Hitler's Secret Backers

The Financial Sources of National Socialism

The book you are about to read is one of the most extraordinary historical documents of the 20th century.

Where did Hitler get the funds and the backing to achieve power in 1933 Germany ? Did these funds come only from prominent German bankers and industrialists or did funds also come from American bankers and industrialists ? Prominent Nazi Franz von Papen wrote in his MEMOIRS (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1953) p. 229, "...the most documented account of the National Socialists' sudden acquisition of funds was contained in a book published in Holland in 1933, by the old established Amsterdam publishing house of Van Holkema & Warendorf, called DE GELDBRONNEN VAN HET NATIONAAL SOCIALISME (DRIE GESPREKKEN MET HITLER) under the name 'Sidney Warburg'."

The book cited by von Papen is the one your are about to read and was indeed published in 1933 in Holland, but remained on the book stalls only a few days. The book was purged. Every copy -- except three accidental survivors -- was taken out of the bookstores and off the shelves. The book and its story were silenced--almost.

One of the three surviving copies found its way to England, translated into English and deposited in the British Museum. This copy and the translation were later withdrawn from circulation, and are presently "unavailable" for research. The second Dutch language copy was acquired by Chancellor Schussnigg of Austria. Nothing is known of its present whereabouts. The third Dutch survivor found its way to Switzerland and in 1947 was translated into German.

This German translation was in turn found some years ago by this editor in the Schweizerischen Sozialarchiv in Zurich, along with an affidavit by the three Dutch-to-German translators and a critique of the book. This editor made copies of the German text and commissioned an English translation. It is this translation that you will read here. Even allowing for the double translation from Dutch to German and German to English, the original lively style is essentially retained. The book is not by any means dull reading. More