To what extent did the US 'fund' Nazi rearmament?

[Garrison]

In short you don't know....which is what I expected.

No, I mean I haven't seen any mention of such a thing in 'Wages of Destruction' or any other source. What you have 'little doubt of' is irrelevant and unless your guy has a stack of documents or a source he can cite all he has is a claim.

Anything that starts with someone going “secret meeting” is automatically suspect and requires some kind of supporting source.

Yes it's a secret meeting that some random bloke in Switzerland has heard of, but has somehow eluded the likes of Adam Tooze.

 

[Barry Bull]

That’s just untrue.

No need for the caps lock either.

- - - - - - - -

Anyway, there seems to be strong differences of opinion on the morality of support (of any stripe) of the Nazis in this thread. It’s a view which I, for one, will not change my stance on.

As such, I’m bowing out of this thread as I don’t need the agro.

Can your stance be supported objectively, without benefit of hindsight, taken the then European latent bias against Jews into account and using peer reviewed journals as citiations?

 

[Barry Bull]

No, I mean I haven't seen any mention of such a thing in 'Wages of Destruction' or any other source. What you have 'little doubt of' is irrelevant and unless your guy has a stack of documents or a source he can cite all he has is a claim.



Yes it's a secret meeting that some random bloke in Switzerland has heard of, but has somehow eluded the likes of Adam Tooze.

@PSL

There is also the problem why would the German need outside money? They paid for resourcees from territories under occupation with newly printed occupation currency or 'IOU's and trade with 'friends' with gold, weapons or raw materials as Reichsmark was not trusted after severe devaluation caused by the need to pre war massive expenditure for rearmanent.

Also, rationing had started in 1939, further reducing the need for liqudity in the nazi domestic economy.

So how likely would the Nazis sought loans from international banks, esp. when the finacial hub of the world, London, heard nothing about that?

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

This is a good thread, but I must float something I heard from a sturdy source on vacation. He's Swiss and was relating , while on vacation there some time ago. He was shown a large building that some how was connected with operation Barbarossa in 1941. The narrative is that in the spring of 1941 the Reich bank held a secret conference in Switzerland raising funds for the upcoming invasion of Russia. Reportedly many bankers from all over the world attended including Americans like Rockefeller were mentioned.

Still curious if there is any more info on this?

There is no more info on this because there is nothing there.

First, why would any foreign banks lend money to Nazi Germany? The chance of not being repaid was very high, even if Germany won the war. And if Germany did win the war, that would mean Britain lost the war, and foreign banks had loaned great sums to Britain and British companies.

Second, why would Germany need to borrow money for BARBAROSSA? Once the war started, Germany was largely blockaded from importing resources, and had little use for foreign loans. Their biggest foreign supplier at that time was the USSR - which they were about to stop doing business with. All resources in German-occupied Europe or in German allied countries (e.g. oil in Romania) was at German disposal without any need for foreign exchange.

Third, either before or during this conference, Germany would have to disclose its plans for BARBAROSSA to "many bankers from all over the world". Given the ubiquity of Jews in banking, this would be tantamount to public announcement of the plans to determined enemies of Nazi Germany.

Fourth, who could Germany try to borrow from in 1941? The only country in the world with significant money to lend was the US.

All of these points strongly suggest that this is an impossible fantasy.

If you want proof that this meeting didn't happen... Fuggedaboudit. Proving such a negative is extremely difficult. And so far, the only evidence cited for this astounding claim is a man who told you he was told something by someone else... Told recently, so this other person could not have been a living witness (unless he was at least 87 years old; a boy of 12 might have been a page or attendant at the meeting).

 

[sloreck]

@Anarch King of Dipsodes : Small nitpick, you can't prove a negative no matter what in most situations. Yes you can prove that team X did not beat team Y in a football game last week because millions saw it live on TV - sort of, unless it was faked like the moon landing. In science when somebody tells you that it is your burden to prove a theory is wrong, or such and such did not happen you raise the BS flag on high, since that this cannot be done. They will always claim that "more studies are needed because this is inconclusive" etc.

 

[Garrison]

The answer to the question in the title of the thread is essentially, they didn't. Throughout the 1930s Nazi Germany pursued a series of economic measures that alienated foreign banks and potential investors. They threatened to default on debt to force a renegotiation of terms even as the scale of their arms build up became clear. They imposed tariffs on imports and subsidized exports, effectively dumping German goods on the international market. There were so many bilateral deals in place with other countries that at one point even the Reichsbank couldn't put a proper value on the Reichsmark versus other currencies. There was no way British or US banks were going to help Germany with loans or foreign exchange and things just got worse after the victory in the west in 1940. The Germans developed a delightful system whereby they bought goods from an occupied territory like France, French banks reimbursed the company, sent the bill to the Reichsbank, who promptly ignored it. In essence countries like France had no choice but to extend Germany an unlimited overdraft. Any banker suggesting loaning money to Germany in 1940-41 is begging to be fired.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

@PSL

There is also the problem why would the German need outside money? They paid for resourcees from territories under occupation with newly printed occupation currency or 'IOU's and trade with 'friends' with gold, weapons or raw materials as Reichsmark was not trusted after severe devaluation caused by the need to pre war massive expenditure for rearmanent.

