage service, merchandise in baggage customs clearance and a full domestic road freight service.
Thanks for your quick response about your funds Delivery, with response to your mail, Please be informed that your funds is ready for DISBURSEMENT. the Name in our list of shipment is {Henry F. Kroll} One of the Lottery Winner. All your winning documents which includes your certificate and a covering document (Money Laundering protection and Letter of Affidavit for Claims) from the British government,stating that the money was obtained legally through the Lottery have been made available(Processed) Since you were unable to come in person to the UNITED KINGDOM NATIONAL LOTTERY DISBURSEMENT CENTER, You are require to transfer the processing fee (GBP £ 280 Pounds) along with the mailing and Insurance charges to enable us proceed with the delivery of your winnings to you. Your cheque and other vital document will be sent to you as soon as you meet with any of the option selected. A description of your package have been stated Below.

DESCRIPTION OF PARCEL TO BE DELIVER:
Order Number: OBC55617
Your Order number is OBC55617
Description of parcel to be delivered:
An original certificate of weight :-------------0.15kg
Bonded draft of weight :-------------0.17kg
Total weight of parcel :-------------0.32kg
Colour of Parcel :-------------Brown.
"Fast Way Courier Service Services Ltd" is a registered and copyright trade marks of :- Fast Way Courier Trans International Ltd".
==================================================================
You can now begin the final step of the claims process, which is the delivery of your prize to you.
Choose from option A, B & C below which is more convenience for you
A. Gold Delivery: in 48hours
Mailing
GBP £150.00
00.00
Insurance
GBP £170.00
00.00
Doc Processing fee
GBP £280.00
00.00
TOTAL
GBP £600.00
00.00
B. Classic Delivery: in 72hours
Mailing
GBP £120.00
00.00
Insurance
GBP £125.00
00.00
Doc Processing fee
GBP £280.00
00.00
TOTAL
GBP £525.00
00.00
C. Normal Delivery: in 5 Days
Mailing
GBP £10.00
00.00
Insurance
GBP £100.00
00.00
Doc Processing fee
GBP £150.00
00.00
TOTAL
GBP £260.00
00.00
Please be informed that the charges of delivering must be paid by you as stated by the British Law and Our Courier's Entity before we can commence with the delivery of your winning Cheque.
DELIVERY CHARGES MODE OF PAYMENT:
You are advice to make the above payment for the option choose by you via WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER to our account officer.
ATTENTION:Bret M. Erwin,


PARCEL REGISTRATION CODE:................



Compact Header|Full Message View FAST WAY COURIER SERVICE AddTo:Bret McDonald Cc:

Dear Valued Customer,


At Fast Way Couriers our goal and mission is to provide quality logistical solutions which exceed our expectations at a competitive price. Our aim of providing global excellence in transportation is provided by our staff members and worldwide suppliers who are here to serve your requirements through the next century.

Fast Way Couriers is a global air cargo wholesaler and has an exclusive network of international agents ensuring complete logistical support for all international cargo requirements. In U.K, Fast Way Couriers is headquartered in Warrington UNITED KINGDOM and has coast-to-coast representation to permit direct and economical flights or by other transportation means.

This E-mail sent to you is to inform you that the Verifications Dept. at the headquarters of the U.K NATIONAL LOTTERY ONLINE PROMOTION have officially cleared you for payment. The original copy of your certificate together with a covering document (Money Laundering protection and Letter of Affidavit for Claims) from the British government stating that the money was obtained legally through a registered lottery programme (U.K NATIONAL LOTTERY ONLINE PROMOTION), as soon as you meet with any of the option listed below, your winnings will be transferred to you immediately.

SHIPMENT AND BILLING
The Lottery certified cheque and documents are packaged to be delivered under one way bill by the contracted Courier Company and are categorized as High priority & Express delivery under applicable laws and regulations. This shipment cannot be delivered to PO boxes or postal codes but to Receiver's address. Transit times for delivery of parcels to customers are in working days and are subject to change depending on location of collection and delivery, weight and value. For lightweight shipment, you may be charged for its value as well as dimensional weight rather than its actual weight.

INSURANCE POLICY
This delivery parcel for greater protection has also been insured in accordance with shipping regulations under unlimited liability. This comprehensive cash in transit insurance cover for your consignment has been arranged {for effective and fast customs clearance}. Delivery of parcel/Transfer of winnings commences {2-3 days} after payment covering delivery charges is made.

ITEM ORDER NUMBER
Order number for Lottery prize parcel: {ORDER NUMBER: .................. you will be asked to give your order number before signing for any document at the arrival of your parcel at your assigned destination. You are hereby advised to keep your order number confidential as this company will not be liable for any uncertainty whatsoever bearing the misconduct on the path of the customer.

PRICE INDEX OF ITEMS
Prices quoted indicate the Air Express services available from the UK to your destination country for the selected shipment type. The actual availability of services is determined by destination area code or city name, and subject to commodity and value restrictions for dutiable shipments.

Whosoever must present the delivery officer identification card regarding to the above names mention. There after you will be given a tracking number to monitor your parcel on line. You can now begin the final step of the claims process, which is the transferring of your cash prize to you. With regards to this, find below options open to you; you are required to select the more convenient.

The options, together with their associated conditions are presented below:

OPTION ONE:

Premium Delivery

Handling & Delivery Cost..............£80
Insurance......................................£290.00
Administrative Charges.................£180.00
Total Cost......................................£550.00 GBP ($1,150.43 USD)
Length of Days..............................24Hrs
Order Number...............................0576534

OPTION TWO:

Economy Delivery

Handling & Delivery Cost...............£50.00
Insurance.......................................£230.00
Admin istrative Charges.................£140.00
Total Cost......................................£420 GBP ($816.374 USD)
Length of Days...............................2 Days
Order Number................................4572145


The International money transfer company, WESTERN UNION have been chosen as method of payments for customers, you are to make payment through any regional office close to you. This payment method was adopted to ameliorate and speed up the process of payment and delivery because of its wide network of operation.

Important Note: That the courier charges cannot be deducted from your Winnings due to Article 1186 section 45 subsection 2.3 of Constitution of the United Kingdom as relates to Financial and freight matters, which are duly codified in the United Kingdom law.

Please respond to this email by making a selection from the options above. Also be reminded that the deadline for the claiming of winnings is exactly (7) Seven Days after the receipt of this email. After this period, your cash prize will be deemed to have been forfeited by you and will be reused in the drawings of the next edition of the lottery.

Good luck and Congratulations once again. Please send your response within the next 24hrs to this same email address.


We are glad to be of service to you.

Mr. Nick Ward
Customer Service Officer
Customer Information and Enquiry Department
Fast Way Couriers Uk
Telephone Numbers:
+44-703-191-5816
Fax Number :
44-707-570-7721
44-707-570-0277

This message, along with any attachments, is strictly confidential, and intended solely for the use of the person or organization to whom it is addressed. It may contain privileged and confidential information which is covered by legal, professional, or other privileges. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not copy, distribute or take any action in reliance on it. In this case, please destroy the email and its attachments. Any opinions presented, expressed or implied, are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company.

Anyway, complaint headquarters. Of about 4 or five total emails from UK Lottery Board, a few really do look legitimate. I'm sure tomorrow to make entirely sure I won't be losing out on what would make me, a homeless person with not enough to pay the shipping charges for 3 million pounds British sterling anyway... Well, tomorrow I'm sure I'll be trying to see if the telephone numbers to the real UK Lottery Board are the same as mentioned in these emails. To that end, won't you respond if you can quickly...
Comments United States Lottery Scams
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27th of Feb, 2009 by jose ariel0 Votes
pagame el premio

18th of Mar, 2009 by bharatbi0 Votes
To,
The Manager
Fast Way Courier Company

Respected Sir,
I agree your notification about this lottery scam.
I also got the same message containing the lottery prize. I give them my details for further process, They said me to pay the sum of £250.00 Great Britain pounds/Sterling i.e. Rs. 17, 200 INR. I deposit the amount in their correspondent SBI account, Next day when they said me that my parcel has ready to dispatch for india but for that I have to paid again the sum of amount £350.00 Great Britain Pounds/Sterling i.e. Rs. 25, 200 INR.
I paid it again, but after depositing the above amount as on dt 18.03.2009 they said me that your parcel is in Mumbai, India Airport, and to releaving the Claiming amount & Certificate I have to paid £1000.00 Great Britain Pounds/Sterling i.e. Rs. 72, 116.27 INR
After that I search it, that's my mistake I has to search it first, but nothing in my favour.
Now what I have to please guide me if it possible. my mail ID is bharat_indurkar@rediffmail.com

26th of Mar, 2009 by manda_sky0 Votes
there still going...
why has no-one done anything about these people?
these r the emails i received from them...

Dear Friend, I am Mrs. Allan Sandra, I am a australia citizen, I am one of those that executed a contract in Nigeria years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $82, 000 trying to get my payment all to no avail.So I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my contract documents, And I was directed to meet Barrister Jeff Cammon, who is the member of CONTRACT AWARD COMMITTEE, and I contacted him and he explained everything to me.He said that those contacting us through emails are fake. Then he took me to the paying bank, which is Access Bank Nigeria Limited, and I am the happiest woman on this earth because I have received my contract funds of $1 Million USD. Moreover, Barrister Jeff Cammon, showed me the full information of those that have not received their payment. I saw your name and your email address as one of the beneficiary, and your contract amount, You have to contact him direct on this information below. Contact Name: Barrister Jeff Common Email: jeffcomms28@super.ltTel: +234-706-570-6144Office Address: 13, Zion Street, Ikeja Lagos Nigeria. You really have to stop your dealings with those contacting you because they will dry you up until you have nothing to left with you. Thank You and God Be Bless. Mrs. Allan sandra.



then...




The National Lottery,
35 Tottenham Court
Road London.
WD1 12T.
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 7035 954 072

Dear Winner,


Congratulations once again from all the staff here. The online cyber lotto draws was conducted from an exclusive list of 120, 000 email address of individual and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. Your email address happens to be one of the emails chosen from our new java-based software. Participants were selected from the registered email addresses in the Public Key Server -- Index, it was drawn from a pool of over 120, 000 names in this batch, participants were taken from Europe, America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Middle-East, parts of Africa, and North & South America as part of our international promotions program conducted six times annually to encourage the use of Internet world wide. In order to verify your winnings, we need your particulars for record purposes. Attached here is a copy of our verifications form, please fill accordingly so as to proceed with your winnings. Once again, congratulations from all the staff of the UK National Lottery Headquarter.

Note you are to fill the verification form below to enable us proceed with the claims process, do fill and send back the claims verification form below:

(Form HLP)
REFERENCE NUMBER: UK/9420X2/68
FULL NAME...
COMPANY NAME: ...
FULL ADDRESS: ...
SEX: ...! ... ...
AGE...
OCCUPATION...
TEL...FAX... (If any)
COUNTRY...
E-MAIL...
HAVE YOU A PASSPORT OR LICENCE: ... (Identification on delivery)

AMOUNT WON...

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF COMPANY/ INDIVIDUAL:
...
...
...

____________________________ ___________________
Date. Signature.


Upon receipt of the duly requested data, I’ll send you the contact information of the payment office so you can proceed with effecting the release of your claim in anyway you deems fit.


Warm Regards,
Mr. Edward Connor.



© Copyright 1994-2009 the U.K. National Lottery Inc.



but wait... theres more...




HOME OFFICE:
28 TAN FIELD ROAD,
LONDON.
REFERENCE NUMBER: UK/839030X2/14
TICKET NO: 56475600545 188


Attention: Manda Renfrew,

The Board of Directors, Staff and the International Awareness Promotion Department of the UKNL Online Sweepstakes Programme, wishes to congratulate you as one of our Star Prize Winner in this months UKNL Online Sweepstakes Promotion (IAP) held in England. The selection process was carried out through a Random Selection in our Computerized Email Selection System (C.E.S.S.) from a database of over three million email addresses from the World Wide Web drawn from different continents of the world. In your Continent, your email address was luckily selected. This makes you a proud winner of the sum of 850, 000.00 GBP (Eight Hundred And Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds). The Cheque comes with other consolation prize such as T-Shirt, Face Cap and a Sony Viao Laptop {courtesy Sony}.

In reference to the above, we would recommend our affiliate courier (FOUR WAYS COURIER SERVICE) which is the only trusted courier presently capable of handling such a vital package as yours, as they have been under a contract with us for quite a long time now to deliver cheques of huge sums from our sponsors to us and our winners. On that note we would require you to contact the courier and arrange them to pick up your Winning Items (i.e. Cheque, T-shirt, Face Cap, Winning Certificate and a Sony Viao Laptop courtesy 'Sony') from our office to be delivered to you, be aware that Uk National office will only dispatch your cheque and other iitems to them and won't be responsible for any delivery charges incurred. After pick up, they would send you a the delivery arrangement of your winning package which you will use to know when your Items would be arriving your location. You can reach the courier through their details below:


Please contact Mr. Colson Charles of Four Ways Courier Service with this email address:
Four Ways Courier International Service
Delivery Officer: Mr. Colson Charles.
Email: customerservice@fourwayscourierdeliveryservice.com
Telephone: +447031974613


You are advised to keep your winning informations confidential until your claim is processed and your winnings safely delivered to you, this is part of our security measures to avoid double claiming on your winning and unwarranted abuse on our program.

We advice that you give the courier company your Full Name, Address, Phone Number and also your Serial No: 53-192008 to present to us before we can release your package to them.


Do not hesitate to contact us for more information, kindly contact us the moment you receive your cheque.


Thanks for being part of our lottery.


Have a wonderful day.


Warm Regards,
Mr. Edward Connor
FIDUCIARY AGENT.
Tel: +44 70359 72315


The information in this E-mail message and any attachment is confidential to the addressee and may be subject to legal privilege. It is intended only for the named recipient(s).
If you are not a named recipient please notify the sender either by replying via email or telephoning (+44) 70359 56912 immediately and do not disclose any part of this email to any other person or allow copies to be taken. The message and any attachments should be deleted from your system at the earliest opportunity and any hard copy either returned to the sender or destroyed.



thats not it...




FOUR WAYS COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE
Head Office
Ham bridge Lane
Newbury Berkshire
RG14 5TU UK
Tel: +447031974613

Dear Valued Customer,

Welcome to FOUR WAYS COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE. We are a private delivery company that ensures safe, sound and secured delivery of your parcels, making sure you get them at when expected.Please fill the shipment Schedule Form below and choose from the Delivery Options below as well for a safe and perfect delivery of your package.

As soon as you submit this form we will pick your package up from your requested location for delivery, which will commence as soon as you make your payments for delivery charges to help us settle your VAT, insurance and other charges involved . Please kindly fill in the information below accurately to help us deliver your package as these will be used to contact you when your package arrives you country;

PLEASE FILL THE DELIVERY SCHEDULE FORM BELOW
Contact Name:
Residential Address:
City:
State/Province:
Postal Code:
Country:
Telephone:
Number of Packages: 1 PKT
Delivery Time(time of recipient's availability):
Brief Description of Individual:
Delivery Option:
{Choose From Below}


(Over Night Serivce)

Mailing £310.00 00..00
Insurance £240.00 00..00
Vat £110.00 00..00
TOTAL £660.00 00..00

(2 working days)
Mailing &n bsp £210 .00 00..00
Insurance £230 .00 00..00
Vat £110 .00 00..00
TOTAL £550.00 00..00


(3 working days)
Mailing £110 .00 00..00
Insurance £260 .00 00..00
Vat £100.00 00..00
TOTAL £470.00 00..00



(To make a currency conversion click on (http://www.xe.com)

On acknowledgement of this email, I would forward to you the payment information and details.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By standardizing the Four Ways Couriers of rates, hence Four Ways Couriers service has put the world in your fingertips. We are not a broker, we are licensed by the Federal Maritime Commission as a non-vesseloperating common carrier ( N.V.O.C.C.) to produce original shipping documents, and we are licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration under the TSA as an indirect air carrier ( I.A.C.) to engage in air cargo worldwide, therefore we can leverage our technology with our experience to save your money and serve you on a global basis.

Note:The charges are a little high because of the insurance cover we have undertaken in case of loss, damage or theft of your highly sensitive consignment content. We assume all responsibilities in case of any eventualities. Four Ways Couriers do not allow Cash on delivery(C.O.D) as all payment must be made in this office before shipment can commence. This company declined reverse payment for these charges, stating that it is against their professional policy towards ensuring the safe delivery of the check to you. That if a reverse payment is made, and something goes wrong, that we/you cannot sue the courier company or insurance company to recover the full value of the fund as stipulated in the check since payment for insurance cover was not made at point of mailing. With the above reason, reverse payment is ruled out. Be informed that we are sending you a check which can only be cleared by you with the provision of your I.D (Driving license/passport).. Four Ways Couriers do not have the authority to cash your check or send your funds via bank-to-bank account. Please take note.

Note: that your prize is protected by a hardcover insurance policy, which makes it impossible to deduct any amount from the money before it has been remitted to you. This means that the above charge cannot be deducted from the prize and hence must be provided by you before your prize is transferred to you. This is in accordance with section 13(1) (n) of the National Gambling Act as adopted in 1993 and amended on 3rd July 1996 by the constitutional assembly. This is to protect winners and to avoid misappropriation of funds'. I hope all of this is clearly understood? As soon as I get your response including your completed Delivery Information Request Form I'll give you payment instruction. Send a copy of your Driving license or Passport via an attachment via e-mail.

Send your response to indicate your collection within the next 24hrs, because you only have 10 working days to claim this check BECAUSE OF THE LIMITED TIME BEFORE FUNDS
LIQUIDATION and after this period, your cash prize will be deemed to have been forfeited by you and will be reused in the drawings of the next edition as informed from your Lottery Promoter.

Thanks for patronage.
Sincerely,
Customer Service
FOUR WAYS COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE
Dispatch Officer{F.W.C.D.S}.
****************************************************************************************************
This e-mail is intended only for the above addressee. It may containprivileged information .
If you are not the addressee you must notcopy, distribute, disclose or use any of the information
in it.. If you have received it in error please delete it and immediately notify the sender.
****************************************************************************************************
Copyright © 2008 Four Ways Courier Delivery Services






after receiving the last one, i knew it had to be a scam... thats when i decided to do sum searching around, found this and knew it was a load of bull... not to mention i have family that live in the uk, n there is no way in hell it would ever cost that much to send sumthing to australia, unless they were sending a loaded 40 foot container... i just cant believe its been going on for years and no-one has stopped these people from doing this stuff...
manda
xxxx

20th of Apr, 2009 by abhishek choudhari0 Votes
All ths is fake & scam..dont believe this
i had also get these same type of mails from him...
this is a just fooling method of all internet users...
please safe ur hardworking money & ignore him..
...jus take it as a joke

27th of May, 2009 by daisy0 Votes
Dear Samsung Electronic Promotion Winner,

I am Mr.Floyd Johnson, Samsung Electronic licensed and accredited agent assigned to your case to help you in the claims process of your funds. I wish to congratulate you and to say you are a lucky person to have won this Samsung Electronics Promotion. All the winners in the Promotion were selected by an advanced automated random computer ballot search from the internet as part of our international promotions program which we conduct every year.

You are required to fill the below Winners Payment Verification Form to facilitate the processing of your claims which will lead to the payment of your prize to you as required. You are also to send a copy of your International Passport or Drivers License via E-MAIL ATTACHMENT along with the filled form. If you do not have any of these, you can send a valid Identity card of yours as a form of Identification.

You are to choose only One (1) from the Two (2) given options on how to claim your prize. For any option you choose, you are to fill in the necessary information .

1. Transfer of your funds to your local bank account by Telegraphic Bank transfer and your funds will be in your account within 48 hours.

2. You employ the services of our affiliate courier/diplomatic service to deliver your prize Funds to you in form of Consignment to your physical mailing address.

You will be totally responsible for the Telegraphic Bank Transfer Charges OR Courier Charges. When we receive your Filled Form, we will send you more information about any option you choose.

Note that your funds (£710, 000.00GBP) have already been insured to your winning E-mail address by Samsung Electronics Inc. and no deductions of any kind can be made on your funds.

Below if the Samsung Electronics Promotion Winner's Data Form.Do fill and return as soon as possible.

SECTION A

First Name.:...
Middle Name.:...
Last Name.:...
Gender.:...
Year Of Birth.:...
Marital Status.:...
Nationality.:...
Natioanal Id Card NO...
Occupation.: ...
Mobile phone No.:...
House Phone No.:...
Fax No...
Contact Address.:...

OPTION 1 TELEGRAPHIC/SWIFT BANK TRANSFER

Account Number:...
Account Name:...
Account Tittle:...
Swift code:...
Bank Name/Country:...

OPTION 2 COURIER DIPLOMATIC DELIVERY SERVICES.

Address 1...
Address 2.:...
City.:...
State/Province.:...
Zip Code.:...
Country.:...

WINNING INFORMATION

Winning E-mail .:...
Amount Won(In Pounds).:...

You are adviced to act fast about this information soonest for further correspondence.Congratulations on behalf of the Samsung Electronics Inc. Company and our promotion agents all over the world.

Yours faithfully,
Floyd Johnson.
Samsung Electronics Promo Dept.
London, United Kingdom.
Phone: +44 7045 795 001
Fax: +44 70928 45470.

Copyright © 2009 Samsung Electronics! Inc.
.


This email and its attachments are confidential and intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s). This email and its attachments may also be privileged or protected by legal rules. If you have received this by mistake please let us know by reply immediately and destroy the email and its attachments without reading, copying or forwarding the contents.

SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO.LTD
PROMOTION CLAIMS DEPT.

Dear Valid Winner
You have being awarded the sum of 710, 000.00 GBP from Samsung Electronics Promotion.
For speedy release of your won prize, you are required to contact your assigned agent
(MR. FLOYD JOHNSON) with your NAME and COUNTRY via E-mail: samsung.floyd@live.com .
Congratulations once more

SUBJECT:DELIVERY GUIDELINE

Compliments of the day to you, We have been notified by the verification/logistic department to conclude all pending processes of your claims and clear you for payment via the accounts section after you have met with the requirements as required below.

The original copy of this certificate, together with a covering document (Money Laundering protection and Letter of Affidavit for Claims) from the British government stating that the money was obtained legally through Samsung ElectronicsPromotion and One Bonded Cheque will be sent to you as soon as you meet with any of the options selected via our courier services.

With regards to this, there are three options open to you, you are required to select the most convenient of the three. These options, together with their associated conditions are presented below:

Courier/Diplomatic service delivery your winning draft to you via any of this channel listed below:
BRONZE DELIVERY
Duration Of delivery: 7 days
An original certificate of weight...0.9Gramms
Total weight of parcel...1.8Gramms
Color of parcel...Blue
Mailing; ...£72.00
Insurance...£250.00
Vat (0.5%)...£025.00
TOTAL...£347.00

SILVER DELIVERY
Duration Of delivery: 4 days
An original certificate of weight...0.9Gramms
Total weight of parcel...1.8Gramms
Color of parcel...Blue
Flight; ...£236.00
Insurance...£299.00
Vat (0.5%) ...£025.00
TOTAL...£560.00

GOLD DELIVERY
Duration Of delivery: 2 days
An original certificate of weight...0.9Gramms
Total weight of parcel...1.8Gramms
Color of parcel...Blue
Flight; ...£480.00
Insurance...£494.00
Vat (0.5%)...£025.00
TOTAL...£999.00

The insurance company declined reverse payment for the courier, stating that it is against their professional policy towards ensuring the safe delivery of the draft & winning documents to you.

That if a reverse payment is made, and something goes wrong, that you can sue the courier company or insurance company to recover the full value of the fund as stipulated in the draft since payment for insurance cover was made at point of mailing.

With the above reason, reverse payment is ruled out. Forward the cost of mailing your draft with any of the courier channel cost you choose above to us.

After payment you will be required to send by fax/e-mail the receipt of your payment so that the transfer process of your winning can be initiated immediately. Your Parcel will be in your mailing address within the stipulated time after payment of required delivery charges.

Note that your funds have been insured and no deductions of any kind can be made on your funds.

Acknowledge receipt of this mail so we can send you information on how to make payment for the required charges and also send you your Tracking Code {TRC} for your delivery package to be delivered to you via our courier services if the courier option is chosen.

Yours faithfully,

Dave Brett
(Regional Franchisee)
Tel: +44-704-576-1976
Fax: +44-709-289-6915
E-mail: fastway.couriers@live.com

Friday, April 27, 2012

HOTEL/MOTEL SCAM...

Please pass this information onto friends and relatives.
It can help them avoid a lot of problems.

This is worthwhile reading. See below.

Hotel/Motel Scam

This one is so simple it is shocking

PLEASE PASS THIS ONE ALONG TO YOUR FAMILY AND
FRIENDS...........Hotel/Motel Scam.

This is kinda scary if only because of how simple it is. You arrive at
your hotel and check in at the front desk.

When checking in, you give the front desk your credit card (for all
the charges for your room).

You get to your room and settle in. Someone calls the front desk and
asked for (example) Room 620 (which happensto be your room). Your
phone rings in your room. You answer and the person on the other end
says the following, 'This is thefront desk.

When checking in, we came across a problem with your charge
cardinformation. Please re-read me your credit card number and verify
the last 3digits numbers at the reverse side of your charge card.

'Not thinking anything you might give this person your information,
since the call seems to come from the front desk.

But actually, it is a scam of someone calling from out side the
hotel/front desk. They ask for a random room number. Then, ask you for
credit card information and address information. Sounding so
professional that you do think you are talking to the front desk.

If you ever encounter this problem on your vacation/ stay, tell the
caller that you will be down at the front desk to clear up any
problems. Then, go to the front desk and ask if there was a problem.
If there was none, inform the manager of the hotel that someone called
to scam you of your credit card information acting like a front desk
employee.This was sent by someone who has been duped........and is
still cleaning up the mess.

P.S. Please everyone, consider spreading the word by forwarding this email.

Who knows, you might just help someone avoid a nasty experience.
AND PLEASE REMOVE ALL THE NAMES AND E-MAIL ADDRESSES OF MAILS YOU FORWARD, USE BCC TO ADD ADDRESSES
Thank you.

Monday, April 16, 2012

STOP FORECLOSURE


STOP FORECLOSURE NOW illegal bundled mortgages...


Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:32:21 -0400
Subject: Monday: HOME FORECLOSURE REMEDIES - MONDAY NIGHT CALL
To: dritecrg@hotmail.com
From: no-reply@americansrestoringamerica.com




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THIS Monday CALL 


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YOUR  FORECLOSURE CRISIS


heard each Monday evening at www.FreedomsRadio.com at 9pm EST / 6pm             Pacific


In an era where a very large portion of mortgage obligations have been securitized, by assignment to a trust and venture trustee, with the resulting pool of assets being then sold as mortgage backed securities, foreclosure becomes an interesting exercise, particularly where judicial process is involved.


We are all familiar with the securitization process.


The steps, if not the process, is simple. A borrower goes to a mortgage lender.  The lender finances the purchase of real estate. The borrower signs a note and a mortgage or deed of trust. The original lender sells the note and assigns the mortgage to an entity that securitizes the note by combining the note with hundreds of thousands of similar obligations to create a package of mortgage backed securities, which are then sold to investors.


Guess what.......


It's illegal.


