Patrick J. Buchanan : Did Hitler Want War?

Did Hitler Want War?

Tuesday - September 1, 2009 at 12:52 am

by Patrick J. Buchanan


On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.
Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished. Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers.
By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin. A hundred million Christians were under the heel of the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin.

What cause could justify such sacrifices?

The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.

Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue.

But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe?

Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn’t want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.

Comes the response: The war guarantee was not about Danzig, or even about Poland. It was about the moral and strategic imperative “to stop Hitler” after he showed, by tearing up the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia with it, that he was out to conquer the world. And this Nazi beast could not be allowed to do that.

If true, a fair point. Americans, after all, were prepared to use atom bombs to keep the Red Army from the Channel. But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet’s, or Fidel Castro’s, was out to conquer the world?

After Munich in 1938, Czechoslovakia did indeed crumble and come apart. Yet consider what became of its parts.
The Sudeten Germans were returned to German rule, as they wished. Poland had annexed the tiny disputed region of Teschen, where thousands of Poles lived. Hungary’s ancestral lands in the south of Slovakia had been returned to her. The Slovaks had their full independence guaranteed by Germany. As for the Czechs, they came to Berlin for the same deal as the Slovaks, but Hitler insisted they accept a protectorate.
Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?
Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland’s turn, then Russia’s, then France’s, then Britain’s, then the United States.
We would all be speaking German now.

But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?
If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?
Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?
Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser’s fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.

Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Miklos Horthy’s Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso’s Slovakia.

Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.

As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?

Winston Churchill was right when he called it “The Unnecessary War” — the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.


 http://buchanan.org/blog/did-hitler-want-war-2068
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Leon Degrelle-The Enigma of Hitler

Institute for Historical Review The Enigma of Hitler by Leon Degrelle "Hitler -- You knew him -- what was he like?" I have been asked that question a thousand times since 1945, and nothing is more difficult to answer. Approximately two hundred thousand books have dealt with the Second World War and with its central figure, Adolf Hitler. But has the real Hitler been discovered by any of them? "The enigma of Hitler is beyond all human comprehension," the left-wing German weekly 'Die Zeit' once put it. Salvador Dali, art's unique genius, sought to penetrate the mystery in one of his most intensely dramatic paintings. Towering mountain landscapes all but fill the canvas, leaving ony a few luminous meters of seashore dotted with delicately miniaturized human figures: the last witness to a dying peace. A huge telephone receiver dripping tears of blood hangs from the branch of a dead tree; and here and there hang umbrellas and bats whose portent is visibly the same. As Dali tells it, "Chamberlain's umbrella appeared in this painting in a sinister light, made evident by the bat, and it struck me when I painted it as a thing of enormous anguish." He then confided: "I felt this painting to be deeply prophetic. But I confess that I haven't yet figured out the Hitler enigma either. He attracted me only as an object of my mad imaginings and because I saw him as a man uniquely capable of turning things completely upside down." What a lesson in humility for the braying critics who have rushed into print since 1945 with their thousands of 'definitive' books, most of them scornful, about this man who so troubled the introspective Dali that forty years later he still felt anguished and uncertain in the presence of his own hallucinatory painting. Apart from Dali, who else has ever tried to present an objective portrayal of this extraordinary man who Dali labeled the most explosive figure in human history? The mountains of Hitler books based on blind hatred and ignorance do little to describe or explain the most powerful man the world has ever seen. How, I ponder, do these thousands of disparate portraits of Hitler in any way resemble the man I knew? The Hitler seated beside me, standing up, talking, listening. It has become impossible to explain to people fed fantastic tales for decades that what they have read or heard on television just does not correspond to the truth. People have come to accept fiction, repeated a thousand times over, as reality. Yet they have never seen Hitler, never spoken to him, never heard a word from his mouth. The very name of Hitler immediately conjures up a grimacing devil, the fount of all of one's negative emotions. Like Pavlov's bell, the mention of Hitler is meant to dispense with substance and reality. In time, however, history will demand more than these summary judgments. ---------------- Hitler is always present before my eyes: as a man of peace in 1936, as a man of war in 1944. It is not possible to have been a personal witness to the life of such an extraordinary man without being marked by it forever. Not a day goes by but Hitler rises again in my memory, not as a man long dead, but as a real being who paces his office floor, seats himself in his chair, pokes the burning logs in the fireplace. The first thing anyone noticed when he came into view was his small mustache. Countless times he had been advised to shave it off, but he always refused: people were used to him the way he was. He was not tall -- no more than was Napoleon or Alexander the Great. Hitler had deep blue eyes that many found bewitching, although I did not find them so. Nor did I detect the electric current his hands were said to give off. I gripped them quite a few times and was never struck by his lightening. His face showed emotion or indifference according to the passion or apathy of the moment. At times he was as though benumbed, saying not a word, while his jaws moved in the meanwhile as if they were grinding an obstacle to smithereens in the void. Then he would come suddenly alive and launch into a speech directed at you alone, as though he were addressing a crowd of hundreds of thousands at Berlin's Tempelhof airfield. Then he became as if transfigured. Even his complexion, otherwise dull, lit up as he spoke. And at such times, to be sure, Hitler was strangely attractive and as if possessed of magic powers. Anything that might have seemed too solemn in his remarks, he quickly tempered with a touch of humour. The picturesque world, the biting phrase were at his command. In a flash he would paint a word-picture that brought a smile, or come up with an unexpected and disarming comparison. He could be harsh and even implacable in his judgments and yet almost at the same time be surprisingly conciliatory, sensitive and warm. After 1945 Hitler was accused of every cruelty, but it was not in his nature to be cruel. He loved children. It was an entirely natural thing for him to stop his car and share his food with young cyclists along the road. Once he gave his raincoat to a derelict plodding in the rain. At midnight he would interrupt his work and prepare the food for his dog Blondi. He could not bear to eat meat, because it meant the death of a living creature. He refused to have so much as a rabbit or a trout sacrificed to provide his food. He would allow only eggs on his table, because egg-laying meant that the hen had been spared rather than killed. Hitler's eating habits were a constant source of amazement to me. How could someone on such a rigorous schedule, who had taken part in tens of thousands of exhausting mass meetings from which he emerged bathed with sweat, often losing two to four pounds in the process; who slept only three to four hours a night; and who, from 1940 to 1945, carried the whole world on his shoulders while ruling over 380 million Europeans: how, I wondered, could he physically survive on just a boiled egg, a few tomatoes, two or three pancakes, and a plate of noodles? But he actually gained weight! He drank only water. He did not smoke and would not tolerate smoking in his presence. At one or two o'clock in the morning he would still be talking, untroubled, close to his fireplace, lively, often amusing. He never showed any sign of weariness. Dead tired his audience might be, but not Hitler. He was depicted as a tired old man. Nothing was further from the truth. In September 1944, when he was reported to be fairly doddering, I spent a week with him. His mental and physical vigor were still exceptional. The attempt made on his life on July 20th had, if anything, recharged him. He took tea in his quarters as tranquilly as if we had been in his small private apartment at the chancellery before the war, or enjoying the view of snow and bright blue sky through his great bay window at Berchtesgaden. At the very end of his life, to be sure, his back had become bent, but his mind remained as clear as a flash of lightening. The testament he dictated with extraordinary composure on the eve of his death, at three in the morning of April 29, 1945, provides us a lasting testimony. Napoleon at Fontainebleau was not without his moments of panic before his abdication. Hitler simply shook hands with his associates in silence, breakfasted as on any other day, then went to his death as if he were going on a stroll. When has history ever witnessed so enormous a tragedy brought to its end with such iron self control? -------------------------------- Hitler's most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic principles. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could be understood by anyone. The laborer from Essen, the isolated farmer, the Ruhr industrialist, and the university professor could all easily follow his line of thought. The very clarity of his reasoning made everything obvious. His behaviour and his life style never changed even when he became the ruler of Germany. He dressed and lived frugally. During his early days in Munich, he spent no more than a mark per day for food. At no stage in his life did he spend anything on himself. Throughout his 13 years in the chancellery he never carried a wallet or ever had money of his own. Hitler was self-taught and made no attempt to hide the fact. The smug conceit of intellectuals, their shiny ideas packaged like so many flashlight batteries, irritated him at times. His own knowledge he had acquired through selective and unremitting study, and he knew far more than thousands of diploma-decorated academics. I don't think anyone ever read as much as he did. He normally read one book every day, always first reading the conclusion and the index in order to gauge the work's interest for him. He had the power to extract the essence of each book and then store it in his computer-like mind. I have heard him talk about complicated scientific books with faultless precision, even at the height of the war. His intellectual curiosity was limitless. He was readily familiar with the writings of the most diverse authors, and nothing was too complex for his comprehension. He had a deep knowledge and understanding of Buddha, Confucius and Jesus Christ, as well as Luther, Calvin, and Savonarola; of literary giants such as Dante, Schiller, Shakespeare and Goethe; and analytical writers such as Renan and Gobineau, Chamberlain and Sorel. He had trained himself in philosophy by studying Aristotle and Plato. He could quote entire paragraphs of Schopenhauer from memory, and for a long time carried a pocked edition of Schopenhauer with him. Nietzsche taught him much about the willpower. His thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. He spend hundreds of hours studying the works of Tacitus and Mommsen, military strategists such as Clausewitz, and empire builders such as Bismark. Nothing escaped him: world history or the history of civilizations, the study of the Bible and the Talmud, Thomistic philosophy and all the masterpieces of Homer, Sophocles, Horace, Ovid, Titus Livius and Cicero. He knew Julian the Apostate as if he had been his contemporary. His knowledge also extended to mechanics. He knew how engines worked; he understood the ballistics of various weapons; and he astonished the best medical scientists with his knowledge of medicine and biology. The universality of Hitler's knowledge may surprise or displease those unaware of it, but it is nonetheless a historical fact: Hitler was one of the most cultivated men of this century. Many times more so than Churchill, an intellectual mediocrity; or than Pierre Lavaal, with him mere cursory knowledge of history; of than Roosevelt; or Eisenhower, who never got beyond detective novels. Even during his earliest years, Hitler was different than other children. He had an inner strength and was guided by his spirit and his instincts. He could draw skillfully when he was only eleven years old. His sketches made at that age show a remarkable firmness and liveliness. He first paintings and watercolors, created at age 15, are full of poetry and sensitivity. One of his most striking early works, 'Fortress Utopia,' also shows him to have been an artist of rare imagination. His artistic orientation took many forms. He wrote poetry from the time he was a lad. He dictated a complete play to his sister Paula who was amazed at his presumption. At the age of 16, in Vienna, he launched into the creation of an opera. He even designed the stage settings, as well as all the costumes; and, of course, the characters were Wagnerian heroes. More than just an artist, Hitler was above all an architect. Hundreds of his works were notable as much for the architecture as for the painting. From memory alone he could reproduce in every detail the onion dome of a church or the intricate curves of wrought iron. Indeed, it was to fulfill his dream of becoming an architect that Hitler went to Vienna at the beginning of the century. When one sees the hundreds of paintings, sketches and drawings he created at the time, which reveal his mastery of three dimensional figures, it is astounding that his examiners at the Fine Arts Academy failed him in two successive examinations. German historian Werner Maser, no friend of Hitler, castigated these examiners: "All of his works revealed extraordinary architectural gifts and knowledge. The builder of the Third Reich gives the former Fine Arts Academy of Vienna cause for shame." In his room, Hitler always displayed an old photograph of his mother. The memory of the mother he loved was with him until the day he died. Before leaving this earth, on April 30, 1945, he placed his mother's photograph in front of him. She had blue eyes like his and a similar face. Her maternal intuition told her that her son was different from other children. She acted almost as if she knew her son's destiny. When she died, she felt anguished by the immense mystery surrounding her son. Throughout the years of his youth, Hitler lived the life of a virtual recluse. He greatest wish was to withdraw from the world. At heart a loner, he wandered about, ate meager meals, but devoured the books of three public libraries. He abstained from conversations and had few friends. It is almost impossible to imagine another such destiny where a man started with so little and reached such heights. Alexander the great was the son of a king. Napoleon, from a well-to-do family, was a general at 24. Fifteen years after Vienna, Hitler would still be an unknown corporal. Thousands of others had a thousand times more opportunity to leave their mark on the world. Hitler was not much concerned with his private life. In Vienna he had lived in shabby, cramped lodgings. But for all that he rented a piano that took up half his room, and concentrated on composing his opera. He lived on bread, milk, and vegetable soup. His poverty was real. He did not even own an over-coat. He shoveled streets on snowy days. He carried luggage at the railway station. He spent many weeks in shelters for the homeless. But he never stopped painting or reading. Despite his dire poverty, Hitler somehow managed to maintain a clean appearance. Landlords and landladies in Vienna and Munich all remembered him for his civility and pleasant disposition. His behaviour was impeccable. His room was always spotless, his meager belongings meticulously arranged, and his clothes neatly hung or folded. He washed and ironed his own clothes, something which in those days few men did. He needed almost nothing to survive, and money from the sale of a few paintings was sufficient to provide for all his needs. Impressed by the beauty of the church in a Benedictine monastery where he was part of the choir and served as an altar boy, Hitler dreamt fleetingly of becoming a Benedictine monk. And it was at that time, too, interestingly enough, that whenever he attended mass, he always had to pass beneath the first swastika he had ever seen: it was graven in the stone escutcheon of the abbey portal. Hitler's father, a customs officer, hoped the boy would follow in his footsteps and become a civil servant. His tutor encouraged him to become a monk. Instead the young Hitler went, or rather fled, to Vienna. And there, thwarted in his artistic aspirations by the bureaucratic mediocrities of academia, he turned to isolation and meditation. Lost in the great capital of Austria-Hungary, he searched for his destiny. During the first 30 years of Hitler's life, the date April 20, 1889, meant nothing to anyone. He was born on that day in Braunau, a small town in the Inn valley. During his exile in Vienna, he often thought of his modest home, and particularly of his mother. When she fell ill, he returned home from Vienna to look after her. For weeks he nursed her, did all the household chores, and supported her as the most loving of sons. When she finally died, on Christmas eve, his pain was immense. Wracked with grief, he buried his mother in the little country cemetery. "I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief," said his mother's doctor, who happened to be Jewish. Hitler had not yet focused on politics, but without his rightly knowing, that was the career to which he was most strongly called. Politics would ultimately blend with his passion for art. People, the masses, would be the clay the sculptor shapes into an immortal form. The human clay would become for him a beautiful work of art like one of Myron's marble sculptures, a Hans Makart painting, or Wagner's Ring Trilogy. His love of music, art and architecture had not removed him from the political life and social concerns of Vienna. In order to survive, he worked as a common laborer sided by side with other workers. He was a silent spectator, but nothing escaped him: not the vanity and egoism of the bourgeoisie, not the moral and material misery of the people, nor yet the hundreds of thousands of workers who surged down the wide avenues of Vienna with anger in their hearts. He had also been taken aback by the growing presence in Vienna of bearded Jews wearing caftans, a sight unknown in Linz. "How can they be Germans?" he asked himself. He read the statistics: in 1860 there were 69 Jewish families in Vienna; 40 years later there were 200,000. They were everywhere. He observed their invasion of the universities and the legal and medical professions, and their takeover of the newspapers. Hitler was exposed to the passionate reactions of the workers to this influx, but the workers were not alone in their unhappiness. There were many prominent persons in Austria and Hungary who did not hide their resentment at what they believed was an alien invasion of their country. The mayor of Vienna, a Christian-Democrat and a powerful orator, was eagerly listened to by Hitler. Hitler was also concerned with the fate of the eight million Austrian Germans kept apart from Germany, and thus deprived of their rightful German nationhood. He saw Emperor Franz Josef as a bitter and petty old man unable to cope with the problems of the day and the aspirations of the future. Quietly, the young Hitler was summing things up in his mind. First: Austrians were part of Germany, the common fatherland. Second: The Jews were aliens within the German community. Third: Patriotism was only valid if it was shared by all classes. The common people with whom Hitler had shared grief and humiliation were just as much a part of the fatherland as the millionaires of high society. Fourth: Class war would sooner or later condemn both workers and bosses to ruin in any country. No country could survive class war; only cooperation between workers and bosses can benefit the country. Workers must be respected and live with decency and honor. Creativity must never be stifled. When Hitler later said that he had formed his social and political doctrine in Vienna, he told the truth. Ten years later his observations made in Vienna would become the order of the day. Thus Hitler was to live for several years in the crowded city of Vienna as a virtual outcast, yet quietly observing everything around him. His strength came from within. He did not rely on anyone to do his thinking for him. Exceptional human beings always feel lonely amid the vast human throng. Hitler saw his solitude as a wonderful opportunity to meditate and not to be submerged in a mindless sea. In order not to be lost in the wastes of a sterile desert, a strong soul seeks refuge within himself. Hitler was such a soul. The lightning in Hitler's life would come from the word. All his artistic talent would be channeled into his mastery of communication and eloquence. Hitler would never conceive of popular conquests without the power of the word. He would enchant and be enchanted by it. He would find total fulfillment when the magic of his words inspired the hearts and minds of the masses with whom he communed. He would feel reborn each time he conveyed with mystical beauty the knowledge he had acquired in his lifetime. Hitler's incantory eloquence will remain, for a very long time, a vast field of study for the psychoanalyst. The power of Hitler's word is the key. Without it, there would never have been a Hitler era. Did Hitler believe in God? He believed deeply in God. He called God the Almighty, master of all that is known and unknown. Propagandists portrayed Hitler as an atheist. He was not. He had contempt for hypocritical and materialistic clerics, but he was not alone in that. He believed in the necessity of standards and theological dogmas, without which, he repeatedly said, the great institution of the Christian church would collapse. These dogmas clashed with his intelligence, but he also recognized that it was hard for the human mind to encompass all the problems of creation, its limitless scope and breathtaking beauty. He acknowledged that every human being has spiritual needs. The song of the nightingale, the pattern and color of a flower, continually brought him back to the great problems of creation. No one in the world has spoken to me so eloquently about the existence of God. He held this view not because he was brought up as a Christian, but because his analytical mind bound him to the concept of God. Hitler's faith transcended formulas and contingencies. God was for him the basis of everything, the ordainer of all things, of his Destiny and that of all others. Bibliographic information Author: Degrelle, Leon Title: The Enigma of Hitler Source: The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org) Date: May/June 1994 Issue: Volume 14 number 3 Location: Page 22 ISSN: 0195-6752 Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $60 per year." Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

