On Financing of the III Reich by the Leading West Countries
An unusual system has developed (the so-called “absurd Weimar circle”). Germany was paing reparations to England and France, which they was paing their WW 1 debts to the United States. Then this money in the form of loans was returned to Germany at significant interest. As a result, Germany “hooked” on the hook loans. This time in the Weimar Republic was called the “Golden Twenties.” The country and its industry lived in debt and without Washington would have suffered complete bankruptcy.
These loans were also used to restore the military-industrial potential of Germany. As a result, already in 1929, German industry came out on the second place in the world (!). However, the Germans paid for loans with shares of industrial enterprises, so Anglo-American capital began to actively penetrate into Germany and occupied a significant sector in the German economy. In particular, the well-known German chemical concern IG Farbenindustri was under the control of the American Standard Oil (that is, the Rockefeller House); depending on General Electric (Morgan) were Siemens and AEG; The American corporation ITT owned up to 40% of German telephone networks. German metallurgy depended heavily on Rockefeller, under the control of General Motors was the company Opel. The American oligarchs did not ignore the banking sector, and the railways, in general, all more or less valuable German assets.
In 1930–1931 (after the beginning of the financial crisis in the USA and Western Europe) Germany stopped receiving loans, its economy began to fall rapidly. Hitler, having received the financial support of his party from American bankers, quickly came to power.
Initially, the attitude of Western politicians and the press towards the new German government was completely benevolent (despite the stated plans for communists, Jews and other “racially alien elements”, etc.). Even when Berlin refused to pay reparations (which called into question the payment of US debts by England and France), Paris and London did not make any claims to Hitler. Moreover, after visiting the United States in May 1933 by the new head of the Reichsbank, Yalmar Schacht, and meeting with American President Franklin Roosevelt and the largest financiers on Wall Street, the Americans allotted Germany new loans worth up to $ 1 billion. In June 1933, Schacht visited the UK. After meeting with Bank of England Governor Norman, England provides Germany with a $ 2 billion loan and cuts, and then cancels payments on old loans.
In 1934, Standard Oil built gasoline plants in the Third Reich, and the American companies Pratt-Whitney and Douglas transferred a number of patents to German aircraft manufacturers. In general, the level of annual American investment in Germany is increasing to $ 500 million per year. It was generous Western investments that became the basis of the “German miracle”, turning Germany into the economic leader of Europe.
Interestingly, US funding for the Hitler regime continued even during the Second World War. So, in the summer of 1942, the New York Herald Tribune made a scandal when it came out with the headline “Hitler’s Angels Have Three Million Dollars at a US Bank.” “Hitler’s angels” refers to the top leaders of the Reich Goebbels, Goering and others. They were depositors of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC), which, according to journalists, became the “main organization for laundering Nazi money.” The FBI was forced to conduct an investigation that found that US investment allowed the German Steel Trust to produce half of the cast iron produced in the Third Reich, more than a third of steel sheet, explosives, and other materials necessary for the war.