Yes, along with all of the other revelations of Banks being found guilty of perpetrating fraudulent foreclosures, by forging and fabricating foreclosure documents, the exposure of deposition testimony by Robo-Signers who have admitted their fraud, and the Bank's corrupt law firms, which were hired, and submitted these fraudulent documents in court, in order to perpetrate their fraud upon the courts, now comes one of the, if not THEE biggest SCAM perpetrated by Wall Street to recently be exposed.


The Clever, and complicated process of creating mortgage backed securities, or the securitization of your mortgage loan, has been exposed to be completely ILLEGAL!


When Wall Street converted your mortgage into unregistered securities, and then sold the securities, without your permission, it was illegal pursuant to the Securities Act of 1933.  Additionally, the selling of your converted, unregistered securities provided you, the homeowner with an automatic right to rescind the loan, meaning the lender would have to give you all of your monthly payments made, and all of your closing costs back to you.   And this is JUST the beginning of their wholesale violations.


Rather than write a lengthy statement of everything 'they' did wrong - let me simply state what you can do that can make it right to stop the home foreclosure and to void the note and the mortgage or deed of trust.


Two keys make this happen….


Identifying the CUSIP/REMIC; following all trades associated therein; Bloomberg Screen Shot identifying just who is the Indispensable Party to a Claim – and it ain’t them…..


Walking into court with an irrevocable cash line-of-credit in the full             amount of the ‘debt’.

Your Honor:  we are not here to contest the debt.  We are here             to pay off the debt. 


Trustee…..Would you please ‘ping’ this account to verify the funds are present to pay this debt in full today?


Your Honor – your Trustee has verified funds are available to pay off this debt.  We have great suspicion that this purported injured             party is NOT the true Owner and Holder of the Note.  So that my             client is not placed in the position of having to pay a debt twice,             we Demand a Prove Up Hearing wherein the alleged injured party will bring the Original Note to give to me in exchange for the Payment in Full; a Certified Copy of the Chain of Custody associated with this Note; and a Certified Copy of that days Call Report that would show the bank lent its money rather than its credit, a thing unlawful.


And there you are. 


To learn more about this wonderful remedy and how you find that your Remedy Is In The Law, join us this Monday evening at 9pm EST / 6pm Pacific at www.FreedomsRadio.com. 


If you would like immediate details of the process, the cost and a sample 'proof' of this process working; over 75 times applied - over 75 times won - simply send an eMail to ME@YourRemedyIsInTheLaw.com with the following in the Subject Line:  ARIZONA PROOF.
               
Also, if you would like immediate contact please go to             www.HomeForeclosureRemedies.com and fill out the short request for contact information.  If you really need to speak to someone NOW - then, in addition to filling out the short contact request at www.HomeForeclosureRemedies.com - simply call; 1-800-625-4250 and someone will speak with you immediately or as soon as possible.



Regards,
ME


If only this were true…..
View article...
http://kauilapele.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/highlights-from-the-david-wilcock-article-major-event-liens-filed-against-all-12-federal-reserve-banks/


From MAJOR EVENT: 


Liens Filed Against All 12 Federal Reserve Banks


Highlights (from the Kp point of view) (and there’s a bunch!)


Ø The next major milestone for Mass Arrests of the cabal has now arrived. Liens have now been filed against all twelve Federal Reserve banks. A Cease and Desist Order has also been filed — to prevent the world’s wealth from continuing to be stolen.


Ø Let’s be clear, again, that this is NOT a coup, NOT martial law, and NOT a takeover of the government in any way.


Ø The plan for mass arrests appears to have been in development since the 1960s… [and] requires the will of the people to succeed. Otherwise, our supporters within the military and the justice system do not have the legal precedent to perform such actions.


Ø US marshals from the Department of Justice and peace officers will carry out the arrests, with the assistance of military personnel — in the event of any unforeseen disturbances.


Ø …the mass arrests will generate a situation from which there is no turning back for the Cabal.


Ø Full disclosure of this group guarantees that no such actions will ever be tolerated again by the public. It is a full-stop Game Over for the cabal.


Ø This cannot and will not be a “cleaning out of middle management” only. The upper levels will be clearly exposed.


Ø Particularly since 9/11, an incredible amount of damning evidence has been quietly collected — all for use in this single moment of Truth… it will be shocking. Very shocking. It will also be undeniable.


Ø There will NOT be a mass power outage unless the negative groups try to do this. The lights will stay on and everyone should be OK during this process.


Ø There may be local disruptions of Internet service and international phone calls for the initial three-day period. This is by necessity…


Ø …the 2008 crash… Had this massive hemorrhage not been quickly stopped in 2008, the economy could have been destroyed beyond any hope of repair.


Ø Scores of DVDs’ worth of documentaries — some narrated by             instantly-recognizable public figures — will be airing, revealing             the truth, with as much sensitivity as possible — while also not             pulling any punches.


Ø Once this information is released, there will be a mass grieving process that must occur, akin to the sudden death of a friend or loved one.


Ø This event will have a similarly “defining” effect in creating a sudden grief process — worldwide — though very little, if any deaths should occur… Many great illusions — in which we, like children, wanted our “parents” to love, protect and support us — will come crashing down.


Ø I have had hundreds of dreams, for many years now, preparing me to see a massive, unprecedented exposure and arrest of this Cabal on a worldwide level… The overall “data cluster” indicates this will indeed be of tremendous, unprecedented, positive benefit to humanity.


Ø …everyone [has had] to knowingly live in a lie… that we live in a “basically good” world that is not being secretly run by psychopaths.


Ø Fear is the only reason why this hasn’t already become a mass, public understanding. However, that “fear of Truth” is already just about broken.


Ø The economic, political and social concerns we struggle with today are the result of a plan that was systematically put into practice as of 1776, with the founding of the Order of the Illuminati in Bavaria.


Ø In order to stop this game and bring about true peace, any plan for mass arrests must involve a full exposure of the gold that was confiscated worldwide — by the bankers themselves.


Ø Adam Smith’s treatise was used — in the tragic aftermath of the completely manufactured, pre-planned World War I — to convince world leaders to hand over their gold. 


Ø Two different economies were set up: the public economy, where we currently have about 62 trillion dollars in world GDP, and what I call the occult economy.


Ø In order to use any of this money, however, it must be withdrawn from accounts held in the occult economy — and converted into real money in the public economy. Therein lies the problem.


Ø Only a very small number of key “traders” still hold any accounts in the occult economy.


Ø Groups like the SEC have completely shut these accounts down. 


Ø The shutdown of these illicit accounts is another reason why so many CEOs have resigned since this happened. Where do you think most of their “big” money was being held?


Ø I was told that any mention of this system, or the jargon that goes along with it, could have led to the dreaded “knock on the door” — but so far I have been fine.


Ø Had I decided to get involved in this occult financial system, Federal Reserve-owned banks would have extended lines of credit to me —  using the initial monies I raised as collateral.


Ø I refused these offers. I would not tolerate anyone attempting to buy my allegiance and using money to control me.


Ø If you have an occult bank balance of, say, 300 billion, and you wish to free up a few million for something, that money has to be created as a ledger entry by one of the major banks… Through this process, trillions of dollars of illicit, occult funds have been laundered into the public economy.


Ø This is why the numbers do not add up — and the books do not balance — in the public economy.


Ø This is ridiculous. It is a bubble. It was meant to be that way.


Ø …the occult economy — and its fantastic bank balances — was, is and always will be the greatest Ponzi scheme on earth.


Ø The plan for mass arrests…, does involve the restoration of the United States Constitution to its full lawful status… [and] requires that the confiscated gold, and the occult economy built off of it, be fully revealed to the world.


Ø The insider name for the confiscated gold is the Global Collateral Accounts. 85 percent of this gold belonged to Asian countries.


Ø The Federal Reserve stole this gold by vastly lying to its owners.


Ø The Asians and all other countries were told that this would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.


Ø Once they [the cabal] secured control of the financial system, through the BIS, they used lethal force to stop anyone from speaking out.


Ø Those who held the original gold… [Asian countries] needed to have something offered to them in exchange for what they handed over… 


Ø …they have been given a continuous supply of Federal Reserve bonds — issued by any one of twelve Federal Reserve banks in the US — as collateral.


Ø Technically, these bonds serve as legal tender. They are United States Federal Reserve Notes, as good as cash.


Ø This was the greatest bank-robbery in human history. It has still not been exposed on a mass public level.


Ø The gold was not moved very far from where it was originally confiscated. Every bar of gold in every facility is rigorously cataloged, documented and “deposited” within the Global Collateral Accounts… The Federal Reserve’s charter for these accounts expired in 1999.


Ø [NEIL KEENAN] We have most recently watched Rothschild and Dupont fly to Indonesia to try and illegally move the assets — to no avail… Now David Cameron, the Prime Minister of England, has his eyes set on the Gold. (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/british-pm-visits-indonesia-as-earthquake-hits-2012-04-11)


Ø [KEENAN] It seems to me that the English are making a push to steal whatever they have not stolen during the past 300 years.


Ø [KEENAN] We intend to establish a trust that will allow these funds to be utilized for the healing and transformation of this planet. The releasing of formerly-classified technologies is a very key element of this plan.


Ø [KEENAN] As Mr. Rothschild and Mr. Dupont did, Cameron also left empty-handed… Furthering this note, a powerful Singaporean/Malaysian businessman made his attempt at stealing the accounts within the past week.             


Ø [BEN FULFORD] There is a genuine Dragon family that is based on Asian royal bloodlines. They have been setting up a benevolent new financial system.


Ø [FULFORD] [But] the Feds, Bernanke, Geithner and their Bush, Rockefeller, Rothschild bosses last week approached Japan Ministry of Finance boss Eijiro Katsu and BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa, and pretended they were the Dragon family.


Ø …the first public posting of the new Cease and Desist Order on behalf of Neil Keenan, signatory for the “real” Dragon Family and its assets.


Ø As of this posting, liens have now been placed against all twelve Federal Reserve banks. We already know they do not have the assets to meet these obligations.


Ø [from Cease and Desist Order] “It has been brought to our attention by Swiss Authorities that Chairman Kaspar Villager of UBS has made attempts to circumvent the lawfully appointed managers and Settlors of the Soekarno Trust — namely Neil F. Keenan and Keith F. Scott…


Ø WHEREBY; we, the undersigned, are ordering Alex Ling Lee Soon, Jack Singh, Mr. Chee, Kaspar Villager, and the United Bank of Switzerland to stand down — and to CEASE AND DESIST on this, the 11th day of April, 2012, or face litigation.


Ø Be aware that on the week of the 13th of April, you will be exposed internationally for your wrongdoings.


Ø SIGNED by the Settlors of the Soekarno Trust – otherwise publicly known as the International Collateral Combined Accounts… Neil F. Keenan, April 11, 2012, Keith F. Scott, April 11, 2012


Ø [DW] FILING LIENS AGAINST THE TWELVE FEDERAL RESERVE BANKS… the grand finale…             


Ø Neil [Keenan] and I [DW] had an extensive conference call with Drake and his associates… as of this past weekend… Drake was told that a certain sequence of events needed to occur before the mass arrests could happen. The filing of this lien is one of those events.


Ø [from Affidavit of Obligation to the 12 Federal Reserve Banks] “The ledger for this True Bill is based on the rate of 4% per annum of the principal amount of leased gold, which was 2,420,937,400 kilograms of pure gold. The total amount since 1961 to present is as             follows:


Ø 2,420,937,400 [x] .04 [=] 96,837,496 per annum


Ø 96,837,496 [x] .51 years [=] 4,638,791,996 kilograms of pure gold


Ø Demand is now made for Lien Debtors, jointly and severally, to deliver over to Lien Claimants 4,638,791,996 kilograms of pure gold.”


Ø We will not stand down. We will not be intimidated… I am only giving a voice to the real heroes — the brave men and women who will conduct these mass arrests, and free our planet from Financial Tyranny.


Ø I do believe I will be fine. No one has hurt me directly. I want to make it absolutely clear that if anyone else I care about is harmed, there will be direct repercussions. You are ordered to Cease and Desist. Now

Sunday, April 15, 2012

HISTORY'S BIGGEST HEIST


British lord says Fed secretly transferred $15 trillion
 • Federal Reserve Bank of New York denies claims

By Pat Shannan

On Feb. 16, 2012, Lord James of Blackheath made a request for Parliament to investigate the suspicious findings of nearly three years’ worth of analysis and data, complete with the delivery of gigabytes of documents to support his position. What finally surfaces may expose the single biggest bank heist in world history.

The secret creation and transfer of $5 trillion or more on three occasions to places and persons still unknown—a total of over $15 trillion—could precipitate the collapse of the U.S. economy. Is this the secret plan of those insiders from the beginning to destroy the United States?

Released from the House of Lords were further examples that Lord James says “expose the betrayal of not only the British and American nations by this secretive cabal of international banksters but [betray] the whole world’s banking system as well.”

In April and May 2009, according to Lord James’s report to the House of Lords, the situation started with the transfer of $5 trillion to Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC) in the United Kingdom. Seven days later, another $5 trillion came to HSBC and three weeks later another $5 trillion. A total of $15.4 trillion is alleged to have been passed into the hands of HSBC for transfer to the Royal Bank of Scotland.

“I have been trying to sort out the sequence by which this money has been created and where it has come from for a long time,” he said. “It starts off apparently as the property of Yohannes Riyadi, who has some claims to be considered the richest man in the world. I have seen some accounts of his showing that he owns $36 trillion in a bank.”

Lord James went on to cite an “astonishing” 2006 document—clearly showing the signatures of Alan Greenspan, as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Timothy Geithner as a witness on behalf of the International Monetary Fund—that confirmed the deal took place.

However, a January report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York denies it is involved in any grant program and says that it does not  maintain grant money or any funds or accounts for individuals.

Although no mention of the secretive, mega-rich Rothschild clan has been made by Lord James, this is exactly the sort of scam that the Rothschilds have been pulling off for almost 300 years.

