Der Leutnant und die Silbermedaille (1932): Ein Bild, das nicht in Geschichtsbüchern steht

Unter dem Aspekt des “Appeasement” – einer von naiver Friedenssehnsucht bestimmten Beschwichtungspolitik, die im Münchener Abkommen von 1938 gipfelte - sei es zu sehen, dass die Westmächte es duldeten, als Hitler 1935 entgegen den Bestimmungen des Vertrags von Versailles (aus der Rest-Reichswehr und Freikorps) die aufgerüstete Wehrmacht schuf. So schreiben es die Schulbücher, und so steht es z.B. auch in Wikipedia (“Vorgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Europa” http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorgeschichte_des_Zweiten_Weltkrieges_in_Europa).

Aber auch ganz andere Gründe als “Appeasement” können maßgeblich gewesen sein – zum Beispiel der Wunsch nach einem militärisch wieder erstarkten Deutschland als “Bollwerk gegen den Bolschewismus”, eine gefühlte Solidarität “nordischer Völker” gegenüber einem  Ansturm genetisch vermeintlich minderwertiger “Untermenschen”, oder eine Kombination aus beidem. (Siehe dazu z.B.  http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/08/bolschewisten-gesichter-das.html  http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/07/liebe-ist-das-grote-aber-nur-wenn.html).

Wenn es bei der “Duldung” der deutschen Wiederaufrüstung ab 1935 tatsächlich nur um “Appeasement” gegangen wäre - wie ließe es sich dann erklären, dass bereits bei den Olympischen Spielen in Los Angeles 1932 ein Reichswehr-Offizier in Uniform bei einem Schießwettbewerb antreten konnte? Reichswehr-Oberleutnant Heinz Hax gewann in der Diszipin “Pistolen-Schießen”, zu der hauptsächlich “Angehörige des Militaers” antraten, die Silbermedaille. (Die Gold- und Bronzemedaillen gingen an Renzo Murigi und Domenico Matteucci, beide Italien.) Eine öffentliche Siegerehrung gab es offenbar nicht (“Ein Vertreter brachte uns seine Silbermedaille”); die Öffentlichkeit war wohl noch nicht reif fuer diesen Anblick. Vier Jahre später bei den Olympischen Spielen in Berlin gab es solche Diskretion angesichts der Verbindung von Sport und Militarismus nicht mehr. “Trotz Boykottaufrufen nicht-staatlicher Organisationen in den USA und anderen Ländern wurden die Olympischen Spiele 1936 in Berlin und Garmisch-Partenkirchen mit Teilnahme von Sportlern und hochrangigen Besuchern aus aller Welt durchgeführt; inszeniert als Feier von ‘Uniformität, Militarismus, Disziplin und Massenchoreografie’ (Grote, 2004)”  (www.hausarbeiten.de/faecher/vorschau/112709.html).

Das Bild von Reichswehr-Oberleutnant Hax in Uniform bei den Olympischen Spielen 1932 (oben) habe ich keinem Geschichtsbuch gesehen. Es steht in einem Sammelalbum der Firma Reemtsma (“Olympia 1932”, erschienen Ende 1932; Seite 92), die nach der “Machtergreifung” mit ihrem “Cigaretten-Bilderdienst” das Nazi-Regime propagandistisch unterstützte (siehe z.B. Bild auf http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/07/liebe-ist-das-grote-aber-nur-wenn.html).

  Auf einer Internetseite für Hobby-Sammler ist eine Liste sämtlicher Bilder des Reemtsma-Albums (Olympia 1932) zu finden (http://oddlyquirky.com/trackandfield/cards/c_olympia1932.html). Das Bild von Heinz Hax ist Nr. 138; auch Nr. 150 (auf S. 103) ist erwähnenswert: Es zeigt als einen der drei “Sieger im Preis der Nationen” den Reiter “Hpt. von Rosen-Schweden” neben “Ltn. Chamberlain-U.S.A.” und “Baron Nishi-Japan”. Es handelt sich um Clarence von Rosen, Anhänger des “nordischen Gedankens”, Hitler-Verehrer und langjähriges Mitglied des Olympischen Komitees (mehr zu Clarence von Rosen, seine schwägerliche Beziehung zu Hermann Goering und seine Rolle bei der Verbreitung eugenischen und nationalsozialistischen Gedankenguts siehe z.B. http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/04/ein-arzt-der-nazizeit-erlautert-die.html).

