Krupp, Borsig and others of the kind – those magnates who could now do nothing to alter the situation of the NSDAP ex-treasurer.
What happened next to Franz Xavier Schwarz may serve to confirm our conclusions. Having obliterated the papers which could cast a shade on the winners, he was given an almost “baby” term, when considering his important position in the NSDAP and the SS – only two years’ imprisonment. Already in 1947, the ex-treasurer walked free from jail. Everything was as agreed – at least, that’s what he must have thought. Schwarz says his say at the trial, silencing what should be silenced, gets his two years and then goes at large. The one thing he forgot was that “the only good witness is a dead witness”. So right out from jail, Schwarz died – that same year. When in prison, he had been safe and sound.
The people who sponsored Hitler ad his party have been named quite often. But these names are either the same old “Krupps and Borsigs” or peripheral figures. When Hitler was tried for the Beer Putsch, it was elicited that he had received money for the party from the director of the Bavarian Industrial Union, privy councillor Aust, the Union’s lawyer Doctor Kulo, and so on.
These names can go on and on, but they won’t tell us anything. Their donations are too ridiculous to believe that they could have helped Hitler to seize the top power in Germany. But why should history books be so persistent in their moving tales of how Hitler was supported by burghers? One of those tales you will find in nearly all such books narrates about the donations made to the NSDAP by one Helena Bechstein, the wife of the owner of a large piano factory. That old woman, as the story goes, felt a mother-like affection for Adolf who was an orphan. When later he was spending time in prison, she would even call herself his mother to gain a visit. A similar generosity was evinced by a Frau von Seidlitz – according to Hitler’s biographers, she gave all her money to the Nazi party[28]. Does it mean that those overactive old ladies should have been placed into the prisoner’s box? Do we call narrow-minded middle-class dames past their prime responsible for the millions killed by the Nazi?
Those who are so colourful in their descriptions of those old ladies’ affections and sympathies are either totally ignorant of how political parties are financed, or, quite on the opposite, too expert in that field. It is clear that the donations extended by a few tender-hearted women are not enough to support a whole party, not to say storm troops. But there must have been some persons who did give the needed sums to the Nazi, for the storm troops grew by leaps and bounds! And every trooper was fully provided for by the party. Every member of the SA (Strurmabteilung) was paid his wages, not exuberant, but regular, even during the total unemployment that had paralysed Germany. It was money and not Hitler’s famous oratory skills that was the most convincing argument in recruiting new members. You can just put on a brown shirt – and you’ll have something to feed your family with. So the SA was constantly growing in number, as did the party’s expenses to keep it. Where could the Führer take the required sums of money from? Neither can membership fees be an adequate explanation; otherwise, we’ll get into the absurd. Let’s say a would-be storm trooper enlists in the party and pays the due fee. And that fee is then used to equip him and pay him wages? Preposterous!
Strange as it may be, the truth about the real sources of money for the Nazi lies in the same books about Hitler. “Hitler also organised systematic collection of money abroad”, Heiden remembers. “One of his most zealous collectors was a Doctor Hanzer in Switzerland”[29].
I must confess, when I read this, I had to go back and reread it more than once to make sure I had grasped the meaning.
Hitler, just making his first steps in politics, is on a hunt for money abroad!
But the authors of books on Hitler do well to spare our nerves by inserting the word “also”, lest we should by any chance surmise that the young and hungry Nazi party received all its funds from other countries! To make assurance double sure, these “historians” always have a couple of Aryan old women up their sleeve, or some German industrial tycoon who donated a tithe of his earnings to Hitler.
It is quite conceivable that citizen of some country should make donations to their countrymen who are in politics. They may have a fancy for the leader or his programme, or some other thing. One can’t ban donations to political parties, after all, can one? Let them donate. However, any autonomous country does not allow accepting donations or material contributions from abroad: it is well-known that those harmless-looking gifts conceal the work of the secret forces of a rival country whose ultimate goal is to set up its own protégé ruler in power, which is certainly solely to its own benefit. For the same reason, any country that values its independence and liberty should have a keen eye on all sorts of funds, foundations and charity associations bankrolled by foreign “philanthropists”. In Russia, there is a generic word for all such formations – “nongovernmental organisations”. Why do you think they are paid so close an attention in this country? That is to preclude financing internal political struggle from without.
This makes sense. However, this book is not about the problems of young Russian democracy. It is about those of another democracy, also young, but German. That of the Weimar Republic, to be precise. To judge even by the scanty and disjointed sources available to us, things were turned upside down in the Germany of the 1920-ies. And unlike today’s Russian Government, no one among the top authorities of Germany of that time seemed to take any interest in the who’s and why’s of the NSDAP foreign financing scheme. The sad result of the lack of such interest that could have saved the ruling government is known to us – in 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.
But what foreign country or countries could have been willing to help that dark horse in German politics with money? Historians propose several different versions, which one can hardly read without a smile.
“The party, which had proved so successful in bringing itself to the foreground, was also supported by Czechoslovak, Scandinavian, but chiefly Swiss financial groups”[30], states Joachim Fest who is widely recognised as one of the best biographers of Hitler.
This comes unexpected. Where are the “German industrialists” we’ve heard so much of? It appears that the more serious investigators of the Nazi history do not trust stereotypes, as would the gullible reader (though they don’t oppose them either).
Why should Czechs sponsor the young, but obviously already fanatical Hitler? He hasn’t got anything in his bag yet but his speeches in beer halls and circuses. And brilliant these speeches are, for sure, he’s got a gift for them, indeed! For that, he is so far but a small figure on the local Bavarian political stage. And it’s not even that! The very Nazi party is yet a tiny society. This will later be confirmed in the writings of the “great connoisseurs” of the Third Reich. “Until 1930 the Nazis remained a minor party on the fringe of German politics”, writes Alan Bullock[31].
The young politician Adolf Hitler bore no marks or makings of the great leader he was eventually to become
But what business could Czechs have had with the Nazi? What reason could Scandinavians have had to finance Hitler? What could Switzerland have had to do with the national socialists? No good reply to these questions is given by historians and scholars, simply because no good reasons can possibly be found for such conjectures. As a rule, you will come across some kind of general phrase; for example, “The motivating reasons for supporting the party were as diverse as the funding sources”[32].
What we need is answers, not run-arounds! It may be good to write books and publish them in millions of copies to secure a comfortable life for yourself, without ever really getting your head round the things you write about. I am not saying anything
