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Publisher: Lyle Stuart, 1981


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25 percent of the stock of Thyssen A.G. The remainder of the stock is diffused into Deutsche Bank in Fr& and Buenos Aires, which holds shares for many individuals on both continents, including those representing the Bormann group.

Countess Zichy resides permanently in West Germany. Her Hungarian husband had supervised the turning of thousands of ranchland acres into productive farm and cattle land, following their flight from Europe in 1940. These ranches in Argentina and Paraguay and the villa in Buenos Aires are occupied by her two sons and their families, who, it is said, "represent the old wealth of Buenos Aires."

Fritz would have liked that.

But if the heirs of the old German elite are moving away from industry, the opposite is the case with the hard-driving professionals who manage the destinies of the giant firms that continue to bring prestige and profit to the Federal Republic, who are the engineers of the German economic leadership.

I.G. Farben, the Third Reich's most substantial foreign income producer, was back in business 60 days h e r the war in Europe ended. But in 1947 the U.S. Military Government announced that I.G. would be dissolved into 47 smaller corporations. Then American and British foreign policy took a different turn: the cold war was on and both Washington and London wanted to halt any Farben breakup. By 1950 emphasis was on a strong West Germany and industrial recovery, and it was finally decided that the I.G. plants should be reorganized into three companies: BASF (Badische Anilin and Soda-Fabrik), Bayer (Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedrich Bayer & Co.), and Hoechst (Farbwerke vorm. Meister Lucius and Bruening). Four smaller concerns under the Farben mantle-Agfa, Cassella, Kalle, and Huels-were also in contention. Under pressure from Washington and London, and from the shareholders of the old Farben stockholders protective committee, who lobbied for their interests in Bonn, the Allied High Commission agreed to a plan of 159 I.G. plants' being formed into the Big Three (BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst). Agfa also went into the Bayer structure and Cassella and Huels went their way as independents. In October 1954, treaties were signed in Paris ending the occupation of West Germany. In 1955, when the Federal Republic of Germany became a sovereign government, the shareholders of the new companies held their first annual meeting. Most were former I.G. stockholders, and one of the first motions passed was to change the Allied bylaws, mandating changing from open stock ownership back to the secrecy of bearer shares. There was relief in Switzerland and in South America, where financial secrecy is a way of life; it is quite necessary to the continuation of the Bormann organization.

The Big Three are today the largest chemical companies in the world. Each is now larger than I.G. itself in its heyday, and the growth potential seems unlimited. The chairman of Bayer A.G. has set a goal of $1 billion in the U.S. market for Bayer A.G.'s subsidiary in America, Mobay Chemical Company. The Allied Liquidation Commission had separated the big banks from their branches. But when occupation ended the banks coalesced again and Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, and Dresdner Bank continue their leadership.

The German business blitzkrieg in the United States is due to the patient professionalism of German managers backed up by heavy spending on market research. William Watson, a U.S. acquisition man for German firms in America, observed, "In many cases there's a very seductive natural 'fit' where a German buyer can marry a U.S. firm's selling skills and strong market base with its own financial strength and often superior technology and wider product range."

Mr. Watson described the circumstances of one such bargaining session. The German firm of Boehringer Mannheim wanted five U.S. firms that were marketing in its U.S. drug-product area, all controlled by Bio-Dynamics. At one point the six motels surrounding the Bio-Dynamics head office near Indianapolis airport were each a headquarters for competitive teams angling for the prize, Bio-Dynamics. "Not only did the German team camp on the spot for the three-week siege, it was led by the president of Boehringer, Kurt Englehorn." Recalls Watson: "I never saw a more tenacious group. They beat out the others with thoroughness and staying power."

West German firms such as these are today generally model multinationals, having come a long way toward their goal of understanding people generally, and Americans in particular. Still, the new Farben image is best observed on the French- German border at Strasbourg. On any working day you can stand on the river frontier where a bridge straddles the Rhine – a traditional invasion route of three wars-and watch 10,000 Alsatians streaming across the border from France to their jobs in the German chemical plant of Badische Aniline and Soda- Fabrick, the giant electrical firms of Siemens and Bosche, and Dow Chemical. The Alsatians say working conditions and pay are better than in France.