Adolf Hitler’s Armed Forces: A Triumph for Diversity?

Adolf Hitler’s Armed Forces: A Triumph for Diversity? Veronica Clark Triumph of diversity: This is precisely what characterized the German Armed Forces of World War II by the year 1945. While this may be difficult for many historians to accept, it is nevertheless an accurate summation of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Even though the Germans initiated their war with a racist doctrine in mind, one that sought to create a “New Order” for Europe, with Germany at the center and German elites at the top of the European political and racial hierarchy (a German version of the so-called “White man’s burden,” so to speak), the Germans nevertheless had to scrap this racial doctrine for one that promoted internationalism and tolerated multicultural and interethnic cooperation and intimate relations. Many Nazis were deeply affected by the non-Germans with whom they fought and worked. For example, Fritz Freitag ended up throwing Nazi doctrine to the wind, and instead focused on building a Ukrainian liberation army. In a telephone interview with German World War II survivor “G” (his identity is being protected), I was informed for the first time that foreigners who were working under “forced labor” contracts in Germany were essentially as free as Germans themselves. The forced labor characterization, according to G, was misleading. Foreigners were paid for their work and allowed to bring their families to live in Germany with them. They enjoyed leisure activities while ethnic Germans were slaughtered by the tens-of-thousands on the Eastern Front. Theory and reality in the Third Reich differed in fundamental ways, and unless we speak directly with those who lived in Europe at the time, we will never come to know what really happened between Germans and non-Germans in their day-to-day lives. This study tries to answer this unknown as best as possible, because it has been ignored or overlooked for too long. Sworn-in at Stahnsdorf in 1943 this man served as a volunteer under Franz Wimmer-Lamquet with Sonderstab F (Major Felmy's Freies Arabien Division). Photo is in the public domain. Let me quickly begin with a few words about terminology. When I use the Nazi terms Mischlinge, Volljude, andHalbjude, my intent is not racist. I use these terms only because they were used by the Nazis, so please do not mistake the Nazi terminology for my own. Secondly, I use the term mulatto in the historical sense. This term is not intended to be racist in this context, but is merely more convenient and historically accurate to use given the subject matter. I have tried very hard to be completely objective toward the Third Reich and its leadership, and have also given much thought to context as I have proceeded in my analysis of the history and historiography. I ask that those historians who have a subjective approach to Hitler and the Third Reich please refrain from judging my intent or bias until they have read my entire book, Black Nazis! A Study of Racial Ambivalence in Nazi Germany’s Military Establishment from which this article is excerpted.  There is a reason why I have presented my case as such, so hopefully fellow historians will come away from this “war and society” study with a deeper understanding of: racial dynamics in all Western societies before and since World War II; Axis history in general; Allied war criminality; non-German Wehrmacht and SS service (especially volunteerism); Adolf Hitler’s racial views. racial changes that occurred within the official Nazi ethos (Weltanschauung)as a result of the war; the unpredictable treatment of Jews, blacks, and mixed-race people in Nazi Germany. When I use the term “racial ambivalence,” I use it in the literal sense: that many Nazis were literally “of two minds” about race and ethnicity. History relating to the National Socialist era is generally rife with emotion and bias and this subjectivity prevents all historians from seeing what really happened in the Third Reich and why. Few historians have asked why so many ethnic minorities and foreigners supported the NS (National Socialist) military apparatus. Likewise, few have asked how so many mulattoes, Africans, and Jews survived the war in spite of the atrocities that were committed against these ethnic groups. This study focuses on those who survived the Nazi regime and why, not on those who died for any number of reasons. The Waffen SS was largely composed of non-Germanic volunteers. Most historians continue to neglect the motivations of these men and women who fought for Hitler as opposed to the Allies. I felt that this was historically unacceptable given that every side feels that it alone is justified. Historians have generally described this interracial phenomenon as “inexplicable” when there is more than sufficient evidence to the contrary. Not only was Hitler ambivalent about his racial and ethnic views, but so too were many prominent Nazis, such as Franz Wimmer-Lamquet and Alfred Rosenberg. I have always maintained that unless the penchant for tolerance and acceptance of the “other” is present, no tolerance or acceptance of the “other” will occur in a genuine way. Many Nazis became great friends with non-Germans. Hitler and Himmler both went out of their way to accommodate their Arab-Semitic volunteers. Hitler met with the Grand Mufti, but failed to meet with the “Aryan” leader of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. From this example, we may conclude that Hitler was willing to contradict his ownWeltanschauung in order to achieve what he needed to achieve politically and militarily. Interestingly, this general attitude of ambivalence was not limited to the military sphere. It extended into the realm of Third Reich society both before and during the war. One excellent study on the SS, entitled Hitler’s Foreign Divisions (edited by Chris Bishop), offered the following explanation for the international character of the SS. Few people realize just how international were the German forces of World War II. It is estimated that nearly two million foreign nationals served under the Swastika. Although towards the end of the war many were transferred to the SS, large numbers served with the Army, particularly on the Eastern Front. The most committed of the foreign volunteers found a home in the SS, until parts of it were more like a German equivalent of the French Foreign Legion than the elite of the German race. Although the SS did not welcome non-German volunteers until midway through the conflict in Russia, the idea of recruiting such men dated back to before the war. In his quest for a pan-Germanic Europe, Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler had decreed in 1938 that non-Germans of suitable ‘Nordic’ origin could enlist in the Allgemeine SS [emphasis added].1 [1] One finds it nearly impossible to disagree with this general assessment of the character of the Waffen SS. One of the more striking features of Bishop’s analysis is his conclusion as to the character of the future German elite as Himmler envisioned it. Bishop’s conclusion is nearly identical to my own in that we both agree that the future German elite was not to be strictly race-based, but rather, based on a combination of “physiognomy, mental and physical tests, character, and spirit.” Bishop rightly concluded that Himmler envisioned an “aristocratic” class that would combine “charismatic authority with bureaucratic discipline.” This, then, would typify “a new human type— warrior, administrator, scholar and leader, all in one—whose messianic mission was to repopulate Europe.”2 [1]The absurd “Superman” notion was a result of Allied propaganda taking hold of and exploiting some of the more radical ideas put forth not by Hitler, but by Friedrich Nietzsche, of whom Hitler had expressed little admiration. In private, Hitler promoted a nearly identical vision to that of Himmler—with regard to a future German core leadership—to Otto Wagener, an early SA leader and one of Hitler’s first economic advisors. However, in contrast to Himmler, Hitler tended to emphasize character, honor, and merit over biology, at that time and later on in 1944. Hitler was consistently a merit man, and this tended to crop up in many racial conversations he had with his various subordinates and officials. Hitler displayed a marked ambivalence, in the literal sense of being ‘of two minds,’ when it came to race and ethnic heritage—he was always willing to make racial exceptions to his own ideology. He had told Wagener at one point that “retainers” (non-Germans) were as common as “heroes” (racial Germans) in early German society. The context and tone of this particular conversation and others, as far as can be deduced from the English translation, suggests that Hitler remained open to the idea of some degree of tolerance for foreign blood within the German folk-body (Volkskörper). Even when he seemed adamantly against Jewish blood infusion, he continued to make exceptions. The military and organizational performance and dedication of various ethnic minorities, such as Erhard Milch and Bernhard Rogge (both Jewish), and foreigners, such as the Grand Mufti (Arab) and Ante Pavelic (Croatian), certainly affected Hitler’s thinking on the issue of race. He had even expressed admiration for many of his foreign allies, including the Grand Mufti and the Cossacks. By Lawrence Dennis’ own account, Hitler sat down and spoke with him one-on-one. Dennis was half-black.3 [1]Hitler also spoke with African American Dr. S.J. Wright in 1932, which I discuss in more detail in my book. As many of us know, Winifred Wagner and others, like Heinrich Hoffmann, convinced Hitler on more than one occasion to treat certain Jews with kindness. Thousands were granted his personal “German” clemency (Deutschblütigkeitserklärung). The fact that Jews could become “German blooded” was an unprecedented display of ethnic tolerance for the time period in question. The US did not even do this for blacks or Jews at that time. Blacks and Jews were not accepted as “WASPs” until the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and even then their position remained precarious. No historian has done a more thorough job examining this Nazi-Jewish phenomenon than Bryan Mark Rigg. However, Rigg, like so many others, has failed to adequately answer why Hitler granted Jewish people clemency in the first place. While he affirms, and correctly so, that Hitler made exceptions to his own ideology for the sake of military expediency, he does not sufficiently explain why Hitler granted Milch or other Jews clemency before the war. Nor does he adequately explain why clemency was granted in 1944 and 1945—a time by which Hitler knew he was losing the war. Furthermore, his argument does not go far enough in explaining why Hitler exempted Jews and Gypsies (Zigeuner) from service in 1944 and 1945, by which time Germany needed every able-bodied man it could summon. Hitler did not allow Russian collaborator Andrei Vlasov independence until 1945. If he was so desperate for manpower, then why did he hold Vlasov’s Russian volunteers back until it was too late? These are questions that Antonio J. Muñoz, Vladimir Baumgarten, and Peter Huxley-Blythe have answered more adequately and in more depth. However, not even these historians have questioned whether the Russians were reliable enough o use in a demanding way on the Eastern Front. They all seem to agree that had Hitler and the Nazis been more racially accepting earlier on, they would have won the war. But this is purely speculative. For all we know these foreigners could have caused the Germans to lose the war sooner than they did for any number of reasons—i.e., poor morale, indiscipline, etc. The Dirlewanger and Kaminski brigades were predominantly foreign, and included many Gypsies and Slavs, but their performance was so poor and their war crimes so atrocious that the Germans had to disband them. Many of the “Asiatic” men in the Niedermayer Division did not perform well under pressure. All of this was reported to Hitler, so more than likely the poor performance of most Russians factored into his decision to use the Russians under Vlasov politically as opposed to militarily. The fact that Hitler did not aim to liberate Russians also played a part in his decision not to use Vlasov’s men earlier, but his attitude changed rather markedly by the end of the war. The stenographic record portrays a Hitler who understood that the most he could hope for was to stall the Russian advance, and nothing more than that. He hoped that the Americans, French, and British would “come to their senses,” helping him and his men halt and repel the Bolsheviks, which is ultimately what happened during the subsequent Cold War. The important thing to realize is that had the Nazis been as racist as most historians have argued, then they could not possibly have garnered the immeasurable level of support that they did. Even after Stalingrad; Spaniards, Slavs, Franks, and tens of- thousands of other non-Germans continued to fight for the Nazis on a volunteer basis. Frenchmen and Arab volunteers gave their lives in the final fight for the capital of Berlin in 1945. Hitler continued to allow thousands of Jewish men to serve, and many did so with incredible tenacity and valor. One has to call into question whether all of these Jewish men and