Hitler’s purses. Freedom in exchange for silence? Names and facts

On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism there had been a lost of speculations in regard to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the responsibility for the start of WWII. Strangely enough the participants of the dispute did not mention the fact that the Third Reich was the creation of London and Washington. The secret of the Anglo-Saxon support of Hitler at the initial stage was taken to their graves by two men.

Who was the real sponsor of Hitler’s seizure of power? Historians are still arguing on this: some think that the Nazis had been secretly sponsored by Reichswehr, which dreamed about the revenge after the defeat in the WWI, the others claim that German industrialists were the key sponsors of the Führer.

Meanwhile, as my colleagues have found out, at the Nuremberg Trial ex-President of Reichsbank and Minister of Economy Hjalmar Schacht suggested for fairness sake those, who had nurtured the Third Reich should be tried as well, having mentioned American corporations General Motors and Ford, as well as Head of the Bank of England Norman Montague. Notably, Americans made a deal with him, having promised release in exchange for silence, and the International Military Tribunal had fully absolved Schacht in spite of the Soviet lawyers’ protests.

The secret of the Anglo-Saxon support of Hitler at the initial stage was taken to their graves by two men – nondescript at first sight Swiss financier Wilhelm Gustloff (it was not by chance that the biggest German cruise liner was named after him posthumously) and treasurer of the NSDAP Franz Schwartz. Hjalmar Schacht called Gustloff, who was murdered in 1936 in Davos, Switzerland by a scrawny student, an “irreplaceable mediator” between British and American corporations on one side and Nazis – on the other side (according to certain data, Gustloff was mediating from 1925 till 1929). As far as Obergruppenführer SS Schwartz is concerned, the circumstances of his death were similarly odd: on December 2 of 1947 he was to be released from the filtering camp in Regensburg, but he never walked out. He had breakfast, then felt unwell and then died in an hour or so – “because of stomach problem”, as the coroner’s statement claimed. In April of 1945 Schwrtz burnt all the financial documents in the “brown house” (the headquarters of the NSDAP in Munich) including those that could discredit the victorious countries, and was naive enough to expect mercy for this reason.

Hitler received the first box of gold from the head of Shell

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that two most important witnesses went silent forever, some historians still managed to unearth the evidence of Anglo-Saxon sponsorship of Hitler and his followers. In particular, Italian Guido Giacomo Preparata, who devoted almost 20 years to the study of Nazi connections with the business circles of London and Washington, named all those, who brought “the brown” to power: “Who finances the fascists from the very beginning? according to a funny story, that was stubbornly imposed in the society, the Nazis financed themselves, raising funds at the rallies”. And further Preparata convincingly proves that the lion’s share of the Nazi party funds had foreign origin. The oversea financial clans of Morgans and Rockefellers  promoted the shares of IG Farbenindustrie and a series of other German companies via Chase National bank in Wall Street (later the creation of Krupp went under control of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil), and the shares of Vereinigte Stahlwerke of Alfred Tissen had been promoted through the banks of Dillon and Reed. “By 1933, when it became absolutely clear that the AEG company financed Hitler, – Preparata wrote, – 30% of its share belonged to an American shareholder – General Electric. Thus, the historian suggests, “in the course of 15 years, from 1919 till 1933, the Anglo-Saxon elite was actively involved in German political life with the intention to create a macabre movement, which later could be used as a pawn in the big geopolitical game… Britain and USA did not create hitlerism,  but it was they, who created the exclusive conditions, in which this phenomenon was able to appear”.

And this is what another scholar of the financial flows nurturing Hitler, German historian Joachim Fest wrote: “In autumn of 1923 Hitler visited Zurich and came back, they said, with ” a box tightly packed with Swiss franks and dollars”. That is, on the eve of the “beer putsch” someone had allotted a solid sum in currency to the would-be Führer. This someone, according to certain data, was no one but Sir Henry Deterding, the head of British and Dutch Shell concern. he will keep on financing Hitler via Gustloff. It is curious, that Munich court, in which the putschists had been tried, only managed to prove that the Nazi party received 20 thousands USD to back up the plot from businessmen of Nuremberg. However the expenditures of Hitlers’ followers were estimated as a twice bigger sum! In April of 1924 Hitler received a five-year jail term for state treason, but he was released in December, bought “Berghoff” villa and started publishing the resurrected “Völkisher Beobachter”. On what funds, can one wonder? “Since 1924, – Joachim Fest wrote, – the industrialists and businessmen sympathizing Hitler (Tissen, Vogler, Kierdorf and Schröder) secretly allotted big sums to the Nazis. Notably, the leaders of the storm-troopers and the party functionaries received salaries in foreign currency”. It is worth mentioning that Vogler and Schröder should be considered American rather than German businessmen, as they had been earning their fortunes predominantly overseas. Other contradictory figures had been among Hitler’s sponsors – e.g., head of IG Farbenindustrie Max Warburg – brother of Director of the Federal Reserve Bank Paul Warburg, or Carl Bosch, heading the German branch of Ford Motor Company.