According to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, West Germany is to become increasingly an "exporter of patents, process, technology, and blueprints." Companies like Volkswagen brought the Federal Republic through the sixties in good shape, but now nearly all German industrial authorities agree that the future belongs to manufacturers of sophisticated equipment like that turned out by such firms as Siemens. Siemens A.G. of Munich keeps 30,000 engineers and technicians busy at four research centers. The company registers 20,000 patents a year and markets 100,000 individual products in almost every sector of electrical engineering, accounting for $16 billion in worldwide sales annually. It continues strong in South America, and has current contracts ranging from the $1.1 billion addition to Argentina's Atucha nuclear power complex to a $41.5 million telecommunications installation in Paraguay for their good friend President Stroessner. They expect sales in the United States to average $500 million annually, but, above all, the United States offers Siemens a hunting ground for the small electronics companies that it has been buying up, such as the Microwave Semiconductor Corporation in New Jersey, or Aerotron, Inc., a North Carolina manufacturer of radio and telephone equipment.

The Federal Republic has become Russia's biggest trading partner. In 1977 the two countries exchanged about $5 billion worth of goods, as U.S.-Soviet trade dropped 28 percent to about $1.75 billion. The West Germans are currently building a gigantic multi-million-dollar steel plant and refining complex at Kursk, site of the greatest tank battle in history, waged by the Panzer divisions of the Wehrmacht and Soviet armored divisions in 1943. The Germans have also gained contracts from Russia by paying for the use of licensed patent processes owned by American firms. The firm of A.E.G.-Telefunken, by using licenses from General Electric, won a $732 million contract for gas turbine pumps for the "Friendshipn gas pipeline from western Siberia to the West German border in 1976. The 25-year trade pact signed by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union in 1978 was hailed as a new breakthrough. But the Germans were not so sanguine. Otto Wolff von Amerongen, head of West Germany's industry and trade association, discounted the importance of the agreement:

"It is not a historic accord. It gives German industrialists the chance to plan better and the possibility to accelerate exchanges."

He meant that each future industrial contract would be carefully scrutinized by the Germans. If previous loans made to the Russians are not in the correct repayment stream, there will be no substitution of sheep and plum jelly for cash in return for German machinery and steel pipes.

The intensity and drive of German businessmen has also produced a feeling of rejection among the young of West Germany, who can't quite figure out why so much energy is being expended on making money. This attitude in turn puzzles their parents, who feel the affluent young have been pampered and do not appreciate the monumental struggle of the past thirty or so years to build a thriving nation out of rubble.

The older Germans also wonder why these young people, student activists and even terrorist sympathizers, should be dissatisfied. Dr. Michael Haltzel, an American who has worked in West Berlin for several years, questioned whether a nation could in the long run sustain itself with a philosophy so prosaic as "enrich yourself."

The Germans of the present decade are handling their relations with the United States public and the Congress with the greatest of skill. Even BASF of Frankfurt has received American awards for imaginative work in improving relations between its American plants and the neighboring communities. By the 1970s the West Germans had concluded that influencing U.S. public opinion is better accomplished with a skillful touch than with a meat cleaver, which had characterized their efforts during the two world wars. An example of such skill was the staged news event of June 5,1972, when Willy Brandt announced at Harvard University that the Federal Republic of Germany would donate 150 million marks ($47 million) to establish a foundation in honor of the Marshal1 Plan--a statesmanlike approach to the recovery of former enemies, and to the recovery generally of Western Europe. Brandt stated that the money would arrive in equal installments for the next fifteen years, for the establishment and operation in the United States of an independent American-run educational foundation specializing in solutions to European problems, to be known as the "German Marshall Fund of the United States-" Memorial to the Marshal1 Plan." The overriding function of this German George C. Marshal1 Research Foundation is public relations, to cosmeticize the German industrialists and bankers whose corporations had worked so successfully for the Third Reich. In October 1978 the Marshall Foundation was utilized as a platform for Dr. Hermann J. Abs, now honorary president of Deutsche Bank A.G., as he addressed a meeting of businessmen and bankers and members of the Foreign Policy Association in New York City on the "Problems and Prospects of American-German Economic Cooperation." This luncheon meeting was chaired by his old friend, John J. McCloy, Wall Street banker and lawyer, who had worked closely with Dr. Abs when McCloy served as U.S. High Commissioner for Germany during those postwar reconstruction years. At that time, Hermann Abs, as chief executive of Deutsche Bank, was also directing the spending of America's Marshall Plan money in West Germany as the chairman of the Reconstruction Loan Corporation of the Federal Republic of Germany.