other non-Germans were really as opposed to the Nazi regime as they have claimed after the fact. Their tenacity and determination suggests otherwise in many cases. The Jewish soldiers Bernhard Rogge, Helmuth Wilberg, Erhard Milch, and Ernst Prager come to mind. Hans Hauck, a half-black man, wanted to join the Wehrmacht in order to prove that he was as “German” as a white German. He elected to remain in Soviet captivity even though he was given a chance to leave with his comrades. He did so to prove that he was German. Such behavior seems unimaginable given what we have been told about Nazi treatment of blacks and mixed-race individuals in Third Reich society. The truth is that relations were far more fluid, dynamic, and complicated than many historians have led us to believe. Hauck had even been promoted to private first class. This was the main reason I wrote my master’s thesis on this particular subject. When I first saw the books about all of these foreigners and ethnic minorities in Nazi service I was dumbstruck. Historians should not be comfortable with the fact that even many formally educated people (I was an undergraduate at the time) had or have no idea that some two million foreigners and ethnic minorities fought for the Axis. I examined their motives and thoughts as well as the thoughts and motives of Hitler and other Nazis in order to explain this phenomenon. This was why I examined POWs, forced laborers, conscripts, and volunteers: in order to get a clearer picture as to what these men and women went through and what they thought about all of it. This is a largely ignored aspect of the Axis and World War II in general. I figured it was time to break new ground. Upon seeing part of Hitler’s Platterhof speech of May 26, 1944 in John Lukacs’ excellent biography The Hitler of History, I decided to purchase the speech from the Institut für Zeitgeschichte and translate it into English myself (with assistance). Up to this point, no historian has translated this entire speech, which is rather remarkable in and of itself. It is a revealing speech, included in full in this second edition of Racial Ambivalence, and one in which Hitler admits rather openly as to having been wrong about race and Volk. While Hitler’s outlook remained “Völkisch-Nationalist,” he patently admitted that the strength of the German people as a whole was the result of its many different racial nuclei. He accepted that the German Volk was a “mixed-race” Volk, but resolved to nurture the Nordic race nucleus more than the others, since he believed this particular nucleus was the most qualified when it came to leadership and organizational capability. Thus, while Hitler’s thinking was still quite racially inclined, he seemed to have understood that individual Germans were more important in certain respects, due to their Nordic proclivities, than the German Volk as a whole (which he felt had to be led by the more capable Nordic types). In this speech Hitler emphasized merit and achievement above all else. This leads me to conclude that he associated Nordic race attributes with merit and achievement, and we can see here that this belief was a partial retraction from the official racial line of NS itself; because any individual with a Nordic bloodline could harbor the biological proclivity for leadership and organizational talent, regardless of whether he was “pure German.” In this respect, Hitler was more accepting of non-German people than was, say, General Heinz Guderian. (On at least one occasion, Guderian requested “racially pure” divisions as per the stenographic record of Hitler’s military conferences). If a half-Jewish soldier exhibited leadership and organizational talent, then that Jewish individual received Hitler’s personal clemency. If we wished to speculate, as too many historians do, then we could say that, given this speech and Hitler’s change in outlook, had Hitler won the war he would have been more racially accepting, since some of his best leaders and most resolved soldiers were mixed-race or foreign-blooded (i.e., Admiral Bernhard Rogge, Field Marshal Erhard Milch, and Léon Degrelle of the SS Wallonie Division). The two Sabac el Cher sons, Herbert and Horst, both mulattoes, were also presumably exempted by Hitler and allowed to serve in the Wehrmacht (one even served in the Stahlhelm in 1935). Hitler ridiculed Himmler’s and others’ “primitive biologism” rather early on. This indicates, as I have argued, that Hitler was more racially open-minded, and earlier on, than previously thought. The Otto Wagener memoirs are filled with Hitler’s ambivalent statements on race and ethnicity. Likewise, Hitler’s “table talks” are contradictory in many ways. Since Hitler seemed to have consistently said contradictory things, we may conclude that he was consistently ‘of two minds’ about certain touchy issues, including race. In my view, this is a more cogent explanation of his personal acceptance of so many Jewish and foreign soldiers within German ranks. I might add at this juncture that Rigg also provided an irrational explanation as to Hitler’s “Aryanization” of Christ. If one examines what Hitler actually said about Christ early on, one sees that he really did believe that Christ was non-Jewish. This is obvious in the Wagener memoirs and Bormann records (Hitler’s Table-Talk, 1941-1944). Hitler was not alone in this belief either. Many German theologians who were not Nazis or Hitler supporters also believed that Jesus Christ was non-Jewish. No historian to my knowledge has done a better job of exploring and analyzing this German phenomenon than Richard Steigmann-Gall. His study has offered a rational explanation for the “Aryanization” of Christ by so many Germans and Nazis, and one would do well to read what he has written. Unfortunately, Rigg fell short in this respect, though his research on Jewish soldier motivations and thoughts remains unparalleled. Getting back to the main point here, I offer the following assessment. While there was certainly racial discrimination in Nazi Germany, there was also racial discrimination in America, Britain, France, Poland, Russia, Japan, China, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Italy. In fact, Gerald Horne (author of Race War!) said that the British, in spite of their propaganda to the contrary, regularly and secretly discriminated against black soldiers. Blacks were not promoted simply because they were black. According to Horne, the British literally used conscripted Indian soldiers as cannon fodder on numerous occasions during the fighting in China. White British blood was apparently too precious to be spilled fighting against Chinese, who the British despised, abused, wantonly murdered, and degraded regularly. As I already mentioned, Sabac el Cher’s two sons, both of whom were ‘mulatto’, served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht, as did Mandenga Ngando (in 1940),4 [1] a Cameroonian-German. Article VII of the First Supplementary Decree made this possible. Numerous blacks served during the Battle for Moscow, and at least one fell there. According to Rigg’s latest book (2009), Lives of Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, some 2,000 full Jews, 60,000 half-Jews and 90,000 quarter-Jews served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht and SS. This may even be an underestimate of the true figures. We just do not know. At least two million non-German foreigners and ethnic minorities served in Hitler’s armed forces at one point or another. Without foreign and non-German help, the Germans never would have had their Western defenses prepared in time for the Allied invasion. Let us think about two things here. Hitler’s Wehrmacht-Waffen SScombination was the most culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse military force in Western history. In spite of this fact, we are all supposed to believe he was a hyper-racist (my own term) like some other Nazis. What do I mean by hyper-racist? Well, just as some individuals in capitalist societies gravitate to the top and become hyper-capitalists (i.e., billionaire CEOs), even though they may not believe in the capitalist system of government per se, the same may be said of many powerful and prosperous individuals in ethnostates and their societies. Numerous Nazis were not adamant “racists,” and those particular Nazis (including Hitler) tended to fall by the wayside as far as political power was concerned. The hyper-racists, like hyper-capitalists, tended to be extremely ambitious and power-hungry individuals. Some may not have even been all that racist, but played the role in order to advance politically and personally. Himmler may well have been one of these hyper-racists, since he was so excited about (and accommodating of) Arab-Semites, Slavic Eastern volunteers, and Gypsies so early on. His demonstrated racial tolerance causes one to ask whether he was really as racist as he made himself out to be. Antonio Muñoz’ findings as well as photographic evidence featured in Borsarello and Palinckx’s Wehrmacht and SS indicate that he was open to recruiting Senegalese and Afro-British POWs to serve Germany in some capacity as well (not necessarily in combat). Thus, just as Richard Steigmann-Gall exposed Bormann’s hyper-anti-Christianity in his book The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945, many historians have similarly exposed Himmler’s hyper-racism—perhaps inadvertently. Hitler himself seems to have faded as far as power politics was concerned. Bormann and Himmler, along with theGestapo and Sicherheitsdienst, usurped most of his actual power and he served as an ideological and moral inspiration for the German people and SS officers more than an actual power player within the Party or SS in those final two years of the war—though he maintained the final say in most military and political justice matters. Hitler retained the loyalty of the lower echelons of the Wehrmacht, SS, SA, and officer corps until the very end of his life, but he had lost a great deal of influence when it came to the higher ranks of the Wehrmacht and other elite cliques. As many already know, Himmler and Göring both betrayed Hitler in the end. I ask those historians who still believe that Hitler and the Nazis were “white supremacists”: how do you account for the incredible degree of non-German and ethnic minority (i.e., 150,000 Jews and Jewish Mischlinge) collaboration during World War II? Again, some two million non-Germans helped the Nazis. If Munoz’ figures are to be believed, then nearly 1.5 million of these volunteers and conscripts were Russians. Let me compare this to a similar modern example by asking whether Zionist Jews, as members of a present-day ethnostate, can honestly boast of such high levels of foreign and ethnic minority collaboration and volunteerism? How about the less recent white South Africans of former Rhodesia? Hundreds-of-thousands of Nazi collaborators were volunteers. How many Palestinians, Persians, Jordanians, or Syrians have volunteered to fight for the IDF and the modern Israeli ethnostate? Some have, of course, but not nearly two million. Foreigners and non-Germans even volunteered forSchuma (security police), SS, and Gestapo service during the Third Reich. Can Israel’s Mossad boast the same? These are comparative questions we must ask ourselves and analyze, without emotion, in order to understand what really happened in Nazi Germany and why. We also have to admit that the Nazis were not nearly as racist as historians have claimed. This is an especially important admission when we consider the historical context. Roosevelt opposed anti-lynching laws against African Americans for the sake of political expediency. In an incredible admission to Walter White, head of the NAACP, he said, “If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take that risk.” Furthermore,  according to the New World Encyclopedia,  “After 1942, when Roosevelt was made aware of the Nazi extermination of the Jews by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Polish envoy Jan Karski and others, he refused to allow any systematic attempt to rescue European Jewish refugees and bring them to the US.”5 [1] To this day the US public is mostly unaware of these incredible examples of Roosevelt’s racism and arrogance. Some blacks were literally incinerated to death by hostile white mobs eager to unleash their aggression against an easy target.6 [1]While many Africans and Afro-Germans were discriminated against in Nazi Germany, the Nazi government never advocated or endorsed lynching of blacks in the Nazi state, nor was racism against Africans institutionalized. In fact, World War II survivor Friedrich Berg unequivocally stated that German children greatly admired Jesse Owens and looked up to him in spite of his race.7 [1] This was relayed to Mr. Berg by a man who lived in Nazi Germany at the time. Indeed, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of this man’s claim; Germans cheered Owens and repeatedly chanted his name – “Jess-ah O-vens, Jess-ah O-vens” – at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Owens himself told the press that he was not forced to sit at the back of German buses, nor was he disallowed to stay at the nicest hotels. Mr. Berg’s acquaintance also mentioned that Owens could have walked into any bar in Germany and been treated as well as a German patron. Contrast