I paid Hitler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I Paid Hitler ( I paid Hitler ) is a controversial autobiography of Fritz Thyssen . The editor is Emery Reves and the translator is César Saerchinger. The question of how authentic these memoirs are, to what extent Thyssen remembered past facts and how honestly he gave the details is controversial.

The Thyssen family was one of the richest families in the world and was the richest family in Germany. Fritz Thyssen was one of Hitler's admirers, and it is said that Thyssen also made it possible for Hitler to speak at the Düsseldorf Industry Club in January 1932. A donation of money from Thyssen and other industrialists enabled the NSDAP to purchase the Palais Barlow for 805,864 gold marks in May 1930 .

Fritz Thyssen fled to Switzerland on September 2, 1939 after the conclusion of the Hitler-Stalin Pact . From there he fled to southern France and in April 1940 published letters to Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring in the US magazine Life , which he had written after his escape. Reves proposed to Thyssen that his experiences be written down in book form. There was a collaboration.

In June 1940 France surrendered . Fritz Thyssen and his wife Amélie Thyssen were extradited to the German Reich by the Vichy regime at the end of 1940 . Reves fled to London. Reves wrote in the foreword of the book that about half of the book had been proofread and corrected by Thyssen, the other half he published uncorrected. Reves later described that he worked with Thyssen for three weeks in Monte Carlo in April and May 1940 . He took the decision to publish it after being without news from Thyssen for over a year.

The first edition of the work was published in English in 1941 by Farrar and Rinehart with 281 pages and by Hodder and Stoughton with 316 pages. In the following years it was translated into Spanish (Yo financié la ascensión de Hitler, 1942), Swedish (Jag betalade Hitler, 1942, translated by Alf Ahlberg), Portuguese (Eu financiei Hitler, 1942, translated by Erico Verissimo; Eu paguei a Hitler, 1945, translated by Carlos Ferrão) and Dutch (Ik financierde Hitler, 1947, translated by G. Borg).

The book was used as evidence in the post-war denazification process against Thyssen. Thyssen testified in the trials that the book was not authorized by him. He didn't read it. During his stay in Monte Carlo in the spring of 1940 he had given four or five interviews with Reves and an assistant. In total, he was only able to proofread about ten pages of the manuscript. The interviewed Reves, however, specified that the preface and eleven of the total of 19 chapters had been reviewed by Thyssen.

The court in Königstein came to the conclusion that the book was "apparently neither a free literary creation by the publisher Reves, nor an autobiographical report written verbatim in all parts by the person concerned".

The historian Henry Ashby Turner , among others , later investigated the question of the authenticity of the book and also checked the original manuscripts, some of which were in French and German, which were made by Reves and Paul Ravoux. Some of them had been corrected by Thyssen.

Turner was particularly interested in Thyssen's relationship with the National Socialists. He comes to the conclusion: "After all, it is not without reason that you feel compelled to doubt yourself that there is any solid basis for the claim made by Thyssen that he personally paid one million marks to the NSDAP." Turner takes one Amount below the stated number.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Henry Ashby Turner: Fritz Thyssen and “I Paid Hitler”. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. No. 3, July 1971. (online) (PDF; 1.0 MB)
  2. ↑ Note: Paul Ravoux was a Berlin reporter for the French news agency Agence Havas until he was expelled from the German Reich on November 15, 1937 by the German government for "malicious reporting".