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Old July 16th, 2012 #1
Alex Linder
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Demystification of the Birth and Funding of the NSDAP
Veronica Kuzniar Clark

What exactly did the NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker's Party) represent and who were its founding members? Why and how did Adolf Hitler transform the party from an unimpressive proletariat workers’ party to a full-fledged political machine that obtained absolute power in Germany? Perhaps more important, how was it funded? We answer these questions in this introduction. But first, we begin with an examination of the early stages of the NSDAP and its recruiting process. One must understand how this process unfolded if one is to understand the NSDAP’s position on Judaism and Freemasonry as well as the prevailing social and political order of the day. Naturally, we also reveal some of the other important aspects of its early development, which necessitates a fair amount of myth busting about Hitler, including who actually gave him money.

Triumvirate: Leadership, development and unity

Adolf Hitler, contrary to his own self-myths and the myths of others, was not poor—at least not until he had drained his savings and entitlements gallivanting in Vienna. Many historians have written that Hitler simply lived day-to-day wasting both his money and time, but in so doing they overlook Hitler’s experiences and ‘life education’ that later played such an important role in the development and direction of National Socialism as well as the Second World War. The development and direction of both can be traced to Hitler’s experiences during those “lost” years.

Hitler, like so many other young German men and women of his day, fell from middle-class status into that of the “wretched proletariat.” This was something that young Hitler refused to accept. He was deeply embittered by his Vienna experiences, which offered false promises of prosperity and hope for young people with enough willpower and talent. The prevailing dissonance of the time and place in which he grew up inculcated in him a burning desire to change these circumstances, which is precisely what he did after 1933. Hitler was so resentful of the class-ridden society that was Vienna, and Austria and Europe generally, that one of his key aims throughout both the peace and war years was cultivating a system of merit. One’s birth station was not what mattered. What mattered were one’s talent, loyalty, dependability and fortitude, notably in the face of adversity and uncertainty. Hitler was able to overcome most imbedded class barriers in two distinct ways:

1. He recruited both men and women from all social classes and accordingly tailored his speech and disposition to each, depending on his/her social standing.

2. He supplanted economic valuation with racial valuation.

Let’s look at the first point. Hitler needed the broadest spectrum of German society he could get, so this meant that he needed to appeal to men, women, young, old, wealthy, poor, unemployed and employed alike. Women were amongst Hitler’s most devoted and fervent supporters in the early years. So were low-wage earners, small businessmen and foreign nobles, such as White Russian émigrés who wished to see the return of the Russian monarchy. They provided Hitler with a physical audience, elite and business connections and monetary support, most of which ended up being granted in the form of loans. Hitler needed industrialists as much as he needed the workers, elites and disenfranchised foreigners. Since his goal was to raise the station of all lower-class ethnic Germans, he had to win them all together, which required a strategy of multi-class appeal. When he met and spoke with counts, duchesses and other members of the former royalty, he addressed them in a royal manner. His etiquette, speech and personal manners proved impeccable in such company. When he met or spoke with industrialists, such as Fritz Thyssen, he tailored his behavior and manner to match that of the hopes and fears of industrialist Germany. At the same time he was careful to scale back his socialistic language in such company, so that the industrialists would not misidentify him as a Marxist-Communist. He had to convince them that he would crush Marxist-Communism and uphold their industrial power base in the face of the growing mass of disenchanted, underpaid workers who felt they were being cheated and exploited by German industry. Whenever things got economically tough, the workers suffered wage and benefit cuts. They blamed the industrialists, but Hitler saw that the industrialists were also suffering: many went bankrupt during the inflation as well as during the Great Depression. The crippling Versailles reparations forced most German industrialists and exporters into an untenable economic position, which in turn harmed German workers. This meant that Hitler had to at least hint at future German rearmament, which was covertly occurring anyway. On the other hand, Hitler had to promise the workers, his single largest and most important support base in almost every respect in the formative years, that he would not allow the state or industry to exploit them or continue treating them as automatons. We can see that balancing the wants and needs of these three core sectors of class-ridden Germany was far from simple. But Hitler did it, and nearly bloodlessly (relative to the Communist revolutions in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe).

Now to the second point: Hitler had to come up with a unifying ideology for Germanic peoples. This task seems simple in retrospect, because Germany was a homogenous society by today’s standards. However, back then this was not how the German situation was seen. Germany may have been racially homogenous, but class antagonisms were so deep-seated that few if any German elites and nobles were interested in sharing political or social power with lower-class and middle-class Germans. The Junkers (estates Lords) treated their farmhands (serfs) as second- or third-class citizens and ordered them to pack up and get out if they dared to vote against their landlord employers. According to James and Suzanne Pool's research, many of the Junkers, notably the friends of von Hindenburg, refused to discontinue living the feudal order, which helped fuel the growing mass discontent for monarchy. This only served the interests of republicans and Freemasons, both of whom wished to see the end of monarchy for good. We will discuss their motivations later. For now it is enough to say that their motives were far from benevolent. German class divisions trumped any sort of racial or ethnic solidarity. Not surprisingly, one finds that the desire to unite all Germans as racial comrades was a desire shared almost entirely amongst the lower and middle classes, and even many middle-class Germans did everything they could to cling to their bourgeois life station, even if it meant keeping the lower-classes downtrodden. As one can see, Hitler’s goal was anything but simple.

How, then, did Hitler unite Germans? And how successful was he? Hitler united Germans by invoking an ideological concept similar to Italy’s Romanita, as espoused by Benito Mussolini. Hitler’s concept was Nordicism: the basic, simplified premise of which was that all Germanic peoples were united by their Nordic racial component, and because they were united by this common “race soul” or blood component, how could they fight or be divided? While such a unifying idea sounded feasible and reasonable to many, some resisted nonetheless. The Junkers, former nobility, and many other business elites in Germany saw Hitler as nothing other than a lowly former corporal who had no clout given his petit bourgeois (lower middle-class) upbringing. Hitler was only partially successful in uniting all Germans as Volksgenossen. His lack of complete success in this regard, an unattainable goal to be sure, later proved to be his undoing. Elites amongst the officer corps did immeasurable damage to Hitler and his war effort, but the story of their treachery and sabotage is beyond the scope of this discussion.

Might Hitler have been more successful had he been more racially inclusive early on? Not necessarily. Mussolini, unlike Hitler, was not racially exclusive at any point and expended a great deal of effort and time attempting to recruit non-Italians to the Italian fascist cause. He was largely unsuccessful, especially in Ethiopia—this in spite of the fact that he had Ethiopians trained as pilots (before the Tuskegee Airmen even came into being) and promised them higher status within a Fascist Italian Empire. We may deduce from this example that Hitler having merely extended his hand openly in the beginning to non-Germans would not have guaranteed National Socialism’s political or military success. Mussolini did so and his tolerant hand was rejected. Indeed the U.S. and Britain did not win the Second World War due to non-white conscription, but because they supported and funded the Soviet war machine and were willing to bomb Germany indiscriminately. Anyway, this brings us back to our main point, which is that unifying a body of people, regardless of whether it is homogenous or diverse, is no easy task. Hitler was only able to convince the lower and middle classes that racial value must supersede economic (class) value. Most of the German elites were never won over to his Nordicism.

So, what does all of this mean? First, it means that a party that wishes to succeed in a Western Liberal-Democratic context must appeal to women and men both, citizens of all ages, and all social classes. A sensible and serious leader and party cannot afford to leave any group out. Naturally this all depends on the individual nation and citizenry in question, as Hitler’s brand of politics and leadership were formed with a specific time, culture, people and place in mind. It was not intended for export, but for adaptation in multiple contexts. Hitler’s brand of politics was in fact largely modeled after Mussolini’s as well as the leadership of the Austrian mayor Karl Lueger.

Second, it means that the masses are more important to a party’s success than the elites, because of their numbers. Only the masses have the power to invoke fear in the upper-class by threatening to support violent revolutionary parties and organizations, which are often led and funded by hostile fifth-columnists. The Communist Party (KPD) was the only party besides Hitler’s that evoked genuine fear in the elite classes of Germany. Hitler and the NSDAP could not be ignored for the very reason that they, besides the Marxist-Communists, had the largest mass following in Germany at the time. Industrialists could not afford to anger or rebuff Hitler and the NSDAP; if they did, then Hitler’s followers would quickly have swelled the ranks of the Communists or perhaps have even overthrown him, as Ernst Röhm and many SA members wished to do. Hitler’s party was the only non-Communist, nationalist party that offered the lower and middle classes a better standing in German society. Given Hitler’s ability to keep the overwhelming majority of his followers in line and loyal meant that he alone could prevent a transitional bloodbath, which is what most of the upper-class Germans feared the most. And this is exactly what he did. What’s important to bear in mind, however, is that Hitler needed a credible threat to maintain his personal and political leverage over the upper classes and big business. Without the Communists to threaten them via mass upheaval and bloodshed, the industrialists and former nobility had little reason other than patriotism to support Hitler and the NSDAP.

Third, a citizenry that wishes to remain united needs a party that can accomplish this. Bavarians wanted to secede from Germany and become an independent state. Big business demanded an end to the Junker estates that squandered numerous government bailouts and demanded trade tariffs that harmed German industry. The Junkers did not care whether the industrialists suffered, so long as their estates were still in their name and they could live a lavish lifestyle of luxury at the German taxpayers’ expense. To mediate such divisiveness, Hitler invoked Nordicism, which called on Germans to recognize and value their blood ties instead of their social standing (based on wealth). This unifying ideology provided Hitler with the necessary means to develop a system of merit: one could rise to the top of National Socialist society regardless of one’s parents’ or personal finances, because one was equal to all other Germans from the racial point-of-view. Hitler’s German racialism and anti-Semitism were the practical means for achieving classless unity among formerly divided Germans. Hitler used a similar approach later on with the Waffen-SS. He turned an exclusively German organizational concept (the Allgemeine SS) into an international, multiethnic idea by uniting everyone who participated against Jewish-Bolshevism, the enemy of “all peoples.”


Hitler salutes marching National Socialists in Weimar, October 1930.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-10541 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de (http://www.creativecommons.org/licen...0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons


Initial member recruitment

Like any grassroots party, the NSDAP developed organically from amongst a handful of hardcore ideologues, the primary catalyst having been Adolf Hitler. But the NSDAP did not spring up on its own; it instead arose from out of a party that already had a platform, leadership core, and small committed following. This was the German Workers’ Party led by Anton Drexler. Hitler was actually appointed by the Army to spy on the German Workers’ Party. The Army was interested in two things: locating nationalists for its own designs and rooting out Communists who threatened to turn Germany into a subservient satellite of Moscow. Hitler’s speaking skills and interest in politics led the Army to select him for this covert task. He took a liking to Drexler and many of his ideas, so he finally signed up and was issued a membership card with his name and membership number on it, a tradition that Hitler maintained in his NSDAP. While Hitler began his political career as the propagandist for the Workers’ party, he was quick to identify the party’s main problems: it appealed to too few and had no outreach venue other than speaking engagements, which were often drab. He therefore focused on developing his own talents, which surpassed Drexler’s, and forming his own designs for the Workers’ party; hence the birth of the NSDAP. Hitler was quick to capitalize on Drexler’s connections to wealthy Thule Society members. He did not join Thule, but requested their patronage. They alone significantly enhanced the potential for what was now his party to appeal to upper-class Germans, who, in turn, also helped fund the party. After he quit the Army, Hitler threw himself into the development of the NSDAP with unbounded determination.

While Drexler and his core focused entirely on winning over German workers, Hitler had eyes for larger audiences and outreach. His relationships with White Russian émigrés, wealthy Thule members, and especially Gottfried Feder (economist) and Dietrich Eckart (philosopher and writer) proved invaluable in his acquisition of the bankrupt Völkischer Beobachter (VB). Feder together with two other early NSDAP members owned 30,000 shares of the VB. Dietrich Eckart was able to obtain a loan for RM 60,000 from the sympathetic General Ritter von Epp to acquire the VB. The rest of the RM 120,000 price tag came from an industrialist named Dr. Gottfried Grandel, who was won over by Hitler’s personal appeal to him. Eckart likely helped out too, along with Dr. Gutberlet (who pledged RM 5,000).

According to the Pools, Hitler’s early supporters came from a wide range of classes, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Numerous wealthy White Russian émigrés, who had Thule contacts, formed an alliance with the NSDAP and allegedly raised “vast sums of money” for Hitler—i.e. according to an official 1923 file note. There was Henry Ford, who was anti-Jewish and wished to spread his message to receptive nations. Benito Mussolini’s personal agents were known to have established contact with NSDAP members in Germany, likely in order to arrange the transfer of financial support from the Duce. The Russian Grand Duchess Victoria, who was pro-monarchy and anti-Bolshevik, gave Hitler money. Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell Corporation offered Hitler vast amounts of money in 1931, ‘32 and ‘33 in exchange for a guarantee that he would regain his expropriated oil interests from the Bolsheviks at some future point in time. The amount was likely between 30 and 55 million pounds sterling. Deterding was so pro-German that he ended up marrying a National Socialist woman and even moved to Germany. He, like so many other German elites, realized that only an assertive foreign policy could secure Germany’s economic survival in a world in which France and England had a monopoly over one-quarter of the globe and were determined to crush Germany’s global competitiveness.

The Germans had tried everything else, including complying with the Versailles reparations, which was de facto theft. This “treaty” was in fact designed with one goal in mind: the permanent crippling of German industrial competition. Ernst Röhm was a fervent German nationalist who channeled Army funds to the NSDAP via various front organizations. The Thule Society, which was pan-Germanic and nationalist, not only contributed members to the NSDAP but helped it raise a lot of money. The two German jewelers Josef Füss and Herr Gahr supported Hitler. A certain Mr. Pöschl, a small businessman, gave to Hitler early on. Quirin Diestl was another early supporter who gave small funds. Oscar Koerner, a toy shop owner, likewise gave money to the NSDAP. Dr. Friedrich Krohn, a dentist, gave as much as he could. Adolf Müller helped the NSDAP keep the VB going by endlessly extending credit to Hitler. Ms. Hoffmann, the widow of a headmaster, contributed regularly. Numerous friends of General Ludendorff, a Thule member, provided the NSDAP with funding. A significant number of prominent foreigners and German nationals living or working in Austria, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden and America gave Hitler money, much of it via Winifred Wagner, Kurt Lüdecke and Hungarian nationalists like Gömbös. The German Free Corps members gave Hitler money, and so did many Stahlhelm members. Several right-wing German business interests, such as Emil Kirdorf of the covert Ruhrlade group, gave Hitler money, along with many business interests that usually supported Alfred Hugenberg (a man who tried to use Hitler for his own ends). There was also General Ritter von Epp, who helped Dietrich Eckart and the NSDAP purchase the VB; Dr. Emil Gansser, who had connections to wealthy Protestants; Admiral Schröder, a former naval commander; Baron Sebottendorf, who had connections to J. F. Lehmann (a Thule member, financier and publisher for the German Navy) and sympathetic naval officers; Herr Schaffer, who acquired weapons for Hitler’s SA; Kurt Lüdecke, and through him two Jewish arms dealers who were either 1) not privy to who Lüdecke was or 2) had no reason to fear Hitler (this was the early 1920s after all); possibly the Duke of Anhalt and Count Fugger; Ernst Hanfstaengl, a wealthy Harvard graduate with numerous American connections and some wealth of his own; the wealthy Magda Quandt, who married Joseph Goebbels and who had elite connections; Fritz Thyssen, who later denied that he gave substantial sums to Hitler and Göring, in 1929 and off and on throughout the 1930s, both of whom he liked very much; and so forth.