this with the fact that in Britain and the US, even prominent blacks were often forced to stand in buses and were never allowed to stay in classy areas designated for “whites only”. African American journalist and author Roi Ottley recounted many of the everyday horrors of British and US treatment of blacks in his book No Green Pastures. It should come as little surprise that Ottley reported that British boys lit Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “frizzly hair” on fire “to see if it would burn.”8 [1]Such crass racism amongst the youth of Britain at the time is largely neglected by today’s historians, mainly because it does not fit today’s whitewashed image of the Allies. Perhaps this is one reason why few historians have mentioned that Cameroonian Louis Brody wrestled for the German Circus Crown throughout the Nazi years, and was the most famous Afro-German actor from the 1920s through 1940s.9 [1] Even fewer historians realize that Martin Bormann issued a circular to all Gauleiters (regional leaders) in March 1936 calling for employment protection of Africans and Afro-Germans living and working in Germany. This order flew in the face of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.10 [1] We may presume that Hitler had something to do with this protective measure, as it remains doubtful that Bormann himself was that concerned with the welfare of blacks. Joachim von Lang has argued that Bormann did everything in his personal power to keep Jewish letters of appeal and clemency applications as well as disturbing war information from Hitler. One need not guess how this man’s actions may have adversely affected Afro-Germans and other blacks living and working in Germany, especially in light of Hitler’s severely declining health and political activeness in the latter half of the war. To conclude, true racists do not suddenly discard their “master race” doctrine simply because of military setbacks. White South Africans and Israelis refused to discard their racial supremacist doctrines in spite of antagonistic world opinion and military setbacks. Israel has yet to allow Palestinians into its highest levels of government. Likewise, the US has yet to allocate top-level military and governmental command to non-whites. Whether or not any of these modern states qualify as truly racist is up to historians and politicians to decide. But they must do it without the hysteria normally associated with such controversial historical and comparative inquiries. If historians cannot get past the hysteria so typical of Third Reich historiography, then how are they going to explain phenomena like the Jüdische Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Order Police), which assisted the Germans with policing the main ghettos of Poland? An estimated 2,500 Jewish men served in Warsaw and half that number in the Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation.11 [1] Having said all this, one fact remains: the Nazis were not true racists unless all other ethnostates at that time (and since) were also truly racist. Harry Truman, not Adolf Hitler, said the following: “I think one man is as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will...says that the Lord made a white man out of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman.” Had Hitler said this, historians certainly would have used it as evidence of his uncompromising racism. And yet, even though no such statements ever came out of Hitler’s mouth, not even with regard to Jews in private, historians have still consistently argued that he was an uncompromising racist, while conveniently ignoring the blatant and sometimes grossly inhuman racism of both Allied and non-German Axis leaders. The British conducted “bizarre tests of racial purity,” but only Berlin’s ‘racial purity’ tests were subjected to international scrutiny and attack.12 [1]Gerald Horne relayed that “[e]ven as the Empire seemed on the verge of being overrun by predatory Japanese troops, London was unwilling to accept offers of aid by people not of ‘pure European descent’— particularly for posts beyond simple soldiering. He went on to say, “This applied to ‘Dartmouth Cadetships and direct entry cadetships’ where the ‘practice of the interview committee’ was to ‘reject boys who evidently have a colour stain’.”13 [1] The British deliberately left racial references like this out of official memoranda just in case these memoranda ended up in anti-British hands. To cite another example: Croatians were hardly tolerant of Serbs during World War II, and yet we never read about this in most history books. Is it because Croats and Serbs do not deserve our historical inquiry? Are they somehow ‘less human’ or ‘less important’ than other ethnic groups of the era? Hitler’s true racism, as I prefer to say, is an ahistorical construct. Historians decided who was racist and who was not on the basis of who won World War II. However, historians cannot have it both ways: Either all Western leaders are portrayed for the racists they were or none of them are portrayed as such—that is, in the historical sense. We do not get to pick and choose our racists. If we do so, then we need to research ever further back in history and condemn Emperor Hadrian as a genocidal anti-Semite, Napoleon as an anti-black racist and genocidal maniac (in light of his actions against Roma and blacks), and the Romans as racist against Greeks. I will add at this point that the Germans never had a “master race” doctrine to begin with. Herrenvolk does not mean “master race.” That definition was the result of a combination of Allied misunderstanding of the GermanFührerprinzip and anti-German war propaganda. It meant ‘elite leadership corps’, and that was strictly in reference to continental Europe, not the world. Hitler did not have world aims, but European ones. Further, the German terms folk (Volk) and race (Rasse) were not synonymous. Herrenvolk (“Volk of leaders”) was not akin toHerrenrasse, and as a matter of fact, the Nazis never used the term Herrenrasse (“race of leaders”). Indeed, Hitler himself differentiated the two German terms at Platterhof. He said, “Volk und Rasse ist nicht dasselbe.” (“Folk and race are not the same.”) It appears that historians influenced by wartime Allied propaganda, and not the Nazis themselves, invented this term and its subsequent racist connotation. This explains why so many Western Allied leaders were shocked to see Russians fighting for Nazis on the Western Front, Indo-Chinese in the Ostlegionen(Eastern legions), and why historians have been loath to describe such Nazi racial dynamics even unto the present day. Gerald Horne described Japanese racial ideology as “sufficiently flexible to allow for...special appeal [...].”14 [1]This description applies to Nazi racial ideology as well. Antonio J. Muñoz went so far as to call into question the rationality of the Spanish volunteers after Franco’s official withdrawal. In so doing, he has failed to explain that the Axis did not see itself as particularly racist, nor did it see itself as unjustified in its war, aims, or conduct. Countless Spaniards loathed Communism and proved quite willing to help Germany in her fight against that political philosophy. As such, they were “true believers” in continued European independence from Russia. The majority of Axis soldiers, including those who were conscripted by the Nazis, were anti-Communist or anti-Bolshevik. Still others, like the French, were anti-British. They were “racists” in their own right, many of them. The Croats were exterminating ethnic minorities long before the Germans occupied Croatia helping it to achieve independence. Vichy French loyalists continued to defy British and American efforts to “liberate” France into 1943: The final phase of this war within a war was the invasion of North Africa, where Vichy forces numbered 100,000. Despite a twin assault by US, British and Free French forces on Morocco and Algeria, Vichy garrisons, but especially ships and submarines, proved more determined in their resistance than expected. A French squadron was sunk by the US off the coast of Morocco, with 500 French sailors killed and 1,000 wounded.15 [1] Numerous Frenchmen resisted the Allies until the very end of the war, whereupon they fought and died in the streets of the German capital. The point of addressing these little known facts is to encourage historians to stop looking at the Third Reich and Axis in such rigid formulae, and instead, to examine it with dynamism and transformation in mind. The war affected Nazis deeply. Many of them had caste off their racism as a result of the camaraderie they developed with their fellow non-German equals and subordinates. As White Russian exile Grigori von Lambsdorff confirmed, most non-Germans saw themselves as equals, not as racial inferiors. This calls into question just how the Nazis treated their non-German comrades in- arms in spite of official propaganda. If Lambsdorff and others saw themselves as equals, then Nazi racial degradation was either non-existent or far less pervasive than historians have claimed it was. I will end by referencing a news article that examined the increasing number of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the US Armed Forces (to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan).16 [1] In spite of America’s official commitment to non-racism and ethnic and social equality, it is knowingly and willingly recruiting racists, and thus tolerating racism, within the military sphere. The exigencies of war have caused this US phenomenon just as exigencies of war caused the Nazis to renege on their official racial doctrine. What tends to happen as a result of developments like these is general and growing acceptance of those who are the newly tolerated (those who used to be shunned), and not vice versa. The normally shunned individuals who are newly tolerated tend to swing the balance of power into their favor, because the exigencies of war naturally favor those who are now “needed” in light of the declining general situation. In light of this assessment, we can honestly argue that the Nazis became less racist at a faster rate than did the Allies, because they were forced to speed up the process of interracial integration and cooperation due to the exigencies of war. War became, to use Tina Campt’s phrase, a positive “vehicle of change” in the Third Reich. The Nazis never racially segregated their troops. Blacks, Slavs, Asians, and Arabs fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Germans. Now, if we examine the US today, we see that the racists in the armed forces will be the ones to gain the upper hand, since they are needed. The balance of power has swung in their favor due to the exigencies of war. This may well result in the racialization of the US Armed Forces, which remains under supreme white command in spite of America’s official doctrine of non-racism and equality for all, and we may well see that America becomes more racist and doctrinally supremacist than was Nazi Germany. America’s war is proving to be a negative “vehicle of change” in this respect. My point with this comparison is to demonstrate that we must not examine history or modern developments in a static way any longer, because just as the Nazis changed, so too shall we. Notes: Hitler’s Foreign Divisions: Foreign Volunteers in the Waffen-SS 1940-1945, ed. Chris Bishop (London, UK: Amber Books, 2005), 8-9. Ibid., 10. Gerald Horne, The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2006), xv. Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Treu bis in den Tod: Von Deutsch-Afrika nach Sachsenhausen—Ein Lebengeschichte (Berlin, DE: Ch. Links Verlag, 2007), 154. New World Encyclopedia, “Roosevelt, Franklin Delano,”http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt [2] (accessed August 29, 2009). Friedrich Berg, interview by author, August 27, 2009. Ibid. Roi Ottley, 27. Bechhaus-Gerst, 76. Ibid. David Littlejohn, Foreign Legions of the Third Reich Vol. 4: Poland, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Free India, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Russia (San Jose, CA: R. James Bender Publishing, 1987), 27. Gerald Horne, Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2004), 237. Ibid., 236. Ibid., 147. Christopher Silvester, “England’s Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy, 1940-1942,” The Telegraph on the Web, September 1, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/6121052/Englands-Last-War-Against-France- Fighting-Vichy-1940-1942.html [3] (accessed September 3, 2009). Matt Kennard, “Neo-Nazis are in the Army Now,” Salon on the Web, June 15, 2009,http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/15/neo_nazis_army/index.html (accessed July 1, 2009). The above article in slightly different form is the preface to Veronica Clark’s book, Black Nazis! A Study of Racial Ambivalence in Nazi Germany’s Military Establishment ~ Veronica Clark, M.A. July 1, 2009 Revised September 3, 2009 Black Nazis! Preface Copyright © 2009. Veronica Clark. All Rights Reserved. None of this text may be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium without prior permission from the author. The author has provided her e-mail contact to IH: clarkvero@hotmail.com. You must e-mail her directly for permission to use her Preface and/or portions of her text.

