On Sunday morning, February 1, 1931, Hitler was at his home base in Munich and went to see Otto Wagener, his chief economic adviser. The leader of the Nazi Party had money on his mind. Hitler and Wagener began considering ways to get hold of millions of reichsmarks to arm the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing, in case a putsch from the left turned into civil war. They settled on the business community, but there was one problem: neither of them had any good contacts there. That needed to change, and fast. Wagener immediately called Walther Funk at his home in Berlin. The newspaper editor was eager to set up meetings with industrialists and financiers for the Nazi leader, and he recommended that Hitler and his entourage set up shop at the capital’s chic Hotel Kaiserhof. Funk told Wagener that this place, Berlin’s first grand hotel, was the only suitable location if Hitler wanted to make a good first impression on the tycoons and if he wanted a serious chance at getting some money from them. The building was situated opposite the Reich Chancellery, around the corner from the offices of Günther Quandt and Friedrich Flick. Funk would reserve the appropriate rooms.
The next morning, Hitler, Wagener, and their entourage left Munich by car. It took more than a day to drive to Berlin. Wagener prepared Hitler, urging him to first discuss economic issues with the men, ease them into conversation, and then ask them for money to acquire weapons for the SA. They finally arrived at the hotel at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, February 3. Funk awaited them in the lobby and showed them their rooms: a large corner suite on the third floor. Hitler had his own bedroom, with a private bath. The rest were quartered together. The Nazi leader would receive his guests in the suite’s richly decorated sitting room, overlooking the Reich Chancellery park. Funk had moved quickly. In two hours, at 4 p.m., Hitler’s first introduction of the week was due to arrive: Baron August von Finck.
The thirty-two-year-old aristocratic financier from Munich was Bavaria’s richest man. His father had left him a business empire, including control of Merck Finck, one of Germany’s major private banks, and the largest stakes in two global insurance giants, Allianz and Munich Re.
August von Finck was tall and regal in bearing, with a cool expression and a full head of immaculately swept back brown hair. He was to the manor born. Von Finck’s father, Wilhelm, was a cofounder of both Allianz and Munich Re. And insurance wasn’t even his main profession. Wilhelm was a financier who built his own private bank, Merck Finck. His entrepreneurial spirit was boundless. Wilhelm started beer breweries, helped expand the railway network, cofounded a venture with the inventor of diesel, and helped build the first hydroelectric power station in the German Empire. In recognition of his many efforts, he was ennobled: Wilhelm Finck became Baron Wilhelm von Finck in 1911. He bought thousands of acres of land and became one of the largest landowners in Bavaria. All in all, he was a tremendously successful man, especially for a pious Protestant living in a devoutly Catholic part of Bavaria.
But disaster struck the family during World War I, when August’s older brother was killed at the front in 1916. Wilhelm had planned on leaving his eldest son his bank, business interests, and board positions; the land and its agricultural enterprises were intended for August. At eighteen years of age August entered the army — on the same day that his older brother was killed in action. August served for two years in a forage unit in the Balkans, searching for food and other provisions. He was injured, but not badly — his right knee was hurt.
After his eldest son’s death, a grieving Wilhelm decided that his bank should be liquidated when he passed away. But on his deathbed in 1924, he reconsidered. Wilhelm changed his will, appointing August to succeed him as principal partner at Merck Finck and as proprietor of all his other business interests, from insurers to breweries. August also inherited an enormous amount of land.
Thus, at age twenty-five, August took up about two dozen board positions, including two of the most important ones in global finance: supervisory board chairman of both Allianz and Munich Re. After all, this was no meritocracy. August also inherited his fathers’ devout Protestantism and famed thriftiness. The young heir became known in his circle as the richest and stingiest man in Bavaria, with a frugality that made him appear cruel and distant. A die-hard conservative, August withdrew to the reactionary aristocratic salons of Munich during the dying years of the Weimar Republic, when a bored and listless Magda was doing the same in Berlin. But now the time had come for him to emerge from that insular far-right clique. August too was feeling more ambitious than ever and ready to get to work on something new and radical.
On that freezing, cloudy Tuesday afternoon in early February 1931, August von Finck, accompanied by Kurt Schmitt, the opportunistic and well-connected CEO of Allianz, was to meet Hitler for the first time. Allianz’s headquarters were across the street from the Hotel Kaiserhof. At 4 p.m., the two men arrived at the suite. Walter Funk took them to the sitting room where Hitler was waiting. Over the next half hour, Hitler sketched a capitalist’s nightmare to the financier duo; he “conjured up the specter of unemployed masses rising in a leftist revolt.” Von Finck and Schmitt agreed with Hitler’s view. The two were displeased with the political situation and the hopelessness of providing millions with jobs. They were “absolutely convinced . . . of the eventual eruption of riots and a major shift to the left,” they told Hitler. After the meeting, Funk walked the two out. He soon returned to the suite with big news: von Finck and Schmitt had pledged to make five million reichsmarks available via Allianz to arm the SA as a stay against a putsch, which might devolve into civil war.
Hitler was speechless. After Funk left, Hitler marveled to Otto Wagener at “the kind of power big business wields.” It was as if the monetary strength of capitalism had revealed itself to the Nazi leader for the first time. But his economic adviser warned him about the businessmen: “They want to earn money, nothing but money, filthy money — and they don’t even realize that they are chasing a satanic phantom.”
Hitler did not care. Many more millions were about to be pledged. Funk had invited Günther Quandt to visit the Kaiserhof the next morning.