“I think you can be much more successful in leading a person, if you do not tell him the truth.”- Hjalmar Schacht, testimony at Nuremberg, explaining his financial deceptions to American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson

Author’s Note: This is adapted from my upcoming book with the working title, “An Anthropology of Financial Power & World Wars, 1871-1945”. If you would like to support my work, please consider subscribing and pledging a monthly donation of $8 to my Substack! Thank you!

The Dark Wizard of Finance and Economics

Alan Greenspan is canonized as “The Maestro” who guided America through two decades of prosperity. Ben Bernanke won a Nobel Prize for his theories on the Great Depression and his “courage to act” during 2008’s financial crisis. Both are celebrated as financial innovators who pioneered unconventional monetary tools: Greenspan’s “put,” Bernanke’s quantitative easing.

Their innovations pale beside those of Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht.

Photo: hlz.hessen.de

Between 1933 and 1939, Schacht engineered financial mechanisms more sophisticated than anything attempted by modern central bankers. His MEFO bills created 12 billion Reichsmarks of shadow currency completely off the books, a scheme that makes quantitative easing look transparent. His bilateral trade system circumvented the entire international banking architecture, conducting commerce with 40 nations while bypassing gold, dollars, and pounds entirely. His eight tools of economic control achieved full employment and industrial recovery without borrowing from international banks or holding significant gold reserves.

The numbers tell the story, unemployment fell from 6 million to 300,000, essentially full employment.[^7] GDP grew approximately 55% between 1933 and 1937. Industrial production tripled from 1933 to 1939.[^9] This happened while Germany paid no reparations after 1933, borrowed minimally from foreign creditors, and operated outside the international financial system.[^8]

Greenspan injected liquidity by lowering rates and verbal guidance. Bernanke printed money to buy bonds from banks. Schacht printed money that didn’t appear to be money, backed by companies that didn’t exist, to fund a military buildup hidden from international observers, while preventing inflation through totalitarian wage and price controls. He understood that MV = PQ, that if you control all four variables in the equation of exchange, not just money supply, you can print unlimited currency without inflation.

Born in 1877 in Tingleff (then German, now Danish), named after American journalist Horace Greeley by parents who’d lived in America, Schacht’s background was a contradiction from the start, his father a salesman, his mother Baroness Constanze von Eggers with Danish noble roots. He earned a doctorate from Kiel in 1899 with a thesis on mercantilism, presciently foreshadowing his later preoccupation with state-managed trade. By 1905, still in his twenties, he was meeting J.P. Morgan and President Theodore Roosevelt during business trips to America.[^1]

The technical sophistication is breathtaking. The moral dimension is horrifying.

Because Schacht didn’t guide a democracy through prosperity. He built the economic foundation for history’s most destructive war. The same genius that stopped Weimar’s hyperinflation in 1923 went on to design the financial architecture that enabled the Holocaust.

This is why Hjalmar Schacht, arguably the most technically brilliant central banker in history, has been erased from economic discourse. Not because his methods failed. Because they succeeded too well.

The Myth That Built a Reputation

The legend begins in 1923. Germany drowning in hyperinflation. Wheelbarrows of cash for bread. The Reichsmark worthless. Into this chaos steps Hjalmar Schacht, appointed Reich Currency Commissioner on November 12.

The popular narrative, one Schacht carefully cultivated, the financial wizard single-handedly devised the Rentenmark, a new currency backed by a mortgage on Germany’s land and property, breaking hyperinflation’s back through sheer genius.

The reality is more complex. Schacht was one of a “handful of economists and political figures” who developed the scheme. Chancellor Hans Luther and former Finance Minister Karl Helfferich were the primary architects. Schacht’s secretary, Fraulein Steffeck, described his actual method, he “sat on his chair and smoked” in a “little dark room” that “still smelled of old floor cloths,” telephoning “in every direction” to coordinate implementation.

Photo: descopera.ro

Schacht’s true genius wasn’t inventing the Rentenmark, it was managing perception. He projected absolute confidence that convinced markets the crisis was over. He claimed credit so effectively that even today, he’s remembered as the sole “saviour of the Mark.”

This reputation became his most valuable asset. When Hitler needed economic credibility in 1933, he turned to the man who had “saved Germany” once before. The myth Schacht built in 1923 gave him power to transform Germany’s economy a decade later.