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Demystification of the Birth and Funding of the NSDAP

Demystification of the Birth and Funding of the NSDAP Veronica Kuzniar Clark What exactly did the NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker's Party) represent and who were its founding members? Why and how did Adolf Hitler transform the party from an unimpressive proletariat workers’ party to a full-fledged political machine that obtained absolute power in Germany? Perhaps more important, how was it funded? We answer these questions in this introduction. But first, we begin with an examination of the early stages of the NSDAP and its recruiting process. One must understand how this process unfolded if one is to understand the NSDAP’s position on Judaism and Freemasonry as well as the prevailing social and political order of the day. Naturally, we also reveal some of the other important aspects of its early development, which necessitates a fair amount of myth busting about Hitler, including who actually gave him money. Triumvirate: Leadership, development and unity Adolf Hitler, contrary to his own self-myths and the myths of others, was not poor—at least not until he had drained his savings and entitlements gallivanting in Vienna. Many historians have written that Hitler simply lived day-to-day wasting both his money and time, but in so doing they overlook Hitler’s experiences and ‘life education’ that later played such an important role in the development and direction of National Socialism as well as the Second World War. The development and direction of both can be traced to Hitler’s experiences during those “lost” years. Hitler, like so many other young German men and women of his day, fell from middle-class status into that of the “wretched proletariat.” This was something that young Hitler refused to accept. He was deeply embittered by his Vienna experiences, which offered false promises of prosperity and hope for young people with enough willpower and talent. The prevailing dissonance of the time and place in which he grew up inculcated in him a burning desire to change these circumstances, which is precisely what he did after 1933. Hitler was so resentful of the class-ridden society that was Vienna, and Austria and Europe generally, that one of his key aims throughout both the peace and war years was cultivating a system of merit. One’s birth station was not what mattered. What mattered were one’s talent, loyalty, dependability and fortitude, notably in the face of adversity and uncertainty. Hitler was able to overcome most imbedded class barriers in two distinct ways: 1.   He recruited both men and women from all social classes and accordingly tailored his speech and disposition to each, depending on his/her social standing. 2.   He supplanted economic valuation with racial valuation. Let’s look at the first point. Hitler needed the broadest spectrum of German society he could get, so this meant that he needed to appeal to men, women, young, old, wealthy, poor, unemployed and employed alike. Women were amongst Hitler’s most devoted and fervent supporters in the early years. So were low-wage earners, small businessmen and foreign nobles, such as White Russian émigrés who wished to see the return of the Russian monarchy. They provided Hitler with a physical audience, elite and business connections and monetary support, most of which ended up being granted in the form of loans. Hitler needed industrialists as much as he needed the workers, elites and disenfranchised foreigners. Since his goal was to raise the station of all lower-class ethnic Germans, he had to win them all together, which required a strategy of multi-class appeal. When he met and spoke with counts, duchesses and other members of the former royalty, he addressed them in a royal manner. His etiquette, speech and personal manners proved impeccable in such company. When he met or spoke with industrialists, such as Fritz Thyssen, he tailored his behavior and manner to match that of the hopes and fears of industrialist Germany. At the same time he was careful to scale back his socialistic language in such company, so that the industrialists would not misidentify him as a Marxist-Communist. He had to convince them that he would crush Marxist-Communism and uphold their industrial power base in the face of the growing mass of disenchanted, underpaid workers who felt they were being cheated and exploited by German industry. Whenever things got economically tough, the workers suffered wage and benefit cuts. They blamed the industrialists, but Hitler saw that the industrialists were also suffering: many went bankrupt during the inflation as well as during the Great Depression. The crippling Versailles reparations forced most German industrialists and exporters into an untenable economic position, which in turn harmed German workers. This meant that Hitler had to at least hint at future German rearmament, which was covertly occurring anyway. On the other hand, Hitler had to promise the workers, his single largest and most important support base in almost every respect in the formative years, that he would not allow the state or industry to exploit them or continue treating them as automatons. We can see that balancing the wants and needs of these three core sectors of class-ridden Germany was far from simple. But Hitler did it, and nearly bloodlessly (relative to the Communist revolutions in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe). Now to the second point: Hitler had to come up with a unifying ideology for Germanic peoples. This task seems simple in retrospect, because Germany was a homogenous society by today’s standards. However, back then this was not how the German situation was seen. Germany may have been racially homogenous, but class antagonisms were so deep-seated that few if any German elites and nobles were interested in sharing political or social power with lower-class and middle-class Germans. The Junkers (estates Lords) treated their farmhands (serfs) as second- or third-class citizens and ordered them to pack up and get out if they dared to vote against their landlord employers. According to James and Suzanne Pool's research, many of the Junkers, notably the friends of von Hindenburg, refused to discontinue living the feudal order, which helped fuel the growing mass discontent for monarchy. This only served the interests of republicans and Freemasons, both of whom wished to see the end of monarchy for good. We will discuss their motivations later. For now it is enough to say that their motives were far from benevolent. German class divisions trumped any sort of racial or ethnic solidarity. Not surprisingly, one finds that the desire to unite all Germans as racial comrades was a desire shared almost entirely amongst the lower and middle classes, and even many middle-class Germans did everything they could to cling to their bourgeois life station, even if it meant keeping the lower-classes downtrodden. As one can see, Hitler’s goal was anything but simple. How, then, did Hitler unite Germans? And how successful was he? Hitler united Germans by invoking an ideological concept similar to Italy’s Romanita, as espoused by Benito Mussolini. Hitler’s concept was Nordicism: the basic, simplified premise of which was that all Germanic peoples were united by their Nordic racial component, and because they were united by this common “race soul” or blood component, how could they fight or be divided? While such a unifying idea sounded feasible and reasonable to many, some resisted nonetheless. The Junkers, former nobility, and many other business elites in Germany saw Hitler as nothing other than a lowly former corporal who had no clout given his petit bourgeois (lower middle-class) upbringing. Hitler was only partially successful in uniting all Germans as Volksgenossen. His lack of complete success in this regard, an unattainable goal to be sure, later proved to be his undoing. Elites amongst the officer corps did immeasurable damage to Hitler and his war effort, but the story of their treachery and sabotage is beyond the scope of this discussion. Might Hitler have been more successful had he been more racially inclusive early on? Not necessarily. Mussolini, unlike Hitler, was not racially exclusive at any point and expended a great deal of effort and time attempting to recruit non-Italians to the Italian fascist cause. He was largely unsuccessful, especially in Ethiopia—this in spite of the fact that he had Ethiopians trained as pilots (before the Tuskegee Airmen even came into being) and promised them higher status within a Fascist Italian Empire. We may deduce from this example that Hitler having merely extended his hand openly in the beginning to non-Germans would not have guaranteed National Socialism’s political or military success. Mussolini did so and his tolerant hand was rejected. Indeed the U.S. and Britain did not win the Second World War due to non-white conscription, but because they supported and funded the Soviet war machine and were willing to bomb Germany indiscriminately. Anyway, this brings us back to our main point, which is that unifying a body of people, regardless of whether it is homogenous or diverse, is no easy task. Hitler was only able to convince the lower and middle classes that racial value must supersede economic (class) value. Most of the German elites were never won over to his Nordicism. So, what does all of this mean? First, it means that a party that wishes to succeed in a Western Liberal-Democratic context must appeal to women and men both, citizens of all ages, and all social classes. A sensible and serious leader and party cannot afford to leave any group out. Naturally this all depends on the individual nation and citizenry in question, as Hitler’s brand of politics and leadership were formed with a specific time, culture, people and place in mind. It was not intended for export, but for adaptation in multiple contexts. Hitler’s brand of politics was in fact largely modeled after Mussolini’s as well as the leadership of the Austrian mayor Karl Lueger. Second, it means that the masses are more important to a party’s success than the elites, because of their numbers. Only the masses have the power to invoke fear in the upper-class by threatening to support violent revolutionary parties and organizations, which are often led and funded by hostile fifth-columnists. The Communist Party (KPD) was the only party besides Hitler’s that evoked genuine fear in the elite classes of Germany. Hitler and the NSDAP could not be ignored for the very reason that they, besides the Marxist-Communists, had the largest mass following in Germany at the time. Industrialists could not afford to anger or rebuff Hitler and the NSDAP; if they did, then Hitler’s followers would quickly have swelled the ranks of the Communists or perhaps have even overthrown him, as Ernst Röhm and many SA members wished to do. Hitler’s party was the only non-Communist, nationalist party that offered the lower and middle classes a better standing in German society. Given Hitler’s ability to keep the overwhelming majority of his followers in line and loyal meant that he alone could prevent a transitional bloodbath, which is what most of the upper-class Germans feared the most. And this is exactly what he did. What’s important to bear in mind, however, is that Hitler needed a credible threat to maintain his personal and political leverage over the upper classes and big business. Without the Communists to threaten them via mass upheaval and bloodshed, the industrialists and former nobility had little reason other than patriotism to support Hitler and the NSDAP. Third, a citizenry that wishes to remain united needs a party that can accomplish this. Bavarians wanted to secede from Germany and become an independent state. Big business demanded an end to the Junker estates that squandered numerous government bailouts and demanded trade tariffs that harmed German industry. The Junkers did not care whether the industrialists suffered, so long as their estates were still in their name and they could live a lavish lifestyle of luxury at the German taxpayers’ expense. To mediate such divisiveness, Hitler invoked Nordicism, which called on Germans to recognize and value their blood ties instead of their social standing (based on wealth). This unifying ideology provided Hitler with the necessary means to develop a system of merit: one could rise to the top of National Socialist society regardless of one’s parents’ or personal finances, because one was equal to all other Germans from the racial point-of-view. Hitler’s German racialism and anti-Semitism were the practical means for achieving classless unity among formerly divided Germans. Hitler used a similar approach later on with the Waffen-SS. He turned an exclusively German organizational concept (the Allgemeine SS) into an international, multiethnic idea by uniting everyone who participated against Jewish-Bolshevism, the enemy of “all peoples.” Hitler salutes marching National Socialists in Weimar, October 1930.  Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-10541 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons Initial member recruitment Like any grassroots party, the NSDAP developed organically from amongst a handful of hardcore ideologues, the primary catalyst having been Adolf Hitler. But the NSDAP did not spring up on its own; it instead arose from out of a party that already had a platform, leadership core, and small committed following. This was the German Workers’ Party led by Anton Drexler. Hitler was actually appointed by the Army to spy on the German Workers’ Party. The Army was interested in two things: locating nationalists for its own designs and rooting out Communists who threatened to turn Germany into a subservient satellite of Moscow. Hitler’s speaking skills and interest in politics led the Army to select him for this covert task. He took a liking to Drexler and many of his ideas, so he finally signed up and was issued a membership card with his name and membership number on it, a tradition that Hitler maintained in his NSDAP. While Hitler began his political career as the propagandist for the Workers’ party, he was quick to identify the party’s main problems: it appealed to too few and had no outreach venue other than speaking engagements, which were often drab. He therefore focused on developing his own talents, which surpassed Drexler’s, and forming his own designs for the Workers’ party; hence the birth of the NSDAP. Hitler was quick to capitalize on Drexler’s connections to wealthy Thule Society members. He did not join Thule, but requested their patronage. They alone significantly enhanced the potential for what was now hisparty to appeal to upper-class Germans, who, in turn, also helped fund the party. After he quit the Army, Hitler threw himself into the development of the NSDAP with unbounded determination. While Drexler and his core focused entirely on winning over German workers, Hitler had eyes for larger audiences and outreach. His relationships with White Russian émigrés, wealthy Thule members, and especially Gottfried Feder (economist) and Dietrich Eckart (philosopher and writer) proved invaluable in his acquisition of the bankrupt Völkischer Beobachter (VB). Feder together with two other early NSDAP members owned 30,000 shares of the VB. Dietrich Eckart was able to obtain a loan for RM 60,000 from the sympathetic General Ritter von Epp to acquire the VB. The rest of the RM 120,000 price tag came from an industrialist named Dr. Gottfried Grandel, who was won over by Hitler’s personal appeal to him. Eckart likely helped out too, along with Dr. Gutberlet (who pledged RM 5,000). According to the Pools, Hitler’s early supporters came from a wide range of classes, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Numerous wealthy White Russian émigrés, who had Thule contacts, formed an alliance with the NSDAP and allegedly raised “vast sums of money” for Hitler—i.e. according to an official 1923 file note. There was Henry Ford, who was anti-Jewish and wished to spread his message to receptive nations. Benito Mussolini’s personal agents were known to have established contact with NSDAP members in Germany, likely in order to arrange the transfer of financial support from the Duce. The Russian Grand Duchess Victoria, who was pro-monarchy and anti-Bolshevik, gave Hitler money. Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell Corporation offered Hitler vast amounts of money in 1931, ‘32 and ‘33 in exchange for a guarantee that he would regain his expropriated oil interests from the Bolsheviks at some future point in time. The amount was likely between 30 and 55 million pounds sterling. Deterding was so pro-German that he ended up marrying a National Socialist woman and even moved to Germany. He, like so many other German elites, realized that only an assertive foreign policy could secure Germany’s economic survival in a world in which France and England had a monopoly over one-quarter of the globe and were determined to crush Germany’s global competitiveness. The Germans had tried everything else, including complying with the Versailles reparations, which was de factotheft. This “treaty” was in fact designed with one goal in mind: the permanent crippling of German industrial competition. Ernst Röhm was a fervent German nationalist who channeled Army funds to the NSDAP via various front organizations. The Thule Society, which was pan-Germanic and nationalist, not only contributed members to the NSDAP but helped it raise a lot of money. The two German jewelers Josef Füss and Herr Gahr supported Hitler. A certain Mr. Pöschl, a small businessman, gave to Hitler early on. Quirin Diestl was another early supporter who gave small funds. Oscar Koerner, a toy shop owner, likewise gave money to the NSDAP. Dr. Friedrich Krohn, a dentist, gave as much as he could. Adolf Müller helped the NSDAP keep the VB going by endlessly extending credit to Hitler. Ms. Hoffmann, the widow of a headmaster, contributed regularly. Numerous friends of General Ludendorff, a Thule member, provided the NSDAP with funding. A significant number of prominent foreigners and German nationals living or working in Austria, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden and America gave Hitler money, much of it via Winifred Wagner, Kurt Lüdecke and Hungarian nationalists like Gömbös. The German Free Corps members gave Hitler money, and so did many Stahlhelm members. Several right-wing German business interests, such as Emil Kirdorf of the covert Ruhrlade group, gave Hitler money, along with many business interests that usually supported Alfred Hugenberg (a man who tried to use Hitler for his own ends). There was also General Ritter von Epp, who helped Dietrich Eckart and the NSDAP purchase the VB; Dr. Emil Gansser, who had connections to wealthy Protestants; Admiral Schröder, a former naval commander; Baron Sebottendorf, who had connections to J. F. Lehmann (a Thule member, financier and publisher for the German Navy) and sympathetic naval officers; Herr Schaffer, who acquired weapons for Hitler’s SA; Kurt Lüdecke, and through him two Jewish arms dealers who were either 1) not privy to who Lüdecke was or 2) had no reason to fear Hitler (this was the early 1920s after all); possibly the Duke of Anhalt and Count Fugger; Ernst Hanfstaengl, a wealthy Harvard graduate with numerous American connections and some wealth of his own; the wealthy Magda Quandt, who married Joseph Goebbels and who had elite connections; Fritz Thyssen, who later denied that he gave substantial sums to Hitler and Göring, in 1929 and off and on throughout the 1930s, both of whom he liked very much; and so forth. No Warburgs. No Rothschilds. No Rockefellers. While the Rockefellers indirectly came into Hitler’s financial sphere by way of Standard Oil technical investments and the Warburgs via I. G. Farben and J. H. Stein later on, neither gave Hitler any financial support before 1933. And neither directly supported or paid Hitler at any point in time. The Sidney Warburg story is pure fabrication. Fritz Thyssen and some of Hugenberg’s heavy industrial connections, not James Warburg, gave Hitler substantial monetary gifts in 1929 (at least RM 1,250,000) and Deterding and several German coal companies took care of Hitler in the early 1930s. While Hitler spent a vast amount on campaigning, he was by no means rolling in untraceable money. All of his funding was carefully accounted for and most of it came from VB advertising; party dues, insurance, and speaking fees; Gregor Strasser’s left-wing faction, which received RM 10,000 per month in 1931; the good will of VB publisher Adolf Müller; and the financial frugality of party treasurer Franz Schwarz, whose meticulous party financial records were destroyed. The Americans interrogated him so brutally that he died in 1946 in British captivity. His records denoting even Hitler’s anonymous donors never turned up anywhere. The Pools suspect that the American occupiers destroyed them. As for Goebbels’s remark on 17 January 1932 that the finances of the party “suddenly improved,” this was not exactly true. The truth is that the party’s credit line suddenly improved, and this was thanks to the maneuverings of Franz von Papen and Baron Kurt von Schröder with his syndicate of investors, including a number of prominent heavy industrialists, the Hamburg-America Steamship Line, the Stein Bank of Cologne, Commerz und Privat Bank, the Gelsenkirchen Mine Company, Deutsche Bank, Reichskredit-Gesellschaft Bank, Allianz Insurance, members of the potash industry, the Brabag Coal Company, Deutsches Erdöl, and a number of other brown-coal industrialists. While Hitler tolerated fifth-column banks like M. M. Warburg and the Temple Bank (a special account created for the Temple Society by the Reichsbank to fund Ha’avara emigration), he eventually restricted and regulated their business opportunities and forced them to assist with financing Jewish emigration. Hitler’s goal was to increasingly inhibit and thereby financially squeeze the foreign banks until they were unable to exist any longer and had to relocate outside Germany—the same policy he employed to encourage Jewish emigration and business closures. One such example was the Germanization (i.e. German takeover) of two Jewish ironworks plants in the Rhön region in 1937. Moving on to the actual recruitment process, potential recruits were approached on the streets and at meetings and speaking engagements. They were given flyers or pamphlets. Sometimes Hitler or other core members of the party were invited to speak or converse privately with industrialists or nobles who were interested in a non-Communist, nationalist party. Contrary to myths like that concerning Sidney Warburg, Hitler and the right-wing faction of the NSDAP did not receive as much industrial or banker funding, before 1933, as the Strasser brothers, the Social Democrats (SPD) or even Hugenberg’s Nationalist Party. The reason why Hitler and the NSDAP never received the same level of financial or moral support early on was three-fold: (a) the industrialists and many Junkers did not trust Hitler given his socialist stance on many issues; (b) most industrialists and Junkers were not financially threatened enough to back a revolutionary party like Hitler’s (they were still satisfied with the status quo); and (c) they were leery of his anti-Jewish stance. Back to recruitment: most potential recruits and financial supporters heard about Hitler and the NSDAP via word of mouth. Nothing else was as effective as this. When men like Scheubner-Richter, Schacht, Borsig, Kirdorf and Thyssen recommended the NSDAP and personally endorsed Hitler, wealthy and other upper- and middle-class Germans were willing to seriously consider Hitler and his party. Hitler was invited to speak to heavy industrialists in 1927 by word of mouth in fact. He even wrote a secret pamphlet intended only for this industrial-capitalist audience, which they then passed around to others. Besides active word-of-mouth campaigning, the NSDAP also placed posters everywhere they could, promoted speaking engagements and other party activities and viewpoints in their newspaper, sold various odds and ends to raise small funds (e.g. various items like soap with NSDAP packaging), and sent wealthier members abroad to raise funds from German expats and foreign sympathizers. Kurt Lüdecke excelled at this form of campaigning. In the very beginning, Hitler and the NSDAP targeted veterans, farmers, workers, young men, noblemen and -women, small businessmen and -women and pensioners. These were the social classes who were initially the most receptive, due to the economy and prevailing anti-monarchism, but later on Hitler’s support base included wealthy elites, heavy industrialists, fascist and monarchist foreigners, landed Junkers, veterans’ organizations, the German Army and Navy and even Montagu Norman, a prominent English banker and personal friend of Hjalmar Schacht who, according to both his private secretary Ernest Skinner and Émile Moreau, despised Jews, the French and Roman Catholics. He unabashedly refused to assist France’s treasury with anything and proved willing and able to arrange financing for the NSDAP by way of his connections to Bruno von Schröder (Schroder Bank), Kurt von Schröder (Stein Bank) and the Bank of England (F. C. Tiarks and M. Norman himself). Norman had strong sympathy for the Germans which dated back to his days as a student in Dresden, and naturally offered to financially assist and thereby stabilize the new government that his friend Schacht had openly supported since 1931. Since Hitler was hostile to France (he saw the French as Foreign Enemy Number One), friendly to Britain (which he did not feel was a threat), and discriminatory towards Jews, the three things that Norman found favorable, he recommended that Kurt von Schröder extend credit to Hitler’s party, which now controlled the government. Schacht was Hitler’s de facto lifeline in this respect, a nationalist German banker who had his own designs for German recovery, but who was also personally impressed with Hitler’s speeches and mass appeal, which no other politician possessed. As for Hitler’s initial support, many farmers were burdened by debt, and most, including landed Junkers, felt threatened by Communist expropriation and insufficient protective agricultural tariffs. The veterans were receptive because they felt betrayed by the ruling class, especially the liberal-democrats of the SPD, and because they had a difficult time finding work. Workers, who were mostly young men, were receptive because they felt they were being exploited by the business class, but primarily because they were the most negatively affected by the inflation and unemployment. Pensioners on fixed incomes were receptive to Hitler’s socialist stance. Noblemen and -women were interested in Hitler because he opposed Freemasonry and expropriation of their landed estates, and because he hinted at restoration of the monarchy. Additionally, all of these groups generally opposed Marxist-Communism. Most of the German masses were not interested in a revolutionary bloodbath or agricultural collectivism, but economic and social security as well as justice and prosperity for themselves; the German elites did not support expropriation and collectivization. Hitler’s main opposition in the formative years came from the Communists, who denounced him as a tool of capitalism and from the former nobility; the heavy industrialists, who distrusted his socialism and the SA (they feared the SA was nothing but a Communistic horde); and the left-wing faction within his own party, who questioned Hitler’s financial sources and pro-business stance. When someone requested to join the NSDAP, one paid one’s initial annual dues and was then given a membership card and asked to perform some service or task for the party. This could be anything from putting up posters before speaking engagements to spreading the word by simply talking about the NSDAP or handing out flyers on street corners and at beer halls. After the Hitler-Strasser break, he or she was asked to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Vetting was likely performed by those members doing the actual talking and recruiting in the streets, as there was no known formal vetting procedure. As long as a person paid his annual dues and served the party loyally, he or she was trusted. Those who wished to break with the party were actually told to leave by Hitler himself at a rally that took place after the Strasser and Stennes affairs. We’ll revisit this topic later on. Along these lines, Kurt Lüdecke, Otto Wagener and Ernst Röhm played leading roles in arming, training and drilling SA men. Their personal fundraising; their secret dealings with the German Army (Reichswehr), which had many prominent sympathizers of the NSDAP and SA; and Lüdecke’s connections to black-market Jewish arms dealers proved essential to building a credible paramilitary threat to the status quo. The government in Berlin tended to ignore SA violence against Communists because it opposed a Communist takeover. Also, Hitler’s party supported German national unity at all costs, so Hitler and his SA were worth tolerating to prevent Bavarian secession. Hitler’s real bargaining base was his SA and the masses. Without both, he could afford to be ignored by the elites, government and industry; however with both he was a true threat, like the Communists. Lüdecke, Wagener and Röhm all led, at one point or another, regular drilling and paramilitary basic training at a large hall funded by party members and various supporters. Marching in formation and drills also took place in the forests and countryside when possible, but mostly it occurred in the party’s own rented hall or on a wealthy sympathizer’s private estate. Fortunately for unemployed and poor members, the party paid for everyone’s uniforms. When SA and SS ranks were introduced, the requirements were loyalty and leadership aptitude. The SS consisted of men handpicked by Hitler himself. Thus, he vetted them personally. As a matter of fact, Hitler usually personally