AFP will report further on this as details emerge, but meanwhile, readers need not bother looking for any updated news on this subject from Time, Newsweek, CNN, NBC or CBS. For some reason the Zionist-controlled media is not interested in this story. Go figure.

 Pat Shannan is a contributing editor of American Free Press. He is also the author of several videos and books including One in a Million: An IRS Travesty, I Rode With Tupper and Everything They* Ever Told Me Was a Lie. All are available from FIRST AMENDMENT BOOKS. Call 1-888-699-6397 toll free to charge.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

One of the greatest ripoff of all time


The Great Patents Heist One of the greatest ripoffs of all time was the theft of German patents after World War II
It is quite acceptable to American pride to acknowledge that immigrants have contributed to our prosperity and greatness. It's a little harder to swallow that a good deal of our scientific lead and prosperity - despite the ever-increasing burdens of non-skilled illegal immigrants and unproductive home-growns - has come from simply seizing German patents and inventions after World War I [the most prominent war booty which Woodrow Wilson seized in 1917 was the patent on aspirin, that "miracle drug"] and far more so after World War II.
There are those who claim the key to America's felicity has been its Jewish citizens. After all, this is now a "service economy" of stockbrokers and financial and entertainment services. Could America dispense with actually manufacturing or growing anything, and instead focus on the essentials like Broadway shows, Hollywood sitcoms and currency speculation?
The message of Bernt Engelmann's 1974 Deutschland ohne Juden, published in English by Bantam Books, New York in 1984 as Germany Without Jews, is clear: You Germans were mediocre until we Jews came, and now that we're gone, you have sunk back into mediocrity.
Engelmann cites endless lists of great Jewish MDs of German or Austrian domicile, several of whom, such as bacteriologists Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) and Robert Koch (1843-1910), won the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology (Ehrlich, 1908; Koch, 1905). Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), of dubious credentials, is one of Engelmann's prize examples.
Engelmann also slays entire forests with pages of printed paeans to forgotten Jewish playwrights, songsters, operetta producers, critics, publishers etc. How could one forget the immortal Meyerbeer? To the wary eye, it smacks of ethnic self-congratulation. One gifted Jew writes a piece, another publishes it, yet another reviews it favourably, a fourth sits at the box office counting out his money and a fifth takes his 10 percent as agent - an unconvincing proof that the nation of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven needed music lessons.
Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Karl Benz (1844-1929) invented the modern gasoline engine in 1878-1887. Other Germans took the lead in 19th-century chemistry and created the first contact lens (in the 1880s), X-rays (Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895), quantum physics (discovered in 1900 by Max Planck, 1858-1947), aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) and last (and least), saccharin in 1913. As for previous centuries, the Germans got no credit for inventing the croissant or "Kipferl," as the Germans call it, in Vienna to celebrate defeating the Turks in 1683; one notes the Turkish religious logo, the crescent (a baked good then snatched up by the French as the "croissant"). Equally, they receive zero credit for baking the first quiche, which in Lorraine and Rhinelander dialects ("Kisch") simply means "kitchen leftovers baked into a pie."
Baked goods aside, the facts reveal that the most creative period in world history may have been Germany between 1932 and 1945, and that much of America's scientific lead came from looting German patents by the ton, both in World War I and far more so after World War II.
And because Germany was so devastated after World War II, there has been a brain drain ever since of the top young German scientists - to Massachusetts and California for computers and genetics and to greater Los Angeles, Houston and Cape Canaveral for aerospace. As one German scientist remarked: "Since the war, we have not had the financing capabilities for basic research for the long-term future. That kind of serious money only the Americans have. In Germany, and in Japan, also, we do applied and clinical research for immediate applications. But to be on the cutting edge, the money and the positions are now in America and we have to go there. [1]
An astounding admission of the stripping of German inventiveness after the war came in an October 1946 article by C. Lester Walker in Harper's magazine. Entitled "Secrets by the Thousands," it presents some problems for the Bernt Engelmanns of this world who imply that German science in the 1932-45 period would have been "nothing without the Jews."


In every collection of Harper's - even that held in a prestigious university research library - the October 1946 issue is missing. A coincidence?

Fortunately this document exists in cyber-space...


In fact, the article suggests in deadly seriousness that German Chancellor Adolf Hitler had been right, from his point of view, to prolong the war to the last gasp. According to the deputy commanding general of Army Air Forces Intelligence, Air Technical Service Command, in a speech to the American Society of Aeronautical Engineers:
The Germans were preparing rocket surprises for the whole world in general and England in particular which would have, it is believed, changed the course of the war if the invasion had been postponed for so short a time as half a year.
Even without its brilliant Jewish minority, the Germans' "V-2 rocket which bombed London was just a toy compared to what the Germans had up their sleeve." They had 138 types of guided missiles in various stages of production or development, using every kind of remote control device or fuse: radio, radar, wire-guided, continuous wave, acoustics, infrared, light beams and magnetism. And for power the Germans were years ahead in jet propulsion at both subsonic and supersonic speeds - even creating a "jet helicopter" wherein tiny jets spun the helicopter blade tips at blinding speeds.
Just as the war was ending, and President Franklin Roosevelt was ordering both Gens. George Patton and Dwight David Eisenhower to pull back and let "Uncle Joe" (Josef Stalin) have Berlin and Eastern Europe, the Germans had been readying their giant A-4 rocket for production. Forty-six feet in length, it weighed over 24,000 pounds and could travel 230 miles - rising 60 miles over the earth to a blistering top speed of 3,375 miles per hour. Its secret was a rocket motor running on liquid nitrogen and alcohol. It was either radar controlled or self-guided by a gyroscope. Since it flew faster than the speed of sound (by many times), it could not be heard before it struck.
Another rocket in the works was the A-9, still bigger at 29,000 pounds and equipped with wings. It had a range of 3,000 miles. Manufactured at Peenemünde, it arced into the sky at an incredible 5,870 miles per hour.






Fritz Todt (September 4, 1891 – February 8, 1942)
Todt first caught Hitler's attention in 1932 by emphasizing the importance of road building for national economic recovery. Following the appointment of Hitler as Reichskanzler on January 30, 1933, Todt became (in July) Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen ("Inspector General for German Roadways") and was involved in the new construction company for the motorways (Reichsautobahnen). Every aspect of Autobahn construction -- its design, aesthetic ("to harmonize with the German landscape"), and model role in National Socialist labor relations -- was stamped with Todt's personality. He later became Leiter des Hauptamts für Technik in der Reichsleitung der NSDAP ("Director of the Head Office for Engineering in the Administration of the Reich of the NSDAP") and Generalbevollmächtigter für die Regelung der Bauwirtschaft ("General Commissioner for the Regulation of the Construction Industry"). As a special privilege, Todt was permitted to have considerable power and was not necessarily immediately answerable to any of the Reich ministries. He was also appointed to the rank of Generalmajor of the Luftwaffe after its official promulgation in March 1935.
In 1938, he founded the Organization Todt (OT), joining together government firms, private companies and the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service), for the construction of the "West Wall", later renamed the "Siegfried Line", for the defence of the Reich territory. With the outbreak of war, Todt's organization provided German troops an exemplary corps of engineers, filling out Germany's expanding imperium with new roads, bridges, aircraft fields, and fortifications.
On March 17, 1940, he was appointed Reichsminister für Bewaffnung und Munition ("Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions") and oversaw the work of Organisation Todt in the occupied west. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, he was appointed to manage the restoration of the infrastructure.
In 1941, he became increasingly distant from the commanders of the Wehrmacht and from Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, the Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (Commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe) in particular. He did remain close to Hitler at this time, yet, after an inspection tour of the Eastern Front, he complained to him that, without better equipment and supplies for the armed forces, it would be better to end the war with the USSR. Inevitably, Hitler rejected such an assessment of the situation and carried on the offensive against the Soviets regardless.
On February 8, 1942, while flying away from the conclusion of a meeting with Hitler at the Wolfsschanze ("Wolf's Lair") at Rastenburg, his aircraft exploded and crashed. He was succeeded as Reichsminister by Albert Speer, who had narrowly missed being on the same aircraft. He was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof, located in the Scharnhorst-Strasse in Berlin and became the first holder, albeit posthumously, of the Deutscher Orden ("German Order"). It was even suggested that Todt was the victim of an assassination plot, but this has never been confirmed.
Speer recounted that the power-hungry but lazy Hermann Göring raced to Hitler's headquarters upon word of Todt's death, hoping to claim the office of Reichsminister for Armaments. Hitler instead presented Göring with the fait accompli of Speer's appointment.
Speer tried to put the German economy on a war footing comparable to that of the Allied nations, but found himself incessantly hindered by party politics and lack of co-operation from the Nazi hierarchy. Nevertheless, by slowly centralizing almost all industry control and cutting through the dense bureaucracy, he succeeded in multiplying war production four times over the next two and a half years, and it reached its peak in 1944 during the height of the Allied strategic bombing campaign.

But most Americans know about German World War II rockets. A few even know that in addition to the car engine the Germans also invented the jet and perfected the superhighway or Autobahn (the three most important inventions binding this vast country. Virtually no one knows that in Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio, in the Library of Congress and in the Department of Commerce in Washington, a "mother lode" of 1,500 tons of German patents and research papers were being mined furiously after the war. One gloating Washington bureaucrat called it "the greatest single source of this type of material in the world, the first orderly exploitation of an entire country's brain power."
Fortunately, it was for the benefit of the United States, which, having thwarted Hitler's crusade against the Soviet Union, had to take up the same gauntlet against a communism spread worldwide by the late 1940s.
The genesis of the project to grab German secrets was in 1944, when, amazed by German technology in everything from rockets and jets to Tiger tanks, a Joint Intelligence Objectives committee was set up to confiscate German inventions the instant they were obtained, even before the surrender, for use against Japan.
Even before reaching the German border, fascinating discoveries began to be made, including one with which every American is familiar: audio tape. The 1946 Harper's article shows the head of the Technical Industrial Intelligence Branch, in quaint excitement:
"...[p]ulling some brown, papery-looking ribbon off a spool. It was a quarter-inch wide, with a dull side and a shiny side. "That's Magnetophone tape," he said. [2] "It's plastic, metallized on one side with ferrous oxide. In Germany, that supplanted phonograph recordings. A day's radio program can be magnetized on one reel. [Then] you can demagnetize it, wipe it off, and put on a new program at any time. No needle, no noise or record wear. An hour-long reel costs 50 cents."
A Short History of Recording and Its Effects Upon Music by Michael Chanan [3] points out that even in the late 1920s, before the "12 darkest years of German history," [4] one Fritz Pfleumer had developed a plastic recording tape. It was launched commercially by BASF [5] in 1934. The idea was based on the film strip, and its original application was for dictation in an office environment. In Britain, a project funded by the great radio genius Guglielmo Marconi was attempting the same thing. (On D-Day, the Americans played audio tapes of combat loudly at various locations to try to throw off the German defenders.)
However, the great leap forward came when one A. M. Poniatoff, president of a small California company called Ampex (a trade name still familiar to the older generation), then wearing a U.S. Army uniform, helped seize German-held Radio Luxembourg in late 1944. Instantly grasping the gold mine in profits and quality which the Magnetophone tape represented, Poniatoff had the 3M Company rush the new tape into American production, and it swept the Los Angeles entertainment industry.
Its major breakthrough came in 1947 when Bing Crosby first used it to record his network shows. The crooner not only preferred the Magnetophone sound but invested heavily in Ampex. Later, movie soundtracks went onto audio tape as well, improving mixing and dubbing efficiency as well, and avoiding the infuriating mishap where a successfully shot movie scene had to be retaken due to sound defects. Ampex later went on to introduce the first videotape recorders in 1956 (all now but a memory, sacrificed on the altar of free trade with Japan).
The list goes on and on: synthetic mica, which increased American cold steel production by 1,000 percent; "the secrets for 50,000 dyes, many of [which] are faster and better than ours, colors we were never able to make"; milk, butter and bread preservation without chemicals; and refrigeration and air-conditioning for German U-boats so efficient that their subs could cruise from the Atlantic to the Pacific, fight there for two months and return to Germany without having to take on fresh water for the crew. In addition, there was the pilot ejector seat, the infrared rifle scope, and even the negative-air ionizer, which many Americans use for the fresh feeling it puts in the air, with claims of reduced blood pressure, allergy and asthma symptoms.
In addition to official government looting of Germany (what GIs always called "liberating"), there was also the personal looting bonanza exemplified by Robert Maxwell, financier extraordinaire, and at one time the most hated man in Britain. The great contribution of this Orthodox Jewish citizen, born Jan Hoch in what was then Czechoslovakia, was to found a scientific publishing empire in Britain, called Pergamon Press, based entirely on German research he had looted with British intelligence connivance. Maxwell came to dominate the British tabloid press and raided his own employees' pension fund to the tune of 90 million pounds. He finally perished mysteriously and nakedly in a plunge from his yacht in 1991 just a week after standing up to the Israeli secret police, the Mossad - who may have set him up in business in the first place. Interestingly, his main co-conspirator in the United States, Robert Rubin, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is now secretary of the treasury [6].
When not gunning down a surrendering German mayor armed only with a white flag (as he boasted in a Der Spiegel interview) or bribing British officers to invent his heroic war record (for which war record Montgomery personally pinned a medal on him), Maxwell/Hoch [7] was in the British Zone of Berlin in 1946 with the full backing of British intelligence, coercing the vast research findings of the Springer science publishing house from Springer's widow for pence on the pound.
Ultimately, after Maxwell stripped $94 million from the pension funds of the 5,000 employees of the Mirror Group, his U.S. financiers at Goldman Sachs were stripped of an estimated $250 million to settle their claims - whereupon Maxwell's body was fished from the sea by an astonished Spaniard, to be buried with full honors in Israel and hopefully forgotten. Far from exemplifying that the Germans were nothing without Jewish scientific help, his life suggested that one Jew could become a billionaire exploiting German ideas.
Which raises the justifiable question of the atom bomb, which European Jews did produce for America and German scientists did not provide in time for Germany.
In his magisterial Verschwörung und Verrat um Hitler ("Conspiracy and Treason Against Hitler"), [8] Gen. Otto Ernst Remer details how anti-Hitler elements in the German scientific community maneuvered their own Werner Carl Heisenberg (b. 1901) into the key uranium-developing program at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (now succeeded by the Max Planck Institute of Physics). His clear mission, proudly proclaimed after World War II, [9] was to bureaucratically delay the German A-bomb project until the Allies had won the war. [10]
As just one example, munitions minister Albert Speer pleaded with Heisenberg and his fellow conspirator von Weizsäcker (brother of a later West German president) to name whatever money or materials they required after they claimed they had been held up by shortages. Von Weizsäcker's reply asking for "40,000 marks" caused Speer to stare in amazement, and to later confess that he had himself planned to propose 100 million marks for starters.
Not only did Heisenberg state explicitly to Der Spiegel, "We never tried to produce any atomic bombs and we are glad not to be responsible for having made any," he also admitted leaking the latest information on German uranium-splitting research to the half-Jewish Danish scientist Niels Bohr, who promptly informed his racial confreres in the U.S.
Thus, Germany did not lack the bomb because it lacked Jews, but rather because a handful of key scientists hostile to Hitler wormed their way into the German atomic program. Heisenberg had even admitted to a shocked Luftwaffe audience in 1942, after the devastating British 1,000-bomber annihilations of the port cities of Kiel and Lübeck, that Germany could produce a bomb with material "the size of a banana" (gesturing with his hands) to wipe out an entire enemy city, but then he caught himself and said this of course would be economically impossible. [11]
One of Gen. Remer's most interesting assertions is that just as the Americans were racing in the final days to convert German inventions for use against Japan, Hitler was sending a U-Boat packed with secrets to that same nation at Emperor Hirohito's explicit request.
In Verschwörung und Verrat um Hitler, Remer first notes the criticism that propaganda minister Josef Göbbels had received for his "stand-fast, the miracle weapons are coming" message after Stalingrad. Ironically, while many of these weapons came too late to save Germany from its fate of occupation, government decapitation and dismemberment, Remer reports that a member of U-234 sent him the following:
In the spring of 1945 I was ordered to report to serve on U-234. The sub was a specially redesigned former mine layer of the type XB with 1,760 tons, 4,200 horsepower and a 52-man crew. The commander was [a] Capt. Fehler.

