Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (18 page)

When Hitler came to power in March 1933, simultaneously with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington, a private "emissary" was sent from Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. to Hanfstaengl in Berlin, with a message to the effect that as it appeared Hitler would soon achieve power in Germany, Roosevelt hoped, in view of their long acquaintance, that Putzi would do his best to prevent any rashness and hot-headedness. "Think of your piano playing and try and use the soft pedal if things get too loud," was FDR's message.
"If
things start

getting awkward please get in touch with our ambassador at once.8

Hanfstaengl kept in close touch with the American Ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd

— apparently much to his disgust, because Putzi's recorded comments on Dodd are distinctly unflattering:

In many ways, he [Dodd] was an unsatisfactory representative. He was a
modest little Southern history professor, who ran his embassy on a shoestring
and was probably trying to save money out of his pay. At a time when it needed
a robust millionaire to compete with the flamboyance of the Nazis, he teetered
around self-effacingly as if he were still on his college campus. His mind and

his prejudices were small.
9

In point of fact Ambassador Dodd pointedly tried to decline Roosevelt's Ambassadorial appointment. Dodd had no inheritance and preferred to live on his State Department pay rather than political spoils; unlike the politician Dodd was particular from whom he received money. In any event, Dodd commented equally harshly on Putzi, "
...
he gave money to Hitler in 1923, helped him write
Mein Kampf,
and was in every way familiar with Hitler's motives ...."

Was Hanfstaengl an agent for the Liberal Establishment in the U.S.? We can probably rule out this possibility because, according to Ladislas Farago, it was Putzi who blew the whistle on top-level British penetration of the Hitler command. Farago reports that Baron William S. de Ropp had penetrated the highest Nazi echelons in pre-World War II days and Hitler used de Ropp
"...
as his confidental consultant about British affairs.10
De Ropp was suspected as being a double agent only by Putzi. According to Farago:
The only person ... who ever suspected him of such duplicity and cautioned the
Fuehrer about him was the erratic Putzt Hanfstaengl, the Harvard educated
chief of Hitler's office dealing with the foreign press.

As Farago notes, "Bill de Ropp was playing the game In both camps — a double agent at

the very top."11 Putzi was equally diligent in warning his friends, the Hermann Goerings,

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CHAPTER EIGHT: Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

about potential spies in

their
camp. Witness the following extract from Putzi's memoirs, in which he points the accusing finger of espionage at the Goerings' gardener..

"Herman," I said one day, "I will bet any money that fellow Greinz is a police
spy." "Now really, Putzi," Karin [Mrs. Herman Goertng] broke in, "he's such a
nice fellow and he's a wonderful gardener." "He's doing exactly what a spy

ought to do," I told her, "he has made himself indispensable."
12

By 1941 Putzi was out of favor with Hitler and the Nazis, fled Germany, and was interned in a Canadian prisoner of war camp. With Germany and the United States now at war Putzi re-calculated the odds and concluded,
"Now
I knew for certain that Germany would be defeated."
13 Putzi's release from the POW camp came with the personal intervention of old

friend President Roosevelt:

One day a correspondent of the Hearst press named Kehoe obtained
permission to visit Fort Hens. I managed to have a few words with him in a
corner. "I know your boss well," I told him. "Will you do me a small service?"

Fortunately he recognized my name.

I gave him a letter, which he slipped into his pocket. It was addressed to the
American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. A few days later it was on the desk
of my Harvard Club friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In it I offered to act as

a political and psychological warfare adviser in the war against Germany.
14

The response and offer to "work" for the American side was accepted. Putzi was installed in comfortable surroundings with his son, U.S. Army Sergeant Egon Hanfstaengl, also there as a personal aide. In 1944, under pressure of a Republican threat to blow the whistle on Roosevelt's favoritism for a former Nazi, Egon was shipped out to New Guinea and Putzi hustled off to England, where the British promptly interned him for the duration of the war, Roosevelt or no Roosevelt,

Putzi's Role in the Reichstag Fire

Putzi's friendships and political manipulations may or may not be of any great consequence, but his role in the Reichstag fire is significant. The firing of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933 is one of the key events of modern times. The fire was used by Adolf Hitler to claim imminent Communist revolution, suspend constitutional rights, and seize totalitarian power.

From that point on there was no turning back for Germany; the world was set upon the course to World War II.

At the time the firing of the Reichstag was blamed on the Communists, but there is little question in historical perspective that the fire was deliberately set by the Nazis to provide an excuse to seize political power. Fritz Thyssen commented in the post-war Dustbin interrogations:

When the Reichstag was burned, everyone was sure it had been done by the

communists. I later learned in Switzerland that it was all a lie.
15

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CHAPTER EIGHT: Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

Schacht states quite emphatically:

Nowadays it would be quite clear that this action could not be fastened on the
Communist Party. To what extent individual National Socialists co-operated in
the planning and execution of the deed will be difficult to establish, but in view
of all that has been revealed in the meantime, the fact must be accepted that
Goebbels and Goering each played a leading part, the one in planning, the

other in carrying out the plan.
16

The Reichstag fire was deliberately set, probably utilizing a flammable liquid, by a group of experts. This is where Putzi Hanfstaengl comes into the picture. The key question is how did this group, bent on arson, gain access to the Reichstag to do the job? After 8 p.m. only one door in the main building was unlocked and this door was guarded. Just before 9 p.m. a tour of the building by watchmen indicated all was well; no flammable liquids were noticed and nothing was out of the ordinary in the Sessions Chamber where the fire started. Apparently no one could have gained access to the Reichstag building after 9 p.m., and no one was seen to enter or leave between 9 p.m. and the start of the fire.