No Warburgs. No Rothschilds. No Rockefellers. While the Rockefellers indirectly came into Hitler’s financial sphere by way of Standard Oil technical investments and the Warburgs via I. G. Farben and J. H. Stein later on, neither gave Hitler any financial support before 1933. And neither directly supported or paid Hitler at any point in time. The Sidney Warburg story is pure fabrication. Fritz Thyssen and some of Hugenberg’s heavy industrial connections, not James Warburg, gave Hitler substantial monetary gifts in 1929 (at least RM 1,250,000) and Deterding and several German coal companies took care of Hitler in the early 1930s. While Hitler spent a vast amount on campaigning, he was by no means rolling in untraceable money. All of his funding was carefully accounted for and most of it came from VB advertising; party dues, insurance, and speaking fees; Gregor Strasser’s left-wing faction, which received RM 10,000 per month in 1931; the good will of VB publisher Adolf Müller; and the financial frugality of party treasurer Franz Schwarz, whose meticulous party financial records were destroyed. The Americans interrogated him so brutally that he died in 1946 in British captivity. His records denoting even Hitler’s anonymous donors never turned up anywhere. The Pools suspect that the American occupiers destroyed them.

As for Goebbels’s remark on 17 January 1932 that the finances of the party “suddenly improved,” this was not exactly true. The truth is that the party’s credit line suddenly improved, and this was thanks to the maneuverings of Franz von Papen and Baron Kurt von Schröder with his syndicate of investors, including a number of prominent heavy industrialists, the Hamburg-America Steamship Line, the Stein Bank of Cologne, Commerz und Privat Bank, the Gelsenkirchen Mine Company, Deutsche Bank, Reichskredit-Gesellschaft Bank, Allianz Insurance, members of the potash industry, the Brabag Coal Company, Deutsches Erdöl, and a number of other brown-coal industrialists. While Hitler tolerated fifth-column banks like M. M. Warburg and the Temple Bank (a special account created for the Temple Society by the Reichsbank to fund Ha’avara emigration), he eventually restricted and regulated their business opportunities and forced them to assist with financing Jewish emigration. Hitler’s goal was to increasingly inhibit and thereby financially squeeze the foreign banks until they were unable to exist any longer and had to relocate outside Germany—the same policy he employed to encourage Jewish emigration and business closures. One such example was the Germanization (i.e. German takeover) of two Jewish ironworks plants in the Rhön region in 1937.

Moving on to the actual recruitment process, potential recruits were approached on the streets and at meetings and speaking engagements. They were given flyers or pamphlets. Sometimes Hitler or other core members of the party were invited to speak or converse privately with industrialists or nobles who were interested in a non-Communist, nationalist party. Contrary to myths like that concerning Sidney Warburg, Hitler and the right-wing faction of the NSDAP did not receive as much industrial or banker funding, before 1933, as the Strasser brothers, the Social Democrats (SPD) or even Hugenberg’s Nationalist Party. The reason why Hitler and the NSDAP never received the same level of financial or moral support early on was three-fold: (a) the industrialists and many Junkers did not trust Hitler given his socialist stance on many issues; (b) most industrialists and Junkers were not financially threatened enough to back a revolutionary party like Hitler’s (they were still satisfied with the status quo); and (c) they were leery of his anti-Jewish stance.

Back to recruitment: most potential recruits and financial supporters heard about Hitler and the NSDAP via word of mouth. Nothing else was as effective as this. When men like Scheubner-Richter, Schacht, Borsig, Kirdorf and Thyssen recommended the NSDAP and personally endorsed Hitler, wealthy and other upper- and middle-class Germans were willing to seriously consider Hitler and his party. Hitler was invited to speak to heavy industrialists in 1927 by word of mouth in fact. He even wrote a secret pamphlet intended only for this industrial-capitalist audience, which they then passed around to others. Besides active word-of-mouth campaigning, the NSDAP also placed posters everywhere they could, promoted speaking engagements and other party activities and viewpoints in their newspaper, sold various odds and ends to raise small funds (e.g. various items like soap with NSDAP packaging), and sent wealthier members abroad to raise funds from German expats and foreign sympathizers. Kurt Lüdecke excelled at this form of campaigning.

In the very beginning, Hitler and the NSDAP targeted veterans, farmers, workers, young men, noblemen and -women, small businessmen and -women and pensioners. These were the social classes who were initially the most receptive, due to the economy and prevailing anti-monarchism, but later on Hitler’s support base included wealthy elites, heavy industrialists, fascist and monarchist foreigners, landed Junkers, veterans’ organizations, the German Army and Navy and even Montagu Norman, a prominent English banker and personal friend of Hjalmar Schacht who, according to both his private secretary Ernest Skinner and Émile Moreau, despised Jews, the French and Roman Catholics. He unabashedly refused to assist France’s treasury with anything and proved willing and able to arrange financing for the NSDAP by way of his connections to Bruno von Schröder (Schroder Bank), Kurt von Schröder (Stein Bank) and the Bank of England (F. C. Tiarks and M. Norman himself). Norman had strong sympathy for the Germans which dated back to his days as a student in Dresden, and naturally offered to financially assist and thereby stabilize the new government that his friend Schacht had openly supported since 1931. Since Hitler was hostile to France (he saw the French as Foreign Enemy Number One), friendly to Britain (which he did not feel was a threat), and discriminatory towards Jews, the three things that Norman found favorable, he recommended that Kurt von Schröder extend credit to Hitler’s party, which now controlled the government. Schacht was Hitler’s de facto lifeline in this respect, a nationalist German banker who had his own designs for German recovery, but who was also personally impressed with Hitler’s speeches and mass appeal, which no other politician possessed.

As for Hitler’s initial support, many farmers were burdened by debt, and most, including landed Junkers, felt threatened by Communist expropriation and insufficient protective agricultural tariffs. The veterans were receptive because they felt betrayed by the ruling class, especially the liberal-democrats of the SPD, and because they had a difficult time finding work. Workers, who were mostly young men, were receptive because they felt they were being exploited by the business class, but primarily because they were the most negatively affected by the inflation and unemployment. Pensioners on fixed incomes were receptive to Hitler’s socialist stance. Noblemen and -women were interested in Hitler because he opposed Freemasonry and expropriation of their landed estates, and because he hinted at restoration of the monarchy. Additionally, all of these groups generally opposed Marxist-Communism. Most of the German masses were not interested in a revolutionary bloodbath or agricultural collectivism, but economic and social security as well as justice and prosperity for themselves; the German elites did not support expropriation and collectivization. Hitler’s main opposition in the formative years came from the Communists, who denounced him as a tool of capitalism and from the former nobility; the heavy industrialists, who distrusted his socialism and the SA (they feared the SA was nothing but a Communistic horde); and the left-wing faction within his own party, who questioned Hitler’s financial sources and pro-business stance.

When someone requested to join the NSDAP, one paid one’s initial annual dues and was then given a membership card and asked to perform some service or task for the party. This could be anything from putting up posters before speaking engagements to spreading the word by simply talking about the NSDAP or handing out flyers on street corners and at beer halls. After the Hitler-Strasser break, he or she was asked to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Vetting was likely performed by those members doing the actual talking and recruiting in the streets, as there was no known formal vetting procedure. As long as a person paid his annual dues and served the party loyally, he or she was trusted. Those who wished to break with the party were actually told to leave by Hitler himself at a rally that took place after the Strasser and Stennes affairs. We’ll revisit this topic later on.

Along these lines, Kurt Lüdecke, Otto Wagener and Ernst Röhm played leading roles in arming, training and drilling SA men. Their personal fundraising; their secret dealings with the German Army (Reichswehr), which had many prominent sympathizers of the NSDAP and SA; and Lüdecke’s connections to black-market Jewish arms dealers proved essential to building a credible paramilitary threat to the status quo. The government in Berlin tended to ignore SA violence against Communists because it opposed a Communist takeover. Also, Hitler’s party supported German national unity at all costs, so Hitler and his SA were worth tolerating to prevent Bavarian secession. Hitler’s real bargaining base was his SA and the masses. Without both, he could afford to be ignored by the elites, government and industry; however with both he was a true threat, like the Communists. Lüdecke, Wagener and Röhm all led, at one point or another, regular drilling and paramilitary basic training at a large hall funded by party members and various supporters. Marching in formation and drills also took place in the forests and countryside when possible, but mostly it occurred in the party’s own rented hall or on a wealthy sympathizer’s private estate. Fortunately for unemployed and poor members, the party paid for everyone’s uniforms.

When SA and SS ranks were introduced, the requirements were loyalty and leadership aptitude. The SS consisted of men handpicked by Hitler himself. Thus, he vetted them personally. As a matter of fact, Hitler usually personally appointed leaders to their positions even in the SA. He recalled Röhm from Bolivia, for instance, to reorganize and lead the SA. Hitler tended to choose people who he felt would resist falling prey to groupthink. Historians have tended to characterize this as Hitler’s “divide and rule” policy, but in-depth study of the party’s early development suggests instead that Hitler chose people who would (a) not challenge or question his leadership, and (b) not fall prey to the “yes man” temptation. This appointment procedure did two things: it prevented serious intraparty division by subordinating all to Hitler himself, while at the same time it encouraged intraparty rivalries, which prevented groupthink. Leaders could disagree and even challenge one another’s authority without destroying the party. Hitler based promotion solely on performance, not status. This tendency increased later on during the war especially after Hitler established the NSFO (National Socialist Commanding Officer Corps). This NS-high command was likely enacted to replace or take over the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). Hitler wanted select NSFO officers to undergo a 4- to 18-hour course in political-ideological instruction. He himself appointed the head of the NSFO, Hermann Reinecke, in December 1944.

The NSDAP expanded into cities and states outside of Munich (Bavaria), where it had its Brown House headquarters, by appointing certain members to run party operations and perform party services in their own states, cities, towns and villages. The most well-known example of an NSDAP member-cum-leader who acquired almost enough personal power, financial backing and mass following to challenge Hitler himself was Gregor Strasser. Hitler was able to prevent a crisis from developing with his gifts for clever maneuvering and personal appeal, but such risks are inherent in any organization that becomes as powerful as the NSDAP. And they are risks that must be taken if a party’s leadership wishes it to develop and grow. Talented, committed and qualified speakers and leaders were appointed to run operations in every location possible. But Berlin NSDAP members also traveled around giving speeches and lectures and soliciting financial support. All speaking engagements required admittance fees. Hitler himself was constantly traveling and meeting with workers and elites alike to recruit new members and bolster his finances.

At the end of 1920, the NSDAP had about 3,000 members. Membership then grew from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928. In August 1931 the NSDAP created its own intelligence and security sector. Heinrich Himmler established the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and Reinhard Heydrich was appointed head of the organization, which was kept separate from the SS (Schutzstaffel). By the time of the Strasser crisis, the SA was some 400,000 members strong and the party itself had grown to 2 million by 1933. In 1932, it was large enough to achieve control of 37% of the Reichstag.

Here are the election results from 1920 to 1933:

Political Parties in the Reichstag
June
1920
May
1924
Dec.
1924
May
1928
Sep.
1930
July
1932
Nov.
1932
Mar.
1933

Communist Party (KPD)
4
62
45
54
77
89
100
81

Social Democratic Party (SPD)
102
100
131
153
143
133
121
120

Catholic Center Party (BVP)
65
81
88
78
87
97
90
93

Nationalist Party (DNVP)
71
95
103
73
41
37
52
52

National Socialist Party (NSDAP)
-
-
-
12
107
230
196
288

Other Parties
98
92
73
121
122
22
35
23

Adapted from James E. and Suzanne Pool. Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power 1919 – 1933 p. 494.

One can see that the NSDAP lost most of its former 230 seats as of July 1932 to the even more radical-revolutionary Communist Party (KPD) in November 1932, not to conservative Catholics or social-democrats. The conservative nationalists (DNVP) only gained 15 seats. These results, contrary to most historiography, do not imply the demise of the NSDAP, but the masses’ disaffection with any party that was not willing to promise sweeping social and economic change for the majority, even if change meant bloodshed. Hitler and the NSDAP were not viewed as extreme enough, so they lost seats to the KPD! This alarmed men like Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen so much that they were finally willing to give Hitler the opportunity to become chancellor.

He actually should have received the chancellorship in July 1932 when his party had the most seats in the Reichstag, but the industrialists and noblemen surrounding General Schleicher, Franz von Papen and President Hindenburg opposed his appointment to the chancellorship. So much for James Warburg’s and the Rothschilds’ “magical funding.”

Hitler faced so much resistance at this stage that he, like others, resorted to blackmail. Hitler arranged a private meeting with President Hindenburg’s son Oskar, during which he is suspected to have threatened to expose his father’s role in the repeated taxpayer bailouts of the Junkers’ mismanaged, bankrupted estates. Since blackmail and intrigue had been used to cheat Hitler of his due appointment, he decided that he could also play such a game. Hindenburg appointed him chancellor shortly thereafter, which most historians claim was at the behest of von Papen. We see that von Papen’s desire to prevent a Communist majority by giving Hitler the chancellorship was only partly why Hindenburg appointed him. Hitler won, but not because he received covert funding. Franz von Papen continued to intrigue against Hitler and urged industrialists to withdraw their financial support of the NSDAP! The goal of this so-called “cabinet of barons” was to give Hitler just enough power to satisfy him personally without actually allowing him to attain a majority strong enough to overthrow the status quo, but just strong enough to prevent a Communist majority.

Given this context of stalemate, the speed of the NSDAP’s growth in just 6 years and its subsequent attainment of absolute power were only possible with an authoritarian leader in a crooked political situation in which blackmail, corruption and political sleight-of-hand were the order of the day. What had started as a democratic-style workers’ party with a simple executive committee to which Hitler was appointed in the early 1900s became an authoritarian-style organization with its own uniforms, offices, training facilities, insurance company, merchandise, newspaper, propaganda machine, army (the SA) and security apparatus (SS and SD). This was nothing short of impressive and most of the credit for its success goes to those leaders and members like Hitler, Hess, Gansser, Eckart, Funk, Schwarz, Feder, Keppler, Himmler, Rosenberg, Goebbels, the Strassers (before 1932), Scheubner-Richter, Hanfstaengl, Lüdecke, Göring and Röhm, all of whom literally devoted their lives to the party.

NSDAP events were staged as often as they could be afforded. The newspaper was of course always available—it was a daily—so the public and members always knew what was going on from day to day. Hitler gave speeches and met with important wealthy persons almost non-stop after his release from prison. He was keen enough to purchase motor vehicles, which were rare in those days. Speedy travel was vital to defeating rival parties like the Communists, who still had to walk to their various speaking engagements and meetings. The NSDAP’s doors, so to speak, were always open to receive new recruits. Interested persons either signed up at simple on-site recruitment centers or they mailed their applications to the party’s headquarters in Munich.

Inconvenient facts about Hitler and the NSDAP

The following is a list of important facts gleaned from the Pools’ Who Financed Hitler. This list clarifies and summarizes our introduction to the NSDAP’s development, support and financing. More importantly, this list exposes numerous myths associated with Hitler and the NSDAP, such as Hitler’s “militatarism,” NSDAP funding via Paul or Sidney (James) Warburg and the Rothschilds, and Hitler’s unpopularity amongst most Germans.

· Gustav Stresemann was as militarily inclined as Adolf Hitler. Thus the idea that Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship meant war in future is moot.

· Upper-class hostages, including members of Thule, were literally lined up and murdered in 1918 by the Communists. A total of 12 hostages were shot in a schoolyard in Munich.

· The Pools noted that since the German economy was not harmful to most industrialists’ profits overall, they as a group wished to uphold the status quo. And that was the problem with them from the perspective of revolutionary parties like Hitler’s, as well as the impoverished, unemployed millions.

· Hitler and Hess, not Göring and Goebbels as claimed by “Sidney Warburg,” solicited money in 1929. German industrialist Emil Kirdorf likely gave the NSDAP money at this time.

· Radek, Levine and Axelrod, all Communists, were Jewish. These three men and the terror they inflicted upon Fritz Thyssen and his father personally, including imprisonment and death threats, changed Thyssen’s life. From that point on he supported Hitler, and fervently so.

· French martial law and Ruhr resource demands were too much for Fritz Thyssen. He was arrested and fined 300,000 gold marks for encouraging German workers to passively resist French military occupation. The French opened fire on these German workers killing and wounding hundreds.

· Thyssen downplayed his support of the National Socialists. He gave 1,250,000 Reichsmarks between 1928 and 1929. This was the exact timing of Sidney Warburg’s alleged covert cash transfers to Hitler.

· Kirdorf had Jewish friends and bank connections, including Dr. Arthur Salomonsohn. In spite of these big money connections, Kirdorf gave very little to Hitler and the NSDAP.