On March 23, 1945 the boat steamed out of Kiel toward southern Norway unsubmerged. On April 15, 1945 it dove at South Christiansand with an immediate goal of proceeding between Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The destination was Japan.

Our orders stated that we were to bring air force Gen. Kessler as a Luftwaffe attaché with his staff and technicians to Tokyo. The [emperor] had asked us to help build up Japan's air defenses with the weapons developed in Germany.

Also on board to this end were, besides the general, two air force officers, a navy anti-aircraft specialist, an underwater demolitions specialist, a low-frequency specialist from the staff of Prof. Küpfmüller as well as two Messerschmitt engineers (specialists for the construction of Me-262s) [12] and two Japanese frigate captains. One of them was [a] Capt. Tomonaga, who had collaborated with us in his capacity as a specialist for one-man torpedoes [13] when we were developing our own small combat boats.

Our cargo consisted of 12 steel cylinders, of the sort used for storing in mines, containing comprehensive microfilm material on the latest developments in German offensive and defensive weaponry, especially in rocket and rocket defense [anti-rocket rockets; TBR ed.] warfare, as well as our research findings in the areas of high- and low-frequency technology, and finally a decisive contribution to the development of nuclear energy and atomic warfare.

After passing through the Straits of Iceland and 28 days submerged at an average depth of 260 feet, a message reached us in the night of the 12th to the 13th of May [14] during snorkel travel, in which Grand Admiral [Karl] Dönitz ordered us to capitulate. At this point in time we were located in the middle of the Atlantic, southeast of the banks of Newfoundland.

The order to our captain was couched in a very personal tone, telling him to hand the U-boat over without destroying its valuable cargo. [15] After 12 hours of debate and reflection, Capt. Fehler decided in harmony with Gen. Kessler and after informing the two Japanese frigate captains that he would be carrying out Dönitz's order and surface to surrender. The two Japanese officers took their own lives before the boat surfaced.

Eight hours later, U-234 was taken as a prize of war by the American destroyer Sutton and brought to the U.S. Navy base at Portland, Maine.

The American officers and officials who subsequently interrogated us were evidently horrified over the contents of our U-boat. They criticized us for supposedly having no idea how valuable our cargo was. At the end of July 1945 the officer in charge of the investigation team declared to me that the microfilm evidence and the testimony of our technicians had proved that in decisive technical developments, we were "100 years" ahead of the United States.
Which raises the nagging question of where all these continual "UFO" sightings come from, which began a few short years after World War II - and the capture of German high tech. The same government which gave us the Warren Commission cover-up, the public silent treatment of the Israeli assault on the USS Liberty, [16] and a blithe nonchalance about the social significance of the Black/White/Asian racial differences proven in the best-selling Harvard study The Bell Curve, seems anxious to keep the public in the dark about all such "unconfirmed" sightings. [17].
It is at least interesting that it was just two years after the seizure of "50 tons" [18] of German aerospace and physics papers that the first major UFO story, the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico incident, broke. After all, what has fascinated researchers ever since (particularly government skeptics monitoring Area 51 at Groom Lake, north of Las Vegas) is things the Germans were working on: spacecraft which use new, tough, but lightweight materials, make 180 degree turns at Mach 4 without spilling the drinks and generally defy the laws of gravity, perhaps by the use of gyroscopes within gyroscopes.
It is well known that the German SS sent expeditions to Tibet, reputedly a land of mind-over-matter marvels - in the late 1930s. [19] The purpose was both to delve into evidence of Indo-European origins in the Himalayas and secret techniques used there, possibly including anti-gravity levitation. What ties this together with Europe, ancient America and Egypt is the finding of blond mummies or Nordic remains in or near many sites of architectural miracles.
As anyone who has seen the excellent programs on Egypt on the cable History Channel, can testify, both the people living in ancient Egypt and the rulers of Macchu Picchu were doing virtually gravity-defying feats in constructing their pyramids and temples.
One can only speculate as to what secrets the Germans may have revived or discovered anew during the Third Reich, and which are now being utilized by the current government in Washington. It is well known from excavations of blond mummies in Egypt and in South America by Thor Heyerdahl as well as the statements of Mexican Emperor Montezuma (welcoming the Spanish "back" as their fabled "white gods") that some sort of ancient white scientists or advanced physicists were involved with the origins of these cultures. Even the Chinese admit the existence of red-haired, blue-eyed tribes constantly infiltrating into ancient China (of which pictorial evidence is presented in a recent National Geographic). The great teacher Confucius himself (roughly 551-479 B.C.), of the noble K'ung family, was said to be a man of unusually tall stature for a Chinese, and Genghiz Khan (A.D. 1167-1227), the Mongol conqueror, had red hair and green eyes.
But the historical blackout continues. The government appears to be willing to hint that "aliens" from outer space are behind all this high tech. God forbid it should turn out that ancient Indo-Europeans were doing these things thousands of years ago, or especially Germans researching without the benefit of the Jews in the Third Reich.
Notes:
[1] In Anton Zischka's Und war es ein Wunder ("And It Was a Miracle") we read: "If the surely not oversensitive Nazis had retired [with pension!] a total of 1,628 professors when they took power, the victims of the [Allied] anti-Nazis numbered no less than 4,289 professors and instructors, who received no pension whatsoever. As the newspaper Christ und Welt calculated in 1950, the Nazis dismissed 9.8 percent of their university teaching staff, the Allies 32.1 percent. Almost every third German professor lost his teaching or research post through the will of the victors. In Germany as a whole it was every second professor... In accordance with Control Commission Directive No. 24 of January 1, 1946, a total of 373,762 persons were found inappropriate for any public service or economic activity above that of manual laborer." Quoted in Remer, Otto Ernst, Verschwörung und Verrat um Hitler ("Conspiracy and Treason against Hitler"). See below (Note 9).
[2] Magnétophone is still the French word for an audiotape player.
[3] London, Verso Publishing, 1995.
[4] The mantra-like phrase every modern German schoolchild learns about the Hitler period.
[5] A German chemical giant, which nowadays has a large plant for adhesives and audiotape in North Carolina.
[6] See Maxwell articles in The Spotlight newspaper of Nov. 18, 1991; May 16, 1994; April 10 and May 1, 1995; and Feb. 3, 1997.
[7] And, briefly, Du Maurier, after a popular cigarette.
[8] Verschwörung und Verrat um Hitler, Urteil des Frontsoldaten ("Judgement by a front-line soldier"), Otto Ernst Remer, general, retired, Verlag K. W. Schütz, Preussisch Oldendorf, 1981. Remer was a highly decorated combat officer, a ramrod straight old-style Prussian. Bearer of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves (personally presented to him by Hitler), he instantly thwarted the July 20, 1944 officers' putsch against Hitler once he had heard Hitler's voice on the phone stating that he was alive and how to proceed. After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, he founded the highly popular Socialist German Reich Party (13 percent of the vote), which the Allies banned. He had to flee Germany in the early 1990s and died in Spanish political exile in 1996.
[9] Der Spiegel, Nov. 24, 1952.
[10] No more unbelievable than people calling themselves "Americans" parading the streets of Washington, D.C. during time of war in 1968, screaming: "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Viet Cong are gonna win!"
[11] Remer .
[12] The German 500-mph fighter-bomber.
[13] One intact example of such a manned torpedo may be seen at the Mystic Seaport museum in Connecticut.
[14] After the German surrender and the arrest of all its officials, including Hitler's successor, Grand Admiral von Dönitz
[15] Dönitz, who had been chosen as successor by Hitler because of his immaculate war record as well as his genuine National Socialist leanings, apparently felt that whatever his admiration for the fighting Japanese people, it would be better that the Americans get these secrets for use against the Soviets than for their ally (who had not notified Berlin before she attacked Pearl Harbor) to receive them in an obviously losing cause.
[16] U.S. Navy officers seem well aware of this outrage. The author spoke with a Navy captain (and, coincidentally, Mayflower descendant), who waved his hand and said, "Don't get me started."
[17] Which is the same as "unconfirmed sightings" of Vietnam-era American POWs, and the standard operating procedure when the Pentagon, CIA or White House has something to hide: "We will neither confirm nor deny..."
[18] Walker
[19] In fact, one expedition was trivialized into a movie, Seven Years in Tibet, about the real SS man Heinrich Harrer - played by Brad Pitt - and a young Dalai Lama.