With them on the dais were Henry H. Fowler, Wall Street investment banker and former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; Henry Cabot Lodge, former U.S. ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, George C. McGhee, another former American ambassador to West Germany, also a trustee of the Marshall Foundation and a member of various private and government advisory groups. These, along with the others on the dais and in the audience, represent firms and banks that are among the most prestigious in the United States and throughout the world; all benefited from the rebirth and rebounding prosperity of the new Federal Republic of Germany. Knowingly or not, these figures and their corporations are indebted to the man who was not there, the financial and administrative genius who set the foundation for the postwar recovery of West Germany, Martin Bormann.

This stroking of American public opinion by German interests, as by those of Japan, is calculated to open further the American market. The United States remains the richest and the most profitable market on the face of the earth, and these businessmen and bankers know that they either buy their way in or negotiate their way in. They know that if they are going to succeed as world companies they must have a generous slice of the U.S. market, and today this can be accomplished only through ties, treaties, and agreements, no longer entirely through retained earnings and bank lines of credit.

A pair of living representatives of separate branches of the Thyssen family learned such facts of corporate life at an early age. Count Federico Zichy-Thyssen acquired his knowledge from grandfather Fritz Thyssen; his cousin Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza acquired similar corporate wisdom from his father, old Fritz's brother, Heinrich Thyssen. The latter became Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and took up residence in Lugano, Switzerland, gaining Swiss citizenship. As Count Zichy represents the largest shareholder group in Thyssen A.G. from his home in Buenos Aires, the young baron directs his interest from his Villa Favorita in Lugano.

One such holding in the United States is Indian Head, Inc., with American corporate headquarters at 1200 Avenue of the Americas, New York City. Thyssen Inc. has its U.S. offices farther down this avenue at number 1114, in the W.R. Grace & Co. building. Indian Head is a wide-ranging manufacturing conglomerate, with 42 plants in the United States and 10,400 employees. It enjoys annual net sales of close to $604 million. For an industrial corporation of such size it has a remarkably low profile. It distributes no annual report-'We are a privately held corporation." Like Thyssen Inc., in the United States, it has no background ownership file with the SEC because it has never had to go public. When Thyssen bought Budd Manufacturing for S275 million, it was in cash, and therefore there was no requirement for corporate disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Still, good will is cherished, and German industrialists and bankers continue to strive to project a friendly German image in the United States. One noteworthy announcement, made from Washington, D.C., in March 1979 was that 57 priceless Old Master paintings from the collection of Baron Thyssen- Bornemisza would be taken on a tour of the United States in 1979 and 1980. This collection of great masterworks is said to be-except for the Royal Collection of the queen of England the greatest private art collection now in existence. This public traveling exhibit constituted a major achievement as a public relations ploy. Ever cautious, however, no German firm underwrote the tour; Indian Head was kept out of the picture. Instead, a major U.S. corporation was chosen to underwrite the masterworks tour. United Technologies of Hartford, Connecticut (152,000 employees, 200 plants, and a worldwide marketing operation in power, flight systems, industrial products and services), agreed to underwrite the cost of the venture as a favor to its German friend in Lugano, Switzerland. The project was initiated from Lugano; the baron, after consulting with his corporate image advisors, agreed to United Technologies rather than Indian Head with its hidden shareholders. The foundation that made all arrangements was another privately endowed, nonprofit organization, International Exhibition Foundation. It made the approach to United Technologies and also brought aboard the prestigious Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.

When the baron came to Washington for the official press preview of the tour he arrived, trim and bouncy, and at fifty-eight years of age, fit, fluent in French, Italian, English, and German. He expressed delight with American cooperation. A speaker at the Washington press ceremonies was Hubert Faure, president and chief executive of United Technologies Otis Group and a director of UT. He spoke warmly of his long-time friendship with Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.

It was a job well done. Old August Thyssen, Senior, who had founded the family fortune, would have given good marks to his descendant for perspicacity in a country where good will and image mean so much.

Following the two world wars, the Germans have always launched drives for the return of their "vested enemy assets." After World War I, German industrialists began an organized campaign.

One example was Textile Mills Securities Corporation, an American holding company engaged in trading in securities as agent for foreign companies. The German group contracted with Textile Mills to "represent them in the United States with the object of presenting their cause to Congress," and to obtain legislation for the return of their assets from the Alien Property Custodian. The German assets in this situation involved $60 million. The fee promised for the return of their properties was 10 percent, or $6 million. The retainer contract was conditioned upon the ability of Textile Mills to get the legislation pushed through before the adjournment of the 70th Congress.