· Thyssen and Kirdorf saw little hope for Germany. France and England had a monopoly over one quarter of the world and were determined to crush Germany’s global competitiveness.

· The Versailles Dictate was Germany’s economic end—really, truly and totally.

· The “Treaty” was actually an economic weapon designed to permanently cripple Germany as an industrial competitor. Germany’s total reparations payments amounted to $32 billion, which equates to $425 billion today, or $6.6 billion per year.

· The NSDAP was not put into power by international Jewish interests as some researchers suggest. The NSDAP fought for its power. For example, in just a single street battle between the National Socialists and Communists, 300 men were killed. Hitler struggled for 14 years to achieve power and was nearly shot dead during his attempted putsch, facts which challenge this thesis.

· The I. G. Farben conglomerate and high finance never factored into the Hitler-NSDAP equation before 1933.

· According to the Pools, since nothing Germany did had worked to relieve the unemployment and trade imbalance, an imperialist policy was necessary for Germany’s economic survival. She had earnestly tried everything else.

· Big business’s main motive for supporting Hitler and the NSDAP was to prevent Communism at all costs.

· General von Seeckt operated under a façade of pro-democracy (like Hitler) until the day when all democratic chains could be broken. Indeed the intellectual demilitarization of Germany was, to von Seeckt, the greatest threat of all.

· Russo-German military collaboration was championed by von Seeckt, not Hitler, and started in 1921. (Before the Treaty of Rapallo). Von Seeckt was instrumental in this collaboration. Lest we overlook it: Hitler, and no one else, had a reserve army—the SA. Thus the years 1921 to 1922 saw some degree of Russian funding of the NSDAP via the Reichswehr’s secret Russian collaboration efforts.

· The Allies destroyed Krupp’s industry, which provided Krupp with a key motive for later supporting the NSDAP. Krupp, with the help of foreign subsidies, established anonymous companies to carry out arms construction and testing in neutral countries long before Hitler came to power.

· Stresemann, like Hitler, wanted to see Germany reemerge as a world power. Neither von Seeckt nor Stresemann was a liberal-democrat (i.e. neither supported democracy, which was imposed upon Germany against her will.)

· Holding companies were used to rebuild the German Navy in the early 1920s, long before Hitler’s ascension.

· “Liberal-Democratic” Weimar Germany was providing covert assistance to German rearmament efforts in every way possible. Krupp was subsidized by the Weimar regime, not by Hitler.

· Given the industrial context of that time period, Thyssen’s industry would die without total rearmament. This was a consequence of Germany’s overdependence on industrialization,. As suggested by Lawrence Dennis in The Dynamics of War and Revolution, a developed nation like Germany had the choice to contract severely in every way, including population-wise, or expand. Most German leaders opted for the latter.

· German rearmament began earnestly “production-wise” in 1928—five full years before Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor.

· The Social Democrats, SPD, supported rearmament.

· Rearmament does not prove that Germany was planning aggressive warfare or that Germany was “militaristic.”

· Both France’s and Poland’s militaries were threatening to encircle and occupy Germany in 1919.

· All of the German power elite had the same goal, only different methods of achieving that goal—to reestablish Germany as a world power. However, only Adolf Hitler understood international power politics or “economy by the sword.” Hitler asked the industrialists in 1927: Does it benefit our nationality now or in the future, or will it be injurious to it? Expediency is the basis of all alliances.

· France, not England, was Enemy Number One in Hitler’s view.

· Political bribes were not illegal in the Weimar Republic.

· The rule of special interest groups and the power of money (with which to buy Reichstag deputies) destroyed the Weimar Republic’s chances of survival. Both are, in fact, inherent features of all democracies, which intentionally give the masses the illusion of power and voice in government to prevent their discontent.

· The SPD was the political instrument of the trade unions and the bureaucracy of organized labor. All of the rest, save the KPD, were big business’s interest groups incognito.

· Walther Rathenau set the Weimar “big business” precedent, not Hitler or the NSDAP.

· The Ruhrlade was a secret society of heavy industrialists, with 12 members, who met secretly to set joint economic and political policy.

· Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party had far more big business and discreet financial backing and prestige than the NSDAP. But not even Hugenberg was an industrialist's tool. He opposed the Anglo-Freemasonic Dawes Plan while several of his industrialist backers supported the plan.

· The Anglo-Freemasonic Young Plan was enacted 11 years after the war, which demanded that Germans pay “reparations” for the next 59 years!

· Hugenberg and Strasser both underestimated Hitler. He was no one’s “pawn.” This was already evident around the time of the passing of the Freedom Law in 1929, right around the time of Sidney Warburg’s alleged cash promise to Hitler. The Warburg myth was used to discredit Hitler by the Strasser-Stennes faction of the NSDAP. Stennes, with 80,000 SA men under his command, seized the NSDAP headquarters in Berlin and occupied it to destroy Hitler, but Hitler was able to largely circumvent recapturing the headquarters via violent means by establishing his right of ownership of the Berlin headquarters. He did this simply by presenting his ownership proof to the courts after the holidays ended. The police were therefore obliged to retake the headquarters for him and Captain Walther Stennes’ attempted anti-Hitler coup fell apart. Interestingly, Stennes was never even an NSDAP member.

· Hitler used Karl Lüger’s methods: utilize the existing implements of power.

· Thyssen admitted to funding the NSDAP. His continuous support and Hitler’s strategic alliance with Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party meant money for Hitler in 1929—none of which was from Sidney Warburg.

· After 1930, the Völkischer Beobachter generated day-to-day revenue and paid off all of its outstanding debts.

· There was no “secret” funding early on. Max Amann mortgaged all of the NSDAP’s property and forestalled all financial obligations until after the elections in 1930, which surprised everyone, including Hitler. Rallies and occasional donations by the wealthy supplemented funds after September 1930.

· NSDAP memberships swelled due to the “bandwagon effect” after the party’s huge electoral success. The VB also started generating substantial advertising revenue. At one point Hitler actually let his prohibitionist idealism go too far with the brewers and they canceled all their VB ads. Fellow party members had to coax them back.

· Adolf Müller helped the Nazis with the VB, the only paper that did not drop in circulation after the Depression began.

· The United States likely destroyed Party Treasurer Franz Schwarz’s records, which were meticulous: Hitler had even told him to denote names of anonymous donors! All of the records are gone. Americans brutally interrogated Schwarz and likely murdered him in 1946. The Anglo-Americans were determined to incriminate only German big business for funding the NSDAP at the IMT. Given that the United States did this, one suspects that there was more American-based funding than just Henry Ford and Teutonia behind the NSDAP, but what that was we will never know. The Anglos were likely trying to cover up American industrial involvement with NS-Germany after 1933, such as that of Standard Oil which we’ve already discussed.

· Generals, namely Alfred Jodl, were won over by Hitler at his Leipzig trial.

· Big business was reassured by Hitler’s total party control and non-Communist stance after he ordered his 107 deputies to vote against the Nazis’ own “left-wing” bill, introduced by Strasser et al.

· The German economy was controlled by the government and a private bank cartel 2,500 banks strong before Hitler assumed power.

· In the summer of 1931, the Ruhrlade made its first contribution to the NSDAP, and Göring was being paid by Thyssen at this time as well.

· Frau Quandt joined the NSDAP in 1930 and brought lots of wealthy influence with her.

· Hitler recalled Ernst Röhm in 1930 to lead the SA. He had been living in Bolivia.

· Kaiser Wilhelm and his sons supported the NSDAP in an effort to try and convince Hitler to reestablish the monarchy.

· Brüning was a de facto dictator but was failing, because the Depression was worsening.

· The Credit-Anstalt, a Rothschild bank branch in Austria, experienced a devastating run in May 1931, which crashed all German banks and eventually even London’s banks. So much for the Rothschilds’ endless, untouchable wealth!

· Freemasonic France and America exacerbated the German collapse by recalling short-term loans to Germany and Austria and with the passing of the Hawley-Smoot tariff.

· The German People’s Party, which enjoyed more conservative support than Hitler, demanded constitutional revision terminating the parliamentary system and giving Hindenburg the power to appoint a government.

· Other nationalist parties got a lot more money and support than Hitler, but they maintained the status quo and displeased the masses immensely. Thus only Hitler had the masses’ support and could therefore not be brushed aside or ignored, not even by the moneyed elite.

· Big business, namely industrialists, was paying the NSDAP by 1931.

· The Harzburg Front organized and rallied in 1931. Hjalmar Schacht gave a speech at this event and shockingly declared that the Weimar government was truly and utterly bankrupt. He, more than anyone else that day including Hitler, brought incalculable benefit to the NSDAP. He was after all the man who had saved the German economy before by introducing the Rentenmark.

· Hitler had his man Keppler meet informally with businessmen to create the NSDAP’s economic policy. This was known as the “Circle of Friends for the Economy.” This is actually where Reinhardt comes into play, the man behind the Reinhardt Plan which Hitler enacted shortly after coming to power. Reinhardt, not Hitler or an NSDAP member, openly called for rearmament in 1932.

· Walther Funk met with Kurt von Schröder, a partner in J. H. Stein of Cologne. A man with great skill for negotiation, Funk was able to “satisfy Schröder” of Hitler’s “good will” towards “international banking.”

· Mussolini gave unofficial support to the NSDAP. France backed the Bavarian separatists while Italy supported the Bavarian nationalists. Hitler was the only nationalist who opposed France and was willing to let Italy keep control of the South Tyrol (with a population of 250,000 Germans).

· Hitler received Italian fascist funding, which only came to light in 1932. Mussolini also sent the NSDAP weapons in the 1920s.

· The U.S.-based Teutonia gave Hitler regular donations.

· Montagu Norman was the governor of the Bank of England for 24 years. He was anti-France, disliked Jews immensely, was opposed to Versailles, and favored Germany due to his earlier studies there. Norman lent money to the Nazis after 1933 via his personal friend Schacht. He may have channeled funds via Baron Kurt von Schröder and J. H. Stein and Company in 1932, but this is not proven. Schröder was a German partner in J. H. Stein.

· Viscount Rothermere of the Daily Mail gave Ernst Hanfstaengl money. He was a staunchly pro-German Anglo who despised Jews.

· It is crucial to understand that Anglo-Saxon foreign policy was designed to prevent any single power—whether France, Germany or Russia—from attaining formidable power enough to rival that of Britain. This was the real reason why King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate; he was simply too pro-German. His sympathy as well as that of Montagu Norman, the Mosleys, the Mitfords and Viscount Rothermere made Hitler miscalculate on Britain. He thought he had more Anglo-Saxon support than he really did.

· Deterding met Alfred Rosenberg in Britain and likely promised him funding. Deterding controlled oil interests in Romania, Russia, California, Trinidad, the Dutch Indies and Mexico. He also had pumps in Mesopotamia and Persia. The Soviets seized his oil fields in Baku, Grozny and Miakop and nationalized them, thereby becoming a serious competitor to Deterding with his own former oil lands.

· Georg Bell was Deterding’s contact agent with the NSDAP. Deterding did not just back the NSDAP, but also White Russians and Ukrainian nationalists, as well as anti-Soviet Georgian rebels.

· Deterding married a pro-National Socialist woman and moved to Germany. He was the one who gave the real ‘big money’ to the NSDAP in 1931, 1932, and 1933—£30 to £55 million. Dr. Kahr claimed that French money flowed to Hitler after going through nine exchanges, but this has not been proven. In fact, Bavarian parties like the BVP were backed by France only because they wished to break away from Berlin!

· The Treaty of Trianon was even worse and more unjust than Versailles. Hungary lost population and territory and was completely impoverished. This treaty soured most Hungarians on democracy. In 1919, Bela Kuhn ruled ruthlessly for three months in Hungary: he confiscated and expropriated private land, slaughtered peasants indiscriminately and further destroyed the economy, which resulted in famine. Hungarians were overwhelmingly anti-Communist, anti-Freemason and anti-Jewish after that. Most of these Communists, including Bela Kuhn, were Jewish Freemasons. This experience is what led the Hungarian nationalist Gyula (Julius) Gömbös to finance the NSDAP.

· Hitler aimed for “careers open to talent” according to Otto Dietrich, a policy opposed to hereditary power.

· Here is the explanation for one of Goebbels’s economic improvement references in his diary: Hitler’s Düsseldorf Industry Club speech of January 27. This fundraising event explains Goebbels’s entry of February 8.

· To give people some perspective on the German economy before Hitler: there were 17,500,000 unemployed Germans over the winter of 1931 to 1932. This was nearly one third of the entire population of Germany!

· Stennes’s rebellion is very important, but all too often overlooked. Stennes was a paid agent of Strasser and Captain Ehrhardt, both of whom had big business (industrialists) and one (Otto Wolff) Jewish backers.

· As a result of this rebellion and other street violence, the SA, SS and HJ were all banned by a Brüning decree signed by President Hindenburg. This was in 1932. So much for Rothschild and Warburg supporting Hitler! Why would they let their “pawn” get banned? This ban was an attempt to destroy the NSDAP and Hitler for good. Besides, if Hitler was really just a “tool” of a vast international entity as researchers like Jim Condit and Guido Preparata suggest, then why didn’t he win the presidency in 1932? What was this entity’s motive for forestalling his “power grab” if it was in fact behind him?

· Paul Silverberg, Jewish, financed Gregor Strasser, not Hitler. Silverberg was head of the R.A.G., one of the largest coal companies in the entire world. He supported the chancellor ruling by presidential decree (Brüning in particular).

· Brüning, not Hitler, asked the question: is democracy able to work in Germany?

Concluding thoughts

Paul Silverberg was extremely liberal, except for his own business enterprise. He naturally favored “equal rights” for Jews and big business, but not for anyone else; he likewise favored “individual rights over national rights” and was therefore completely opposed to the NSDAP. Silverberg was angry at Brüning’s ouster. He opposed von Papen, supported General Schleicher as chancellor, and gave both Schleicher and Hitler’s rival Gregor Strasser large sums of money.

Gregor Strasser received 10,000 marks per month, beginning in the spring of 1931, for the NSDAP from heavy industry. So much for Sidney Warburg! Walther Funk got 3,000 marks per month in 1931 and Hitler got 100,000 marks from various coal companies that same year, shortly before the Reichstag elections. As one can see his alleged 1931 “miracle financing” was no miracle at all. It came from German coal companies, not Sidney Warburg. In fact, most of the NSDAP’s money came from the party itself: insurance premiums, dues, speaking fees, etc. Brüning, not Hitler, was backed by I. G. Farben. Chancellor Schleicher, with Silverberg’s and other industrial bigwigs’ money, conspired with Ernst Röhm on a plan to incorporate the SA into the German Army and thereby betray Hitler.

Clearly, Franz von Papen was no puppet either, contrary to the thesis of Guido Preparata (Conjuring Hitler). He refused to lift the SA ban until June 15. He also banned political parades until after 30 June 1932 and made himself Reich Commissioner of Prussia. He enjoyed widespread support among industrialists, big business, Hindenburg and the Army officer corps. His intent was to block Hitler from ever attaining more than nominal power in government. Hitler was so financially strapped thanks to this intrigue against him that he ended up signing contracts amounting to giving away everything the party owned to finance his 1932 election: he won over 13 million votes and 230 seats in the Reichstag. This was nothing short of impressive. He should’ve been appointed chancellor right then and there.

The real question was whether Hitler could be bought. That was the question that Franz von Papen and Chancellor Schleicher were asking. Since it did not seem likely, both opposed his chancellorship as long as possible. Von Papen conceded in the end: he wanted power for himself and he did not want a Communist majority in the Reichstag. By agreeing to appoint Hitler chancellor in 1933, von Papen thought that he could satisfy Hitler’s personal power needs and keep the NSDAP in check, while at the same time use Hitler’s party as a means to prevent the Communists from ever achieving a majority. Only Hitler had the mass following to pull off such a plan. And only von Papen could secure for Hitler the appointment, funding and support of industrialists he needed to become chancellor with a stable government. Indeed Hitler deserved the chancellorship, and was fully entitled to it, since he had the masses’ support and the largest number of seats in the Reichstag. The rest, as they say, is history.


