The Nuremberg Interviews (40 page)

“You must understand that the meaning of the word ‘unemployed’ in Germany is different than in America. In America, ‘unemployed’ means that a man may be unable to obtain work in his profession. In Germany it means he can’t get work in any profession. In Thuringia there were 1.7
million people, of whom 500,000 men were unemployed in 1932 before Hitler came to power. In the whole of Germany there were 8 million unemployed and 7 million half-time workers.

“America is so big that it cries for work. In Germany, if you tried to find work, you couldn’t. In America it was a strange economy which caused unemployment. German unemployment was due to the boycott of German goods. Not an official boycott. The world market refused to accept German goods. France, England, and America refused. Germany had no colonies and she had to export manufactured goods for grain. We had nothing to speak of. We managed to live during the war by rations. We all lived on a strict ration — even ministers in the government like myself — and we lived on things from the conquered countries, including Africa and Russia.”

I noted that, as I understood it, for about fourteen years Sauckel was fairly well off. “I’ve always been a worker, with my ten children. I never became a rich man in my office. I lived on property owned by the state. I had no bank account. I possessed nothing, not even a garden.”

I asked Sauckel what he thought of the evidence brought up in court in the last weeks about Goering and his art plundering. “Goering took these things for art galleries. Goering comes from a great family. I didn’t know Goering and don’t know his habits. If he took things for his own benefit, the German people will condemn him.

“The 5 million foreign laborers got the same treatment as Germans. You must differentiate between Himmler’s treatment and my treatment of foreign labor. There were about 2 million voluntary workers; the other 3 million came to Germany by law.” I inquired what he meant by “by law.” “Well, the French had a government, for instance, and they made these people come to Germany.” I asked whether in his opinion it was a good law. “If you were a German, and upon the execution of that law depended the welfare of a nation, wouldn’t you do the same? We fought against Russia, and Russia is doing the same thing now. I know it from many sources.” I said that he had been in prison and solitary confinement for a long while — since the war ended. How did he know or feel so sure of these things? “I know.” I said that even if Russia were doing the same thing now, which I didn’t know about myself, would that make it right? “No. But if we had not had foreign labor we would have had to capitulate to the Russians and the whole of Europe would be Sovietized.”

I said I thought that Germany declared war on Russia. “Yes. But the psychology we were all under was that Russia had tremendous armies waiting to attack us, and it was only a question of who would strike first. Russia did the same thing with its attack on Bessarabia in 1940–41, and in Finland. And they took slave labor from those countries. And also many millions of Chinese laborers.” I asked if it was forced labor. “That I don’t know.”

Hjalmar Schacht
1877–1970

Hjalmar Schacht was president of the Reichsbank until 1939 and minister without portfolio until January 1943. Tried by the Nuremberg tribunal, he was found not guilty.

I saw Hjalmar Schacht again today. He was the same as ever — the hail-fellow-well-met, indignant at his being accused as a war criminal. He repeated the word “Frightful!” several times in the course of the interview, and reiterated that this is his tenth month in Allied prison and that before that he spent ten months in prison on orders of Hitler.

He spoke as if he were Hitler’s archenemy, yet he was minister of economics and president of the Reichsbank for at least five or six years of Hitler’s regime, and remained minister without portfolio until 1943. He explained this by saying that Hitler would not relieve him of that title. I asked him whether he requested to be relieved and he said, “Repeatedly, but Hitler wouldn’t allow it. All I did was live on my little farm outside Berlin. Hitler retained me as minister without portfolio because of my international reputation and the prestige of my name abroad.”

Schacht told me again of his meeting Roosevelt in 1934 and 1935, and how much he admired our president. For probably the fourth time Schacht told me that Roosevelt slapped his thigh, saying, “I appreciate your frankness in this meeting.” At that time when he was in Washington, Schacht said, “at great personal risk I met with influential Jews and
addressed them.” Just what he said he did not mention, but he emphasized that it was “a risky business” for him to address Jews because of the nature of the Nazi government.

Schacht went on to expatiate on how he had met most of our American presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and others. He regretted to say that he had never met Harding. He characterized Herbert Hoover as being “an honest man but a little cold and difficult to talk to because Hoover was socially shy. Coolidge was very nice.” I asked Schacht whether he knew the late Ambassador Dodd, whose posthumous diary I had read some time ago. Schacht replied, “Oh, yes, indeed. Dodd died soon after he left Germany. Do you know perchance of what he died? Did he by any chance have a mental illness? Because Dodd, though undoubtedly an honest man, behaved queerly in Germany and never drew the right conclusions from what he saw. Besides, his children, William and Martha Dodd, were quite bad. They were full of Communist ideas.” Schacht went on to state with a slight smile that Martha Dodd was constantly in the company of Louis Ferdinand, the son of the ex–crown prince of Germany. Schacht said that this companionship gave rise to some “ugly rumors.” “Besides,” said Schacht, “Ambassador Dodd’s diary is questionable because it was issued after his death by his radical children.”

Schacht repeated his indignation “that a man who has never been associated with anything but high finance for forty years, and who was never a soldier and never did anything to hurt anyone, should be locked up and tried as a common war criminal.” Again he repeated that he did nothing but live on his farm since 1939, and besides, he was a party to the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.

