Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
FRITZ THYSSEN
Made and P,illled in Grea; B,iIM" /0' Hoddtr c!l- Slough/on, Limiled. Lo"dOll
by Wyma'. & SO"s Limited, London, Reading and Fakenltam
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD
A cha racter istic page of the m anu scri pl " I Paid H itler, " wit h F t itz Th}'su:n 's
orillina l han d writing in F rench .
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD 15
EMERY REVES,
PRESIDENT,
Cooperation Publishing Co., Inc.
* * *
PAGE
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD 5
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 19
PACK
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
O N Bad
August 15th, 1939, I arrived with my wife at
Gastein in the Austrian Alps. We needed
a rest. It had been a particularly worrying and
strenuous year.
It has been said that I went to Gastein to prepare
my escape from Germany. This is untrue. In fact,
I had left Germany early that August to visit the
Zurich exhibition. Had I wanted to escape I could
have remained in Switzerland then. But I did not
believe that war would come. The German generals
were against it. Moreover, I had been told of state-
ments made by one of Hermann Goering's intimate
friends, Gauleiter Terboven of Essen, from which it
appeared that all this was purely and simply a diplo-
matic game and that no one in office dreamed of
embarking upon an armed adventure. Terboven's
remarks most certainly reflected Goering's own opinion.
At the beginning of August Goering was opposed to
war; his subsequent change of mind came only at the
eleventh hour. I was therefore quite reassured when
I left for Gastein.
On August 23rd I received the surprising news of
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84 I PAID HITLER
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Facsimil e of the contr act signed by Fritz Thyssen and Eme ry Reves for
the pub lication of his memoin .
THE END OF A POLITICAL ERROR 65
NATIONAL HUMILIATION
89
go I PAID HITLER
Historical Notes
THE PARTIES IN THE GERMAN LEGISLATIVE NATIONAL
ASSEMBLY AND IN THE GERMAN REICHSTAG
I N resistance,
October, 1923, after the end of the passive
I made a trip to Munich. I paid a
call on General Erich Ludendorff, whose acquaint-
ance I had made at my father's house during the war.
I have always had a great admiration for Ludendorff.
Under the influence of his second wife he adopted
in later years an attitude violently opposed to Catholic-
ism, and he almost played the part of the founder of
a new religion. During his last illness, however, he
was under the care of nuns in a Catholic hospital at
Munich. I have been told that he had flowers
purchased every day in order to decorate the altar.
After the revolution of 1918, General Ludendorff
enjoyed a great reputation among patriots. Although
he was a Prussian, he moved to the Bavarian capital
two years after the war, where he took up residence
with his sister and where he continued to work on
his memoirs without abandoning his close contact
with political life. As the Ruhr was being occupied,
Hugo Stinnes established relations with him, and
Ludendorff went to Berlin with a view to organising
military resistance to the occupation with the help of
1°9
110 I PAID HITLER
Historical Notes
THE DAWES PLAN
Historical Notes
THE KRUPP PLANTS
A LTcreate
H OU GH I had failed in my endeavours to
a corporative system iStandische Wirt-
schaftsordnung) , and thus to put German economy on
a sound basis, I did not at first give up all hope for
a rational economic leadership. The State Council
seemed to function quite well at the beginning, and
Franz von Papen, who remained vice-chancellor until
1934, made a few quite sensible speeches. I was
especially favourably impressed by the great speech
he made at Marburg, toward the end of 1933. He
seemed to endeavour to strengthen the influence of
the conservative elements which he had brought into
power along with Hitler.
I congratulated him on his speech, and I had the
impression that he himself believed he had accom-
plished much by delivering it. Many interpreted it
at the time as a warning to the National Socialists
not to misuse their power.
163
I PAID HITLER
W ITNational
H Adolf Hitler everything is propaganda.
Socialist Germany has evolved en-
tirely new methods of propaganda, and has used
them with great effect and with a profound knowledge
of mass psychology. Yet Hitler despises the common
people. He has no sympathy for the working man,
and is entirely devoid of any social sense. What he
does, he does not for the people but for publicity.
His " social" policy, therefore, is fundamentally false.
Hitler even started this war for the sake of propa-
ganda. I and many others have taken great pains
to keep Germany at peace. But to-day nobody, not
even the generals, dare dissent. The Nazi terror
imposes a fatal silence on all.
Hitler believed, at first, that neither England nor
France would take any action regarding the invasion
of Poland. It is true that, despite the consternation
caused by Hitler's shocking breach of faith after
Munich, some people in England still believed that
peace could be maintained. Theyplaced particular trust,
it seems, in Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, be-
cause he was a member of the Oxford Group and, by
1 89
Igo I PAID HITLER
FR Oleaders
M the moment they seized power, the Nazi
professed the greatest contempt for the
individual. A large number of German conservatives,
ignorant of the facts and appalled by the burning of
the Reichstag, assented to the incarceration of the
political enemies of the regime without a trial. They
may have regarded this measure as purely provisional
and justified by the danger of civil war, and assumed
that the National Socialists would soon reinstate legal
procedure. They were mistaken. The concentration
camps, better called torture camps, are, to this day,
a state institution. Despite all my inquiries, I have
never learned in what circumstances my nephew, von
Remnitz, died at Dachau.
One of the outstanding cases which I found par-
ticularly shocking was the imprisonment of the
Protestant pastor, Martin Niemoller, in the con-
centration camp of Oranienburg, Martin Niemoller
had been a naval officer. During the war of 1914-
1918 he commanded a submarine. After the war he
became a pastor. When the National Socialists
2Ij
216 I PAID HITLER
Historical Notes
NIETZSCHE AND HIS SUPERMAN
National Socialism has attempted to falsify Nietzsche's
work and to represent this great German philosopher as
a precursor of the Nazi racial doctrine and the" Blood and
Soil" theory. The truth is that Nietzsche found no
greater object of scorn, in many of his works, than the
inflated pan-Germanic mind. The "superman," as
represented in his most famous work, Thus Spak« :(arathustra,
has quite a different aspect from the prospective" leaders"
produced in the National Socialist leadership schools
(Ordensburgen) , Nietzsche's "superman" was the man
living in solitude on the summit, because by his spiritual
superiority he had overcome everything that Nietzsche
considered to be prejudices and traditional nonsense.
THE CONCORDATS
" Concordat " was originally the name given to a treaty
between the Papal See and the Emperors of Germany.
In recent times, the concordats between the Vatican and
I PAID HITLER
THE KULTURKAMPF
This is the name given to the conflict begun by Bismarck
in 1875, under the pretext that several measures taken by
the Holy See represented interferences with the govern-
ment's powers-in Germany in general and Prussia in
particular. Since almost half of Germany's population
was Catholic, Bismarck's step aroused widespread indigna-
tion. As the Catholics followed the leadership of their
priests, the conflict gradually degenerated into persecution
of the clergy. A few years later Bismarck was obliged to
yield to Rome and make peace with the Church. How-
ever, the Kulturkampf has left its traces in Germany to
this day, in the form of the Catholic Centre party, which
was originally founded as a medium of self-protection,
and which, after playing an essential part in the Reichstag
opposition, became one of the most important govern-
ment parties in post-war Germany.
PART FOUR
GERMANY AND THE FUTURE OF
THE WORLD
CHAPTER ONE