Wall St. and the Rise of Hitler by
Antony C. Sutton from reformation.org
CHAPTER SEVEN
Who Financed Adolf Hitler?
The funding of Hitler and the Nazi movement has yet to be explored in exhaustive depth. The only published examination of Hitler's personal finances is an article by Oron James Hale, "Adolph Hitler: Taxpayer,1 which records Adolph's brushes with the German tax authorities before he became Reichskanzler, In the 1920s Hitler presented himself to the German tax man as merely an impoverished writer living on bank loans, with an automobile bought on credit. Unfortunately, the original records used by Hale do not
We
do know that prominent European and American industrialists were sponsoring all
manner of totalitarian political groups at that time, including Communists and
various Nazi groups. The U.S. Kilgore Committee records that:
By
1919 Krupp was already giving financial aid to one of the reactionary political
groups which sowed the seed of the present Nazi ideology. Hugo Stinnes was an
early contributor to the Nazi Party (National Socialistische Deutsche Arbeiter
Partei). By 1924 other prominent industrialists and financiers, among them
Fritz Thyssen, Albert Voegler, Adolph [sic] Kirdorf, and Kurt von Schroder,
were secretly giving substantial sums to the Nazis. In 1931 members of the coal
owners' association which Kirdorf headed pledged themselves to pay 50 pfennigs
for each ton of' coal sold, the money to go to the organization which Hitler
was building.3
Hitler's
1924 Munich trial yielded evidence that the Nazi Party received $20,000 from
Nuremberg industrialists. The most interesting name from this period is that of
Emil Kirdorf, who had earlier acted as conduit for financing German involvement
in the Bolshevik Revolution.4
Kirdorfs role in financing Hitler was, in his own words:
In
1923 I came into contact for the first time with the National-Socialist
movement .... I first heard the Fuehrer in the Essen Exhibition Hall. His clear
exposition completely convinced and overwhelmed me. In 1927 I first met the
Fuehrer personally. I travelled to Munich and there had a conversation with the
Fuehrer in the Bruckmann home. During four and a half hours Adolf Hitler
explained to me his programme in detail. I then begged the Fuehrer to put
together the lecture he had given me in the form of a pamphlet. I then
distributed this pamphlet in my name in business and manufacturing circles.
Since
then I have placed myself completely at the disposition of his movement,
Shortly after our Munich conversation, and as a result of the pamphlet which
the Fuehrer composed and I distributed, a number of meetings took place between
the Fuehrer and leading personalities in the field of indus. try. For the last
time before the taking over of power, the leaders of industry met in my house
together with Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Goering and other leading
personalities of the party.5
In
1925 the Hugo Stinnes family contributed funds to convert the Nazi weekly Volkischer Beobachter to a daily
publication. Putzi Hanfstaengl, Franklin D. Roosevelt's friend and protegé,
provided the remaining funds.6
Table 7-1 summarizes presently known financial contributions and the business
associations of contributors from the United States. Putzi is not listed in
Table 7-1 as he was neither industrialist nor financier.
In
the early 1930s financial assistance to Hitler began to flow more readily.
There took place in Germany a series of meetings, irrefutably documented in
several sources, between German industrialists, Hitler himself, and more often
Hitler's representatives Hjalmar Sehaeht and Rudolf Hess. The critical point is
that the German industrialists financing Hitler were predominantly directors of
cartels with American associations, ownership, participation, or some form of
subsidiary connection. The Hitler backers were not, by and large, firms of purely
German origin, or representative of German family business. Except for Thyssen
and Kirdoff, in most cases they were the German multi-national firms — i.e., I.G. Farben, A.E.G., DAPAG, etc. These multi-nationals had been
built up by American loans in the 1920s, and in the early 1930s had American
directors and heavy American financial participation.