Sources:

Dennis, Lawrence. The Dynamics of War and Revolution. New York: Revisionist Press, 1975.
Gregor, Dr. A. J. National Socialism and Race. London: Steven Books, 2009.
Pool, James E. and Suzanne Pool. Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power 1919 – 1933. New York: The Dial Press, 1978.
Pudor, Dr. Heinrich. “The High Financiers of France.” In Warwolves of the Iron Cross: The Hyenas of High Finance, edited by Veronica Kuzniar Clark and Luis Muñoz, 51-66. United States: Vera Icona Publishers, 2011.
Schinnerer, Erich. German Law and Legislation. Edited by Richard Mönnig. Berlin: Terramare Publications, 1938.
Schwarz, Dieter. Freemasonry: Ideology, Organization and Policy. 6th ed. Berlin: Central Publishing House of the NSDAP, 1944.
Schwarzwäller, Wulf. The Unknown Hitler: His Private Life and Fortune. Translated by Aurelius von Kappau. Edited by Alan Bisbort. Bethesda, Md.: National Press Inc and Star Agency, 1989.
Warburg, Sidney. The Financial Sources of National Socialism: Hitler’s Secret Backers. Translated by J. G. Schoup. Palmdale, Cal.: Omni Publications, 1995.

http://www.inconvenienthistory.com/a..._the_nsdap.php
 
Old July 18th, 2012 #2
John sholtes
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Join Date: Mar 2012
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This is the best source for information in the constant battle to get out the truth about Hitler. Everone I ever always says something like tht Hitler was financed by the Rothchilds or was part of the zionist conspiracy. Just now it was that he was part of a jesuit conspiracy. But these inconvienient facts explain everything that comes up about Who was "Behind Hitler."

Inconvenient facts about Hitler and the NSDAP

The following is a list of important facts gleaned from the Pools’ Who Financed Hitler. This list clarifies and summarizes our introduction to the NSDAP’s development, support and financing. More importantly, this list exposes numerous myths associated with Hitler and the NSDAP, such as Hitler’s “militatarism,” NSDAP funding via Paul or Sidney (James) Warburg and the Rothschilds, and Hitler’s unpopularity amongst most Germans.

· Gustav Stresemann was as militarily inclined as Adolf Hitler. Thus the idea that Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship meant war in future is moot.

· Upper-class hostages, including members of Thule, were literally lined up and murdered in 1918 by the Communists. A total of 12 hostages were shot in a schoolyard in Munich.

· The Pools noted that since the German economy was not harmful to most industrialists’ profits overall, they as a group wished to uphold the status quo. And that was the problem with them from the perspective of revolutionary parties like Hitler’s, as well as the impoverished, unemployed millions.

· Hitler and Hess, not Göring and Goebbels as claimed by “Sidney Warburg,” solicited money in 1929. German industrialist Emil Kirdorf likely gave the NSDAP money at this time.

· Radek, Levine and Axelrod, all Communists, were Jewish. These three men and the terror they inflicted upon Fritz Thyssen and his father personally, including imprisonment and death threats, changed Thyssen’s life. From that point on he supported Hitler, and fervently so.

· French martial law and Ruhr resource demands were too much for Fritz Thyssen. He was arrested and fined 300,000 gold marks for encouraging German workers to passively resist French military occupation. The French opened fire on these German workers killing and wounding hundreds.

· Thyssen downplayed his support of the National Socialists. He gave 1,250,000 Reichsmarks between 1928 and 1929. This was the exact timing of Sidney Warburg’s alleged covert cash transfers to Hitler.

· Kirdorf had Jewish friends and bank connections, including Dr. Arthur Salomonsohn. In spite of these big money connections, Kirdorf gave very little to Hitler and the NSDAP.

· Thyssen and Kirdorf saw little hope for Germany. France and England had a monopoly over one quarter of the world and were determined to crush Germany’s global competitiveness.

· The Versailles Dictate was Germany’s economic end—really, truly and totally.

· The “Treaty” was actually an economic weapon designed to permanently cripple Germany as an industrial competitor. Germany’s total reparations payments amounted to $32 billion, which equates to $425 billion today, or $6.6 billion per year.

· The NSDAP was not put into power by international Jewish interests as some researchers suggest. The NSDAP fought for its power. For example, in just a single street battle between the National Socialists and Communists, 300 men were killed. Hitler struggled for 14 years to achieve power and was nearly shot dead during his attempted putsch, facts which challenge this thesis.

· The I. G. Farben conglomerate and high finance never factored into the Hitler-NSDAP equation before 1933.

· According to the Pools, since nothing Germany did had worked to relieve the unemployment and trade imbalance, an imperialist policy was necessary for Germany’s economic survival. She had earnestly tried everything else.

· Big business’s main motive for supporting Hitler and the NSDAP was to prevent Communism at all costs.

· General von Seeckt operated under a façade of pro-democracy (like Hitler) until the day when all democratic chains could be broken. Indeed the intellectual demilitarization of Germany was, to von Seeckt, the greatest threat of all.

· Russo-German military collaboration was championed by von Seeckt, not Hitler, and started in 1921. (Before the Treaty of Rapallo). Von Seeckt was instrumental in this collaboration. Lest we overlook it: Hitler, and no one else, had a reserve army—the SA. Thus the years 1921 to 1922 saw some degree of Russian funding of the NSDAP via the Reichswehr’s secret Russian collaboration efforts.

· The Allies destroyed Krupp’s industry, which provided Krupp with a key motive for later supporting the NSDAP. Krupp, with the help of foreign subsidies, established anonymous companies to carry out arms construction and testing in neutral countries long before Hitler came to power.

· Stresemann, like Hitler, wanted to see Germany reemerge as a world power. Neither von Seeckt nor Stresemann was a liberal-democrat (i.e. neither supported democracy, which was imposed upon Germany against her will.)

· Holding companies were used to rebuild the German Navy in the early 1920s, long before Hitler’s ascension.

· “Liberal-Democratic” Weimar Germany was providing covert assistance to German rearmament efforts in every way possible. Krupp was subsidized by the Weimar regime, not by Hitler.

· Given the industrial context of that time period, Thyssen’s industry would die without total rearmament. This was a consequence of Germany’s overdependence on industrialization,. As suggested by Lawrence Dennis in The Dynamics of War and Revolution, a developed nation like Germany had the choice to contract severely in every way, including population-wise, or expand. Most German leaders opted for the latter.

· German rearmament began earnestly “production-wise” in 1928—five full years before Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor.

· The Social Democrats, SPD, supported rearmament.

· Rearmament does not prove that Germany was planning aggressive warfare or that Germany was “militaristic.”

· Both France’s and Poland’s militaries were threatening to encircle and occupy Germany in 1919.

· All of the German power elite had the same goal, only different methods of achieving that goal—to reestablish Germany as a world power. However, only Adolf Hitler understood international power politics or “economy by the sword.” Hitler asked the industrialists in 1927: Does it benefit our nationality now or in the future, or will it be injurious to it? Expediency is the basis of all alliances.

· France, not England, was Enemy Number One in Hitler’s view.

· Political bribes were not illegal in the Weimar Republic.

· The rule of special interest groups and the power of money (with which to buy Reichstag deputies) destroyed the Weimar Republic’s chances of survival. Both are, in fact, inherent features of all democracies, which intentionally give the masses the illusion of power and voice in government to prevent their discontent.

· The SPD was the political instrument of the trade unions and the bureaucracy of organized labor. All of the rest, save the KPD, were big business’s interest groups incognito.

· Walther Rathenau set the Weimar “big business” precedent, not Hitler or the NSDAP.

· The Ruhrlade was a secret society of heavy industrialists, with 12 members, who met secretly to set joint economic and political policy.

· Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party had far more big business and discreet financial backing and prestige than the NSDAP. But not even Hugenberg was an industrialist's tool. He opposed the Anglo-Freemasonic Dawes Plan while several of his industrialist backers supported the plan.

· The Anglo-Freemasonic Young Plan was enacted 11 years after the war, which demanded that Germans pay “reparations” for the next 59 years!

· Hugenberg and Strasser both underestimated Hitler. He was no one’s “pawn.” This was already evident around the time of the passing of the Freedom Law in 1929, right around the time of Sidney Warburg’s alleged cash promise to Hitler. The Warburg myth was used to discredit Hitler by the Strasser-Stennes faction of the NSDAP. Stennes, with 80,000 SA men under his command, seized the NSDAP headquarters in Berlin and occupied it to destroy Hitler, but Hitler was able to largely circumvent recapturing the headquarters via violent means by establishing his right of ownership of the Berlin headquarters. He did this simply by presenting his ownership proof to the courts after the holidays ended. The police were therefore obliged to retake the headquarters for him and Captain Walther Stennes’ attempted anti-Hitler coup fell apart. Interestingly, Stennes was never even an NSDAP member.

· Hitler used Karl Lüger’s methods: utilize the existing implements of power.

· Thyssen admitted to funding the NSDAP. His continuous support and Hitler’s strategic alliance with Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party meant money for Hitler in 1929—none of which was from Sidney Warburg.

· After 1930, the Völkischer Beobachter generated day-to-day revenue and paid off all of its outstanding debts.

· There was no “secret” funding early on. Max Amann mortgaged all of the NSDAP’s property and forestalled all financial obligations until after the elections in 1930, which surprised everyone, including Hitler. Rallies and occasional donations by the wealthy supplemented funds after September 1930.

· NSDAP memberships swelled due to the “bandwagon effect” after the party’s huge electoral success. The VB also started generating substantial advertising revenue. At one point Hitler actually let his prohibitionist idealism go too far with the brewers and they canceled all their VB ads. Fellow party members had to coax them back.

· Adolf Müller helped the Nazis with the VB, the only paper that did not drop in circulation after the Depression began.

· The United States likely destroyed Party Treasurer Franz Schwarz’s records, which were meticulous: Hitler had even told him to denote names of anonymous donors! All of the records are gone. Americans brutally interrogated Schwarz and likely murdered him in 1946. The Anglo-Americans were determined to incriminate only German big business for funding the NSDAP at the IMT. Given that the United States did this, one suspects that there was more American-based funding than just Henry Ford and Teutonia behind the NSDAP, but what that was we will never know. The Anglos were likely trying to cover up American industrial involvement with NS-Germany after 1933, such as that of Standard Oil which we’ve already discussed.

· Generals, namely Alfred Jodl, were won over by Hitler at his Leipzig trial.

· Big business was reassured by Hitler’s total party control and non-Communist stance after he ordered his 107 deputies to vote against the Nazis’ own “left-wing” bill, introduced by Strasser et al.

· The German economy was controlled by the government and a private bank cartel 2,500 banks strong before Hitler assumed power.

· In the summer of 1931, the Ruhrlade made its first contribution to the NSDAP, and Göring was being paid by Thyssen at this time as well.

· Frau Quandt joined the NSDAP in 1930 and brought lots of wealthy influence with her.

· Hitler recalled Ernst Röhm in 1930 to lead the SA. He had been living in Bolivia.

· Kaiser Wilhelm and his sons supported the NSDAP in an effort to try and convince Hitler to reestablish the monarchy.

· Brüning was a de facto dictator but was failing, because the Depression was worsening.

· The Credit-Anstalt, a Rothschild bank branch in Austria, experienced a devastating run in May 1931, which crashed all German banks and eventually even London’s banks. So much for the Rothschilds’ endless, untouchable wealth!

· Freemasonic France and America exacerbated the German collapse by recalling short-term loans to Germany and Austria and with the passing of the Hawley-Smoot tariff.

· The German People’s Party, which enjoyed more conservative support than Hitler, demanded constitutional revision terminating the parliamentary system and giving Hindenburg the power to appoint a government.

· Other nationalist parties got a lot more money and support than Hitler, but they maintained the status quo and displeased the masses immensely. Thus only Hitler had the masses’ support and could therefore not be brushed aside or ignored, not even by the moneyed elite.

· Big business, namely industrialists, was paying the NSDAP by 1931.

· The Harzburg Front organized and rallied in 1931. Hjalmar Schacht gave a speech at this event and shockingly declared that the Weimar government was truly and utterly bankrupt. He, more than anyone else that day including Hitler, brought incalculable benefit to the NSDAP. He was after all the man who had saved the German economy before by introducing the Rentenmark.

· Hitler had his man Keppler meet informally with businessmen to create the NSDAP’s economic policy. This was known as the “Circle of Friends for the Economy.” This is actually where Reinhardt comes into play, the man behind the Reinhardt Plan which Hitler enacted shortly after coming to power. Reinhardt, not Hitler or an NSDAP member, openly called for rearmament in 1932.

· Walther Funk met with Kurt von Schröder, a partner in J. H. Stein of Cologne. A man with great skill for negotiation, Funk was able to “satisfy Schröder” of Hitler’s “good will” towards “international banking.”

· Mussolini gave unofficial support to the NSDAP. France backed the Bavarian separatists while Italy supported the Bavarian nationalists. Hitler was the only nationalist who opposed France and was willing to let Italy keep control of the South Tyrol (with a population of 250,000 Germans).

· Hitler received Italian fascist funding, which only came to light in 1932. Mussolini also sent the NSDAP weapons in the 1920s.

· The U.S.-based Teutonia gave Hitler regular donations.

· Montagu Norman was the governor of the Bank of England for 24 years. He was anti-France, disliked Jews immensely, was opposed to Versailles, and favored Germany due to his earlier studies there. Norman lent money to the Nazis after 1933 via his personal friend Schacht. He may have channeled funds via Baron Kurt von Schröder and J. H. Stein and Company in 1932, but this is not proven. Schröder was a German partner in J. H. Stein.

· Viscount Rothermere of the Daily Mail gave Ernst Hanfstaengl money. He was a staunchly pro-German Anglo who despised Jews.

· It is crucial to understand that Anglo-Saxon foreign policy was designed to prevent any single power—whether France, Germany or Russia—from attaining formidable power enough to rival that of Britain. This was the real reason why King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate; he was simply too pro-German. His sympathy as well as that of Montagu Norman, the Mosleys, the Mitfords and Viscount Rothermere made Hitler miscalculate on Britain. He thought he had more Anglo-Saxon support than he really did.

· Deterding met Alfred Rosenberg in Britain and likely promised him funding. Deterding controlled oil interests in Romania, Russia, California, Trinidad, the Dutch Indies and Mexico. He also had pumps in Mesopotamia and Persia. The Soviets seized his oil fields in Baku, Grozny and Miakop and nationalized them, thereby becoming a serious competitor to Deterding with his own former oil lands.

· Georg Bell was Deterding’s contact agent with the NSDAP. Deterding did not just back the NSDAP, but also White Russians and Ukrainian nationalists, as well as anti-Soviet Georgian rebels.

· Deterding married a pro-National Socialist woman and moved to Germany. He was the one who gave the real ‘big money’ to the NSDAP in 1931, 1932, and 1933—£30 to £55 million. Dr. Kahr claimed that French money flowed to Hitler after going through nine exchanges, but this has not been proven. In fact, Bavarian parties like the BVP were backed by France only because they wished to break away from Berlin!

· The Treaty of Trianon was even worse and more unjust than Versailles. Hungary lost population and territory and was completely impoverished. This treaty soured most Hungarians on democracy. In 1919, Bela Kuhn ruled ruthlessly for three months in Hungary: he confiscated and expropriated private land, slaughtered peasants indiscriminately and further destroyed the economy, which resulted in famine. Hungarians were overwhelmingly anti-Communist, anti-Freemason and anti-Jewish after that. Most of these Communists, including Bela Kuhn, were Jewish Freemasons. This experience is what led the Hungarian nationalist Gyula (Julius) Gömbös to finance the NSDAP.

· Hitler aimed for “careers open to talent” according to Otto Dietrich, a policy opposed to hereditary power.

· Here is the explanation for one of Goebbels’s economic improvement references in his diary: Hitler’s Düsseldorf Industry Club speech of January 27. This fundraising event explains Goebbels’s entry of February 8.

· To give people some perspective on the German economy before Hitler: there were 17,500,000 unemployed Germans over the winter of 1931 to 1932. This was nearly one third of the entire population of Germany!

· Stennes’s rebellion is very important, but all too often overlooked. Stennes was a paid agent of Strasser and Captain Ehrhardt, both of whom had big business (industrialists) and one (Otto Wolff) Jewish backers.