_______

Vier Jahre später:

"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt!"
Adolf Hitler als Schirmherr der Olympischen Spiele 1936 in Berlin und Berchtesgaden. (Programmheft gesponsert von der I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft.)
Bild gefunden auf http://www.vhec.org/images/pdfs/1936%20Olympics%20teacher's%20guide.pdf

 

 

"Farben war Hitler, und Hitler war Farben":
Zur Verbindung zwischen der I.G. Farbenindustie Aktiengesellschaft  und Adolf Hitler

 

Das Olympia-Programmheft, das gleichzeitig Propaganda war, wurde von I.G. Farben gesponsert (siehe Abbildung oben). I.G. Farben betrieb in großem Stil Werbung für Hitler und die Nazi-Partei – und erhielt dafür in den ersten Jahren professionelle Unterstützung von einem der bedeutendsten modernen PR-Experten, Ivy Lee.

 

Aus
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER
By Antony C. Sutton
Copyright 2000
HTML version created in the United States of America by Studies in Reformed Theology
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_02.htm

Chapter II
The Empire of I.G. Farben

Farben was Hitler and Hitler was Farben. (Senator Homer T. Bone to Senate Committee on Military Affairs, June 4, 1943.)

On the eve of World War II the German chemical complex of I.G. Farben was the largest chemical manufacturing enterprise in the world, with extraordinary political and economic power and influence within the Hitlerian Nazi state. I. G. has been aptly described as "a state within a state."

The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies — Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. These companies were merged to become Inter-nationale Gesellschaft Farbenindustrie A.G. — or I.G. Farben for short. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg for war crimes committed by the I. G. cartel. Other I. G. Farben directors were placed on trial but the American affiliates of I. G. Farben and the American directors of I. G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the archives.

It is these U.S. connections in Wall Street that concern us. Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I. G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.

German bankers on the Farben Aufsichsrat (the supervisory Board of Directors)1 in the late 1920s included the Hamburg banker Max Warburg, whose brother Paul Warburg was a founder of the Federal Reserve System in the United States. Not coincidentally, Paul Warburg was also on the board of American I. G., Farben's wholly owned U.S. subsidiary. In addition to Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz, the guiding hand in the creation of the Farben empire, the early Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler. All except Max Warburg were charged as "war criminals" after World War II. […]
Hermann Schmitz, the organizer of I. G. Farben in 1925, became a prominent early Nazi and supporter of Hitler, as well as chairman of the Swiss I. G. Chemic and president of American I. G. The Farben complex both in Germany and the United States then developed into an integral part of the formation and operation of the Nazi state machine, the Wehrmacht and the S.S.

I. G. Farben is of peculiar interest in the formation of the Nazi state because Farben directors materially helped Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933. We have photographic evidence (see page 60) that I.G. Farben contributed 400,000 RM to Hitler's political "slush fund." It was this secret fund which financed the Nazi seizure of control in March 1933. […]

Qualified observers have argued that Germany could not have gone to war in 1939 without I. G. Farben. […] There were over 2,000 cartel agreements between I. G. and foreign firms — including Standard Oil of New Jersey, DuPont, Alcoa, Dow Chemical, and others in the United States […]

In 1939, out of 43 major products manufactured by I.G., 28 were of "primary concern" to the German armed forces. Farben's ultimate control of the German war economy, acquired during the 1920s and 1930s with Wall Street assistance, can best be assessed by examining the percentage of German war material output produced by Farben plants in 1945. Farben at that time produced 100 percent of German synthetic rubber, 95 percent of German poison gas (including all the Zyklon B gas used in the concentration camps), 90 percent of German plastics, 88 percent of German magnesium, 84 percent of German explosives, 70 percent of German gunpowder, 46 percent of German high octane (aviation) gasoline, and 33 percent of German synthetic gasoline. […]

There were numerous Farben arrangements with American firms, including cartel marketing arrangements, patent agreements, and technical exchanges as exemplified in the Standard Oil-Ethyl technology transfers mentioned above. These arrangements were used by I.G. to advance Nazi policy abroad, to collect strategic information, and to consolidate a world-wide chemical cartel. […]

The Berlin N.W. 7 office of I.G. Farben was the key Nazi overseas espionage center. The unit operated under Farben director Max Ilgner, nephew of I.G. Farben president Hermann Schmitz. Max Ilgner and Hermann Schmitz were on the board of American I.G., with fellow directors Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company, Paul Warburg of Bank of Manhattan, and Charles E. Mitchell of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

At the outbreak o£ war in 1939 VOWI employees were ordered into the Wehrmacht but in fact continued to perform the same work as when nominally under I.G. Farben. One of the more prominent of these Farben intelligence workers in N.W. 7 was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who joined Farben in the early 1930s after completion of an 18-month period of service in the black-uniformed S.S. […]

Chemnyco's vice president in New York was Rudolph Ilgner, an American citizen and brother of American I. G. Farben director Max Ilgner. In brief, Farben operated VOWI, the Nazi foreign intelligence operation, before World War II and the VOWI operation was associated with prominent members of the Wall Street Establishment through American I.G. and Chemnyco.

