74 Comments

Thank you for drawing attention to the incredibly important information that Rachel has highlighted so excellently in "Ultra". The most high profile sedition trial in American history is that which most of us know nothing about. It is an excellent production, and the podcast has the vibe of the very popular "Serial" podcast.

I am fascinated to learn more about this very dark part of American history, so much that I am actually listening to this podcast for the second time. (Eight episodes, approximately 40 minutes each)

You can get this where ever you get your podcasts. The MSNBC Ultra website also has the podcasts along with transcripts and added photos and information that accompany the podcast.

"Ultra" reflects on our history of "American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power," and the fact that having Nazis infiltrate our government is nothing new. Not by a long shot. Thank you TC, for highlighting these events. I will be looking forward to hearing all you have to report on this attempt to overthrow our government. All Americans need to understand what happened here so we can learn from it.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra

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Such an important storyline!

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That's a great idea and I will look forward to reading it. Decisions like Truman's to "protect" us from harmful information (Iran/Contra, anyone) never work out.

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well, they work until they don't. but Iran/Contra wasn't about "protecting" us, it was about covering up wanton criminality, which was clearly a lot more impeachable than any number of blowjobs. there's a joke lurking in there somewhere (probably involving the use of "unimpeachable," but I'm feeling too lazy to work it.

"Ultra" really is a superb podcast series and, like most of us, involves things I had no clue about. compared with this stuff, the Smedley Butler 1933 story is common knowledge, even though I only found out about it within the past ten years.

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I have listened to all 8 episodes of Ultra, and while I’m not a historian, I have an interest in our history and am educated, that said I was blown away by what I learned about collaborators within our government and business institutions who conspired with the Germans while their sons and neighbors were actively fighting them and dying while doing so. The Justice Department and the Truman administration determined that there were too many of them in our government at the highest levels (just like we are witnessing today), to be able to prosecute them like they deserved, so yes we have been here before, lesson learned doesn’t seem to be the case. I know that I’m preaching to the choir but don’t you think it’s time that the truth, including the parts that are most uncomfortable, is revealed so that we can deal with it and move on, in a way that will benefit all of us? We have got an enormous pile of corrections to put in place, starting with Native Americans, racial inequality, systematic inequality that affects so many, it’s going to take the rest of our lifetimes and more to be that shining city on the hill, but it is doable, and I’m all in.

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Thank you for carrying the light into the darkest and most frightening den of our history. While I eagerly await your first release on the 8th, I feel a frisson that makes me want to lock my door and curl up in a corner and hide.

I remember some years back someone suggesting that there were powerful Americans, leaders in business and government, who were supporting the Nazi movement, and government, and I was incredulous, and I was angry that such a thing could even be suggested.

Dear Lord....

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it's always been sort of common knowledge that Ford didn't shut down any of its German plants for the entire war. Henry was a big fan of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which he republished in...what was it called?..."The Dearborn Independent," if I'm not mistaken.

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Yes! I had forgotten about that! Or rather suppressed it....

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Have listened and want to learn more. How come, I ask, we NEVER EVER EVER heard anything about this before now? The closest I've come to any knowledge is from reading Philip Roth interviews. I can't wait for your reports. Can't wait!

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We didn’t hear about it because after the judge died, they sealed the records.

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Holy Schitt, do you have security? Is this the same Prescott/Preston Bush who was an instigator/supporter of the Coup of 1933 (Google Smedley Butler) against FDR?

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Yes, Prescott.

(Note to Self): copyedit, particularly late at night, before hitting "send")

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I was going to guess that "Prescott" was his mother or grandmother's maiden name, as is the habit among New England WASPs. But at least as far back as the parents and grandparents, that name does not appear. One additional search yielded the answer, in Britannica:

The Bush family tree

The Bush family’s roots in the United States extend back to the arrival of the Mayflower (1620). Ancestors include Samuel Prescott, who joined Paul Revere and William Dawes on their ride to warn their fellow colonists of the British march on Lexington and Concord (1775), and War of 1812 veteran Obadiah Bush. The family’s long connection with Yale University dates to the 1840s, when James Smith Bush prepared for the Episcopal ministry there. His son Samuel Prescott Bush successfully guided the fortunes of Buckeye Steel Castings, a railroad equipment manufacturer in Columbus, Ohio, that had the financial backing of John D. Rockefeller’s brother Frank.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Prescott-Bush

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Holy Schitt, indeed.