One
flow of foreign political funds not considered here is that reported from the
European-based Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil's great competitor in the 20s
and 30s, and the giant brainchild of Anglo-Dutch businessman Sir Henri
Deterding. It has been widely asserted that Henri Deterding personally financed
Hitler. This argument is made, for instance, by biographer Glyn Roberts in The Most Powerful Man in the World. Roberts
notes that Deterding was impressed with Hitler as early as 1921:
...and
the Dutch press reported that, through the agent Georg Bell, he [Deterding] had
placed at Hitler's disposal, while the party was "still in long
clothes," no less than four million guilders.7
It
was reported (by Roberts) that in 1931 Georg Bell, Deterding's agent, attended
meetings of Ukrainian Patriot in Paris "as joint delegate of Hitler and
Deterding."8 Roberts also reports:
Deterding
was accused, as Edgar Ansell Mowrer testifies in his Germany Puts the Clock Back, of putting up a large sum of money for
the Nazis on the understanding that success would give him a more favored
position in the German oil market. On other occasions, figures as high as
£55,000,000 were mentioned.9
Biographer
Roberts really found Deterding's strong anti-Bolshevism distasteful, and rather
than present hard evidence of funding he is inclined to assume rather than
prove that Deterding was pro-Hitler. But pro-Hitlerism is not a necessary
consequence of anti-Bolshevism; in any event Roberts offers no proof of
finance, and hard evidence of Deterding's involvement was not found by this
author.
Mowrer's
book contains neither index nor footnotes as to the source of his information
and Roberts has no specific evidence for his accusations. There is circumstantial
evidence that Deterding was pro-Nazi. He later went to live in Hitler's Germany
and increased his share of the German petroleum market. So there may have been
some contributions, but these have not been proven.
Similarly,
in France (on January 11, 1932), Paul Faure, a member of the Chambre des Députés, accused the French
industrial firm of Schneider-Creuzot of financing Hitler — and incidentally
implicated Wall Street in other financing channels.10
The
Schneider group is a famous firm of French armaments manufacturers. After
recalling the Schneider influence in establishment of Fascism in Hungary and
its extensive international armaments operations, Paul Fauré turns to Hitler,
and quotes from the French paper LeJournal,
"that Hitler had received 300,000 Swiss gold francs" from
subscriptions opened in Holland under the case of a university professor named
von Bissing. The Skoda plant at Pilsen, stated Paul Fauré, was controlled by
the French Schneider family, and it was the Skoda directors von Duschnitz and
von Arthaber who made the subscriptions to Hitler. Fauré concluded:
.
. . I am disturbed to see the directors of Skoda, controlled by Schneider,
subsidizing the electoral campaign of M. Hitler; I am disturbed to see your
firms, your financiers, your industrial cartels unite themselves with the most
nationalistic of Germans ....
Again,
no hard evidence was found for this alleged flow of Hitler funds.
Fritz Thyssen and W.A. Harriman Company of New York
Another
elusive case of reported financing of Hitler is that of Fritz Thyssen, the
German steel magnate who associated himself with the Nazi movement in the early
20s. When interrogated in 1945 under Project Dustbin,11
Thyssen recalled that he was approached in 1923 by General Ludendorf at the
time of French evacuation of the Ruhr. Shortly after this meeting Thyssen was
introduced to Hitler and provided funds for the Nazis through General
Ludendorf. In 1930-1931 Emil Kirdorf approached Thyssen and subsequently sent
Rudolf Hess to negotiate further funding for the Nazi Party. This time Thyssen
arranged a credit of 250,000 marks at the Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V.
at 18 Zuidblaak in Rotterdam, Holland, founded in 1918 with H.J. Kouwenhoven
and D.C. Schutte as managing partners.12
This bank was a subsidiary of the August Thyssen Bank of Germany (formerly von
der Heydt's Bank A.G.). It was Thyssen's personal banking operation, and it was
affiliated with the W. A. Harriman financial interests in New York. Thyssen
reported to his Project Dustbin interrogators that:
I
chose a Dutch bank because I did not want to be mixed up with German banks in
my position, and because I thought it was better to do business with a Dutch
bank, and I thought I would have the Nazis a little more in my hands.13
Thyssen's
book I Paid Hitler, published in
1941, was purported to be written by Fritz Thyssen himself, although Thyssen
denies authorship. The book claims that funds for Hitler — about one million
marks — came mainly from Thyssen himself. I
Paid Hitler has other unsupported assertions, for example that Hitler was
actually descended from an illegitimate child of the Rothschild family.
Supposedly Hitler's grandmother, Frau Schickelgruber, had been a servant in the
Rothschild household and while there became pregnant:
...
an inquiry once ordered by the late Austrian chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss,
yielded some interesting results, owing to the fact that the dossiers of the
police department of the Austro-Hungarian monarch were remarkably complete.14
This
assertion concerning Hitler's illegitimacy is refuted entirely in a more
solidly based book by Eugene Davidson, which implicates the Frankenberger
family, not the Rothschild family.
In
any event, and more relevant from our viewpoint, the August Thyssen front bank
in Holland — i.e., the Bank voor
Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. — controlled the Union Banking Corporation in New
York. The Harrimans had a financial interest in, and E. Roland Harriman (Averell's
brother) was a director of, this Union Banking Corporation. The Union Banking
Corporation of New York City was a joint Thyssen-Harriman operation with the
following directors in 1932:15
|
E.
Roland HARRIMAN
|
Vice
president of W. A. Harriman & Co., New York
|
|
H.J.
KOUWENHOVEN
|
Nazi
banker, managing partner of August Thyssen Bank and Bank voor Handel
Scheepvaart N.V. (the transfer bank for Thyssen's funds)
|
|
J.
G. GROENINGEN
|
Vereinigte
Stahlwerke (the steel cartel which also funded Hitler)
|
|
C.
LIEVENSE
|
President,
Union Banking Corp., New York City
|
|
E.
S. JAMES
|
Partner
Brown Brothers, later Brown Brothers, Harriman & Co.
|
Thyssen arranged a credit of 250,000 marks for Hitler, through this Dutch bank affiliated with the Harrimans. Thyssen's book, later repudiated, states that as much as one million marks came from Thyssen.
Thyssen's
U.S. partners were, of course, prominent members of the Wall Street financial
establishment. Edward Henry Harriman, the nineteenth-century railroad magnate,
had two sons, W. Averell Harriman (born in 1891), and E. Roland Harriman (born
in 1895). In 1917 W. Averell Harriman was a director of Guaranty Trust Company
and he was involved in the Bolshevik Revolution.16
According to his biographer, Averell started at the bottom of the career ladder
as a clerk and section hand after leaving Yale in 1913, then "he moved steadily forward to
positions of increasing responsibility in the fields of transportation and
finance.17 In addition to his directorship in
Guaranty Trust, Harriman formed the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation in 1917,
which soon became the largest merchant fleet under American flag. This fleet
was disposed of in 1925 and Harriman entered the lucrative Russian market.18
In
winding up these Russian deals in 1929, Averell Harriman received a windfall
profit of $1 million from the usually hard-headed Soviets, who have a reputation
of giving nothing away without some present or later quid pro quo. Concurrently with these successful moves in
international finance, Averell Harriman has always been attracted by so-called
"public" service. In 1913 Harriman's "public" service began
with an appointment to the Palisades Park Commission. In 1933 Harriman was
appointed chairman of the New York State Committee of Employment, and in 1934
became Administrative Officer of Roosevelt's NRA — the Mussolini-like
brainchild of General Electric's Gerard Swope.19
There followed a stream of "public" offices, first the Lend
Lease program, then as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, later as Secretary of
Commerce.
By
contrast, E. Roland Harriman confined his activities to private business in
international finance without venturing, as did brother Averell, into
"public" service. In 1922 Roland and Averell formed W. A.
Harriman& Company. Still later Roland became chairman of the board of Union
Pacific Railroad and a director of Newsweek
magazine, Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, a member of the board
of governors of the American Red Cross, and a member of the American Museum of
Natural History.
Nazi
financier Hendrik Jozef Kouwenhoven, Roland Harriman's fellow-director at Union
Banking Corporation in New York, was managing director of the Bank voor Handel
en Scheepvaart N.V. (BHS) of Rotterdam. In 1940 the BHS held approximately $2.2
million assets in the Union Banking Corporation, which in turn did most of its
business with BHS.20 In the 1930s Kouwenhoven was also a
director of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G., the steel cartel founded with Wall
Street funds in the mid-1920s. Like Baron Schroder, he was a prominent Hitler
supporter.
