Who bankrolled Hitler's rise to power?

 

So who bankrolled Hitler’s march to power in 1930s Germany? The answer is – the filthy rich.

In the early 1930s, the Nazis were facing financial ruin, with Goebbels saying their situation was ‘hopeless’. Then in stepped the bosses of two leading industrial companies - arms manufacturer Krupp and I G Farben, which would make the poison gas used in the Nazi gas chambers. They appear to have been impressed by Hitler’s promise to get rid of trade unions and communists.

Together they raised 3 million Deutschmarks (worth about £22 million today) for the Nazis, and by the end of 1933, Hitler was Chancellor and I G Farben alone had donated about 4.5 million DM (c £33 million). Leading figures in both companies would be tried at Nuremburg and convicted of using slave labour among other crimes.

Hitler was quite keen on building up a personal fortune. As early as 1925 he used party funds to buy himself a luxury Mercedes, with a personal chauffeur. He made a lot of money from his book Mein Kampf, helped by Germany’s practice of giving it to newly married couples as a wedding present, but the Fuhrer was not enthusiastic about paying taxes, and quickly got himself declared exempt.

The Brexit Tax: how much are you prepared to pay?

Nobody much now believes the biggest lie in British politics: that leaving the EU would produce an extra £350 million a week for the NHS. It is now clear that ANY arrangement that follows us leaving the EU will make us worse off - apart from a few of the hyper-rich non-elite who may be helped to avoid tax.

An assessment that Theresa May tried to keep secret shows that if we get a Norway-type deal of leaving the EU, but staying in the Single Market (the kind Nigel Farage used to favour but now considers insufficiently extreme) we will all be 2 per cent worse off. 

With a Canada-type free trade deal, we will be 5 per cent worse off, and if we go for the no-deal scenario favoured by the Brexit fanatics, which Theresa May is keen not to rule out, we will all be 8 per cent worse off. So instead of being paid, say, £30,000, you will get £27,600.

But it gets worse. Because we will all have less money, the government will get less from taxes to pay for the NHS and other public services. By 2033, the Norway model will leave a Black Hole in the public finances of £20bn or about £300 for every man, woman and child in the country; the shortfall for a Canada arrangement will be £55bn, or about £850 for every man, woman, and child in the country, while having no deal would cost about £80bn, or £1,230 for each of us.

Interestingly surveys on how much people are to pay for Brexit usually come up with the answer: £0.

It's only money (2) + unhappy country

So now it’s official. Labour have been telling us that we are uniquely well placed to face the economic recession, but in fact we are uniquely badly placed. The International Monetary Fund has let the cat out of the bag, saying that we will be worse hit than the United States, Western Europe or Japan, and that we're heading for our worst slump since the 1930's with the economy shrinking by 2.8 per cent this year.

There is something we could do to mitigate this financial disaster, of course, but Labour are far too doctrinaire to try it. The economy needs people to spend. Poorer people are much more likely than better off people to spend their money rather than saving it, and more likely to spend it on local goods and services, rather than foreign holidays for example. Rich people, unfortunately, were given huge tax cuts by Mrs Thatcher (then the richest further rewarded themselves with huge pay rises). Many believed these tax cuts were unsustainable, and, indeed, they are now destroying our economy. We need tax increases for those at the top, with the proceeds distributed to poorer people as tax cuts or benefit increases. How nice to be able to do something that is not only right but profitable, but Labour won’t.

At the Congo war crimes trial of Thomas Lubanga yesterday, the first prosecution witness changed his story and said he had not been one of the 30,000 child soldiers recruited to fight in the civil war in the Ituri region. The court was then adjourned amid worries about intimidation of witnesses.

Today war is still raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and altogether more than 5 million people have died since 1998, making this the world’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. Back in the 19th Century, the region was taken over by King Leopold II of Belgium as his personal domain. During a 23 year reign of terror, according to official estimates, half the population of the Congo was wiped out, by murder, forced labour, starvation and disease. See A Disastrous History of the World.