CHAPTER EIGHT
Putzi: Friend of Hitler and
Roosevelt
Ernst Sedgewiek Hanfstaengl (or Hanfy or Putzi, as he was more usually called), like Hjalmar Horace Greeley Sehacht, was another German-American at the core of the rise of Hitlerism. Hanfstaengl was born into a well-known New England family; he was a cousin of Civil War General John Sedgewiek and a grandson of another Civil War General, William
By coincidence,
S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler's father was also Putzi's form master at the Royal
Bavarian Wilhelms gymnasium. Putzi's student day friends at Harvard University
were "such outstanding future figures" as Walter Lippman, John Reed
(who figures prominently in Wall Street
and the Bolshevik Revolution), and Franklin D. Roosevelt. After a few years
at Harvard, Putzi established the family art business in New York; it was a
delightful combination of business and pleasure, for as he says, "the
famous names who visited me were legion, Pierpont Morgan, Toscanini, Henry
Ford, Caruso, Santos-Dumont, Charlie Chaplin, Paderewski, and a daughter of
President Wilson."2 It was also at
Harvard that Putzi made friends with the future President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt:
I took most of
my meals at the Harvard Club, where I made friends with the young Franklin D.
Roosevelt, at that time a rising New York State Senator. Also I received
several invitations to visit his distant cousin Teddy, the former President,
who had retired to his estate at Sagamore Hill.3
From these
varied friendships (or perhaps after reading this book and its predecessors, Wall Street and FDR and Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, the
reader may consider Putzi's friendship to have been confined to a peculiarly
elitist circle), Putzi became not only an early friend, backer and financier of
Hitler, but among those early Hitler supporters he was, "., . almost the only person who crossed the lines of his
(Hitler's) groups of acquaintances."4
In brief, Putzi
was an American citizen at the heart of the Hitler entourage from the early
1920s to the late 1930s. In 1943, after falling out of favor with the Nazis and
interned by the Allies, Putzi was bailed out of the miseries of a Canadian
prisoner of war camp by his friend and protector President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. When FDR's actions threatened to become an internal political
problem in the United States, Putzi was re-interned in England. As if it is not
surprising enough to find both Heinrich Himmler and Franklin D. Roosevelt
prominent in Putzi's life, we also discover that the Nazi Stormtrooper marching
songs were composed by Hanfstaengl, "including the one that was played by
the brownshirt columns as they marched through the Brandenburger Tor on the day
Hitler took over power.5 To top this
eye-opener, Putzi averred that the genesis of the Nazi chant "Sieg Heil,
Sieg Heil," used in the Nazi mass rallies, was none other than
"Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah."
Putzi certainly
helped finance the first Nazi daily press, the Volkische Beobachter. Whether he saved Hitler's life from the
Communists is less verifiable, and while kept out of the actual writing process
of Mein Kampf — much to his disgust —
Putzi did have the honor to finance its publication, "and the fact that
Hitler found a functioning staff when he was released from jail was entirely
due to our efforts. ,"7
When Hitler
came to power in March 1933, simultaneously with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in
Washington, a private "emissary" was sent from Roosevelt in
Washington, D.C. to Hanfstaengl in Berlin, with a message to the effect that as
it appeared Hitler would soon achieve power in Germany, Roosevelt hoped, in view
of their long acquaintance, that Putzi would do his best to prevent any
rashness and hot-headedness. "Think of your piano playing and try and use
the soft pedal if things get too loud," was FDR's message. "If things start getting awkward
please get in touch with our ambassador at once.8
Hanfstaengl
kept in close touch with the American Ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd —
apparently much to his disgust, because Putzi's recorded comments on Dodd are
distinctly unflattering:
In many ways,
he [Dodd] was an unsatisfactory representative. He was a modest little Southern
history professor, who ran his embassy on a shoestring and was probably trying
to save money out of his pay. At a time when it needed a robust millionaire to
compete with the flamboyance of the Nazis, he teetered around self-effacingly
as if he were still on his college campus. His mind and his prejudices were
small.9
In point of
fact Ambassador Dodd pointedly tried to decline Roosevelt's Ambassadorial
appointment. Dodd had no inheritance and preferred to live on his State
Department pay rather than political spoils; unlike the politician Dodd was
particular from whom he received money. In any event, Dodd commented equally
harshly on Putzi, "... he gave
money to Hitler in 1923, helped him write Mein
Kampf, and was in every way familiar with Hitler's motives ...."