There was only one way a group with flammable materials could have entered the Reichstag

— through a tunnel that ran between the Reichstag and the Palace of the Reichstag President. Hermann Goering was president of the Reichstag and lived in the Palace, and numerous S.A. and S.S. men were known to be in the Palace. In the words of one author:
The use of the underground passage, with all its complications, was possible
only to National-Socialists, the advance and escape of the incendiary gang was
feasible only with the connivance of highly-placed employees of the Reichstag.

Every clue, every probability points damningly in one direction, to the
conclusion that the burning of the Reichstag was the work of

National-Socialists.
17

How does Putzi Hanfstaengl fit into this picture of arson and political intrigue?

Putzi — by his own admission — was in the Palace room at the other end of the tunnel leading to the Reichstag. And according to
The Reichstag Fire Trial,
Putzi Hanfstaengl was actually in the Palace itself during the fire:

propaganda apparatus stood ready, and the leaders of the Storm Troopers
were in their places. With the official bulletins planned in advance, the orders
of arrest prepared, Karwahne, Frey and Kroyer waiting patiently in their cafe,
the preparations were complete, the scheme almost perfect.
18

Dimitrov also asserts that:

The National-Socialist leaders, Hitler, Goering and Goebbels, together with the
high National-Socialist officials, Daluege, Hanfstaengl and Albrecht, happened
to be present in Berlin on the day of the fire, despite that the election campaign
was at its highest pitch throughout Germany, six days before the poll. Goering
and Goebbels, under oath, furnished contradictory explanations for their

"fortuitous" presence in Berlin with Hitler on that day. The National-Socialist
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CHAPTER EIGHT: Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

Hanfstaengl, as Goering's "guest," was present in the Palace of the Reichstag
President, immediately adjacent to the Reichstag, at the time when the .fire
broke out, although his "host" was not there at that time.
19

According to Nazi Kurt Ludecke, there once existed a document signed by S.A. Leader Karl Ernst — who supposedly set the fire and was later murdered by fellow Nazis — which implicated Goering, Goebbels, and Hanfstaengl in the conspiracy.

Roosevelt's New Deal and Hitler's New Order

Hjalmar Schacht challenged his post-war Nuremburg interrogators with the observation that Hitler's New Order program was the same as Roosevelt's New Deal program in the United States. The interrogators understandably snorted and rejected the observation. However, a little research suggests that not only are the two programs quite similar in content, but that Germans had no trouble in observing the similarities. There is in the Roosevelt Library a

small book presented to FDR by Dr. Helmut Magers in December 1933.20 On the flyleaf of

this presentation copy
is written the inscription,

To the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in profound
admiration of his conception of a new economic order and with devotion for his
personality. The author, Baden, Germany, November 9, 1933.

FDR's reply to this admiration for his new economic order was as follows:
21

(Washington) December 19, 1933

My dear Dr. Magers: I want to send you my thanks for the copy of your little
book about me and the "New Deal." Though, as you know, I went to school in
Germany and could speak German with considerable fluency at one time, I am
reading your book not only with great interest but because it will help my
German.

Very sincerely yours,

The New Deal or the
"
new economic order" was not a creature of classical liberalism. It was a creature of corporate socialism. Big business as reflected in Wall Street strived for a state order in which they could control industry and eliminate competition, and this was the heart of FDR's New Deal. General Electric, for example, is prominent in both Nazi Germany and the New Deal. German General Electric was a prominent financier of Hitler and the Nazi Party, and A.E.G. also financed Hitler both directly and indirectly through Osram.

International General Electric in New York was a major participant in the ownership and direction of both A.E.G. and Osram. Gerard Swope, Owen Young, and A. Baldwin of General Electric in the United States were directors of A.E.G. However, the story does not stop at General Electric and financing of Hitler in 1933.

In a previous book,
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,
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CHAPTER EIGHT: Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

were also at 120 Broadway. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was working in Wall Street, his address was also 120 Broadway. In fact, Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, the FDR

Foundation, was located at 120 Broadway. The prominent financial backer of an early Roosevelt Wall Street venture from 120 Broadway was Gerard Swope of General Electric.

And it was "Swope's Plan" that became Roosevelt's New Deal — the fascist plan that Herbert Hoover was unwilling to foist on the United States. In brief, both Hitler's New Order and Roosevelt's New Deal were backed by the same industrialists and in content were quite similar —
i.e.,
they were both plans for a corporate state.

There were then both corporate and individual bridges between FDR,s America and Hitler's Germany. The first bridge was the American I.G. Farben, American affiliate of I.G. Farben, the largest German corporation. On the board of American I.G. sat Paul Warburg, of the Bank of Manhattan and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The second bridge was between International General' Electric, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric Company and its partly owned affiliate in Germany, A.E.G. Gerard Swope, who formulated FDR's New Deal, was chairman of I.G.E. and on the board of A.E.G. The third "bridge" was between Standard Oil of New Jersey and Vacuum Oil and its wholly owned German subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanisehe Gesellschaft. The chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey was Walter Teagle, of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was a trustee of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and appointed by FDR to a key administrative post in the National Recovery Administration.