Source: https://www.renegadetribune.com/debunking-the-myth-of-the-two-jewish-bankers-who-funded-hitler/
by Karl Radl
Every so often someone will bring up the video clip of British historian David Irving talking about how he had discovered a letter from former Zentrum (Catholic Centre Party) German Chancellor Heinrich Bruning to the British government during the Second World War, which alleged that he (Bruning) had found out while he was in a position of authority in Germany before the coming of the Third Reich in January 1933 that Hitler had been ‘funded by two jewish bankers from Berlin’.
Now I have long known this letter to be almost certainly genuine but also to be utterly misleading in that Irving assumed that ‘because Bruning was in a position to know’ and ‘had access to special information’ that he was right, but this is not necessarily true as Bruning could have been lying to slander a political enemy – remember many German politicians from the Weimar years who spent the war years abroad (like Ernst Hanfstaengl) simply lied about Hitler and his closest supporters in order to feather their own nests and/or to get revenge – but also they may simply have been incorrect because they were as fallible as anyone else.
As it happens, we actually know through the specialist literature that has debunked many myths about the funding of the NSDAP has identified who these ‘two jewish bankers from Berlin’ were and it is also easy to see why Bruning may have simply gotten confused or passed off a plausible lie to show his loyalty to the anti-German cause.
As the academic historian Henry Ashby Turner Jr. writes in his ‘German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler’:
‘Nor were the Papen cabinet’s funds from industrial sources limited in the fall of 1932 to those who agreed on at the conclave of October 19. At Nuremberg after the war Friedrich Flick told a separate meeting organized by Otto Wolff, who invited a group of industrialists to his house to hear Papen request funds with which “to fight Hitler.”’ (1)
So, in other words in mid to late 1932 – remember this is the time that Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP are easily the most popular party in Germany and the German conservatives under von Papen are ruling Germany as an ‘anti-Nazi dictatorship’ under a ‘State of Emergency’ per Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and were desperate for popular support to ensure their political legitimacy after Bruning was forced to resign on 1st June 1932 – there was an attempt by von Papen to solicit significant funds from German big businesses to prop up his emergency government so it could ‘fight Hitler’.
But how do know the ‘two jewish bankers from Berlin’ were there?
Well, they just happen to have affixed their names to a ‘business leaders’ document supporting von Papen that urged people to vote for the DNVP – a German civic nationalist party of the time that had been under the thumb of big business since its inception in the 1920s – (2) so as to make it a viable governing party. (3)
Their names?
Georg Solmssen (born Georg Salomonsohn) – formerly of the ‘Direktion der Disconto-Gesellschaft’ but as of 1929 ‘Deutsche Bank’ after the two firms had merged – and Oskar Wassermann, who was also a director at ‘Deutsche Bank’. (4)
And they both ‘violently opposed Nazi anti-Semitism’. (5)
Surprise, surprise!
Now it is worth also quoting Ashby Turner about where the money to fund the NSDAP’s many election campaigns and efforts as well as staff costs and so on came from.
To wit speaking of the situation in late 1932 he writes:
‘Nazism had been a largely self-financing operation, with monthly dues required for membership in good standing serving as the principal source of funds for the national organization. As the party ranks swelled rapidly during the depression years, money had flooded in abundantly at the time when falling prices made that rising income ever more valuable. Now, however, the influx of new members dwindled to a trickle and defections multiplied. Many of those who nominally remained members ceased paying their dues promptly. With hopes of victory receding, members who had in the past made donations in excess of their regular membership dues now proved less responsive to appeals for funds. So did sympathizing non-members who formerly contributed to the coffers of a party that seemed on its way to power. A major source of income at the local level, admission fees charged at party rallies plummeted as attendance fell off during late 1932, despite sharply reduced ticket prices, as public interest in the party waned.’ (6)
This further confirmed by sociological and demographic studies of NSDAP members which detail that between 1925 and 1933 that at least between a quarter and a third of all dues paying members were in fact members of the German working class. (7)
So put another way: the NSDAP was full of working class Germans who – because there were so many of them relatively speaking (unlike the frequently unemployed supporters of the KPD) – gave small amounts in subscriptions, lotteries, membership fees, small donations, entry tickets and so that culminated in enough money to run the NSDAP till the crisis of late 1932 when – as Ashby Turner relates – the NSDAP was running out of money fast and Hitler put it all on one last throw of the dice in the elections in the Principality of Lippe on 15th January 1933 and won. (8)
So, what of Bruning and his ‘two jewish bankers from Berlin’?
Well clearly because of how close von Papen’s attempt to raise funds in late 1932 ‘to fight Hitler’ from Solmssen and Wassermann – who both appear to have donated – (9) and von Papen’s fall from grace on 3rd December 1932 and his subsequent unexpected political tout face to supporting Hitler – who he believed was a simpleton who he could control – against his former friend and rival Kurt von Schleicher between 3rd December 1932 and 30th January 1933.
It is obvious that Bruning got the two events confused – deliberately or otherwise – in that ‘two jewish bankers from Berlin’ financially supported von Papen’s unelected regime to ‘fight Hitler’, but because von Papen fell from power a few weeks after this occurred and then played a key role in getting President Paul von Hindenburg to accede to the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30th January 1933 then Bruning has confused the ‘two jewish bankers from Berlin’ as supporting/funding Hitler when in fact they were actually supporting/funding von Papen to take on and ‘fight Hitler’.
So thus, we can see that while it sounds like convincing evidence; because Irving didn’t properly check it then he ended up propagating at best a simple mistake in recollection and at worst a deliberate political libel.
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References
(1) Henry Ashby Turner Jr., 1985, ‘German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, p. 296
(2) Cf. John Leopold, 1977, ‘Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 27-138
(3) Ashby Turner, ‘German Big Business’, Op. Cit., p. 296
(4) Ibid.; Harold James, 2004, ‘Banks and Business Politics in Nazi Germany’, p. 47 in Francis Nicosia, Jonathan Huener (Eds.), 2004, ‘Business and Industry in Nazi Germany’, 1st Edition, Berghahn Books: New York
(5) James, Op. Cit., p. 48
(6) Henry Ashby Turner Jr, 1996, ‘Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933’, 1st Edition, Bloomsbury: London, pp. 58-59
(7) William Brustein, 1996, ‘The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925-1933’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, p. 8
(8) Ashby Turner, ‘Hitler’s Thirty Days’, Op. Cit., p. 77
(9) Ashby Turner, ‘German Big Business’, Op. Cit., p. 296
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