appointed leaders to their positions even in the SA. He recalled Röhm from Bolivia, for instance, to reorganize and lead the SA. Hitler tended to choose people who he felt would resist falling prey to groupthink. Historians have tended to characterize this as Hitler’s “divide and rule” policy, but in-depth study of the party’s early development suggests instead that Hitler chose people who would (a) not challenge or question his leadership, and (b) not fall prey to the “yes man” temptation. This appointment procedure did two things: it prevented serious intraparty division by subordinating all to Hitler himself, while at the same time it encouraged intraparty rivalries, which prevented groupthink. Leaders could disagree and even challenge one another’s authority without destroying the party. Hitler based promotion solely on performance, not status. This tendency increased later on during the war especially after Hitler established the NSFO (National Socialist Commanding Officer Corps). This NS-high command was likely enacted to replace or take over the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). Hitler wanted select NSFO officers to undergo a 4- to 18-hour course in political-ideological instruction. He himself appointed the head of the NSFO, Hermann Reinecke, in December 1944. The NSDAP expanded into cities and states outside of Munich (Bavaria), where it had its Brown House headquarters, by appointing certain members to run party operations and perform party services in their own states, cities, towns and villages. The most well-known example of an NSDAP member-cum-leader who acquired almost enough personal power, financial backing and mass following to challenge Hitler himself was Gregor Strasser. Hitler was able to prevent a crisis from developing with his gifts for clever maneuvering and personal appeal, but such risks are inherent in any organization that becomes as powerful as the NSDAP. And they are risks that must be taken if a party’s leadership wishes it to develop and grow. Talented, committed and qualified speakers and leaders were appointed to run operations in every location possible. But Berlin NSDAP members also traveled around giving speeches and lectures and soliciting financial support. All speaking engagements required admittance fees. Hitler himself was constantly traveling and meeting with workers and elites alike to recruit new members and bolster his finances. At the end of 1920, the NSDAP had about 3,000 members. Membership then grew from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928. In August 1931 the NSDAP created its own intelligence and security sector. Heinrich Himmler established the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and Reinhard Heydrich was appointed head of the organization, which was kept separate from the SS (Schutzstaffel). By the time of the Strasser crisis, the SA was some 400,000 members strong and the party itself had grown to 2 million by 1933. In 1932, it was large enough to achieve control of 37% of the Reichstag. Here are the election results from 1920 to 1933: Political Parties in the Reichstag June 1920 May 1924 Dec. 1924 May 1928 Sep. 1930 July 1932 Nov. 1932 Mar. 1933 Communist Party (KPD) 4 62 45 54 77 89 100 81 Social Democratic Party (SPD) 102 100 131 153 143 133 121 120 Catholic Center Party (BVP) 65 81 88 78 87 97 90 93 Nationalist Party (DNVP) 71 95 103 73 41 37 52 52 National Socialist Party (NSDAP) - - - 12 107 230 196 288 Other Parties 98 92 73 121 122 22 35 23 Adapted from James E. and Suzanne Pool. Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power 1919 – 1933 p. 494.One can see that the NSDAP lost most of its former 230 seats as of July 1932 to the even more radical-revolutionary Communist Party (KPD) in November 1932, not to conservative Catholics or social-democrats. The conservative nationalists (DNVP) only gained 15 seats. These results, contrary to most historiography, do not imply the demise of the NSDAP, but the masses’ disaffection with any party that was not willing to promise sweeping social and economic change for the majority, even if change meant bloodshed. Hitler and the NSDAP were not viewed as extreme enough, so they lost seats to the KPD! This alarmed men like Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen so much that they were finally willing to give Hitler the opportunity to become chancellor. He actually should have received the chancellorship in July 1932 when his party had the most seats in the Reichstag, but the industrialists and noblemen surrounding General Schleicher, Franz von Papen and President Hindenburg opposed his appointment to the chancellorship. So much for James Warburg’s and the Rothschilds’ “magical funding.” Hitler faced so much resistance at this stage that he, like others, resorted to blackmail. Hitler arranged a private meeting with President Hindenburg’s son Oskar, during which he is suspected to have threatened to expose his father’s role in the repeated taxpayer bailouts of the Junkers’ mismanaged, bankrupted estates. Since blackmail and intrigue had been used to cheat Hitler of his due appointment, he decided that he could also play such a game. Hindenburg appointed him chancellor shortly thereafter, which most historians claim was at the behest of von Papen. We see that von Papen’s desire to prevent a Communist majority by giving Hitler the chancellorship was only partly why Hindenburg appointed him. Hitler won, but not because he received covert funding. Franz von Papen continued to intrigue against Hitler and urged industrialists to withdraw their financial support of the NSDAP! The goal of this so-called “cabinet of barons” was to give Hitler just enough power to satisfy him personally without actually allowing him to attain a majority strong enough to overthrow the status quo, but just strong enough to prevent a Communist majority. Given this context of stalemate, the speed of the NSDAP’s growth in just 6 years and its subsequent attainment of absolute power were only possible with an authoritarian leader in a crooked political situation in which blackmail, corruption and political sleight-of-hand were the order of the day. What had started as a democratic-style workers’ party with a simple executive committee to which Hitler was appointed in the early 1900s became an authoritarian-style organization with its own uniforms, offices, training facilities, insurance company, merchandise, newspaper, propaganda machine, army (the SA) and security apparatus (SS and SD). This was nothing short of impressive and most of the credit for its success goes to those leaders and members like Hitler, Hess, Gansser, Eckart, Funk, Schwarz, Feder, Keppler, Himmler, Rosenberg, Goebbels, the Strassers (before 1932), Scheubner-Richter, Hanfstaengl, Lüdecke, Göring and Röhm, all of whom literally devoted their lives to the party. NSDAP events were staged as often as they could be afforded. The newspaper was of course always available—it was a daily—so the public and members always knew what was going on from day to day. Hitler gave speeches and met with important wealthy persons almost non-stop after his release from prison. He was keen enough to purchase motor vehicles, which were rare in those days. Speedy travel was vital to defeating rival parties like the Communists, who still had to walk to their various speaking engagements and meetings. The NSDAP’s doors, so to speak, were always open to receive new recruits. Interested persons either signed up at simple on-site recruitment centers or they mailed their applications to the party’s headquarters in Munich. Inconvenient facts about Hitler and the NSDAP The following is a list of important facts gleaned from the Pools’ Who Financed Hitler. This list clarifies and summarizes our introduction to the NSDAP’s development, support and financing. More importantly, this list exposes numerous myths associated with Hitler and the NSDAP, such as Hitler’s “militatarism,” NSDAP funding via Paul or Sidney (James) Warburg and the Rothschilds, and Hitler’s unpopularity amongst most Germans. ·    Gustav Stresemann was as militarily inclined as Adolf Hitler. Thus the idea that Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship meant war in future is moot. ·    Upper-class hostages, including members of Thule, were literally lined up and murdered in 1918 by the Communists. A total of 12 hostages were shot in a schoolyard in Munich. ·    The Pools noted that since the German economy was not harmful to most industrialists’ profits overall, they as a group wished to uphold the status quo. And that was the problem with them from the perspective of revolutionary parties like Hitler’s, as well as the impoverished, unemployed millions. ·    Hitler and Hess, not Göring and Goebbels as claimed by “Sidney Warburg,” solicited money in 1929. German industrialist Emil Kirdorf likely gave the NSDAP money at this time. ·    Radek, Levine and Axelrod, all Communists, were Jewish. These three men and the terror they inflicted upon Fritz Thyssen and his father personally, including imprisonment and death threats, changed Thyssen’s life. From that point on he supported Hitler, and fervently so. ·    French martial law and Ruhr resource demands were too much for Fritz Thyssen. He was arrested and fined 300,000 gold marks for encouraging German workers to passively resist French military occupation. The French opened fire on these German workers killing and wounding hundreds. ·    Thyssen downplayed his support of the National Socialists. He gave 1,250,000 Reichsmarks between 1928 and 1929. This was the exact timing of Sidney Warburg’s alleged covert cash transfers to Hitler. ·    Kirdorf had Jewish friends and bank connections, including Dr. Arthur Salomonsohn. In spite of these big money connections, Kirdorf gave very little to Hitler and the NSDAP. ·    Thyssen and Kirdorf saw little hope for Germany. France and England had a monopoly over one quarter of the world and were determined to crush Germany’s global competitiveness. ·    The Versailles Dictate was Germany’s economic end—really, truly and totally. ·    The “Treaty” was actually an economic weapon designed to permanently cripple Germany as an industrial competitor. Germany’s total reparations payments amounted to $32 billion, which equates to $425 billion today, or $6.6 billion per year. ·    The NSDAP was not put into power by international Jewish interests as some researchers suggest. The NSDAP fought for its power. For example, in just a single street battle between the National Socialists and Communists, 300 men were killed. Hitler struggled for 14 years to achieve power and was nearly shot dead during his attempted putsch, facts which challenge this thesis. ·    The I. G. Farben conglomerate and high finance never factored into the Hitler-NSDAP equation before 1933. ·    According to the Pools, since nothing Germany did had worked to relieve the unemployment and trade imbalance, an imperialist policy was necessary for Germany’s economic survival. She had earnestly tried everything else. ·    Big business’s main motive for supporting Hitler and the NSDAP was to prevent Communism at all costs. ·    General von Seeckt operated under a façade of pro-democracy (like Hitler) until the day when all democratic chains could be broken. Indeed the intellectual demilitarization of Germany was, to von Seeckt, the greatest threat of all. ·    Russo-German military collaboration was championed by von Seeckt, not Hitler, and started in 1921. (Before the Treaty of Rapallo). Von Seeckt was instrumental in this collaboration. Lest we overlook it: Hitler, and no one else, had a reserve army—the SA. Thus the years 1921 to 1922 saw some degree of Russian funding of the NSDAP via the Reichswehr’s secret Russian collaboration efforts. ·    The Allies destroyed Krupp’s industry, which provided Krupp with a key motive for later supporting the NSDAP. Krupp, with the help of foreign subsidies, established anonymous companies to carry out arms construction and testing in neutral countries long before Hitler came to power. ·    Stresemann, like Hitler, wanted to see Germany reemerge as a world power. Neither von Seeckt nor Stresemann was a liberal-democrat (i.e. neither supported democracy, which was imposed upon Germany against her will.) ·    Holding companies were used to rebuild the German Navy in the early 1920s, long before Hitler’s ascension. ·    “Liberal-Democratic” Weimar Germany was providing covert assistance to German rearmament efforts in every way possible. Krupp was subsidized by the Weimar regime, not by Hitler. ·    Given the industrial context of that time period, Thyssen’s industry would die without total rearmament. This was a consequence of Germany’s overdependence on industrialization,. As suggested by Lawrence Dennis in The Dynamics of War and Revolution, a developed nation like Germany had the choice to contract severely in every way, including population-wise, or expand. Most German leaders opted for the latter. ·    German rearmament began earnestly “production-wise” in 1928—five full years before Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor. ·    The Social Democrats, SPD, supported rearmament. ·    Rearmament does not prove that Germany was planning aggressive warfare or that Germany was “militaristic.” ·    Both France’s and Poland’s militaries were threatening to encircle and occupy Germany in 1919. ·    All of the German power elite had the same goal, only different methods of achieving that goal—to reestablish Germany as a world power. However, only Adolf Hitler understood international power politics or “economy by the sword.” Hitler asked the industrialists in 1927: Does it benefit our nationality now or in the future, or will it be injurious to it? Expediency is the basis of all alliances. ·    France, not England, was Enemy Number One in Hitler’s view. ·    Political bribes were not illegal in the Weimar Republic. ·    The rule of special interest groups and the power of money (with which to buy Reichstag deputies) destroyed the Weimar Republic’s chances of survival. Both are, in fact, inherent features of all democracies, which intentionally give the masses the illusion of power and voice in government to prevent their discontent. ·    The SPD was the political instrument of the trade unions and the bureaucracy of organized labor. All of the rest, save the KPD, were big business’s interest groups incognito. ·    Walther Rathenau set the Weimar “big business” precedent, not Hitler or the NSDAP. ·    The Ruhrlade was a secret society of heavy industrialists, with 12 members, who met secretly to set joint economic and political policy. ·    Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party had far more big business and discreet financial backing and prestige than the NSDAP. But not even Hugenberg was an industrialist's tool. He opposed the Anglo-Freemasonic Dawes Plan while several of his industrialist backers supported the plan. ·    The Anglo-Freemasonic Young Plan was enacted 11 years after the war, which demanded that Germans pay “reparations” for the next 59 years! ·    Hugenberg and