Who Financed Hitler; The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power 1919-1933 (1978) by James Pool

Author:James Pool [Pool, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The activities of the Berlin S.A. were usually not so harmless. The traditional domination of the capital city by the Marxist parties provided an excellent reason why it had to be taken. Gauleiter Dr. Goebbels was determined to “smash the Reds” in the very center of their strength. Berlin’s East End had been in a virtual state of siege since May 1, 1929, when open hostilities broke out between the Storm Troopers and the Red Front Fighters. The basement taverns and corner cafes served as bases for the rival armies and were described by S.A. men as “fortified positions in the battle zone.” For days at a time whole rows of streets were in the grip of a new kind of urban guerilla warfare that raged through the tenement districts and the grim terrain in the networks of alleys between the tall old buildings. Only massive intervention by the police was able to temporarily quell the fighting in which nineteen were killed and forty were seriously injured.

In spite of his proletarian background and his familiarity with the workers of Berlin, Dr. Goebbels also made his coup in high society. This triumph did not come through influential friends or from having persuaded an industrialist to contribute, but by way of a romance. One evening a beautiful and elegant lady, attracted by the sound of military music and the excited faces of the large crowd pushing their way to the box office, decided to attend a Nazi meeting at the Sportpalast, just out of curiosity. Ten thousand people cheered Dr. Goebbels as he walked across the platform past an honor guard of burly young Storm Troopers wearing brown shirts. The front of the stage was lined with red swastika flags. Goebbels began to speak; there was perfect silence in the hall. A torrent of words poured down on the enemies of the people, the bosses and the November criminals; the eyes of the speaker flashed. He then spoke of Adolf Hitler, the savior of the German people who would lead them out of their misery. The people jumped up, shouted, and were beyond themselves with ecstasy. The beautiful young lady, who at first had felt out of place among these rough, fanatical people who smelled of sweat, sat fascinated by what she had heard and the man on the platform. The next day she joined the local Nazi group in west Berlin. Her name was Magda Quandt. She was twenty-nine years old, divorced, and bored with a life that seemed to her monotonous and senseless.

Born in Berlin on November 11, 1901, Magda Quandt was the daughter of Oskar Ritschel, a well-to-do engineer, who had married her mother, Augusta Behrend, after Magda’s birth. Three years later the Ritschels were divorced and Magda’s mother married a Jewish businessman named Friedlander. Thus Magda acquired a Jewish stepfather whose name she used until she was nineteen. The family moved to Belgium and the six-year-old girl was put in the school of Sacre Coeur run by the Ursuline nuns.

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