Definitions of Fascism
Few words cause more confusion and heated debate than fascism. It is often used in the sense of extreme repression. Often the understanding of fascism is limited to the Nazis dictatorship. The term has been applied to many individuals, such as Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and others. It is frequently - often wrongly - used to describe police and law enforcement, and government and its policies.
What then is fascism exactly? Webster’s Dictionary defines it as: “A government system marked by a centralized dictatorship, stringent socioeconomic controls and belligerent nationalism.”
Benito Mussolini, the world’s first fascist dictator, said: “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is a merge of state and corporate power.” The word fascism stems from the Italian word fascio, a union or league, and the Latin word fasces, an ancient Roman symbol of authority consisting of an executioner’s ax bound in a bundle of rods. Under ancient Roman law, it originally symbolized the power to kill mercifully with the ax or mercilessly by beating the condemned to death with the rods. It is also interpreted as “Strength Through Unity,” the fascist motto in V for Vendetta; in other words, corporatism. The reverse side of the Mercury dime depicts a fasces.
Upton Sinclair defined fascism simply as “capitalism plus murder.” According to Franklin Roosevelt:
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
Another good definition of fascism comes from Heywood Broun, a noted American columnist in the 1930s:
Fascism is a dictatorship from the extreme right, or to put it a little more closely into our local idiom, a government which is run by a small group of large industrialists and financial lords... I think it is not unfair to say that any businessman in America, or public leader, who goes out to break unions is laying the foundations for fascism.
A lengthy description of fascism often credited to Mussolini is in the 1932 Italian Encyclopedia edited by Giovanni Gentile. Excerpts from that description are given in Appendix 1.
Overall, these definitions are vague and abstract. Roosevelt’s definition comes closest to the true essence, but even his is incapable of taking into account all forms of fascism. Like democracy, fascism comes in many forms. Further, no fascist state has ever first appeared full-blown. Even the Nazis and Mussolini took several years to consolidate their power. It’s that gradual transition that makes fascism so insidious.
The lack of a clear definition of fascism led the War Department to develop a training program to teach new inductees what they were fighting. The War Department released Program 64 on March 24, 1945. An excerpt from that program alludes to the difficulty in precisely defining a fascist.
Three Ways to Spot U.S. Fascists.
Fascists in America may differ slightly from fascists in other countries, but there are a number of attitudes and practices that they have in common. Following are three. Every person who has one of them is not necessarily a fascist. But he is in a mental state that lends itself to the acceptance of fascist aims.
1. Pitting religion, racial, and economic groups against one another in order to break down the national unity is a device of the divide and conquer technique used by Hitler to gain power in Germany and in other countries. With slight variations, to suit local conditions, fascists everywhere have used this Hitler method. In many countries, anti-Semitism (usually more accurately termed Judeophobia, as the word “Semitic” denotes mainly the language of the Arabs, and not the religion of the Jews) is a dominant device of fascism. In the United States native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor and anti-foreign born. In South America native fascists use the same scapegoats except that they substitute anti-Protestantism for anti-Catholicism. Interwoven with the master race theory of fascism is a well-planned hate campaign against minority races, religions, and other groups. To suit their particular needs and aims, fascists will use any one or a combination of such groups as a convenient scapegoat.
2. Fascism cannot tolerate such religious and ethical concepts as the brotherhood of man. Fascists deny the need for international cooperation. These ideas contradict the fascist theory of the master race. International cooperation, as expressed in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, run counter to the fascist program of war and world domination. Right now our native fascists are spreading anti-British, anti-Soviet, anti-French and anti-United Nations propaganda.
3. It is accurate to call a member of a communist party a communist. For short, he is often called a Red. Indiscriminate pinning of the label Red on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device. It is a favorite trick of native as well as foreign fascists.
Many fascists make the spurious claim that the world has but two choices - either fascism or communism - and they label as communist everyone who refuses to support them. By attacking our free enterprise, capitalist democracy, and by denying the effectiveness of our way of life, they hope to trap many people.
Program 64 set off a major firestorm of criticism in Congress. Led by pro-fascist members, the controversy raged until the War Department gave up the program.
Characteristics of Fascism
This book defines fascism as follows, with one condition. Fascism is a repressive totalitarian regime in which a small elite controls and uses the government for their benefit. Any action by a government that places the rights of a corporation or a group of elites above the rights of the people is a step toward fascism. However, even this definition fails to delineate the transformation from a capitalist democracy to a fascist state. For instance, when did Germany become a fascist state? Did it occur with Hitler’s appointment as chancellor? Or was it before or after the appointment?
While the March 1933 election was not free, nevertheless, the Nazi Party failed to gain a majority in the Reichstag. Thus it can be argued that the transformation occurred after that election. However, Germany was well along the road to a full fascist state before Hitler’s appointment.
The lack of a clear line marking the transformation to a fascist state points again to the movement’s insidious nature, and the impossibility of relying on simplistic definitions. Since there is no all-encompassing definition, it is best to look at the traits that explore the degree of fascism. While many of the traits of fascism are almost universally included on such lists, some are hotly contested. Political scientist Lawrence Britt listed the following:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military: Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism: The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media: Sometimes media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Government leaders frequently use religious rhetoric, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected: The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often puts government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business-government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment: Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Fascist regimes are almost always governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions, and then use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections: Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times, elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Some additional, more definitive traits of fascism, roughly in order of their importance, are:
Top-Down Revolution or Movement: Fascism is a rebellion or revolt by the elite to preserve their social economic status. This is the primary reason fascism begins during periods of economic turmoil. While the large number of followers of fascism such as Hitler’s Brown Shirts came from the middle and lower classes, the elite of German society controlled the party. It was only after Hitler assured the prominent business leaders of his opposition to socialism and unions that he gained power.
Unbridled Corporatism: The corporate leaders direct government policy for their own benefit. Fascism reduces controls on business and suppresses or bans unions.
Extreme Anti-communism, Anti-socialism and Anti-Liberal Views: Fascists regard the state as supreme and the individual as subordinate to the state. Fascism cancels or forces deep cuts in social programs.
Extreme Exploitation: Fascist regimes reduce people to objects of the state without human rights. Citizenship may be revoked from groups of people to exploit them and seize their property. (See also No. 2 on Britt’s list.)
Totalitarian: Fascism does not tolerate dissent. Dissenters face imprisonment or execution. Fascism packs the courts with party ideologues, leaving no recourse for grievances.
Extreme Nationalism: Excessive display of nationalism with flags, mottoes, slogans and other national symbolism is common to all fascist regimes. Fascist governments glorify the military and divert most of the government spending to the military and defense items. Often this extreme nationalism results in the expanding the country’s borders through wars. (Common to both lists.)
Destructive Divisiveness: All politicians in a democracy use divisions to win elections. However, under fascism, the divisiveness is uniquely destructive and often takes the form of racism, class warfare or even genocide. (Similarity with No. 3 on Britt’s list.)
Opportunistic Ideology: Fascists often adopt popular stances on issues to gain and hold power, but once fully in control, they reverse themselves in favor of reactionary positions. Hitler borrowed from socialism to gain power only. Once he gained power, he repudiated these ideas, and socialists were some of the first prisoners in the concentration camps.
Violence and Terror: Fascist regimes use violence and terror to gain and preserve power. Hitler had his Brown Shirts intimidate voters and opposition leaders by starting street brawls and even murdering the opposition. Once in power, he used the Gestapo, the secret state police, to root out and remove any opposition.
Expounding of Mysticism or Religious Beliefs: Hitler often spoke of the declining moral values in Germany, and used the church to manipulate public opinion. The Nazis modeled the SS after both religious and pagan customs. (Common to both lists.)
Cult-like Figurehead: A popular figurehead surrounded by a small cadre of cult-like followers has headed every fascist regime to date.
Censorship: The press and media are tightly controlled under fascism, and reduced to the role of the party’s mouthpiece. (Common to both lists.)
It must be emphasized that not all of these traits need be present in a fascist state. For instance, Nazi Germany was the only fascist state to show extreme racism. There is scant evidence of it in Franco’s Spain, Peron’s Argentina and Pinochet’s Chile. Even in Italy, racism was minor before the Nazis took control.
Strictly speaking, fascist states to are totalitarian and place the rights of corporations above the rights of their citizens. However, there is a wide gray area in defining when a government becomes totalitarian, or at what point protecting corporations becomes fascist.
Understanding this gray area is essential to recognizing how fascist regimes arise. It points to the inherent danger in all societies based on a free market economy. Once an elite class gains enough wealth to control and run the government, it ceases to exist in its own right. Not all free market economies end in fascism; many have ended in right-wing dictatorships. The various coups in Central and South America provide plenty of examples. A few may end in a Marxist revolution, as in Cuba, and others may become democracies. The turn to fascism is the extreme case.
Once again, this gray area makes fascism dangerous and hard to recognize. Unlike communism, fascism does not need a revolution to emerge, although fascist putschists will often use mobs to underpin their coups. Considering the enormous impact the Nazis had on the world, Germany greeted Hitler’s appointment as chancellor with indifference. His appointment followed a long list of short-lived German governments and chancellors. A newsreel shown widely throughout movie theaters in Germany placed Hitler’s appointment last in the six events covered, behind reports on a horse race, a horse show and a ski jump. Similarly, reaction outside Germany was largely indifferent and restrained.
The great indifference to Hitler’s appointment indicates how easy it is for a democracy to slide into fascism. In The End of America, published in July 2007, Naomi Klein outlines ten steps to a fascist takeover:
Invoke an internal and external threat; establish secret prisons; develop a paramilitary force; surveil ordinary citizens; infiltrate citizens’groups; arbitrarily detain and release citizens; target key individuals; restrict the press; cast criticism as ‘espionage’ and dissent as ‘treason;’ and subvert the rule of law.
Klein then gives current, Bushist examples of each. She also notes how many of the steps were followed in the Thai military coup of September 2006, “as if they had a shopping list… Thailand was a police state within a matter of days.” The scenario in the U.S. is more gradual, more banal, but just as overwhelmingly thorough.
Any objective assessment of the George W. Bush administration after the reports of torture at the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison in May 2004 would find most of the traits from all three lists. Undoubtedly, this government has been one of the most repressive in U.S. history. By spring 2004, some journalists were already describing it as fascist.
The Philosophy of Fascism
Further insights into fascism can be gained by looking at its roots in modern philosophy. March 23, 1919 in Milan, Italy, Mussolini formed the Fasci di Combattiment, fighting leagues or bands. Some writers suggest there was already a well-developed theory of fascism dating back to Karl Marx, but this is part of the futile yet concerted effort by the Right Wing to link fascism with communism and the Left.
Much of their argument stems from the fact that several of the philosophers of fascism, including Mussolini, Sergio Panunzio and George Sorrell, had once been members of the Socialist Party or associated with the Left in other ways. The Socialist Party had expelled Mussolini for his support for the war, and both he and Giovanni Gentile grew to despise socialism. To argue that fascism is a leftist ideology is like claiming that President Reagan was a liberal because he had once been a member of the Democratic Party.
The earliest efforts to define the fascist philosophy came with the printing of the Fascist Doctrine, written by Gentile and often credited to Mussolini. Gentile served as minister of education in Mussolini’s first cabinet, and organized a purge of liberals and democrats in Italian universities. He believed future revolutions would occur in backward countries where people needed to focus their strength on restoring the nation. (This is the opposite of Marx’s theory that revolutions would be a struggle by the working class to gain power in industrialized countries.)
Gentile hated the socialists for their support of continuous strikes and work stoppages in Italy during the chaos immediately following World War I. He sensed the Italian nation was beginning to crumble. Gentile also thought humans have no purpose outside the nation, and all must make sacrifices for it - whereas Marx looked forward to a withering away of the state.
Other themes in the Fascist Doctrine originate with more traditional influences. Corporatism and its theories of class collaboration, and economic and social relations can be traced to the model laid out by Pope Leo XII’s 1892 encyclical Rerum Novarum. There is great similarity between the fascist and encyclical versions of corporatism. The encyclical addressed politics and the way in which the Industrial Revolution transformed society. It sharply criticized socialism and its theory of class struggle, while also citing capitalism for exploiting the masses. Seeking a principle to replace the Marxist doctrine of class struggle, the encyclical urged social solidarity between the upper and lower classes, and approved nationalism as a way of preserving traditional morality, customs and folkways. Pope Leo XII proposed a kind of corporatism, organizing political societies along industrial lines, much like medieval guilds. The pope went so far as to reject the democratic ideal of “one person, one vote” in favor of representation by interest groups.
Italian fascism as a political and economic system combined parts of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism and anti-communism. In many regards, it may be considered an ideology of negation: anti-liberal, anti-communist and antidemocratic. It was a reactionary ideology in that it promoted whatever views would be useful to further exploit the people. It was also a reaction against the French Revolution, that landmark event that launched a major shift in European culture and governments, whose motto of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” the European nobility hated the most.
The concept of liberty from repressive regimes in the daily lives of the citizenry incensed the early philosophers of fascism. Freedom from forced religious values, the right to vote, majority rule in which the minority still held a set of inalienable rights - these were radical ideas in a time of debtor’s prisons, indentured servants and vassal states. Such ideas directly threatened kings, nobles, and the Church.
