Bush family enterprise--and follow its course into one of history's darkest projects.
The firm's first global lever was its successful arrangement to get into Germany by dominating that
country's shipping. Averell Harriman announced in 1920 that he would re-start Germany's
Hamburg- Amerika Line, after many months of scheming and arm-twisting. Hamburg-Amerika's
commercial steamships had been confiscated by the United States at the end of the First World War.
These ships had then become the property of the Harriman enterprise, by some arrangements withthe U.S. authorities that were never made public.
The deal was breathtaking; it would create the world's largest private shipping line. Hamburg-
Amerika Line regained its confiscated vessels, for a heavy price. The Harriman enterprise took "the
right to participate in 50 percent of all business originated in Hamburg" ; and for the next twentyyears (1920-1940), the Harriman enterprise had "complete control of all activities of the Hamburg (^)
line in the United States." @s1@s
Harriman became co-owner of Hamburg-Amerika. The Harriman-Walker firm gained a tight hold
on its management, with the not-so-subtle backing of the post-World War I occupation of Germanyby the armies of England and America.
Just after Harriman's public statement, the St. Louis press celebrated Bert Walker's role in
assembling the money to consummate the deal:
"Ex-St. Louisan Forms Giant Ship Merger"
"G. H. Walker is Moving Power Behind Harriman-Morton Shipping Combine...."
The story celebrated a "merger of two big financial houses in New York, which will placepractically unlimited capital at the disposal of the new American-German shipping combine...." (^)
@s1@s
Bert Walker had arranged a "marriage" of J.P. Morgan credit and Harriman family inherited wealth.
W.A. Harriman & Co., of which Walker was president and founder, was merging with the Morton
& Co. private bank--and Walker was "[p]rominent in the affairs of Morton & Co.," which was
interlocked with the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Co.
The Hamburg-Amerika takeover created an effective instrument for the manipulation and fatalsubversion of Germany. One of the great "merchants of death," Samuel Pryor, was in it from the (^)
beginning. Pryor, then chairman of the executive committee of Remington Arms, helped arrange the
deal and served with Walker on the board of Harriman's shipping front organization, the American
Ship and Commerce Co.
Walker and Harriman took the next giant step in 1922, setting up their European headquarters office
in Berlin. With the aid of the Hamburg-based Warburg bank, W.A. Harriman & Co. began
spreading an investment net over German industry and raw materials.
From the Berlin base, Walker and Harriman then plunged into deals with the new dictatorship of theSoviet Union. They led a select group of Wall Street and British Empire speculators who re-started
the Russian oil industry, which had been devastated by the Bolshevik Revolution. They contracted
to mine Soviet manganese, an element essential to modern steelmaking. These concessions were
arranged directly with Leon Trotsky, then with Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet
dictatorship's secret intelligence service (K.G.B), whose huge statue was finally pulled down by