Ernst
Sedgewick Hanfstaengl (or Hanfy or Putzi, as he was more usually
called), like Hjalmar Horaee Greeley Sehacht, was another
German-American at the core of the rise of Hitlerism. Hanfstaengl
was born into a well-known New England family; he was a cousin of
Civil War General John Sedgewick and a grandson of another Civil War
General, William Heine. Introduced to Hitler in the early l920s by
Captain Truman-Smith, the U.S. Military Attache in Berlin, Putzi
became an ardent Hitler supporter, on occasion financed the Nazis
and, according to Ambassador William Dodd, "... is said to have
saved Hitler's life in 1923."1
By
coincidence, S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler's father was also Putzi's
form master at the Royal Bavarian Wilhelms gymnasium. Putzi's
student day friends at Harvard University were "such outstanding
future figures" as Walter Lippman, John Reed (who figures
prominently in Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution), and
Franklin D. Roosevelt. After a few years at Harvard, Putzi
established the family art business in New York; it was a delightful
combination of business and pleasure, for as he says, "the famous
names who visited me were legion, Pierpont Morgan, Toscanini, Henry
Ford, Caruso, Santos-Dumont, Charlie Chaplin, Paderewski, and a
daughter of President Wilson."2 It was
also at Harvard that Putzi made friends with the future President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
I took
most of my meals at the Harvard Club, where I made friends with
the young Franklin D. Roosevelt, at that time a rising New York
State Senator. Also I received several invitations to visit his
distant cousin Teddy, the former President, who had retired to
his estate at Sagamore Hill.3
From these
varied friendships (or perhaps after reading this book and its
predecessors, Wall Street and FDR and
Wall Street and the Bolshevik
Revolution,
the reader may consider Putzi's friendship to have
been confined to a peculiarly elitist circle), Putzi became not only
an early friend, backer and financier of Hitler, but among those
early Hitler supporters he was, "... almost the only person
who crossed the lines of his (Hitler's) groups of acquaintances."4
In brief,
Putzi was an American citizen at the heart of the Hitler entourage
from the early 1920s to the late 1930s. In 1943, after falling out
of favor with the Nazis and interned by the Allies, Putzi was bailed
out of the miseries of a Canadian prisoner of war camp by his friend
and protector President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When FDR's actions
threatened to become an internal political problem in the United
States, Putzi was re-interned in England. As if it is not surprising
enough to find both Heinrich Himmler and Franklin D. Roosevelt
prominent in Putzi's life, we also discover that the Nazi
Stormtrooper marching songs were composed by Hanfstaengl, "including
the one that was played by the brownshirt columns as they marched
through the Brandenburger Tor on the day Hitler took over power.5
To top this eye-opener, Putzi averred that the genesis of the Nazi
chant "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," used in the Nazi mass rallies, was
none other than "Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah."
Putzi
certainly helped finance the first Nazi daily press, the
Volkische Beobachter. Whether he saved Hitler's life from the
Communists is less verifiable, and while kept out of the actual
writing process of Mein Kampf — much to his disgust — Putzi
did have the honor to finance its publication, "and the fact that
Hitler found a functioning staff when he was released from jail was
entirely due to our efforts."7
When Hitler
came to power in March 1933, simultaneously with Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in Washington, a private "emissary" was sent from
Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. to Hanfstaengl in Berlin, with a
message to the effect that as it appeared Hitler would soon achieve
power in Germany, Roosevelt hoped, in view of their long
acquaintance, that Putzi would do his best to prevent any rashness
and hot-headedness. "Think of your piano playing and try and use the
soft pedal if things get too loud," was FDR's message. "If
things start getting awkward please get in touch with our ambassador
at once.8
Hanfstaengl
kept in close touch with the American Ambassador in Berlin, William
E. Dodd — apparently much to his disgust, because Putzi's recorded
comments on Dodd are distinctly unflattering:
In many
ways, he [Dodd] was an unsatisfactory representative. He was a
modest little Southern history professor, who ran his embassy on
a shoestring and was probably trying to save money out of his
pay. At a time when it needed a robust millionaire to compete
with the flamboyance of the Nazis, he teetered around
self-effacingly as if he were still on his college campus. His
mind and his prejudices were small.9
In point of
fact Ambassador Dodd pointedly tried to decline Roosevelt's
Ambassadorial appointment. Dodd had no inheritance and preferred to
live on his State Department pay rather than political spoils;
unlike the politician Dodd was particular from whom he received
money. In any event, Dodd commented equally harshly on Putzi, "...