Another
director of the New York Union Banking Corporation was Johann Groeninger, a
German subject with numerous industrial and financial affiliations involving
Vereinigte Stahlwerke, the August Thyssen group, and a directorship of August
Thyssen Hutte A.G.21
This
affiliation and mutual business interest between Harriman and the Thyssen
interests does not suggest that the Harrimans directly financed Hitler. On the
other hand, it does show that the Harrimans were intimately connected with
prominent Nazis Kouwenhoven and Groeninger and a Nazi front bank, the Bank voor
Handel en Scheepvaart. There is every reason to believe that the Harrimans knew
of Thyssen's support for the Nazis. In the case of the Harrimans, it is
important to bear in mind their long-lasting and intimate relationship with the
Soviet Union and the Harriman's position at the center of Roosevelt's New Deal and
the Democratic Party. The evidence suggests that some members of the Wall
Street elite are connected with, and certainly have influence with, all significant political groupings in
the contemporary world socialist spectrum — Soviet socialism, Hitler's national
socialism, and Roosevelt's New Deal socialism.
Financing Hitler in the March 1933 General Election
Putting
the Georg Bell-Deterding and the Thyssen-Harriman cases to one side, we now
examine the core of Hitler's backing. In May 1932 the so-called "Kaiserhof
Meeting" took place between Schmitz of I.G. Farben, Max Ilgner of American
I.G. Farben, Kiep of Hamburg-America Line, and Diem of the German Potash Trust.
More than 500,000 marks was raised at this meeting and deposited to the credit
of Rudolf Hess in the Deutsche Bank. It is noteworthy, in light of the
"Warburg myth" described in Chapter Ten that Max Ilgner of the
American I.G. Farben contributed 100,000 RM, or one-fifth of the total. The
"Sidney Warburg" book claims Warburg involvement in the funding of
Hitler, and Paul Warburg was a director of American I.G. Farben22
while Max Warburg was a director of I.G. Farben.
There
exists irrefutable documentary evidence of a further role of. international
bankers and industrialists in the financing of the Nazi Party and the Volkspartie for the March 1933 German
election. A total of three million Reichmarks was subscribed by prominent firms
and businessmen, suitably "washed" through an account at the Delbruck
Schickler Bank, and then passed into the hands of Rudolf Hess for use by Hitler
and the NSDAP. This transfer of funds was followed by the Reichstag fire,
abrogation of constitutional rights, and consolidation of Nazi power. Access to
the Reichstag by the arsonists was obtained through a tunnel from a house where
Putzi Hanfstaengel was staying; the Reichstag fire itself was used by Hitler as
a pretext to abolish constitutional rights. In brief, within a few weeks of the
major funding of Hitler there was a linked sequence of major events: the
financial contribution from prominent bankers and industrialists to the 1933
election, burning of the Reichstag, abrogation of constitutional rights, and
subsequent seizure of power by the Nazi Party.
The
fund-raising meeting was held February 20, 1933 in the home of Goering, who was
then president of the Reichstag, with Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht acting as
host. Among those present, according to I.G. Farben's von Schnitzler, were:
Krupp
von Bohlen, who, in the beginning of 1933, was president of the Reichsverband
der Deutschen Industrie Reich Association of German Industry; Dr. Albert
Voegler, the leading man of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke; Von Loewenfeld; Dr,
Stein, head of the Gewerkschaft Auguste-Victoria, a mine which belongs to the
IG.23
Hitler
expounded his political views to the assembled businessmen in a lengthy
two-and-one-half hour speech, using the threat of Communism and a Communist
take-over to great effect:
It
is not enough to say we do not want Communism in our economy. If we continue on
our old political course, then we shall perish .... It is the noblest task of
the leader to find ideals that are stronger than the factors that pull the
people together. I recognized even while in the hospital that one had to search
for new ideals conducive to reconstruction. I found them in nationalism, in the
value of personality, and in the denial of reconciliation between nations ....
