Re: Trading With the Enemy, by Charles Higham
Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 3:26 am
In 1932, Schmitz joined forces with Kurt von Schroder, director of the BIS and the enormously wealthy private bank, J.H. Stein, of Cologne, Germany. Schroder was a fanatical Nazi. On the surface he was suave, elegant, impeccably dressed, with a clean-cut face. In private he was a dedicated leader of the Death's Head Brigade. During the war he could be seen driving from his office in his sober pinstripe, changing into a black and silver uniform covered in decorations, and continuing to a meeting by torchlight of his personal storm troopers. It was this SS man who was most closely linked to Winthrop Aldrich of the Chase Bank, Walter Teagle of Standard Oil, Sosthenes Behn of ITT, and the other American members of The Fraternity. In 1933, at his handsome villa in Munich, Schroder arranged the meeting between Hitler and von Papen that helped lead to Hitler's accession to power in the Reichstag.
Also in 1932, Hitler's special economic advisor Wilhelm Keppler joined Schroder in forming a group of high-ranking associates of The Fraternity who could be guaranteed to supply money to the Gestapo. They agreed to contribute an average of one million marks a year to Himmler's personally marked "S" account at the J. H. Stein Bank, transferable to the secret "R" Gestapo account at the Dresdnerbank in Berlin.
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Librarian's Comment:
Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick