'The only book which has been burned in Germany since World War II'

From the foreword to SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE - The London Connection by Eustace Mullins:

In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a Federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked "Federal Reserve Note" and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States government. After he was denied broadcasting time in the U.S., Dr. Pound broadcast from Italy in an effort to persuade people of the United States not to enter World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt had personally ordered Pound's indictment, spurred by the demands of his three personal assistants, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, and Alger Hiss, all of whom were subsequently identified as being connected with Communist espionage.

I had no interest in money or banking as a subject, because I was working on a novel. Pound offered to supplement my income by ten dollars a week for a few weeks. My initial research revealed evidence of an international banking group which had secretly planned the writing of the Federal Reserve Act and Congress' enactment of the plan into law. These findings confirmed what Pound had long suspected. He said, "You must work on it as a detective story." I was fortunate in having my research at the Library of Congress directed by a prominent scholar, George Stimpson, founder of the National Press Club, who was described by The New York Times of September 28, 1952: "Beloved by Washington newspapermen as 'our walking Library of Congress', Mr. Stimpson was a highly regarded reference source in the Capitol. Government officials, Congressmen and reporters went to him for information on any subject."

I did research four hours each day at the Library of Congress, and went to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in the afternoon. Pound and I went over the previous day's notes. I then had dinner with George Stimpson at Scholl's Cafeteria while he went over my material, and I then went back to my room to type up the corrected notes. Both Stimpson and Pound made many suggestions in guiding me in a field in which I had no previous experience. When Pound's resources ran low, I applied to the Guggenheim Foundation, Huntington Hartford Foundation, and other foundations to complete my research on the Federal Reserve. Even though my foundation applications were sponsored by the three leading poets of America, Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings, and Elizabeth Bishop, all of the foundations refused to sponsor this research. I then wrote up my findings to date, and in 1950 began efforts to market this manuscript in New York. Eighteen publishers turned it down without comment, but the nineteenth, Devin Garrity, president of Devin Adair Publishing Company, gave me some friendly advice in his office. "I like your book, but we can't print it," he told me. "Neither can anybody else in New York. Why don't you bring in a prospectus for your novel, and I think we can give you an advance. You may as well forget about getting the Federal Reserve book published. I doubt if it could ever be printed."

This was devastating news, coming after two years of intensive work. I reported back to Pound, and we tried to find a publisher in other parts of the country. After two years of fruitless submissions, the book was published in a small edition in 1952 by two of Pound's disciples, John Kasper and David Horton, using their private funds, under the title Mullins on the Federal Reserve. In 1954, a second edition, with unauthorized alterations, was published in New Jersey, as The Federal Reserve Conspiracy. In 1955, Guido Roeder brought out a German edition in Oberammergau, Germany. The book was seized and the entire edition of 10,000 copies burned by government agents led by Dr. Otto John.

The burning of the book was upheld April 21, 1961 by judge Israel Katz of the Bavarian Supreme Court. The U.S. Government refused to intervene, because U.S. High Commissioner to Germany, James B. Conant (president of Harvard University 1933 to 1953), had approved the initial book burning order. This is the only book which has been burned in Germany since World War II. In 1968 a pirated edition of this book appeared in California. Both the FBI and the U.S. Postal inspectors refused to act, despite numerous complaints from me during the next decade. In 1980 a new German edition appeared. Because the U.S. Government apparently no longer dictated the internal affairs of Germany, the identical book which had been burned in 1955 now circulates in Germany without interference.

I had collaborated on several books with Mr. H.L. Hunt and he suggested that I should continue my long-delayed research on the Federal Reserve and bring out a more definitive version of this book. I had just signed a contract to write the authorized biography of Ezra Pound, and the Federal Reserve book had to be postponed. Mr. Hunt passed away before I could get back to my research, and once again I faced the problem of financing research for the book.

My original book had traced and named the shadowy figures in the United States who planned the Federal Reserve Act. I now discovered that the men whom I exposed in 1952 as the shadowy figures behind the operation of the Federal Reserve System were themselves shadows, the American fronts for the unknown figures who became known as the "London Connection." I found that notwithstanding our successes in the Wars of Independence of 1812 against England, we remained an economic and financial colony of Great Britain. For the first time, we located the original stockholders of the Federal Reserve Banks and traced their parent companies to the London Connection.

This research is substantiated by citations and documentation from hundreds of newspapers, periodicals and books and charts showing blood, marriage, and business relationships. More than a thousand issues of The New York Times on microfilm have been checked not only for original information, but verification of statements from other sources.

It is a truism of the writing profession that a writer has only one book within him. This seems applicable in my case, because I am now in the fifth decade of continuous writing on a single subject, the inside story of the Federal Reserve System. This book was from its inception commissioned and guided by Ezra Pound. Four of his protégés have previously been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, William Butler Yeats for his later poetry, James Joyce for "Ulysses", Ernest Hemingway for "The Sun Also Rises", and T.S. Elliot for "The Waste Land". Pound played a major role in the inspiration and in the editing of these works--which leads us to believe that this present work, also inspired by Pound, represents an ongoing literary tradition.

Although this book in its inception was expected to be a tortuous work on economic and monetary techniques, it soon developed into a story of such universal and dramatic appeal that from the outset, Ezra Pound urged me to write it as a detective story, a genre which was invented by my fellow Virginian, Edgar Allan Poe. I believe that the continuous circulation of this book during the past forty years has not only exonerated Ezra Pound for his much condemned political and monetary statements, but also that it has been, and will continue to be, the ultimate weapon against the powerful conspirators who compelled him to serve thirteen and a half years without trial, as a political prisoner held in an insane asylum a la KGB. His earliest vindication came when the government agents who represented the conspirators refused to allow him to testify in his own defense; the second vindication came in 1958 when these same agents dropped all charges against him, and he walked out of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, a free man once more. His third and final vindication is this work, which documents every aspect of his exposure of the ruthless international financiers to whom Ezra Pound became but one more victim, doomed to serve years as the Man in the Iron Mask, because he had dared to alert his fellow-Americans to their furtive acts of treason against all people of the United States.

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