The Ruling Elite Read online

  According to Joseph Goebbels’s diary, the NSDAP coffers were almost empty by late 1932. Yet, according to Marxist propagandists, the party had plenty of money. By 1923, industrialist Fritz Thyssen, impressed by Hitler, began making large donations to the NSDAP. By 1928, Thyssen’s United Steelworks controlled 75 percent of Germany’s iron ore reserves and employed two hundred thousand people. In November 1932, Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler. Thyssen joined the NSDAP in 1933.

  Hitler also had financial support from Emil Georg von Stauss, who sat on the board of at least thirty companies and was on the committee of the supervisory board of the Deutsche Bank from 1915 to 1932. On November 1, 1906, he helped found the European Petroleum Union to oppose the dominant Rockefeller interests. Members hoped that the new union would compel Standard Oil to “reduce its price or come to some agreement with the new company.”48 Stauss, like most businessmen, attempted to build political ties to whatever government was in power and was especially close to Göring. He had initially introduced Schacht to Hitler and to Göring.49 For an elaboration on Hitler’s funding, read Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power 1919-1933 by James and Suzanne Pool. A myth perpetuated by Sidney Warburg holds that Jewish bankers funded Hitler. Warburg claimed that Hitler received $10 million from Kuhn, Loeb and Company in 1929 and another $15 million in 1931 and $7 million in 1933.50

  On August 7, 1933, the New York Times published the text of a radio address by Samuel Untermeyer in which he said that Jewish bankers in New York had lent money to Germany. He claimed that Hitler’s regime was using part of this money in a “reckless, wicked campaign of propaganda to make the world anti-Semitic.” He claimed that the Germans had invaded “Great Britain, the United States and other countries where they have established newspapers, subsidized agents and otherwise are spending untold millions in spreading their infamous creed.” Untermeyer said that the German government should use the money to pay its “honest debts.” Instead, he said, the government was using the funds in an “infamous campaign” with “ever increasing intensity” to “the everlasting disgrace of the Jewish bankers who are helping to finance it.”51

  Speaking of an “infamous creed,” Cyrus I. Scofield had access to big money from among others Untermeyer and Lyman Stewart, an American executive and the cofounder of Union Oil. Stewart, a Christian philanthropist and cofounder of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, funded The Fundamentals, a twelve-volume publication that provided the foundation for the fundamentalist Christian movement. Scofield, a member of in the non-Christian Lotus Club of New York, announced his intention to create a new Christian Bible concordance. Untermeyer, a dedicated Zionist, supported his efforts and introduced Scofield to other Zionists and socialists, such as Samuel Gompers, Fiorello La Guardia, Abraham Straus, Bernard Baruch, and Jacob H. Schiff who helped fund Scofield’s research trips to Britain where he met purported Bible scholars. They also assisted in the publication and distribution of his concordance.52

  Untermeyer and other Jews believed that, if they promoted an imminent rapture or second coming with Christian churches that Christians would relinquish their moral influence on the culture, education, and politics. Their absence would allow an influx of charismatic Jewish writers, political leaders, and crypto Jews to replace them with the goal of presenting the Zionist idea that those who called themselves Jews would have to “return” to Palestine before the rapture or the second coming could occur. The Scofield Bible changed Christian theology and paved the way for a plethora of Christian Zionist churches that would hail the founding of the Israeli state, facilitated by tales of discrimination, persecution, and a deadly Holocaust.53

  In an example of psychological projection, Untermeyer further claimed that the Hitler regime, through a one-day boycott, intended to “exterminate the Jews” by warning Germans to avoid shopping in Jewish shops or otherwise “dealing with them.” He also claimed that officials were imprisoning Jewish shopkeepers and “parading them through the streets by the hundreds under guard of Nazi troops for the sole crime of being Jews.” He said that they were “ejecting them from the learned professions in which many of them had attained eminence” and that the Germans were excluding Jewish children from schools and kicking Jewish men out of labor unions. He said that the Nazis had deprived the Jews of earning a living and were locking them in “vile concentration camps, starving and torturing them, murdering and beating them without cause.” He claimed that the Germans were using every “conceivable form of torture, inhuman beyond conception, until suicide has become [the Jews’] only means of escape and all solely because they are or their remote ancestors were Jews, and all with the avowed object of exterminating them.”54