Was Hanfstaengl
an agent for the Liberal Establishment in the U.S.? We can probably rule out
this possibility because, according to Ladislas Farago, it was Putzi who blew
the whistle on top-level British penetration of the Hitler command. Farago
reports that Baron William S. de Ropp had penetrated the highest Nazi echelons
in pre-World War II days and Hitler used de Ropp "... as his confidential consultant about British affairs.10 De Ropp was
suspected as being a double agent only by Putzi. According to Farago:
The only person
... who ever suspected him of such duplicity and cautioned the Fuehrer about
him was the erratic Putzi Hanfstaengl, the Harvard educated chief of Hitler's
office dealing with the foreign press.
As Farago
notes, "Bill de Ropp was playing the game In both camps — a double agent
at the very top."11 Putzi was
equally diligent in warning his friends, the Hermann Goerings, about potential
spies in their camp. Witness the
following extract from Putzi's memoirs, in which he points the accusing finger
of espionage at the Goerings' gardener..
"Herman,"
I said one day, "I will bet any money that fellow Greinz is a police
spy." "Now really, Putzi," Karin [Mrs. Herman Goering] broke in,
"he's such a nice fellow and he's a wonderful gardener." "He's
doing exactly what a spy ought to do," I told her, "he has made
himself indispensable."12
By 1941 Putzi
was out of favor with Hitler and the Nazis, fled Germany, and was interned in a
Canadian prisoner of war camp. With Germany and the United States now at war
Putzi re-calculated the odds and concluded, "Now
I knew for certain that Germany would be defeated."13 Putzi's
release from the POW camp came with the personal intervention of old friend
President Roosevelt:
One day a
correspondent of the Hearst press named Kehoe obtained permission to visit Fort
Hens. I managed to have a few words with him in a corner. "I know your
boss well," I told him. "Will you do me a small service?"
Fortunately he recognized my name.
I gave him a
letter, which he slipped into his pocket. It was addressed to the American
Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. A few days later it was on the desk of my
Harvard Club friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In it I offered to act as a
political and psychological warfare adviser in the war against Germany.14
The response
and offer to "work" for the American side was accepted. Putzi was
installed in comfortable surroundings with his son, U.S. Army Sergeant Egon
Hanfstaengl, also there as a personal aide. In 1944, under pressure of a
Republican threat to blow the whistle on Roosevelt's favoritism for a former
Nazi, Egon was shipped out to New Guinea and Putzi hustled off to England,
where the British promptly interned him for the duration of the war, Roosevelt
or no Roosevelt,
Putzi's
friendships and political manipulations may or may not be of any great
consequence, but his role in the Reichstag fire is significant. The firing of
the Reichstag on February 27, 1933 is one of the key events of modern times.
The fire was used by Adolf Hitler to claim imminent Communist revolution,
suspend constitutional rights, and seize totalitarian power. From that point on
there was no turning back for Germany; the world was set upon the course to
World War II.
