HITLER ASFRANKENSTEIN

JOHANNES STEEL

With a Preface byHAROLD J. LASKI

WISHART & CO. JOHN ST. ADELPHI.

22 HITLER AS FRANKENSTEIN

Nazis. Finance is Adolf Hitler's personalprerogative. Funds are centralised under hisdirection and he is virtually the only personwho can authorise disbursements. It is noconcern of the mass of the brown shirts, inthe view of their leader, to know where themoney comes from or how it is spent.

Many people in Germany look upon Hitleras a Messiah, he is not averse to being soconsidered, for he explains that he is guidedby 'voices' in his mission of regeneration. Butin this twentieth century the 'messiah' businessis very much like any other business, in thatit calls for working capital. And when, as inthe case of the Nazis, the 'messiah' has afollowing of some fifteen millions, the workingcapital has to be calculated in millions ofpounds.

The National Socialist organisation is dividedinto three parts. There is first the Party as apolitical organisation. Then there are theStorm Troops, numbering about four hundredthousand, composed of the bulk of the membersof the Party capable of bearing arms: then thereare the Storm Guards, being the bodyguardof lo.cal and central leaders constituting a sortof cheka, the 'strong arm' of the executiveorgans of the Movement.

THE MONEY

'II

: !'!i t,: r, ,: J

23The main troops and the bodyguards are

uniformed and organised on military lines withstaffs, headquarters and barracks, and prac-tically every member of these troops receivesa daily pay of fifty pfennings to two marks.During the last five years this pay has beenconstant and represents a sum of some fortymillion marks. In addition there is the outlayfor equipment and its upkeep, together withexpenditures for military training.

In January 1933, the Hitler organisation hada fleet of thirty-five military aeroplanes andfour aviation schools under the personal super-vision of Captain Goering, who during theWar was the successor to, the German ace,von Richthofen. There was a military academywith one hundred and eighty paid instructors,all ex-officers of the former Imperial Army.One million marks were spent in January 1930upon the Brown House in Munich, whichincidentally had been decorated after drawingsby Hitler himself. About half of this moneyhad been raised by a Hitler Loan from amongthe members of the Party. The usual rate ofinterest was paid for this loan.

Although the Party had in January 1932,seven hundred thousand inscribed memberswho were supposed to pay a monthly fee of

I i;",,',1'"':;II:,.,',,j'

I,i!I ~ 11!;;

,I

46 HITLER AS FRANKENSTEIN

him to dabble in the arms traffic with materialtaken by the Nazis from German arsenals towhich they had obtained access illegally.

Both Dr. Schacht and Alfred Rosenbergwere quick to seize upon the favourable oppor-tunities presented in 1931, which led toRamsay Macdonald taking office as head of theNational Government. Nationalism was thekeynote in Britain. It was the daily theme ofthe Beaverbrook and Rothermere newspapers,who were calling upon Britain to awake, just asHitler was screeching 'Rise up, Germany.'They were printing articles telling Britain ofthe fine moral qualities of the stern leaders ofthe Nationalist Movement among the youthof Germany, of the splendid work being doneto prevent young people from being infectedby Communist or Socialist propaganda. Inthis connection a sensational article by Vis-count Rothermere himself may be recalled, inwhich he praised Hitler and held him up as aregenerator of Germany. This type of Englishnewspaper told their public that the rise ofNationalism in Germany could only be inter-preted as a precipitation of events also about tohappen in Britain,l and as a world wide awaken-

1 Other British connections particularly those between Hitlerand Sir Henri Deterding are dealt with separately in Chapter 4.

THE MONEY 47ing of many nations to Nationalism and re-generation through it. Certain Swedish papermills had in their accounts cash balances ofmysterious origin in favour of Fr. Eher Nachf.Munich, publishers of the Hitler propagandaliterature.

