On Dec. 11, 1939 (nine weeks after the Hitler attack on Poland), the representative of International General Electric cabled from Berlin to GE official Dr. Zay Jeffries: "Our friends at Osram Co. [a German lighting company linked to GE] informed me yesterday that Krupp would be interested in capitalizing the royalties now being received from Carboloy ... In this connection, Dr. Louis (a Krupp official) has asked for an appointment with me in Zurich where we shall both be next week. They are quite anxious that the Krupp name be kept out of correspondence, particularly telegrams that might reach improper hands and therefore I shall refer to them in the future either as the European licensor under Carboloy contract or simply as Dr. Louis..."

"The `improper hands' could be either the United States government or the governments of Europe which had been attacked by Hitler," reported the UE NEWS in 1948. "GE agreed to protect the Nazis.

"In 1940, with the American defense moves in full swing, GE was still reporting to the Nazi representatives, now stationed in Zurich, Switzerland, how much tungsten carbide was being used in the United States. GE paid royalties to the Nazis on every pound used here. That was money for the Hitler war chest."

In other words, Hitler was getting 12 pounds of tungsten carbide at the price the U.S. government was getting one pound. For every pound of the material sold in the U.S., Hitler through Krupp was getting royalties with which he bought more munitions.

In 1940, with Europe at war, Krupp arranged to have its royalties from GE collected by a Swiss go-between.

Wall Street and the Nazi Inner Circle

The author presents a study of the functioning of Dutch industry, exemplified by the case of Philips, under German occupation during the Second World War. It is shown that economic collaboration with German economic institutions had its forerunners in peacetime arrangements, especially in patent pools with German enterprises and in cartels. The importance of patent pools as a vehicle for internationalization and their relative immunity from conflicts between nation-states is underlined.

When German authors argue that up to 1943 the international economy was functioning'as if there was no war', then this is another way of saying that the international economy was an autonomous supersystem, for which no rules were effective other than the normal rules of economic behaviour under capitalism. But at the national level the exigencies of a totalitarian state do not allow much functional autonomy. Thus, one may conclude that whenever a state is labelled totalitarian, normal economic behaviour is, by definition, 'collaboration'.

Justice delayed: IBM's collaboration with Nazi Germany