Rijkens, Unilever, Nazi Germany
Firestarter said:
The following PDF has information on 3 Dutch Nazi collaborators that were corporate executives, and didn’t get punished – Henri Deterding, Paul Rijkens and Frits Fentener van Vlissingen…
The Dutch Unilever chairman Paul Rijkens could be the most interesting of the 3 Dutch Nazi collaborators. He was one of the 3 founders, with his friends Prince Bernhard and the Polish-born Joseph Retinger, of the Bilderberg Conference, but for some reason is often overlooked…
Bilderberg was founded with additional help of CIA-directors Walter Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles:
https://ac.home.xs4all.nl/global/achtergrond/bilderberg.htm
(
http://archive.is/BBIq)
In the 1930s, the Anglo-Dutch Unilever was the biggest foreign corporation in Germany. By 1930, following various acquisitions, mergers and joint-ventures, Unilever’s share in the margarine industry in Germany was a whopping 69%.
In April 1933, Unilever had invested £18 to £20 million in Germany that continued to increase during the rest of the decade.
In 1940, Unilever’s total direct investment in Germany of $167 million was 81% of the total direct investment in Greater Germany of the $206 million by the (much larger) US.
Part of the rise in Unilever’s investment figures was caused by the Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of Czechoslovakia. In the latter country alone, Unilever had invested nearly £8 million.
On the eve of World War II, Unilever had become highly diversified in Germany, besides its very strong position in the margarine industry. In September 1939, when WW II broke out, Unilever’s total FDI in Greater Germany, including Austria and Sudetenland, amounted to approximately £37.6 million.
In September 1939, Unilever’s 102 companies in Greater Germany had 33,900 staff; it’s second most important market after Britain, where the company had 41,000 employees.
By 1941, Unilever (MVU) had bought 49% of the share capital of Nordsee Deutsche Hochseefischerei AG with its head office at Bremerhaven (worth nearly RM 11 million).
In July 1933, Unilever British chairman Francis D’Arcy Cooper and Paul Rijkens flew to Berlin for meetings arranged by British businessman E.W.D. Tennant, who was close to Nazi Minister for Foreign affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop (whose brother-in-law was married to Frits Fentener van Vlissingen’s daughter), and had arranged a meeting with Hitler’s economic adviser Keppler. Tennant also mentioned that Fuhrer Adolf Hitler would like to meet D’Arcy Cooper in Berlin, as he was anxious to maintain good relations with the British business community.
In May 1936, Georg Schicht for Unilever met Hermann Göring, who expressed his appreciation of the British Empire, which Germany would never disturb.
Georg Schicht later noted that Unilever’s chairmen Sir D’Arcy Cooper and Rijkens had done everything they could to improve relations between Germany and Britain, by co-founding the Anglo-German Fellowship in 1935.
From 1935 to 1938, Unilever benefitted from acquiring “Jewish property” (“non-Aryan” in Nazi terminology).
When the pressure on Jewish businesses increased, some German Jews offered their assets (companies and pieces of land) for sale below the market price. From June 1938 on, transfers of “Jewish property” to non-Jewish partners were made punishable by Nazi law.
On 27 November 1937, one day after Hjalmar Schacht’s resigned as Economics Minister, State Secretary Hans Ernst Posse of the Economic Ministry signed an order to expel Jews from the German economy.
In 1938, the Unilever Board informed Hans Kehrl, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Economics in Nazi Germany that “
the Jewish share in the Unilever capital was only 1.65 per cent”.
Keppler then informed Rijkens that there were concerns over the 5 of the 24 Directors that weren’t “pure Aryans” (Jews): Albert van den Bergh, James P. van den Bergh, Sidney van den Bergh, Arthur Hartog and Dr. J.L. Polak. Keppler then gave Rijkens the suggestion to claim that only the “Aryan” board members Dr. Heinrich Schicht, Rudolf Jurgens, P.D.H. Hendriks, C. Barnish and Rijkens himself were involved in the German Unilever business.
After doing so, on 28 November 1938 the Luftwaffen-Verordnungsblatt published, signed by Hermann Göring:
The Unilever concern and his subsidiaries, working on the sale margarine, oil and fats, are considered to be an Aryan company.
https://ebha.org/ebha2010/code/media_168884_en.pdf
(
http://web.archive.org/web/20191229160013/https://ebha.org/ebha2010/code/media_168884_en.pdf)
(A predecessor of) Unilever had in fact been founded by the Dutch Jewish Van den Bergh family.
Jewish Unilever board member Sidney James van den Bergh was the son of Sam van den Bergh.
In May 1940, after the Dutch capitulation to Nazi Germany, Sidney van den Bergh “escaped” to Great Britain, where he was involved in recruiting Dutch volunteers in Canada and the USA.
Sidney van den Bergh later got high positions in the Dutch military (even before the end of WW II). In May 1959, Queen Juliana even selected Van den Bergh as Minister of Defence (in Dutch):
http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn1880-2000/lemmata/bwn6/bergh
The Jewish Unilever Director Arthur Hartog had joined a predecessor of Unilever in 1929. He was Unilever’s vice chairman from 1938 to 1939 and from 1946 to 1951.
In December 1941, Hartog was taken prisoner by the Japanese in Hong Kong and held for 9 months in a prison camp, until he was released:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150524182404/https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/01/obituaries/arthur-hartog.html