· As a result of this rebellion and other street violence, the SA, SS and HJ were all banned by a Brüning decree signed by President Hindenburg. This was in 1932. So much for Rothschild and Warburg supporting Hitler! Why would they let their “pawn” get banned? This ban was an attempt to destroy the NSDAP and Hitler for good. Besides, if Hitler was really just a “tool” of a vast international entity as researchers like Jim Condit and Guido Preparata suggest, then why didn’t he win the presidency in 1932? What was this entity’s motive for forestalling his “power grab” if it was in fact behind him?

· Paul Silverberg, Jewish, financed Gregor Strasser, not Hitler. Silverberg was head of the R.A.G., one of the largest coal companies in the entire world. He supported the chancellor ruling by presidential decree (Brüning in particular).

· Brüning, not Hitler, asked the question: is democracy able to work in Germany?

Concluding thoughts

Paul Silverberg was extremely liberal, except for his own business enterprise. He naturally favored “equal rights” for Jews and big business, but not for anyone else; he likewise favored “individual rights over national rights” and was therefore completely opposed to the NSDAP. Silverberg was angry at Brüning’s ouster. He opposed von Papen, supported General Schleicher as chancellor, and gave both Schleicher and Hitler’s rival Gregor Strasser large sums of money.

Gregor Strasser received 10,000 marks per month, beginning in the spring of 1931, for the NSDAP from heavy industry. So much for Sidney Warburg! Walther Funk got 3,000 marks per month in 1931 and Hitler got 100,000 marks from various coal companies that same year, shortly before the Reichstag elections. As one can see his alleged 1931 “miracle financing” was no miracle at all. It came from German coal companies, not Sidney Warburg. In fact, most of the NSDAP’s money came from the party itself: insurance premiums, dues, speaking fees, etc. Brüning, not Hitler, was backed by I. G. Farben. Chancellor Schleicher, with Silverberg’s and other industrial bigwigs’ money, conspired with Ernst Röhm on a plan to incorporate the SA into the German Army and thereby betray Hitler.

Clearly, Franz von Papen was no puppet either, contrary to the thesis of Guido Preparata (Conjuring Hitler). He refused to lift the SA ban until June 15. He also banned political parades until after 30 June 1932 and made himself Reich Commissioner of Prussia. He enjoyed widespread support among industrialists, big business, Hindenburg and the Army officer corps. His intent was to block Hitler from ever attaining more than nominal power in government. Hitler was so financially strapped thanks to this intrigue against him that he ended up signing contracts amounting to giving away everything the party owned to finance his 1932 election: he won over 13 million votes and 230 seats in the Reichstag. This was nothing short of impressive. He should’ve been appointed chancellor right then and there.

The real question was whether Hitler could be bought. That was the question that Franz von Papen and Chancellor Schleicher were asking. Since it did not seem likely, both opposed his chancellorship as long as possible. Von Papen conceded in the end: he wanted power for himself and he did not want a Communist majority in the Reichstag. By agreeing to appoint Hitler chancellor in 1933, von Papen thought that he could satisfy Hitler’s personal power needs and keep the NSDAP in check, while at the same time use Hitler’s party as a means to prevent the Communists from ever achieving a majority. Only Hitler had the mass following to pull off such a plan. And only von Papen could secure for Hitler the appointment, funding and support of industrialists he needed to become chancellor with a stable government. Indeed Hitler deserved the chancellorship, and was fully entitled to it, since he had the masses’ support and the largest number of seats in the Reichstag. The rest, as they say, is history.


Sources:

Dennis, Lawrence. The Dynamics of War and Revolution. New York: Revisionist Press, 1975.
Gregor, Dr. A. J. National Socialism and Race. London: Steven Books, 2009.
Pool, James E. and Suzanne Pool. Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power 1919 – 1933. New York: The Dial Press, 1978.
Pudor, Dr. Heinrich. “The High Financiers of France.” In Warwolves of the Iron Cross: The Hyenas of High Finance, edited by Veronica Kuzniar Clark and Luis Muñoz, 51-66. United States: Vera Icona Publishers, 2011.
Schinnerer, Erich. German Law and Legislation. Edited by Richard Mönnig. Berlin: Terramare Publications, 1938.
Schwarz, Dieter. Freemasonry: Ideology, Organization and Policy. 6th ed. Berlin: Central Publishing House of the NSDAP, 1944.
Schwarzwäller, Wulf. The Unknown Hitler: His Private Life and Fortune. Translated by Aurelius von Kappau. Edited by Alan Bisbort. Bethesda, Md.: National Press Inc and Star Agency, 1989.
Warburg, Sidney. The Financial Sources of National Socialism: Hitler’s Secret Backers. Translated by J. G. Schoup. Palmdale, Cal.: Omni Publications, 1995.

http://www.inconvenienthistory.com/a..._the_nsdap.php
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Old December 25th, 2014 #3
Robbie Key
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[saw Linder tweet this, so credit to him]

Bush, Rockefeller, Rothschild & Hitler

JANUARY 23, 2013 AFP 18 COMMENTS

By Michael Collins Piper



Some AMERICAN FREE PRESS readers were upset by the first two articles in this series reflecting on the proliferation of myths, phony documents and fraudulent “quotations” muddying serious research into big issues of the current day and events of the past.

However, AFP’s job is to report the facts.

This week, we take a look at one particularly ubiquitous myth—a combination of myths—which has excited many: A variety of claims the Bush, Rockefeller and Rothschild families and a host of “Jewish bankers”—together or independently—helped finance Hitler’s rise to power.

The most cited source for the story Jewish bankers paved the way for Hitler is Hitler’s Secret Backers, supposedly by a Jewish banker named Sidney Warburg.

First of all, there was no Sidney Warburg. But those who actually read the spurious book (and most who cite it haven’t read it) will find the unknown author says—in contrast to what people think he said—that Jewish bankers didn’t finance Hitler. Instead, the book claims some naughty non-Jewish bankers did so.

But even that isn’t true. An accurate assessment by James Pool in Who Financed Hitler absolutely refutes the legend big banking or industrial interests played a substantial role funding Hitler. Most of the Nazi Party’s money came from small contributions and sales of literature.

No Rothschilds backed Hitler. That’s a myth. One banker, a practicing Christian of one-quarter Jewish descent, was said—by one source, passing on a rumor—to have donated money to Hitler. And that’s it. The one Jewish banker known to have given money to any Nazis gave it to elements in the Nazi party—the Strasser brothers—who were trying to stop Hitler.

And Hitler wasn’t descended from any Rothschilds or Frankenbergers. If he had any Jewish blood, it has never been authoritatively traced.


One proponent of the claim Hitler was Jewish cites Brigitte Hamann’s Hitler’s Vienna as proof, pointing out the book describes stories of Hitler’s Jewish heritage. In fact, Hamann dissects the legends, refuting them in detail. Scholars such as Carolyn Yeager and Veronica Clark, in Warwolves of the Iron Cross, have also demolished the rumors.

Some claim Hitler was pro-Zionist. They are wrong. For a brief period Hitler did encourage some Zionists in efforts to promote Jewish immigration from Germany to Palestine, as described in Edwin Black’s The Transfer Agreement. However, at the same time, other Zionist forces were calling for war against Hitler as early as 1933.

The legendary “Nazi-Zionist collaboration” was a tiny blip of no geopolitical consequence. But it makes for great Internet chatter.

Others are hysterical over the fact American banks and corporations worked with the Nazi regime, yet—despite the frenzy—this is neither a major revelation nor is it extraordinary.

These were well-known arrangements, sometimes going back decades, with whatever German government was in power.

Many think that Antony Sutton “proved” in Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler that Rockefeller-controlled Standard Oil funded Hitler. However, in his book, Sutton says flatly: “Standard Oil apparently did not finance Hitler’s accession to power.”

Some cite that same book as evidence the Bush family, with the Harriman banking interests, funded Hitler. In fact, Sutton says only that the Harrimans—like many American financial groups—had connections to corporate interests in Germany. And he concludes that this “does not suggest that the Harrimans directly financed Hitler.” He never mentions the Bushes at all.

Another rumor claims the Bushes were part of a “fascist plot” to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt, often citing Jules Archer’s The Plot to Seize the White House. While there was a scheme to dislodge FDR—which many patriots believe to have been a good thing—the book never mentions the Bushes, nor is there any other evidence they had anything to do with that plot.

As Detective Sergeant Joe Friday used to say: “Just the facts.”

Michael Collins Piper is an author, journalist, lecturer and radio show host. He has spoken in Russia, Malaysia, Iran, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Canada and the U.S.

http://americanfreepress.net/?p=8153
 
Old December 25th, 2014 #4
Alex Linder
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie Key View Post
[saw Linder tweet this, so credit to him]

Bush, Rockefeller, Rothschild & Hitler

JANUARY 23, 2013 AFP 18 COMMENTS

By Michael Collins Piper



Some AMERICAN FREE PRESS readers were upset by the first two articles in this series reflecting on the proliferation of myths, phony documents and fraudulent “quotations” muddying serious research into big issues of the current day and events of the past.

However, AFP’s job is to report the facts.

This week, we take a look at one particularly ubiquitous myth—a combination of myths—which has excited many: A variety of claims the Bush, Rockefeller and Rothschild families and a host of “Jewish bankers”—together or independently—helped finance Hitler’s rise to power.

The most cited source for the story Jewish bankers paved the way for Hitler is Hitler’s Secret Backers, supposedly by a Jewish banker named Sidney Warburg.

First of all, there was no Sidney Warburg. But those who actually read the spurious book (and most who cite it haven’t read it) will find the unknown author says—in contrast to what people think he said—that Jewish bankers didn’t finance Hitler. Instead, the book claims some naughty non-Jewish bankers did so.

But even that isn’t true. An accurate assessment by James Pool in Who Financed Hitler absolutely refutes the legend big banking or industrial interests played a substantial role funding Hitler. Most of the Nazi Party’s money came from small contributions and sales of literature.


http://americanfreepress.net/?p=8153
[good job, RK - i came here specifically to post this and you beat me. all i can add is there are a LOT of links in the original. it's similar to the khazar stuff - continual misrepresentation. jews are not khazars. that theory is debunked. people who push it are liars are dupes - and more important, anonying wastes of times. same with those who try to portray hitler as the tool of some other party. he wasn't. he was sometimes wrong, sometimes failed, but he was not a tool of bankers, jews, or big business.]
 
Old September 17th, 2015 #5
Robbie Key
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The Myth of the Big Business-Nazi Axis
K.R. Bolton

The party-line of the Left is that Fascism and Nazism were the last resort of Capitalism.1 Indeed, the orthodox Marxist critique does not go beyond that. In recent decades there has been serious scholarship within orthodox academe to understand Fascism as a doctrine. Among these we can include Roger Griffin,2 Roger Eatwell,3 and particularly Zeev Sternhell.4 The last in particular shows that Fascism derived at least as much from the Left as from the Right, emerging from Italy but also in particular from Francophone Marxists as an effort to transcend the inadequacies of Marxism as an analysis of historical forces.

Among the National Socialists in Germany, opposition to international capital figured prominently from the start. The National Socialists, even prior to adopting that name, within the small group, the German Workers’ Party, saw capital as intrinsically anti-national. The earliest party program, in 1919, stated that the party was fighting “against usury… against all those who make high profits without any mental or physical work,” the “drones” who “control and rule us with their money.” It is notable that even then the party did not advocate “ socialization” of industry but profit-sharing and unity among all classes other than “drones.”5 As the conservative spokesman Oswald Spengler pointed out, Marxism did not wish to transcend capital but to expropriate it. Hence the spirit of the Left remained capitalist or money-centered.6 The subordination of money to state policy was something understood in Germany even among the business elite, and large sections of the menial class; quite different to the concept of economics understood among the Anglophone world, where economics dominates state policy.

Hitler was continuing the tradition of the German economic school, which the German Workers’ Party of Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer had already incorporated since the party’s founding in 1919. Hitler wrote in 1924 in Mein Kampf that the state would ensure that “capital remained subservient to the State and did not allocate to itself the right to dominate national interests. Thus it could confine its activities within the two following limits: on the one side, to ensure a vital and independent system of national economy and, on the other, to safeguard the social rights of the workers.” Hitler now realized the distinction between productive capital and speculative capital, from Feder who had been part of a political lecture series organized by the army. Hitler then understood that the dual nature of capital would have to be a primary factor addressed by any party for reform.7 The lecture had been entitled “The Abolition of Interest-Servitude.”8 A “truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people” was that “the absolute separation of stock-exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without at the same time attacking capital as such…”9 While Everette Lemons, apparently a libertarian, quotes this passage from Mein Kampf, he claims that Hitler loathed capitalism, whether national or international. As illustrated by the passage above, Hitler drew a distinction between creative and speculative capital, as did the German Workers’ Party before he was a member.

National economy was a widely held legacy of the German school of economics founded by Friedrich List in the 19th century, the aim being national autarchy as distinct from the English school of international free trade.10 National economy governed German thinking like Free Trade governed British thinking. At a glance, List stated: “I would indicate, as the distinguishing characteristic of my system, NATIONALITY. On the nature of nationality, as the intermediate interest between those of individualism and of entire humanity, my whole structure is based.”11 It was an aim that German businessmen readily embraced.

Because the Hitler regime would not or could not fulfill the entirety of the NSDAP program, and because Feder was given a humble role as an under-secretary in the economics ministry, there is a widespread assumption that the regime was a tool of big capital. The Marxist interpretation of the Third Reich as a tool of monopoly capital has been adopted and adapted by their opposite number, libertarians, particularly aided by the book of the Stanford research specialist Dr. Antony Sutton. Sutton followed up his Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,12 detailing dealings between U.S. and other business interests and the Bolshevik regime, with Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.13 Many libertarians welcome the second book as showing that Hitler was just as much a “socialist” as the Bolsheviks and that both had the backing of the same big-business interests that pursue a “collectivist” state. Lemons, for example, argues that Hitler’s anti-capitalism was an implementation of many of the ideas in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, thereby indicating an ignorance of German economic theory.14 Lemons refers to Hitler’s “communist style” economy.15

Henry Ford – an Early Nazi Party Sponsor?

If there was any wealthy American who should or could have funded Hitler it was Henry Ford Sr. Indeed, Ford features prominently in allegations that Hitler received financial backing from wealthy elites. But Ford was not part of the financial elite. He was an industrialist who challenged Wall Street. If he had backed Hitler that would have been an example of a conflict between “industrial capital” and “financial capital” that Ford had himself recognized, and that Hitler had alluded to in Mein Kampf. Not only did his newspaper the Dearborn Independent, under the editorship of W. J. Cameron, run a series of ninety-one articles on the “Jewish question,” but that series was issued as a compendium called The International Jew, which was translated into German. Such was the pressure from Jewish Wall Street interests on the Ford Motor Company that Ford recanted, and falsely claimed that he had not authorized the series in his company newspaper.16 Yet Ford never funded the Hitlerites, despite several direct, personal appeals for aid on the basis of “international solidarity” against Jewish influence.