  In 1933, Emery Reves founded the Cooperation Publishing Service, which published anti-Nazi propaganda. British officials sent Reves, Churchill’s literary agent, to New York to strengthen their propaganda operation in North and South America. In 1941, Reves, an advocate of world federalism, wrote I Paid Hitler, attributing the information to Fritz Thyssen. Reves saw Thyssen as “one of the men most responsible for the rise of Hitler and for the seeking of power by the National Socialists in Germany.” In 1940, Thyssen and his family traveled to France where Vichy authorities arrested them, then deported them to Germany where they were incarcerated for the rest of the war. After the war, Thyssen disputed the authenticity of the book. It is similar in nature to Andreas Niebuhr’s Those Who Bought Hitler. Reves wrote The Anatomy of Peace in 1945 to popularize world federalism and international law. The book was endorsed by Albert Einstein and numerous other prominent figures.

  President Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934. By unanimous decision, Hitler merged the offices of chancellor and president, a move legalized by a plebiscite. Hitler renewed the enabling act in 1937, 1939, and 1942. Then, as he had promised for years, he eliminated the other political parties. Members of the SDP and the Centre Party and their deputies in the Reichstag were well aware that Hitler would use the enabling act, due to expire when another government replaced the current one, to make changes. One of the first changes was the dismissal of Hugenberg, who at the World Economic Conference made demands, assumed to be from Hitler, that may have alienated his potential ally, Britain. Hitler was given the power to govern by 82 percent of Reichstag members. Alan Bullock and others would have us believe that he used trickery and deception to end the Weimar Republic, get the enabling bill passed, then institute a reign of terror. Further, there was never any recrimination against those, such as the ninety-four Social Democrats, who voted against the enabling act. Hitler wanted the enabling law to suspend the multi-party state. On May 17, 1933, even the SPD unanimously endorsed Hitler’s foreign policy resolution and, along with the NSDAP, gave him a standing ovation.55

  Marquis W. Childs, a journalist and author of Sweden: The Middle Way (1936), reports that, while he was in Europe, he discovered that “a man named Davis, with a grudge against Standard Oil, for allegedly ruining him, conspired to form a giant combine to ship oil to Germany.” Apparently, Standard and Shell tankers had refused to transport oil to Germany. According to Childs, Sir Henri Deterding, of Royal Dutch Shell, was working with Hitler and backed him with “a huge sum of money when the NSDAP was about to fail.” Deterding supposedly supported Hitler because he hoped that Hitler would attack Russia, allowing Royal Dutch Shell to seize the Baku oil fields.56

  The Worldwide Masonic Brotherhood

  Albert Mackey’s Lexicon of Freemasonry states that “the religion of Freemasons is not Christianity.” Author Jüri Lina and other researchers verify that the Freemasons participate in occult demonism-Satanism.57 Rabbi Stephen S. Wise affirmed, “Freemasonry is a Jewish establishment, whose history, grades, official appointments, passwords, and explanations are Jewish from beginning to end.”58 Albert Pike admitted that the Jewish philosophy found in the Kabbalah is the foundation of Freemasonry.59

  In 1903, Hjalmar Schacht join
ed the Dresdner Bank where he was a deputy director from 1908 to 1915. For years, his father lived in the United States where he worked for the Morgan-controlled Equitable Trust Company on Wall Street and then in its Berlin office. Because of this, the younger Schacht spoke fluent English. In 1905, during a business trip to the United States with the bank’s board members, he met J. Pierpont Morgan and President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1908, Schacht became a Freemason when Montagu Norman, his protégé, invited him to join the order. Schacht’s father was also a Freemason.

