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
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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