he gave money to Hitler in 1923, helped him write Mein Kampf,
and was in every way familiar with Hitler's motives ...."
Was
Hanfstaengl an agent for the Liberal Establishment in the U.S.? We
can probably rule out this possibility because, according to
Ladislas Farago, it was Putzi who blew the whistle on top-level
British penetration of the Hitler command. Farago reports that Baron
William S. de Ropp had penetrated the highest Nazi echelons in
pre-World War II days and Hitler used de Ropp "... as his
confidential consultant about British affairs.10
De Ropp was suspected as being a double agent only by Putzi.
According to Farago:
The
only person ... who ever suspected him of such duplicity and
cautioned the Fuehrer about him was the erratic Putzi
Hanfstaengl, the Harvard educated chief of Hitler's office
dealing with the foreign press.
As Farago
notes, "Bill de Ropp was playing the game in both camps — a double
agent at the very top."11 Putzi was
equally diligent in warning his friends, the Hermann Goerings, about
potential spies in their camp. Witness the following extract
from Putzi's memoirs, in which he points the accusing finger of
espionage at the Goerings' gardener:
"Herman," I said one day, "I will bet any money that fellow
Greinz is a police spy." "Now really, Putzi," Karin [Mrs. Herman
Goering] broke in, "he's such a nice fellow and he's a wonderful
gardener." "He's doing exactly what a spy ought to do," I told
her, "he has made himself indispensable."12
By 1941
Putzi was out of favor with Hitler and the Nazis, fled Germany, and
was interned in a Canadian prisoner of war camp. With Germany and
the United States now at war Putzi re-calculated the odds and
concluded, "Now I knew for certain that Germany would be
defeated."13 Putzi's release from the
POW camp came with the personal intervention of old friend President
Roosevelt:
One day
a correspondent of the Hearst press named Kehoe obtained
permission to visit Fort Hens. I managed to have a few words
with him in a corner. "I know your boss well," I told him. "Will
you do me a small service?" Fortunately he recognized my name.
I gave
him a letter, which he slipped into his pocket. It was addressed
to the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. A few days
later it was on the desk of my Harvard Club friend, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. In it I offered to act as a political and
psychological warfare adviser in the war against Germany.14
The
response and offer to "work" for the American side was accepted.
Putzi was installed in comfortable surroundings with his son, U.S.
Army Sergeant Egon Hanfstaengl, also there as a personal aide. In
1944, under pressure of a Republican threat to blow the whistle on
Roosevelt's favoritism for a former Nazi, Egon was shipped out to
New Guinea and Putzi hustled off to England, where the British
promptly interned him for the duration of the war, Roosevelt or no
Roosevelt.
Putzi's Role in the
Reichstag Fire
Putzi's
friendships and political manipulations may or may not be of any
great consequence, but his role in the Reichstag fire is
significant. The firing of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933 is one
of the key events of modern times. The fire was used by Adolf Hitler
to claim imminent Communist revolution, suspend constitutional
rights, and seize totalitarian power. From that point on there was
no turning back for Germany; the world was set upon the course to
World War II.