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Darn tootin’. And Charles Koch (groomed by HIS father) picked up the organization of Corporate billionaire- Nazi sympathizers, especially after Nixon’s failure to subvert elections (aka, Watergate).

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Most of this stuff that you’re going to read has been swept under the rug for too many years. Like the internment of Japanese-American citizens during WW2, most Americans are totally ignorant of its ever occurring. It’s about time this part of our history sees the light of day and will help to explain how our “esteemed” upper crust population is so enamored of totalitarian governments. Anything to make and preserve a buck…like the Kochs, Mercers, and others who have too much money and time on their hands.

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Another great case in point is Henry Ford. Ask most Americans about him and they’ll say he was the man who revolutionized automobile manufacturing, a great captain of industry, a great American, etc., but not that he was a raging antisemite, a union buster of the highest degree, and an admirer of Hitler and the Nazis. He refused to accept weapons contracts from the government so much so that the Feds got his grandson, Henry Ford II, out of the Navy to step in and run the Ford Motor Company after the old man was forced out by his wife and the company stockholders. Willow Run and the Rouge were too important to the war effort to let Henry Ford screw it up. Packard got the contract to build Rolls-Royce Merlin engines under license because Henry Ford refused to do it.

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Yep.

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if I'd continued to read all the comments, I would have read yours and been spared the trouble of mine (which is vastly inferior to yours anyway). I have to admit that when I was a little kid spending my summers with relatives in Detroit, I couldn't get enough of all that Ford stuff...the Museum, the plant, and Greenfield Village. I'd keep schlepping my dad, who'd roll his eyes and take me until I was about eleven, when he told me why he was so unenthusiastic about these outings.

I also remember passing Father Coughlin's church right on Woodward in Royal Oak about a thousand times. it still amazes me that those broadcasts actually existed, let alone having been so popular.

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Henry Ford was a great innovator and in the beginning of his career, was very enthusiastic about streamlining the automation process to produce autos that the general public could afford, including his own workers. But as he got older, richer, and more powerful, he began to change and became more autocratic and set in his ways. Try reading “The Reckoning” by David Halberstam as it has a good analysis of Ford’s descent into cruelty and antisemitism, including ruining his corporation financially as well as driving his son and heir, Edsel, to an early death. He was certainly no paragon of virtue, sort of like Edison, who was lionized by the public but wasn’t a very nice human being…

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Not only wa Edison not a nice human being, he was a "thief of credit."

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Yeah, I remember reading about him ripping off Nikola Tesla and the disputes between them over AC vs. DC electricity generation…

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Not only that but he did not "invent" the lightbulb. His employees did. Sort of like how Muck didn't "invent" paypal, or Tesla or Space-X.

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Very eye opening podcast, now we know what Rachel was up to!

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Very interesting findings. One correction: George H.W. Bush's father was named Prescott Sheldon Bush. He was first elected to the Senate from Connecticut in 1952. After he retired from the Senate, the man he beat in the election in 1952, Abraham Ribicoff, won the election to succeed him.

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changes made, thanks

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Thank you, TC, for filtering the firehose of information and sending us the important streams we might otherwise have missed. I eagerly await your first post on this explosive, long suppressed report. And now I need to go find and listen to “Ultra”. I’m enraged but also have some sympathy with Truman’s decision to bury the report. Americans had just poured five years of courage, unity of purpose, and heartfelt sacrifice into the monumental effort, with the Allies, of wiping Hitler and the Nazi movement from the face of the earth—or so they thought. Truman must have been thoroughly sickened by the extent of complicity with Nazis by prominent Americans. I’m guessing he couldn’t face inflicting that level of cynical disillusionment on the country. It would have been equivalent to America finding out that our intelligence community had all the information necessary to see that the 9/11 attacks were coming but fumbled the ball and failed to prevent them. Oh wait…

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I'm looking forward to reading your reports, TC.