Now
we stand before the last election. Regardless of the outcome, there will be no
retreat, even if the coming election does not bring about decision, one way or
another. If the election does not decide, the decision must be brought about by
other means. I have intervened in order to give the people once more the chance
to decide their fate by themselves ....
There
are only two possibilities, either to crowd back the opponent on constitutional
grounds, and for this purpose once more this election; or a struggle will be
conducted with other weapons, which may demand greater sacrifices. I hope the
German people thus recognize the greatness of the hour.24
After
Hitler had spoken, Krupp von Bohlen expressed the support of the assembled
industrialists and bankers in the concrete form of a three-million-mark
political fund. It turned out to be more than enough to acquire power, because
600,000 marks remained unexpended after the election.
Hjalmar
Schacht organized this historic meeting. We have previously described Schacht's
links with the United States: his father was cashier for the Berlin Branch of
Equitable Assurance, and Hjalmar was intimately involved almost on a monthly
basis with Wall Street.
The
largest contributor to the fund was I.G. Farben, which committed itself for 80
percent (or 500,000 marks) of the total. Director A. Steinke, of BUBIAG
(Braunkohlen-u. Brikett-Industrie A.G.), an I.G. Farben subsidiary, personally
contributed another 200,000 marks. In brief, 45 percent of the funds for the
1933 election came from I.G. Farben. If we look at the directors of American
I.G. Farben — the U.S. subsidiary of I.G. Farben — we get close to the roots of
Wall Street involvement with Hitler. The board of American I.G. Farben at this
time contained some of the most prestigious names among American
industrialists: Edsel B. Ford of the Ford Motor Company, C.E. Mitchell of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Walter Teagle, director of the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Georgia Warm Springs Foundation.
Paul
M. Warburg, first director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and chairman
of the Bank of Manhattan, was a Farben director and in Germany his brother Max
Warburg was also a director of I.G, Farben. H. A. Metz of I.G. Farben was also
a director of the Warburg's Bank of Manhattan. Finally, Carl Bosch of American
I.G. Farben was also a director of Ford Motor Company A-G in Germany.
Three
board members of American I.G. Farben were found guilty at the Nuremberg War
Crimes Trials: Max Ilgner, F. Ter Meer, and Hermann Schmitz. As we have noted,
the American board members — Edsel Ford, C. E. Mitchell, Walter Teagle, and
Paul Warburg — were not placed on trial at Nuremberg, and so far as the records
are concerned, it appears that they were not even questioned about their
knowledge of the 1933 Hitler fund.
Who
were the industrialists and bankers who placed election funds at the disposal
of the Nazi Party in 1933? The list of contributors and the amount of their
contribution is as follows:
|
FINANCIAL
CONTRIBUTIONS TO HITLER:
Feb.. 23-Mar. 13, 1933: |
||
|
(The
Hjalmar Schacht account at Delbruck, Schickler Bank)
|
||
|
Political
Contributions by Firms (with selected affiliated directors)
|
Amount
Pledged |
Percent
of
Firm Total |
|
Verein
fuer die Bergbaulichen Interessen (Kitdorf)
|
$600,000
|
45.8
|
|
I.G.
Farbenindustrie (Edsel Ford, C.E. Mitchell, Walter Teagle, Paul
Warburg)
|
400,000
|
30.5
|
|
Automobile
Exhibition, Berlin (Reichsverbund der Automobilindustrie S.V.)
|
100,000
|
7.6
|
|
A.E.G.,
German General Electric (Gerard Swope, Owen Young, C.H. Minor, Arthur
Baldwin)
|
60,000
|
4.6
|
|
Demag
|
50,000
|
3.8
|
|
Osram
G.m.b.H. (Owen Young)
|
40,000
|
3.0
|
|
Telefunken
Gesellsehaft ruer
drahtlose Telegraphic |
85,000
|
2.7
|
|
Accumulatoren-Fabrik
A.G.
(Quandt of A.E.G.) |
25,000
|
1.9
|
|
|
_____________
|
_____________
|
|
Total from industry
|
1,310,000
|
99.9
|
|
Plus Political
Contributions by Individual Businessmen:
|
|
|
Karl
Hermann
|
300,000
|
|
Director
A. Steinke (BUBIAG-
Braunkohlen—u. Brikett — Industrie A.G.) |
200,000
|
|
Dir.