At the time the
firing of the Reichstag was blamed on the Communists, but there is little
question in historical perspective that the fire was deliberately set by the
Nazis to provide an excuse to seize political power. Fritz Thyssen commented in
the post-war Dustbin interrogations:
When the
Reichstag was burned, everyone was sure it had been done by the communists. I
later learned in Switzerland that it was all a lie.15
Schacht states
quite emphatically:
Nowadays it
would be quite clear that this action could not be fastened on the Communist
Party. To what extent individual National Socialists co-operated in the
planning and execution of the deed will be difficult to establish, but in view
of all that has been revealed in the meantime, the fact must be accepted that
Goebbels and Goering each played a leading part, the one in planning, the other
in carrying out the plan.16
The Reichstag
fire was deliberately set, probably utilizing a flammable liquid, by a group of
experts. This is where Putzi Hanfstaengl comes into the picture. The key
question is how did this group, bent on arson, gain access to the Reichstag to
do the job? After 8 p.m. only one door in the main building was unlocked and
this door was guarded. Just before 9 p.m. a tour of the building by watchmen
indicated all was well; no flammable liquids were noticed and nothing was out
of the ordinary in the Sessions Chamber where the fire started. Apparently no
one could have gained access to the Reichstag building after 9 p.m., and no one
was seen to enter or leave between 9 p.m. and the start of the fire.
There was only
one way a group with flammable materials could have entered the Reichstag —
through a tunnel that ran between the Reichstag and the Palace of the Reichstag
President. Hermann Goering was president of the Reichstag and lived in the
Palace, and numerous S.A. and S.S. men were known to be in the Palace. In the
words of one author:
The use of the
underground passage, with all its complications, was possible only to
National-Socialists, the advance and escape of the incendiary gang was feasible
only with the connivance of highly-placed employees of the Reichstag. Every
clue, every probability points damningly in one direction, to the conclusion
that the burning of the Reichstag was the work of National-Socialists.17
How does Putzi
Hanfstaengl fit into this picture of arson and political intrigue?
Putzi — by his
own admission — was in the Palace room at the other end of the tunnel leading
to the Reichstag. And according to The
Reichstag Fire Trial, Putzi Hanfstaengl was actually in the Palace itself
during the fire:
propaganda
apparatus stood ready, and the leaders of the Storm Troopers were in their
places. With the official bulletins planned in advance, the orders of arrest
prepared, Karwahne, Frey and Kroyer waiting patiently in their cafe, the
preparations were complete, the scheme almost perfect.18
Dimitrov also
asserts that:
The
National-Socialist leaders, Hitler, Goering and Goebbels, together with the
high National-Socialist officials, Daluege, Hanfstaengl and Albrecht, happened
to be present in Berlin on the day of the fire, despite that the election
campaign was at its highest pitch throughout Germany, six days before the poll.
Goering and Goebbels, under oath, furnished contradictory explanations for
their "fortuitous" presence in Berlin with Hitler on that day. The
National-Socialist Hanfstaengl, as Goering's "guest," was present in
the Palace of the Reichstag President, immediately adjacent to the Reichstag, at
the time when the .fire broke out, although his "host" was not there
at that time.19
According to
Nazi Kurt Ludecke, there once existed a document signed by S.A. Leader Karl
Ernst — who supposedly set the fire and was later murdered by fellow Nazis —
which implicated Goering, Goebbels, and Hanfstaengl in the conspiracy.
Roosevelt's New Deal and Hitler's New Order
Hjalmar Schacht
challenged his post-war Nuremberg interrogators with the observation that
Hitler's New Order program was the same as Roosevelt's New Deal program in the
United States. The interrogators understandably snorted and rejected the
observation. However, a little research suggests that not only are the two
programs quite similar in content, but that Germans had no trouble in observing
the similarities. There is in the Roosevelt Library a small book presented to
FDR by Dr. Helmut Magers in December 1933.20 On the
flyleaf of this presentation copy is
written the inscription,
To the
President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in profound admiration
of his conception of a new economic order and with devotion for his
personality. The author, Baden, Germany, November 9, 1933.
FDR's reply to
this admiration for his new economic order was as follows:21
(Washington)
December 19, 1933
My dear Dr.
Magers: I want to send you my thanks for the copy of your little book about me
and the "New Deal." Though, as you know, I went to school in Germany
and could speak German with considerable fluency at one time, I am reading your
book not only with great interest but because it will help my German.
