Hjalmar Schacht
|
Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht |
Dr.
Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (
January 22,
1877 â€"
June 3,
1970) was a
German financial expert and Minister of Economics from
1935 until
1937.
Schacht was born in
Tinglev, Germany (now in
Denmark) to William Leonhard Ludwig Maximillian Schacht and Danish baroness Constanze Justine Sophie von Eggers. His parents originally decided on the name Horace Greeley Schacht, in honor of the American journalist
Horace Greeley. However they yielded to the insistence of the Schacht family grandmother, who firmly believed the child's given name should be Danish. Schacht studied
medicine,
philology and
political science before earning a
doctorate in
economics in
1899. In
1905, while on a business trip to America with board members of
Dresdner Bank, Schacht met the famous American banker
J. P. Morgan, as well as U.S. President
Theodore Roosevelt.
He became one of the directors of the
Reichsbank in
1916 and in
1923 became currency commissioner for the
Reich. After his economic policies helped reduce German
inflation and stabilize the German mark, Schacht was appointed president of the
Reichsbank. He collaborated with other prominent figures in economics to form the
Young Plan to modify the way that war reparations were paid after Germany's economy was destabilizing under the
Dawes Plan. Though on
March 7,
1930, six months after the beginning of the
Great Depression, he stepped down from the position of Reichsbank Chairman, but returned on
March 17,
1933 after Hitler's rise to power.
Though never a member of the
Nazi Party, Schacht became influenced by
Adolf Hitler after reading
Mein Kampf in 1930, and helped to raise funds for his Nazi Party after meeting with him. He successfully organized German industrialists to sign a petition calling for President
Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as
Chancellor of Germany in
1933. In August of
1934, Hitler appointed Schacht as his Minister of Economics. Schacht supported
public works programs similar to
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
New Deal, most notably the construction of the
Autobahn to attempt to alleviate
unemployment - policies which had been instituted in Germany under legislation drawn-up by
Kurt von Schleicher's government in late
1932, and had in turn influenced Roosevelt's policies. Schacht also found an innovative solution to the problem of the government deficit by using
mefo bills. He was appointed General Plenipotentiary for the War Economy in May,
1935 and was awarded honorary membership of the Nazi Party and the Golden Swastika in January,
1937.
Although hostile to Jews Schacht disagreed with what he called "unlawful activities" against them and in August,
1935 made a speech denouncing
Julius Streicher and the articles he had been writing in
Der Stuermer.
Schacht resigned as Minister of Economics and General Plenipotentiary in November,
1937 due to his disapproval of Hitler's war aims and excessive military spending because he believed it would cause inflation, as well as because of conflicts with
Hermann Göring, but was re-appointed President of the Reichsbank until he was dismissed from the position by Hitler in January,
1939. Schacht instead held the title of Minister Without Portfolio and received the same salary as he did as President of the Reichsbank until he was fully dismissed in January,
1943.
Schacht was falsely accused of being involved in the
1944 July 20 Plot to
assassinate Hitler, and was arrested and sent to
Dachau concentration camp as a "special prisoner" until it was liberated in April,
1945. He was arrested by the
Allies and accused of war crimes at the
Nuremberg Trials, but was acquitted and released in
1946. He was again arrested by Germans, tried in a
denazification court and sentenced to eight years in a work camp, but was released early in September,
1948. He formed the
DĂĽsseldorfer AuĂźenhandelsbank Schacht & Co. after his release and became an economic and financial advisor for developing countries. Schacht died in
Munich, Germany on
June 3,
1970.
Schacht was tried for crimes against peace in Nuremberg in 1946.His defence was that he was only a banker and economist, even though evidence showed that he participated in meetings that directly helped bring the Nazis to power, and that he admitted to breaking the
Treaty of Versailles. He had created schemes to regiment the German workforce and gut the union movement (even before the election of Hitler).
The judges were split on his case due to a lack of evidence against Schacht during the war years.
Robert Jackson, a member of the prosecution team and an Associate Justice of the United States, was so outraged at the trial result that he lashed out at Schacht as "the most dangerous and reprehensible type of all opportunists, someone who would use a Hitler for his own ends, and then claim, after Hitler was defeated, to have been against him all the time. He was part of a movement that he knew was wrong, but was in it just because he saw it was winning." However, since Schacht had lost his important posts before the war, kept in close contact with dissidents such as
Hans Bernd Gisevius throughout the war, and spent most of the last year of the war as a concentration camp prisoner himself, the case against him was doomed from the start.
Schacht wrote three books during his lifetime:
The End of Reparations, published in
1931;
Account Settled, published in
1949 after his acquittal at the Nuremberg Trials; and
Confessions of the Old Wizard, an autobiography published in
1953.
* While in prison, an army psychologist named
G.M. Gilbert was allowed to examine the Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of the
Wechsler-Bellevue IQ test was administered. Hjalmar Schacht scored 143, which was the best score of all the tested Nazi leaders (albeit that his mark was adjusted upwards to take account of his age)
[Gilbert, PhD, G.M. Nuremberg Diaries. Da Capo Press. (New York: 1947)]*
Schacht prosecution notes from "Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression"*
Spartacus.schoolnet*
Businessweek*
JewishVirtualLibrary.org