Karl Lange (Geschaftsfuhrendes
Vostandsmitglied des Vereins Deutsches Maschinenbau—Anstalten) |
50,000
|
|
Dr.
F. Springorum (Chairman: Eisen-und Stahlwerke Hoesch A.G.)
|
36,000
|
|
Source: See Appendix for translation of original document. |
|
How
can we prove that these political payments actually took place?
The
payments to Hitler in this final step on the road to dictatorial Nazism were
made through the private bank of Delbruck Sehickler. The Delbruck Schickler
Bank was a subsidiary of Metallgesellschaft A.G. ("Metall"), an
industrial giant, the largest non-ferrous metal company in Germany, and the
dominant influence in the world's nonferrous metal 'trading. The principal
shareholders of "Metall" were
I.G. Farben and the British Metal Corporation. We might note incidentally that
the British directors on the" Metall" Aufsichsrat were Walter Gardner (Amalgamated Metal Corporation) and
Captain Oliver Lyttelton (also on the board of Amalgamated Metal and
paradoxically later in World War II to become the British Minister of
Production).
There
exists among the Nuremberg Trial papers the original transfer slips from the
banking division of I.G. Farben and other firms listed on page 110 to the
Delbruck Schickler Bank in Berlin, informing the bank of the transfer of funds
from Dresdner Bank, and other banks, to their Nationale Treuhand (National Trusteeship) account. This account was
disbursed by Rudolf Hess for Nazi Party expenses during the election.
Translation of the I.G. Farben transfer slip, selected as a sample, is as
follows:25
Translation
of I.G, Farben letter of February 27, 1933, advising of transfer of 400,000
Reichsmarks to National Trusteeship account:
I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT
Bank Department
Bank Department
Firm:
Delbruck Schickler & Co.,
BERLIN W.8
Mauerstrasse 63/65, Frankfurt (Main) 20
Our Ref: (Mention in Reply) 27 February 1933
B./Goe.
BERLIN W.8
Mauerstrasse 63/65, Frankfurt (Main) 20
Our Ref: (Mention in Reply) 27 February 1933
B./Goe.
We
are informing you herewith that we have authorized the Dresdner Bank in
Frankfurt/M., to pay you tomorrow forenoon: RM 400,000 which you will use in
favor of the account "NATIONALE TREUHAND" (National Trusteeship).
Respectfully,
I.G.
Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft
by Order:
by Order:
(Signed)
SELCK (Signed) BANGERT
By
special delivery.26
At this juncture we should take note of the efforts that have been made to direct our attention away from American financiers (and German financiers connected with American-affiliated companies) who were, involved with the funding of Hitler. Usually the blame for financing Hitler has been exclusively placed upon Fritz Thyssen or Emil Kirdorf. In the case of Thyssen this blame was widely circulated in a book allegedly authored by Thyssen in the middle of World War II but later repudiated by him.27 Why Thyssen would want to admit such actions before the defeat of Nazism is unexplained.
Emil
Kirdorf, who died in 1937, was always proud of his association with the rise of
Nazism. The attempt to limit Hitler financing to Thyssen and Kirdorf extended
into the Nuremberg trials in 1946, and was challenged only by the Soviet
delegate. Even the Soviet delegate was unwilling to produce evidence of
American associations; this is not surprising because the Soviet Union depends
on the goodwill of these same financiers to transfer much needed advanced
Western technology to the U.S.S.R.
At
Nuremberg, statements were made and allowed to go unchallenged which were
directly contrary to the known direct evidence presented above. For example,
Buecher, Director General of German General Electric, was absolved from
sympathy for Hitler:
Thyssen
has confessed his error like a man and has courageously paid a heavy penalty
for it. On the other side stand men like Reusch of the Gutehoffnungshuette,
Karl Bosch, the late chairman of the I.G. Farben Aufsichtsrat, who would very
likely have come to a sad end, had he not died in time. Their feelings were
shared by the deputy chairman of the Aufsichtsrat of Kalle. The Siemens and AEG
companies which, next to I.G. Farben, were the most powerful German concerns,
and they were determined opponents of national socialism.