Equality in the eyes of the law was unspeakable. How could a mere peasant have the same rights under the law as kings, nobles and merchants? There had been a time when the king’s word was the law. The social standing of one’s birth determined one’s rights. The only rights a person had were those the king was willing to extend - and which he could withdraw at any moment. Fraternity, in the sense that all men and women shared humanity, was considered heresy. Society had treated slaves as animals and women as property, not part of a greater humanity. All three terms meant a loss of control by those in power, and the 19th century saw a flourishing counter-revolution of obscurantist philosophy.
Some writers look for signs that 19th century German thinkers like Schopenhauer, Hegel, or Weber foreshadowed Nazism, but with little basis. The 19th century precursor to the fascist ideology was Social Darwinism, an English manufacture, as will be seen in Ch. 3. Germany contributed the mad nihilist Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), known for his Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Will to Power. Hitler liked to be photographed staring at a bust of Nietzsche, the enfant terrible who theorized two sets of morals for the ruling and slave classes. He believed that ancient empires grew out of the ruling class and that religions - which denigrate the rich, the powerful, rationalism and sexuality - arose from the slave classes. “The unhealthy must at all costs be eliminated, lest the whole fall to pieces.” He developed the idea of an Übermensch, or overman, a superhuman, symbolizing man at his most creative and highest intellectual development. “A daring and ruler race is building itself up... to become the ‘lords of the earth.”
... a secret circular went out from the Reich Interior Ministry which marked the beginning of a programme of euthanasia for mentally ill or deformed children up to 3 years old. Doctors would be required to report all such cases to the health authority on special forms; the forms would then be forwarded to a panel of three medical assessors who would adjudicate over life or death by appending “-” or “+.” Should all three place a “+,” a euthanasia warrant would be issued, signed by the Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler of the Fuhrer’s Chancellery or SS Oberfuhrer Dr Viktor Brack, head of the Chancellery’s Euthanasia Department II. And so it happened: infants marked for death were transferred to what were referred to as Children’s Special Departments in politically reliable clinics, there to be given a “mercy death” by injection, or in one institution at Eglfing-Haar simply starved by a progressive reduction of diet.
This superman or perfected man was mirrored in the racialist Nazi concept of “Aryan,” as contrasted to the “Semitic” Jewish minority, as shown in this lurid passage from Hitler’s Mein Kampf:
With satanic joy in his face, the black haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its culture and political height, and himself rising to be master.
While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has eliminated much of the racial hate in the United States, a good deal remains just below the surface. In late 1998, Sen. Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia were exposed as members of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The group’s Web site, cofcc.org, still continues to bash blacks in a primitive fashion, and calls itself the No Longer Silent Majority.
The Rise of the Third Reich
Two factors were largely responsible for shaping global policies of the 1920s: the Treaty of Versailles and the rise of Bolshevism. Both figure prominently in Hitler’s rise.
The Versailles Treaty placed severe limits on Germany and demanded harsh reparations. The French delegate Clemenceau demanded even harsher terms than approved by the treaty, hoping to permanently weaken Germany and ensure that France would be the sole continental power. Most historians regard the treaty as the primary cause of the rise of the Nazis, but the Bolshevik Revolution also played a part. It was the bogeyman that most aroused demagogues on the right. Communism, socialism, worker revolutions and unionism threatened the existing social order. In the United States, the Red Scare of 1919 led to extreme anti-unionism. Fascist regimes offered big business owners and rightist leaders protection against communism and worker class movements.
The war was partially responsible for the global rebirth of the hard Right. From their service on the frontlines, many soldiers developed a strict sense of order and harsh justice compatible with right-wing beliefs. J.P. Morgan formed the American Legion to protect business interests and to act as a union-busting group of thugs. The Freikorps in Germany served the same purpose; Hitler himself was a member.
During the 1920s and 1930s fascism came to be viewed as a bulwark against Bolshevism. The Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations actively sought to strengthen Mussolini’s hold on Italy to prevent the rise of socialism or communism there.
The end of World War I brought an end to the German Empire and monarchy. A series of weak center-right coalition governments governed the short-lived Weimar Republic (1919-33). Financial problems and internal turmoil rocked the ill-fated republic. The only period of stability was a short span of six years, 1923-29. Fourteen chancellors and 19 cabinets governed before Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. The last year of the republic was especially chaotic with the failure of three governments (Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher). The rapid changes contributed to the instability and increasing polarization in Germany.
During the 14 years of the Weimar Republic, the government repressed communists and socialists through violence, often assassination. Early on, it used the Freikorps to put down communist uprisings. Gen. Franz Epp, a leader of the Freikorps, led 30,000 soldiers to crush the Bavarian Socialist Republic, killing more than 600 communists and socialists. The Freikorps officially disbanded in 1921, but suppression of the Left continued, often resulting in street battles between the Right and Left.
In 1926, the German army formed an Economic High Command to rearm and prepare for a new war. The Weimar government did nothing to suppress these actions. Instead, it conducted hundreds of treason trials in secret against any worker or journalist who revealed the truth.
Hitler was a member of the List Regiment in Munich. During the attempted socialist takeover of Bavaria, historians believe that Hitler personally executed as many as 10 men. After the uprising was put down, Hitler was promoted in 1919 to a position as a Vertrauens-mann or undercover agent by Capt. Karl Mayr, who was in charge of Section I b/P of army intelligence, a bureau organized to investigate subversive political activities among the troop. Hitler remained an undercover agent until his discharge in late March 1920.
Hitler’s first foray into politics came on Sept. 12, 1919, when his superior officers ordered him to investigate the German Workers’ Party. Hitler attended a mid-September meeting in a little beer hall named Sterneckerbrau to gather information for his report. The fledging party had aroused the attention of the military, which was suspicious of all workers’ groups. Anton Drexler had founded the party on March 7, 1918 under the name “Free Labor Committee for a Good Peace.” The party consisted of roughly 50 railroad men and Drexler friends. After the war, Drexler changed the name, but the same members and chairman remained.
Hitler attended the meeting dressed in civilian clothes. Originally, Dietrich Eckart was slated as the main speaker, but canceled due to illness at the last moment, and Gottfried Feder took his place. Feder was an economic hack, and Hitler was glad when he finished his speech. After an attack on his views, Feder replied with a spirited defense. If the meeting had closed at this point, history might have taken a very different path. However, someone from the audience demanded Bavaria separate from Prussia and unite with Austria. Hitler had pronounced views on German unity and demanded the floor, delivering a rousing speech. It was the first time Hitler spoke before a political party, and the look of astonishment in the eyes of his audience pleased him. Hitler had no high opinion of the members of the tiny party, and had no intention of returning. However, before leaving the meeting, Drexler shoved a pamphlet into Hitler’s hands.
The pamphlet outlined Drexler’s views. While sketching out a “new world order” based on National Socialism, the pamphlet was largely an anti-Jewish tract. A portion follows:
There is a race - or perhaps we should call it a nation - which for over two thousand years has not possessed a state of its own, but has nevertheless spread over the entire earth. They are the Jews. They are not peasants, farmers or factory workers; they do not work in the coalmines or in the building trade. They are the secret “givers of bread” behind every limited liability company; they are the ones who barter everything fashioned by the intellectual and manual skill of mankind. They quickly conquered the money market, although they began in poverty, and were thereby made all the richer in vice, vermin and pestilence. All this they accomplished in the various countries they penetrated, and thus they became the indispensable bankers in all civilized countries and the economic leaders, exerting power over princes and rulers.
Only one per cent of the total population is Jewish but for thousands of years the Jews, from the highest to the lowest, have grimly pursued the thought that this tiny people should never serve rulers but always govern them. Yet they are unable to form a state of their own. Consequently in every country they strive to monopolize the money market, the economy, politics, literature, the press, and this race has almost made themselves the masters of the world.
Hitler recorded his first impression of the party in Mein Kampf as follows:
My impression was neither good nor bad; a new organization like so many others. This was the time in which anyone who was not satisfied with developments and no longer had confidence in the existing parties felt called upon to found a new party. Everywhere these organizations sprang from the ground, only to vanish silently after a time. The founders for the most part had no idea what it means to make a party - let alone a movement - out of a club. And so these organizations nearly always stifle automatically in their absurd philistinism.
Sept. 16, 1919, Hitler received a postcard saying the party accepted his membership and inviting him to attend a special meeting of the executive committee. Although he considered the postcard presumptuous, Hitler decided to go. He soon met Dietrich Eckart, a member of the Thule Society. Behind the front of a literary club studying Nordic culture, the Society was a hard-right political group devoted to anti-Semitism or Judeophobia and aristocratic rule. Its agents had penetrated the government and were adept forgers with powerful ties to the Freikorps.
Eckart began tutoring Hitler by giving him books to read, teaching him to dress properly, introducing him to prominent people, and giving him money - funding that most likely came from other wealthy Eckart acquaintances. The introductions to prominent individuals arranged by Eckart paid large dividends in advancing Hitler and the party.
One of the first such introductions was to Frau Helene Bechstein, wife of the piano manufacturer Carl Bechstein. Hitler intrigued Helene. She soon gave him sizable contributions and began urging her friends to do the same. Her patronage eased the way for Hitler’s acceptance in the highest social circles in Germany.
Hitler recognized that for the party to continue to grow, Karl Harrer, the chairperson and another Thule Society member, had to be replaced. By Feb. 6, 1920 Drexler and Hitler had finished writing the party program, the infamous 25 points (see Appendix 2). Hitler’s speeches had already contributed to the party’s growth.
At this time, the party changed its name to National Socialist German Workers Party. Hitler also insisted on a party flag that could outdo the communist banner. A dentist from Stamberg suggested the design. The swastika has a long history dating back centuries and is found in various cultures, including American Indians. It had long been a symbol of the Teutonic Knights, and was used by the Thule Society and several Freikorp units.
By all accounts, Hitler lived frugally during this time, saving money for the party’s needs and expansion. Since his discharge from the regiment in March 1920, he had no regular source of income. Hitler and the party were compensated from members’ monthly dues and admission charged at meetings and rallies. However, party membership was still fewer than 3,000 by the end of the year. While Hitler was attracting crowds of around 6,000, the party spent much of the income on the welfare of party members, many of who were unemployed.
Before the end of 1920, Hitler insisted on one luxury item, a car, that he believed would dignify the party leadership. A second-hand Selve was purchased from funds raised mysteriously by a party member.
Hitler also wanted a larger forum. He told Eckart that the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper was in financial difficulties and could be bought for 180,000 marks. At 8 a.m., Drexler and Eckart set off to raise the funds. By noon, they had secured 60,000 marks from Gen. von Epp and another 30,000 marks from others. At 4 p.m., the purchase of the paper was properly registered. Hitler named Eckart as the editor of the newly acquired paper.
Shortly after buying the paper, Hitler hired his former sergeant major, Max Amann, as the party’s business manager. Amann was a Thule Society member and could arrange for short-term credit for the party.
In July 1921, Hitler went to Berlin for six weeks to confer with north German right-wing leaders. A former electric company executive and Eckart friend, Dr. Emil Gansser, arranged for Hitler to speak at the prestigious National Club of Berlin. The speech impressed Adm. Ludwig von Schroeder, former commander of the German Marine Corps. The admiral proved to be a great help in winning over the support of the Prussian upper class to the Nazi cause.
While Hitler was in Berlin, a factional revolt directed against him broke out in the party. On his return to Munich, Hitler threatened to resign unless given dictatorial powers over it. The ruse worked and Hitler solidified his position.
In the late summer of 1921, the party’s defense squads of volunteer brawlers reorganized under paramilitary lines. On Oct. 5, 1921 the party officially named them Sturmabteilung or Storm Troopers (SA). It cost a great deal to equip the SA. Shelter and food had to be provided, uniforms, flags and weapons had to be purchased, and there was the cost of transporting them to and from rallies. The money came from the High Command of the Bavarian Army, the Reichswehr. According to author James Pool, the aid was given on the initiative of Capt. Ernst Roehm without the knowledge of his superiors in the Bavarian army, but there is reason to doubt this. Officially in charge of the press and propaganda for the Bavarian Reichswehr, Roehm had much more influence than his rank of captain suggested. Unofficially, the generals took his advice on political matters. He organized many of the Freikorp units and was responsible for hiding arms from the Allied Control Commission. Roehm also was the leader of the SA.
By November 1922, the Nazi Party had moved into larger headquarters and employed 13 full-time staff. A central file system and archive also were developed. Nov. 22, 1922, Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstaengl attended one of Hitler’s speeches on a suggestion from Capt. Truman Smith, the assistant military attaché of the U.S. Embassy. Hanfstaengl was an anti-communist, and his mother, who was from a wealthy American family, owned an art business in Munich. Impressed by Hitler’s speech, he joined the Nazi Party. Soon after, he loaned $1,000 to the party to buy a couple printing presses and convert the new party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter from a weekly to a daily.
By the end of 1922, the German mark fell to 400 against the U.S. dollar. Hyperinflation continued through 1923. During the hyperinflation, Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter was the most important fund-raiser for the Nazi Party. The wealthy Scheubner-Richter approached aristocrats, big business leaders and leaders of heavy industry for contributions. Scheubner-Richter was a close friend of Gen. Erich Ludendorff, who channeled money to him from industrialists. Ludendorff was a prominent World War I general who fled to Sweden claiming left-wing politicians had stabbed the German army in the back. In 1924, he became one of the first Nazis to be seated in the Reichstag.
