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by M. J. Racusin
July 30, 1941
Copyright by New York Tribune, Inc.
New York, July 30 – Hidden in the tides of economic warfare
now surging over the world, the New York Herald Tribune has discovered
that Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist who was Adolf Hitler’s
original patron a decade ago, has three million dollars in American cash
salted away in the bank vaults of downtown New York.
In the American colony of Thyssen enterprises perhaps the
most interesting is the Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, nominal
guardian of the three million dollars cache, all in United States
currency – a sort of nest egg for Thyssen or perhaps some of his
high-placed Nazi friends when the present troublous days are over.
Real Ownership is Mystery
Among other Thyssen interests in New York are half a dozen
corporations engaged in the shipping, export and import trades,
centering chiefly about the coal and steel industries and operating
under the wing of the Union Banking Corporation. These organizations did
a thriving business in rolling up dollars for Thyssen in years past, but
have been brought virtually to a standstill during the last year by the
war.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this story is the
mystery surrounding the real ownership of the Thyssen fortune. At the
moment, of course, no one can get at this Thyssen nest egg, because it
is part of the $4,500,000,000 foreign assets frozen by the United States
Government since Adolf Hitler’s armies began overrunning Europe.
Government circles assert that the assets of the Union
Banking Corporation and its subsidiaries were frozen because capital and
control came from a Netherlands institution called the Bank Voor Handel
en Scheepvaart (Bank for Trade and Shipping) in Rotterdam, one of the
Thyssen string of banking houses on the continent. It was subject to the
freezing order, however, as a Dutch corporation, and not as a
German-owned property.
As the custodian of all Dutch property outside the
Netherlands, the Netherlands government in exile represents that it,
too, would seem to have some rights in the matter. Nevertheless all of
Thyssen’s properties were confiscated by the Nazi regime back in 1939,
and thus it might appear that the assets here are legally a part of the
German government’s assets in the United States.
The Thyssen bank in Rotterdam which nominally owned the New
York corporation was bombed out of existence by the invading Nazis in
May, 1940. No one in New York professes to know what has happened to the
officers of the Rotterdam institution. Not a word of instruction or
advice has come from abroad.
Rift Believed Not Genuine
Perhaps it wasn't Thyssen's money at all. Some persons
suggest maybe he sent it here for safekeeping for some of the Nazi
bigwigs -- perhaps for Hermann Wilhelm Goering, for Paul Joseph Goebbels,
for Heinrich Himmler, or even Hitler himself.
No matter how the story comes out, the United States
Government has the situation in hand. Every penny of known Thyssen
assets is frozen, under the strictest control.
There are many Americans in responsible positions who do
not think that the rift between Thyssen and the Nazis was genuine at
all, preferring to believe that Thyssen was in reality a sort of
economic advance agent of the Hitler forces, a financial surveyor and
softener-up posing as a refugee.
Reliable private information is that Thyssen has been
wandering about Switzerland, France and other European countries before
and after the Nazi armies arrived without much hindrance from the Hitler
government. Thyssen is now in Germany -- not under confinement, free to
move about but closely watched -- perhaps a willing prisoner, perhaps a
hostage for his wealth throughout the world.
Thyssen's adventure in the American business world dates
back to August, 1924, when without flourishes or ruffles the Union
Banking Corporation was incorporated with a capital stock of $400,000,
the money coming from the Bank Voor Handei en Scheepvaart, it was
licensed under the New York State banking laws as an investment
corporation.
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