Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: The Hossbach Meeting (Background)
Summary:
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project (CANADA)
Keywords: Hossbach,Goering,Schacht
X-Remember: https://nizkor.org/
Archive/File: people/g/goering.hermann/hossbach.001
Last-Modified: 1994/03/05
“… the economic boycott against Germany continued. [Ed. note:
because of the persecution of the Jews. knm] The party’s Bonzen
(big shots) and Ausland (foreign) organization kept on spending
money to import luxury goods and support Nazi activities in other
countries. When Schacht, who had never been a party member, was
unable to prevail against the Nazi nabobs, he complained to Hitler
that continuance of the pattern would lead to bankruptcy and the
inability to obtain strategic materials. Hitler thereupon, in early
1936, appointed Goering as comptroller of foreign exchange, on the
presumption that Goering had the clout to make the rules stick.
“Furthermore, the Fu”hrer a few days later named Goering as
commissioner of the first Four Year Plan, designed to achieve
autorchy[?]. Gasoline, rubber, and other products were to be produced
synthetically so as to make Germany independent of foreign sources.
[…]
“Predictably, Goering, rather than acting as a planner and
coordinator, set about to establish himself as economic czar.
Beneath him a new bureaucracy sprang up. The Hermann Goering Works,
embracing coal and iron mines, steel mills, and various other
enterprises, developed into Goering’s personal industrial empire.
Providing him with a new source of graft, it transformed him into
one of Germany’s richest men.
“In his drive to increase production, Goering ignored costs, and the
Germany [sic] economy began to stagger under his inefficiencies.
The iron he wrested from the low-grade ores of the Salzgitter mine
in Brunswick cost twice as much as imported iron. The manpower he
siphoned off from the now fully employed work force could have been
used far better to produce goods for export. Instead of
contributing to the solution of the trade problem, he intensified
it. ‘We have no butter, comrades,’ he flamboyantly told a mass
rally in Hamburg. ‘But I ask you — would you rather have butter or
guns? Shall we bring in lard or iron ore? I tell you, preparedness
makes us powerful. Butter only makes us fat!’ Slapping his paunch,
he drew a roar of laughter and support. (Mosley, Leonard. The Reich
Marshall. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1974, 204)
“Goering’s ‘guns or butter’ comment achieved worldwide renown, but
did not impress Schacht. Schacht considered Goering a cross between
an economic ignoramus and mad hatter. ‘I have never taken orders
from Goering and I never would,’ he declared during an
interrogation. ‘Goering didn’t like me, and I hated him.’
“In April 1937, Schacht told Goering that, unless various schemes
under the Four Year Plan were cut back and the pace of rearmament
curtailed, the economy would be out of control by the end of the
year. When, by August, he had had no satisfactory response, he
refused to associate himself further with what he perceived as a
portending economic crisis, and submitted his resignation to
Hitler. On August 11, Schacht met with Hitler and argued that it
was impossible to forge cannon out of air and paper money.
“Though Hitler refused to be dissuaded from his intent to continue
with the rapid buildup of the armed forces, he took up Schacht’s
argument and twisted it to his own purpose. On November 5, shortly
after Schacht’s decision to resign because irrevocable, Hitler
called Goering, Minister of War Werner von Blomberg, Foreign
Minister Constantin von Neurath, and the army and Navy chiefs,
General Werner von Fritsch and Admiral Erich Raeder to the Reich
Chancellery to explain to them his views on Germany’s economic
condition and foreign relations. The notes of the meeting were kept
by Hitler’s adjutant, Colonel Friedrich Hossbach. They composed,
Sidney Alderman told the court, ‘one of the most striking and
revealing of all the captured documents.’ (IMT, vol. 2, 262)
“Except for Goering, all the men present at what came to be known as
the Hossbach Meeting were from the Nationalist camp, and Hitler’s
primary intent was to wean them away from Schacht’s gradualist
conception of rearmament. But, carried away and ranging, as was his
wont, from the Creation to the Apocalypse, he conducted a
four-and-a-half-hour monologue during which he presented his
blueprint for aggression.” (Conot, 134-136)
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.