 The U.S. War Department also accused I.G. Farben and its American associates of spearheading Nazi psychological and economic warfare programs through dissemination of propaganda via Farben agents abroad, and of providing foreign exchange for this Nazi propaganda. Farben's cartel arrangements promoted Nazi economic warfare — the outstanding example being the voluntary Standard Oil of New Jersey restriction on development of synthetic rubber in the United States at the behest of I. G. Farben. […]

Acting on behalf of the Nazi state, Farben broadened its own horizon to a world scale which maintained close relations with the Nazi regime and the Wehrmaeht. A liaison office, the Vermittlungsstelle W, was established to maintain communications between I.G. Farben and the German Ministry of War [(Wehrwirtschaftsamt)] […]

Unfortunately the files of the Vermittlungsstelle [(liaison office between I.G. Farben and Wehrwirtschaftsamt)] were destroyed prior to the end of the war, although it is known from other sources that from 1934 onwards a complex network of transactions evolved between I.G. and the Wehrmacht. In 1934 I. G. Farben began to mobilize for war, and each I.G. plant prepared its war production plans and submitted the plans to the Ministries of War and Economics. By 1935-6 war games were being held at I.G. Farben plants and wartime technical procedures rehearsed. These war games were described by Dr. Struss, head of the Secretariat of I.G.'s Technical Committee:

It is true that since 1934 or 1935, soon after the establishment of the Vermittlungsstelle W in the different works, theoretical war plant games had been arranged to examine how the effect of bombing on certain factories would materialize. It was particularly taken into consideration what would happen if 100- or 500-kilogram bombs would fall on a certain factory and what would be the result of it. It is also right that the word Kriegsspiele was used for it. […]

Consequently, throughout the 1930s I. G. Farben did more than just comply with orders from the Nazi regime. Farben was an initiator and operator for the Nazi plans for world conquest. Farben acted as a research and intelligence organization for the German Army and voluntarily initiated Wehrmacht projects. In fact the Army only rarely had to approach Farben; it is estimated that about 40 to 50 percent of Farben projects for the Army were initiated by Farben itself. In brief, in the words of Dr. von Schnitzler:

Thus, in acting as it had done, I.G. contracted a great responsibility and constituted a substantial aid in the chemical domain and decisive help to Hitler's foreign policy, which led to war and to the ruin of Germany. Thus, I must conclude that I.G. is largely responsible for Hitler's policy. […]

This miserable picture of pre-war military preparation was known abroad and had to be sold — or disguised — to the American public in order to facilitate Wall Street fund-raising and technical assistance on behalf of I. G. Farben in the United States. A prominent New York public relations firm was chosen for the job of selling the I.G. Farben combine to America. The most notable public relations firm in the late 1920s and 1930s was Ivy Lee & T.J. Ross of New York. Ivy Lee had previously undertaken a public relations campaign for the Rockefellers, to spruce up the Rockefeller name among the American public. The firm had also produced a syncophantic book entitled USSR, undertaking the same clean-up task for the Soviet Union — even while Soviet labor camps were in full blast in the late 20s and early 30s.

From 1929 onwards Ivy Lee became public relations counsel for I. G. Farben in the United States. In 1934 Ivy Lee presented testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee on this work for Farben.15 Lee testified that I.G. Farben was affiliated with the American Farben firm and "The American I.G. is a holding company with directors such people as Edsel Ford, Walter Teagle, one of the officers of the City Bank .... " Lee explained that he was paid $25,000 per year under a contract made with Max Ilgner of I.G. Farben. His job was to counter criticism levelled at I.G. Farben within the United States. […]

The initial payment of $4,500 to Ivy Lee under this contract was made by Hermann Schmitz, chairman of I.G. Farben in Germany. It was deposited in the New York Trust Company under the name of I. G. Chemic (or the "Swiss I.G.," as Ivy Lee termed it). However, the second and major payment of $14,450 was made by William von Rath of the American I.G. and also deposited by Ivy Lee in New York Trust Company, for the credit of his personal account. (The firm account was at the Chase Bank.) This point about the origin of the funds is 'important when we consider the identity of directors of American I.G., because payment by American I.G. meant that the bulk of the Nazi propaganda funds were not of German origin. They were American funds earned in the U.S. and under control of American directors, although used for Nazi propaganda in the United States.

