TRIUMPHS, TROUBLES SHAPE GENERATIONS
PRESCOTT BUSH PAVED MODERATE PATH FOR
SON AND GRANDSON; WOUNDED BY FRIEND'S BETRAYAL,
HE PUT HIGH PRICE ON LOYALTY
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff
Date: 04/23/2001 Page: A1 Section: National/Foreign
AN AMERICAN DYNASTY Last of two parts "Prescott Bush was surely aghast at a sensational article the New York Herald Tribune splashed on its front page in July 1942. "Hitler's Angel Has 3 Million in US Bank,"read the headline above a story reporting that Adolf Hitler's financier had stowed the fortune in Union Banking Corp., possibly to be held for "Nazi bigwigs."
Bush knew all about the New York bank: He was one of its seven directors. If the Nazi tie became known, it would be a potential "embarrassment,"Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman worried, explaining to government regulators that their position was merely an unpaid courtesy for a client. The situation grew more serious when the government seized Union's assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the sort of action that could have ruined Bush's political dreams.
As it turned out, his involvement wasn't pursued by the press or political opponents during his Senate campaigns a decade later. But the episode may well have been one of the catalysts for a dramatic change in his life. Just as the Union Banking story broke, Bush volunteered to be chairman of United Service Organizations, putting himself on the national stage for the first time. He traveled the country raising millions of dollars to help boost the morale of US troops during World War II, enhancing his stature in a way that helped him get elected US senator. A son and grandson would become presidents."
"The Bush family fortune came from the Third Reich."-John Loftus, former US Justice Dept. Nazi War Crimes investigator and President of the Florida Holocaust Museum quoted in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune 11/11/2000
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