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CONFESSIONS OF "The Old Wizard" THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HJALMAR HORACE GREELEY SCHACHT Translated by Diana Pyke I L L U S T R A T E D HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON The Riberside Press Cambridge 1956 -III - COPYRIGHT © 1955 BY HJALMAR HORACE GREELEY SCHACHT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD NUMBER: 55- 11550 The Riberside Press CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. -IV - NEITHER VIOLENCE NOR POWER OF THE PURSE FASHION THE UNIVERSE ETHICAL ACTION, SPIRITUAL FORCE MAY RESHAPE THE WORLD'S COURSE. Hialmar Schacht -V- [This page intentionally left blank.] -VI - INTRODUCTION THE SECOND OF SEPTEMBER, 1948, was a particularly sultry day. Somewhat ill at ease in my fur coat I stood at the exit of Ludwigsburg Internment Camp waiting for the turnkey to come and open the door for me. My wife was waiting outside with my lawyer. Plucky Manci, who for years had been fighting a desperate battle against every kind of obstruction, in order to have me released. Now, at last it had happened. She had come to fetch me in Dr. Schwamberger's car. Now and again she would raise her hand and signal unobtrusively, which meant: Only a few minutes more, and you'll be free! Seconds passed. Two young press photographers had taken up their stand beside the gateway ready to record on their film my first step into freedom. I waited. The photographers grinned. They were obviously already looking forward to the caption: "Wearing a fur coat in a temperature of 77° F., the former president of the Reichsbank is released from Ludwigsburg." There would be no point in trying to explain to them about the coat. What did they know of four years' imprisonment under the Gestapo, of American and German Denazification tribunals? How could they tell the condition of the clothes I wore under that coat? A couple of workmen came by and, attracted by the interesting drama, stopped to light cigarettes. I could hear their conversation. "There's Schacht," said one. "They acquitted 'im yesterday." "Think they'll let 'im go?" the other asked. He wore a pair of blue dungarees, and from the waist up was clad only in his own sunburned skin. "Nope," said the first man slowly. "I don't b'lieve they will. They'll find some reason or other to pop 'im back in the jug!" They spat into their hands, picked up their tools and departed. Their talk could not be described as encouraging. Vox populi , I thought. The turnkey arrived, rattled his keys and solemnly opened the -VII - great gate. The cameras clicked; someone asked me a question. Manci cut him short and led me to the car. I sank into the back seat next to the man who for months past had conducted my defense. "Let's get away," said Manci, "away from here..." I don't know if it was that same evening or on one of those that followed that I decided to write my memoirs. For the first time in four years, one month and ten days I was a free man. Ever since seven o'clock on the morning of July 23, 1944, when the Secret State Police had arrested me, I had been pushed around like a postal package. Other people had assumed responsibility for my person, had transferred me from one prison to another by car, plane and truck; they had conducted me from my cell to the courts and back again to my cell; had threatened me, shouted at me, spoken me fair. Prison air is the same the world over. I had been imprisoned for conspiring against Hitler. After Hitler was dead, I was imprisoned for aiding him. Men who knew nothing of my country or of my personal circumstances had confronted me with ready- made judgments on my person and my country and had flung these judgments in my face. I was seventy-one years old and suddenly once more a free man. My wife and children were living in a kind of log hut on Lüneburg Heath. I had lost everything I possessed - money, house, land, even the wood I had once planted. Such a situation makes a man think. He begins to reflect on his future as well as his past life. I was not greatly concerned about the future. As a young man I had worked my way to the top; I could do so a second time. In my family we mature late and remain active well into the biblical years. Such had been the case with my grandfather, a parish doctor in a small North German town. The same had been true of my father, who as a young man had emigrated to America, returned to Germany six years later and for a second time built his life anew. I could not do otherwise. No - I had no fear of the future. I would work, I would not fail the three people who depended on me. The past was a somewhat different matter. It may of course be argued that four years of prison, concentration camps, international tribunals and denazification courts were ample for a man to come to terms with his past. That is a mistaken assumption. There is no time during an enquiry for a man to come to terms with himself. One is handed over, defenceless, to those authorities who - from -VIII - the prison warder to the foremost public prosecutor - never for an instant relax their grip. Unswervingly, unremittingly, they endeavor to catch you out, to pin you down, to prove something against you. You need to have presence of mind, to be constantly on the qui vive if you are not to weaken. Exposed to every kind of trick and browbeating, granted concessions one day only to have them withdrawn on the next, you are no longer a free subject but a target for the law. This was the case, whether in the National Socialist concentration camps, as "war criminal" in an American prison or in the camps of the denazification tribunals. In our world political tribunals aim at taking their victims by surprise. Serious thought is possible only for a free man. A few days after my release I went for a walk beside a stream in a wood. I love woods and water. On my former estate (now in Russian hands) there were woods, and lakes with waterfowl - herons, sawbills, divers, wild duck... The sun had set in a mighty turmoil of color: tattered clouds of red, orange and yellow mirrored in the water. For some time I stood gazing at the scene, then sat down on a bench. "Are you not Dr. Schacht?" said a voice at my elbow. I looked up, startled. A man - a complete stranger - had approached noiselessly and now sat down beside me. "Yes," I said. He held out his hand. "I'm so very glad to meet you, Dr. Schacht," he said. "I have always wanted to shake hands with you." We shook hands. "What can I do for you?" I asked. "Nothing," he said. "I just wanted the chance to talk with you. You're a free man now, aren't you?" "It looks like it," I answered. He shifted to a more comfortable position, took out a cigar case and handed it to me. "Won't it be robbing you?" "Not a bit of it!" was his grandiose reply. "Cigars are my business - been in the trade thirty-five years. Don't you remember me?" "I haven't the faintest..." "I came to see you once...at that time I was traveling for a cigar factory. I'm on my own now, thank goodness. Business is good, people are buying again since the introduction of the D- mark..." " You came to see me?" "I was going to tell you about that." He handed me a match. "I called on you at the Reichsbank. My firm wanted to name a new -IX - brand of cigars after you. The Hjalmar Schacht Cigar, President brand, ha-ha-ha!" His laughter stirred my memory. "I remember," I said, "but I couldn't recall your face. You called on me and wanted to pay for the use of my name?" "Right," he said. "And it would have been a good stroke of business for you too. A box of cigars on the house every week as long as you lived." "Is the firm still in business?" "And how! It's going full steam ahead!" cried the cheery cigar merchant. "Pity I turned the offer down," I ventured, for the sake of saying something. "Yes, isn't it?" he retorted. We smoked side by side for another quarter of an hour, then he rose, shook me long and warmly by the hand, and departed. Poor devil, his expression said - what have you got now? The Reichsbank is kaput, the Reich is kaput, the President deposed. They've no further use for a president of the Reichsbank these days. Look at me - I'm only a cigar merchant, but I'm the owner of a business and that's better than a Reichsbank. If you had only agreed to let those cigars be named after you, you would now be receiving a free box every week. That is what he would have said. I threw away the remainder of his cigar and closed my eyes. The encounter had jolted me out of the present - way back into a past which I found difficult to think about again.

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