Scheubner-Richter also was close to White Russian émigrés, and worked to bring about close cooperation between right-wing Russian émigrés and the Nazi Party. Through him, Hitler received the unqualified support of Gen. Vasili Biskupsky. In 1922, Biskupsky declared his support for Grand Duke Cyril, a pretender to the Russian throne. As a first cousin to Czar Nicholas II, he was a rightful heir to the crown. Both the Grand Duke and his wife, the Grand Duchess Victoria, took up the Nazi cause and gave generously.
There also are credible reports that Hitler traveled to Switzerland to raise funds during the hyperinflation. Even trifling sums in foreign currency were worth enormous sums in German marks.
In October 1923, Gen. Eric Ludendorff suggested to Fritz Thyssen that he attend a speech by Hitler. Thyssen, whose family owned one of Germany’s largest steel firms, was immediately struck by Hitler’s views, and began contributing money to the Nazi Party. In October he gave Ludendorff 100,000 gold marks (not the inflated paper German marks) to divide between the Nazis and the Oberland Freikorps.
Here lies the controversy and the need for a close look at Hitler’s rise to power. There has been a concerted effort in recent years to distance big business from support for the Nazis. Writers and historians try to downplay this connection and resort to deception. They base their argument on the size of Germany’s industries, saying that only a few qualified as big businesses. This is as absurd as defining big business in the United States today to be only the 30 companies in the Dow-Jones Industrial index. Some writers have defined big business in Germany so that less than 10 qualify.
The same writers, including Pool, try to minimize Thyssen’s contribution by noting it was divided between the Nazis and the Freikorps. This argument is weak and misleading. Today in the United States, it’s almost standard practice for a businessman or a corporation to contribute money to both parties to cover all possible outcomes, although the donations are seldom equal, and this practice is common across time and national boundaries. In fact, at the time of the Beer Hall Putsch in Germany, giving to multiple parties was especially prudent, since Germany’s proportional parliamentary system awarded seats in the Reichstag on total votes received, rather than a winner-take-all system. Thus, even minor parties won a voice in the Reichstag.
Moreover, the Freikorps helped fund the Nazis. A close look at Hitler’s trial reveals a close association between the two. Also, the Freikorps was a militia and not a political party. It did not fund other political candidates.
While the Nazis and Hitler were well known around Munich, they were unknown elsewhere. The Nazis had yet to seat their first representative in the Reichstag. Thyssen must have had an extraordinary degree of faith in the Nazis to make such a generous donation at a time of economic strife. The table below gives the composition of the Reichstag seats throughout the Weimar Republic.
SPD: Social Democrats; USPD: Independent Socialists; KPD: Communists; Centre Party: Catholics; BVP: Bavarian Peoples Party; DDP: Democrats; DVP: Peoples Party; Wirtschafts Partei: Economy Party; DNVP: Nationalists; NSDAP: Nazis.
After the Nazis’ November 1923 attempt at an armed coup d’état, the Beer Hall Putsch, the Bavarian government only halfheartedly tried to round up and arrest members of the Nazi Party. Anton Drexler and Dietrich Eckart were arrested, but Eckart was released after 10 days because of sickness and died a month later. Franz Guertner, the minister of justice, worked feverishly behind the scenes to ensure Hitler received a light sentence. Of more than 100 people for taking part in the putsch, Guertner decided to prosecute only 10: Hitler, Ludendorff, Ernst Pochner, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Roehm, Friedrich Weber, Hermann Kriebel and three storm troopers - Brueckner, Wagner and Pernet, who were merely spearcarriers.
Frick had been Hitler’s secret agent inside the police department. Weber was the commander of the Oberland Bund. Kriebel commanded the Kampfbund, an amalgam of the Reich War Flag, the Oberland Bund and Nazi storm troopers. The Oberland Freikorps was the parent organization of the Oberland Bund, a participant in the putsch. There was extensive cross-membership between the Nazis and the Oberland Bund. Further, the Thule Society helped fund the Oberland Freikorps.
In essence, the Oberland Bund helped to provide Hitler with manpower for the Beer Hall Putsch. Looking at this evidence, the ridiculous claims by Pool and other writers that Thyssen’s donation to the Nazis is overrated are obvious. Thyssen’s donation went exclusively to Hitler and his thugs.
Hitler’s trial provides more evidence of his funding sources. Feb. 7, 1924, Herr Auer, vice president of the Bavarian Diet, testified:
The Bavarian Diet has long had information that the Hitler movement was partly financed by an American anti-Semitic chief, who is Henry Ford. Mr. Ford’s interests in the Bavarian anti-Semitic movement began a year ago when one of Mr. Ford’s agents, seeking to sell tractors, came in contact with Diedrich Eichart the notorious Pan-German. Shortly after, Herr Eichart asked Mr. Ford’s agent for financial aid. The agent returned to America and immediately Mr. Ford’s money began coming to Munich.
Herr Hitler openly boasts of Mr. Ford’s support and praises Mr. Ford as a great individualist and a great anti-Semite. A photograph of Mr. Ford hangs in Herr Hitler’s quarters, which is the center of the monarchist movement.
Shortly after Auer’s testimony, W.C. Anderson resigned and Ford experienced severe difficulties in doing business in Germany. Ford’s donation came amid Germany’s hyperinflation period, when foreign currency was especially valuable. The extent of the donation is unknown.
Further confirmation of Ford’s funding comes from an interview Hitler gave seven months before the Beer Hall Putsch to Raymond Fendick, a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Fendick wrote:
We look on Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascisti movement in America. We admire particularly the anti-Jewish policy, which is the Bavarian Fascisti platform. We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. It is being circulated to millions throughout Germany.
In 1924, Kurt Luedecke traveled to America to get more funding from Ford. Luedecke insists he was sent on the direct orders from Hitler. Luedecke had glowing remarks for Ford’s editor of the Dearborn Independent, William Cameron.
Further confirmation of Ford’s support for Hitler comes from newspaper articles. The Berliner Tageblatt made an appeal to the American ambassador to investigate the report of Ford’s financing of the Nazis, noting that Hitler had money to spend during the hyperinflation period when marks were worthless. The Manchester Guardian reported Hitler received more than moral support from two American millionaires.
While there is no direct proof, it can be surmised that the Guardian was referring to either the du Pont family or W. Averell Harriman. Irénée du Pont, heir apparent of the du Pont family, was a Hitler admirer who followed his career closely. The du Ponts quickly reestablished their cartel agreements with IG Farben as soon as World War I ended. Harriman traveled to Berlin in 1922 to set up the Berlin branch of W.A. Harriman & Co. George Herbert Walker was a director of the company; he was the father-in-law of Prescott Bush. Harriman and Thyssen had agreed to set up an American bank for Thyssen before 1924. The resulting bank, Union Bank, was seized from Prescott Bush in 1942 under the Trading With the Enemy Act.
The perplexing question of why American big businessmen would support Hitler at this early date has never been addressed. Before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was largely unknown outside the Munich area, even within Germany. Given Ford’s character as a miser who hated making donations to charities and organizations, why would he back a political party that had so far failed to seat a single representative in the Reichstag, at a time when the country was on the brink of a financial collapse? Only two explanations seem reasonable: Hitler’s strong anti-communist stance or his extreme anti-Semitism or Judeophobia. Both Harriman and Irénée du Pont were Judeophobes, although not fanatics like Ford. Throughout the 1920s, both U.S. foreign policy and trade policy show that American investors were sympathetic with Mussolini because of his anti-communist stance.
Hitler’s trial revealed he received $20,000 from Nuremberg industrialists. The most significant contributor was Emil Kirdorf. In a Jan. 3, 1937 article in the Preussiche Zeitung, Kirdorf hints at his early support for Hitler: “In 1923 I came into contact for the first time with the Nationalist Socialist movement … I first heard the Fuehrer in the Essen Exhibition Hall. His clear exposition completely convinced me.”
More evidence of Hitler’s early financiers comes from the records of the Kilgore Committee.
By 1919 Krupp was already giving financial aid to one of the reactionary political groups which sowed the seed of the present Nazi ideology. Hugo Stinnes was an early contributor to the Nazi Party. By 1924 other prominent industrialists and financiers, among them Fritz Thyssen, Albert Voegler, Adolph Kirdorf and Kurt von Schroeder were secretly giving substantial sums to the Nazis.
Except for Schroeder, all the people named above came from the large steel and coal trusts. Stinnes met with Hitler and Ludendorff on Oct. 25, 1923. Although no direct evidence is available, it appears Stinnes funneled money to Hitler through Ludendorff, one of the large industrialists who benefited from the hyperinflation. Indeed, many large industrialists in Germany benefited handsomely from the hyperinflation, lending creditability to the theory of an organized plot to relieve them of their millions in wartime debt, which they paid off with worthless, inflated marks. After Stinnes died in 1924, his son continued to support the Nazis.
The Nazi Party formed a bridge between the upper and the lower classes. While lower- and middle-class people filled the ranks of the SA, the upper class controlled and guided the policies of the party. Fascism as represented by the Nazis was a top-down movement by the elite to preserve their status.
More proof of Hitler’s powerful connections comes from the extremely lenient sentence he received. Article 81 of the German Penal Code declares: “whosoever attempts to alter by force the Constitution of the German Reich or of any German state shall be punished by lifelong imprisonment.” Ludendorff was found innocent for taking part in the coup attempt. Hitler received only five years in prison and was released six months after the trial, serving only a year from the time of his arrest. Minister of Justice Franz Guertner secured an early release for Hitler and legalized the Nazi Party, which the trial judge had banned. Guertner later served as minister of justice in the cabinets of Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. Hitler kept Guertner in that position, even though he was not a party member and protested the Nazi perversion of justice. He died in 1941.
Less lenient sentences were handed out to others in secret trials conducted by the Weimar Republic during the 1920s. For instance, Walter Bullerjahn was sent to prison for 15 years for treason. The Allies had discovered that the arms maker Paul von Gontard had secretly cached an arsenal contrary to the Treaty of Versailles. Gontard disliked Bullerjahn and charged him with revealing to the Allies the fact he was secretly arming Germany. No evidence of any connection between Bullerjahn and the Allies was ever presented in court. Bullerjahn was one of hundreds of victims who received more severe sentences for far less serious crimes than an armed rebellion and coup attempt.
In jail, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, first published July 18, 1925. By the end of the year, the first run of 10,000 was nearly sold out and a second printing was ordered. However, in the following year, sales dropped sharply, reviving only after Hitler seized power.
On Dec. 20, 1924, when Hitler was released from prison, he found the party in disarray and his leadership challenged. The court had seized his car and the party newspaper. He was banned from speaking in Bavaria and in most of Germany. The party had made good inroads into the Reichstag in the May 1924 election, gaining 32 seats, but it suffered stunning losses in the December election that year, losing more than half of the seats gained in the summer. The only good news for Hitler was that Guertner had quashed an effort to deport him.
By spring 1925, Hitler bought a new supercharged Mercedes-Benz for 28,000 marks. His only source of income after his release from prison was an occasional fee for newspaper articles he wrote. He also required a chauffeur who needed to be paid regularly. During the summer, Hitler spent much time at Obersalzberg in the Alps, traveling by car regularly from Munich. During this time, he came into more contact with the feudal princes. The Bavarian aristocrats were equally divided; half of them supported Hitler while the other half detested him. The divorced wife of the Duke of Sachsen-Anhalt began giving Hitler 1,500 marks a month from her alimony. Thanks to his increasing contacts with the princes and their generosity to the party, Hitler changed his program and came out in favor of restoring expropriated lands and property. This change caused a major split in the party. Even Joseph Goebbels denounced the idea, but by the end of the summer, Hitler was in full control.
After his release from prison, Hitler realized that his only path to power was through the ballot box, so he decided to work within the system. However, 1925-29 marked a period of slow growth for the party. Inflation was under control and the communist threat had subsided. Without these two threats, voters turned away from the radical Nazi Party. Nazi records show the number of dues-paying members steadily increased from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928, but the party records are suspect and the real figures may be only half those reported.
Hitler and Big Business
Authors such as James Pool and Henry Ashby Turner, who minimize and distort the support of big business for the Nazi Party, suggest that Hitler’s financing from 1925 - 29 came mainly from dues and speaking fees. Yet the number of dues-paying members was inadequate, and Hitler was banned from speaking in much of Germany. On the other hand, author Carroll Quigley lists the following industrialists as supporters of Hitler during this time: Carl Bechstein, August Borsig, Emil Kirdorf, Fritz Thyssen and Albert Vogler.
There is much evidence to support Quigley’s position. Even Turner is forced to acknowledge that Hitler started courting big business support. On June 20, 1926, the Essen newspaper Rheinisch-Westfalische Zeitung reported that two days before, Hitler spoke to a closed-door meeting of invited business leaders. Hitler closed the meeting to get around the Prussian state’s ban on public speeches. In the subsequent 18 months, he addressed three other such meetings. Hitler was softening his approach to big business thanks to past financial donations. By all reports, after these meetings the business leaders were in favor of Hitler’s views. The meetings grew in size from 40 for the first meeting to a high of 800 for the last one.
Turner tries to minimize big business participation in these meetings by claiming that no record of attendance has ever been found in the files of the big businessmen, and that some records would have survived. However, many of these big business leaders supported Hitler in secret, and the need for secrecy was mutual. Hitler had to avoid losing a large number of party members who opposed big business. The big business leaders had to maintain secrecy to avoid consumer boycotts. Ford’s business suffered badly after his support of Hitler became known, and the lesson was not lost on these savvy executives. In 1926, even the Bechstein piano firm dismissed Edwin Bechstein after reports surfaced in the press of his fraternization with Hitler.
