Brotherhood of Death / Order of Skull and Bones Established at Yale University by William Russell and Alphonso Taft

As summed up by John Loftus, former U.S. Department of Justice Nazi War Crimes prosecutor, and the President of the Florida Holocaust Museum: “Thyssen (and the Nazi Party) obtained” his “early financing from Brown Brothers Harriman, and its affiliate, the Union Banking Corporation. Union Bank, in turn, was the Bush family’s holding company for a number of other entities, including the Holland American Trading Company. The Bush’s Union Bank bought the same corporate stock that the Thyssens were selling as part of their Nazi money laundering.”

These Nazi-front companies, “Brown Brothers, Harriman” and “Union Banking Corporation,” were controlled almost entirely by men who belonged to the American chapter of “Skull and Bones” (32). Prescott Bush and associates, and Standard Oil, also provided loans, executive expertise, and petroleum-related products to IG Farben (12). IG Farben used that expertise to develop poison gas and petroleum to drive the Nazi war machine, and to run its slave labor and death-camps, the most notorious of which was Auschwitz where 83,000 people worked as slaves.

It is estimated that in the concentration camps alone, Himmler’s SS, worked to death and killed over 10 million men and women (6). A favored method of killing was using a special gas developed by IG Farben.

As detailed in chapter 2, Prescott Bush and Harriman were also in business with several other leading Nazis, such as Friedrich Flick who later became Hitler’s minister of the Interior, as well as IG. Farben, the company that developed the poison gas to kill Russians, gypsies, and Jews. Like Harriman and Bush, Flick was a member of The Order (6). The Flick-Harriman partnership was managed by Prescott Bush (see chapter 2).

According to a U.S. government brief presented in 1946 at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, industrialist Friedrich Flick, was “a leading financial contributor to the Nazi Party from 1932 on and a member of the Circle of Friends of Himmler who contributed large sums to the Nazi SS.”

The “Circle of Friends” is also known as the “Friends of the Reichsfuhrer SS.” The Hamburg-Amerika line, which was directed by Prescott Bush, was also counted among the Friends of the Reichsfuhrer SS (6)—also known as “The Order” and the “Brotherhood of Death.”

Frick joined this most secretive and powerful of societies in 1932. By contrast, Prescott Bush and the Harriman brothers (W.A. and E.R) joined the American chapter of The Order, in 1917, 1913, and 1917, respectively, long before Hitler had taken the first steps on his long road to power. They were all part of the same brotherhood, however. Indeed, be it the Thule Society, the SS, or the American version of “The Order,” all sprouted from the same German roots.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH

The evil, diabolic symbolism of Skull and Bones is designed to stir feelings of terror and to warn of death which is why it appears on bottles of poison and has been the symbol of choice for pirates and death squads. It is precisely because it is designed to induce terror that the symbol of the death head became the talisman worn on the black uniforms of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi elite: The Order—the dreaded SS, the Brotherhood of Death.

The Bonesman of Yale shared not just the symbolism of the Skull and Bones with the SS Nazi elite, but practiced many of the same exact initiation rituals and recruited their elite members from the same strata of society.

Like the Bonesmen of Yale, the Nazi SS recruited its members from the upper echelons of society, i.e. the blue bloods, bankers, and aristocrats. As detailed by Heinz Hohns (6), “the first arrivals were from the aristocracy. Even before the Nazi seizure of power certain great names had been added to the SS list” including Grand Dukes, Counts, and Princes. However, “in spring 1933 came a further infusion of blue blood. Many of the senior SS posts were occupied by the nobility… and the ruling class elite. The primary requirements in the SS, were money and officer material, and they could come only from one source—the old-established ruling class elite—the nobility, the world of commerce and the financiers… German’s captains of industry.”

There were, however, different ranks within the SS. Those who were to belong to the highest ranks underwent an initiation ceremony similar to that of the Order of Skull and Bones at Yale. As detailed in Heinz Hohn’s, The Order of the Death’s Head (6), initiates into the SS underwent an occult-like quasi-religious midnight ceremony involving oath-taking, question and answer confessions, and prayer-like sessions, all of which were designed to impress upon the initiate that he was able to become a “knight” and a member of a secret brotherhood.

