Prescott Bush [grandfather of George W. Bush], in collaboration with Fritz Thyssen, actually financed the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and continued to support him with money and materials during the Second World War. Matters reached such a pitch that on 29 October 1942 the United States alien property custodian, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, seized the shares of one of Prescott Bush's companies, Union Banking Corporation. On 17 November 1942 another company, Silesian American Corporation, managed by Prescott Bush, was also seized because it was supplying coal and steel to the Nazi war industry and financing the German Steel Trust which was responsible for between one third and one half of Nazi iron and explosive production. This was done in association with Friedrich Flick, friend and financial supporter of Heinrich Himmler.

According to John Loftus, author of Secret War Against The Jews, recent information confirms the direct line between the Bush empire and the profits of slave labour from Auschwitz concentration camp. The motto "business is business" seems to have prevailed among the Bush family even during the past decade, when most of its business associates did not disdain profiting from investment by the Bin Laden family. This irony may not bother Mr. Bush at all, as he has consistently displayed a disjuncture between language and reality, as on the celebrated occasion that he described Ariel Sharon as "a man of peace." This surely entitles him to be regarded as one of the great defilers of language.