The first step taken by Textile Mills was to employ the Ivy Lee public relations firm to generate propaganda involving "the sanctity of private property." The Ivy Lee firm went to work. Its expertise in remolding public opinion was unquestioned, and among its clients was John D. Rockefeller I. The firm prepared speeches favorable to the German cause for delivery by prominent American public figures, and flooded U.S. newspapers with comment and stories urging the return of seized German assets. It was a smooth campaign directed equally at the influentials of Washington and New York and at grass-roots America. Meanwhile, Textile Mills hired two Washington-smart lawyers, Warren F. Martin, former special assistant to the attorney general, and J. Reuben Clark, former solicitor in the State Department. These men advised on the preparation of two supportive brochures: Status of Enemy Property: Interpretations of Treaties and Constitutions; and American Policy Relative to Alien Enemy Property. Textile Mills employed F.W. Mondell, attorney and former representative in Congress, to make proposals to congressmen to promote speedy passage of the wanted legislation; he appeared before congressional committees, flanked by Ivy Lee men and other specialists. This aggressive approach, along with wining and dining and bribery, eventually tripped up Textile Mills. The outcome was a sordid tax case, which turned up in law books under the title, Commissioner Internal Revenue v. Textile Mills Securities Corporation, with the latter losing, its appeal denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Another noted case was that of the German Corporation, Metallbank, seeking the return of $6.5 million held by the Alien Property Custodian. This time the Germans went straight to the heart of a decision; they arranged an attempt to bribe the attorney general of the United States, Harry M. Daugherty, along with Thomas W. Miller, then Alien Property Custodian. It worked, and in September of 1921 Custodian Miller took two checks drawn on the U.S. Treasury in the sum of $6,453,- 979.97 to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York City, returning these assets to the Germans of Metallbank. Later, a German representing Metallbank made delivery to an individual representing the attorney general and the alien property custodian of $391,000 in U.S. Liberty Bonds. Word got out, and brought about the criminal indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, on May 7,1926, of Daugherty and Miller. The custodian was sentenced to 18 months in Atlanta prison; the case against the attorney general ended in a hung jury.

There were other cases, but those that succeeded for the Germans were situations in which the German owners of companies in the United States changed the names or juggled the stock and started new companies with assets of the previous firms.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, West German industrialists and bankers in the Third Reich conducted campaigns resembling those of the 1920s for the return of German assets. Some properties were sold off by the U.S. attorney general to the highest private bidder, among them General Aniline, an Interhandel I.G. Farben holding company mentioned earlier, while others found their way back to fid German ownership, in one fiscal fashion or another, In a few instances, American individuals became touched with corruption that reached even into the U.S. Congress. A distinguished U.S. senator was investigated and rebuked for his impropriety of conduct by a Senate committee of his peers, the beginning of the end for Senator Thomas T. Dodd. He had had a close and peculiar relationship with Julius Klein, who had been retained by German interests to polish up their image in the United States. Julius Klein & Associates a Chicago-based public relations firm, was handsomely paid, for Ruhr industrialists calculated that having a Jew fronting for them in the United States would be good business.

During June and July of 1966 Klein occupied the attention of a Senate Committee on Ethics, which was looking into the foreign agent activities of Mr. Klein. He had been lobbyist, political public relations counsel, and foreign agent for the Society for German-American Cooperation, an umbrella for such firms as Mannesman A.G. of Dusseldorf, Rheinmetall of Dusseldorf, Flick A.G. of Dusseldorf, Daimler-Benz of Stuttgart, Der Spiegel magazine of West Germany, the State of Hesse in Frankfurt, and Bayer Aspirin and Pharmaceuticals. When Chairman Fulbright opened hearings in the Senate on May 14,1963, Julius Klein was hesitant in identifying his German principals:
THE CHAIRMAN: On April 6, 1960, you filed the first registration for a committee representing German industrialists and civic leaders, is that correct?

JULIUS KLEIN: Yes, Mr. Chairman. The committee doesn't like to have their name in newspapers or registered and so on and so forth, therefore, they call it a group. Every time when I came to Germany, three or four times a year, they had a group together, about 150 or 200, that I addressed. They agreed that they would permit me to file the name of the board, which I did. But the Frankfurter Bank was the principal, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRMAN: Was the bank employing you or was the bank merely the conduit for payment?