At the time
the firing of the Reichstag was blamed on the Communists, but there
is little question in historical perspective that the fire was
deliberately set by the Nazis to provide an excuse to seize
political power. Fritz Thyssen commented in the post-war Dustbin
interrogations:
When
the Reichstag was burned, everyone was sure it had been done by
the communists. I later learned in Switzerland that it was all a
lie.15
Schacht states
quite emphatically:
Nowadays it would be quite clear that this action could not be
fastened on the Communist Party. To what extent individual
National Socialists co-operated in the planning and execution of
the deed will be difficult to establish, but in view of all that
has been revealed in the meantime, the fact must be accepted
that Goebbels and Goering each played a leading part, the one in
planning, the other in carrying out the plan.16
The
Reichstag fire was deliberately set, probably utilizing a flammable
liquid, by a group of experts. This is where Putzi Hanfstaengl comes
into the picture. The key question is how did this group, bent on
arson, gain access to the Reichstag to do the job? After 8 p.m. only
one door in the main building was unlocked and this door was
guarded. Just before 9 p.m. a tour of the building by watchmen
indicated all was well; no flammable liquids were noticed and
nothing was out of the ordinary in the Sessions Chamber where the
fire started. Apparently no one could have gained access to the
Reichstag building after 9 p.m., and no one was seen to enter or
leave between 9 p.m. and the start of the fire.
There was
only one way a group with flammable materials could have entered the
Reichstag — through a tunnel that ran between the Reichstag and the
Palace of the Reichstag President. Hermann Goering was president of
the Reichstag and lived in the Palace, and numerous S.A. and S.S.
men were known to be in the Palace. In the words of one author:
The use
of the underground passage, with all its complications, was
possible only to National-Socialists, the advance and escape of
the incendiary gang was feasible only with the connivance of
highly-placed employees of the Reichstag. Every clue, every
probability points damningly in one direction, to the conclusion
that the burning of the Reichstag was the work of
National-Socialists.17
How does Putzi
Hanfstaengl fit into this picture of arson and political intrigue?
Putzi — by
his own admission — was in the Palace room at the other end of the
tunnel leading to the Reichstag. And according to The Reichstag
Fire Trial, Putzi Hanfstaengl was actually in the Palace itself
during the fire:
propaganda apparatus stood ready, and the leaders of the Storm
Troopers were in their places. With the official bulletins
planned in advance, the orders of arrest prepared, Karwahne,
Frey and Kroyer waiting patiently in their cafe, the
preparations were complete, the scheme almost perfect.18
Dimitrov also
asserts that:
The
National-Socialist leaders, Hitler, Goering and Goebbels,
together with the high National-Socialist officials, Daluege,
Hanfstaengl and Albrecht, happened to be present in Berlin on
the day of the fire, despite that the election campaign was at
its highest pitch throughout Germany, six days before the poll.
Goering and Goebbels, under oath, furnished contradictory
explanations for their "fortuitous" presence in Berlin with
Hitler on that day. The National-Socialist Hanfstaengl, as
Goering's "guest," was present in the Palace of the Reichstag
President, immediately adjacent to the Reichstag, at the time
when the .fire broke out, although his "host" was not there at
that time.19
According
to Nazi Kurt Ludecke, there once existed a document signed by S.A.
Leader Karl Ernst — who supposedly set the fire and was later
murdered by fellow Nazis — which implicated Goering, Goebbels, and
Hanfstaengl in the conspiracy.
Roosevelt's New Deal and Hitler's
New Order
Hjalmar
Schacht challenged his post-war Nuremburg interrogators with the
observation that Hitler's New Order program was the same as
Roosevelt's New Deal program in the United States. The interrogators
understandably snorted and rejected the observation. However, a
little research suggests that not only are the two programs quite
similar in content, but that Germans had no trouble in observing the
similarities. There is in the Roosevelt Library a small book
presented to FDR by Dr. Helmut Magers in December 1933.20
On the flyleaf of this presentation copy is written the
inscription,
To the
President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in
profound admiration of his conception of a new economic order
and with devotion for his personality. The author, Baden,
Germany, November 9, 1933.
FDR's reply
to this admiration for his new economic order was as follows:21
(Washington) December 19, 1933
My dear
Dr. Magers: I want to send you my thanks for the copy of your
little book about me and the "New Deal." Though, as you know, I
went to school in Germany and could speak German with
considerable fluency at one time, I am reading your book not
only with great interest but because it will help my German.