Turner claims that an obscure man named Arnold, who held a managerial job at a midsize smelting firm, organized the first meeting. Then he assumes only people in similar positions were invited. It is unlikely that a group of midlevel managers from small to midsize firms meeting with Hitler would have attracted the attention of local newspapers. It also is unlikely Hitler would have traveled to Essen to speak at the request of midlevel business managers unless some prominent names were present.
Turner also tries to distance big business from the Nazis by suggesting that company donations were made by junior or middle-level management. While such an argument sounds reasonable, it is patently false. Almost no business even today allows such decisions by middle-level managers; such daring decisions would likely lead to the employee’s dismissal. As an example, Ludwig Grauert, the managing director of the Arbeitnordwest, the iron and steel industry association in the Ruhr, made a $100,000 loan to the Nazis after receiving permission from Ernst Borbet, another director of United Steel. After his boss returned and discovered the loan, Grauert was nearly fired. If Thyssen had not replaced the funds, Grauert would have been dismissed.
In 1927, Elsa Bruckmann, a Munich socialite, arranged a meeting between Hitler and Emil Kirdorf. Kirdorf was a fanatical nationalist and supporter of radical right-wing causes. During the four-hour meeting, Hitler downplayed his anti-Semitism and said the Nazi Party’s 25 points would not be implemented. Hitler rarely spoke of the 25-point program and, in later years, only spoke of it derisively. He presented himself as a defender of private enterprise and a supporter of an economy based on Darwinian principles that only the strong survive. Kirdorf suggested Hitler write down his thoughts in a pamphlet to spread secretly among business leaders. Hitler complied and Kirdorf printed the pamphlet, The Road to Resurgence, listing Hitler as the author. In October, Kirdorf offered Hitler further aid by inviting him to his home to meet with 14 of his friends.
It is unknown how many pamphlets of The Road to Resurgence were printed, but the circulation was extremely limited. Only one of the pamphlets has survived. It was found in the library of a major Ruhr industrial firm. In his shamefully apologetic diatribe to big business, Turner uses this fact to suggest the pamphlet was largely unread. However, as it was found in the library of a large industrial firm, it suggests that whoever received the pamphlet placed it there so others could read it. Further, it is equally probable that these industrialists passed the pamphlet within their own circle of friends. It is more likely these industrialists read the pamphlet eagerly, since they were intrigued by Hitler’s ability to rally the workers, along with his anti-socialist and anti-union views .
Hitler continued to meet with business leaders, often in secret, until his appointment as chancellor. Many times, these meetings were so secret that they would take place in a lonely forest glade on the side of an isolated road.
A complete list of Hitler’s financial backers may never be known. However, Walter Funk named many business leaders and industries as financial supporters of Hitler during his Nuremberg testimony: Georg von Schnitzler, a leading director of IG Farben; August Rosterg and August Diehn of the potash industry; Wilhelm Cuno of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, the shipping company seized from Prescott Bush for trading with the enemy; Otto Wolf, a powerful Cologne industrialist; and Kurt von Schroeder, a radical Nazi and Cologne banker. Also implicated were Deutsche Bank, Commerz Bank, Dresdner Bank, Deutsche Kredit Gesellschaft and Allianz, Germany’s largest insurer.
Many businesses chose to align with and support the Nazis after they gained power. Krupp and IG Farben were both executors of Goering’s Four-Year Plan to make Germany militarily self-sufficient by 1940. In April 1933, Gustav Krupp sought a private meeting with Hitler. Krupp agreed to become Hitler’s chief fund-raiser and chairman of the Adolf Hitler Fund. In return, Hitler promised to appoint Krupp as the Fuehrer of Germany industry. Through the years, Krupp contributed more than 6 million marks of his own money to the Nazis, and his correspondence shows that he enjoyed his job as chairman. It is common knowledge that after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, Krupp greeted people cheerfully with the Heil Hitler salutation.
In 1932, Kurt von Schroeder and Wilhelm Keppler formed the group known as “The Fraternity.” Members agreed to contribute an average of 1 million marks a year to Heinrich Himmler’s personally marked “S” account and the transferable, secret “R” account of the Gestapo.
While Hitler continued to meet with the industrialists, he allowed Gregor Strasser, Goebbels and Gottfried Feder to continue to beguile the masses with socialist views. Hitler never expressed any solid economic views of his own. He would tailor his speech to the audience. Speaking in front of industrialists, he would soften his anti-Semitism and denounce the Nazi 25-point program. In fact, Hitler never did support the 25-point program and referred to it only once in Mein Kampf, and then in a derogatory manner. Hitler continued to evolve the party away from socialism and was successful in convincing Goebbels to desert the socialist faction of the Nazi Party led by Strasser. This softening of the Nazi position on capitalism and private property is clearly seen in an Erklärung, a clarification of the party position issued April 13, 1928.
Since the NSDAP admits the principle of private property, it is self-evident that the expression “confiscation without compensation” merely refers to the possible legal powers to confiscate, if necessary, land illegally acquired, or administered in accordance with the national welfare. It is directed in the first instance against Jewish companies which speculate in land.
Besides receiving aid from German business leaders and the upper class of German society, Hitler and the Nazis received important support from corporate America, as shown in this excerpt from an interview with the American ambassador to Germany, William Dodd.
Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help fascists occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there …
Propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress, they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions.
Dodd did not name any of the industrialists in the interview, but most historians believe he was referring to Henry Ford. Other foreign sources of support for Hitler came from Sir Henri Deterding, the founder of Royal Dutch Petroleum. Deterding was strongly opposed to communism and, as early as 1921, was a Hitler admirer. Deterding was interested in discovering those forces that would remove once and for all the dangers of social or colonial revolutions. At the inquiry into the Reichstag fire, Johannes Steel, a former agent of the German Economic Intelligence Service, testified to Deterding’s financial support for the Nazis. The Dutch press reported that Deterding had given Hitler about 4 million guilders. By the 1930s, Deterding began secret negotiations with the German military to provide a year’s supply of oil on credit. In 1931, Deterding made a 20 million pound loan to Hitler, allegedly for a promise of a petroleum monopoly once the Nazis were in power. In May 1933, Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s representative, met with Deterding, confirming the close link between big oil and the Nazis. In 1936, the board of directors forced Deterding to resign over his Nazi sympathies.
Despite Hitler’s successful effort in courting support from big business and industrialists, the Nazis remained a minor party until after the 1929 stock market crash. Owing to its huge burden of debt, Germany suffered more than other countries. In the 1930 election, the Nazis won 107 seats in the Reichstag, making it the second largest party. It became the largest party in the Reichstag in the July 1932 election, but still fell short of a clear majority. The depression brought about three short-lived governments, amid political intrigue and backroom deals. However, Hitler’s only visible gains from the 1930 election were meetings with the chancellor and the president.
Early in 1932, Hitler decided to run for president against Paul von Hindenburg. Two other candidates were on the ballot: Theodor Duesterberg, a nationalist, and Ernst Thaelmann, a communist. Hitler lost badly to Hindenburg, receiving just 30 percent of the vote to Hindenburg’s 49.6 percent. Hitler campaigned on the slogan “Freedom and Bread.” Since Hindenburg did not receive a majority of the vote, a runoff was held a month later. In it, Hitler received 37 percent of the vote to Hindenburg’s commanding 53 percent.
The final year of the republic was marked by the failure of three separate governments: Bruening, von Papen and Schleicher. The last government of Schleicher lasted only 57 days. Party leaders became embroiled in political plots, forming transient alliances. Von Papen, who like Schleicher was heavily involved in political intrigue, later played a prominent role in Hitler’s appointment as chancellor.
The intrigues also involved big business leaders and other prominent industrialists. On Jan. 26, 1932, Hitler spoke to 650 industrialists at the Düsseldorf Industry Club to gain their trust and support. While the Nazi Party was the largest party in the Reichstag after the July 1932 election, Hitler was still denied the office of Chancellor.
Business viewed von Papen’s government favorably because it allowed the unilateral breaking of union contracts and lower wages. Estate owners received subsidies, and land reform was stopped. Businesses received tax rebates, but workers received no tax relief.
Politically, the von Papen administration existed only because of the secret support of the Nazis. In return, von Papen granted three Nazi demands. He dissolved parliament, which triggered the July 1932 election; he reinstated the SA and SS, which had been banned; and he disposed of the Prussian government, removing the last obstacle for the Nazis. After the July election, negotiations between von Papen and Hitler broke down, as both sought the office of chancellor.
As early as September 1932, leading Ruhr industrialists told Gregor Strasser that they had suggested to the highest offices in Berlin that Hitler be appointed chancellor. By November, business leaders took a more active role in securing a Hitler government by sending a petition seeking his appointment as chancellor. The petition originated with members of the Keppler Circle and was signed by Kurt von Schroeder, Vogler, Thyssen and others. The petition was less than successful in the business community, as the Nazis became more radical in their demands throughout the summer, into the fall and through the November election.
The radicalism cost Hitler and the Nazi Party dearly. They lost 34 seats in the Reichstag and their source of funding from business leaders was severely cut. Nevertheless, Hindenburg asked Hitler to form a government under two conditions. Hitler refused the offer, resulting in Schleicher’s appointment as chancellor. But business leaders soon opposed Schleicher, who restored the inviolability of union contracts and launched a large-scale public works policy to reduce unemployment.
With the arrival of a new year, the Nazi Party’s future looked dim. Hopes were dashed by the November election, and the party experienced severe financial difficulties. However, business leaders turned against the new Schleicher government and arranged a meeting between Hitler and von Papen. The objective of the meeting at the Cologne home of Kurt von Schroeder was to form a new government led by Hitler and von Papen.
Baron von Schroeder was a member of the most influential group in Germany, the Herrenklub, as well as the Thule Society. He later held several high positions in the Nazi government and directed ITT’s Germany subsidiaries. Moreover, von Schroeder had extensive financial contacts in New York and London. He was a co-director of the Thyssen foundry with Johann Groeninger, Prescott Bush’s New York bank partner. Schroeder also was vice president and director of Prescott Bush’s Hamburg-Amerika Line.
The meeting took place in utmost secrecy on Jan. 4, 1933 with two Americans present: John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. The Dulles brothers were there representing their client, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., which had extended large, short-term credits to Germany and needed assurance of repayment from Hitler before committing to support him. Goebbels recorded the success of the meeting in his diary on Jan. 5, 1933: “If this coup succeeds, we are not far from power ... Our finances have suddenly improved.”
Hitler now had the backing of both von Papen and the business leaders. Facing pressure from these quarters, Hindenburg relented and appointed Hitler as chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933.Von Papen assumed the vice-chancellor position.
Herein lies the danger of creeping fascism. Hitler was appointed chancellor thanks to a backroom deal, with the blessing of international bankers. He rose to power by electoral rather than revolutionary means. However, Hitler’s appointment as chancellor was not due solely to support from big business and from political intrigue. A flaw in the German constitution, which did not account for a stalemated parliament, aided his rise to power. Power in Germany was concentrated in the office of the president, headed by Hindenburg, who had the authority to appoint cabinets and chancellors. Beginning in 1930, Hindenburg began appointing chancellors who were not beholden to parliament, and circumvented it by granting them the emergency powers given to the president by the constitution. Presidential decrees enacted almost all national laws, including the power to tax, because parliament was hopelessly deadlocked in petty political bickering.
Americans should take special note of the concentration of power in Germany in the president’s office. US presidents increasingly are relying on executive orders. These executive orders bypass Congress and are most likely unconstitutional, since they usurp the power to rule by presidential decree. Most alarming are the series of executive orders concerning a state of emergency. They give the US president the right to seize the media, farms, private transportation, airlines, medical facilities and housing, and even to conscript citizens into organized work battalions.
In Germany, the Hitler-von Papen government was a coalition between the NSDP and the DNVP, plus big business and landowners, since it was their support of the Nazis that persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler.
The membership of the Nazi Party came mostly from the lower and middle classes: 7% upper class, 7% peasants, 35% workers, and 51% middle class. The largest single occupational group was the elementary school teachers. These percentages reflect the structure of German society. Germany had a large middle class before Hitler assumed power, although the real wealth of the country was concentrated in a few hands.
In 1925, Professor Theodor Geiger conducted an extensive study of the class distribution in Germany. He divided German society into five classes.
While there is no direct comparison between Geiger’s study and later breakdowns of party membership by class, the figures indicate the Nazi party had a widespread appeal in the upper class. The small percentage of capitalists indicates the stratification of Germany society, with wealth concentrated in just a few families. Although the middle class membership numbers suggest widespread support for the Nazis, the reality is many of the professions, such as schoolteachers, were required to join the party. Figures for the 1925 class structure and the party membership point to fascism being a top-down movement.
Hitler became chancellor only after he eased the fears of big business leaders and assured them of his support. Fascism is generally a desperate reaction by the elite to preserve their power and wealth in periods of economic crisis and political strife. The resurgence of fascism since the 1980s may be linked to the stresses of shifting from an industrial to an information-based economy. This is especially troubling in the United States, where U.S. supremacy is threatened by increasing dependence on imported oil and manufactures. The fortunes of the American elite depend on an oil-driven economy and the ability of the U.S. to project power with a navy, army and air force running largely on oil.
Politicians and political speeches promise everything; however, the real character of any regime can only be determined by its actual policies. Hitler and the Nazis were no different. They used socialist rhetoric to attract followers, but soon turned on them. Hitler’s Nazi economic policies up to the invasion of Poland revealed the true character of fascism without distortion by the fog of war.
The Nazi Government and Big Business
Within his first month as chancellor, Hitler faced a crisis. He proposed to dissolve parliament and hold new elections. Hugenberg, the leader of the DNVP party and a member of Hitler’s cabinet, rejected the idea of a new election. Big business backed Hitler, but only after a Berlin meeting between the Nazis and the Reich Association of German Industry. The industrialists gave their support only after Hitler assured them of the need for a fundamental cleavage between democracy and private capital. Private ownership of the means of production could only be ensured once democracy was destroyed. The elderly Krupp welcomed Hitler’s remarks and looked forward to a strong, independent state and business prosperity. Once Hitler gained the industrialists’ support, Goering appealed to the group for financing for the new election. Three million marks were required; the Ruhr industrialists supplied 1 million.
By choosing to finance the March 1933 election for the Nazis, big business became a full partner of the Third Reich. The support came at a crucial time for Hitler. If business leaders had withheld their support, Hitler’s government would have failed.
After a week in office, Hitler got a new decree from Hindenburg to remove the Prussian ministers. Their powers were conferred on von Papen; Goering received the police authority. The Nazis already controlled the national police through the Interior Department, headed by Wilhelm Frick. By Feb. 7, 1933, Hitler had secured control of the national and Prussian police. He then launched a violent, two-pronged attack against the opposition. Goering and Frick, under a cloak of legality, worked from above, while Capt. Ernst Roehm, head of the storm troopers, worked from below, with no pretext of legality. Goering and Frick removed all noncooperative police officials and replaced them with Nazis, usually storm troopers. On Feb. 4, 1933, Hindenburg signed an emergency decree, giving Hitler the right to ban meetings and the press.
The opposition was attacked from below in violent assaults, often leaving one or more people dead. Despite the violence inflicted by storm troopers, it was obvious the week before the election that the Nazis faced strong opposition. Under these circumstances, a plot was hatched to burn the Reichstag and blame the communists. The Nazis fingered a mentally incompetent Dutchman, Van der Lubbe, who was left wandering about the Reichstag after the fire. The following day, Feb. 28, 1933, Hindenburg signed an emergency decree suspending all civil liberties. The Nazis arrested all communist members of the Reichstag and thousands of others. Communist and social democrat newspapers were suspended for two weeks.
The regular German courts acquitted the four communists charged with setting the blaze and convicted poor Van der Lubbe. Several people knew the truth, including Ernst Oberfohren, a Nationalist Reichstag member, but they were murdered in March and April. Goering had most of the Nazis involved in the plot killed during the blood purge of June 30, 1934.
Despite the Nazis’ drastic measures, the March 5, 1933 election failed because they succeeded in drawing only 43.9 percent of the vote. The new Reichstag convened March 23 at the Kroll Opera House. To achieve a majority, the Nazis excluded all the communists and 30 socialists from the session. The remaining members were then asked to pass an enabling act giving the government the right to rule by decree for four years. Since the act required a two-thirds majority, it could have been defeated if only a small group of Center Party members voted against it. But the measure passed 441-94, with the social democrats forming a solid minority.
Next, the Nazis issued a series of revolutionary decrees ordering the diets of all German states be reconstituted in proportion to the national election, excluding all communists. A similar measure followed in local governments. An April 7, 1933 decree gave the Hitler government the right to name a new governor for each German state. The governors were empowered to dismiss state governments, including judges. The law was used to seat Nazi governors and judges.
Hitler declared May 1 to be a national holiday and gave a speech on the dignity of labor. The next day, the SA seized all union buildings and offices, arrested all labor leaders and sent most of them to concentration camps, betraying the duplicity of the Nazi character. In July, Hess promised to break up the great department stores, but no action was ever taken.
By July 1933, all political parties except the Nazis were banned. Wholesale and retail trade associations were consolidated into the Reich Corporation of German Trade, under the direction of Nazi Party member Adrian von Renteln. Von Renteln became president of the German Industrial and Trade Committee, a union of all branches of the chamber of commerce. Previously, the chamber of commerce had been a semipublic corporation.
Labor was coordinated without opposition, except from the communists. However, by the spring of 1934, the SA was becoming an acute problem. It was calling for a second revolution and economic reforms favorable to labor and damaging to the heart of the Nazi support - big business. Further, the SA was calling for incorporation into the Reichswehr, with each officer holding the same rank as he had in the SA.
On June 21, 1934, Hindenburg ordered General Werner von Blomberg to use the army to restore order if necessary. Hitler quickly arranged a deal with the top military leaders to destroy the SA in return for his appointment as president, once Hindenburg died. Hitler’s previous support from a faction within the military should not be overlooked in this deal. On June 30, 1934, Hitler arranged a meeting of SA leaders in Bad Wiessee. The SS under Hitler’s command arrested and shot most of the leaders at the meeting in the middle of the night. Goering did the same to SA leaders in Berlin and murdered most of his personal enemies. In all, the Nazis killed several thousands in the blood purge.
The threat from the army to restore order had been serious, but not overwhelming, since the SA outnumbered the Reichswehr 10 to 1. The choice facing Hitler was clear: support the “second revolution” and socialism, or destroy it. His decision to decapitate the SA and with it any hope for social reforms shows how fascism served big business. Any supporters of a second revolution lucky enough to survive were driven underground.
The close association of the Nazis with big business, and more generally of fascism with the merger of corporations and the state, can be seen in the shift of power in Germany. Carroll Quigley divides the ruling groups of Germany into the five classes in three historical periods:
The table above shows big business drastically gaining in power under the Nazi state, which was organized so that everything was subject to the benefit of capitalism, with two limiting clauses: the Nazis controlled the state, and war could force curtailment of capitalistic benefits. In short, the Nazi system was dictatorial capitalism and aptly described as economic Darwinism.
Chief Economic Adviser Wilhelm Keppler stopped efforts to coordinate industry and privatized many of the companies the government had acquired. The previous German governments had a policy of not letting firms fail. If a firm filed bankruptcy, the government would buy all or part of it to keep it solvent. The Nazis privatized several large concerns. In 1932, the government bought Gelsenkirchen (a part of United Steel) and through a complicated series of mergers, the Nazis practically gave the company back to business. In 1936, the Nazis returned the last of the stock to United Steel for 100 million marks. In 1931, the old government had bought several large banks. By the end of 1937, the Nazis had returned the Dresdner, Commerz and Deutsche banks to private hands. In 1936, the Nazis also returned most of the stock in the Deutscher Schiff und Maschinenbau Steamship Co. In September 1936, the Nazis ceded the government’s 8 million marks of capital in Hamburg Sud-Amerika. The shipping concern only had a capitalization of 10 million marks. The Nazi government suffered large losses in privatizing the firms.
The Nazis vigorously opposed municipally owned enterprises. In particular, utility companies had remained profitable during the depression, and big business prized them. The day Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht to the Ministry of Economy, he issued orders to hasten liquidation of municipal enterprises.
In Italy, Mussolini privatized the Consortium of Match Manufacturers, the state-owned life insurance industry and municipal enterprises. The support of big business and the elite is obvious from the fascist tax code. A June 1, 1933 law allowed industrialists to deduct the costs of new equipment immediately from their taxable income. Supplemented by the law passed on Oct. 16, 1934, businesses were reimbursed partially for any expenses in repairing houses, factories or stores. Tax delinquents had balances reduced by half. Families employing a maid were allowed to claim a dependent and reap the tax benefit. In April 1934, the Nazis granted nearly 500 million marks in tax cuts to businesses. In Italy, the fascists abandoned the inheritance tax, and halved the taxes of managers and directors of corporations. The Italian Minister of Finance boasted: “We have broken with the practice of persecuting capital.”
In an economy based on capitalism or free enterprise, businessmen hate and fear competition. Before the Nazi takeover, big business had three different types of organizations to limit competition: cartels, trade associations and employers’ associations.
The cartels regulated prices, production and the markets. Trade associations were political groups organized like chambers of commerce. Employers’ associations sought to control labor.
Nazi policy left existing cartels relatively unaffected, while cartelizing various new industry groups. The Nazis merged the employers’ associations into the Labor Front, and the Ministry of Economics gained control over the trade associations. All of this took place with the blessing of big business.
While big business lost direct control over the three groups, it got what it wanted. Under the Labor Front, big business gained control over labor, wages and working conditions. The Nazis restricted employers from hiring workers who quit or were discharged from another firm unless the previous employer signed a workbook, releasing the employee to seek work elsewhere. By refusing to sign the workbook, employers were able to exert absolute control over employees, holding them as virtual slaves.
Trade associations were reduced essentially to social and propaganda organizations, headed by prominent business leaders. Of 173 of these heads throughout Germany, 108 were businessmen, only 11 were Nazi Party members. Cartels were extended, removing almost all forms of market competition. Only the largest German firms controlled the cartels. The Nazis allowed big business to force all firms into cartels, sparking mergers and destroying small businesses.
The July 15, 1933 law gave the minister of the economy the right to make membership in certain cartels mandatory. The law also allowed the minister to regulate the capacity of enterprises and to ban the establishment of new firms. The Nazis issued hundreds of decrees under this law. On the same day, the ban against boycotts by cartels was lifted. Big business could now refuse to supply smaller firms.
The 1937 corporation law eased the way for big business to buy smaller firms through mergers. The law required a minimum of 500,000 marks in capital for new incorporations and a nominal value of at least 1,000 marks for all shares. The Nazis ordered all firms with less than 100,000 marks capital dissolved. This provision condemned 20 percent of all corporations. At the same time, the law sharply limited shareholder rights.
Legally, supervising cartels was a role of the government and the cartel courts. Under the November 1936 decree, cartels held the sole right to fix prices and regulate the markets. The decree mandated the use of uniform accounting. While this provision didn’t affect big business, small firms lost their right to keep their books and count their costs as they wished.
Many people mistakenly believe that the Nazis were totalitarians and exerted full control over the economy and big business. While this was partially true in the later years of the war, even then it was common for big business to ignore decrees. The formation of the Hermann Goering Works is a good example of the degree of independence enjoyed by big business. In preparation for war, Goering first tried to persuade German mining and smelting concerns to use low-grade domestic ore instead of importing the high-grade ore from Sweden, which was draining precious foreign currency, and could be unreliable because of the long shipping route vulnerable to attack and blockade. In fact, the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway to protect the shipping lanes for Swedish ore. The industrialists politely refused Goering’s request - even under threats of arrest for sabotage. Continued resistance to Germany’s low-grade ore led Goering to form his own company.
The close relationship between big business and the Nazis was further cemented by Hitler’s drive to make Germany self-sufficient. IG Farben, the giant chemical cartel, always preserved a close association with the German military. Initially, the company had several Jews among its directors and was attacked by the Nazis. Once the Jews were replaced and a few rabid Nazis rose to director positions, the company ideology merged with that of the party. One of the critical materials IG Farben supplied to the Nazis was gasoline derived from coal. By the end of the war, IG Farben was using a series of slave labor camps, including Auschwitz. Another product IG Farben supplied was Zyklon-B.
The reorganization of cartels and the laws passed from 1933-38 were fully approved first by big business. Krupp von Bohlen was one of the industrialists who played a key role in the reorganization, often forcing the Nazis to compromise on an issue. The true character of fascism - the merger of big business with the government - is readily obvious in the policies imposed by the Nazis before the Polish invasion. Once in power, Hitler dismissed numerous officials opposed by big business. Thousands more were eliminated in the blood purge. For instance, after the blood purge, Kurt Schmitt was removed as director of the Ministry of Economics on the insistence of big business. Schmitt had fallen into disfavor when he restructured the business organizations.
The primary architect of the Nazi economy was Hjalmar Schacht, the banker who masterminded the stabilization of the currency in 1923. Like Hitler, Schacht detested democracy and parliamentary government. In March 1933, he became president of the Reichsbank and in 1934, minister of the economy, a post he held until he resigned over policy disputes in 1937. His first official act was creating Metall-Forschungsgesellschaft A.G. (Mefo), a dummy corporation of four armament firms. Mefo issued bills similar to promissory notes to government contractors, which could be extended up to five years. Schacht’s Mefo bills allowed Hitler unlimited credit to rearm Germany on a large scale. By 1936, Schacht was worried that the continued pace of rearmament would renew inflation. He was acquitted of war crimes at Nuremberg.
While the Nazi economy was good for big business, labor suffered. In the first three years after the Nazis seized power, the net profits of big business rose nearly 500 percent, while wages remained static. Under the Nazis, workers gained no benefit, other than a decrease in unemployment.
What little gains made by labor came with increasing work hours in the required 48-hour workweek. Not only did the Nazis want to suppress union activity, they also wanted to dominate all the workers’ time. The Labor Front required workers to join various party organizations, seeking to indoctrinate them with Nazi ideology. The only recourse for labor grievances was through the shop cell, headed by the choice of the factory owner.
In late 1937, armament industries made enormous profits, but the plight of labor was so bad that cries were renewed for the second revolution. In January 1938, industrialists fearing nationalization met with Hitler. Top Nazi officials assured them there would be no nationalization of any industry.