JULIUS KLEIN: No, the bank was the agent for this group, Mr. Chairman. As a matter of fact, the head of the bank was the chairman of the group, and he was the toastmaster at every dinner that I appeared at, at Frankfurt.

THE CHAIRMAN: It doesn't help me yet as to who your principal is. Will you please try to clarify in my mind and the committee record as to whom you represent?

JULIUS KLEIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, I represent a society in Germany for the purpose of promoting good relations between the United States and Germany. These are my principles and to the best of my knowledge I translated into English the name of that society (Foerderkreis fur Deutsch-Amerikanische Zusammenarbeit, the Society for the Promotion of German-American Cooperation). That society does not alone promote the good will between Germany and the United States but with 211 Latin American countries, so I am only a little part of the activities for their group.

THE CHAIRMAN: he law is quite clear that you should identify your principals. You don't question that, do you? Now to state that you represent a good will society or friendship society without stating any of the people-.

JULIUS KLEIN: I have the list here.

THE CHAIRMAN: State who the members of the society were.

JULNS KLEIN: The General Secretary is a distinguished counsel-.

THE CHAIRMAN: Were these the officers in 1960 when you filed? Do they control the society?

JULIUS KLEIN: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: Who are they? Put their names on record.

JULNS KLEIN: Dr. Gerhard Hempel, former mayor of Weimar, now the General Secretary of the group-.

THE CHAIRMAN: Is he the man with whom you negotiated the contract?

JULIUS KLEIN: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: Did you file his name when you negotiated, when you filed in 1960?

JULIUS KLEIN: No, in 1960 I negotiated with Dr. Janssen, the president of the Frankfurter Bank, and that is the way I registered.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why didn't you file the names so we could identify your principals? This is a major point I would like to make. I just wondered why you didn't do this? You identified Mr. Hempel. Was there anyone else?

JULIUS KLEIN: Yes, sir.

THE CHAIRMAN: Who are they?

JULIUS KLEIN: Dr. Walter Leiske, former mayor of Frankfurt.

THE CHAIRMAN: What is he now?

JULIUS KLEIN: He is a distinguished consultant on economics, he is an economist.

THE CHAIRMAN: Consultant to whom?

JULIUS KLEIN: To industries in Germany.

THE CHAIRMAN: Who else?

JULIUS KLEIN: Mr. Udo Boeszoermany, banker from Stuttgart, and Dr. Paul Schroeder, another banker from Stuttgart. They constitute the executive committee for the board of directors.

THE CHAIRMAN: How do they procure their funds?

JULIUS KLEIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, that should be addressed to the group. All I am interested in is to get paid. Where they get the money from and how is their business. THE CHAIRMAN: you are not interested in who pays you?

JULIUS -KLEIN: I don't know where the money comes from, as long as it doesn't come from Nazis or Communists.

THE CHAIRMAN: If you don't know, how do you know it does not come from Communists or Nazis? Can you give the committee any ideas on what basis they paid you? Do they pay you any specific amount or must you accept whatever they choose to send you?

JULIUS KLEIN: Oh, no, Mr. Chairman. I have an arrangement which was originally made with the Frankfurter Bank when they were acting for this group, that I would get between $125,000 and $150,000 a year.

THE CHAIRMAN: It is this committee's business as to who your client is, and I am not satisfied that you have disclosed your principal.


The interrogation of Julius Klein before the Senate committee continued, still without full disclosure of the key principals of his society client; although it developed that Dr. Paul Krebs, a director of Deutsche Bank, had also paid Klein between $75,000 and $100,000 a year-"I've forgotten the amount, Mr. Chairman"--on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Foreign Investments. Early on, long before his appearance before the Fulbright committee, Klein had been effective, and word was passed to other German firms that Daimler-Benz A.G. had signed a contract with Klein under the terms of which he was "to supply Daimler-Benz with situation reports on political, economic, technical, personnel, or general and other conditions that might be of interest to the business development of D-B A.G. in the United States of America."

