GRGR(5) Katje and the Nazis

[Doug Millison]

At 1:39 PM -0400 7/10/99, MalignD at aol.com wrote a fine post:
[snip]
>One other note:  the idea that historians were more-or-less clueless about
>the dirty hands of American corporations until the appearance of GR in 1973
>is false.  These facts came to light immediately after the war when the
>allies had access to IG Farben's files, as Millison knows.  The book The
>Sovereign State of ITT, also published in 1973 and not even a scholarly work,
>talks about Sosthenes Behn's and his company's trading with the Germans
>throught the war.  It was no great secret.

Before the straw man gets up and dances away, please note that my claim in
this thread is not that historians were clueless, of course Pynchon had
sources for his info, and as MalignD mentions American corporate and
governmental complicity was not unknown. It wasn't widely known, however,
certainly not the way the heroic version of our participation in the War
was known. I paid attention in all my history classes through high school
and college (through 1971), and while I got a good dose of the stirring
role the U.S. played in the war, plus the horrors of the Holocaust, it
wasn't until I bumped into GR that I learned there was a darker story to be
told. (I came late to the details of the political critique of the U.S.
that were circulating in the Movement.)

Paul's point about Casablanca is insightful. But, despite all the greed
that is portrayed in that movie, I'm not aware that the film says anything
about U.S. corporations supplying both sides in the conflict and thus
prolonging WWII and its attendant suffering.

-Doug



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