Sutton did an admirable job of tracing direct and definitive links between Wall Street and the Bolsheviks. However, perhaps in his eagerness to show the common factor of “socialism” between National Socialists and Bolsheviks, and the way Wall Street backed opposing movements as part of a Hegelian dialectical strategy,17 Sutton seems to have grasped at straws in trying to show a link between plutocrats and Nazis. Sutton repeats the myth of Ford backing of the Hitlerite party that had been in circulation since the 1920s. As early as 1922 The New York Times reported that Ford was funding the embryonic National Socialist party, and the Berliner Tageblatt called on the U.S. ambassador to investigate Ford’s supposed interference in German affairs.18 The article in its entirety turns out to be nothing but the vaguest of rumor-mongering, of making something out of nothing at all, but it is still found to be useful by those perpetrating the myth of big-money backing for Hitler.19 Dr. Sutton quotes the vice president of the Bavarian Diet, Auer, testifying at the trial of Hitler after the Munich Putsch in February 1923, that the Diet long had had information that Hitler was being financed by Ford. Auer alluded to a Ford agent seeking to sell tractors having been in contact with Dietrich Eckart in 1922, and that shortly after Ford money began going to Munich.20 Having provided no evidence whatsoever, Sutton states that “these Ford funds were used by Hitler to foment the Bavarian rebellion.”21



Scott Nehmer, who had his dream of an academic career aborted because he would not write his doctoral thesis according to the preconceptions of his supervisor, undertook a convincing examination of the allegations regarding the supposed link during World War II between the Third Reich, Ford, and General Motors.22 His would-be dissertation was published as a book. However, it is indicative of the poor shape of scholarship in tertiary education, and not only in the USA. Mr. Nehmer writes of his recent predicament:

Quote:
I intended to write my book solely concentrating on the patriotism of Ford and General Motors during World War II but my plans were altered causing me to emphasize how Marxist ideology combined with sensationalism has smeared Ford and GM. The book was conceived as a PhD in history dissertation for Central Michigan University. Almost from its inception my advisor, Eric Johnson,23 attempted to force me to libel the Ford Motor Company. He ordered me to accuse Ford of betraying the United States during World War II using falsehoods based on the faulty implications of sensationalist journalists.24
What these accounts of the funding of the Nazi party and even of the Third Reich war machine amount to are descriptions of interlocking directorships and the character of what is today called globalization. Hence, if Ford, General Electric, ITT, General Motors, and Standard Oil are somehow linked to AEG, I. G. Farben, Krupp, etc., it is then alleged that Rockefeller, Ford, and even Jewish financiers such as James Warburg, were directly involved in a conspiracy to aid Nazi Germany. To prove the connections, Sutton has a convenient table which supposedly shows “Financial links between U.S. industrialists and Adolf Hitler.” For example Edsel Ford, Paul M. Warburg and two others in the USA are listed as directors of American I.G. while in Germany I.G. Farben reportedly donated 400,000 R.M. to Hitler via the Nationale Treuhand; ipso facto Edsel Ford and Paul Warburg were involved in funding Hitler.25 The connections do not seem convincing. They are of an altogether different character than the connections Sutton previously documented between Wall Street and the Bolsheviks.

The story behind the Henry Ford-Nazi legend has been publicly available since 1938. Kurt Ludecke had been responsible for attempting to garner funds for the fledgling Nazi party since joining in 1922. In 1934 he had fallen out with Hitler, had been incarcerated, and then left Germany for the USA, where he wrote his memoirs, I Knew Hitler.26He sought out possible funding especially in the USA, met Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the organization, then 5,000,000 strong, impressing him as a good money-making racket for its recruiters, who got 20% commission on membership fees.27 He met Czarist supporters of Grand Duke Cyril, claimant to the Russian throne, in Paris,28 and in Britain several aristocrats suspicious of Jewish influence: the Duke of Northumberland, and Lord Sydenham.29 Money was not forthcoming from any of them. Indeed, Ludecke traveled about perpetually broke.

Ludecke met Ford in 1922. He attempted to persuade Ford that international solidarity was needed to face the Jewish issue, and that the Hitler movement had the best chance of success. Ford could not relate to the political requirements and while listening had no interest in providing funds. It is evident from Ludecke that all of the party’s hopes had been pegged on Ford’s financial backing. Ford’s series on The International Jew was much admired in Nazi circles. Hitler also greatly admired Ford as an industrial innovator, a picture of the industrialist hanging up in Hitler’s office; something that is seen as of great significance to those seeking a Nazi connection.30

James Pool, on the subject of the funding of Hitler, spends thirty pages attempting to show that Ford might have given money to the NSDAP on the sole basis that he was anti-Jewish. He frequently cites Ludecke, but decides to ignore what Ludecke stated on Ford. Pool states that Frau Winifred Wagner had told him in an interview that she had arranged for Ludecke to meet Ford, which is correct, but it is evident that her claim that Ford gave Hitler money is pure assumption. Pool conjectures that the money was given by Ford to Hitler via Boris Brasol, an anti-Semitic Czarist jurist, who in 1918 had worked for U.S. Military Intelligence, and had who maintained contact with both the Nazi party and was U.S. representative for Grand Duke Cyril. Again Pool is making assumptions, on the basis that Brasol was employed by Ford. Pool’s “evidence” is the same as that used by Sutton; contemporary newspaper accounts of rumors and allegations.31

Had Ludecke succeeded in gaining funds from Ford that would not only have not been an example of funding from Wall Street and international finance, but it would have been an example of how not all wealthy individuals are part of the world’s banking nexus. Ford definitely was not, and drew a distinction between creative and destructive capital. Despite his ignominious surrender and groveling to Jewish interests when the pressure mounted due to his publication of The International Jew, in 1938 Ford described to The New York Times the dichotomy that existed between the two forms of capital:

Quote:
Somebody once said that sixty families have directed the destinies of the nation. It might well be said that if somebody would focus the spotlight on twenty-five persons who handle the nation’s finances, the world’s real war makers would be brought into bold relief. There is a creative and a destructive Wall Street… [I]f these financiers had their way we’d be in a war now. They want war because they make money out of such conflicts – out of the human misery such wars bring.32
Sutton dismissed this, writing: “On the other hand, when we probe behind these public statements we find that Henry Ford and son Edsel Ford have been in the forefront of American businessmen who try to walk both sides of every ideological fence in search of profit. Using Ford’s own criteria, the Fords are among the ‘destructive’ elements.”33 Contrary to Sutton, however, Pool states that Ford executives had been strongly opposed to their boss’s anti-Jewish campaign, and they persuaded him to drop the campaign in the late 1920s. In the forefront of this was his son, Edsel who owned 41% of the stock.34

Ford’s actions show that he was opposed to the forces of war. He did not do himself any favors by opposing the “destructive Wall Street.” In 1915 Ford chartered the Oscar II, otherwise known as the Ford “Peace Ship,” in the hope of persuading the belligerents of the world war to attend a peace conference. The mission received mostly ridicule. Those aboard, including Ford, were wracked with influenza. Ford continued to fund the “Peace Ship” as it traveled around Europe for two years, and despite the ridicule was widely regarded as a sincere, if naïve, pacifist. Dr. Sutton does not mention Ford’s “Peace Ship” or his peace campaign during World War I. Therefore, when he was an early supporter of the America First Committee,35 founded in 1940 to oppose Roosevelt’s efforts to entangle the USA in a war against Germany, he was too easily dismissed as pro-Nazi, as was America First.36 Very prominent Americans joined from a variety of backgrounds, including General Robert A. Wood, president of Sears Roebuck, and among the most active, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh. Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas was a regular speaker at rallies. Many Congressmen and Senators resisted the Roosevelt war machine. They included pacifists, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, conservatives. Of Henry Ford, George Eggleston, an editor of Reader’s Digest, Scribner’s Commentator, and formerly of Life, and a major figure in America First, recalled that so far from being a “Nazi,” Ford expressed the hope that there would be a “parliament of man,” “a world-wide spirit of brotherhood, and an end to armed conflict.”37

J. P. Morgan & Co. - Thomas Lamont

Thomas W. Lamont, senior partner in J. P. Morgan, was in the forefront of Wall Street agitation for war. Lamont, a supporter of Roosevelt’s New Deal, was a keen protagonist of internationalism. Speaking to the Academy of Political Sciences at the Astor Hotel in New York on 15 November 1939, he stated that the war against Germany was the consequence of the failure of the Versailles treaty and the rise of economic nationalism. In contrast to Old Guard Republicans such as ex-president Herbert Hoover, Lamont did not believe that it was possible to negotiate with Hitler. However, the military defeat of Hitler would not suffice. The USA must abandon isolationism and embrace “internationalism.”38

Lamont indeed had it right: international capital versus economic nationalism. The latter now included imperialism, and all autarchic trading blocs and empires. International finance could no longer be constrained by empires and trading blocs. But the world order that Woodrow Wilson had tried to inaugurate after World War I with his “Fourteen Points” and the League of Nations, based around international free trade, had been repudiated even by his own country.39 The Axis states were building autarchic economic blocs, and had been instituting barter among states, including those that they had occupied. Roosevelt was to candidly state to Churchill during the discussions on the “Atlantic Charter” that the post-war world would not tolerate any empires including the British, and would be based on free trade. He stated unequivocally that the war was being fought over the premise of free trade.40 Roosevelt stated to Churchill, as related by the president’s son, Elliott Roosevelt: “Will anyone suggest that Germany’s attempt to dominate trade in central Europe was not a major contributing factor to war?”41 Apparently the cause of the war was not Pearl Harbor, nor the invasion of Poland. Roosevelt made it clear that international free trade would be the foundation of the post-war world, and empires would be passé.

General Motors - James D. Mooney

Another alleged enthusiast for Nazi Germany was James D. Mooney, vice president of General Motors, in charge of European operations. General Motors plays a large role in the alleged nexus between the Nazis and Big Business because of its European affiliates operating in German-occupied countries during the war. Such was Mooney’s supposed enthusiasm for Nazism that he allegedly regarded himself as a future “Quisling” in the USA in the event of a German victory.42 The most extraordinary nonsense has been widely repeated that Mooney practiced how to technically achieve a Nazi salute and “Sieg Heil” in front of his hotel mirror prior to meeting Hitler in 1934. How Edwin Black knows this is not stated.43

It is evident that, utilizing his world-wide connections, Mooney embarked on private diplomacy with the intent of avoiding war. However, already in 1938 a G.M. executive, likely to have been Mooney, approached the British War Office to discuss British requirements in the event of war with Germany. From what is indicated by Mooney’s unpublished autobiography, it seems that, unsurprisingly, a major concern was the German method of trade. A biographer states of this:

Quote:
Mooney took the opportunity at the dinner to deliver his own “blockbuster”: if the Germans could negotiate some form of gold loan, would they be willing to stop their subsidized exports and special exchange practices which were so annoying to foreign traders, particularly the U.K. and the U.S? Whilst Mooney clearly honestly believed that this might ensure peace, in truth the practices had had a deleterious effect on General Motor’s extraction of profit out of Germany....44
Mooney formulated a list of recommendations to ease tensions. Significantly, most of the list involves the return of Germany to the world trading and banking system:

Quote:
1. Limitation of armaments.

2. Non-aggression pacts.

3. Move into trade practices of western nations:
a) Free exchange

b) Discontinue subsidized exports

c) Move into most-favored-nation practices.

d) Discharge foreign obligations (pay debts).45
It seems evident that Mooney was acting as an emissary for international capital, if not also as an intelligence agent for the U.S.A. and/or Britain. Some efforts were made by Walther Funk of the Reichsbank to compromise on terms of trade and finance, but war intervened. On February 4, 1939 Mooney stated before an annual banquet of the American Institute of Banking that an accommodation with Hitler could not be reached.46

Reich Commissioner for the Handling of Enemy Property

Allied-affiliated corporations such as Opel, affiliated with General Motors, operating in German-occupied Europe during the war did so under control of the Reich Commissioner for the Handling of Enemy Property.

German state decrees of June 24 and 28, 1941 blocked the assets of American companies, following the blocking of German assets in the USA on June 14, 1941.

In a review for the U.S. National Archives. Dr. Greg Bradsher states that American company and bank assets were seized by a December 11, 1941 amendment to the “Decree Concerning the Treatment of Enemy Property of January 15, 1940.” U.S. corporate and bank assets were controlled by the Reichskommissar für die Behandlung Feindlichen Vermoegens, which was part of the Ministry of Justice. Such trusteeship was part of international law. The Reichskommissar acted as trustee for the property of enemy aliens, in accordance with the German war effort until the end of hostilities, after which they would be returned to the owners with proper accounting. A custodian was appointed for each enterprise, who rendered financial accounts to the Reichskomissar every six months. However, other enterprises were confiscated outright by the Reich Ministry of Economics.47

By March 1, 1945, the Reichskommissar Office had taken under administration property in excess of RM 3.5 billion. On that date, the approximately RM 945 million of US property was administered by the Reichskommissar’s Office and another RM 267 million of US property was not administered by the Reichskommissar’s Office.48

Therefore, foreign corporations were hardly free to pursue their profits during war-time. Communication with the home office of the corporation was discontinued. Nonetheless, the argument persists that such corporations as Ford and General Motors were in league with the enemy during the war.49 On the basis that the same German directors of Opel in Germany prior to the war were approved by the Reich office during the war, and that Alfred P. Sloan and Mooney remained theoretically on the Opel board, this is deemed sufficient to show collusion.50 While Dr. Bradsher is unsure as to what happened to the profits, according to the Dividend Law of 1934, corporations were restricted on the amount of profits and dividends payable to shareholders to 6%. The remainder of profits had to be reinvested into the enterprise or used to buy Government bonds.51 In short, the foreign-affiliated corporations were run by and for Germany as one would expect, and according to the aim of national autarchy.

Dr. Sutton tries to resolve many contradictions and paradoxes by stating that they are part of a Hegelian dialectical process learned in Germany during the early 19th century by scions of Puritan finance who founded the Yale-based Skull and Bones Lodge 322.52 Hence, the reason why sections of Big Business dealt with both National Socialist Germany and the USSR; they were promoting controlled conflict that would result in a dialectical globalist synthesis.53

Fritz Thyssen

Sutton quotes Fritz Thyssen as to why he supported Hitler, but does not see that the motives are different from Wall Street's. Thyssen, and other industrialists such as Krupp, who funded Hitler, did so openly and for patriotic reasons. Thyssen wrote, as cited by Sutton: “I turned to the National Socialist party only after I became convinced that the fight against the Young Plan was unavoidable if complete collapse of Germany was to be prevented.”54 The Young Plan for the payment of World War I reparations was regarded as the means of controlling Germany with American capital.55 Thyssen is hardly an example of a nexus between Nazism and international capitalism; to the contrary, it shows that German business was motivated by patriotic sentiment to an extent that American business was not then and is today lesser still.

Thyssen was a Catholic motivated by the Church’s social doctrine that sought an alternative to both Marxism and monopoly capitalism. Like many others throughout the world of all classes, Thyssen found the corporatist doctrines of Fascism and National Socialism to reflect Church doctrine on social justice. Thyssen was a member of the conservative National People’s Party. While one of the few industrialists who donated to the NSDAP, at a late date, even this was meagre. The denazification trials in 1948 found that Thyssen donated about 650,000 Reichsmarks to various right-wing parties and groups, of which there were many, including the NSDAP, between 1923 and 1932. He was an adherent of the corporatist theories of Austrian philosopher Othmar Spann. In 1933 Thyssen was asked by the NSDAP to set up an Institute for Corporatism in Düsseldorf.56 However, this was regarded as rivalling the Labor Front and was closed in 1936. In 1940, after having emigrated from Germany, Thyssen and his wife were captured in France and incarcerated in Germany for the duration of the war.

Prescott Bush

A figure that is associated with Thyssen is Prescott Bush. Because he was, like his sons Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush, initiated into Lodge 322, vastly nonsensical theories has been woven around the Yale secret society, a.k.a. The Order of the Skull and Bones, as a pro-Nazi death cult, and the scions of influential families as part of an international Nazi conspiracy for world domination.

Prescott Bush was partner with W. Averell Harriman in Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the Union Banking Corporation. UBC acted as a clearinghouse for Thyssen interests. Because of this UBC’s assets were seized by the U.S government during the war. That Thyssen languished in Nazi concentration camps for the duration of the war is disregarded by those who seek a Wall Street connection with Hitler via Thyssen. Hence, The Guardian claimed to have new revelations in 2004 which turn out as nothing, with the focus on Thyssen being the businessman who “financed Hitler to power.” However, again more is said of the character of international capital than of big business backing for Hitler. The Guardian article states:

Quote:
Erwin May, a treasury attaché and officer for the department of investigation in the APC,57 was assigned to look into UBC’s business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn’t actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC’s president.

May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: “Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart NV of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr. Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest.”

May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel traveled to these companies through UBC.

By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman H. J. Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen’s Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen’s steel and coal mine empire in Germany.58
The connections are tenuous at best, but of the same character as the other supposed associations between transnational corporations and the Third Reich.

Who Paid the Nazi Party?