TIME magazine’s 1933 profile captured the contradiction: “Monkish little,” “straight-necked,” an “Iron Man” with a “Bismarckian manner” in conferences. Yet among friends, “genial, kindly, and twinkle-eyed.”[^3] The duality let him navigate between worlds, the respectable banker who calmed industrialists’ nerves about Nazi radicalism, the creative genius who could devise solutions outside orthodox economics.

The Kingmaker: Engineering Hitler’s Rise

Schacht’s transformation from liberal democrat to fascist enabler wasn’t reluctant, it was calculated and enthusiastic. In 1919, he’d co-founded the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP), a pillar of Weimar democracy. By 1930, he’d read Mein Kampf and was “converted to fascism.”[^4]

December 1930: Schacht met Hermann Göring. January 1931: he met Hitler at Göring’s house. He came away convinced Hitler was a man of “will and spirit” with whom “one could cooperate.” This wasn’t naivety. Schacht saw in Hitler’s movement the “dynamic force” necessary to break Germany free from Versailles and restore national sovereignty.

From that point, Schacht became pivotal. He leveraged his immense prestige in the financial world to persuade powerful industrialists like Gustav Krupp and Fritz Thyssen to provide crucial Nazi funding. He organized fundraising events. He vouched for Hitler’s economic competence to skeptical business elites.[^5]

His most critical act came November 1932. With Nazi electoral support temporarily waning, Schacht organized the Industrielleneingabe, a petition signed by Germany’s leading industrialists urging the aging President Paul von Hindenburg to overcome his personal disdain and appoint Hitler Chancellor. The pressure worked. Hitler took power January 30, 1933.

Photo: dhm.de

His reward was swift. March 17, 1933: Hitler reappointed Schacht as Reichsbank president. Almost immediately, Schacht embarked on a U.S. tour, giving forty speeches and numerous radio interviews deliberately misleading the American public, claiming Hitler would soon restore democracy. His meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt was a notable failure, FDR later described Schacht as “extremely arrogant.” Years later, Roosevelt would “enjoy” recalling how Schacht sat at his desk “weeping…about his poor country”, theatrical pathos likely aimed at securing American financial goodwill.

The MEFO Miracle: Shadow Currency at Scale

Schacht’s appointment as Reichsbank president in March 1933 (and Minister of Economics in August 1934) gave him near-total control over German finance. His challenge, financing massive rearmament while hiding it from Allied observers and preventing inflation.

His solution was perhaps the most sophisticated financial fraud in history.

In May 1933, Schacht established Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft m.b.H. (Metallurgical Research Corporation. MEFO). The company’s shareholders were four major armament manufacturers: Krupp, Siemens, Gutehoffnungshütte, and Rheinmetall.

MEFO conducted no research. It manufactured nothing. It existed only on paper.

The mechanism was elegant in its deception:

* Government contractors building weapons and infrastructure drew bills of exchange on MEFO for work performed

* These bills could be presented to any German bank for cash

* Banks could rediscount the bills at the Reichsbank at any time within the last three months before maturity

* The bills earned 4% interest annually, making them attractive to hold

This circumvented the statutory limit of 100 million Reichsmarks on direct Reichsbank lending to government. Technically, the Reichsbank wasn’t lending to the government, it was providing liquidity to private banks by rediscounting bills from a “private company.”

Schacht later admitted at Nuremberg that MEFO bills “enabled the Reichsbank to lend by a subterfuge to the Government what it normally or legally could not do.”[^2]

By April 1938, nearly 12 billion Reichsmarks of MEFO bills were outstanding, 120 times the statutory lending limit. Through this mechanism, Germany financed massive rearmament without appearing to violate Versailles restrictions or borrowing from international banks.

Compare this to Bernanke’s quantitative easing: The Fed openly announced it would buy bonds, expanding its balance sheet from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion. Everyone could see it happening. Markets debated it. Congress questioned it.

Schacht’s MEFO bills were invisible to outside observers. International bankers saw Germany achieving full employment and industrial recovery but couldn’t identify the financing source. By the time they understood, Germany had rearmed.

The Equation Most Economists Still Don’t Understand

Schacht grasped something most modern economists miss: the equation of exchange that governs all monetary systems:

Money Supply × Velocity = Prices × Quantity of Goods(MV = PQ)

Modern central bankers like Greenspan and Bernanke can only control M (money supply). They print money and hope for the best. But Schacht recognized that if you control ALL FOUR variables, you can print unlimited money without inflation:

* M (Money Supply): Created 12 billion through MEFO bills

* V (Velocity): Slowed through capital controls, forced savings in Labor Front

* P (Prices): Froze by decree, businesses who raised prices went to concentration camps

* Q (Quantity): Exploded through rearmament, public works, forced labor

This is why orthodox economists were baffled. They said printing 12 billion Reichsmarks should cause Weimar-style hyperinflation. But when you control velocity through terror, freeze prices through decree, and force production through totalitarianism, the equation balances.