  In October 1914, General Karl von Lumm, a former member of the board of directors of the Reichsbank and then generalkommissar for the bank in Belgium, had assigned Schacht to the staff of the banking commissioner for occupied Belgium to supervise the financing of Germany’s purchases in Belgium. Von Lumm dismissed him in July 1915 when he discovered that Schacht, in payment for that merchandise, had channeled 500 million francs through the Dresdner Bank at a significant discount. In November 1918, along with Walther Rathenau, Schacht would help found the German Democratic Party.60

  Dieter Schwarz wrote that “Freemasonry is an ideological form of hostility to National Socialism” and that it “corrupts the principles of all forms of government based on racial and Folkish considerations, enables the Jews to achieve social and political equality, and paves the way for Jewish radicalism through its support for the principles of freedom, equality, and brotherhood, the solidarity of Folks, the League of Nations and pacifism, and the rejection of all racial differences. With the help of its international connections and entanglements, Freemasonry interferes in the foreign policy relationships of all Folks, and pursues, through governmental leaders, secret foreign and world policies which escape the control of those in government.”61

  During World War I, German Freemasons created field lodges where members could meet for lodge work. Some of the top German brothers met with Freemasons in a Belgian lodge. Reportedly, Captain Adolf Hetzel met with Belgian brothers in Liège where they expressed their mutual brotherhood despite the war. Captain Hetzel apparently had greater loyalty to Freemasonry than to Germany inasmuch as he fraternized in a foreign lodge as a German officer with Germany’s enemies. The Grand Lodge did not disapprove of this obvious conflict of national interest. On March 15, 1915, German Freemasons founded a field lodge in France to fraternize with their French brothers, making their Masonic commonality more important than the people who were dying and killing in the war.62

  During World War I, Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff founded the Munich branch of the Thule Society, a völkisch, nonoccult Germanic study group, named for a mythical northern country from Greek legend. The baron and Walter Neuhaus, the society’s founder, recruited 250 Munich residents—doctors, lawyers, judges, police officials, industrialists, professors, and other respectable aristocrats—and about 1,500 people from throughout Bavaria. Many of the founders were former members of the Progressive People’s Party. According to Sebottendorff, members were more concerned about racism and preventing Jewish and communist influence than they were interested in pursuing Germanic studies. In October 1918, the Thule Society bought a local newspaper and soon changed its name to the Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer).63

  In December 1918, Sebottendorff planned to kidnap Kurt Eisner, the Bavarian prime minister and a Jew, but the plan fell through. Eisner had organized the socialist revolution that toppled the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918. During the Bavarian revolution of April 1919, officials accused Thule Society members of attempting to infiltrate the state government. On April 26, Munich’s communist government entered the Thule facility and took seven members into custody, including Neuhaus, executing them on April 30.

  The Thule Society sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), founded January 5, 1919, by Karl Harrer, a Thulist, and Anton Drexler, Gottfried Feder, and Dietrich Eckart, one of numerous parties in postwar Germany. Drexler had strong connections to right-wing workers’ organizations in Munich. By then, Sebottendorff had left the society and did not join the DAP or the NSDAP. There is no evidence that Hitler ever joined or even attended a Thule Society meeting, though many of its members were enthusiastic about him. Harrer, the editor of Völkischer Beobachter, left the party on January 5, 1920. Harrer, unlike Hitler, wished to maintain the DAP as a secret group like the Thule Society. By the end of February 1920, Hitler had transformed the party into the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).

  Dietrich Bronder, a Jew, wrote Before Hitler Came, which was probably one of the original sources of the deceptive claim that Eckart, Feder, Hans Frank, Hermann Göring, Professor Karl Haushofer, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, and Alfred Rosenberg were among numerous members of the Thule Society who became prominent in Germany. However, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in his research found that Feder, Eckart, and Rosenberg visited the group only as guests during the Bavarian revolution of 1918. Hess and Frank belonged to the society prior to their association with the NSDAP. Hitler expended little time on esoteric activities. In fact, a speech he made on September 6, 1938, shows that he disapproved of occultism. He attempted to obliterate Freemasonry in Germany and Austria.