I
know that this unfriendly attitude on the part of the Siemens concern to the
Nazis resulted in the firm receiving rather rough treatment. The Director
General of the AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft), Geheimrat Buecher,
whom I knew from my stay in the colonies, was anything but a Nazi. I can assure
General Taylor that it is certainly wrong to assert that the leading
industrialists as such favored Hitler before his seizure of power.28
Yet
on page 56 of this book we reproduce a document originating with General
Electric, transferring General Electric funds to the National Trusteeship
account controlled by Rudolf Hess on behalf of Hitler and used in the 1933
elections.
Similarly,
von Schnitzler, who was present at the February 1933 meeting on behalf of I.G.
Farben, denied I.G. Farben's contributions to the 1933 Nationale Treuhand:
I
never heard again of the whole matter [that of financing Hitler], but I believe
that either the buro of Goering or Schacht or the Reichsverband der Deutschen
Industrie had asked the office of Bosch or Schmitz for payment of IG's share in
the election fund. As I did not take the matter up again I not even at that
time knew whether and which amount had been paid by the IG. According to the
volume of the IG, I should estimate IG's share being something like 10 percent
of the election fund, but as far as I know there is no evidence that I.G.
Farben participated in the payments.29
As
we have seen, the evidence is incontrovertible regarding political cash
contributions to Hitler at the crucial point of the takeover of power in
Germany — and Hitler's earlier speech to the industrialists clearly revealed
that a coercive takeover was the premeditated intent.
We
know exactly who contributed, how much, and through what channels. It is
notable that the largest contributors — I.G. Farben, German General Electric
(and its affiliated company Osram), and Thyssen — were affiliated with Wall
Street financiers. These Wall Street financiers were at the heart of the
financial elite and they were prominent in contemporary American politics.
Gerard Swope of General Electric was author of Roosevelt's New Deal, Teagle was
one of NRA's top administrators, Paul Warburg and his associates at American
I.G. Farben were Roosevelt advisors. It is perhaps not an extraordinary
coincidence that Roosevelt's New Deal — called a "fascist measure" by
Herbert Hoover — should have so closely resembled Hitler's program for Germany,
and that both Hitler and Roosevelt took power in the same month of the same
year — March 1933.
Footnotes:
2Ibid, fn. (2).
3Elimination
of German Resources, p.
648. The Albert Voegler mentioned in the Kilgore Committee list of early Hitler
supporters was the German representative on the Dawes Plan Commission. Owen
Young of General Electric (see Chapter Three) was a U.S. representative for the
Dawes Plan and formulated its successor, the Young Plan.
4Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, op. cit,
6See p. 116.
7Glyn Roberts, The Most Powerful Man in the World, (New York: Covicl, Friede,
1938), p. 305.
8Ibid., p. 313.
9Ibid., p. 322.
10See Chambre
des Deputes — Debats, February 11, 1932, pp. 496-500.
11U.S. Group Control Council (Germany0
Office of the Director of Intelligence, Field Information Agency, Technical).
Intelligence Report No. EF/ME/1,4 September 1945. "Examination of Dr.
Fritz Thyssen," p, 13, Hereafter cited as Examination of Dr. Fritz
Thyssen.
13Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen.
14Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1941). p.
159.
15Taken from Bankers Directory, !932 edition, p, 2557 and Poors, Directory of Directors. J.L. Guinter and
Knight Woolley were also directors.
16See Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,
op. cit.
18For a description of these ventures,
based on State Department files, see An, tony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, Volume 1, op.
cit.
20See Elimination
of German Resources, pp. 728-30.
21For yet other connections between the
Union Banking Corp, and German enterprises, see Ibid., pp. 728-30.
22See Chapter Ten.
24Josiah E. Dubois, Jr., Generals in Grey Suits op. cit., p. 323.
25Original reproduced on page 64.
27Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, (New York: Toronto: Farrat & Rinehart, Inc.,
1941).
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