act as an unseen, noncombatant provocateur who covertly promote and finance weapons and warfare" (EDITOR'S NOTE An excellent modern example of this activity has been documented in the World War II financing of Nazis by (Prescott Bush, Director of Union Banking Corp) the patriarch of President George Bush and his son, President George W. Bush On October 20, 1942, the US. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City that were being conducted by Prescott Bush, the father of former president George Herbert Walker Bush. Harriman Bank was the main Wall Street connection for several German companies and the varied US. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen had been an early financial backer of the Nazi party until 1938, but by 1939 had fled Germany and was bitterly denouncing Hitler. He was later jailed by the Nazis for his opposition to the regime. Business transactions with Germany were not illegal when Hitler declared war on the United States on December, but, six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Trading With the Enemy Act after it had been made public that US. companies were doing business with the declared enemy of the United States. On October 20, 1942, the US. government ordered the seizure of German banking operations in New York City. Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing Bush's property under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The order 271
cited only the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Bush was a director and held one share, which had connections with a Dutch bank owned by Thyssen.