He never actually said this but things that are close to it. Making up shit to create a sound bite meme is not a good trend.
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Ahhh, Smedley Butler - the man who would be president aka Fascist Dictator after the coup (The Business Plot) hoping to oust FDR
muckrock.com/news/archives/2…
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Swiss banks—especially the Swiss National Bank—served as a major financial conduit for Nazi Germany during World War II by converting large quantities of gold into Swiss francs that Germany then used to buy essential war materials from other neutrals. uek.ch
Switzerland handled roughly 77–79% of all Reichsbank gold shipments sent abroad. The SNB itself acquired about 1.2 billion Swiss francs worth of that gold (out of 1.6–1.7 billion delivered to Switzerland). Commercial banks handled a smaller share, especially after 1941. uek.ch
Much of the gold was looted. It included reserves seized from the central banks of occupied countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria, plus a smaller but documented quantity of “Melmer gold” melted from personal items (jewelry, dental gold) taken from Holocaust victims. Swiss officials received Allied warnings about the gold’s origins yet continued purchases into April 1945. fcit.usf.edu
Germany needed the Swiss francs because many suppliers (Portugal for tungsten, Spain, Romania) would not accept Reichsmarks or raw gold. The francs therefore functioned as hard currency that helped sustain Germany’s import of strategic materials. The Swiss government also extended large clearing credits that supported Swiss exports to the Reich. uek.ch
After the war Switzerland paid 250 million francs under the 1946 Washington Accord. In the 1990s the Volcker and Bergier commissions examined dormant accounts and gold dealings; the two largest banks later paid $1.25 billion in a 1998 settlement with Holocaust survivors and heirs. More recent reviews of Credit Suisse archives have uncovered additional previously undisclosed Nazi-linked accounts.swissinfo.ch
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@grok When Smedley Butler called out the elites for trying to overthrow the United States government, did any of them get tried for treason or otherwise imprisoned?
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Pre-war and early-war commercial dealings with Germany, operations of foreign branches in occupied Europe, and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS):
US side:
Chase National Bank (predecessor of JPMorgan Chase) participated in the Rückwanderer Marks program from 1936 to 1941. It sold discounted German marks—drawn largely from blocked accounts of Jews who had fled Germany—to German-Americans planning to return, generating more than $20 million in foreign exchange for the Reich and roughly $500,000 in commissions for Chase. FBI documents later confirmed the scheme. After the German occupation of France, Chase’s Paris branch remained open, handled Reichsbank and German Embassy accounts, preemptively blocked Jewish customers’ assets, and saw deposits roughly double with German-linked funds. New York headquarters was informed but did not intervene. Similar patterns occurred at J.P. Morgan’s French operations. In the late 1990s Chase reached a settlement with Jewish organizations and submitted to an independent review of its wartime French activity. en.wikipedia.org
The Union Banking Corporation in New York, whose directors included Prescott Bush (father of George H. W. Bush) partners from Brown Brothers Harriman, served as a vehicle for the Thyssen family’s U.S. interests. Fritz Thyssen had provided early financial support to the Nazi Party. U.S. authorities seized UBC assets in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act; they were later returned. en.wikipedia.org
On the British side, the Bank of England authorized the March 1939 transfer of 23.1 tonnes of Czechoslovak gold held in a BIS account at Threadneedle Street to a Reichsbank account after the German occupation of Prague. Governor Montagu Norman approved the move on banking-procedure grounds. A second, larger transfer of Czech gold was blocked by the Treasury. Barclays’ Paris branch volunteered the names of Jewish staff to German administrators, accepted a deposit of funds taken from prisoners at the Drancy transit camp, and helped arrange credit for a quarry expansion intended to increase output for the German war effort. Pre-war British commercial banks also extended loans to German borrowers under standstill arrangements; at the outbreak of war those outstanding credits totaled about £34 million. smh.com.au
The BIS (Bank of International Settlements), owned by central banks including the Bank of England, transferred the Czech gold, accepted 3.7 tonnes of looted Belgian and Dutch gold from the Reichsbank during the war, and continued to receive interest payments from Germany that were used to pay dividends to its shareholders. Reichsbank vice-president Emil Puhl described the BIS as Germany’s “only real foreign branch.” After the war the BIS restituted a portion of the looted gold.bis.org
These transactions occurred in a period when the United States remained formally neutral until December 1941 and when international payments still flowed through established correspondent networks and the BIS. Direct wartime lending by British or American banks to the German government after hostilities began was illegal and limited; most documented activity involved occupied-territory branches, gold transfers, or pre-war credits. Post-war investigations and 1990s–2000s settlements addressed frozen Jewish accounts and some looted assets, but prosecutions of the banks themselves were rare.
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* Major General Smedley Butler
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedle…
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