Uncensored History of World War II

Theft of German Scientific Research Fueled Post-War Technology Boom
"TO THE VICTORS BELONG THE SPOILS" is an American saying (attributed to Andrew Jackson) and, regrettably, an occasional American practice as it was in the case of "the Great Patent Heist of 1946." It was made official policy in World War II by President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9604, also known as the "License to Steal," which permitted agents of the U.S. government to execute the greatest robbery in world history: the theft of German intellectual (scientific) property. What technology the Americans and Soviets stole has, in fact, fueled some of the greatest scientific advances of the modern era.
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By Daniel W. Michaels
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Now, almost three-quarters of a century after World War II, as the fear of arrest and punishment for denying the received version of the causes and consequences of World War II as established by the victorious Allies diminishes, more and more Germans are investigating Allied behavior before, during and after the war. Aside from the "holocaust," which remains immune from critical studies, almost any aspect of the war, however embarrassing to the victors (e.g., the strategic bombing campaign), may now be studied without fear of retribution.
In this new spirit, Friedrich George has published a study of Allied postwar policy regarding the disposition of German intellectual property, especially the modern and futuristic patents of Nazi Germany. George finds that the Allies, chiefly the Americans and the Soviets, simply confiscated all patents, designs, inventions etc they could lay their hands upon - military, industrial and commercial - regardless of international law or the Geneva Conference. Once in the United States or Soviet Russia the German inventions were "reinvented" and stamped "Made in the U.S.A." or "XXXX."
When World War II ended, America's elite determined that the United States would not lapse back into its prewar depressed state, but rather would revitalize its economy and have a first-class military and industrial establishment. To this end, Germany’s advanced military hardware; aeronautical and industrial secrets would simply be confiscated and transplanted in America.
Even before the war ended, Vannevar Bush, America's scientific advisor, recommended that the activities of the Combined Intelligence Operations Subcommittee (CIOS), a joint Anglo-American intelligence-gathering operation, be expanded to include the exploitation of German technical information of an industrial nature as well as of strictly military matters. In August 1945, President Harry Truman, acting under the adage that "might makes right" issued Executive Order 9604 ordering the release and distribution of confiscated German scientific and industrial information (technologies, inventions, methods, processes, equipment etc) to the U.S. civilian economy. It was literally a license to steal.
President Truman's Executive Order 9604 provided for:
The release and dissemination of certain scientific and industrial information heretofore or hereafter obtained from the enemy, including all information concerning scientific, industrial and technological processes, inventions, methods, devices, improvements and advances heretofore or hereafter obtained by any department or agency of this government in enemy countries regardless of its origin, or in liberated areas if such information is of enemy origin or has been acquired or appropriated by the enemy.
~Gimbel, John. Science, Technology, and Reparations. Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1990.
As the American military began to occupy Germany, they initially concentrated on locating and securing advanced German military hardware used in the war. In the summer of 1944 the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff created military-civilian teams, called the Joint Intelligence Objectives Committee (JIOC), which was to follow the invading armies and uncover Germany's military, scientific and industrial assets. "Field Intelligence Agencies, technical" units (FIAT units) scoured the countryside for German economic assets. While the U.S. military had no qualms about confiscating German military hardware, they hesitated and eventually refused to engage in the wholesale seizure of German commercial and industrial assets, considering such action not within their authority. More than a few honorable U.S. Army officers, led by Gen. Lucius D. Clay, interceded with civilian occupation policymakers on behalf of the Germans to stop the looting.
Concerning the legality of the U.S. confiscations of German property, William G. Downey, chief of the Army's International Law Branch in the Judge Advocate General's Office, quoting extensively from The Hague Convention rules on the seizure of private enemy property, wrote:
It is a generally recognized principle of the international law of war that enemy private property may not be seized unless it is susceptible of direct military use. An army of occupation can only take possession...of property belonging to the state. (Gimbel 172)
The theft of intellectual property is not new, but the extent and ruthlessness of what the "wannabe" superpowers did in Germany from 1945 to 1948 was unprecedented. The United States and the Soviet Union literally stole the entire extant store of German patents, designs, inventions and trademarks. Germans, who were not forthcoming in informing the U.S. Occupation Forces of the existence and location of such records could be imprisoned, punished and even threatened with death for "insufficient reporting." To ensure that the Allies would have an insurmountable head start in exploiting the patents, the Germans were even forbidden to use or refer to their own inventions after they were confiscated. The German Patent Office was closed by the Allies and not reopened for several years. When it did reopen, the first number assigned was 800,001, indicating that some 800,000 original patents had been looted by the Allies. As a result, in the immediate postwar years, with Germany prostrate and robbed of its intellectual property, America and Russia soon emerged as the two superpowers in a bipolar world.
Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the German Federal Republic, wrote in his Memoirs:
At the end of 1948 the director of the American office for technical services, Mr. John Green, gave the press a report on his activities, which were concerned with the exploitations of German patents and industrial secrets. What strikes one in this report is the fact that AMTORG [Moscow's foreign trade organization] was the keenest purchaser. During one month alone the Russians bought more than 2,000 Wehrmacht reports on secret German weapons, for which they paid $6,000. According to a statement made by an American expert, the patents formerly belonging to IG Farben have given the American chemical industry a lead of at least 10 years. The damage thus caused to the German economy is huge and cannot be assessed in figures. It is extraordinarily regrettable that the new German inventions cannot be protected either, because Germany is not a member of the Patent Union. Britain has declared that it will respect German inventions regardless of what the peace treaty may say. But America has refused to issue such a declaration. German inventors are therefore not in a position to exploit their own inventions. This puts a considerable brake on German economic development. (Adenauer 429)
Adenauer denied reports in the British zone of occupation press that he had characterized Allied measures regarding German patents as sheer robbery:
I had said nothing of the kind....I had mentioned the view of leading foreign politicians that the German patents were extremely valuable. My speech was intended to point out that German inventors still did not enjoy international protection of their rights and that this constituted a notable obstacle to German recovery. (147-51)
Years later, in 1953, the chancellor pressed President Dwight Eisenhower to resolve the question of the use of trademarks owned by German nationals before the war. Some progress had been made in restoring trademarks to their previous German owners, and Adenauer received assurances that no further German assets or trademarks would be confiscated or liquidated and that restitution would be "considered" at some later date. (That date has not yet arrived.)
The United States also promised to review the situation concerning German ships, with an eye to possibly returning them to German control.
Although Americans today find it hard to believe that this country was once a laggard nation in science and industrial innovations, it was, until the hostilities broke out in late 1941. America under President Franklin Roosevelt had failed to pull the country out of the doldrums of the depression, and while the economy, after having been put on a wartime basis, was unsurpassed in its volume of production, its products, including wartime hardware, were inferior to those of the German war machine. Mass production-quantity rather than quality-characterized American manufacturing.
Even during the war the United States was not particularly noted for major breakthroughs in pure science or innovative technologies. The National Science Foundation brought this deficit in American capabilities sharply to the attention of the government in a 1946 report indicating, among other factors, that up to that date the United States had been the home of only four Nobel Prize winners in chemistry as compared to 37 recipients in Europe, eight U.S. winners in Physics to 39 in Europe, and six in medicine, to 37 in Europe. Most of these prizes were awarded to Germans and Austrians.
While military analysts the world over now recognize the superiority of German World War II hardware, few, however, are aware that German scientists had done much of the basic scientific pioneer work in the development of many postwar industrial technologies and products for civilian use. In consumer goods and medical advances, Germans under National Socialism were enjoying color TV and color photography a decade before the American public could buy its first black-and-white sets. The Nazi government had modernized the road system in Germany in the 1930s with the Autobahn, and Volkswagen had begun to produce the 'Beetle' so that all citizens could afford to own an automobile. It was not until the 1950s, under President Eisenhower, that the United States undertook the construction of a modern highway system.
German scientists established a link between smoking and cancer in the 1930s, but fierce resistance of the American tobacco companies prevented the American people from having access to this knowledge until 20 years after its discovery. They studied the effects of positively and negatively ionized air on health conditions, developed performance-enhancing drugs, and introduced other innovative and therapeutic treatments that are common practice today everywhere. During the war Germans had also developed a synthetic blood plasma (capain), a blood liquid substitute (periston), and synthetic penicillin, 'substitute 3065.'
The revolutionary birth control pill, whose discovery was announced in the United States in 1951, also had its origins in investtigations conducted in the laboratories of Gottingen University, Germany, in the 1940s. Chemist Carl Dierassi, who emigrated from Vienna to America shortly before the war, worked with pharmacologists Gregori Pincus and John Rock to introduce 'Enovid' on the American market, protected by a U.S. patent, in the 1960s. (Georg, 157)
Germany, like Japan, was and remains one of the 'have-not' nations, small in size and wanting in natural resources. The development of synthetic (ersatz) products of all kinds was essential to German existence, especially in wartime. Necessity being the mother of invention, German chemists undertook to provide substitutes for Mother Nature's shortcomings. Most synthetics served well. Some, like ersatz coffee (Kaffee-Ersatz), fell short of general acceptance.
One of the largest hauls of classified information harvested by the Allies came from laboratories and plants of IG Farben, a syndicate with close American ties that held an almost complete monopoly on chemical production. Chemistry of course was the foundation for the creation of most synthetics. The enormous IG Farben Building in Frankfurt, which housed records of estimable value, was 'miraculously' spared during World War II bombing orgy, proving that better bombing accuracy was possible if the Allies had wished it. The vaults of the Farben Building contained secret industrial information on, among others, liquid and solid fuels, metallurgy, synthetic rubber, textiles, chemicals, plastics, drugs and dyes. Secret formulas were obtained for over 50,000 dyes, many faster and better than those in the democracies.
Several U.S. Army officers stationed in the Farben Building after the war commented that the value of the files and records confiscated would alone have been sufficient to finance the war.
In the digital world, for example, German prewar and wartime scientists had been at the cutting edge of important developments, from the quartz clock, semiconductors, silicon technology and transistors to the first computer. Among others, German researchers Herbert F. Matere and Heinrich Welker, working with Zeiss, Siemans and the Kaiser Willhelm Institute for Silicate Research, were the first to develop the process for the industrial production of integrated circuits and transistors.
The culmination of these advances in solid-state physics and digital instrumentation in Nazi Germany was the wartime development of a pioneer computer, the Z4. Engineers Konrad Zuse and Helmut Schreyer in Berlin developed these earliest computers. Zuse's laboratory and earlier models of his computer, dating from 1937, were destroyed in bombing raids during the Battle of Berlin, but in the immediate postwar era Zuse was able to rebuild a fully operational Z4 by 1949, several months before the debut of the U.S. Eniac. Zuse is also credited with having developed the first programmable computer language, 'Plankalkul.' America's Bill Gates met with Zuse in 1995 and now displays Zuse's picture in his office at Microsoft.
Of foremost importance to all industrial nations, and to Germany in particular for the war, was the need for a reliable source of energy to power the factories, heat the homes, and fuel the ships, planes and vehicles of the nations.
Germany possessed coal but not oil. German chemists met the challenge quickly and successfully through the development of both the Fischer-Topische and the hydrogenation methods of converting (liquefying) coal into oil and, from the oil, to make lubricants and gasoline. In the course of the war these plants were gradually being moved underground to protect them from bombing. After the war the Allies confiscated all patents and records on the design and operation of the hydrogenation and Fischer-Topische plants and forbade the Germans from using existing plants or developing new ones, making them dependent on imported oil. For example, 10% of Marshall Plan had to be used to buy American oil.
Germany is also said to have invented a distillation process for the separation of gasoline from oil by the use of audible frequency vibrations. Self-sufficiency in power generation is essential to the sovereignty and independence of all nations. So important is the power factor that the planned Berlin-Baghdad-Basra railroad is said to have been as decisive for the British declaration of war against Germany in World War I as the development of the Fischer-Topische and hydrogenation processes in Germany was for the British declaration of war in World War II. As long as Britain and France controlled the Near East oil fields, Germany would never be granted free access, nor would the Allies want to see Germany gain oil independence through its newly developed conversion processes.
In the matter of nuclear power, German scientists in Berlin were making feasibility studies of the possible uses of nuclear energy to propel ships and submarines as early as 1941. Moreover, the possibilities of employing nuclear reactors to power land vehicles were also being explored.
To list just a few of the many technological advances of consumer interest, German industry developed synthetic mica, synthetic sapphires, Diesel engines, plastics, rayon-weaving machines, the cold-extrusion process, UV milk pasteurization, fruit juice sterilization without heat, food preservation techniques, magnetic tape, infrared night vision aids, laser guidance and so on. The patents, test models, and prototypes of all of the above were simply taken and exploited by their new proprietors.
By the time the war ended, Germany had 138 types of guided missiles in various stages of development and production as well as every conceivable experimental and operational guidance and triggering systems (radar, radio, wire, continuous radio waves, acoustic, infrared, light beams, and magnetics) for its war effort. The 'rocket' that launched the United States into superpower realm was German. The Soviet Union also copied the German weaponry but largely ignored consumer products.
In May 1955 Paris Agreement, the Allies, aware of the improprieties involved in their seizure of German industrial secrets, made the German Federal Government agree to renounce all claims or objections to Allied actions during the occupation:
The [German] federal government shall in the future raise no objections against the measures which have been, or will be, carried out with regard to German external assets or other property, seized for the purpose of reparation or restitution, or as a result of the state of war, or on the basis of agreements concluded, or to be concluded by the Three Powers with any other Allied countries, neutral countries or former allies of Germany. (Georg 338)
It is clear from the above provision that the Allies, chiefly the United States, still maintain the right to monitor German industry by means of the 'Echelon' eavesdropping program and other intellignece aganecies. The fruits of this ongoing surveillance are sent, among other destinations, to U.S. and Israeli recipients. (Georg 345)
It is of course impossible to determine exactly how much the confiscation, sale, and the industrial exploitation of the German patents enriched the United States and Israel in dollars. Prof. John Gimbel, in his book Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, estimates the 'intellectual reparations' taken by the U.S. and the UK alone amounted to about $10 billion.
In 1952 the publisher Herbert Grabert ventured an estimate of $30 billion. Converted into 2008 dollars these estimates would amount to hundreds of billions. If the loot taken by the Soviet Union were also taken into account, the sum would likely approach $1 trillion. An infusion of this amount into the U.S. economy over a period of years easily explains U.S. postwar prosperity.
In conclusion, author Friedrich Georg warns that successive countries in history have for a time enjoyed a leading position in world power, only to see the baton pass on to competing nations, America too must guard its vanguard position. In order to ensure its status as the world's superpower today, the United States will have to maintain an innovative scientific, engineering and technological base. China, Georg believes, is currently in the best position to overtake the United States in that the Chinese have talent, the drive, the geography and most importantly, thanks to globalization, the wealth (in U.S. dollars) to buy whatever they require.
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DANIEL W. MICHAELS was for over 40 years a translator of Russian and German for the Department of Defense, the last 20 years of which he was with the Naval Maritime Intelligence Center. He is the author of various scientific reports and is a contributor of book reviews and articles to geographical and historical periodicals. Born in New York City, he now lives in Washington, D.C. area.


