Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler

“The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities.... Not only was an influential sector of American business aware of the nature of Nazism, but for its own purposes aided Nazism wherever possible (and profitable)―with full knowledge that the probable outcome would be war involving Europe and the United States.”

Penetrating a cloak of falsehood, deception, and duplicity, Professor Sutton reveals one of the most remarkable and under-reported facts of World War II―that key Wall Street banks and American businesses supported Hitler’s rise to power by financing and trading with Nazi Germany. Carefully tracing this closely guarded secret through original documents and eyewitness accounts, Sutton comes to the unsavory conclusion that the catastrophe of World War II was extremely profitable for a select group of financial insiders. He presents a thoroughly documented account of the role played by J.P. Morgan, T.W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric, Standard Oil, and the National City, Chase, and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and scores of others in helping to prepare the bloodiest, most destructive war in history.

This classic study, first published in 1976 and the third volume of a trilogy, is reproduced here in its original form. The other volumes in this trilogy are Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution and Wall Street and FDR.

Antony C. Sutton (1925–2002) was born in London and educated at the universities of London, Gottingen and California. He was a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford, California, from 1968 to 1973, and later an Economics Professor at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of 25 books, including the major three-volume study Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development.