strife, and economic chaos. And he ex-plains all these phenomena simply:" That was the work of democracy."He points scornfully at the" democraticparties," and says triumphantly thatthey have not been able to cope withGermany 's problems. It follows, there-fore, that they and not the active andpassive rightist parties- were respon-sible for Nazism .
Last year when Fritz Thyssen , theformer king of Ruhr steel, appearedbefore a de- Nazification court, theprosecution introduced records of ameeting of Germany 's industrial andfinancial hierarchy shortly before theelections that pushed Hitler into power.One of the leading industrialists hadsaid bluntly:" What we need now is amaximum of disorder."( This, ofcourse, is the same disorder for whichSchacht blames democracy and the" democratic parties.") The prosecu-tion asked why Thyssen , one of themost influential magnates there, hadnot objected. Thyssen replied calmly,that he had, indeed, registered his dis-agreement, and when the court askedhow, he said:" I shook my head."
Today the Schachtists, or the" non-Nazi" nationalists, proclaim again andagain that they protested against Hitler by shaking their heads, if not by un-derground resistance." You must keepin mind," a powerful Ruhr industrialistsaid in a private conference in Düssel dorf a few weeks ago," that men like
Schacht hated the Nazis , but joined inorder to stop them." This man hadhimself been a" contributing member"of the S.S. He probably never wore theuniform; perhaps he never even worethe emblem of the National Socialist German Workers' Party ; but he putmoney into Himmler 's treasury
at
a time when the tramping of blackboots and the flashing of S.S. daggers
were powerful means of intimidation.
The Schachtists- and they includedof course, many officers of the German general staff- probably did dislike Hit ler . He was vulgar, and his grammarwas faulty. But they despised andfeared democracy more, and theythought that they could control Hitler and use him for their own ends. Theyagreed with his aims sufficiently tooverlook his methods. Today they con-demn Hitler 's madness because it lackedsufficient method. The long- range aimsof German nationalism remain just somuch unfinished, but fully justifiable,business.
Schacht found no fault with theNazi program. As a matter of fact, hesaw in it the fulfillment of his ownobjective: the extension of German power. There was nothing in the Nazi platform, the naive nationalists main-
tain, that could have warned them ofviolence. There was no indication thatanybody would be persecuted. The ag-gressive chants, heard shouted nightafter night by marching columns," To-day Germany is ours, tomorrow thewhole world," and the cries of" Downwith the Jews !"- neither of thesepenetrated Schacht's" nonpolitical"consciousness. As for Mein Kampf ,Schacht shrugs it off as" not an officialparty statement, but propaganda andfighting literature." He was disturbedless by the book's contents than by itsstyle, which, he says," could only be re-garded as a rape of the German lan-guage."
And there is the real difference be-tween the genteel nationalists and theNazis , a difference that became gradu-Nazis, a difference that became gradu-ally more marked and even sent someof the Schachts and the Thyssens intoof the Schachts and the Thyssens intoconcentration camps. The question wasone of manners." The half- educated"is Schacht's most scathing commentfor Hitler ." Any attempt to trace[ Hit-
GARDONHAKE
ler's] family gets lost in illegitimatebirths," he complains." Little is knownabout Hitler 's childhood. Surely hemust have lacked a good upbringing.... Once I looked at a little oil paintingby Hitler 's brush which had been putup in the Thyssen home as a matter ofcuriosity. Its architecture was very bad-ly drawn." To Schacht, a member ofthe natural ruling class, Hitler was aboorish little corporal , who had someuseful ideas and a way with the masses:a promising tool, who, unfortunately,got out of hand." During the war heremained a lance corporal for fourand a half years," says Schacht, as ifno more need be said.
Schacht's account of the past alsoseems to be his guide to the future: toachieve the goals of German national-ism, leadership must be kept out of thehands of men of Hitler 's class.
Such must have been the thoughtsof the prominent Ruhr industrial leaderwho, a few weeks ago, tried to convinceme that the Nazis really representedthe extreme left wing of German poli-tics. One of the reasons why the" anti-Nazi" nationalists are" anti- Nazi " maybe seen in Schacht's sorrowful de-scription of how he erred in judgingNazism ." All meetings and debates ofthose first months[ of Hitlerism]," hewrites," indicated that the governmentdid not consider or describe itself asnational- socialist, but as national. Men-tioned was always the national bloc, thenational front, the national revolution-never a national- socialist one." Plain-ly, then, a national revolution againstdemocracy would have been welcome.Plainly, too, such a revolution wouldbe favored today by those nationalistswho parade as the defenders of freeenterprise and democracy.
It is best, perhaps, to ignore the in-decent episodes of Schacht's- and the
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
13