Like the assumption that Ford could have funded Hitler because they had similar views about Jews, Pool also makes the same assumption about Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, Schacht’s friend, because Norman was also antagonistic towards Jews (and the French). He deplored the economic chaos wrought on Germany by the Versailles diktat and the adverse impact that was having on world trade. On that score, he could have funded the Nazi party, but there is no evidence for it. Pool’s book is useful however insofar as he shows, despite himself, that the Nazi party was not a tool of big business.

I. G. Farben, for example, often depicted as one of the plutocratic wirepullers of the Nazi regime, and as the center of a Third Reich industrial death machine, was headed by liberals. Pool states that from its formation in 1925 I.G. Farben gave funding to all parties except the Nazis and the Communists. Not until 1932, with the NSDAP as the biggest party in parliament, did two representatives of the firm meet Hitler to get his views on the production of synthetic fuel.59 Not surprisingly, Hitler was in favor, given that it was an important factor in an autarchic economy. However, the matter of funds for the party was not raised.

The upshot that we learn from Pool in regard to Nazi party funding is that, quoting economist Paul Drucker:

Quote:
The really decisive backing came from sections of the lower middle classes, the farmers, and working class… As far as the Nazi Party is concerned there is good reason to believe that at least three-quarters of its funds, even after 1930, came from the weekly dues…. And from the entrance fees to the mass meetings from which members of the upper classes were always conspicuously absent.60
Ludecke, despite his repudiation of Hitler, nonetheless cogently pointed out the difference in world-views between National Socialism and liberal capitalism. He wrote that the “newly legalized concept of property rights in Germany differs radically from the ideas of orthodox capitalism, though Marxian groups in particular persist in the erroneous contention that the Hitler system is a phase of the reaction designed to enforce the stabilization of capitalism.” He pointed out that “this planned economy signifies complete State control of production, agriculture, and commerce; of exports, imports, and foreign markets; of prices, foreign exchange, credit, rates of interest, profits, capital investments, and merchandizing of all kinds…”61 Ludecke quotes from an article in the Council of Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs (July 1937) that “the German conception of capitalism was always essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon, because it was developed under an entirely different conception of the state and government…” Interestingly, the Foreign Affairs writer pointed out that what Hitler enacted was the consolidation of what had already been put in place by Social Democracy.62 There were Social Democratic governments that had undertaken similar measures. Anyone familiar with New Zealand’s first Labor Government, assuming power about the same time as Hitler, could easily assume that what the Foreign Affairs writer is describing is the Labor Government’s economic policies.

Hjalmar Schacht

A direct link between international capital and the Hitler regime was Hjalmar Schacht. He is instructive as to how the global banking nexus sought to co-opt the Nazi state, and how it failed. While researchers have focused on the first, they have neglected the implications of the latter. Sutton states that “Schacht was a member of the international financial elite that wields its power behind the scenes through the political apparatus of a nation. He is a key link between the Wall Street elite and Hitler’s inner circle.”63 Schacht was a major figure in the creation of the Bank for International Settlements. The presence of German delegates to that institution during World War II is a primary element of this alleged Nazi-Wall Street nexus. One could say, and some do, the same about the International Committee of the Red Cross64 and Interpol65 during the war.

It is tempting to speculate as to whether Schacht was planted in the National Socialist regime to derail the more-strident aspects of the NSDAP ideology on international capitalism. It is unreasonable to claim that Hitler betrayed the National Socialist fight against international capital, because the full economic program of the NSDAP was not fulfillled. There is always going to be a difference in perspective as to what can be achieved when one is not in government. Schacht was obliged to work within National Socialist parameters and could not help but achieve some remarkable results. Like Montagu Norman and others, he was also concerned that the economic chaos in Germany engendered by the post-war Versailles diktat was having an adverse impact on world trade. Sutton does not mention that he ended up in a concentration camp because of his commitment to international capital. At least Higham states early in his book that “Hjalmar Schacht spent much of the war in Geneva and Basle pulling strings behind the scenes. However, Hitler correctly suspected him of intriguing for the overthrow of the present regime in favor of The Fraternity66 and imprisoned him late in the war.”67


Hjalmar Schacht testifying for the defendant Friedrich Flick, said the industrialist contributed to the Nazi Party's campaign fund in 1933 because Hitler promised to protect private industry and to eliminate all strikes.

Hitler re-appointed Hjalmar Schacht as president of the Reichsbank in 1933, and in 1934 as minister of economics. Schacht wrote after the war:

Quote:
National Socialist agitators led by Gottfried Feder had carried on a vicious campaign against private banking and against our entire currency system. Nationalization of banks, abolition of bondage to interest payments and introduction of state Giro ‘Feder’ money, those were the high-sounding phrases of a pressure group which aimed at the overthrow of our money and banking system. To keep this nonsense in check, [I] called a bankers’ council, which made suggestions for tighter supervision and control over the banks. These suggestions were codified in the law of 1934... by increasing the powers of the bank supervisory authority. In the course of several discussions, I succeeded in dissuading Hitler from putting into practice the most foolish and dangerous of the ideas on banking and currency harbored by his party colleagues.68
What Schacht did introduce was the MEFO bill. Between 1934 and 1938 12,000,000 bills had been issued at 3,000,000 bills per year. MEFO bills were used specifically to facilitate the exchange of goods.69 However, once full employment had been achieved, Schacht wanted to return to orthodox finance. Hitler objected, and it was agreed that Schacht would continue as president of the Reichsbank until 1939, on the assurance that the MEFO issue would be halted when 12,000,000 bills had been reached.70 After the war Schacht assured readers that fiat money such as the MEFO,71 like barter, should not become the norm for the world, despite their successes in Germany.

Likewise, Schacht opposed the autarchic aims of National Socialism. Schacht was, in short, ideologically inimical to the raison d’etre of National Socialism. Today he would be a zealous exponent of globalization along with David Rockefeller and George Soros. He wrote after the war:

Quote:
Exaggerated autarchy is the greatest obstacle to a world-wide culture. It is only culture which can bring people closer to one another, and world trade is the most powerful carrier of culture. For this reason I was unable to support those who advocated the autarchistic seclusion of a hermitage as a solution to Germany’s problems.72
Yet Schacht was also responsible during six years for re-establishing Germany’s economy, and among the achievements which were in accord with National Socialism was the creation of bi-lateral trade agreements based on reciprocal credits. Schacht wrote of this:

Quote:
In September 1934 I introduced a new foreign trade programme which made use of offset accounts, and book entry credit…

My plan was to some extent a reversion to the primitive barter economy, only the technique was modern. The equivalent value of imported goods was credited to the foreign supplier in a German banking account, and vice versa foreign buyers of German goods could make payment by means of these accounts. No movement of money in marks or foreign currency took place. All was done through credits and debits in a bank account. Thus no foreign exchange problem came into being.73
Schacht then hints at what would result in a clash of systems, and world war:

Quote:
Those interested in the exchange of goods came into conflict with those interested solely in money. There was soon a battle royal between the exporters who sold goods to Germany, and the creditors who wanted their interest. Both parties demanded to be given preference, but the decision always went in favor of foreign trade.

I concluded special agreements with a number of states which were our principal sources of raw materials and foodstuffs. Anyone who wished to sell raw materials to Germany had to purchase German industrial products. Germany could pay for goods from abroad only by means of home-produced goods, and was thus able to trade only with countries prepared to participate in this bilateral programme. There were many such countries. The whole of South America, and the Balkans were glad to avail themselves of the idea, since it favoured their raw materials production. By the spring of 1938 there were no less than 25 such offset account agreements with foreign countries, so that more than one half of Germany’s foreign trade was conducted by means of this system. This trade agreement system in which two countries - Germany and one foreign country - were always involved, has entered economic history under the name of ‘bilateral’ trading policy. 74

It created much ill-feeling in countries which were not part of the system. These were precisely those countries who were Germany’s main competitors in world markets, and who had hitherto attempted to effect repayment of their loans by imposing special charges on their imports from Germany. The countries participating in bilateral trade were not amongst those which had granted Germany loans. They were primary producers or predominantly agrarian, and had hitherto scarcely been touched by industrialisation. They utilised the bilateral trading system to accelerate their own industrial development by means of machines and factory installations imported from Germany.75
However, Schacht was not even in favor of the permanence of this great alternative method of world trade that allowed for the peaceful development of backward economies. Imagine the difference to the world today had this system been allowed to live and grow. Schacht remained a member of The Fraternity, to use Higham’s term, and he worried that

Quote:
The bilateral trading system kept the German balance of payments under control for many years, but it was not a satisfactory solution, nor was it a permanent one. It is true that it enabled Germany to preserve its industry and to feed its populace, but the system could not provide a surplus of foreign exchange. No more was ever imported than was exported. Import and export balanced out exactly in monetary terms. Thus this system achieved the very opposite of what I, in agreement with the foreign creditors, had deemed to be necessary.76
As if to emphasize that he had never intended to renege on his loyalty to The Fraternity, Schacht lamented apologetically:

Quote:
Already at the time when I introduced the bilateral trading system I made it known that I regarded it as a most inadequate and unpleasant system, and expressed the hope that it would soon be replaced by an all-round, free, multilateral trading policy. In fact the system did have some considerable influence on the trading policies of Germany’s competitors.77
It seems that Schacht had unleashed forces of economic justice and equity upon the world in spite of his intentions and it could only be stopped by war. Again: “For my part I would not say that the bilateral trading system, ranks among those of my measures which are worth copying.”78 Introducing barter in world trade seems to have been the source of great shame to Schacht.

Schacht criticizes Hitler for having financed the war neither with taxation nor with the raising of loans. “Instead he chose to print banknotes,”79 which of course is anathema to a banker such as Schacht, claiming the looming prospect of “inflation.” True enough, the “inflation” did not occur because of the other state controls, but Schacht stated that it did happen - in 1945.80 At the end of the war the bills in circulation amounted to between 40 and 60 billion marks. Schacht comments that it did not result in hyperinflation, and that the aim was to keep the level at that amount.81 Might one conclude then that the fiat money that had been issued by the Third Reich had not been the cause of inflation, but rather the destruction of German production by the end of the war? At any rate it was not until 1948 that the Allied occupation attempted currency reform, based on the recommendations of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., by a massive devaluation of the mark. This is what had devastating consequences upon middle- and working-class Germans, and Schacht states that “malevolent intent was involved.”82 Fiat money has long been the great bugaboo among orthodox economists. Amusingly, Schacht spent two days during the Nuremberg proceedings trying to explain the MEFO bills, and when asked for a third time, gave up and refused.83

The Bank for International Settlements reports show that up to the end of the war the Reich Government used a variety of methods of finance, including what Schacht had ridiculed as “state Giro ‘Feder’ money.”

Another interesting point made by Schacht is that, contrary to the widespread assumption, German economic recovery was not based on war expenditure. Schacht even criticizes Hitler with the assumption that he did not understand the requirements of war preparation. During 1935-1938 armaments expenditure was 21 billion RM.84 Schacht assumes that this was due to Hitler’s ignorance. The other alternative is that there was no long-term plan to wage a major war or prolonged aggression. There was no buildup of raw materials and no real war economy until 1939.

In 1939 Schacht was replaced by Dr. Walther Funk, who had served in 1932 as deputy chairman of the NSDAP’s economic council under the chairmanship of Feder. The replacement of Schacht by Funk working under the direction of Göring the head of the Four Year Plan, seems to be an indication that a transitional phase had been completed and that the Government was well aware of Schacht’s role as an agent for international capital. Otto D. Tolischus, writing from Berlin for The New York Times, commented:

Quote:
Dr. Schacht was ousted because he believed that Germany had reached the limit in debt-making and currency-expansion, that any further expansion spelled danger to the economic system, for which he still considered himself responsible, and that the government would have to curtail its ambitions and confine itself to the nation’s means…

No authoritative explanation of the new financial policy is available so far, but judging from hints in the highest quarters, the policy is likely to proceed about as follows:

1. Expand the currency circulation only for current exchange demands and not for special purposes.

2. Open the capital market for private industry and make private industry finance many tasks hitherto financed by the state, either directly or by prices on public orders, which have enabled industry to finance the expansion of new Four-Year Plan factories out of accumulated profits and reserves.

3. Create a non-interest bearing credit instrument with which the state, now having to share the capital market with private enterprise, will finance its own further orders in anticipation of increasing tax receipts from the resulting expansion of production.

In one respect therefore, Herr Funk presumably will continue ‘pre-financing’ the state’s orders as did Dr. Schacht, but whereas Dr. Schacht did it with bills, loans, delivery certificates and other credit instruments, all of which cost between 4½ and 5 per cent interest per year, Herr Funk proposes doing it with non-interest-eating instruments.

How that is to be done is his secret, but the mere mention of interest-free credit instruments inevitably recalls the plan of Gottfried Feder which at one time fascinated Chancellor Hitler, but which Dr Schacht vetoed.85
What had taken place was an ultimatum from the Reichsbank, which in January 1939 refused to grant the state any further credits.86 This amounted to a mutiny by orthodox banking. On January 19 Schacht was removed a president of the Reichsbank, and his position was assumed by Economics Minister Funk. Hitler issued as edict that obliged the Reichsbank to provide credit to the state.

Funk commented on Germanys’ monetary policy a year later:

Quote:
Turning from the external to the internal sector, the question, “How is this war being financed in Germany?” is one in which the world shows a lively interest. The war is financed by work, for we are spending no money which has not been earned by our work. Bills based on labour – drawn by the Reich and discounted by the Reichsbank – are the basis of money…87
Broadly, it seems that Feder’s ideas were being implemented. The NSDAP broke the bondage of the international gold merchants, and this was being openly discussed as the way of the future. Germany created an autarchic trading bloc both before and during the war, based on barter through a Reich clearing center. Pegging national currencies to the Reichsmark resulted in immediate wage increases in the occupied states. The Bank for International Settlements Annual Report for 1940-1941 quoted finance spokesmen from Fascist Italy and the Third Reich:

Quote:
The development of clearings in Europe has given rise to certain fears with regard to the future position of gold as an element in the monetary structure. It has since been noted that Germany has been able to finance rearmament and war with very slight gold reserves and that the foreign trade of Germany and Italy has been carried on largely on a clearing basis. Hence the question is being asked whether a new monetary system is being developed which will altogether dispense with the services of gold.

In authoritative statements made on this subject in Germany and Italy a distinction is drawn between different functions of gold. The president of the German Reichsbank said in a speech on 26 July 1940 that “in any case in the future gold will play no role as a basis of European currencies, for a currency is not dependent upon its cover but on the value which is given to it by the state, i.e. by the economic order as regulated by the state.” “It is,” he added, “another matter whether gold should be regarded as a suitable medium for the settlement of debit balances between countries, but we shall never pursue a monetary policy which makes us in any way dependent upon gold, for it is impossible to tie oneself to a medium the value of which one cannot determine oneself.”88
After the war Schacht, while acquitted of charges at Nuremberg, did not escape the vindictiveness of the Allies, despite the testimonials of those who stated that he was from the start an enemy of Hitler. In 1959 Donald R. Heath, American ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who had been director of political affairs for the American military government during the time of the Nuremberg trials, wrote to Schacht telling him that he had tried to intervene for Schacht with U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson:

Quote:
After consultation with Robert Murphy, now Under Secretary of State, and with the permission of General Clay, I went to Nürnberg to see Jackson. I told Jackson not only should you never have been brought before that tribunal but that you had consistently been working for the downfall of the Nazi regime. I told him that I had been in touch with you consistently during the first part of the war and Under Secretary of State Wells through me, and that you had passed on to me information adverse to the Nazi cause…89
In 1952 Schacht applied to establish a bank in Hamburg but was refused on the basis that the MEFO bills had offended banking morality. Notably, it was the Socialists who found the MEFO objectionable. 90

Who Wanted War?