Another area of German foreign agent activity was revealed when Klein testified that prior to his German society, government, and industrial accounts, he had represented for one year the Republic of Panama for $40,000; this was followed by a contract with an organization that Klein described as being "formed by Lord Shawcross of England and Mr. Hermann Abs of Germany to bring about a Magna Carta for the protection of foreign investments of World War II." Lord Shawcross, a distinguished barrister and financier in the City of London and a board member of many international firms, had also been chief prosecutor for the United Kingdom before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Here he also renewed his prewar, wartime, and postwar relations with Hermann Josef Abs, then and now doyen chief of Deutsche Bank and a director of Daimler-Benz and Siemens.

The full scope of Julius Klein's political lobbying on behalf of his foreign clients did not surface until two other Senate committees held hearings. One was the Subcommittee of the Committee on the judiciary of the U.S. Senate in the 85th Congress, and the other consisted of hearings before the Select Committee on Standards and Conduct of the U.S. Senate, in 1966, relating to Senator Thomas J. Dodd and his relationship with Julius Klein.

At the select committee hearings, Senator George Smathers of Florida made this statement: "It is my understanding that Dr. Hermann J. Abs, former director of I.G. Farben and a prominent financial figure during the Hitler regime, is the common denominator of this group seeking return of vested enemy properties of World War II."

Senator Smathers also pointed out that the foreign agents' registration statement for this project was signed by "the Washington law firm of Ginsburg, Leventhal, & Brown, the Washington law firm of Boykin & De Francis, and the public relations firm of Julius Klein & Associates." Those who signed for "The Society for the Promotion of the Protection of Foreign Investments" were Dr. Paul Krebs, a Deutsche Bank director, and Hermann J. Abs, president of the board of directors of the society.

These hearings were being widely reported in German newspapers and on television and radio, and Julius Klein suffered a falling away of his German clients discomforted by the unwelcome publicity. He turned to his friends in the Senate for help; his friends included Senator Dodd, the late Senators Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen, Senator Jacob Javits, the late Senator Kenneth Keating, and Senator Mundt. Klein virtually demanded of Senator Dodd that he make a special trip to Bonn and speak with Chancellor Adenauer and others to persuade them that he, Klein, was highly regarded by senators on both sides of the aisle, and that his Germans should not fear to continue doing business with him.

So Senator Dodd traveled to Germany on behalf of Julius Klein; who had contributed so much money to his campaigns and to his personal life style. His meeting in Bonn with Chancellor Adenauer was arranged by Dr. Ludger Westrick, state secretary in the Office of the Federal Chancellor, likewise a director of the Society for German-American Cooperation. On his return to Washington Senator Dodd sent a fulsome letter of praise, written by Klein, to Ludger Westrick, who had been promoted to minister. One phrase therein, "I know of your splendid record," was not without unintended irony. For Westrick had another type of record, which had been concealed but which was known to the OSS. He was a classified Vehrwirtschaftsfuehrer," a leader associated with notorious Nazi enterprises, and he had also been a district economic advisor to Reichsleiter Martin Bormann.

The Senate committee found Senator Dodd's relationship with Julius Klein indiscreet, one that went beyond the proper role of a United States senator. But because of an inability to identify and question Klein's German clients, they declined to pass a formal motion of censure on Dodd's relationship with him. However, as the Klein association was only one of many indiscretions of Senator Dodd that the committee had under investigation, this Senate committee on ethics later censored Dodd for diverting to his use more than $100,000 in campaign funds.

The importance of the Klein affair, hardly earth-shaking in retrospect, is the clear picture it presented to the American public as to how press agents and lobbyists for foreign interests work themselves into the mainstream of United States political power and contort legislative processes to the gain of their clients. Today there are 647 registered and active Americans so occupied, and this figure does not include the many thousands of foreign nationals residing in the United States and spending all their time promoting their own national interests; Koreagate is but one example.

While not really illegal, it was Julius Klein's boldness of manner in suborning an elected member of the United States Senate to his own ends that projected him onto the front pages and frightened off his West German clients, who preferred, as always, to hide their movements, and to act with circumspection and secrecy. One of the first to leave the Klein client listing was Friedrich Flick of Düsseldorf, the tycoon who had also been an ardent contributor to Himmler's Third Reich club known as "Friends of the Reichsfbehrer-SS." The characteristic secrecy surrounding the actions of German industrialists and bankers during the final nine months of the war, when Bormann's flight capital program held their complete attention, was also carried over into the postwar years when they began pulling back the skeins of economic wealth and power that stretched out to neutral nations of the world and to formerly occupied lands.

There was a suggestion of this in France. Flora Lewis, writing from Paris in the

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