It becomes obvious in talking to Schacht that he is attempting to devise two distinctly paradoxical pictures of himself: the one, that he was a harmless old man who had been inactive since 1939; the other, a picture of a great national German patriot who worked ceaselessly for Hitler’s downfall and frustration, and was actively a participant in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. Clinically, it is obvious that Schacht has tremendous energy and vitality for a man of his years.

Regarding the Jewish question, Schacht said again that he never subscribed to race persecution. Of course, during his time as economics minister and Reichsbank president, from 1933 to 1938, Jews “were not hurt in any way economically or financially.” Schacht said that he could not hold
himself responsible for any Jewish persecution, looting, or whatever occurred during those years, because it was not within his province or jurisdiction. He repeated that he had many Jewish friends that he helped in one way or another, mostly by getting them out of Germany. “The Jewish problem was caused by several things. Of course, Hitler was always anti-Semitic, but immediately prior to his coming to power, many Jews were involved in large scandals of a financial nature in Germany. Moreover, many Jews were coming from the East to settle in Germany and doing business. Besides, there were so many Jews who were Communists.”

Schacht said that he once told one of his assistants, a Jew, to take a message to the Central Union of Jews in Germany, which was the leading Jewish organization within Germany.
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The message stated that the Central Union should adopt a resolution against Jews being Communists, and that they should forswear any connection with Communism. The man returned in a few days and said that he was sorry but the Central Union refused to consider action on Schacht’s recommendation. “Well,” said Schacht, “I said then that someday they would regret it.” Schacht did not specify when this purported incident took place.

I remarked that it seemed to me a violation of civil liberties and individual rights for an organization to forbid its members freedom of political thought and that therefore I thought that Schacht’s recommendation to the Central Union of Jews was rather fascistic. Schacht bridled at this and said that of course he believed in freedom of political belief as well as freedom of religion. He said that he did not, however, believe in Communism and that furthermore, all he was trying to do was to save the Jews from being found identified with Communism. As the interview ended, Schacht said, “One thing I fear, that you Americans will do the same thing that you did after the last war. I mean that you will pull out of here and leave Europe, then Russia will have her way. Private enterprise and individual rights will be lost just as much as under a Nazi government. Frightful!”

Schacht was cordial and as usual somewhat grandiose in his manner when I entered his cell this evening. He expresses confidence in his acquittal but is bitter against the “malevolent prosecution,” as he calls it. His whole attitude of “These other criminals belong in the dock but not me” is unchanged and as adamant as ever.

Schacht said he would like to tell me the “whole story” of his connections and activities with the Nazi government. His speech was punctuated with the frequent “And now, Dr. Goldensohn, where is the crime?” — followed by a scornful, high-pitched laugh.

“I helped finance armaments,” he began, “intending to bring them to a level where Germany would be on an equal footing with her neighbors, from 1934 to 1937. My reason for doing so was that the other powers would not disarm — I mean the twenty-seven powers who signed the Versailles Treaty. On the contrary, Czechoslovakia armed to the teeth although it was but a newly created state. Since I wanted Germany to be on an equal footing, either these other countries had to disarm or we had to rearm. The German government told these other countries that in March 1935.”

I said that I had heard from other Germans that without Schacht’s financial genius in putting Germany on a sound financial footing, Nazism would not have been possible. I asked Schacht what his opinion about that view might be. “Everyone can be replaced. The year after I stopped all financing, Hitler spent five and a quarter billion marks more than during the last year when I helped him. Now, who procured that five and a quarter billion marks? The financial genius was not operating. Hitler got the money by ruthless tactics and depriving people. I did my financing by maintaining the stability of currency value and without hurting economic life in any way. Hitler took money from sources which I would never have touched — but he got the money.”

I asked Schacht whether he thought, therefore, that anyone could have done what he accomplished from 1934 to 1937. “Anyone. The only honor I claimed was that Hitler would have done it unreasonably and I did it reasonably. You see, the prosecution tries to accuse me, and I laugh at all that, and then when I found that Hitler wanted to arm more than was needed to get on an equal footing with other nations, I withdrew my credit to the Reich, would not furnish one penny more, and that led to my dismissal. The note circulation when I left my post was eight billion, and it is now seventy billion.” I asked him what the significance of that was and he said at once, “Inflation. Hitler abused the Reichsbank. Funk succeeded me and he could not act individually as I could and did. The Reichsbank could give or deny credit under the rules at its own discretion while I was president of it. The very day I left the Reichsbank, Hitler issued a law which obliged the Reichsbank to give any credit he would
ask for. It was under that law that Funk took office. Perhaps in that sense Funk was not responsible, but in another sense, of course, he was responsible because he was a willing tool. If he went so far as to take the post, he was willing to obey.”

I said I had heard that one of the reasons for his leaving the Reichsbank was a personal struggle for power between himself and Goering. Schacht emphatically denied this. “I know that is said and I know that criminal Goering tries to say that repeatedly. The truth is that my difficulties with Goering were on quite another basis. From August 1934, I was minister of economics in addition to being president of the Reichsbank. I used the minister position to object and oppose any exaggerated rearmament. Hitler disliked that very much, and so he elaborated the so-called Four Year Plan and put Goering in charge of it, and Goering was, of course, in favor of tremendously exaggerated rearmament. That was in the fall of 1936. These diverging tendencies of his and mine brought us into permanent conflict with each other, in which, of course, Goering held the stronger position because he was backed by Hitler and I wasn’t. In the fall of 1937 I resigned as minister of economics. I was dismissed from the Reichsbank in January 1939.