Contributions from Poland have not onlycome from German minorities in certain partsof Poland, but also from Polish interests.Here again it was the armament industry,which for very much the same reasons as theFrench armament industry, had particularinterest in the growth of the Hitler Movement.The Polskie Zaklady Skoda which contributedbeing a subsidiary of the Skoda Company,which is controlled by Schneider-Creusot,through the Union Europeene Banque, has animportant shareholder in Count Henckel-Donnersmarck, the richest landowner in Silesia,on both the Polish and German side. Donners-marck is openly Nazi, although he plays animportant part in Polish politics and has,owing to his enormous interests in PolishUpper Silesia where he owns almost everyindustrial enterprise, a deciding influence onPolish economics.

'Selling Hitler' has not been confined tothese countries. In Italy where Fascism is

CHAPTER IV

THE MURDER OF DR. GEORGE BELLAND HERR HERMANN SCHNEIDER

AND OTHERS

'The Press is requested not to carry any news about indivi-duals who are supposed to have disappeared, or met withdeath under unknown circumstances.'

-Hitler Government decree.

THE MURDER OF DR. GEORGE BELL

THE murder of Dr. George Bell, aScotsman, naturalised in Germany, is

one of those unsolved mysteries which aretypical of the history of the Hitler Movement.It is not only that, but also one of the mostblatant examples of the undue influence whichis exercised by international capital and vestedinterests upon the conduct of internationalaffairs, and upon the prospects of peace andwar. It shows the determination of certainagencies to get where they want to, in disregardof all conceptions of honesty and fair play, and

87

.,88 HITLER AS FRANKENSTEIN

their complete callousness as to the methodsused.The story of this murder, which took place

in the middle of March 1933, is a very longone and as complicated as an Edgar Wallacenovel. It has all the ,elements of a first classthriller and its origin dates back as far as 1926.

During the year 1926 there was formed inParis a society of the so-called UkrainianPatriots. This society held in the same yearseveral congresses at Paris, at which a 'Presi-dent Designate' was elected. The aim of thissociety, it was said, was that of freeing theUkraine from the Soviet yoke. The' PresidentDesignate' of the society established contactwith Mr. Winston Churchill and Sir HenriDeterding.

Dr. George Bell was present at several ofthese conferences as a delegate of Hitler andDeterding jointly. For Dr. Rosenberg, whoat that time had been just two years naturalisedin Germany, had become Hitler's expert inforeign affairs, and he had advised Deterding,through the medium of Dr. George Bell, whobrought about the contact, as to the attitude theHitlerites would take in regard to the questionof the Polish Corridor and the Soviet Ukraine,where there are rich supplies of oil. Rosen-

THE MURDER OF DR. GEORGE BELL 89berg suggested to Deterding, through Bell, thatat an appropriate mOlpent unrest should befostered in the Ukraine, and an attempt bemade with the aid of Germany to wrest theSoviet Ukraine away from the Soviet Unionand give it back to Poland, to whom it hadbelonged at the time of the ancient Polishkingdom. Germany in return should receivethe Corridor back, so satisfying the Hitlerites'nationalistic ambitions, and Sir Henri Deter-ding should be rewarded with mineral con-cessions for his efforts to persuade responsibleBritish quarters to give tacit support to suchan undertaking.The idea was not so fantastic as it appears to

be at the first glance, for Sir Henri Deterding,as the head of the Royal Dutch Shell PetroleumCompany, has admittedly been an untiringadvocate and organiser of foreign action againstthe U.S.S.R. Anyway, from the day of theUkrainian Conference, Deterding has beensupporting Hitler with considerable sums ofmoney (which found their way into the Hitlerexchequer through Dr. Bell), hoping that incase the Hitlerites should come into power,they would pursue at any rate an anti-Sovietpolicy. But during January and February1933, it appeared to Deterding that he was

