Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (17 page)

At Nuremburg, statements were made and allowed to go unchallenged which were directly contrary to the known direct evidence presented above. For example, Buecher, Director General of German General Electric, was absolved from sympathy for Hitler:
Thyssen has confessed his error like a man and has courageously paid a heavy
penalty for it. On the other side stand men like Reusch of the
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_07.htm (10 of 13) [8/4/2001 9:44:16 PM]

CHAPTER SEVEN: Who Financed Adolf Hitler?

Gutehoffnungshuette, Karl Bosch, the late chairman of the I.G. Farben
Aufsichtsrat, who would very likely have come to a sad end, had he not died in
time. Their feelings were shared by the deputy chairman of the Aufsichtsrat of
Kalle. The Siemens and AEG companies which, next to I.G. Farben, were the
most powerful German concerns, and they were determined opponents of
national socialism.

I know that this unfriendly attitude on the part of the Siemens concern to the
Nazis resulted in the firm receiving rather rough treatment. The Director
General of the AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft), Geheimrat
Buecher, whom I knew from my stay in the colonies, was anything but a Nazi. I
can assure General Taylor that it is certainly wrong to assert that the leading

industrialists as such favored Hitler before his seizure of power.
28

Yet on page 56 of this book we reproduce a document originating with General Electric, transferring General Electric funds to the National Trusteeship account controlled by Rudolf Hess on behalf of Hitler and used in the 1933 elections.

Similarly, von Schnitzler, who was present at the February 1933 meeting on behalf of I.G.

Farben, denied I.G. Farben's contributions to the 1933 Nationale Treuhand:
I never heard again of the whole matter [that of financing Hitler], but I believe
that either the buro of Goering or Schacht or the Reichsverband der Deutschen
Industrie had asked the of fice of Bosch or Schmitz for payment of IG's share in
the elec tion fund. As I did not take the matter up again I not even at that time
knew whether and which amount had been paid by the IG. According to the
volume of the IG, I should estimate IG's share being something like 10 percent
of the election fund, but as far as I know there is no evidence that I.G. Farben
participated in the payments.
29

As we have seen, the evidence is incontrovertible regarding political cash contributions to Hitler at the crucial point of the takeover of power in Germany — and Hitler's earlier speech to the industrialists clearly revealed that a coercive takeover was the premeditated intent.

We know exactly who contributed, how much, and through what channels. It is notable that the largest contributors — I.G. Farben, German General Electric (and its affiliated company Osram), and Thyssen — were affiliated with Wall Street financiers. These Wall Street financiers were at the heart of the financial elite and they were prominent in contemporary American politics. Gerard Swope of General Electric was author of Roosevelt's New Deal, Teagle was one of NRA's top administrators, Paul Warburg and his associates at American I.G. Farben were Roosevelt advisors. It is perhaps not an extraordinary coincidence that Roosevelt's New Deal — called a "fascist measure" by Herbert Hoover — should have so closely resembled Hitler's program for Germany, and that both Hitler and Roosevelt took power in the same month of the same year — March 1933.

Footnotes:

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_07.htm (11 of 13) [8/4/2001 9:44:16 PM]

CHAPTER SEVEN: Who Financed Adolf Hitler?

1

The American Historical Review,
Volume LC, NO. 4, July. 1955. p, 830.

2Ibid, fn. (2).

3
Elimination of German Resources,
p. 648. The Albert Voegler mentioned in the Kilgore Committee list of early Hitler supporters was the German representative on the Dawes Plan Commission. Owen Young of General Electric (see Chapter Three) was a U.S. representative for the Dawes Plan and formulated its successor, the Young Plan.

4Antony C. Sutton,
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, op. cit,
5
Preussiche Zettung,
January 3, 1937.

6See p. 116.

7Glyn Roberts,
The Most Powerful Man in the World,
(New York: Covicl, Friede, 1938), p. 305.

8Ibid., p. 313.

9Ibid., p. 322.

10See
Chambre des Deputes — Debats,
February 11, 1932, pp. 496-500.