In essence, the Nazis reorganized the economy by abolishing four principles. The principle that all businesses should enjoy equal economic rights was largely eliminated. Free competition was almost abolished, as was the freedom of business enterprise. The principle that business leaders should be free to form voluntary associations was largely abandoned. Reorganization took place only with the approval of big business as a means to remove competition. New associations, such as the Keppler Circle, ensured big business leaders that they had the ear of Hitler and the Nazi Party. The changes made it easy for big business to decide economic policy under the Nazis.
An alliance of big business, army generals and the Nazi Party altered the economy in six significant ways following the reorganization:
1. Suppression of trade unions, supremacy of employers’ managerial prerogative in industrial relations.
2. Acceptance of the principle of compulsion in private organizations for market control, whether for expelling outsiders, or forcing small business to join cartels and submit to big business.
3. Inducements by which governmental agencies, using direct controls, could channel favors to particular business groups and institutions of capitalism.
4. Compulsory groupings replaced voluntary trade associations.
5. Expansion of the noncapitalistic institution of public investment for purposes of rearmament.
6. Specific direct controls in a few markets using funds and essential raw materials for rearmament, with allocation by government decisions.
Big business demanded the first three changes. The last three changes resulted from the military goals of the Nazi regime. While favored by both big business and the Nazi Party, the generals were the more precise formulators and the loudest supporters of the last three changes.
Only after the cost of rearmament became burdensome did the Nazis raise taxes on corporations. In 1936, at the peak of the rearmament boom, the Nazis raised the corporate tax rate by 5 percent. However, the fiscal policy of the Nazis shifted the tax burden away from business and onto the consumer.
The Nazi economy was based on capitalism, with a strong taste of social Darwinism. Big business could maximize profits and privatize assets, while shifting costs onto workers and society. Wages were reduced and fixed by big business through a puppet government organization.
The Nazis took the burdening of workers to an extreme in the slave labor camps. It was big business that first proposed to use the prisoners. The Nazis at first dismissed the idea, but after bNoig businesses suggested they would be willing to pay the SS a nominal fee for slaves, the Nazis relented. Most of the slave labor camps of big business were much more brutal than the concentration camps run by the SS (as noted by William Manchester in The Arms of Krupp, p. 477). In effect, the slave labor camps saved the employer the cost of adequately feeding workers, who usually starved to death within six months.
Although right-wing elements persist in labeling Nazism as socialism by citing public works projects, the table below of public works spending dispels any notion of socialism in the Third Reich.
Except for the housing projects, almost all the categories the Nazis spent money on had a military application. From the moment the Nazis seized power, their plans were to start another war. From his experiences in World War I, Hitler certainly was well aware of the need for modern transportation systems in a military conflict. Thus, modernizing the railroads and construction of the autobahn figured prominently in the Nazis’ plans. Much of the money spent on regulating rivers also had a military application in supporting barge traffic. Likewise, Hitler had firsthand experience with the food shortage caused by the British blockade during World War I, so investment in agriculture also had an underlying military objective. The table above also includes figures for public works projects started by the previous government. Thus, the total amount the Nazis spent on public works projects totaled less than 2 billion marks. At the same time, the government receipts from 1934-38 totaled nearly 135 billion marks. The amount the Nazis earmarked for non-military public works projects was minuscule - less than 2 percent - of the government’s revenue. Even if all the money listed in the table was to be considered for public works, it still represents only 5 percent of the government’s revenue.
With the recent rise of fascism globally, accompanied by free trade agreements, the hard Right is desperately repainting the Nazis in an attempt to distance itself from its past. Their false claims, by spokesmen like Rush Limbaugh, extend to everything the hard Right opposes: allegedly the Nazis were environmentalists, homosexuals and even pagans:
The most notorious environmentalists in history were the German Nazis. The Nazis ordered soldiers to plant more trees. They were the first Europeans to establish nature reserves and order the protection of hedgerows and other wildlife habitats. And they were horrified at the idea of hydroelectric dams on the Rhine. Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis were vegetarian and they passed numerous laws on animal rights.
The above quote comes from the transcript of a British Channel 4 documentary, Against Nature, whose political direction came from Frank Furedi’s libertarian magazine. It was extracted from Ron Arnold’s Center in Defense of Free Enterprise Web page, where the transcript is featured as a “guest editorial.”
The quote is full of half-truths and lies. Nature worship in Germany dates from the origins of modern romanticism. The Nazis were fearful of dams on the Rhine, but not because they were nature worshippers or ecologists. Dams on the Rhine would have required locks to allow for barge traffic. The Nazis wanted the Rhine free of dams so barges could transport armaments and men as quickly as possible.
Hitler was the only leading Nazi who was a vegetarian, and his diet was due to his digestive problems. Sausages gave Hitler extreme stomach cramps. He also avoided alcohol because of his poor digestion.
The Nazis also passed animal rights or cruelty laws, but again not out of any conviction for animal welfare. The penalty for injuring a guard dog at any concentration camp was death. On the Eastern Front, the Nazis depended on horses and mules for much of their transportation needs, especially during the long Russian winter.
The Nazis planted trees to help make Germany self-sufficient. Population growth in the 19th century had made Germany dependent on imports of food, fibers and other materials needed to wage war. Chemistry labs played pivotal roles in reducing imports, including the Haber process in World War I that resulted in the production of explosives from nitrogen in the air, freeing Germany from its dependence on Chilean nitrates.
In World War I, Dr. Hugo Schweitzer was president of the Bayer Co. in the United States. He also headed the German espionage service in America. At the time of his death, U.S. government agents searched his apartment and found a remarkable, unpublished document, The Chemists War. In that document, Schweitzer described how the Haber process freed Germany, which faced starvation because of the British blockade. The portion of the document about planting trees follows:
All these endeavors to substitute cotton may appear ridiculous to us who have been brought up with the idea that Cotton is King and that we have been destined by fate to supply this fiber to the civilized world. The farmers who cultivated the madder root and the planters who raised indigo were also inclined to jest when they were appraised of the fact that German chemists had succeeded in reproducing in the laboratories the dyes which their crops furnished, but when the manufactured materials drove the natural products from the markets and left the farmers and planters without a job, hilarity ceased. History may repeat itself and willow bark and nettle, or some other substitute raised on German soil may, in the near future, depose King Cotton. The German chemist has a duty to perform, and with his perseverance and application he does not shrink from any problem however difficult it might appear to outsiders.
Many on the right also claim the Nazis were all homosexuals. Under Rohm, the SA did have a homosexual leaning, but he and most of the homosexuals with him in the SA were eliminated in the Night of the Long Knives. Homosexuals were also some of the first sent to the concentration camps. Hitler was heterosexual. He had a mistress, Geli, before marrying Eva Braun. The rest of the top Nazis were all married.
The Nazis and Religion
Nazis are often categorized as pagans by elements of the Right Wing today, with claims that some of the top party officials engaged in blood rituals and other pagan ceremonies. There is some evidence the Nazis were interested in Eastern religions and mysticism. However, there is no direct evidence that any of the Nazi officials were devoted to any particular form of mysticism, paganism or religion. Some evidence exists that Himmler may have modeled certain SS ceremonies after pagan rituals, but others say he copied the Jesuits.
For instance, it is claimed that the Nazis used Zyklon-B in the gas chambers because they believed it killed not only the body, but also the soul, making it the supreme final solution. Such a belief stems from philosopher Rudolf Steiner. In the later years of his life, Steiner developed anthroposophy or what he termed the complete science of the spirit. Otto Ohlendorf, a high-ranking Nazi official, was a regular participant in anthroposophic conferences on biodynamic farming or medicinal eurhythmics, and was instrumental in saving the Waldorf Schools as long as possible. The Waldorf Schools were based on Steiner’s anthroposophy, and many members were enthusiastic followers of the Nazis. The Nazis closed the Waldorf Schools nonetheless. Reinhard Heydrich, who was Himmler’s second in command in the SS, viewed anthroposophy as an “Oriental soiling of the clear Germanic mind,” and banned the Anthroposophic Society in 1935.
Attempting to assign a particular religious belief system to the Nazis is foolish. The religious philosophy of the party was as diverse as that of the German culture.
If religious beliefs can be discerned by policy, then the Nazis were Christians, as evidenced by their version of The Lord’s Prayer, which was mandated for recitation at the beginning of the day in all schools.
Almighty God, dear heavenly Father. In Thy name let us now, in pious spirit, begin our instruction. Enlighten us, teach us all truth, strengthen us in all that is good, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from all evil in order that, as good human beings, we may faithfully perform our duties and thereby, in time and eternity, be made truly happy. Amen.
None of the top Nazis were devoted to any particular religious beliefs, Christian or otherwise. Both Hitler and Himmler died as members of the Catholic Church, but were not devoted followers. The Nazis were opportunists who used religion in the same way they used socialism to attract followers. Mein Kampf is sprinkled with religious references and moralizing by Hitler.
The sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.
The more the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire and with it the hour of freedom for my German-Austria people.
The Lord’s grace smiled on his ungrateful children.
... they speak of this whole field as if it were a great sin, and above all express their profound indignation against every sinner caught in the act, then close their eyes in pious horror to this godless plague and pray God to let sulfur and brimstone preferably after their own death rain down on this Sodom and Gomorrah, thus once making an instructive example of this shameless humanity.
In the quote, Hitler is referring to syphilis.
Today Christians ... stand at the head of Germany .... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .... We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past ... few years.
There was a complex relationship between the Nazis and the Vatican. In 1929, Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) gave Hitler a large cache of church money, allegedly because of Hitler’s strong opposition to communism. Sister Pascalina witnessed the transfer of money.
There is other evidence of a conspiracy between Hitler and Rome. One of Hitler’s first acts after gaining power was to sign the Concordat, an agreement with the Vatican, which gave the new Nazi regime international prestige. Moreover, the Catholic Church played a prominent propagandist role in softening up European countries in preparation for a Nazi invasion by fomenting dissent and in some countries a Nazi underground. Catholics were prominent in all the countries which adopted fascism: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria and Hungary. And the Vatican was the primary sponsor of the ratlines that allowed Nazi war criminals to escape from Europe and justice after the war.
Hitler and the American Influence
Much of the misinformation and lies about the Nazis comes from a resurgence of the Right Wing since 1980, which has also disseminated a deliberately false definition of socialism. The primary duty of any government is to protect its citizens. Failing that, the government has no legitimate right to exist and is usually quickly removed in a revolution. This government protection extends to protecting the citizens from environmental degradation, labor laws and other social issues.
Today, America’s Right Wing has twisted this protection of citizens to only include protection from foreign powers. It knowingly misleads people in classifying environmental protection, the minimum wage, Social Security and a host of other social welfare programs as socialism. Our founders viewed corporations and moneyed interest as a threat equivalent to the dangers of a foreign power, as the words of Thomas Jefferson suggest: “I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
A survey of early state constitutions confirms the seriousness with which the founders viewed the threat from corporations. In an effort to cover up their past support for fascism and to install global fascism through what is falsely termed free trade agreements, America’s Right Wing is engaged in a desperate effort to label the Nazis as socialists and to attribute to them any trait they find distasteful.
Hitler modeled the Nazis after Mussolini’s fascist Italy. In Italy, fascism grew out of two movements: nationalism and syndicalism, or trade unionism. In syndicalism, it is believed that as equal owners, the members in an organization should share the rewards or profits equally. The principle of private ownership is still recognized. At the same time, Italy had a growing communist movement. Mussolini was a syndicalist who turned nationalist after World War I.
From 1922-25, Mussolini followed a laissez-faire economic policy under Finance Minister Alberto De Stefani. De Stefani reduced taxes, laws and trade controls, but his opposition to protectionism and business subsidies alienated some industrial leaders, which led to his removal. From 1925 on, Mussolini began the cartelization of the Italian economy and the formation of the corporate state. The economic powers were consolidated into the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, in which big business was the real force in making policy.
America’s Right Wing regarded Mussolini as a bastion against communism. Their high regard is obvious in the foreign policies and trade agreements throughout the 1920s, and in the three Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. In the 1930s, the Right still respected Mussolini for revitalizing the Italian economy. However, by 1939, the Italian economy had only expanded by 15 percent from 1929 levels. The economic well-being of the workers had fallen; private consumption had dropped below 1929 levels. The primary reason was the same as in Germany: War preparations took precedence over a consumer economy.
Yet America’s right-wing support for fascism extended far beyond favorable foreign policies and trade agreements with Mussolini. Henry Ford’s anti-Jewish views had a major impact on Germany and Hitler. Ford owned the Dearborn Independent newspaper, which published anti-Jewish articles that were later reprinted in four volumes known as The International Jew. In Germany, the latter appeared in a translated version, The Eternal Jew, which soon became the Bible for the Nazis. Theodore Fritsch published six printings of The Eternal Jew between 1920-22. By 1933, he had published 29. Once Hitler gained power, it became a stock item of Nazi propaganda. Some passages in Mein Kampf appear to have been copied directly from Ford.
The impact of The International Jew on Germany should not be underestimated. At that time, many people worldwide worshipped the great industrialist Henry Ford, especially in Germany with its economy in chaos. At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth, testified that he became an anti-Semite after reading The International Jew. Ford’s book led many Germans to the Nazi Party.
Of course, Ford is not entirely to blame for the extreme Nazi hatred of the Jews. The growing American eugenics movement was equally responsible. The Nuremberg Laws were modeled after eugenics laws passed by various states in the 1920s. In addition, the Rockefeller Foundation financed much of the eugenics research in Germany.