Why Henry Ford was awarded with the Third Reich order

Talking about Ford: in 1931 a correspondent of American newspaper Detroit News, who arrived in Germany in order to interview an ambitious politician Adolf Hitler, was astonished to see a portrait of a man she knew perfectly well – Henry Ford – over Hitler’s desk. “I consider him the man, who inspired me”, – Hitler explained. However, Ford did not only inspire the Nazi leader, but also lavishly sponsored him. Ford and Hitler found common ground in antisemitism they both adhered to. As early as in the beginning of 1920s “uncle Ford” at his own expense printed and sent to Germany half a million strong circulation of “The protocols of the elders of Zion”, and then two of his own books – “The international Jew” and “Jewish activity in New-York”.

In the end of the 1920s and beginning of 30s Ford, according to some sources, was lavishly sponsoring the NSDAP (written testimony of Franz Schwartz in regard to this was preserved, although he never revealed the exact figures). As a sign of gratitude Hitler decorated Ford with the Big Cross of the German Eagle – the highest reward of the Reich that a foreigner could be awarded with. The ceremony took place of July 30 of 1938 in Detroit, at a festive dinner, at which about one and a half thousand of American celebrities had been present. The order was presented by the German consul. Ford, allegedly, was so much touched that he wept. Afterward Ford carried out the financing of Hitler’s “folk car” project and as a result acquired almost 100% of the shares of the newly formed Volkswagen concern.

The connections of Ford and Hitler had been so close that they weren’t even interrupted by the war. By that time a special law was adopted across the ocean forbidding any type of cooperation with the Hitlerites (Trading with the enemy act), but it seemed to have no power over Ford. In 1940 Ford disagreed to assemble the engines for British airplanes fighting with Germany, and at the same time in the French town of Poissy his new works started production of engines for Lüftwaffe. European branches of Ford company supplied 65 thousand of trucks to Hitler in 1940 – free of charge! In occupied France the branch of Ford’s kept on producing lorries for the Wehrmacht,and another branch, in Algeria, supplied Germn General Rommel with trucks and armoured vehicles. By the way – a curious detail: in the end of the war the allied air force had raised to the ground the city of Cologne. Only several buildings of Ford’s car-producing plant miraculously remained intact. Nevertheless Ford and also his competitors from General Motors succeeded in receiving compensation from the state for the “damage don to their property in the enemy’s territory”. At that General Motors owned one of the biggest German automobile concerns – Opel – producing Blitz trucks. On the basis of these trucks the notorious Gasenwagens had been produced – gas cameras on wheels. By the beginning of WWII the combined investments of american corporations into German branches and representative offices comprised about 800 mln USD. Ford’s investments were estimated as 17.5 mln, Standard Oil (today Exxon) – 120 mln, General Motors – 35 mln.

The chief of the American intelligence service controlled money flows from the USA to Germany

Do you remember the scene from the “Seventeen moments of spring” series, in which Nazi general Karl Wolf meets the CIA head Allen Dulles? Historians often wonder, why President Roosevelt sent no one else but Dulles to conduct separate talks with Germany? However, the answer is obvious. In January of 1932 the meeting of Hitler with British financier Norman Montague took place. Ph D in historical science, Academician of the Academy of Sciences Yuriy Rubtsov suggests that “a secret deal was made at the meeting on financing of the NSDAP”. Rubtsov writes: “American politicians the Dulles brothers had also been present  at the meeting – the fact that their biographers always fail to mention”. One of the brothers was the would-be head of American intelligence Allen Dulles. Is it a mere coincidence? as some historians claim, Dulles personally controlled all financial flows to the Reich beginning with Hitler’s electoral campaign in 1930. It was, by the way, partially financed by IG Farbenindustrie, which by that time was already under control of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Thus, Roosevelt sent no one else but Dulles to the separate talks as he knew better than anyone else who among the American tycoons invested in the Hitler’s rise and the ensuing economic upheaval of Germany and how much. Why did Dulles so insistently inquired about the assets and gold of the “new German authorities”? because his task was to compensate ll the expenditures!

The subject of Anglo-Saxon sponsorship of Hitler is so vast that it cannot be embraced in the framework of one newspaper article. We did not mention the story of Ernst Hanfstaengl – an American citizen of German origin, who supervised Adolf Hitler on behalf of American intelligence in 1920s and supplied the would-be Führer with funds from US businessmen. We dd not manage to give full account of the part of British national Norman Montague in sponsoring of Hitler and the split of the British elite – the colleagues remark, suggesting to keep on with the studies of financial flows nurturing German Nazism.

And now I ask you: who in reality started the WWII? Do you still insist that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was the main reason? Or were London and Washington involved? What is your opinion?

Oleg Lurye in LiveJournal