1938 to 1939, Czechoslovakia would be torn apart and devoured by Hitler. Was it that which these mysterious Czech “friends” on the NSDAP gave their precious money for? They would have been blind to do that.
The neutral “Scandinavians” were also said to have helped Hitler. But who were these Scandinavians? Were they Norwegians whose territory would be occupied in 1940 by the one they sponsored? Could it have been the King of Norway who had been bored enough to start a game of political roulette, granting a lump sum to the would-be Führer and later fleeing from his country aboard a British man-of-war? You must admit, there are simpler ways to set on a sea voyage. Or, maybe, the word “Scandinavians” meant Danish who would be occupied with no resistance on their part? Or Swedish who miraculously preserved neutrality throughout the war?
I have already said that any act of funding a political party has a definite goal to achieve. Especially so, if the funding is made from another country. In that case, the goal must be very serious and on a global scale, and the benefit must be not only economical, but primarily geopolitical and strategic.
Well, for the life of me, I can see no reason for any of Hitler’s “donors” to pay him. What could be their gain? What geopolitical advantage? What profit to Czechoslovakia or Norway, or Switzerland from the revival of a strong Germany? Zero profit. Or were all they secret Nazi adherents? But have you heard of any in Denmark, Czechoslovakia, or, most of all, in Switzerland? True, there were a few hundred fanatics who were enlisted into SS divisions and later found their rest in common graves. But money donors and cannon fodder are completely different things!
According to Fest, “in the autumn of 1923, Hitler went to Zurich and was said to bring back with him “a coffer full of Swiss francs and American dollar banknotes”[33]. To put it simply, someone granted the future leader of Germany a substantial sum in foreign currency, on the very eve of his attempted coup. Hear them talking about Swiss themselves who did it!
Let me explain something. In April 1917, Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) from Switzerland, having travelled across Germany in a sealed armoured carriage. Why then do they so often write that the money the Bolsheviks so suddenly procured had been provided by the German General Staff? What absolute nonsense! Lenin had been staying in Switzerland – in fact, in that very city of Zurich that was only six years later visited by Adolf Hitler, for his own motives. So, if use the logic proposed by the books on Hitler, we must conclude that Lenin had accepted money from Swiss! The Swiss intelligence services organised the October Revolution! It is to be regretted that no one should have gone so far in their speculations. That idea would really have taken the cake. As with the Nazi, Switzerland had no conceivable reason to back either a Russian revolution, or a German left-wing society. We might as well suggest that they did it to boost demand on Swiss chocolate and wrist-watches in a war-torn Europe.
We won’t get anywhere trying to analyse Hitler’s rise to power and his role in the outbreak of the Second World War without ruling out the notion of Czechs and Swiss as the Nazi’s principal benefactors. But why on earth do Hitler’s biographers stick to that downright rubbish? Could they indeed be so naïve to suggest in in full earnest?
No, they can’t, and that is why they resort to prevarication. But faithful to their labour, these authors can’t but mention the fact, having abundant evidence that Hitler’s gold streams ran through Czechoslovakia, Scandinavian countries, and Switzerland. And though mentioned but in a few lines, this brief testimonial speaks louder of the causes and effects of world wars than volumes of historical treatises.
The financing of shady dealings and obscure occurrences in world politics is always effected via banks and personalities that belong to neutral countries! Should such an affair surface up, the blame can at any moment be laid on the neutrals to avert suspicions from the superpowers. And it is only the neutral countries that Hitler’s historians put the blame on. Swiss bankers only did their job, as it appears. They had been “told” to give money to Herr Hitler, and so they did it.
There is another question of importance – why these “kind-hearted” neutrals sponsored Hitler’s party, out of all out there. Or maybe they sponsored all the German parties, hoping for a good “roll of the dice”? No, they didn’t. They only gave money to the most promising ones. And not only Adolf Hitler. “Kurt W. Lüdecke, who was regarded as a “dark horse”, also obtained considerable funds from some sources, unknown to the present day, but most likely, foreign ones, which enabled him, for example, to run a payroll of his “own” SA detachment of over fifty troopers”[34].
Who was that Kurt Lüdecke? A Nazi panjandrum? Not at all. You will see books describe him as “one of the earliest supporters of the movement”, “one of the comrades”, or even “an agent of Hitler’s”. And now we have this quite inconspicuous “comrade” digging some unknown, but on all presumption foreign, sources for money to finance Hitler’s yet budding endeavour. Then we see the same “dark horse” as a reporter for the Völkischer Beobachter, a newspaper controlled by the NSDAP central body. Why wasn’t this valuable provider of funds and a “comrade” of Hitler’s appointed as Gauleiter, or SS Gruppenführer, or even as editor-in-chief, but only a humble reporter? An old friend in need could be a friend indeed for the newly appointed Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler, especially so astute a man as was Lüdecke, who instead is sent off to write reports for a periodical.
Small wonder, though. A “dark horse” reads “agent” or “spy”. A newspaper reporter is the favourite and rather hackneyed story of intelligence officers working under cover. We can infer with reasonable accuracy the source of the financial “Renaissance” of the yet nascent Nazi movement in 1920–1922 from Lüdecke’s itinerary in the 1930-ies. Where does he go? To Bremen, Rostock, or Berlin? To Moscow, Prague, or Geneva? Nothing of the sort. Kurt Lüdecke goes to the United States of America.
A still more curious version exists, suggesting that Hitler was sponsored by the French intelligence service![35]
But we are quite familiar with kind of logic. There is evidence that the Nazi received financial help from the bordering France. One can’t obviate that fact in a book. There must be some explanation for it. So our “investigators” will say that the French financed the Nazi as Bavarian separatists!
True, France had always backed Germany’s disintegration. So the idea of financing those who wished to separate Bavaria from the rest of the country should be a sound one. There is only one point – neither Hitler, nor his followers had ever expressed such intents. What is more, Hitler regarded France as Germany’s number-one enemy. “We must fully realise that the deadliest foe of the German nation is, and will always be, France. No matter who should be in power there – the Bourbons or the Jacobins, Napoleons or bourgeois democrats – the ultimate objective of French external politics will always be that of seizing the Rhine. And to keep this great river in their hands, France will always invariably seek to see Germany a weak and disintegrated state”, Hitler would write some time later in his notorious Mein Kampf. Could the French intelligence be headed by sheer idiots?
At the time of these “French” money transactions Hitler’s book had not yet seen light, which fact may, in the eyes of “hitlerologists”, account for this oddity. It is true that Hitler hadn’t yet published his “landmark” work; but the NSDAP certainly had a programme, which one would certainly have done well to browse through at least, before giving money the party. Just to be able to tell between separatists and radical nationalists.
The French, however, appeared to be totally unacquainted with the NSDAP political programme. We can only suppose that the French intelligence service was so rich that they didn’t bother to read the official documents of those organisations it was about to finance. They simply drew the budget earmarked by Paris for the special
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, of April 29, 2005.