The ceremony took place at midnight, in a castle, beneath the dining hall where there lay “a stone crypt” and “the realm of the dead” (6). “A flight of steps in the middle of the crypt led down into a well-like cavity; in the centre of the cavity were twelve stone pedestals.” Bones and relics, including the skull and skeleton of noble men and kings were also kept within the “holy of holies” including the bones of “King Heinrich.”

Initiates would thus commune with the spirits of the dead, who might appear and even speak. The initiate into the SS, by undergoing this spiritual journey, would also be reborn, as a knight, and a member of the secret order (6).

Likewise, we are informed that initiates into Yale’s ‘The Order’, were required to undergo an array of “exotic and occult” “bonding rituals” including a quasi-religious midnight ceremony which involved question and answer confessions that took place while the initiate lay in a coffin (17,29).

The ceremony took place in castle, at midnight, in “the tomb.” As explained by Ron Rosenbaum (29) while lying in the “coffin” the initiates goes “off on a symbolic journey through the underworld to rebirth, which takes place in Room Number 322. There, the Order clothes the newborn knight in its own special garments, implying that, henceforth, he will tailor himself to the Order’s mission” (p. 89, 148).

The Castle walls of Himmler’s SS headquarters, were heavily decorated with Nazi symbols and regalia.

Likewise, based on several independent reports by those who visited the Skull and Bones’ Yale Castle—what Bones initiates call “the Tomb”—some of the walls and rooms are covered with Nazi symbols and regalia, including swastikas, and “SS macho Nazi iconography.” One visitor described a room with “a little Nazi shrine inside” (17,18).

In yet another room of the Order of Skull and Bones, one visitor observed “mantelpieces decorated with loads of skulls.” She and others have been told “that in order to prove their mettle and perhaps to bond them in mutual guilt over participation in an illicit act, each class of 15 new initiates to Skull and Bones are required to dig up the skull of a famous person and bring it to the Tomb to be enshrined in its skull collection” (17,18).

Like the SS, The Order of Skull and Bones is also known as the Brotherhood of Death. And we are told, initiates into the SS and The Order of Skull and Bones, are required to say the words: “It is an honor…”

When George W. Bush was asked, “Did you have any qualms, say, about joining an elite secret club like Bones?” Bush replied, “I was honored” (33).

The identical symbolism and use of similar language is not just coincidence. In fact, Prescott Bush and several of his fellow Bonesmen, felt such an affinity with Nazi terrorist ideals, that they helped arm Hitler’s SS and the Nazi terrorist war machine. However, Bush and his partners in banking and oil, did not link up with Hitler and his SS just because of shared ideology but because of money, oil, and an unquenchable thirst for power.

