Reply #25: "The Secret Insurance Man" Explains Why AIG Is Getting Bailed Out

[NashVegas]

Germany had 45% of the worldwide wholesale insurance industry before the war began and managed to actually expand its business as it conquered continental Europe. As wholesalers, or "reinsurers," these companies covered other insurers against a catastrophic loss that could wipe out a single company. In the process, the wholesaler learned everything about the lives and property they were reinsuring.

...

"This story is incredible because the unit begins as part of the desire of American interests to contribute to the war effort and exploit it for future economic gain," said historian Timothy Naftali, a consultant to the Nazi War Criminals Interagency Working Group that was created by Congress last year.

Starr** had started out selling insurance to Chinese in Shanghai in 1919 and, over the next 50 years, would build what is now American International Group, one of the biggest insurance companies in the world. He was forced to move his operation to New York in 1939, when Japan invaded China.

In the early years of the war, the German insurance industry expanded its business as it conquered continental Europe. Nazi insurance brokers who traveled with combat troops during invasions also scoured local insurance files for strategic data.

German-owned companies were blacklisted by the Allies, but the Insurance Intelligence Unit found that the Nazis did business through countries such as Switzerland and laundered transactions through South American affiliates, particularly in Argentina.

"The blacklist is of no good use because the firms not blacklisted are full of Germans," one of the Insurance Intelligence Unit's reports complained in 1943.

Starr's people and other insurance executives had intimate knowledge of the people involved in the global insurance business, so they were able to track potential collaborators.

** refers to Cornelius Starr, Kenneth Starr's uncle.