Hjalmar Schacht

Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht

Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (22 January, 1877 – 3 June, 1970) was a German financial expert and Minister of Economics from 1935 until 1937.

Education and rise to President of the Reichsbank

Schacht was born in Tingleff, Imperial Germany (now in Denmark) to William Leonhard Ludwig Maximillian Schacht and Danish baroness Constanze Justine Sophie von Eggers. His parents, who had spent years in the United States, 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 Weimar Republic. 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. Although on March 7, 1930, six months after the beginning of the Great Depression, he stepped down from the position of Reichsbank Chairman, he returned on March 17, 1933 after Hitler's rise to power. Schacht had left the small German Democratic Party, which he had helped found, in 1926 and later came to lend his support to (but did not join) the Nazi Party.

Involvement in the Nazi Party

Though never a member of the Nazi Party, Schacht helped to raise funds for the party after meeting with Adolf Hitler. In August 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 autobahns 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 somewhat 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 Stürmer.

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.

Imprisonment and subsequent life

Schacht was falsely accused of being involved in the July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944, 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 Düsseldorfer Außenhandelsbank Schacht & Co. after his release and became an economic and financial advisor for developing countries. Schacht died in Munich, Germany on 3 June 1970.

Schacht at the Nuremberg trials

File:Schacht+AlbSchwamberger.jpg

Schacht in 1947, during the Nuremberg trials.

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, building a successful case against him would prove difficult.

Works

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 * Confessions of the Old Wizard, an autobiography published in 1953

Miscellany

• Gustave Gilbert, an American Army psychologist, 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, the highest among the Nazi leaders tested, albeit adjusted upwards to take account of his age.

External links

• Schacht prosecution notes from "Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression"
• Spartacus.schoolnet
• Businessweek
• JewishVirtualLibrary.org