NOTES

1. Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of History; Science of Logic; The Philosophy of Right; by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
2. The Bondage of the Will; By Faith Alone; by Martin Luther.
3. W. L. Shirer. “The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich.” Fawcett World Library, New York, 1960.
4. John Loftus and Mark Aarons. “The Secret War Against The Jews” St. Martins Press, New York, 1994; Charles Higham, “Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949,” Delacorte Press, 1983; Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography,” The Executive Intelligence Review.
5. J. Toland. “Adolf Hitler,” Doubleday, New York, 1976
6. Heinz Hohne. The Order of the Death’s Head.” Ballantine, New York. 1967.
7. Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf;” Adolf Hitler, “Table Talk.”
8. David MacGregor, “Hegel and Marx After the Fall of Communism, “Demy, 1998; Sowell Thomas, “Marxist Philosophy and Economics,” William Morrow and Company,” New York 1985. In 1843, Marx began work on a line-by-line analysis of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right” and introduced a synthesis which he described as “dialectical materialism,” the philosophy of communism. In 1948, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, in which he applied Hegel’s ideas of thesis and anti-thesis to government and capitalism to arrive at the synthesis of a “conflict-free society;”i.e., communism. Marx believed his idea of a communist society was the fulfillment of Hegel’s ideal, which, according to Marx and Engle, “had been turned upside down on its head.” Marx believed he had put the Hegelian Idea right side up. In Marxist communism, instead of just a few individuals owning all the means of 95 …Bush, bin Laden, 9-11… production, and thus all the wealth, all the people would own their own means of production and would share equally in its rewards. “Hegel- in contrast to his disciples- did not parade ignorance, but was one of the finest intellects of all time” -Friedrich Engels, “The Critique of Political Economy.”
9. Tom Rockmore, “On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy,,” University of California Press, 1992. Leonard Peikoff, “The Ominous Parallels,” Second Renaissance, Inc. 1986.
10. Antony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,” Arlington House, 1974; Among the banks loaning millions of dollars to the Soviet Union in the early 1900s: J.P. Morgan, Guranty Trust Company (Harriman-Walker), and Rockefeller’s Chase-Manhattan Bank. It is estimated that over $75,000,000 in assistance was provided. In 1912, Mrs. Edward Harriman (Mother of Roland and Averell Harriman) sold 8,000 shares of Guaranty Trust to J.P. Morgan which thus acquired a controlling interest. The Harriman-Walker-Bush and Rockefeller banking clique had their eye on the oil-rich Caspian basin and the Caucuses. With these loans, the Soviet Union was able to purchase oil-related services from companies controlled by this same clique, including Rockefellers Standard Oil which built oil refineries which were financed by the loans provided by Harriman-Bush-Rockefeller banks.
11. The Washington Post, 2/2/1918; John Loftus and Mark Aarons. “The Secret War Against The Jews” St. Martins Press, New York, 1994; Charles Higham, “Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949,” Delacorte Press, 1983; Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography,” The Executive Intelligence Review; Antony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,” Arlington House, 1974; Eustace Mullins, “The World Order,” 1980.
12. Anthony Sutton, “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler,” Anthony Sutton, “How the Order Creates War & Revolution;” John Loftus and Mark Aarons. “The Secret War Against The Jews” St. Martins Press, New York, 1994; Charles Higham, “Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949,” Delacorte Press, 1983; Christopher Simpson, “The Splendid Blond Beast.”
13. “Senate Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program,” Senator Harry Truman, chairman, May-August, 1942; NMT, “IG. Farben Case,” Volumes VII and VIII; “Elimination of German Resources,” United States Congress; United States Senate, Patents Committee, Senator Homer T. Bone, Chairman, May, 1942.
14. Edward J., Jr. Renehan, “The Kennedys at War, 1937-1945,” Doubleday, 2002.
15. William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937, “Ambassador Dodd’s Diary;” see also Court Documents: Hearst vs Gillmor, see paragraph 61: “Promptly after this said visit with Adolf Hitler and the making of said arrangements. . . said plaintiff, William Randolph Hearst, instructed all Hearst press correspondents in Germany, including those of INS [International News Service] to report happenings in Germany only in a friendly’ manner. All of such correspondents reporting happenings in Germany accurately and without friendliness, sympathy and bias for the actions of the then German government, were transferred elsewhere, discharged, or forced to resign.” According to journalist George Seldes: “William Randolph Hearst, Sr., was the lord of all the press lords in the United States. The millions who read the Hearst newspapers and magazines and saw Hearst newsreels in the nation’s moviehouses had their minds poisoned by Hitler propaganda.., Hitler had the support of the most widely circulated magazine in history, ‘Readers Digest,’ as well as nineteen big-city newspapers and one of the three great American news agencies, the $220-million Hearst press empire” (George Seldes, “Even the Gods Can’t Change History”).
