The president of the Reichsbank under Hitler , left free by various courts,has written a book indicating that his judges may have been hasty
About a year ago, agroup of Americans dining in a fashion-able German res-taurant were sur-
prised to see most ofthe waiters deserttheir assigned tables to crowd around awell- dressed, bespectacled, white-haired man who had just arrived. Afterthe bowing and scraping had subsided,the Americans found out that the mag-netic customer was Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht . The waiters'awed response to him was a tribute to a
48
long series of most remarkable achieve-
ments.
Hjalmar Schacht 's technical geniusin financial matters had won him animportant post in Hitler 's first Cabinet.From 1934 to 1937, he had been Min ister of National Economy, and from1933 to 1939, president of the Reichs bank , the institution which financedthe secret rearmament of Germany andwhich later accumulated a hoard ofgold teeth from the mouths of concen-tration- camp victims. At the Nürn berg war- crimes trial Schacht was oneof the most prominent defendants, buthis skillful lawyers, who made much ofhis alleged participation in the July 20,1944, plot against Hitler , won him totalclearance. Later several de- Nazifica-
tion courts failed to lock up Schacht ,and there is one more trial pending, forwhich hearings have not yet been held.Meanwhile, the apparently indestructi-ble financier has participated in somehigh- level, though unofficial, economicconferences with western German offi-cials. Most important of all, he haswritten a book, Settling an Accountwith Hitler ( Abrechnung mit Hitler ),which, in a low- priced edition, has runto three hundred thousand copies, andbecome one of the most startling Ger man postwar best- sellers. Roundingout the roster of Schacht 's distinctionsis the fact that he spent the last monthsof the war in a Nazi concentrationcamp, which helped considerably toassure his several acquittals. In hisbook, Schacht refers to the Flossen bürg " extermination" camp; but healso mentions the fact that he had a
( 51)
radio in his barracks, a conveniencethat was not available to most other in-mates.
As literature, Schacht 's book is negli-gible. As a historical record, it is one ofthose volumes which, for the past hun-dred years, have persuaded Germans that every country in the world haschronically been out of step excepttheir own.
In spite of these shortcomings, I rec-ommend the book as an indispensableguide to postwar Germany , a uniqueBaedeker for any American travelerwho hopes to understand the German scene- that political landscape of mur-derous precipices carefully hidden bysmoke screens of respectability andKultur . The book provides interestingevidence of the resilience of those Ger man nationalists who have flourishedduring every régime since that of Wil helm I , through the Weimar Republic ,the Hitler dictatorship, the war( untilit began to be lost), and the interreg-num of the Allied Occupation. Settlingan Account with Hitler is as importanta book as the seventy- two- year- old fi-nancier is a man. Both are of vitalsignificance as symbols. If you under-stand Schacht 's book and Schacht 'smind, you know that the German dan-ger has not been averted by the suicideof Hitler . The book repudiates Hitler .Hitler 's Nazism is dead, it says, butis adds at once: Long live Schacht 'snationalism!
Schacht denies, of course, that hegave any aid to Hitler . He describes atgreat length the poverty and hopeless-ness that ravaged the Weimar Re public . He tells of unemployment, theforeign debt, demoralization, political
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
12