90 HITLER AS FRANKENSTEIN

being cheated by Hitler and might not get hismoney's worth as far as Nazi anti-Sovietpolicies were concerned. The bad reactionand unfavourable Press comments in Englandduring the first two months of the Hitler rulebrought about a decided pro-Soviet orientationof the Nazi foreign policy, which tried to makeuse of the opportunity offered by the estrange-ment of Soviet-English relations due to theMoscow Trial. So Sir Henri was worried,and in the latter part of February, he went toHolland, where, too, he had asked Dr. Bell tomeet him. Nobody can, of course, say whathappened at this conference, but it is not sodifficult to form the obvious conclusions, forDr. Bell, when he returned to Germany beganto pack up his things, and tried to leaveGermany by way of Austria. When he crossedthe border he was murdered by uniformedBavarian Nazis and Nazi Police who had vio-lated the frontier. No reports of the incidentappeared in the German Press. When Bellreturned from Holland he had first gone toBerlin before going to Bavaria. In Berlin hehad a meeting with the Nationalist Deputy,Dr. Oberfohren, to whom he admitted that hehad been instrumental in setting the Reichstagon fire, that he had directed this venture, and

THE MURDER OF DR. GEORGE BELL 91

that he was very anxious and worried aboutsome unforeseen consequences this action hadhad. The' unforeseen' consequences of thisaction were the facts that after the Reichstagfire the employees of the Derop (the Russiancompetitors of the Royal Dutch in Germany)had been arrested in a body, and that thehead of the Hamburg office of the Derophad been driven to suicide by the Nazi Ogpu.It was shortly after this that Bell was mur-dered. But Dr. Oberfohren did not escapehis fate either, for in the first week in May,1933, a short time after the Bell murder; araid was carried out by the Nazi Ogpu uponOberfohren's flat in Kiel. The day after theraid Dr. Oberfohren, who was the Parlia-mentary leader of the Nationalist Party whichformed the coalition with the Nazis in thepresent Government, and who had been alife-long friend of Hugenberg, the prominentmember of the Hitler Cabinet, was foundmurdered. This episode illustrates the ruth-lessness of the Nazis, who will not take chanceson people who are in possession of politicalsecrets.

These intrigues were the immediate cause ofDr. Bell's death, although another factor mayhave played an important role in the instigation

r

92 HITLER AS FRANKENSTEIN

of this murder, for it should be rememberedthat the homosexual, Roehm, against whomBell had given appalling evidence, was NaziCabinet Minister in Bavaria at the time themurder was committed, and that the murderwas executed by men who were under Roehm'simmediate command. Ever since the day Bellhad given evidence against Roehm, he was amarked man, and only his importance to theNazi Foreign Office prevented the Fehme fromassassinating him before. It thus appears thatwhen Bell's usefulness was at an end, thekillers were let loose. Revolutions may costvictims, but this was not manslaughter: it wascold-blooded murder which had been pre-meditated-who knows-perhaps for years.And so, on the 5th May, 1933, Dr~ Rosenberg,the then official plenipotentiary of Hitler,arrived in London accompanied by CountBismarck instead of by Bell who had beenwith him on his previous visits. Before callingon the German Ambassador, Dr. Rosenbergwent to Buckhurst Park, Ascot, which is thehome of Sir Henri Deterding. Only after thisvisit did he request the German Embassy toarrange an interview with the Foreign Office.It may be added that it was suggested by a

part of the British Press that Rosenberg during

THE MURDER OF DR. GEORGE BELL 93

his trip to London served only as a smokescreen to cover the activities of other 'inquiryagents' who might have to'be disowned in casetheir activities should become known to theBritish Government. However that may be,it would only have been a procedure com-pletely in keeping with the usual Nazi methodsand tactlessness, which the British public hashad an opportunity of witnessing duringRosenberg's presence in London.

The German Ambassadors. on various occa-sions have been made to look like fools by theNazi Foreign Office. First when MinisterGoering, over the heads of the GermanAmbassador, sent direct telegraphic proteststo Swedish papers which had published someuncomplimentary comment; secondly, when hesent Herr Alexander Bogs on a mission toScandinavia, which was just as little successfulas Rosenberg's similar trip to London.

It is not likely that all the details of thisepisode in the Hitler backstairs diplomacywill ever be common knowledge, but I believethat this account will give the reader anopportunity to draw some interesting con-clusions about the character and methodsHitler intends to employ in his foreign policy.