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Looking forward to your posts on this TC. Ultra is an excellent podcast and I recommend it to everyone. I learned so much I didn’t know about Nazi infiltration into our government. It was well hidden but appears now it can be easily dug up. Thank you TC and Rachel.

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Not only do I have the PDF, I found a used copy of "Black Mail" on Amazon. And I found that "Heritage History.com", a site put up by the Heritage Foundation to supply materials for Homseschoolers who want "accurate" history, has a book you can download (which I will) written in the 40s, that attacks the anti-Nazis as "liars" and "purveyors of fake news" (sound familiar?) and claims all the America First Nazis and the people tried for sedition were in fact "patriots" being pursued by the "communists" of the New Deal. They put that out now! To educate children with about how the lib'ruls persecute conservatives!

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Wow! Same crap...different day!

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I am looking forward to your report. Is this how you take time off to care for yourself🙄

Best

Hale

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Things are going well here, I am giving them the time they need together, so I have "time on my own." Which I am putting to good use.

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Happy to hear this.

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I'm so happy to hear things are going well with the sisters.

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Ugly history repeating itself...

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Wow. I look forward to your series!

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This is what frightens me..WTF are we teaching the next generation!

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I downloaded that "1776" bullshit. it was probably a little more subtle, but it was pretty fucking nuts. I'm checking out the Heritage stuff NOW.

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and now I've got the Heritage stuff within my grasp. I'm a little afraid that if I click on any of the links, my inbox will explode with fascist propaganda. but wtf....it's not like I haven't been there before.

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so I chose the Cleopatra bio at random. right at first, lest we think that there was anything remotely African about her, we're told that her genius derived from her Ptolemy blood (which, strictly speaking, wasn't actually Greek, but Macedonian--a difference that mattered to the Greeks). then there's a nice, long paragraph contrasting Egypt's weather with St, Petersburg's. this is going to be fun, in tiny doses.

I'll have to say one thing in praise of at least this one book...it presupposes the students' ability to navigate long, complex sentences. this assumption has been dead for pretty close to a century and today's textbook style has all the flavor of Israeli matzoh. I take that back...it's more like a communion wafer (yeah, I tasted communion wafer back in those "no experience can be bad" days).

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Yeah, it's amazing how bad Heritage has become under Jim DeMint. I didn't realize how truly awful he is.

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now, a few hours later, I've tried to read some more stuff on that site. the most amazing thing is their "Faerie Queen Stories for Children." I was an English major, and believe me, nobody reads Spenser for the stories. NOBODY. so right now, I'm trying to figure out the ulterior motive.

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My first knowledge of the Bush family dealings with the Nazis was from a book by Kevin Phillips (of all people) called “American Dynasty: Aristocracy Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush” (Penguin, 2004). Reading it was a WTF moment for me.

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Kevin Phillips was one of those old-time Republicans they don't make anymore. and in his Wikipedia entry, it says that he's been a registered Independent since some time in the '90's.

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I waited for a long time for Kevin Phillips to apologize for essentially setting the GOP on the path to being a white supremacist party. Although Nixon sensed the possibility of a Southern Strategy, it was Phillips who gave it the veneer of statistical validation/inevitability. And he helped the Nixon campaign if I remember correctly. I admire his work, and find many of his books compelling, but his Main Street/cloth coat Republicanism wears thin with me.

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TC, I will look forward to your posts on the Nazi infiltration of our government and those who benefited from that. Germany has done a better job than the US has in examining its history. WWII was major evidence that German history was horrendous. America has never looked at the previous leaders such a the traitors to the Union who served in the Confederate military. Given all the previously unknown (to me at least) history that I have learned since becoming a subscriber to various newsletters on Substack, it's hard not to feel skeptical and cynical about our political life, especially at the state and national levels. Keep informing us, TC.

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Very much looking forward to your presentation TC. Clearing bookshelf space for when this one comes out in book form.

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