In 1936 the US Ambassador in Berlin, William Dodd, wrote to President Roosevelt warning of a pro-Nazi clique of US industrialists ‘hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government.’ We look at the notorious Liberty League and the dinner in New York’s Astoria to celebrate the fall of Paris to the Nazis. We showcase the businessmen who believed they were above democracy and could achieve world peace (under fascism) through world trade.

#86 'Hell-bent to supplant our democratic government' - Ep 5 Trading with the Nazis

A perfect storm created the conditions for the Nazi’s march to war. The naïve belief that you could kill Nazism with kindness (aka trade agreements from which bankers and businessmen personally hoped to profit) was held simultaneously by the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and the second in command at the British Foreign Office, Orme Sargent. Their opponents in government argued that tough action was necessary to contain Germany ‘even at a cost’ to those who had invested.  They were consistently undermined.

#87 Kill Nazism with kindness? - Ep 6 Trading with the Nazis

Horrified by the implications of aiding German rearmament, a few British and American companies made serious attempts to get out of Germany in the 1930s. Particularly after Kristallnacht, 10 November 1938, when Nazi thugs attacked Jewish businesses. But the British Establishment saw Hitler as ‘a man who could be relied upon’. The Bank of England argued as late as March 1939, four days after Hitler had marched into Prague, that the British couldn’t just pull out of Germany, without bringing down the whole London banking sector.

#88 'It haunts me' - Ep 7 Trading with the Nazis

In 1935 the Etonians in the British Cabinet and Foreign Office rejected all calls from the USSR to unite with France and Eastern Europe against the rise of the Third Reich. They were far too terrified of Communism. Instead, Britain agreed a treaty allowing the Germans to expand their navy. When supporters of the elected left-wing government in Spain faced annihilation by Franco’s fascists in 1936-7 the Tory Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, openly welcomed the carnage in Spain.  It would, he declared, make the British public understand that Nazi Germany would be ‘an ally of ours and of all order-loving folk.’

#89 Britain's Nazi Allies - Ep 8 Trading with the Nazis

True history storytelling at the History Café. Join BBC Historian Jon Rosebank & HBO, BBC & C4 script and series editor Penelope Middelboe as we give history a new take. Drop in to the History Café weekly on Wednesdays to give old stories a refreshing new brew. 75+ ever-green stand-alone episodes and building...

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