Very sincerely
yours,
The New Deal or
the "new economic order"
was not a creature of classical liberalism. It was a creature of corporate
socialism. Big business as reflected in Wall Street strived for a state order
in which they could control industry and eliminate competition, and this was
the heart of FDR's New Deal. General Electric, for example, is prominent in
both Nazi Germany and the New Deal. German General Electric was a prominent
financier of Hitler and the Nazi Party, and A.E.G. also financed Hitler both
directly and indirectly through Osram. International General Electric in New
York was a major participant in the ownership and direction of both A.E.G. and
Osram. Gerard Swope, Owen Young, and A. Baldwin of General Electric in the
United States were directors of A.E.G. However, the story does not stop at
General Electric and financing of Hitler in 1933.
In a previous
book, Wall Street and the Bolshevik
Revolution, the author identified the role of General Electric in the
Bolshevik Revolution and the geographic location of American participants as at
120 Broadway, New York City; the executive offices of General Electric were
also at 120 Broadway. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was working in Wall
Street, his address was also 120 Broadway. In fact, Georgia Warm Springs
Foundation, the FDR Foundation, was located at 120 Broadway. The prominent
financial backer of an early Roosevelt Wall Street venture from 120 Broadway
was Gerard Swope of General Electric. And it was "Swope's Plan" that
became Roosevelt's New Deal — the fascist plan that Herbert Hoover was
unwilling to foist on the United States. In brief, both Hitler's New Order and
Roosevelt's New Deal were backed by the same industrialists and in content were
quite similar — i.e., they were both
plans for a corporate state.
There were then
both corporate and individual bridges between FDR,s America and Hitler's
Germany. The first bridge was the American I.G. Farben, American affiliate of
I.G. Farben, the largest German corporation. On the board of American I.G. sat
Paul Warburg, of the Bank of Manhattan and the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York. The second bridge was between International General' Electric, a wholly
owned subsidiary of General Electric Company and its partly owned affiliate in
Germany, A.E.G. Gerard Swope, who formulated FDR's New Deal, was chairman of
I.G.E. and on the board of A.E.G. The third "bridge" was between
Standard Oil of New Jersey and Vacuum Oil and its wholly owned German
subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanisehe Gesellschaft. The chairman of Standard Oil
of New Jersey was Walter Teagle, of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He
was a trustee of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Georgia Warm Springs Foundation
and appointed by FDR to a key administrative post in the National Recovery
Administration.
These
corporations were deeply involved in both the promotion of Roosevelt's New Deal
and the construction of the military power of Nazi Germany. Putzi Hanfstaengl's
role in the early days, up to the mid-1930s anyway, was an informal link
between the Nazi elite and the White House. After the mid-1930s, when the world
was set on the course for war, Putzis importance declined — while American Big
Business continued to be represented through such intermediaries as Baron Kurt
von Schroder attorney Westrick, and membership in Himmler's Circle of Friends.
Footnotes:
1William E. Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938, (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1941), p. 360.
2Ernst
Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, (New
York: J.B. Lippincott, 1957), p. 28.
3Ibid., p.
4Ibid., p. 52.
5Ibid., p. 53.
6Ibid., p. 59.
7Ibid., p. 122.
8Ibid., pp. 197-8.
9Ibid., p. 214.
10Ladislas Farago,
The Game of the Foxes, (New York:
Bantam, 1973), p. 97.
11Ibid., p. 106.
12Ernst
Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, op. cit.,
p. 76.
13Ibid.
14Ibid., pp.
310-11.
16Hjalmar Horace
Greeley Schacht, Confessions of" The
Old Wizard," (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), p. 276.
17George Dimitrov,
The Reichstag Fire Trial, (London:
The Bodley Head, 1934), p. 309.
18Ibid., p. 310.
19Ibid., p. 311.
20Helmut Magers, Ein Revolutionar Aus Common Sense, (Leipzig:
R. Kittler Verlag, 1934).
21Nixon, Edgar B.,
Editor, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign
Affairs, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969),
Volume 1: January 1933-February 1934. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Hyde Park,
New York.
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