16. Karl Meyer, “The Opium War’s Secret History,” New York Times, 6/28/1997; Jack Breeching, “The Chinese Opium Wars,” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1975.
17. Anthony Sutton, “America’s Secret Establishment: An introduction to The Order of Skull & Bones” Liberty House, New York. 1986.
18. Ron Rosenbaum, “The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones,” Esquire Magazine, September, 1977; Peggy Alder-Robohm, “Skull and Bones — Bush’s Boy’s Club,” Covert Action Quarterly No. 33, 1990; John Schrag, “Skeleton in His Closet,” Willamette Week, September 19- 25, 1991; David W. Dunlap, “Yale Society Resists Peeks Into Its Crypt,” New York Times, 11/4/88.
19. Peggy Alder-Robohm, “Skull and Bones — Bush’s Boy’s Club,” Covert Action Quarterly No. 33, 1990; John Schrag, “Skeleton in His Closet,” Willamette Week, September 19-25, 1991.
20. Bensel, Richard F. “Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877,” Cambridge University Press, 1990; Ransom, Roger L. “Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and the American Civil War.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989; Ransom, Roger L. “The Economic Consequences of the American Civil War.” In The Political Economy of War and Peace, M. Wolfson. Norwell (Ed), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998; Goldin, Claudia, and Frank Lewis. “The Post- Bellum Recovery of the South and the Cost of the Civil War: Comment.” Journal of Economic History 38, 487-492, 1978.
21. Michael Fellman, ‘’Inside War.” T. J. Stiles, “Jesse James, Last Rebel of the Civil War,” Knopf, 2002.
22. Ted Flynn, “Hope for the Wicked;” Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography,” The Executive Intelligence Review. A veritable list of America’s financial elite and powerful have been members of Skull and Bones.
23. Fitzhugh Green, “George Bush: An Intimate Portrait,” Hippocrene Books; Russell S. Bowen (ret. Brigadier General, U. S. Army), “The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed,” America West Publishers 1991; Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography,” The Executive Intelligence Review; Christopher Simpson, “The Splendid Blond Beast.”
24. Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography,” The Executive Intelligence Review.
25. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, “The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made,” Simon & Schuster, 1986; Christopher Ogden, “Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman,” Little and Brown and Company 1994
26. William Still “New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies,” Huntington House, 1990; Michael Howard, “The Occult Conspiracy: Secret Societies — Their Influence and Power in World History,” Destiny Books 1989; Bill Cooper, “Behold A Pale Horse.”
27. Trevor Ravenscroft, “Spear of Destiny.”
28. Bill Cooper, “Behold A Pale Horse.” Ron Rosenbaum, “The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones,” Esquire Magazine, September, 1977;
29. Ron Rosenbaum, “The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones,” Esquire Magazine, September, 1977.
30. Fritz Thyssen, “I Paid Hitler.”
31. On Oct. 20, 1942, Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being directed by Prescott Bush, including the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.’s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland, Bunny Harriman, and three Nazis, and two other Bush associates (see Office of Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 248, Vesting Order No. 259, Vesting Order No. 261, Vesting Order No. 370). Vesting Order No. 248 noted that the Union Banking Corporation was run as a front for the “Thyssen family” of “Germany” and designated “Thyssen” as “nationals … of a designated enemy country.” See also testimony of Capt. Frederick C. Mensing, John Schroeder, Paul von Lilienfeld-Toal, “Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities,” Public Hearings before A Subcommittee of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, United States House of Representatives, Seventy Third Congress, New York City, July 9-12, 1934—Hearings No. 73- NY-7, Washington: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1934.
32. Members of Skull & Bones in Brown Bros, Harriman: Ray Morris (Class of 1901), Mortimer Seabury (Class of 1909), W.A. Harriman (Class of 1913), E. Roland Harriman (Class of 1917), Prescott Sheldon Bush (Class of 1917), Ellery S. James (Class of 1917), Knight Wooley (Class of 1917), Robert A. Lovett (Class of 1918). Members of Skull and Bones in Union Banking Corp: E. Roland Harriman (Class of 1917), Prescott Sheldon Bush (Class of 1917), Knight Wooley (Class of 1917), Ellery Sedgewick James (Class of 1917).
33. Walter Isaacson, “My Heritage Is Part Of Who I Am,” Time Magazine, 6/72000.