In other words, most of the Nazi propaganda funds handled by Ivy Lee were not imported from Germany. […]

Finally, Ivy Lee employed Burnham Carter to study American new paper reports on Germany and prepare suitable pro-Nazi replies. It should be noted that this German literature was not Farben literature, it was official Hitler literature […]

Several basic observations can be made from this evidence. First, the board of American I.G. had three directors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most influential of the various Federal Reserve Banks. American I.G. also had interlocks with Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford Motor Company, Bank of Manhattan (later to become the Chase Manhattan), and A.E.G. (German General Electric). Second, three members of the board of this American I.G. were found guilty at Nuremburg War Crimes Trials. These were the German, not the American, members. Among these Germans was Max Ilgner, director of the I.G. Farben N.W. 7 office in Berlin, i.e., the Nazi pre-war intelligence office. If the directors of a corporation are collectively responsible for the activities of the corporation, then the American directors should also have been placed on trial at Nuremburg, along with the German directors — that is, if the purpose of the trials was to determine war guilt. Of course, if the purpose of the trials had been to divert attention away from the U.S. involvement in Hitler's rise to power, they succeeded very well in such an objective.

Footnotes […]

______


Aus

Hauke Klenz:
Die Olympischen Sommerspiele 1936 und der Nationalsozialismus im Spiegel der Schleswig-Holsteinischen Tagespresse

Examensarbeit , 2010   

 

Zugleich nutzte die nationalsozialistische Propaganda den Neubaubeschluss für ihre Zwecke, indem sie den komplexen Entwurfs- und Planungsprozess auf den Hitler zugeschriebenen Satz „Wir werden bauen!“ verkürzte und ein Foto, dass ihn zusammen mit Reichsinnenminister Frick in Bauherrenpose zeigt^[80] und unter anderem auf dem Vorsatzblatt der Propagandaschrift „Olympia 1936. Eine nationale Aufgabe“ zu sehen war, mit diesem Satz untertitelte.^[81] So sollte im Zusammenhang der Olympia-Vorbereitungen eine klassische Identität des staatlichen Machthabers inszeniert werden: die des Baumeisters, der den Zerfall von Staat, Gesellschaft und Volk verhindert, indem er den Bau des Staates neu fügt.^[82] [....]
 

Aufgrund der vorherrschenden innenpolitischen Verhältnisse sah sich das Deutsche Reich einer Front internationaler Proteste gegenüber, die von den Vereinigten Staaten angeführt wurde.^[101] Besonders auf den Erlass der „Nürnberger Gesetze“ reagierte man dort schockiert und beschloss, eine finale Abstimmung vorzunehmen, in der darüber entschieden werden sollte, ob man die Olympischen Spiele in Berlin boykottiert. Es war besonders der Lobbyarbeit des Funktionärs Avery Brundage, in dessen Chicagoer Heimatverein auch keine Juden zugelassen waren und der während einer Deutschlandreise an dem allgegenwärtigen Antisemitismus keinerlei Anstoß nahm, zu verdanken, dass sich das amerikanische OK im November 1935 mit zwei Stimmen Mehrheit für eine Teilnahme entschied.^[102] [...]
Die Anzahl dieser Sprachanweisungen verzeichnete von 1933, als 330 Presseanweisungen herausgegeben wurden, bis 1936, als es sich um 2.500 Presseanweisungen handelte, einen rapiden Anstieg. Eine einheitliche Vorstellung zur Pressearbeit existierte trotz dieser Anweisungen aber keineswegs [...] Einigkeit bestand lediglich darin, dass die linke Presse mit allen Mitteln bekämpft werden musste.^[164] [...]
Die 1933 verabschiedeten Gesetze und Verordnungen^[165] bildeten wie überall im Reich auch in Schleswig-Holstein die Basis für die Zentralisierung des Personalsektors, die besonders durch die Gleichschaltung des Reichsverbandes der deutschen Presse vom 9. Mai 1933 vorangetrieben wurde und der man im schleswig-holsteinischen Landesverband bereits am 23. April 1933 insofern zuvorkam, als man den einstimmigen Beschluss fasste, jüdischen, kommunistischen und sozialdemokratischen Redakteuren die Mitgliedschaft fortan zu verweigern.^[166]
 
http://www.diplomarbeiten24.de/vorschau/190656.html


____


1934 Press Photo Ivy Lee New York Publicity Expert Advised Hitler Committee

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1934-Press-Photo-Ivy-Lee-New-York-Publicity-Expert-Advised-Hitler-Committee-/351060885386?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item51bcdbff8a