The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

THE WRITING ON THE WALL 109France in 1940, reportedly to escape the Nazis, but ended the war in Germany’sprestigious hotel Adion, where he remained in contact with his oldfriend, banker Kurt Freiherr von Schroeder.By the end of 1943, another ranking Nazi had left the Fatherland.Reichsbank president Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht had left the Fatherlandfor Switzerland, ostensibly for health reasons. During his stay,accounts of his “Schlacht Plan” began to circulate. It was similar to that ofSchnitzler—a collaboration between German and Allied corporate businesswith the major German banks acting as clearinghouses for suchtransactions. Naturally, Schacht was to direct this effort. Despite his activitiesas one of the Reich’s principal money men, Schacht suffered noreal penalties after the war. He was acquitted by the Nuremberg warcrimes court, which stated that rearmament was not itself a criminal act.He was convicted in a German court and sentenced to eight years inprison, but this was overturned on appeal. Four more efforts to convictSchacht in court came to no avail.By late August 1944, following the D-Day invasion of Europe and despitethe advent of the V-1 wonder weapon, many in the Nazi leadershipwere beginning to see the writing on the wall. When the French town ofSaint-Lô, center of the German defense line facing the Allied beachheadin Normandy, fell on July 18, opening all of southern France to Alliedarmor and infantry, they knew the end of the war was only a matter oftime.According to captured medical records, Hitler was on a roller- coasterride of euphoria and depression due to large daily doses of amphetamines,and had increasingly lost contact with reality. However, the second mostpowerful man in the Reich, Hitler’s deputy Martin Bormann, was not soincapacitated.Bormann, a stocky, nondescript man with thinning brown hair, wasborn in 1900 in Halberstadt in central Germany. He was the son of a cavalrysergeant who later became a civil servant. Young Bormann droppedout of high school after one year and was later drafted into the army duringWorld War I, where he served with the field artillery. Returning fromthe war, Bormann joined the right-wing Freikorps and served a year inprison in 1924 for his part in the murder of his former elementary school