Judeophobia was deeply rooted in Germany, dating back as far as Luther’s time:
This is a good month to reflect on the toxicity of words meant to kill. Nov. 9 marks the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 “Night of Shattered Glass” unleashed by the Nazis to terrorize Germany’s Jews. The date was chosen specially by Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist, to honor the birthday of Martin Luther, the 16th century monk who was a father of the Protestant Reformation and the founder of what became the Lutheran church.
Hitler greatly admired Luther: “He saw the Jew as we are only beginning to see him today.” Indeed, Luther saw the Jews as “hopeless, wicked, venomous, and devilish ... our pest, torment, and misfortune.”
Initially, certain that his version of Christianity would appeal to Jews, he expected large numbers of them to covert. When that failed to happen, he turned violently against them. In 1543, Luther Published On the Jews and Their Lies, a work that would become known throughout Germany, perhaps the most widely disseminated work of Judeophobia by a German until the rise of the Nazis 400 years later.
“What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?” Luther asked.
“First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt, so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it... ”
“Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed... ”
“Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmuds, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught.”
“Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more...”
“Fifthly, passports and traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews... ”
“Sixthly, I advise that ... all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them... ”
“Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them... If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs, so we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his.”
This is hate speech.
Sixty years ago next Monday on the night of Luther’s birthday, Nazi gangs rampaged across Germany. In every Jewish neighborhood, windows were smashed and buildings were torched. All told, 101 synagogues were destroyed, and nearly 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses were demolished. On that night, 91 Jews were murdered; 26,000 were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. It was the greatest pogrom in history. And it was nothing compared with what was to come.
The yellow star the Nazis forced Jews to wear had originated in earlier centuries. The Vatican confined Jews to ghettos that were locked at night. During the day, the Jews could go about the cities to conduct business, but only if they wore a badge.
But it was the financial and commercial rather than moral support from America that was the key. As time goes by, more reports surface, suggesting US corporate involvement was much greater than previously believed.
Bernd Greiner said 26 of the top 100 U.S. companies in the 1930s collaborated to some degree with the Nazis before, and in some cases after, Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941. Company headquarters in the U.S. have denied they knew what was going on in Germany, but there is evidence to suggest they knew their German subsidiaries used slave labor, tolerated it and in some cases were actively involved, Greiner said.
Greiner confirmed a report in the newspaper Die Zeit, based on his findings of U.S. corporate involvement in Nazi Germany. The findings went beyond allegations of U.S. lawyers and historians last year that automakers General Motors and Ford collaborated with the Nazi regime.
The impact of American industrialists’ investments in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s was immense and immeasurable. Besides direct financial aid to Hitler, American industrialists began building factories inside Germany in the 1920s. When the Nazis seized power, these American factories were allowed to continue operation, manufacturing war material. Sewing machine factories owned by Singer were converted to manufacture machine guns.
The greatest benefits the Nazis reaped from these factories was the transfer of technology. Before Ford and GM built factories in Germany, automobiles were largely assembled one at a time there. Ford’s introduction of the assembly line streamlined German manufacturing. It allowed the Nazis to rapidly produce large numbers of tanks, airplanes, trucks and even the V2 rockets.
Prescott Bush and the Nazis
The two Wall Street firms that aided the Nazis the most were Sullivan & Cromwell, and Brown Brothers Harriman. Sullivan & Cromwell was the Wall Street law firm that employed Allen and John Foster Dulles. Brown Brothers Harriman was the Wall Street investment firm that employed George Herbert “Bert” Walker and his son-in-law, Prescott Bush. In one three-year period, Brown Brothers Harriman sold American investors more than $50 million of German bonds.
Harriman’s firm did not merge with Brown Brothers until after the 1929 stock market crash. Their first success in investing in Germany came in 1920 when Averell Harriman announced that he would restart Germany’s Hamburg-Amerika Line. After many months of scheming and political intrigue, the United States had confiscated Hamburg-Amerika’s commercial steamships after World War I. By some arrangements with the U.S. authorities that were never made public, these ships then became the property of the Harriman enterprise.
George Walker, Prescott Bush’s father-in-law, arranged the credits Harriman needed to take control of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. Walker and Averell Harriman gained control of the steamship company in 1920 through negotiations with its post-World War I chief executive, Wilhelm Cuno, and with the line’s bankers, M. M. Warburg. Walker organized the American Ship and Commerce Corp. as a unit of W. A. Harriman & Co., with contractual power over Hamburg-Amerika’s affairs. The Harriman 15 Corp., run by Prescott Bush and George Walker, held the Harriman-Bush shares in American Ship and Commerce Corp.
Albert Voegler served on the board of Hamburg-Amerika Line and as a director of the Thyssen-controlled Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. Voegler also was the chief executive of Thyssen-Flick German Steel Trust, for which Bush’s Union Bank was the New York office. Voegler, Thyssen and Cuno all contributed heavily to the Nazis from 1930-32. Baron Rudolph von Schroeder was vice president and director of the Hamburg-Amerika Line.
One of the great merchants of death, Samuel Pryor, was included in the deal from the beginning. Pryor, then chairman of the executive committee of Remington Arms, helped arrange it. Walker served on the board of Harriman’s shipping front organization, the American Ship & Commerce Co.
Samuel P. Bush, Prescott’s father, became chief of the Ordinance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board, which was headed by Wall Street speculator and advisor to President Wilson, Bernard Baruch. Samuel Bush took national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies. This was an unusual appointment for a railroad person. Previously, Bush owned a company that supplied parts for railroad lines that transported Rockefeller oil. In the arrangement with Rockefeller, the railroad lines had to buy their parts from Bush’s foundry. Most of Samuel Bush’s arms-related records and correspondence in government archives have been burned. However, Samuel Bush’s appointment placed him close to Pryor.
The Schroeder family of bankers was a linchpin for the Nazi activities of Harriman and Prescott Bush. Closely associated with the Schroeders were John Foster and Allen Dulles. Baron Kurt von Schroeder was co-director of the massive Thyssen-Hütte foundry, along with Johann Groeninger, Prescott Bush’s New York bank partner. A rabid Nazi, he also was the treasurer of the support organization for the Nazi Party’s private armies. As previously noted, both John Foster and Allen Dulles were present at the pivotal meeting between von Papen and Hitler. While representing their client Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and seeking assurances from Hitler, their principal contribution was in hiding Nazi ownership and involvement in American firms through a maze of paperwork.
Direct actions taken by the Harriman-Bush shipping line in 1932 and by the Dulles brothers in January 1933 are the two gravest actions ever taken against the United States and humanity in the 20th century. Those actions led directly to the seizure of power by the Nazis, placing the burden for the resulting Holocaust and widespread destruction of Europe squarely on the shoulders of Harriman, Bush and the Dulles brothers.
In 1932, the German government took steps to defend the republic and national freedom by ordering the disbanding of Nazi private armies. The U.S. embassy in Berlin reported the high costs of election campaigns and of keeping a private army of up to 400,000 men had raised questions about the Nazis’ financial backers. The Nazi Brown Shirts had intimidated or shot thousands of Germans who opposed Hitler.
After Remington Arms signed a cartel agreement with IG Farben, the U.S. Senate conducted an investigation that found that German political associations like the Nazis and others were nearly all equipped with American guns. The arms were shipped across the Atlantic aboard the Harriman-Bush Hamburg-Amerika Line. Before reaching Antwerp, the weapons were transferred to river barges, which allowed them to be smuggled through Holland without inspection. Besides revolvers, the principal arms were Thompson submachine guns.
On March 7, 1933, Prescott Bush’s American Ship and Commerce Corp., notified Max Warburg that he was to be the corporation’s official representative on the board of Hamburg-Amerika. Kuhn, Loeb was directly connected with the Warburgs through marriage. Paul Moritz Warburg and Felix Moritz Warburg married Nina Jenny Loeb, Solomon’s youngest, and Frieda Schiff, Jacob’s only daughter, respectively. Both Warburgs became partners of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
On March 29, 1933, Max Warburg’s son Erich sent a cable to his cousin Frederick Warburg, a director of the Harriman railroad system. The cable directed Frederick Warburg to use all of his influence to stop all anti-Nazi activity in America. On March 31, 1933, the American-Jewish Committee, controlled by the Warburgs, and B’nai B’rith issued a formal, official joint statement, which counseled that no American boycott against Germany be encouraged and advised that no further mass meetings be held or similar forms of agitation be employed. The American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith continued with a no-attack-on-Hitler policy all through the 1930s.
On Sept. 5, 1933, the executive board of the Hamburg-Amerika Line (Hapag) met jointly with the North German Lloyd Co. board in Hamburg and merged under Nazi supervision. Prescott Bush’s American Ship and Commerce Corp. installed Christian Beck, a longtime Harriman executive, as manager of freight and operations in North America for the new joint Nazi shipping line.
In 1934, testimony before Congress proved that a supervisor from the Nazi Labor Front was aboard every ship of the Harriman-Bush line. The Bush-controlled shipping lines subsidized Nazi propaganda in the United States and functioned as a den of spies for the Nazis until the government seized Hamburg-Amerika in 1942 for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act. Below is an extract from Vesting Order No. 126.
Seizure of all the assets of the Hamburg-American Line and of the North German Lloyd and of all the American branches jointly operated by them. Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker and others operated the U.S. arm of Hamburg-American Line, seized herewith. Among other things, the company offered a cash reward to any American who would travel to Germany on a one-way ticket and proselytize for Hitler. The line also smuggled Nazi spies into the U.S., even after America had entered the war.
President Roosevelt felt this constituted treason.
Hamburg-Amerika was one of two companies pivotal to the Harriman-Bush dealings with the Nazis. The other was Union Bank.
In 1922, Averell Harriman traveled to Germany to set up a branch of W. A. Harriman in Berlin, and hired George Herbert Walker to run both the New York and Berlin offices. During his stay in Germany, Harriman met the Thyssen family and agreed to help them set up an American bank.
Early in 1924, Hendrick Kouwenhoven, managing director of Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, traveled to New York. Meeting with Walker and the Harriman brothers, they founded the Union Banking Corp. Two of the directors of Union Bank, Groninger and Kouwenhoven, were Nazi directors of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, formerly the von Heydt Bank. Von Heydt, also a Nazi, was identified as the intermediary between the Guaranty Trust and Hitler. Both Groninger and Kouwenhoven contributed lavishly to Himmler’s Circle of Friends.
In 1926, August Thyssen died. The eldest son, Fritz, expanded the Thyssen empire by creating United Steel Works (Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG). Thyssen also brought Friedrich Flick on board. The Thyssen-Flick union was designed to suppress the union movement. With the merger, George Walker hired his son-in-law, Prescott Bush, to manage the United Steel Works account. One division of United Steel Works consisted of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corp. and the Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Co., both located in the mineral-rich Silesian area of Poland. Until the Depression started in 1929, the arrangement was extremely profitable for all four men - Thyssen, Flick, Walker and Bush. Congressional investigations after the war showed that United Steel had supplied more than 50 percent of the pig iron in Nazi Germany and also was a major supplier of all other ferrous metal products needed by Hitler’s war machine.
Due to the Depression, Harriman merged with Brown to form the Brown Brothers Harriman firm. Internally, the Harriman 15 Corp., formed by Harriman and Bush, held Flick’s two-thirds share of the stock of Consolidated Silesian Steel Co. Having lost property after WWI, Thyssen and Flick were nervous about Hitler’s invasions of Europe, and they sold Consolidated Silesian to Union Bank. Under the complete control of Harriman and Bush, the company became Silesian American Corp., part of UBC and Harriman’s portfolio of 15 corporations.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Depression also bankrupted the Wall Street-backed German Steel Trust. When the German government took over the Trust’s stock shares, interests associated with Konrad Adenauer and the anti-Nazi Catholic Center Party tried to buy the shares. However, Harriman-Bush Union Bank, working in concert with Montagu Norman, the vocal supporter of Hitler and fascism from the Bank of England, made sure that Thyssen regained control over the trust shares.
In May 1933, after the Nazis consolidated power, an agreement was reached in Berlin coordinating all Nazi commerce with the United States. Under the agreement, Harriman International, headed by Oliver Harriman, first cousin to Averell, would lead a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals to conduct all exports from Germany to the United States.
By 1934, with Hitler in solid control of Germany, the profits from the Thyssen-Flick union soared to more than 100 million. Both Union Bank and the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart were overflowing with money. Prescott Bush became managing director of Union Bank and took over the day-to-day operations of the German plan.
Instead of divesting himself of Nazi money and activities, Prescott Bush hired Allen Dulles to hide the Nazi assets. Dulles’ client list from Sullivan & Cromwell shows his first assignment at Brown Brothers Harriman as June 18, 1936. The entry listed his work at Brown Brothers Harriman as “Disposal of Standard Oil Investing Stock.”
Standard Oil was another of Dulles’ clients who hired him to cloak agreements with IG Farben. By January 1937, all of Standard Oil’s Nazi activities were in one account, “Brown Brothers Harriman-Schroeder Rock.” Schroeder was the Nazi bank in which Dulles served as a director. The Rock referred to the Rockefellers. In May 1939, Dulles handled another problem for Brown Brothers Harriman listed as “Securities Custodian Accounts.”
