Money, Power, and Election Spending 1933 and Today

    Hitler With German Industrialists 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Lord Acton noted:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”

Less than a month after his appointment as Chancellor by President Hindenburg and before the Reichstag Fire, Adolf Hitler met with German industrialists at Hermann Goering’s Estate on February 20th 1933. The purpose of the meeting was to secure financial support for the Nazi Party in the upcoming Reichstag election, an election that would be the last in Hitler’s Germany.

The invitees were a “who’s who” of German industrialists and by the end of the day they had pledged over Two Million Reichsmarks to the Nazi cause.

It wasn’t hard for Hitler to win them over. They feared a Communist counter revolution against the Nazis and they were still unsure of the economic plans of the Nazis, as the Nazis did have a Wing that believed in a more socialist vision. Their leaders included Ernst Röhm leader of the Brownshirt SA, or Stürmabteilung which numbered over three million members and eyed itself as a people’s army to replace the 100,000 man Reichswehr. Likewise, the Stasser brothers, Otto and Gregor, attempted to wrest leadership and policy of the NSDAP from Hitler, who they believed was to friendly with the industrialists. Röhm even openly talked of a second revolution. But the industrialists had nothing to fear, by the next summer Röhm most of the SA senior leadership  was dead, as was Gregor Strasser, murdered during the Night of the Long Knives, while Otto Strasser fled the country.  The threat of a second revolution was over, and the German conservative establishment was safe.

Knowing the industrialists better than they knew themselves, Hitler played to their worst fears as William Shier recorded in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. “Private enterprise,” he said, “cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality… All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen… We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist.” He promised the businessmen that he would “eliminate” the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). “Now we stand before the last election,” Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that “regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat.” If he did not win, he would stay in power “by other means… with other weapons.” Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of “financial sacrifices” which “surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years.”

Money and power, the sacrifice of hard earned freedoms, the selling out of political openness, workers, and Jews were irrelevant in the end. What mattered was profit and the protection of it and their status by an authoritarian state in perpetuity. As such the German industrialists, championed by Hjalmar Schachtsold their souls and their nation to Hitler. They included the head of Krupp Industries, Gustav Krupp, the head of Opel, Fritz von Opel, as well as the leaders of the electronics powerhouse Siemens, chemical and pharmacy giant IG Farben, one of the leading German insurance agencies Allianz, and numerous others. Hitler’s goal for the meeting was basically a shakedown of the industrialist leaders to raise enough money to ensure a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag to pass his Enabling Act which would enable Hitler to rule by decree, in effect, to establish a dictatorship, by parliamentary means. Historian Adam Tooze, the author of The Wages of Destruction wrote:

The meeting of 20 February and its aftermath are the most notorious instances of the willingness of German big business to assist Hitler in establishing his dictatorial regime. The evidence cannot be dodged.

Between the meeting and the election the Reichstag, scheduled for March 5th, the Reichstag was burned, and the Reichstag Fire Decree enacted. In the elections that followed the Nazis still not achieve a majority in the Reichstag, much less a two-thirds majority. Even so, with the surrender and acquiescence of every remaining party but the Socialists, the Nazis passed the Enabling Act. The leaders of the German economic and banking establishment, Nazi or not, were pleased, their mortal enemies could now be persecuted. By June, all opposition parties were liquidated, mostly by themselves, or outlawed, as was the SPD. All independent labor unions were dissolved and forcibly incorporated into Robert Ley´s German Labor Front, which ironically occurred the day after Hitler declared May 1st as a National Holiday to honor German Workers.

Hitler’s economic supporters included corporate and banking leaders from other countries, including Henry Ford of the United States, whose German factories as well as GM‘s German subsidiary Opel, produced much of Germany’s war materials.

The curious thing is that in many countries, including the United States, leaders of great corporations, the banking industry, builders, manufacturers are little different than their predecessors in Nazi Germany and so many other democracies that succumbed to dictatorship. Money needs power, and those that desire power need money, and are willing to spend it to their advantage, regardless of which candidate or party they donate.

Let’s take that as a warning for every politician who seeks the money of corporate lobbyists, and corporate leaders who seek political power, regardless of what ideology or party they represent, especially the religious, “patriotic,” or nationalist ones.

This is a lesson we all need to learn today. In 2016, some 6.5 Billion dollars was spent on Presidential and Congressional elections by all parties. Recent studies indicate that over 10 billion dollars, over 6 billion on traditional television and radio, media, as well as internet and social media advertising will be spent in the 2020 primary campaigns and general elections, the latter often manipulated by Russia, as it was in 2016. Regardless of the outcome in November, that cannot be a good thing.

Think about it, let it sink in.

Peace

Padre Steve+