  Rosenberg wrote numerous articles about Freemasonry and commented on it in his book, Myths of the Twentieth Century. In 1922, he wrote an article titled “The Crime of the Freemasons.” After Hitler came to power in 1933, Reich Marshal Göring began taking measures against German Freemasonry and informed the Old Prussian lodges that they must discontinue their activities in National Socialist Germany.64 The NSDAP initiated policies against Freemasonry and would not employ former Freemasons as officers or military officials or in any state or municipal capacity. While the party did not dismiss Masonic personnel, it monitored their activities. National Socialism systematically sought to have Freemasons willingly dismantle their lodges. In other instances, police prohibitions limited their activities.65

  Benito Mussolini, though an honorary Freemason, acknowledged that the worldwide brotherhood, a politically motivated entity, answerable to the Grand Orient of France, was not as benign as he had originally thought. He told the Freemasons in the Fascist Party to choose between the party and the brotherhood. In late 1925, he disbanded Freemasonry in Italy.66

  On February 13, 1923, the Grand Council of Fascists in Italy opposed “the Green Snake” and required all Fascists to sever their Freemasonry connections. Then the government imposed laws, like the Anti-Masonic Law of 1925, to destroy Freemasonry, causing many Italian Freemasons to emigrate. Grand Master Torrigiani responded by attempting to ignite the animosity of international Freemasonry against Fascist Italy. In 1925, Mussolini explained to the Italians, “Freemasonry is combated by Fascists because it is an international organization which conducts its activity in Italy on the basis of orders which are issued in foreign countries… one cannot be a good Italian and simultaneously a Freemason, because the Palazzo Giustiniani follows foreign directives.”67 With regard to its past, Italian Freemasonry made claims similar to German Freemasonry’s, contending that the Freemasons implemented Italian unification. But Freemasonry had no part in the Italian nationalistic movement of the nineteenth century.68

  Walther Rathenau was an influential advocate of Jewish assimilation in Germany. He maintained that Jews should resist Zionism and socialism and unite within the society, a course he felt would eventually eliminate anti-Semitism. In 1921, the government appointed him as minister of reconstruction, and in 1922, he became foreign minister. He insisted that Germany should satisfy the obligations that the Versailles Treaty imposed while seeking a modification of its conditions. His attitude regarding this issue enraged German nationalists. On November 13, 1923, during the nation’s hyperinflation, Hjalmar Schacht, never more than an honorary member of the NSDAP, became the special commissioner to stabilize the economy. Shortly thereafter, he became president of the Reichsbank, a post he held from 1923 to 1930.

  Schacht led the German delegation that negotiat
ed the Young Plan for settlement of reparations after World War I. Owen Young, J. Pierpont Morgan Jr. and his partner, Thomas W. Lamont, represented the United States. The meetings concluded on August 31, 1929, and the delegates officially adopted the plan at a second Hague Conference in January 1930. One of the provisions of the plan was the establishment of an international bank of settlements to manage reparations transfers, appropriately called the Bank for International Settlements.

  From May 4 to 13, 1933, Schacht, again the president of Reichsbank because he had credibility with world bankers, was in the United States visiting President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull regarding Germany’s economic situation. Roosevelt expressed his concerns about the alleged persecution of Jews but wanted to repair financial ties. Schacht told Roosevelt that Germany, out of money, might default on its loans. This disturbed Hull, since this might affect the already depressed economy. During his visit, Schacht also met with David Sarnoff, president of RCA, and other leading Jews, including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Sarnoff was Owen Young’s assistant at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.69

  Schacht knew that whatever he said would not end the Jewish boycott that was crippling Germany’s economy. Acting on behalf of the Foreign Policy Association, James McDonald contacted Schacht toward the end of his visit. He warned Schacht that France was considering invading and dividing Germany if the Germans continued their policies toward the Jews. Schacht relayed this information to Hitler after he boarded a ship to return to Germany. Hitler would dismiss Schacht from the Reichsbank presidency on January 20, 1939, and replace him with Walter Funk. The Allies later acquitted Schacht at Nuremberg.