In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, ending a dispute over taxes between Consolidated and the Polish government. The original Nazi plan was to replace the workers in Polish factories with Soviet prisoners, but that portion of the plan was never implemented. Consolidated Silesian Steel Corp. was located near the Polish town of Oswiecim. When the plan to use Soviet prisoners as forced labor fell through, the Nazis began shipping Jews, communists, gypsies and other minority populations to the camp. This was the beginning of Auschwitz. IG Farben soon built a plant near Auschwitz to take advantage not only of the nearby coal deposits, but also of slave labor. According to a Dutch intelligence agent, Prescott Bush even managed a portion of the slave labor force in Poland; what’s clear is that he profited handsomely from it.
July 31, 1941, New York Herald-Tribune ran a bold headline “Hitler’s Angel Has $3 Million in U.S. Bank.” The article described Thyssen as that angel and reported the money actually belonged to “Nazi bigwigs,” including Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler or even Hitler himself. The account was deposited in Union Bank.
Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, leaks from Washington suggested Prescott Bush was under investigation for aiding the Nazis in time of war. Once again, rather than divesting himself of the Nazi accounts and his pro-Nazi activities, Prescott Bush wrapped himself in the flag. He became the national chairman of the United Service Organization’s annual fund campaign. However, his subterfuge didn’t work; the government’s investigation continued.
How the government was able to unravel all the cloaking activities of Allen Dulles and deception by Bush and other ranking officers of Union Bank was typical of Roosevelt. Roosevelt was well aware of Americans aiding the Nazis. As a means to counter these traitors, Roosevelt employed numerous private spies. In the case of Brown Brothers Harriman, the spy was an employee of Bert Walker named Dan Harkins. Harkins kept up his pretense of being an ardent Nazi sympathizer while he blew the whistle on Brown Brothers Harriman’s spy apparatus to Congress, and continued to report to Naval Intelligence.
Oct. 20, 1942, under authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. Congress seized UBC and liquidated its assets. The seizure is confirmed by Vesting Order No. 248 in the U.S. Office of the Alien Property Custodian and signed by U.S. Alien Property Custodian Leo Crowley (see Appendix 4 for the complete vesting order). The order listed the following stockholders: E. Roland Harriman - 3,991 shares, Cornelis Lievense - 4 shares, Harold D. Pennington - 1 share, Ray Morris - 1 share, Prescott Bush - 1 share, H.J. Kouwenhoven - 1 share, Johann G. Groeninger - 1 share. All those listed were directors of Union Bank. Groeninger was a Nazi industrial executive.
Government documents show that Union Bank was a clearinghouse for several Thyssen-controlled enterprises and assets, including as many as a dozen individual businesses. They show Union Bank shipped valuable U.S. assets, including gold, coal, steel, and U.S. Treasury and war bonds to their foreign clients overseas as Hitler geared up for his 1939 invasion of Poland.
Moreover, the records show that Bush and Harriman not only hid their Nazi activities from the government, but also continued dealing with the Nazis unabated. These activities included financial dealing with the city of Hanover and several industrial firms while Averell Harriman was serving as President Roosevelt’s personal emissary to the United Kingdom.
The documents reveal that all UBC assets and its related businesses belonged to Thyssen-controlled enterprises, including his Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam. Nevertheless, Cornelius Livense, president of UBC, claimed to have no knowledge of such a relationship. The documents note that: “Strangely enough, claims he does not know the actual ownership of the company.” Livense repeatedly tried to mislead authorities. H. D. Pennington, manager of Brown Brothers Harriman and a UBC director, also lied to them.
Despite the organized efforts to mislead, investigators were able to show that a careful examination of UBC’s general ledger, cash books and journals from 1919 onward clearly established the principal, and practically the only source of funds, had been Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart.
After the war, Fritz Thyssen managed to retain his vast financial holdings, despite four years of interrogation by British and American officials, from 1945-49. They knew he was lying, but underestimated the crafty Thyssen. After losing part of his financial empire following World War I, August Thyssen, Fritz’s father, established three banks in the 1920s: the August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam, and the Union Banking Corp., in New York City. To protect his financial empire, all his sons had to do was transfer corporate paperwork from one bank to the other.
Under this scheme, it was not necessary to move physical assets, such as gold and currency, between banks. For example, when Thyssen sold the Holland-American Trading Co., for a tax loss, the Union Banking Corp., in New York bought the stock. Prescott Bush then invested the disguised Nazi profits in American steel and manufacturing corporations that became part of the secret Thyssen empire.
The elder Thyssen took additional steps to protect his empire as World War II approached. His son Fritz, became a member of the Nazi Party in 1923. The other son married into Hungarian nobility and changed his name to Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, claiming dual citizenship in both Holland and Hungary. Publicly, he detested his elder brother’s Nazi views. Privately, they met in secret board meetings in Germany to coordinate their operation.
In 1929, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart held the shares of the August Thyssen Bank, and also American subsidiaries and the Union Banking Corp., New York. At the beginning of World War II, the bank served as the holding company for the vast Thyssen empire and had only one shareholder, a Hungarian citizen.
After the Nazis invaded Holland, they investigated the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. The Nazi auditors had long suspected Fritz Thyssen of being a tax fraud and of smuggling his profits. They were right, but the bank vaults were empty of clues. The assets had been secretly transferred back to the August Thyssen Bank in Berlin under the friendly supervision of Baron Kurt Von Schroeder. Thyssen spent the rest of the war under VIP arrest.
Fritz Thyssen continued the ruse after the war, claiming no ownership of foreign corporations and detesting his relatives who, with help from Allied investigators, were quietly reassembling his financial empire. Under the laws of the occupation of Germany, any property of citizens of a neutral nation seized by the Nazis had to be returned upon proof of ownership. There was a flood of neutral parties from Holland claiming ownership of various parts of the Thyssen empire.
While the Allied investigators focused on the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and the large number of transactions conducted with the Nazis, they were unable to discover where the money had gone. They did not know was that Allen Dulles was secretly the lawyer for the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and Thyssen. Baron Kurt Von Schroeder was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen companies, which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch.
The Dutch bank was the key to Dulles’ Tarnung or cloaking scheme. Moreover, it was his most successful effort at Tarnung. It has taken investigators more than 50 years to untangle the intricacies of Dulles’ web. Despite one small problem, Thyssen’s empire would remain intact. Once Germany fell to the Allies, it was time to ship the documents back to Holland so that the “neutral” bank could claim ownership under the friendly supervision of Allen Dulles, who, as the OSS intelligence chief in 1945 Berlin, was in a position to handle any troublesome investigations. Thyssen had hedged his bets with positions on both sides and the middle.
However, the August Thyssen Bank had been bombed during the war, and the documents were buried in the underground vaults beneath the rubble. Even more perplexing was that the August Thyssen Bank was located in the Soviet sector of Berlin. Under the pretext of recovering the crown jewels stolen by the Nazis, Prince Bernhard commanded a unit of Dutch intelligence in Operation Juliana. The Russians gave the prince permission to recover the jewels. Bernhard was a Nazi SS officer and successfully recovered the corporate papers to keep the Thyssen empire intact.
The treachery of Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush and the Rockefellers can only be measured in the enormity of this pipeline to launder Nazi assets. Brown Brothers Harriman was the conduit to invest money into Nazi Germany, Union Bank was the return pipe for the profits.
In 1970, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, which also served as the group’s holding company, merged with Nederlandse Credietbank N.V. After the merger, the resulting holding firm was named Thyssen-Bornemisza Group. Chase Manhattan, the Rockefeller bank, holds 31 percent of the new company. The Thyssen-Bornemisza group is now one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, with a net worth of more than $50 billion. It is so rich it even bought the Krupp family’s arms business.
After the war, the Dutch government began an investigation into the location of some more jewelry stolen from the royal family by the Nazis, and started looking at the books of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. After discovering transaction papers of the Silesian American Corp., they questioned the bank manager, H.J. Kouwenhoven. Shocked at being discovered, he soon traveled to New York to tell Prescott Bush. According to the Dutch, this meeting between Bush and Kouwenhoven took place shortly after Dec. 25, 1947. Two weeks later, the otherwise healthy Kouwenhoven died of a heart attack. The Gehlen network of former Nazis had perfected a means to induce a heart attack without detection.
In August 1942, under the same authority, Congress seized the first of the Bush-Harriman-managed Thyssen entities, Hamburg-Amerika Line, under Vesting Order No. 126, also signed by Crowley. Eight days after the seizure of UBC, Congress invoked the Trading with the Enemy Act again to take control of two more Bush-Harriman-Thyssen businesses - Holland-American Trading Corp. (Vesting Order No. 261) and Seamless Steel Equipment Corp (Vesting Order No. 259). In November, Congress seized the Nazi interests in Silesian-American Corp., which allegedly profited from slave labor at Auschwitz via a partnership with IG Farben, Hitler’s third major industrial patron and partner in the infrastructure of the Third Reich.
After the war, the U.S. government seized another 18 companies related to the Harriman-Bush Union Bank for violations of the Trading with the Enemy Act. Several companies seized had continued the Thyssen relationship after takeover of Union Bank in 1942.
In October 1950, the government conducted one of the last seizures of Nazi assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The seizure concerned the U.S. assets of a Nazi baroness named Theresia Maria Ida Benedikta Huberta Stanislava Martina von Schwarzenberg. Brown Brothers Harriman continued with the subterfuge, claiming the baroness was a victim of Nazi persecution. However, government investigators concluded she was a member of the Nazi Party.
Meanwhile, in 1951, after the death of Fritz Thyssen, the Alien Property Custodian released the assets of the Union Banking Corp., to Brown Brothers Harriman. Prescott Bush received $1.5 million for his share in Union Bank’s blood money, and filed for his 1952 Senate race.
Further examination of the documents show that Bush and Harriman conducted business after the war with related concerns, moving assets into Switzerland, Panama, Argentina and Brazil, which were critical destinations for Nazi war criminals and flight capital.
Additional vesting orders linking Brown Brothers Harriman to Nazi interests are listed in Appendix 3.
Evidence of a continuing conspiracy between Wall Street and former Nazis also comes from the holdings of the Rockefellers. By 1972, the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan bank in New York secretly owned 38 percent of Thyssen’s company. The Thyssen-Krupp Corp. is now the wealthiest conglomerate in Europe.
In the 1970s, Brown Brothers Harriman convinced the docile New York State Banking Commission to issue an order allowing it to shred all records from the Nazi period.
It has been more than 60 years since the government seized Union Bank from Bush and Harriman, and yet most people are unaware that the current president’s grandfather was guilty of treason and aided the Nazis. The lack of knowledge about this cover-up is due in a large part to the current corporate media. When John Buchanan broke his 2004 story of the seizures of 18 additional companies from Bush and Harriman, the mainstream media ignored the story. The only paper to print it was The New Hampshire Gazette.
Moreover, the seizure of Union Bank was never announced or widely published at the time. Some suspect the hush-up was due to the Roosevelt-Harriman connection, but Roosevelt believed that widespread exposure of American traitors would cause a public scandal, which would affect public morale, cause strikes and provoke military mutinies. Besides, he had plans to deal with the American traitors such as Bush and Harriman after the war. Unfortunately, he died before the end of the war and his plan died with him.
It was not illegal for industrialists to invest in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, but once the Nazis seized power, the judgment of these industrialists is a concern. Their continued support of the Nazis after 1941 was clearly treason.
American corporations that supported the Nazis have successfully hidden for more than six decades by claiming that the Nazis seized control of their German subsidiaries. Usually, this is false. Almost all subsidiaries in Nazi Germany collaborated with the Nazis with the full knowledge of their American home offices. They went to extraordinary means to keep communication and control. For instance, when the GIs landed on Normandy, IBM CEO Thomas Watson still knew the exact location of every IBM machine in Europe. Even though the Nazis had seized them from other governments and put them to use in such places as the concentration camps, IBM’s European subsidiary continued to service them and to convey their locations back to New York.
Unequivocally, John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush and Averill Harriman were the most flagrant in aiding for the Nazis. Not only did they help Hitler seize power, their actions also facilitated other American aid to the Nazis. Bush and Harriman acted as Hitler’s American bankers, operating a company that was at the center of the Nazis’ espionage ring in the United States. Once it was clear that war was imminent, the Dulles brothers attempted to cloak the Nazi investments of their clients.
Many people and some authors attempt to dismiss Prescott’s dealings with the Nazi by claiming it wasn’t illegal to invest in Germany before the war and by saying there is no evidence that he was a Nazi. They try to describe Prescott as just a good, ruthless businessman. However, ruthless business practices are nothing more than another expression of fascism and are precisely what Upton Sinclair had in mind when he said, “fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
Other Bush apologists try to deflect blame from Prescott by claiming Joseph Kennedy owned stock in Nazi Germany companies, which is true. Kennedy bought his stock from Prescott Bush through Brown Brothers Harriman. But unlike Prescott Bush, Kennedy never served as the Nazis’ American banker and never managed a company that was at the heart of Nazi espionage in North America.
The universal claim from the Bush supporters is that there is no evidence to suggest Prescott Bush was a Nazi or fascist. Such a claim is false. Prescott Bush came from America’s elite that almost universally supported fascism. He was the president of Connecticut’s eugenic society, an organization that advocated eliminating the inferior. Bush was guilty of treason the moment he hired the Dulles brothers to hide the Nazi ownership in his companies. He chose to stand with the Nazis and to defy his own country. He was well aware that he was violating the law - and aware of his guilt.
Prescott Bush didn’t need jackboots and a swastika armband, when he controlled the Nazi purse strings in North America.