"Captured" German and Japanese Information and Know-How
Following the advancing Allied Troops into France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and, later, Japan, teams of military and industrial specialists came right on the heels of the combat units to collect documents and study German and Japanese military and industrial developments that had produced some of the major weapons used by the enemies especially towards the end of the war: the jet engine, the V-1 and V-2 rockets, high-speed aircraft, remotely guided mini-tanks to destroy combat tanks, one- and two-man kamikaze U-boats, and many more. Worse, there was talk of the existence of flying saucers, atomic bombs, chemical and biological ammunition, and other miracle weapons which Hitler or the Japanese were going to use during the end-phase of the fighting in order to wrest victory from the Allied Forces.
The more desperate the situation became for the Axis Powers, the weirder the schemes that came to light: there was talk, for example, that the Japanese were building mini-bombers which could be stored on U-boats and thus transported close to the Central American mainland. Re-assembled on board and launched from the boat, these bombers were to destroy in a suicide mission, the gates of the Panama Canal and thus interrupt the shipping of essential war materials and supplies from the factories of the eastern United States to the Pacific theater of war. The American and British teams of military and industrial specialists following the combat troops were charged to find out what was actually there and what could, reasonably, be expected to happen. This was, by no means, a safe and pleasant job. Most of the 'targets' had, more or less, been subjected to bombing or devastated during the fighting; the Germans were still counter-attacking; there were mines and unexploded ammunition everywhere; and the just 'liberated ' Germans were not always friendly or co-operating. Some of the intelligence men lost their lives or were wounded and all were living and working under conditions that were not better than those for the soldiers. But why the hurry, could this information gathering not have taken place later?
One reason why not was the lack of intelligence concerning the state of atomic bomb development in Germany. The Allies did not know that Hitler, not wanting, or not being able to recognize the revolutionary potential of atomic weapons, did not favor, and, therefore, support financially, the development of these bombs on the level that would have assured success. There was also talk later on that German physicists like Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn, and their staffs, who had been in the forefront of atomic research prior to the war, were hesitant to deliver the all-destructive power of the atom into the Führer's hands and kept stalling. Furthermore, some of the most brilliant minds had left Germany and Europe for the United States during Hitler's persecution of the Jews and were now working for the Allies. True or false: the West did not know what was really going on and how far the German research had advanced literally until the last days of the conflict when, with the capture of Heisenberg, they finally could breathe easier.
What was known to the Allies was that the German chemists had developed highly toxic and deadly gases and biological cultures, that these were already being used to kill Jews and other 'undesirables' by the thousands, and that there would be a good chance that Hitler would use these poisons at the end of the war to destroy his enemies and what was left of his own people. To secure and study these weapons and, possibly, find antidotes, was another reason for the rapid deployment of the intelligence troops.
Thirdly, it was expected that the war against Japan, especially following the Allied invasion of the Japanese homeland, would be a bitterly fought and long-lasting battle costing many casualties on both sides. Where there any weapons in the German arsenal that could be quickly adapted for use against the Japanese?
Finally, the development of German miracle weapons had to be based on advances in research and development by Germany's industry and research facilities from basic to advanced levels and the results of that research had to be made available to American and Allied companies for their exploitation and use, especially during the period of conversion from wartime to peacetime economy.
The Collectors
The teams collecting military and industrial information and documents were made up of small groups of military and/or industrial specialists, working independently. They were recruited from military or Government laboratories and from American and British companies and were experts in their fields. Knowing the state of development in their specialties in their own countries, they were able to judge whether German development was superior, inferior, or just useful. All teams reported to their own field agencies; their reports were generally classified "secret" until after the capitulation of Germany and of Japan respectively. There seems to have been little coordination or cooperation between the individual agencies and, to the dismay of German factory owners and what was left of their technical staffs, many of the targets were visited by several teams and more than once, and, what one team left behind, the others took. The most important agencies working in Germany and their 'fields of interest' were the following: (1)
OSS, the Office of Strategic Services - identified targets of strategic and industrial importance and provided this information to other agencies which then sent investigative teams.
EEIS, the Enemy Equipment Intelligence Service - actually located German and Japanese equipment, such as new aircraft, tanks, binoculars, ammunition, metalworking equipment, etc. for evaluation and to instruct Allied personnel in its use. Later, the staff was used to evaluate German industrial equipment in general.
ALSOS Mission - This group, composed of military and counter-intelligence specialists was charged with a specific mission: to determine the state of atomic bomb development in Germany.
FIAT, the Field Intelligence Agency, Technical - was established to investigate German industrial development during 1939 - 1945 primarily in the American Occupation Zone. Headquartered in Frankfurt, it was the 'collecting' arm of the Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee (TIIC).
CIOS, the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee - was made up of American and British specialists to examine German industrial targets. The reports issued by this group are the CIOS and JIOA (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency) document series.
TIIB, the Technical Industrial Intelligence Branch (later: TIIC, Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee) - was established as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but transferred to the Department of Commerce in January 1946. Its task was to look into every segment of the German industrial landscape and obtain any information that might be of interest to American companies. During 1946 TIIB sent over 400 investigators into Germany. Many of these industrial experts traveled at their company's expense, sworn in as temporary Government employees without compensation. TIIB arranged with the Army for their transportation and for their living and working quarters in Germany. In return, the investigators agreed that their findings would be fully reported in writing to TIIB and that these reports would be made public.
To make sure that individual investigators did not use information obtained from German companies for their own or their company's exclusive use, two men from competing companies were teamed up. Furthermore, the reports submitted were reviewed for completeness by TIIB staff and the American military government. Overall, TIIB staff selected from the 3.5 billion pages collected from the files of German industry about 3.5 million which were considered of interest to United States industry. The documents chosen were filmed in Germany, the rest were left there. In addition, TIIB brought more than 300,000 pounds of German equipment and product samples from Germany, in addition to the 200 tons of materials captured by the Army and Navy, which was also turned over to civilian agencies for study and testing after the military had completed its studies (2).
Navy Technical Mission, Europe (Japan) - original a portion of the ALSOS Mission, was assigned to investigate German (and Japanese) advances in synthetic fuels and lubricants of interest to the Navy. U.S. Naval Technical Oil Mission in Europe: Production of Synthetic Fuels by the Hydrogenation of Solid and Liquid Carbonaceous Materials (PB 27701).
TOM (Technical Oil Mission) - A non-military group sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Mines, was made up of American and British petroleum experts and charged with investigating the industrial production of synthetic fuels and lubricants from coal using the Fischer-Tropsch method. The Bureau and American industry actually built petroleum manufacturing plants according to German specifications after the war, but the glut of petroleum available then made the program uneconomical. In the 1970's, however, faced with a petroleum embargo, the Republic of South Africa developed the SASOL synthetic petroleum plant using the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Working under different economic constellations, it is still in operation today. U.S. Government Technical Oil Mission. Index. Microfilm. Reel.... (LC call number: Z6972.U6)
The Documents Research Center, A-2, United States Air Forces in Europe - was "organized for the purpose of collecting and processing all captured German air documents. The organization was moved to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in 1946 where the project is being continued by the Air Documents Division, Intelligence, T-2. While the Research Center was still in Europe it was estimated that between 1,000 and 1,500 tons of German air documents eventually would be collected. The final screened library, however, and the collection which is now at Wright Field consists of approximately 220 tons. These documents are in the process of being cataloged, indexed, abstracted, translated and analyzed." (3).
The Library of Congress was to have received a complete copy of the filmed material but only about one third of the total output was sent. The archival copy was turned over by the Air Force to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and can be consulted at its Garber Facility in Suitland, MD. The copy retained by the Library of Congress cannot be used in modern reader-printers which tear the microfilm copies into small segments. All books and journals from the same haul were turned over by the Air Force to the Library of Congress where they were examined and new items incorporated into the general collections. Duplicates were made available to other libraries or discarded, if not claimed. The reports are indexed in a multi-volume Desk Catalog of German and Japanese Air-Technical Documents (Z5063.A1U6). Some of the air documents were also made available to the Publication Board of the Department of Commerce, re-issued and made available to the public as PB documents.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey - studied the effectiveness of the Allied bombing effort on targets in Germany, as well as German-occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Library of Congress Foreign Mission - was sent to gather books and journals published in Germany (and the rest of Europe) and not available for purchase through normal channels once the war had been declared. Up to that point German literature could still be obtained either directly from the sources or by way of neutral countries (Sweden).
The Targets
Any company having in some form contributed to the German war effort (and who had not, no matter how large and small) or having research information or products that would be of interest to Allied manufacturers, was considered a 'target'. Much information on German industries had already been compiled and made available to the Allied air armies by the United States intelligence agencies. Further targets were research institutes, universities, military laboratories, testing ranges and supply depots, Government agencies like the Reichsforschungsrat (The National Research Council), even concentration camps (sites of medical research using humans as test objects), the Reichspatentamt (Patent Office), the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Force Ministry), the Wehrmachtwaffenamt (Army Weapons Agency), their subordinate departments, research/test facilities, etc.
It was not always easy to find the targets - many had been destroyed by bombing or during combat, their documents burned, looted, removed for or from safe storage; owners, managers, scientific personnel killed, drafted into the armed forces, dispersed, relocated; roads and rail lines impassible; the population frightened, uncooperative, hostile: 'After what you have done to us, why should we give you our family- company- and commercial secrets? They belong to us, we will need them to rebuild...' In other cases people cooperated willingly, often for the chance of getting food, cigarettes.
Sometimes several visits and some arm-twisting was needed to get the Germans to deliver documents, information, and sometimes it just took a good dose of Yankee ingenuity. Theodore von Karman, a world famous aeronautical scientist, who was a member of one of the teams looking for information on German experimental aircraft, describes his experiences at an aeronautical research facility near Braunschweig that had escaped Allied detection and bombing because it was so well camouflaged that nobody knew it existed. The team had gone through the trashed, chaotic laboratories, looking, but finding very little, when, suddenly, on a desk in a corner someone noticed a scale model of the swept-wing bomber, a type of aircraft that nobody had ever seen before. They reasoned that were there was a model, there must also be documentation, like wind tunnel, testing, and design data. But no matter where they looked and whom they interrogated, the records could not be located. Finally von Karman, who had been a student at nearby Göttingen University before the war, resorted to a ruse:
I had with me a sergeant assigned to Intelligence. Frank Tchitcherine was of Russian origin, and in fact had been related to the first minister of education in the Kerensky government of Russia. As we were walking to our automobile with the director, I said in English, which I knew the director understood:
'Listen, Tchitcherine, we are through here. I think now it is time to notify Russian Intelligence to take over'
Russian Intelligence was nowhere in the vicinity. But I knew that the Germans were terrified of the Russians and that this might stir them into action. I was right. The next day the director called in Tchitcherine and took him to a dry well. He looked inside. It was full of documents.
Among them were the papers describing the sweptback wing and providing considerable wind-tunnel data which showed clearly that the sweptback plane had superior speed properties near the speed of sound. These data were the first of its kind. Schairer quickly wrote to his Boeing associates to stop work on the Mach 1 transonic plane with the straight wing which they had designed, telling them of his find. He microfilmed the data and used them when he got back to Seattle to design the B-47, the first U.S. sweptback bomber....
In going through the papers, Ted Toller, one of my former assistants who was on a committee involved with these documents, came to me one day and said that he had found a very interesting report. The title, as translated by the English-speaking German sergeant, was 'The Resistance of Undernourished Bodies.' Troller wondered what this title was doing in a collection of aerodynamics material. So he looked up the author and found it was von Karman. It was a translation of my 1931 paper 'The Drag on Slender Bodies'.
The documents revealed that the Germans had conducted a variety of interesting research at Braunschweig. For instance, they had run studies of the effect of wind on human beings and shown that the human being can take velocities up to 550 miles an hour. They also had developed an emergency pressure suit fixed up with a cylinder of oxygen like those used in USAF life rafts. If a plane flying at 70,000 feet loses pressure, the pilot can jerk a ribbon and re-pressurize himself. All these items were valuable to the United States." (4)
The Loot
I am not sure that there was, in the end, an exact accounting of how many documents/pages were taken from Germany, or if that was at all possible. Some documents contained more than 1,000 pages, others, like patent applications, only one.
Von Karman, in the source already cited goes on to say that "some 3,000,000 documents, weighing 1,500 tons were sifted and microfilmed in Europe; eventually they formed the basis for the collections of ASTIA, the Armed Services Technical Information Agency, " now the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). The Annual Report of the Secretary of Commerce for 1946 (5) talks about 3,500,000 pages that TIIB selected. If one adds the documents brought to the United States and processed at Wright Field, and those deposited at the Library of Congress, then the number of pages becomes astronomical.
I remember that when I came to the Library in 1957, there were large green boxes, 'footlockers' 8 feet long, stored, to the very ceilings, in the hallways and vestibules of the 4th floor of the Adams Building, containing documents to be processes by the Air Information and Air Technology Divisions under contract to the Air Force. One day they were gone - "shipped back to Germany" and soon AID and ATD were abolished also. In addition to corporate papers, there were interviews with plant/laboratory personnel, photographs, blueprints, patents and patent applications (the Secretary of Commerce talks of thousands of applications obtained from the files of the giant I.G.Farben complex alone which had not even been filed with the Reichspatentamt because of staff shortages everywhere) and much more. From these mountains of materials the industrial teams prepared summary reports some up to 1,000 pages thick. To give an idea of the coverage it is interesting to look at just a small selection of the important new discoveries which they contained:
One of the best customers for German technical information were the American aircraft and airline industries. In addition to general studies of the German air transport industry (PB 17920, 19717), there are studies on 'Plastics in the Aircraft Industry' (PB 1104, 4351, 27000, 58373), 'Aircraft Hydraulic and Fuel Systems' (PB 16684), 'Magnetic Brakes for Propellers (PB 464, 4349), 'Helicopters' (PB 6339, 6340, 16712, 17544), 'De-icing of Windshields' (PB462, 23815, 23856, 31251, 40292, 58242); then there are numerous reports on rocket fuels (PB186, 392, 405, 4284, 23815, etc). In terms of military aircraft two reports are of interest: The Horton Tail-less Aircraft (PB 260) possibly a forerunner of the stealth bomber, and German High-Speed Airplanes and Design Development (CIOS XXXI-3).
