Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht [Hardcover]

John Weitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

William Shirer called Hjalmar Schacht "the only brilliant and, next to Hitler, the most interesting Nazi." Biographer John Weitz uses excerpts from Schacht's diary and memoir to create a thrilling chronicle that brings to life the extraordinary financial feats that put Schacht on stormy but intimate terms with Nazi leaders, as well as his trial and eventual acquittal for war crimes at Nuremberg.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Schacht, as the Weimar Republic's finance minister, saved Germany from hyperinflation. He later gave his support to Hitler, and his financial manipulations hastened Germany's rearmament. Nevertheless, Schacht did not approve of war and spent the last years of the Third Reich in concentration camps. His ambivalence toward National Socialism is interesting, although his anti-Semitism was not remarkable for the time. Weitz (Hitler's Diplomat, LJ 7/92) is not a historian but a fashion designer, and it shows. He relies heavily on secondary sources, including a bizarre summation of Schacht's postwar years with newspaper headlines. Weitz also makes silly mistakes, like attributing a quotation by Stalin to Hitler. He does enlighten the reader with an intimate knowledge of the Third Reich as a refugee and OSS intelligence officer. Though flawed, his work is the only available English-language biography in print about a fascinating man.?Randall L. Schroeder, Wartburg Coll. Lib., Waverly, Iowa
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Weitz has written half a dozen successful books, most recently Hitler's Diplomat (1992), a popular biography of Joachim von Ribbentrop. Weitz's family had to flee the Nazis in 1938, and Weitz seems fascinated by the much-asked question of why "ordinary" people cooperated or collaborated with the Nazis. He pursues that issue again with this biography. Schacht was appointed president of the Reichsbank in 1923 and is acknowledged as one of the two most responsible for bringing Germany's hyperinflation under control. He resigned in a dispute over the plan for German reparations that had been crafted at the Hague in 1930. Hitler reappointed Schacht president of the Reichsbank in 1933 and also made him his minister of economics. Schacht is credited with again turning around the German economy, this time relying on armaments buildup. When he realized Hitler planned on using his new weapons to carry out a policy of aggression, Schacht protested, was arrested, and put into a concentration camp until 1944. Until now no popularly accessible material had been written about him. David Rouse

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 361 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1St Edition edition (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316929166
• ISBN-13: 978-0316929165
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #653,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thorough explanation of Schacht's thinking., November 3, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Hempstead, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (Hardcover)

Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht first attracted the attention of the world when he was given credit for ending the German hyperinflation of 1923, after which the economy of the Weimar Republic performed remarkably well until the 1929 recession which eventually developed into the Great Depression plaguing the advanced capitalist system in the 1930s.When the World War I reparations payments were subject to a general moratorium in 1931, Schacht played a major role in the creation of the Bank for International Settlements that was responsible for the servicing of the loans made under the Dawes and Young Plans.to Germany. These loans were finally paid off by the Federal Republic od Germany in 1980.. Schacht had certain fundamental beliefs: he opposed the paying of reparations required by the terms of the Versailles Treaty in 1919; he had the typical banker's fear of inflation and the role of governmental expenditures in the creation of rising prices; he advocated the rearmament of Germany and sincerely believed that this would contribute to world peace. By 1936, he had begun to oppose Hitler's 4-Year Plan which, under the leadership of Goering, called for a drive towards autarky and additional military spending in an economy that was already back to full employment as a result of deficit spending.. Schacht was opposed to devaluating the mark, which was increasingly seen as a solution based on Britain's devaluation of the pound in 1931 and their comparatively successful subsequent coping with the Great Depression in Great Britain. Instead, Schacht and his cohorts came up with .the Mefo bonds which were used to deficit finance the construction of the famous Autobahns. Schacht went along with the 4-Year plan only after being assured that the Mefo bonds, which he regarded as a stop-gap measure, would be paid off or retired in 1938. Presumably the inflationary impact of rising military expenditures would be offset by the deflationary retirement of the bonds. The increasing reluctance of Schacht to go along with the Military Keynesianism of his successor, Walther Funk, who, like Schacht , was an economic journalist, showed up in Schacht's increasing criticism of Hitler and personally in his souring relationship with his first wife, Luise, who was a convinced Nazi. By the time of the serious attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, Schacht was a candidate for involvement in this conspiracy and was subsequently imprisoned.by the Nazis. Thus, it becomes more understandable why Funk received a long sentence while Schacht was acquitted following the Nuremberg Trials. Schacht's opposition to the autarky and additional military spending to support Hitler's aggressive plans saved his neck , although he was harrassed by the West German courts long after his Nuremberg acquittal. Schacht never joined the Nazi Party and was clearly used by Hitler since his intellectual talents were too great to ignore. After the war his services were in high demand in the Third World, particularly in Indonesia, India, Egypt, and Iran. He organized his own export company and regained some of his earlier wealth before dying in his nineties.. Lynn Turgeon Professor Emeritus of Economics.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, May 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (Hardcover)

This book is as my summary suggests excellent. The chapter on hyper inflation is brilliant. This book is not only a biography of Schacht which is quite gripping, but an economic history of Germany between the wars. It is simply written making it easy to read, easy to understand and detailed. It is an equally siutable book for a reader with a casual interest in this period, a GCSE student, an A-level student or degree standard.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A fair portrait of the man, but shaky on the facts, April 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hitler's Banker: Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (Hardcover)

Afraid to say that Weitz's book is littered with errors as regards basic facts of the Nazi era and the inter-war period in general. This won't matter to those who have a good knowledge of the times, but students fresh to the subject should beware. The heavy reliance on US news reports of the time suggests a certain thinness of research. Even so, the picture of Schacht that emerges is reasonably well-balanced and so the book is worth a try.