11U.S. Group Control Council (Germany0 Office of the Director of Intelligence, Field Information Agency, Technical). Intelligence Report No.

EF/ME/1,4 September 1945. "Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen," p, 13, Hereafter cited as Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen.

12The Bank was known in Germany as
Bank fur Handel und Schiff.

13Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen.

14Fritz Thyssen,
I Paid Hitler,
(New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1941). p.

159.

15Taken from
Bankers Directory,
!932 edition, p, 2557 and Poors,
Directory of
Directors.
J.L. Guinter and Knight Woolley were also directors.

16See Antony C. Sutton,
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, op. cit.

17
National Cyclopaedia,
Volume G, page 16.

18For a description of these ventures, based on State Department files, see An, tony C. Sutton,
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development,
Volume 1,
op. cit.

19See Antony C. Sutton,
Wall Street and FDR.
Chapter Nine, "Swope's Plan,"

op. cit.

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_07.htm (12 of 13) [8/4/2001 9:44:16 PM]

CHAPTER SEVEN: Who Financed Adolf Hitler?

20

See
Elimination of German Resources,
pp. 728-30.

21For yet other connections between the Union Banking Corp, and German enterprises, see Ibid., pp. 728-30.

22See Chapter Ten.

23
NMT,
Volume VII, p. 555.

24Josiah E. Dubois, Jr.,
Generals in Grey Suits op. cit.,
p. 323.

25Original reproduced on page 64.

26
NMT,
Volume VII, p. 565. See p. 64 for photograph of original document.

27Fritz Thyssen,
I Paid Hitler,
(New York: Toronto: Farrat & Rinehart, Inc., 1941).

28
NMT,
Volume VI, pp. 1169-1170.

29
NMT,
Volume VII, p. 565.

BACK

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_07.htm (13 of 13) [8/4/2001 9:44:16 PM]

TABLE 7-1: FINANCIAL LINKS BETWEEN U.S. INDUSTRIALISTS AND ADOLF HITLER

TABLE 7-1: FINANCIAL LINKS BETWEEN U.S. INDUSTRIALISTS AND ADOLF HITLER

American Bankers

Intermediary for

Date

and Industrialists

U.S. Affiliated Firm

German Source

Funds/Agent

1923

Henry FORD

FORD MOTOR

—

—

COMPANY

1931

E.R. HARRIMAN

UNION BANKING

Fritz

250,000 RM Bank voor Handel en

CORP

THYSSEN

Scheepvaart N.V.

(Subsidiary of August

Thyssen Bank)

1932-3

Flick

Friedrich

150,000 RM Direct to NSDAP

(a director

FLICK

of AEG)

February-

NONE

Emil

600,000 RM "Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

KIRDORF

a/c at Delbrück

Schickler Bank

February-

Edsel B. FORD

AMERICAN

I.G. FARBEN

400,000 RM "Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

C.E. MITCHELL

I.G.

Walter TEAGLE

Paul M. WARBURG

February-

NONE

Reichsverband der

100,000 RM "Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

Automobilindustrie

February-

Gerard SWOPE

INTERNATIONAL

25

A.E.G.

60,000 RM

"Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

Owen D. YOUNG

GENERAL

percent

C.H. MINOR

ELECTRIC

E. Arthur BALDWIN

NONE

DEMAG

50,000 RM

February-

Owen D. YOUNG

INTERNATIONAL

162/3

OSRAM

40,000 RM

"Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

GENERAL

percent G.m.b.H.

ELECTRIC

February-

Sosthenes BEHN

I.T.T.

Telefunken

35,000 RM

"Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

February-

NONE

Karl

300,000 RM "Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

Herrman

Februa ry-

NONE

A. Steinke

200,000 RM "Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

(Director of

BYBUAG)

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/table_7-1.htm (1 of 2) [8/4/2001 9:44:17 PM]

TABLE 7-1: FINANCIAL LINKS BETWEEN U.S. INDUSTRIALISTS AND ADOLF HITLER

February-

NONE

Karl Lange

50,000 RM

"Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

(Machine

industry)

February-

NONE

F. Springorum

36,000 RM

"Nationale Treuhand"

March 1933

(Hoesch A.G.)