In the area of construction the Germans were forced, because of the devastating success of Allied bombings, to put their most important factories underground. Immense tunnels running for miles under the Harz Mountains in Thuringia were built by slave labor from the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp at a horrendous cost in human lives to house whole synthetic fuel refineries as well as aircraft and rocket assembly lines. Obviously, such underground installations and their ventilation, heating and cooling, sanitation, etc. systems were of great interest to the Bureau of Mines and the mining industries, as well as the Defense Department, which was preparing abandoned mines as 'safe places' for high Government officials in case of future wars. (PB 25638, 25639, 27779).
Acetylene is one of the most versatile intermediates for the generation of synthetic rubbers, plastics (vinyl), and industrial alcohols, plus many other compounds. It is also highly explosive so that its generation, transport and use must be subject to very strict controls. German industry, depending greatly on acetylene, devoted much energy and research to making it safe and expanding its use. (PB 188, 189, 377, 485, 517, 969, 1017, 4287, 7745, 7747, 23750, 25560, 28556, 44943, 46966).
Germany has not been blessed with significant oil deposits; to fuel her war machine she depended on imports from the Soviet Union and Rumania. When these sources were lost, she had to rely on synthetic fuel derived from her rich coal reserves. The process, called the Fischer-Tropsch Process, uses water gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide derived from the hydrogenation of coal, coke, or lignite and extra hydrogen over catalysts at elevated pressures and temperature to generate straight-chain hydrocarbons and waxes which can be further processed to yield fuels, lubricants, facts, even some type of margarine. (PB 284, 288, 289, 373, 1279, 1291, 7745, 7917, 12624, 18911, 18926, 23750, 28883, 46390, 49196, 66130, 75817, 75845, 77706, 78242)
Plastics and synthetic fibers have always spawned successful industries in Germany. Here are just a few examples of many reports published in these areas: 'Plastic Plants' (PB 400, 403, 531, 979, 1069, 25642, 37784); 'Chemical Developments in the Synthetics Industry' (PB 1243); 'Soda Ash and Caustic Soda' (PB 7746, 7797, 27434, 40122); 'Dyestuff Intermediates' (PB 82, 60945, 67569, 77672, 78269, 78276)
Solid fuels: Germany always has had enormous supplies of coal in the Ruhr and, after the annexation of portions of Poland in 1939, also control over the Upper Silesia coal deposits. Improving the technologies of mining and processing coal was important for the war effort (PB 1827, 4322, 4323, 4345, 4461, 4462, 20579).
Sulfonamide: In wars past more soldiers died of infections of their wounds than in actual combat. With the beginning of the 20th century, great strides were made in the development of sanitary methods and anti-bacterial agents. German doctors, chemists and pharmacists had always been in the forefront of medical research. The development of sulfonamide was no exception (that it was tested on human guinea pigs in the concentration camps is another chapter). (PB 237, 248, 918, 77766, 80380 with 10 supplements)
One of the most dreaded diseases was malaria and research to find effective drugs was really universal. The German effort , except for the test methods, was significant (PB 237, 239, 246, 1101, 1718, 1859, 81613)
Some of the most cruel experiments were performed in the field of aviation medicine by the infamous SS-doctor Sigismund Rascher at Dachau Concentration Camp. Simulating conditions experienced by a pilot shot down over the North Atlantic, he subjected inmates to exposure to cold by immersing them in ice water to find out how long they could survive and possibly have a chance for being rescued (PB250). Another experiment involved pilots at high, oxygen-poor altitudes - when should they pull the cord to inflate the parachute and how long could they free-fall before losing consciousness? (same report).
Metallurgists in Germany were far ahead of their American counter-parts in the field of magnesium and magnesium alloy production and processing; the reports were much in demand by American companies (PB 204, 18930, 18948, 29663, 23748, 44675, 49828, 94315)
One curiosity is reported in the literature that simply begs to be repeated: Among all these high-technology, war-related products and efforts, there appears a lonely teddy bear and other stuffed toy animals manufactured by the Steiff Company, which was the target investigated by a British specialist on behalf of a British manufacturer.
Evaluating the Loot
The activities of FIAT and the 'acquisition' of German industrial know-how are best described in a unique book by John Gimbel: "Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany." It is 'must-reading' for anybody studying or interested in the years immediately following World War II in Europe. It is the only attempt, to my knowledge, of reporting the efforts of trying to put a price tag on what was taken. In summary, Gimbel refers to a meeting early in 1947 in Moscow of the Council of Foreign Ministers, established by the victorious nations to deal with problems arising from inter-zonal relations and the question of German reparations.
Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, "argued the case of his government's claim against Germany for 10 billion dollars in reparations, reportedly stating that Great Britain and the United States had already received considerable reparations from Germany in the form of patents and other technical know-how. 'Press reports say that these reparations amount to more than ten billion dollars' Molotov said" (6). (In true Soviet fashion, and true to the old Communist maxim that 'what is yours is mine and what is mine is none of your business' Molotov did not mention that the Soviet Union had already taken from her occupation zone literally everything that was not nailed down, and if it had been, they took that and the nails, too. For example, the Russians dismantled vast stretches of the rail system in East Germany, the locomotives, passenger- and freight cars, the rails, the ties upon which the rails rested, and then the gravel upon which the ties had been laid). "General Marshall", Gimbel continues, "the American Foreign Minister, in response stated: 'We have used United States scientists to obtain information on German science, including patents, all of which information is being published in pamphlets and made available to the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, Amtorg, the Soviet Purchasing Agency in the United States, has been so far the biggest single purchaser of these pamphlets. The pamphlets cost a nominal fee to cover printing and administrative expenses. No ten billion in reparations is involved." (7).
But once raised, the question of the value of the German industrial information obtained by Britain and the United States would not go away. Early estimates ranged from $10 million to $275 million. It was General Lucius Clay, the American High Commissioner in Germany, who kept on raising the question and prod the War-, Navy-, State-, and Commerce Departments to come up with a 'realistic' figure. General Clay was not against the official position of the United States that America should not pay the Germans for the industrial know-how taken; on the other hand he felt strongly that the value of this information should be counted towards the reparations that would be imposed by the victors on the Germans. Years of political maneuvering between the U.S. Government departments involved produced no results.
The Departments of the Army and the Navy did submit data; Commerce declined, saying that the true value could only be assessed five to ten years down the road when it became known what American industry had done with the information; State refused to comply outright saying "that such an evaluation would serve no practical purpose except 'to keep the American conscience clean'... The FIAT material should not be valued for reparation purposes. The discussants had essentially three reasons: First, given the hundreds of tons of documents and materials held by the Commerce Department, the task of sorting and evaluating separate items with the staff that could be assigned to it would be physically impossible. Second, the material was not only for the United States, and it would be doubtful that other countries would agree to charge their reparations accounts similarly. Third, reparations was an integral concern and properly the subject of an international agreement." (8)
John Gimbel tried to make his own evaluation of the know-how taken from Germany. Using statements made in public or in writing by U.S. Government officials and industrialists directly involved in evaluating and/or using the information contained in the German documents, as well as reports from the political and trade press, he arrived at a value of $ 5 billion for the U.S. take. By doubling this value to account for the British 'acquisitions' he arrived at - surprise! - the $10 billion mentioned by Mr. Molotov.
But this did not conclude the question of the value of the intellectual know-how derived from German industry. In late 1946 and early 1947 various German initiatives were started to evaluate the German losses. Up to this point the Germans had only been repaid for copying costs of the documents, obviously a ridiculously low sum. But the German efforts also failed as most companies, even those hardest hit, refused to cooperate for tax reasons. In other attempts the reported data could not be reduced to common denominators to yield meaningful results.
Only after the new West German Government had agreed to forego any tax investigations that might evolve from the reporting, did industry finally comply. A report, issued by the Notgemeinschaft für Reparationsgeschädigte Industrie (Emergency Union of Industries Damaged by Reparations) in February 1951 "estimated the total value of the patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property ('geistiges Gut') removed from Germany to be somewhere in the range of 10 to 30 billion Deutschmarks (DM) not Reichsmark, the currency used in Germany prior to its devaluation of 1949, or between $4.8 and $12 billion" (9). What was the actual value? If we consider that the Library of Congress still receives requests for copies of the German materials, more than 50 years after the War, primarily in the areas of dyestuffs, plastics, fuels, and, more recently, for the location of industries, test ranges for guns and ammunition, storage depots of chemical, biological, and explosive weapons (for the purpose of localizing and sanitizing toxic soils) then, maybe, the Commerce Department was right when it insisted that the value should be based on the usefulness and actual use by American industry over an extended period of time?
Other Foreign Documents
Obviously, the main interest in foreign information was concentrated on the German collection: its size, the immediacy of collecting and processing, the language (many American scientists and engineers still had studied German in college), the fact that German industry before the war had been a main competitor of many American companies, and that the Germans were renowned for the quality of their research. This also explains why Germany was investigated so thoroughly.
From the very beginning, the situation involving Japanese information was different: not many people could read Japanese and the systematic investigation of Japanese industries did not begin until much later, giving the Japanese industrialists a chance to sort out what they wanted to give and what not. Also, as the mountains of German documents, along with materials from U.S. and British sources started to pile up, the Japanese documents were somewhat neglected. In his Annual Report for 1947 the Secretary of Commerce stated:
In addition to data from Germany, and documents from American sources, the (Bibliographic and Reference) Division (of the Office of Technical Services) is beginning to receive materials directly from Japan. Some of it consists of up-to-date technological studies prepared by Japanese nationals on subjects of interest to American industry. Many wartime and pre-war Japanese publications have also been received during the past year from the Washington Document Center. This Center is the Washington processing office which was set up to handle materials gathered in Japan by the military forces. Although much material has already been received, a large part of it is now out of date and of little value. We have been assured, however, that valuable documents from this source will reach us during the coming year. (10)
The Secretary continues:
The Belgian Government has voluntarily contributed scientific reports to the Division. In addition, extremely important material has been received from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, South Africa, Italy, and France.... The excellent relations which OTS through this Division, has had with the British in the exchange of reports is noteworthy. At present the British Intelligence Objective Subcommittee, commonly known as BIOS, maintains a liaison office in Washington. Our work with this office might well be cited as a fine example of international cooperation. The British have generously provided large quantities of their printed reports and with single microfilm copies of any of their manuscript reports which were requested. They also provide a special reference service for this Office and for American business firms. We, on our part, provide a similar service for the British. (11)
What Happened to the Documents?
We must not forget that the collectors were dealing with mountains of material and that only a very small fraction was processed and filmed. Thus the question has remained ever since "What happened to the rest?" It is still being asked today, especially if a researcher is interested in, let's say, a particular camera made by the Leitz Company and he is looking for the user manual. In my search for the answers I have, over the decades, talked to many people some of whom had been in the collecting and processing effort. "You cannot imagine, unless you had been there, how many documents and single pages were scattered all over the floors, crammed into shelves, stacked from floor to ceiling, falling over, spilling, it was utter chaos," I was told. The filming was often equally wild: page after page the documents were pulled through the machines , with quantity rather than quality being the determining factor by untrained machine operators who did the best they could under the circumstances. Quality control was non-existent. The result was that some film rolls contain almost in their entirety, only blurred, useless images. Also, when specialists wrote reports, let's say on the 'German Optical Industry' the supporting documents were, unless the were deemed important enough to be registered individually, discarded; the same happened to translated documents.
Military and Nazi Party documents generally were brought to the United States, sorted, filmed, and eventually returned to German archives. Books and journals were, supposedly, turned over to the Library of Congress, but we are not sure that we actually received all that was designated for the Library. According to Richard Eells, Acting Chief of the Aeronautics Division, "the Library, by agreement with the Air Material Command, Wright Field, has become the depository for all purely historical and descriptive portions of this captured material. The preliminary winnowing of the shipment from Wright Field yielded 9,114 aeronautical books, periodicals, and ephemera. In addition, more than 18,000 items representing the literature of related fields were turned over to the Library for its general collection. Some of the confiscated libraries belonged to institutions that loomed large in the history of the Luftwaffe: e.g., Junkers, Focke-Wulf, the Deutsche Akademie der Luftfahrtforschung (German Academy for Aeronautical Research), the Deutsche Forschungsinstitut für Segelflug (German Research Institute for Gliding), the Flugfunkforschungsinstitut (Research Institute for Aeronautical Radio), and the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Ministry) itself." (12). During the past years I have inspected about two thirds of the Library's aeronautical collection but found but a dozen or so volumes having book plates ascribing them to the libraries of the institutes just mentioned. This certainly does not add up to the 12,000 books from the Junkers Aircraft Company Library alone that we supposedly received.
It is interesting to note that according to German newspaper reports (13) published after the war, the American officer in charge of the team collecting the Junkers Library was none other than Charles Lindbergh, who was no stranger to Hitler's Germany. Because of his friendship with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and General Udet (he was later accused of having been a Nazi sympathizer) many doors had opened to him in Nazi Germany and he had visited and inspected the aircraft manufactured by Junkers several times. We must also remember that the Allies had much respect for the German Luftwaffe and that one of the stipulations of the German capitulation was that she would never again build an air force. Therefore, all books and reports in German libraries that could be used to re-build the Luftwaffe, were to be removed from Germany. Now Dessau, where Junkers was located, was to be in the designated Russian Zone - why would the Americans leave a library of such importance to the Russians? So, what happened to these libraries?
Eells, in the article cited (14) also mentions another important aspect:
A check of the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie indicates that the Library of Congress has acquired many, if not all, of the commercial aeronautical imprints in Germany during the war years.
One of the strengths of the Library of Congress before and for some decades after the War was its aeronautical collection. Now, if we already had almost all of the books contained in the Junkers and the other German libraries, we would have made the rest either available to other interested American libraries, or, on demand, returned the volumes to German archives (the disappeared footlockers?). Since the Junkers Aircraft Company, located in the Russian Zone or the German Democratic Republic, did no longer exist after 1945, who would have received the returned material? The Russians?
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Bibliography
1. Library of Congress. Science & Technology Division. Note of Karl Green. n.d.
2. United States Department of Commerce. Report of the Secretary of Commerce, 34th 1946. Washington, DC : GPO, 1946: xxvi-xxvii
3. Eells, Richard. 'Aeronautical Science. German Documents.' Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 3 (4) Aug. 1946
4. Von Karman, Theodore. The Wind and Beyond. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. 1967
5. United States Department of Commerce. Report of the Secretary of Commerce, 34th, 1946. Washington, DC: GPO, 1946
6. Gimbel, John. Science, Technology, and Reparations. Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990
7. Ibid
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. United States Department of Commerce. Report of the Secretary of Commerce, 35th, 1947. Washington, DC: GPO, 1947
11. Ibid
12. Eels, Richard. 'Aeronautical Science'. Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 3(4) Aug. 1947
13a. "Junkers Bibliothek: Ein verschollenes Objekt der Begierde" Mitteldeutsche Zeitung Dessau, 17 June 1995
13b. "'Bernsteinzimmer der Technik' soll nach Dessau zurückkehren." Anhaltische Zerbster Nachrichten 24 March 1995
13c. "Fundgrube für Junkers Forschung und die Bibliothekssuche in Amerika" Der Alte Dessauer, 28 April 1995
14. Eells, Richard. Ibid, 1947