Also, rationing had started in 1939, further reducing the need for liqudity in the nazi domestic economy. ...

... and things just got worse after the victory in the west in 1940. The Germans developed a delightful system whereby they bought goods from an occupied territory like France, French banks reimbursed the company, sent the bill to the Reichsbank, who promptly ignored it. In essence countries like France had no choice but to extend Germany an unlimited overdraft. Any banker suggesting loaning money to Germany in 1940-41 is begging to be fired.

Joseph Harsch as a journalist was a witness to this, visiting Germany through 1940, returning to the US in early 1941. His observations written in a series of articles for the Christian Science Monitor was published in book format in April 1941. Harsch describes the multilayered rationing system in Germany that gave the senior party members all the food they could buy, & left the lower groups with subsistence rations if they were Germans, or the Untermensch with starvation subsistence. He was not allowed in Poland, but did tour occupied France, Belgium, and Holland. Currency manipulation enabled the common German soldier to purchase a armful or two of luxury goods and food with his monthly pay for the family back home, while the locals scrimped to obtain the basic necessities.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Seymour Hersch as a journalist was a witness to this, visiting Germany through 1940, returning to the US in early 1941. His observations written in a series of articles for the Christian Science Monitor was published in book format in April 1941. Hersch describes the multilayered rationing system in Germany that gave the senior party members all the food they could buy, & left the lower groups with subsistence rations if they were Germans, or the Untermensch with starvation subsistence. He was not allowed in Poland, but did tour occupied France, Belgium, and Holland. Currency manipulation enabled the common German soldier to purchase a armful or two of luxury goods and food with his monthly pay for the family back home, while the locals scrimped to obtain the basic necessities.

You mean William Shirer, right? Sy Hersch was born in 1937 and was Jewish while being famous for covering the Vietnam War.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Eh, Harsch is the correct spelling. He was a old school print journalist, not one of those electronic age radio fellows like Shirer.

https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-conquest-Joseph-Close-Harsch/dp/B0007DMHEW

 

[Barry Bull]

@Anarch King of Dipsodes : Small nitpick, you can't prove a negative no matter what in most situations. Yes you can prove that team X did not beat team Y in a football game last week because millions saw it live on TV - sort of, unless it was faked like the moon landing. In science when somebody tells you that it is your burden to prove a theory is wrong, or such and such did not happen you raise the BS flag on high, since that this cannot be done. They will always claim that "more studies are needed because this is inconclusive" etc.

The best one can do is to show that people who allegedly participate in certain event was actually found in other places and away from the location of the alleged event.

 

[Barry Bull]

If you want proof that this meeting didn't happen... Fuggedaboudit. Proving such a negative is extremely difficult. And so far, the only evidence cited for this astounding claim is a man who told you he was told something by someone else... Told recently, so this other person could not have been a living witness (unless he was at least 87 years old; a boy of 12 might have been a page or attendant at the meeting).

The answer to the question in the title of the thread is essentially, they didn't. Throughout the 1930s Nazi Germany pursued a series of economic measures that alienated foreign banks and potential investors. They threatened to default on debt to force a renegotiation of terms even as the scale of their arms build up became clear. They imposed tariffs on imports and subsidized exports, effectively dumping German goods on the international market. There were so many bilateral deals in place with other countries that at one point even the Reichsbank couldn't put a proper value on the Reichsmark versus other currencies. There was no way British or US banks were going to help Germany with loans or foreign exchange and things just got worse after the victory in the west in 1940. The Germans developed a delightful system whereby they bought goods from an occupied territory like France, French banks reimbursed the company, sent the bill to the Reichsbank, who promptly ignored it. In essence countries like France had no choice but to extend Germany an unlimited overdraft. Any banker suggesting loaning money to Germany in 1940-41 is begging to be fired.

People probably misunderstood what the Swiss banks actually did in their dealings with Nazi Germany during WWII.

 

[Garrison]

People probably misunderstood what the Swiss banks actually did in their dealings with Nazi Germany during WWII.

The Swiss had to play nice considering the position they found themselves in after the summer of 1940, but they were in no position to provide the means to pay for the volume of imports Germany needed to make up their deficits in raw materials. They certainly couldn't provide a conduit for the import of those raw materials even if Germany had been able to pay for them. Foreign exchange wasn't much good to the Reich when the Royal Navy cut them off from most of the places they could actually spend it.