If some industrialists and businessmen such as Henry Ford Sr. did not want war and supported the America First Committee, others, including those supposedly pro-Nazi, were clamoring for aid to Britain and antagonism towards Germany well before Pearl Harbor. Senator Rush D. Holt, a liberal pacifist, during the last session of the 76th Congress, exposed the oligarchs promoting belligerence against Germany. Commenting on an influential committee, Defend America by Aiding the Allies, headed by newspaperman William Allen White, to agitate for war against Germany, or at least “all aid short of war” to Britain, Senator Holt said the founders included “eighteen prominent bankers.” Among those present at its April 1940 founding were Henry L. Stimson, who had served as counsel for J. P. Morgan and senior Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont.91 The campaign began on June 10, 1940, with advertisements entitled “Stop Hitler Now” appearing in newspapers throughout the USA. There was an allusion to the advertisements being paid for by “a number of patriotic American citizens.” On July 11 Senator Holt spoke to the Senate on the advertisement:

Quote:
You find it is not the little fellows who paid for this advertisement, “Stop Hitler Now!” … Listen to these banks. The directors of these banks, or the families of directors, paid for this advertisement. Who are they? No wonder they want Hitler stopped. Director of J. Pierpont Morgan & Co.; Director of Drexel & Co.; Director of Kuhn, Loeb Co., - Senators have heard that name before – Kuhn, Loeb & Co. international banking. No wonder Kuhn, Loeb & Co. helped finance such an advertisement. A Director of Lehman Bros., another international banking firm, helped pay for this “Stop Hitler” advisement, and a number of others.92
Holt, referring to a list of names of the advertisement sponsors, stated that they are not the types who die in battle, or the fathers of those who die in battle. He named the wives of international financiers W. Averell Harriman,93 H. P. Davison,94 the late Daniel Guggenheim,95 and John Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Other sponsors included Frederick M. Warburg,96 a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; Cornelius V. Whitney, mining magnate associated with Rockefeller and Morgan interests; and Thomas W. Lamont of J. P. Morgan Co. In communications, there was Henry Luce, publisher of Time, and Samuel Goldman, the Hollywood mogul. Holt described these sponsors not as “patriots,” but as “paytriots.”

In his farewell speech to the Senate, Holt nailed exactly what was behind the agitation for war against Germany, and the different attitude towards the USSR: “Germany is a factor in world trade against England, Russia is not.” “American boys are going to be sent once again to Europe, in the next session of Congress, not to destroy dictatorship or to preserve democracy but to preserve the balance of power and protect world trade.” It is interesting to read now that in reply Senator Josh Lee reminded Holt that Roosevelt had promised that “no American expeditionary force would be sent to Europe.” Holt replied that Roosevelt had broken many promises.97

A survey of the newspaper headlines also indicates those most avid in calling for U.S. war against Germany, from as early as 1938; and indeed the war hysteria that was being pushed against Germany from an early date. Apart from President Franklin D. Roosevelt promising that he would not involve the USA in another European war, out of one side one his mouth while out of the other demanding an urgent military buildup, the two individuals who stand out most prominently in war-mongering are presidential confidant and Wall Street financier Bernard M. Baruch and New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman of Lehman Brothers. In October 1938 Baruch and Roosevelt were both calling for increased military spending by the USA. In January 1939 Baruch offered $3,300,000 of his own fortune to help equip the U.S. army. In February 1939 Roosevelt was saying that U.S. involvement in helping Britain and France was “inevitable,” although hostilities were not declared until September. In May 1940, amidst war-mongering by “rabbis” and Roosevelt, “Baruch exhorts U.S. to re-arm.” In June “Lehman tells Roosevelt to send all arms asked.” A few days later James P. Warburg, of the famous banking dynasty, “says only force will stop Hitler.” In July Lehman called for compulsory military service. In January 1941 James P. Warburg “asks for speed” in rearming the USA. A few days previously Rabbi Stephen S. Wise urged “all aid short of war” to Britain, as Roosevelt asked “billions in loans to fight Axis,” and Lehman “urges speedy passage of aid measure.” In February “Jewish Institute to Plan Role in New World Order,” and “Lehman Urges Speed in Voting British Aid Bill.”98 Lehman, U.S. diplomat Bullitt, and others of the pro-war party were pitching to the American public, overwhelmingly opposed to war, that if Britain is defeated, the USA faced impending invasion.99 Those such as Colonel Charles Lindbergh, who showed that such alarmist claims were utter nonsense, were pilloried as “pro-Nazi.”

Conclusion

Some Wall Street luminaries who are supposed to have been “pro-Nazi” on the basis of business affiliations in Germany were among those agitating for war against Germany. Foreign business holdings were held in trust throughout the war by Germany in accordance with international law. The one individual who had convincing links with international capital, Hjalmar Schacht, was relieved of all positions by 1939 and ended up in a concentration camp. Those German businessmen who did provide funds to the Nazi party did so at a comparatively late date, and were of nationalistic sentiments in a German tradition that was alien to that of the self-interest of the English free-trade school. Even those foreign businessmen who might reasonably have been expected to fund the NSDAP on ideological grounds, primarily Henry Ford, did not do so, persistent allegations to the contrary.

The Third Reich was a command economy, and corporate executives became “trustees” of their firms, subject to state supervision. The NSDAP premise: “the common interest before self-interest” was upheld throughout the regime. Dividends and profits were limited to a large extent. While it is a widespread assumption that Hitler reneged on the “socialist” principles of the NSDAP program, what the regime did carry out was extensive in terms of bilateral trade, and the use of unorthodox methods of finance. The machinations of international capital, including those who were supposedly pro-German, were for war, especially if Germany could not be persuaded to return to orthodox methods of trade and finance. War came the same year as Schacht was dismissed from office.

Notes:

1 See for example: “Fascism” in ABC of Political Terms (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1982), pp. 29-30; cited in Roger Griffin, Fascism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 282-283.

2 Ibid.

3 Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (London: Vintage, 1995).

4 Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Neither Left nor Right: Fascist Ideology in France (Princeton, 1986).

5 “Guidelines of the German Workers’ Party,” January 5, 1919, in Barbara M. Lane and Leila J. Rupp, Nazi Ideology Before 1933(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), pp. 9-11.

6 Oswald Spengler [1926], The Decline of the West (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), Vol. 2, p. 402.

7 Hitler, Mein Kampf (London; Hurst and Blackett, 1939), pp. 180-181.

8 Ibid., p. 183.

9 Ibid.

10 Friedrich List, The National System of Political Economy (1841) online at: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/315

11 Ibid., “Author’s Preface.”

12 Antony Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House Publishers, 1974).

13 Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (Suffolk: Broomfield Books, 1976).

14 Everette O. Lemons, A Revolution in Ideological Inhumanity (Lulu Press, 2013), Vol. 1 pp. 339-340.

15 Ibid. , p. 389.

16 Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler (London: Jarrolds Publishers, 1938), pp. 287-288.

17 Sutton, How The Order Creates War and Revolution (Bullsbrook, W. Australia: Veritas Publishing (1985). Sutton’s evidence for Wall Street funding of Hitler comprises nothing other than the supposed links with Fritz Thyssen (pp. 58-63), which will be considered below.

18 “Berlin hears Ford is backing Hitler,” New York Times, December 20, 1922, cited by Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, pp. 90-92.

19 See for example: “ The Constantine Report,” http://www.constantinereport.com/new...acking-hitler/
Also the citing of the article in a university thesis: Daniel Walsh, “The Silent Partner: how the Ford Motor Company Became an Arsenal of Nazism,” p. 4, University of Pennsylvania, http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/view...xt=hist_honors

20 Antony Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (Suffolk: Broomfield Books, 1976), p. 92.

21 Ibid.

22 Scott Nehmer, Ford, General Motors and the Nazis: Marxist Myths About Production, Patriotism and Philosophies (Bloomington, Indiana: Author House LLC, 2013).

23 Professor Eric Johnson seems to be particularly close to Jewish interests, which might explain his outrage at Mr. Nehmer’s lack of subservience. See: Central Michigan University, History Department Newsletter, “Faculty Publications and Activities,” June 2010, p. 2, https://www.cmich.edu/colleges/chsbs...letter2010.pdf

24 Scott Nehmer, “Ford General Motors, and the Nazis,” http://scottnehmer.weebly.com/

25 Antony Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, pp. 104-105.
Trading with the Enemy (London: Robert Hale, 1983), by Charles Higham, is along the same lines.

26 Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler (London: Jarrolds Publishers, 1938).

27 Ibid., p. 196.

28 Ibid., p. 203.

29 Ibid., p. 201.

30 Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, p. 92.

31 James Pool, Who Financed Hitler (New York: Pocket Books, 1997), pp. 65-96.

32 New York Times, June 4, 1938; quoted by Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, pp. 90-91.

33 Ibid., p. 90.

34 Pool, p. 84.

35 George T. Eggleston, Roosevelt, Churchill and the World War II Opposition (Old Greenwich, Conn.: The Devin-Adair Co., 10979), pp. 96-97.

36 Ibid., pp. 101, 146, 147, 164, 165.

37 Ibid., p. 101.

38 Thomas Lamont, “ American Business in War and Peace: Economic Peace Essential to Political Peace,” speech before the Academy of Political Sciences, November 15, 1939, quoted by Peter Luddington, Why the Good War was Good: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New World Order, doctoral thesis, UCLA (Ann Arbor: ProQuest LLC, 2008), pp. 112-113.

39 K. R. Bolton, “The Geopolitics of White Dispossession” in Radix, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 108-110.

40 Ibid., pp. 112-114.

41 Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946), p. 35.

42 Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: How the Allied Multinationals supplied Nazi Germany throughout World War Two (London: Robert Hale, 1983)., pp. 166-177.

43 Edwin Black, “Hitler’s Car Maker: The Inside Story of How General Motors Helped Mobilize the Third Reich,” History News Network, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/37935

44 James D. Mooney, Always the Unexpected, unpublished autobiography, ed. Louis P. Lochner, (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, 1948), p. 24; cited by David Hayward, Automotive History, “Mr. James D. Mooney: A Man of Missions,” http://www.gmhistory.chevytalk.org/J...d_Hayward.html

45 Mooney, ibid., p. 27.

46 Luddington, p. 113.

47 Dr. Greg Bradsher, “German Administration of American Companies 1940-1945: A Very Brief Review,” U.S. National Archives, June 6, 2001, http://www.archives.gov/research/hol...companies.html

48 Ibid.

49 Rinehold Billstein, et al Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors and Forced Labor in Germany During the Second World War (Berghahn Books, 2004), p. 141.

50 Anita Kugler, Working for the Enemy, ibid., p. 36.

51 Richard Overy, The Dictators (London: Allen Lane, 2004), p.p. 438-439.

52 Antony Sutton, How The Order Creates War and Revolution, pp. 3-9.

53 Ibid, inter alia.

54 Frtiz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler (New York: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., n.d.) p. 88, cited by Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, p. 25.

55 Sutton, ibid., p. 25.

56 “Fritz Thyssen,” ThyssenKrupp, http://www.thyssenkrupp.com/en/konze..._grfam_t2.html

57 Alien Property Commission.

58 “How Bush’s Grandfather Helped Hitler’s Rise to Power,” The Guardian, September 25, 2004, http://www.theguardian.com/world/200...secondworldwar

59 Pool, pp. 336-337.

60 Paul Drucker, The End of Economic Man (London: 1939), p. 105; quoted by Pool, p. 272.

61 Ludecke, p. 692.

62 Ibid., p. 693.

63 Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, p. 18.

64 Arthur Spiegelman, “WWII Documents Bolster Nazi-Red Cross Connection,” Detroit Free Press, August 30, 1996, p. 6A.

65 Gerald L. Posner, “Interpol’s Nazi Affiliations Continued after War,” New York Times, March 6, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/06/op...ar-137690.html

66 Higham’s term for the international financial cabal.

67 Higham, pp. 9-10.

68 Hjalmar Schacht, The Magic of Money (London: Oldbourne, 1967), p. 49; http://www.autentopia.se/blogg/wp-co...c_of_money.pdf

69 Ibid., p. 117.

70 Ibid., p. 114.

71 Ibid., p. 116.

72 Ibid., p. 85.

73 Ibid., pp. 85-86.

74 Ibid., p. 86.

75 Ibid., p. 87.

76 Ibid., p. 87.

77 Ibid., p. 87.

78 Ibid., p. 89.

79 Ibid., p. 98.

80 Ibid., p. 143.

81 Ibid., p. 109.

82 Ibid., p. 121.

83Ibid., p. 118.

84 Ibid., p. 101.

85 “The Abolition of Debt-Bonds Is the Story behind the Removal of Dr. Schacht,” Social Justice, February 13, 1939, p. 11

86 Schacht, p. 117.

87 Walther Funk, “The Economic Re-Organisation of Europe,” Speech: July 25, 1940.

88 The Bank for International Settlements Annual Report for 1940-1941, Eleventh Annual Report, June 9, 1941, p. 96.

89 Hjalmar Schacht, p. 107.

90 Ibid., p. 118.

91 “Rabid Tory Propagandists are Worst War Profiteers,” Weekly Roll-Call, January 25, 1941, p. 6; citing Chicago Daily Tribune, June 12, 1940.

92 “Aid to Britain Screech comes from Wall Street Profiteers facing loss,” Weekly Roll-Call, February 3, 1941, p. 5.

93 An elder statesman of American diplomacy under several presidents, he was a founder of Brown Brothers Harriman international bank, one of whose partners was fellow Lodge 322 initiate Prescott Bush. On account of business affiliations with German corporations such as those of Fritz Thyssen, Harriman is assumed to have been a Wall Street backer of Hitler, along with Prescott Bush. His sponsorship of war agitation shows this is not the case.

94 Associated with J.P Morgan interests, he was a Lodge 322 initiate in 1920.

95 Guggenheim, the copper magnate, had been a member of the National Security League, headed by J. P. Morgan, which had agitated for war against Germany during World War I.

96 A director in Harriman railway interests.

97 “Senator Holt in Farewell Speech calls Pro-War agitators ‘Traitors’,” Weekly Roll-Call, January 11, 1941, p. 9.

98 “The Chronology of the Devil who wants War,” Weekly Roll-Call, February 17, 1941, p. 2.

99 “Prompt passage of aid bill urged,” The Pittsburgh Press, January 26, 1941, pp. 1, 12. “U.S. envoys who saw Nazis in action fear invasion, back Lend-Lease Bill,” Pittsburgh Press, p. 12.

http://inconvenienthistory.com/archi..._nazi_axis.php
 
Old September 17th, 2015 #6
Robbie Key
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So, the meat and potatoes of this article is:

Quote:
I. G. Farben, for example, often depicted as one of the plutocratic wirepullers of the Nazi regime, and as the center of a Third Reich industrial death machine, was headed by liberals. Pool states that from its formation in 1925 I.G. Farben gave funding to all parties except the Nazis and the Communists. Not until 1932, with the NSDAP as the biggest party in parliament, did two representatives of the firm meet Hitler to get his views on the production of synthetic fuel.59 Not surprisingly, Hitler was in favor, given that it was an important factor in an autarchic economy. However, the matter of funds for the party was not raised.

The upshot that we learn from Pool in regard to Nazi party funding is that, quoting economist Paul Drucker:

Quote:
The really decisive backing came from sections of the lower middle classes, the farmers, and working class… As far as the Nazi Party is concerned there is good reason to believe that at least three-quarters of its funds, even after 1930, came from the weekly dues…. And from the entrance fees to the mass meetings from which members of the upper classes were always conspicuously absent.60
Ludecke, despite his repudiation of Hitler, nonetheless cogently pointed out the difference in world-views between National Socialism and liberal capitalism. He wrote that the “newly legalized concept of property rights in Germany differs radically from the ideas of orthodox capitalism, though Marxian groups in particular persist in the erroneous contention that the Hitler system is a phase of the reaction designed to enforce the stabilization of capitalism.” He pointed out that “this planned economy signifies complete State control of production, agriculture, and commerce; of exports, imports, and foreign markets; of prices, foreign exchange, credit, rates of interest, profits, capital investments, and merchandizing of all kinds…”61 Ludecke quotes from an article in the Council of Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs (July 1937) that “the German conception of capitalism was always essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon, because it was developed under an entirely different conception of the state and government…” Interestingly, the Foreign Affairs writer pointed out that what Hitler enacted was the consolidation of what had already been put in place by Social Democracy.62 There were Social Democratic governments that had undertaken similar measures. Anyone familiar with New Zealand’s first Labor Government, assuming power about the same time as Hitler, could easily assume that what the Foreign Affairs writer is describing is the Labor Government’s economic policies.
 
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