Very
sincerely yours,
The New
Deal or the "new economic order" was not a creature of
classical liberalism. It was a creature of corporate socialism. Big
business as reflected in Wall Street strived for a state order in
which they could control industry and eliminate competition, and
this was the heart of FDR's New Deal. General Electric, for example,
is prominent in both Nazi Germany and the New Deal. German General
Electric was a prominent financier of Hitler and the Nazi Party, and A.E.G. also financed Hitler both directly and indirectly through
Osram. International General Electric in New York was a major
participant in the ownership and direction of both A.E.G. and Osram.
Gerard Swope, Owen Young, and A. Baldwin of General Electric in the
United States were directors of A.E.G. However, the story does not
stop at General Electric and financing of Hitler in 1933.
In a
previous book, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, the
author identified the role of General Electric in the Bolshevik
Revolution and the geographic location of American participants as
at 120 Broadway, New York City; the executive offices of General
Electric were also at 120 Broadway. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was working in Wall Street, his address was also 120 Broadway. In
fact, Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, the FDR Foundation, was
located at 120 Broadway. The prominent financial backer of an early
Roosevelt Wall Street venture from 120 Broadway was Gerard Swope of
General Electric. And it was "Swope's Plan" that became Roosevelt's
New Deal — the fascist plan that Herbert Hoover was unwilling to
foist on the United States. In brief, both Hitler's New Order and
Roosevelt's New Deal were backed by the same industrialists and in
content were quite similar — i.e., they were both plans for a
corporate state.
There were
then both corporate and individual bridges between FDR's America and
Hitler's Germany. The first bridge was the American I.G. Farben,
American affiliate of I.G. Farben, the largest German corporation.
On the board of American I.G. sat Paul Warburg, of the Bank of
Manhattan and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The second
bridge was between International General Electric, a wholly owned
subsidiary of General Electric Company and its partly owned
affiliate in Germany, A.E.G. Gerard Swope, who formulated FDR's New
Deal, was chairman of I.G.E. and on the board of A.E.G. The third
"bridge" was between Standard Oil of New Jersey and Vacuum Oil and
its wholly owned German subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanische
Gesellschaft. The chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey was Walter
Teagle, of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was a trustee of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and
appointed by FDR to a key administrative post in the National
Recovery Administration.
These
corporations were deeply involved in both the promotion of
Roosevelt's New Deal and the construction of the military power of
Nazi Germany. Putzi Hanfstaengl's role in the early days, up to the
mid-1930s anyway, was an informal link between the Nazi elite and
the White House. After the mid-1930s, when the world was set on the
course for war, Putzis importance declined — while American Big
Business continued to be represented through such intermediaries as
Baron Kurt von Schroder attorney Westrick, and membership in
Himmler's Circle of Friends.
Footnotes:
1William E. Dodd, Ambassador
Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
1941), p. 360.
2Ernst
Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, (New York: J.B. Lippincott,
1957), p. 28.
3Ibid.,
p.
4Ibid.,
p. 52.
5Ibid.,
p. 53.
6Ibid.,
p. 59.
7Ibid.,
p. 122.
8Ibid.,
pp. 197-8.
9Ibid.,
p. 214.
10Ladislas Farago, The Game of
the Foxes, (New York: Bantam, 1973), p. 97.
11Ibid., p. 106.
12Ernst Hanfstaengl, Unheard
Witness, op. cit., p. 76.
13Ibid.
14Ibid., pp. 310-11.
15Dustbin report EF/Me/1.
Interview of Thyssen, p. 13.
16Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht,
Confessions of" The Old Wizard," (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1956), p. 276.
17George Dimitrov, The Reichstag
Fire Trial, (London: The Bodley Head, 1934), p. 309.
18Ibid., p. 310.
19Ibid., p. 311.
20Helmut Magers, Ein Revolutionar
Aus Common Sense, (Leipzig: R. Kittler Verlag, 1934).
21Nixon, Edgar B., Editor,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, (Cambridge: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), Volume 1:
January 1933-February 1934. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Hyde
Park, New York.