Fritz Thyssen and W.A.
Harriman Company of New York
Another
elusive case of reported financing of Hitler is that of Fritz
Thyssen, the German steel magnate who associated himself with the
Nazi movement in the early 20s. When interrogated in 1945 under
Project Dustbin,11 Thyssen recalled
that he was approached in 1923 by General Ludendorf at the time of
French evacuation of the Ruhr. Shortly after this meeting Thyssen
was introduced to Hitler and provided funds for the Nazis through
General Ludendorf. In 1930-1931 Emil Kirdorf approached Thyssen and
subsequently sent Rudolf Hess to negotiate further funding for the
Nazi Party. This time Thyssen arranged a credit of 250,000 marks at
the Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. at 18 Zuidblaak in
Rotterdam, Holland, founded in 1918 with H.J. Kouwenhoven and D.C.
Schutte as managing partners. This bank was a subsidiary of the
August Thyssen Bank of Germany (formerly von der Heydt's Bank A.G.).
It was Thyssen's personal banking operation, and it was affiliated
with the W. A. Harriman financial interests in New York. Thyssen
reported to his Project Dustbin interrogators that:
I chose
a Dutch bank because I did not want to be mixed up with German
banks in my position, and because I thought it was better to do
business with a Dutch bank, and I thought I would have the Nazis
a little more in my hands.13
Thyssen's
book I Paid Hitler, published in 1941, was purported to be
written by Fritz Thyssen himself, although Thyssen denies
authorship. The book claims that funds for Hitler — about one
million marks — came mainly from Thyssen himself. I Paid Hitler
has other unsupported assertions, for example that Hitler was
actually descended from an illegitimate child of the Rothschild
family. Supposedly Hitler's grandmother, Frau Schickelgruber, had
been a servant in the Rothschild household and while there became
pregnant:
... an
inquiry once ordered by the late Austrian chancellor, Engelbert
Dollfuss, yielded some interesting results, owing to the fact
that the dossiers of the police department of the
Austro-Hungarian monarch were remarkably complete.
This
assertion concerning Hitler's illegitimacy is refuted entirely in a
more solidly based book by Eugene Davidson, which implicates the
Frankenberger family, not the Rothschild family.
In any
event, and more relevant from our viewpoint, the August Thyssen
front bank in Holland — i.e., the Bank voor Handel en
Scheepvaart N.V. — controlled the Union Banking Corporation in New
York. The Harrimans had a financial interest in, and E. Roland
Harriman (Averell's brother) was a director of, this Union Banking
Corporation. The Union Banking Corporation of New York City was a
joint Thyssen-Harriman operation with the following directors in
1932:
|
E. Roland HARRIMAN |
Vice president of
W. A. Harriman & Co., New York |
|
H.J. KOUWENHOVEN |
Nazi banker,
managing partner of August Thyssen Bank and Bank voor
Handel Scheepvaart N.V. (the transfer bank for Thyssen's
funds) |
|
J. G. GROENINGEN |
Vereinigte
Stahlwerke (the steel cartel which also funded Hitler) |
|
C. LIEVENSE |
President, Union
Banking Corp., New York City |
|
E. S. JAMES |
Partner Brown
Brothers, later Brown Brothers, Harriman & Co. |
