Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Warburg & the Nazis

Archive/File: places/germany/nuremberg schacht.001
Last-Modified: 1994/03/05

   "For Hjalmar Schacht and other apologists for Hitler, the
   Kristallnacht marked a bitter end to rationalization. For years
   Schacht had proclaimed that the disabilities imposed upon the Jews
   were for their own benefit. After the passage of the Nuremberg
   Laws, Schacht told President Roosevelt's personal emissary: 'I
   called Mr. Warburg [a leading Jewish banker] in to see me the other
   day and explained to him the protection Germany now guarantees to
   Jews; they can engage in their businesses from now on and will have
   proper governmental protection. I told Mr. Warburg to have his
   people stop making a noise and accept this protection.' (NCA, EC
   450, Report of Dodd-Schacht-Fuller Conference.)

   Such statements now having been given the lie, Schacht, who unlike
   so many others retained at least a measure of integrity, told
   Reichsbank personnel at a Christmas party: 'The deliberate burning
   of Jewish synagogues, the destruction and looting of Jewish
   businesses, and the ill-treatment of Jewish citizens was such a
   wanton and outrageous undertaking as to make every decent German
   blush with shame.' On another occasion, he remarked to a woman
   dinner companion: 'My dear lady, we have fallen into the hands of
   criminals. How could I have known this?'(IMT, vol. 12, p. 562)" 
   (Conot, 175)

This text clearly suggests that Mr.  Warburg had attempted to use his
perceived financial influence upon the Nazi government to assist
German Jews.  Alas, little mention of the gentleman exists in
Conot, who, however, sheds further light on possible reasons why
Warburg and others may have provided investment funds for the German
government*:

   "As long as Schacht had been economics minister, his policy of
   keeping communications open had paid off to the extent of even
   convincing Jewish bankers to continue participation in the floating
   of Reich bonds. But now the break was complete. So Schact, whose
   Reichsbank was desperately short of funds, became engaged in an
   attempt to trade Jewish emigres for money.

   In December 1938, he met George Rublee, the representative of the
   Jewish American Joint Distribution Committee, in London. Schacht
   proposed, and Rublee tentatively agreed, that 150,000 Jewish men in
   the work force should each be provided with an immigration loan of
   ten thousand marks raised by American and British Jews -- a total
   of 1.5 billion marks. A considerable part of this loan would be
   spent in Germany, and so provide the government with foreign
   exchange. Germany would sequester the property of the departing
   Jews and repay the loan over a period of twnety-five to thirty
   years from the proceeds." (Ibid., 175-176)

Conot mentions the family in conjunction with von Papen:

   "Descended from landowning gentry, Papen had at one time been a
   professional army officer, and was a cousin of the famed
   Jewish-Gentile, German-American Warburg bankers." (Ibid., 113)

                           Work Cited

   Conot, Robert E.  Justice at Nuremberg.  New York: Harper & Row,
   1983

   Abbreviations:

   IMT. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals;
   the published transcipts of the trial. 

   NCA. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggession, the 10-volume compendium of the
   prosecution's agruments.

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