Strasser both underestimated Hitler. He was no one’s “pawn.” This was already evident around the time of the passing of the Freedom Law in 1929, right around the time of Sidney Warburg’s alleged cash promise to Hitler. The Warburg myth was used to discredit Hitler by the Strasser-Stennes faction of the NSDAP. Stennes, with 80,000 SA men under his command, seized the NSDAP headquarters in Berlin and occupied it to destroy Hitler, but Hitler was able to largely circumvent recapturing the headquarters via violent means by establishing his right of ownership of the Berlin headquarters. He did this simply by presenting his ownership proof to the courts after the holidays ended. The police were therefore obliged to retake the headquarters for him and Captain Walther Stennes’ attempted anti-Hitler coup fell apart. Interestingly, Stennes was never even an NSDAP member. ·    Hitler used Karl Lüger’s methods: utilize the existing implements of power. ·    Thyssen admitted to funding the NSDAP. His continuous support and Hitler’s strategic alliance with Hugenberg and the Nationalist Party meant money for Hitler in 1929—none of which was from Sidney Warburg. ·    After 1930, the Völkischer Beobachter generated day-to-day revenue and paid off all of its outstanding debts. ·    There was no “secret” funding early on. Max Amann mortgaged all of the NSDAP’s property and forestalled all financial obligations until after the elections in 1930, which surprised everyone, including Hitler. Rallies and occasional donations by the wealthy supplemented funds after September 1930. ·    NSDAP memberships swelled due to the “bandwagon effect” after the party’s huge electoral success. The VBalso started generating substantial advertising revenue. At one point Hitler actually let his prohibitionist idealism go too far with the brewers and they canceled all their VB ads. Fellow party members had to coax them back. ·    Adolf Müller helped the Nazis with the VB, the only paper that did not drop in circulation after the Depression began. ·    The United States likely destroyed Party Treasurer Franz Schwarz’s records, which were meticulous: Hitler had even told him to denote names of anonymous donors! All of the records are gone. Americans brutally interrogated Schwarz and likely murdered him in 1946. The Anglo-Americans were determined to incriminate only German big business for funding the NSDAP at the IMT. Given that the United States did this, one suspects that there was more American-based funding than just Henry Ford and Teutonia behind the NSDAP, but what that was we will never know. The Anglos were likely trying to cover up American industrial involvement with NS-Germany after 1933, such as that of Standard Oil which we’ve already discussed. ·    Generals, namely Alfred Jodl, were won over by Hitler at his Leipzig trial. ·    Big business was reassured by Hitler’s total party control and non-Communist stance after he ordered his 107 deputies to vote against the Nazis’ own “left-wing” bill, introduced by Strasser et al. ·    The German economy was controlled by the government and a private bank cartel 2,500 banks strong beforeHitler assumed power. ·    In the summer of 1931, the Ruhrlade made its first contribution to the NSDAP, and Göring was being paid by Thyssen at this time as well. ·    Frau Quandt joined the NSDAP in 1930 and brought lots of wealthy influence with her. ·    Hitler recalled Ernst Röhm in 1930 to lead the SA. He had been living in Bolivia. ·    Kaiser Wilhelm and his sons supported the NSDAP in an effort to try and convince Hitler to reestablish the monarchy. ·    Brüning was a de facto dictator but was failing, because the Depression was worsening. ·    The Credit-Anstalt, a Rothschild bank branch in Austria, experienced a devastating run in May 1931, which crashed all German banks and eventually even London’s banks. So much for the Rothschilds’ endless, untouchable wealth! ·    Freemasonic France and America exacerbated the German collapse by recalling short-term loans to Germany and Austria and with the passing of the Hawley-Smoot tariff. ·    The German People’s Party, which enjoyed more conservative support than Hitler, demanded constitutional revision terminating the parliamentary system and giving Hindenburg the power to appoint a government. ·    Other nationalist parties got a lot more money and support than Hitler, but they maintained the status quo and displeased the masses immensely. Thus only Hitler had the masses’ support and could therefore not be brushed aside or ignored, not even by the moneyed elite. ·    Big business, namely industrialists, was paying the NSDAP by 1931. ·    The Harzburg Front organized and rallied in 1931. Hjalmar Schacht gave a speech at this event and shockingly declared that the Weimar government was truly and utterly bankrupt. He, more than anyone else that day including Hitler, brought incalculable benefit to the NSDAP. He was after all the man who had saved the German economy before by introducing the Rentenmark. ·    Hitler had his man Keppler meet informally with businessmen to create the NSDAP’s economic policy. This was known as the “Circle of Friends for the Economy.” This is actually where Reinhardt comes into play, the man behind the Reinhardt Plan which Hitler enacted shortly after coming to power. Reinhardt, not Hitler or an NSDAP member, openly called for rearmament in 1932. ·    Walther Funk met with Kurt von Schröder, a partner in J. H. Stein of Cologne. A man with great skill for negotiation, Funk was able to “satisfy Schröder” of Hitler’s “good will” towards “international banking.” ·    Mussolini gave unofficial support to the NSDAP. France backed the Bavarian separatists while Italy supported the Bavarian nationalists. Hitler was the only nationalist who opposed France and was willing to let Italy keep control of the South Tyrol (with a population of 250,000 Germans). ·    Hitler received Italian fascist funding, which only came to light in 1932. Mussolini also sent the NSDAP weapons in the 1920s. ·    The U.S.-based Teutonia gave Hitler regular donations. ·    Montagu Norman was the governor of the Bank of England for 24 years. He was anti-France, disliked Jews immensely, was opposed to Versailles, and favored Germany due to his earlier studies there. Norman lent money to the Nazis after 1933 via his personal friend Schacht. He may have channeled funds via Baron Kurt von Schröder and J. H. Stein and Company in 1932, but this is not proven. Schröder was a German partner in J. H. Stein. ·    Viscount Rothermere of the Daily Mail gave Ernst Hanfstaengl money. He was a staunchly pro-German Anglo who despised Jews. ·    It is crucial to understand that Anglo-Saxon foreign policy was designed to prevent any single power—whether France, Germany or Russia—from attaining formidable power enough to rival that of Britain. This was the real reason why King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate; he was simply too pro-German. His sympathy as well as that of Montagu Norman, the Mosleys, the Mitfords and Viscount Rothermere made Hitler miscalculate on Britain. He thought he had more Anglo-Saxon support than he really did. ·    Deterding met Alfred Rosenberg in Britain and likely promised him funding. Deterding controlled oil interests in Romania, Russia, California, Trinidad, the Dutch Indies and Mexico. He also had pumps in Mesopotamia and Persia. The Soviets seized his oil fields in Baku, Grozny and Miakop and nationalized them, thereby becoming a serious competitor to Deterding with his own former oil lands. ·    Georg Bell was Deterding’s contact agent with the NSDAP. Deterding did not just back the NSDAP, but also White Russians and Ukrainian nationalists, as well as anti-Soviet Georgian rebels. ·    Deterding married a pro-National Socialist woman and moved to Germany. He was the one who gave the real ‘big money’ to the NSDAP in 1931, 1932, and 1933—£30 to £55 million. Dr. Kahr claimed that French money flowed to Hitler after going through nine exchanges, but this has not been proven. In fact, Bavarian parties like the BVP were backed by France only because they wished to break away from Berlin! ·    The Treaty of Trianon was even worse and more unjust than Versailles. Hungary lost population and territory and was completely impoverished. This treaty soured most Hungarians on democracy. In 1919, Bela Kuhn ruled ruthlessly for three months in Hungary: he confiscated and expropriated private land, slaughtered peasants indiscriminately and further destroyed the economy, which resulted in famine. Hungarians were overwhelmingly anti-Communist, anti-Freemason and anti-Jewish after that. Most of these Communists, including Bela Kuhn, were Jewish Freemasons. This experience is what led the Hungarian nationalist Gyula (Julius) Gömbös to finance the NSDAP. ·    Hitler aimed for “careers open to talent” according to Otto Dietrich, a policy opposed to hereditary power. ·    Here is the explanation for one of Goebbels’s economic improvement references in his diary: Hitler’s Düsseldorf Industry Club speech of January 27. This fundraising event explains Goebbels’s entry of February 8. ·    To give people some perspective on the German economy before Hitler: there were 17,500,000 unemployed Germans over the winter of 1931 to 1932. This was nearly one third of the entire population of Germany! ·    Stennes’s rebellion is very important, but all too often overlooked. Stennes was a paid agent of Strasser and Captain Ehrhardt, both of whom had big business (industrialists) and one (Otto Wolff) Jewish backers. ·    As a result of this rebellion and other street violence, the SA, SS and HJ were all banned by a Brüning decree signed by President Hindenburg. This was in 1932. So much for Rothschild and Warburg supporting Hitler! Why would they let their “pawn” get banned? This ban was an attempt to destroy the NSDAP and Hitler for good. Besides, if Hitler was really just a “tool” of a vast international entity as researchers like Jim Condit and Guido Preparata suggest, then why didn’t he win the presidency in 1932? What was this entity’s motive for forestalling his “power grab” if it was in fact behind him? ·    Paul Silverberg, Jewish, financed Gregor Strasser, not Hitler. Silverberg was head of the R.A.G., one of the largest coal companies in the entire world. He supported the chancellor ruling by presidential decree (Brüning in particular). ·    Brüning, not Hitler, asked the question: is democracy able to work in Germany? Concluding thoughts Paul Silverberg was extremely liberal, except for his own business enterprise. He naturally favored “equal rights” for Jews and big business, but not for anyone else; he likewise favored “individual rights over national rights” and was therefore completely opposed to the NSDAP. Silverberg was angry at Brüning’s ouster. He opposed von Papen, supported General Schleicher as chancellor, and gave both Schleicher and Hitler’s rival Gregor Strasser large sums of money. Gregor Strasser received 10,000 marks per month, beginning in the spring of 1931, for the NSDAP from heavy industry. So much for Sidney Warburg! Walther Funk got 3,000 marks per month in 1931 and Hitler got 100,000 marks from various coal companies that same year, shortly before the Reichstag elections. As one can see his alleged 1931 “miracle financing” was no miracle at all. It came from German coal companies, not Sidney Warburg. In fact, most of the NSDAP’s money came from the party itself: insurance premiums, dues, speaking fees, etc. Brüning, not Hitler, was backed by I. G. Farben. Chancellor Schleicher, with Silverberg’s and other industrial bigwigs’ money, conspired with Ernst Röhm on a plan to incorporate the SA into the German Army and thereby betray Hitler. Clearly, Franz von Papen was no puppet either, contrary to the thesis of Guido Preparata (Conjuring Hitler). He refused to lift the SA ban until June 15. He also banned political parades until after 30 June 1932 and made himself Reich Commissioner of Prussia. He enjoyed widespread support among industrialists, big business, Hindenburg and the Army officer corps. His intent was to block Hitler from ever attaining more than nominal power in government. Hitler was so financially strapped thanks to this intrigue against him that he ended up signing contracts amounting to giving away everything the party owned to finance his 1932 election: he won over 13 million votes and 230 seats in the Reichstag. This was nothing short of impressive. He should’ve been appointed chancellor right then and there. The real question was whether Hitler could be bought. That was the question that Franz von Papen and Chancellor Schleicher were asking. Since it did not seem likely, both opposed his chancellorship as long as possible. Von Papen conceded in the end: he wanted power for himself and he did not want a Communist majority in the Reichstag. By agreeing to appoint Hitler chancellor in 1933, von Papen thought that he could satisfy Hitler’s personal power needs and keep the NSDAP in check, while at the same time use Hitler’s party as a means to prevent the Communists from ever achieving a majority. Only Hitler had the mass following to pull off such a plan. And only von Papen could secure for Hitler the appointment, funding and support of industrialists he needed to become chancellor with a stable government. Indeed Hitler deserved the chancellorship, and was fully entitled to it, since he had the masses’ support and the largest number of seats in the Reichstag. The rest, as they say, is history. Sources: Dennis, Lawrence. The Dynamics of War and Revolution. New York: Revisionist Press, 1975. Gregor, Dr. A. J. National Socialism and Race. London: Steven Books, 2009. Pool, James E. and Suzanne Pool. Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s     Rise to Power 1919 – 1933. New York: The Dial Press, 1978. Pudor, Dr. Heinrich. “The High Financiers of France.” In Warwolves of the Iron Cross: The Hyenas of High Finance, edited by Veronica Kuzniar Clark and Luis Muñoz, 51-66. United States: Vera Icona Publishers, 2011. Schinnerer, Erich. German Law and Legislation. Edited by Richard Mönnig. Berlin: Terramare Publications, 1938. Schwarz, Dieter. Freemasonry: Ideology, Organization and Policy. 6th ed. Berlin: Central Publishing House of the NSDAP, 1944. Schwarzwäller, Wulf. The Unknown Hitler: His Private Life and Fortune. Translated by Aurelius von Kappau. Edited by Alan Bisbort. Bethesda, Md.: National Press Inc and Star Agency, 1989. Warburg, Sidney. The Financial Sources of National Socialism: Hitler’s Secret Backers. Translated by J. G. Schoup. Palmdale, Cal.: Omni Publications, 1995. Copyright © 2011. Veronica Kuzniar Clark. All Rights Reserved. None of this text may be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication, or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium without prior permission from the author. Please e-mail Inconvenient History for contact information. The full introductory text is featured in The Nazi SS Manual on Freemasonry (Martinson Edition) by Dieter Schwarz.

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