February-

Edsel B. FORD

Ford Motor Co.

Carl BOSCH

March 1933

(I.G. Farben & Ford

Motor A.G.)

1932-1944

Walter TEAGLE

Standard Oil

94

Emil HELFFRICH

Heinrich Himmler S.S.

J.A. MOFFETT

of N.J.

percent (German-American

via Keppler's Circle

W.S. FARISH

Petroleum Co)

1932-1944

Sosthenes BEHN

I.T.T.

Kurt yon

Heinrich Himmler S.S.

SCHRÖDER

via Keppler's Circle

Mix & Genest

Lorenz

BACK

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/table_7-1.htm (2 of 2) [8/4/2001 9:44:17 PM]

CHAPTER EIGHT: Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

CHAPTER EIGHT

Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

Ernst Sedgewiek Hanfstaengl (or Hanfy or Putzi, as he was more usually called), like Hjalmar Horaee Greeley Sehacht, was another German-American at the core of the rise of Hitlerism. Hanfstaengl was born into a well-known New England family; he was a cousin of Civil War General John Sedgewiek and a grandson of another Civil War General, William Heine. Introduced to Hitler in the early l920s by Captain Truman-Smith, the U.S. Military Attaehe in Berlin, Putzi became an ardent Hitler supporter, on occasion financed the Nazis and, according to Ambassador William Dodd, "... is said to have saved Hitler's life in 1923."
1

By coincidence, S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler's father was also Putni's form master at the Royal Bavarian Wilhelms gymnasium. Putzi's student day friends at Harvard University were "such outstanding future figures" as Walter Lippman, John Reed (who figures prominently in
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution),
and Franklin D. Roosevelt. After a few years at Harvard, Putzi established the family art business in New York; it was a delightful combination of business and pleasure, for as he says, "the famous names who visited me were legion, Pierpont Morgan, Toscanini, Henry Ford, Caruso, Santos-Dumont, Charlie Chaplin, Paderewski, and a daughter of President Wilson."
2
It was also at Harvard that Putzi made friends with the future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
I took most of my meals at the Harvard Club, where I made friends with the
young Franklin D. Roosevelt, at that time a rising New York State Senator. Also
I received several invitations to visit his distant cousin Teddy, the former
President, who had retired to his estate at Sagamore Hill.
3

From these varied friendships (or perhaps after reading this book and its predecessors,
Wall
Street and FDR
and
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,
the reader may consider Putzi's friendship to have been confined to a peculiarly elitist circle), Putzi became not only an early friend, backer and financier of Hitler, but among those early Hitler supporters he was,
"., .
almost the only person who crossed the lines of his (Hitler's) groups of acquaintances."
4

In brief, Putzi was an American citizen at the heart of the Hitler entourage from the early 1920s to the late 1930s. In 1943, after falling out of favor with the Nazis and interned by the Allies, Putzi was bailed out of the miseries of a Canadian prisoner of war camp by his friend and protector President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When FDR's actions threatened to become an internal political problem in the United States, Putzi was re-interned in England. As if it is not surprising enough to find both Heinrich Himmler and Franklin D. Roosevelt prominent in Putzi's life, we also discover that the Nazi Stormtrooper marching songs were composed by Hanfstaengl, "including the one that was played by the brownshirt columns as they marched through the Brandenburger Tor on the day Hitler took over power.
5
To top this http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_08.htm (1 of 7) [8/4/2001 9:44:17 PM]

CHAPTER EIGHT: Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

eye-opener, Putzi averred that the genesis of the Nazi chant "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," used in the Nazi mass rallies, was none other than "Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah."

Putzi certainly helped finance the first Nazi daily press, the
Volkische Beobachter.
Whether he saved Hitler's life from the Communists is less verifiable, and while kept out of the actual writing process of
Mein Kampf —
much to his disgust — Putzi did have the honor to finance its publication, "and the fact that Hitler found a functioning staff when he was released from jail was entirely due to our efforts. ,"
7