Who set Hitler against Stalin?. Nikolay Starikov
to the Nazi, but for having practiced slave work at his factories, exploiting innocent people brought by force from Eastern Europe. The industrial magnate Kirdorf from the Ruhr region went so far as to pay the tithe of five Pfennigs to the NSDAP from every ton of coal sold. This amounted to a stunning six million Deutschemarks per year. Some money! But he was never charged or tried for that. If that same coal had been mined by concentration camp prisoners who had been dying by thousands from sheer emaciation, the “sponsor” would certainly have been punished. Once there are no exploited prisoners, there’s no charge – that’s how it was.
Indeed, no one was brought to book for paying Hitler! And not because those industrialists were thought to be beyond the reach of law, but because their donations were grossly dwarfed by the expenses of Hitler’s party. Their help was of importance, but not of key importance, for even in the roaring 1930-ies, the Golden Age of Hitler and his party, the Nazi’s expenses did not tally with their income!
According to some estimations, the expenses of the NSDAP spent on political propaganda, the wages of the storm troops, and the endless election campaigns must have totalled from 70 to 90 million Deutschemarks!
And now hear them talking about donations of one to three million Deutschemarks! Even the six million from the coal industry is quite disproportionate to what they really spent. Adding party membership fees and miscellaneous donations by German citizens, we still end up with 30 to 40 million Deutschemarks unaccounted-for. Is this possible that the industrialists might be lying to conceal their real contribution to Hitler’s budget? Hardly so. Who was it then, who gave him those millions? He couldn’t have made them out of nothing, could he?
This question still remains without an acceptable reply. Precisely speaking, there have been replies readily given by some, but only to lull the readers out of asking unwanted questions. The fact that almost 90 % of the NSDAP financial documents vanished during the last days of the party may give some colour to this matter. In the spring of 1945 the Nazi made haste to destroy evidence. Only the archives of the Gestapo and the correspondence between the top commanders of the SS and the party leadership (for example, between Kaltenbrunner and Bormann) survived to be seized by the winners in the war. Still, the surviving documents sufficed to confine many leaders and top officials of the Third Reich either to the hangman or to decades behind bars. Why on earth had the Nazi not taken care of those documents as well? The answer is readily given – they were too occupied with destroying their financial history. It was that which they had been making every effort to get rid of in the first place. And only after that, they had proceeded to burn the less “grave” papers, like mass execution and deportation warrants, in order of significance. But why, among the smoking ruins of Berlin and Munich and on the brink of total annihilation, why should anyone take such pains to prevent the world from knowing the source of money used by the Führer to come to his power? What difference would it make to Göring or Himmler if everyone knew the “heroes” of the financial backstage dealings? They would stand trial in any case, and be condemned to at least many years in prison. Why would they think of burning folders with bills and receipts instead of those with warrants and reports of executions?
Göring and Himmler had no reason to do that whatsoever. Their crimes were too grave to bother about petty things like that. But there were those smaller fry in the Nazi hierarchy who had plans to live on. One example is the unchallenged treasurer of the NSDAP and SS Obergruppenführer Franz Xavier Schwarz. It was he who destroyed the bulk of the party’s financial documents in the Munich “brown house”. Herr Schwarz was privy to all the monetary transactions of the party, and of course its financing. Hitler himself would often remonstrate that Schwarz wouldn’t give him a Pfennig, with “his arse glued to the gold chests”, and that he (Hitler) would sooner get something “begging on the church porch”. So raging and fuming with indignation, Hitler still never thought of firing or even punishing Schwarz. Because Schwarz was exactly what a Minister of Finance is supposed to be.
Now why did Xavier Schwarz burn the financial documents? And still more interestingly, why didn’t he burn all the documents, but left some untouched? That was all because he had plans for further life, to fulfil which he must make certain steps. He must destroy all the compromising materials and leave only the most harmless ones. On that condition only could he hope to be spared by those who had his life and well-being in their hands.
But who were they? German industrialists like the Krupps and the Borsigs? Of course not. They were those who defeated the Nazi Germany – the leaders of the Antihitlerite nations. Which occupation zone did the Nazi bigwigs try so desperately to get into after the defeat? Not hard to guess – that controlled by the United States and the United Kingdom. So it happened that Franz Xavier Schwarz was arrested in Munich by the allied forces who had entered the city not long after he had destroyed everything “unfit” in his archive. It is those remaining documents that have enabled latter-day historians to judge that Hitler was financed by German industrialists.
Here comes the miraculous conclusion: once the 10 % of the documents that have actually been preserved state that financing was made by German capitalists, the lost 90 % must have been to the same effect! This kind of inference was drawn by both Western and Soviet historians and scholars, and has never changed up to the present day. The layman can’t see beyond this conclusion to notice the logical fallacy. But why would one burn documents, saving some of them, if the preserved part could later be used to restore the content of the destroyed ones? It is evident that the destroyed documents must be radically different from those preserved. To destroy that which no scholar will ever find – that is logical enough! To destroy that which would compromise the leadership of the victorious parties in the war – their secret services and intelligence bureaus, and to preserve the sort of things Schwarz did – materials bearing on donations from Krupp, Borsig and others of the kind – those magnates who could now do nothing to alter the situation of the NSDAP ex-treasurer.
What happened next to Franz Xavier Schwarz may serve to confirm our conclusions. Having obliterated the papers which could cast a shade on the winners, he was given an almost “baby” term, when considering his important position in the NSDAP and the SS – only two years’ imprisonment. Already in 1947, the ex-treasurer walked free from jail. Everything was as agreed – at least, that’s what he must have thought. Schwarz says his say at the trial, silencing what should be silenced, gets his two years and then goes at large. The one thing he forgot was that “the only good witness is a dead witness”. So right out from jail, Schwarz died – that same year. When in prison, he had been safe and sound.
The people who sponsored Hitler ad his party have been named quite often. But these names are either the same old “Krupps and Borsigs” or peripheral figures. When Hitler was tried for the Beer Putsch, it was elicited that he had received money for the party from the director of the Bavarian Industrial Union, privy councillor Aust, the Union’s lawyer Doctor Kulo, and so on.
These names can go on and on, but they won’t tell us anything. Their donations are too ridiculous to believe that they could have helped Hitler to seize the top power in Germany. But why should history books be so persistent in their moving tales of how Hitler was supported by burghers? One of those tales you will find in nearly all such books narrates about the donations made to the NSDAP by one Helena Bechstein, the wife of the owner of a large piano factory. That old woman, as the story goes, felt a mother-like affection for Adolf who was an orphan. When later he was spending time in prison, she would even call herself his mother to gain a visit. A similar generosity was evinced by a Frau von Seidlitz – according to Hitler’s biographers, she gave all her money to the Nazi party[28]. Does it mean that those overactive old ladies should have been placed into the prisoner’s box? Do we call narrow-minded middle-class dames past their prime responsible for the millions killed by the Nazi?
Those who are so colourful in their descriptions of those old ladies’ affections and sympathies are either totally ignorant of how political parties are financed, or, quite on the opposite, too expert in that field. It is clear that the donations extended by a few tender-hearted women are not enough to support a whole party, not to say storm troops. But there must have been some persons who did give the needed sums to the Nazi, for the storm troops grew by leaps and bounds! And every trooper was fully provided for by the party. Every member