VERY Gravity's Rainbow.

[Mark Kohut]

Beyond an official trip to buy stuff, no I can"t. I think it must vary
widely as to exactly what one can be.

On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 9:51 PM, jesse gooch <jlguuch at gmail.com> wrote:

> Can you define a purchasing mission for me? I think I get the idea, nazis
> sent off to acquire goods and $, but can’t seem to find examples elsewhere.
>
> On May 29, 2017, at 9:46 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From The Paris Review interview with George Steiner, 1994.
>
>
> STEINER
> Then the war comes and my father is asked by the French prime minister to
> go with a mission to negotiate with the Germans for the purchase of Grumman
> fighter planes. A totally amazing story happened. Everybody has forgotten
> that New York was a *neutral* city in 1940. It was full of Nazi
> purchasing missions, bank missions, engineers. My father was at lunch in
> honor of the Trade Purchasing Commission at the Wall Street Club. At his
> table were representatives of the American treasury, the banks and the
> French delegation. The waiter brings my father a folded sheet of paper
> saying that a gentleman at another table has asked that I bring this to
> you. My father whirls around and sees a Nazi purchasing mission, with the
> swastikas in their lapels. Perfectly legitimate: they too were buying
> equipment and arranging oil loans with the Chase Bank and many others.
> Father recognizes a man who had been one of his closest friends in
> business, and with whom he has had no contact whatever since 1933 when
> Hitler took over. So my father ostentatiously tears up the note, the piece
> of paper, and drops it on the floor. He goes to the john; the man is
> waiting there, grabs my father and says, “You better listen to me whether
> you like it or not. I can give you no details, I don't know any. We're
> coming into France very soon.” (This is in 1940.) “Get your family out at
> any price.”
> Now, this was one of the heads of the most important electrical concerns
> in Europe, Siemens. The “final solution” meeting had not yet taken place.
> But in Poland the massacres were already on, and the heads of Siemens knew
> something. They didn't know the details, because you were shot immediately
> if you were on leave and talked about it; but it was filtering through the
> high command, through diplomats, and this man, thank God, believed it, and
> my father believed him.
> My father got in touch with the prime minister and asked him if his family
> could join him for a while since the negotiations were going to be longer
> than he had thought. The prime minister said, “Yes, of course, let them
> join you.” That's what saved us. We came out with the last American boats.
> This story will be of considerable interest to historians, because it
> means that *early* in 1940 — the Germans came through in May, whereas
> this was in January — an informed senior German knew something.
>
>
>
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