Modern Fed chairs pull one lever. Schacht controlled the entire machine.

Eight Tools of Total Economic Control

MEFO bills solved financing, but Schacht faced another challenge, preventing inflation while pushing the economy to maximum capacity. His solution required eight tools that revealed the true cost of escaping international finance, totalitarian control over every aspect of economic life.

Tool #1: Hidden Deficit Spending Through Shell Companies

Beyond MEFO, Schacht created multiple shell companies to hide government borrowing’s true scale. The official budget looked modest while shadow spending reached astronomical levels. By 1939, actual spending was multiple times the published figures.

Tool #2: Wage Suppression Through Labor Front Control

The Nazi regime dissolved independent unions in May 1933, replacing them with the state-controlled German Labor Front. “Trustees of Labor” set wages by decree. Between 1933 and 1939, real hourly wages remained near Depression lows while working hours increased from 43 to 49 weekly.[^10] Workers got jobs, not prosperity. Krupp, Siemens, and IG Farben made fortunes.[^11]

Tool #3: Comprehensive Price Controls

The Office of Price Formation froze prices by decree beginning in 1934. Businesses that raised prices faced fines, imprisonment, or concentration camps. Hugo Junkers lost his aircraft company for non-cooperation. Fritz Thyssen, an early Nazi supporter, ended up imprisoned. Price controls prevented inflation but created massive shortages, empty stores, endless queues, black markets.

Tool #4: Bureaucratic Resource Allocation

With prices frozen, markets couldn’t allocate scarce resources. The Four Year Plan organization under Hermann Göring determined who received steel, coal, and copper. Military production got priority. Consumer industries starved. Housing construction virtually ceased despite severe shortages, with materials reserved for military infrastructure.

Tool #5: Selective International Debt Default

In June 1934, Germany announced partial default on foreign debts, but selectively. Countries that maintained trade relationships got partial payment. The United States, which had erected tariff barriers, got nothing. The selective default saved 400 million Reichsmarks annually while maintaining essential trade relationships.[^17]

Tool #6: Capital Controls on All Imports

Beginning in 1934, every import required government permission. The regime reviewed each request, approving only strategic materials. Iron ore for steel? Approved. Coffee for consumers? Denied. The controls worked but required total bureaucratic management of the economy.

Tool #7: Export Subsidies Despite Strong Currency

Germany refused to devalue (fearing inflation) but needed exports competitive. The solution, direct government subsidies to exporters, compensating for the overvalued Reichsmark. Expensive but effective, maintaining export earnings for strategic imports.

Tool #8: Personal Capital Controls and Wealth Confiscation

The regime limited emigrants to taking 50,000 Reichsmarks in assets, imposing a 25% “flight tax” (Reichsfluchtsteuer) above that threshold. Jewish emigrants could take almost nothing. Property was seized through forced sales at depression prices. Bank accounts frozen. Businesses “Aryanized”: transferred to non-Jewish Germans for nominal payments.

Schacht calculated German Jews held approximately 8 billion Reichsmarks in assets.[^18] But these weren’t liquid foreign reserves, they were German real estate, businesses, Reichsmark deposits. The economic threats were sophisticated: If Jews tried selling properties en masse to emigrate, it would trigger fire sales, crashing real estate values. Mass deposit withdrawals would cause bank runs in an already fragile system. The visible capital flight would destroy Reichsmark confidence, potentially triggering hyperinflation again.

The regime needed Jewish wealth for rearmament. But Schacht’s approach to antisemitism was characteristically pragmatic and amoral. He publicly denounced crude violence like Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer, even making speeches noting Jewish soldiers had fought bravely for Germany in WWI. This wasn’t moral opposition, it was concern that chaotic pogroms damaged Germany’s financial standing.

Behind the scenes, he implemented Aryan racial laws in his Ministry and Reichsbank without compulsion, personally signing decrees dismissing Jewish employees and Germans married to Jews. He publicly justified the 1935 Nuremberg Laws to international audiences. He was instrumental in the Haavara Agreement with the World Zionist Organization, allowing some German Jews to emigrate to Palestine by transferring assets, simultaneously achieving Nazi goals of removing Jews while benefiting the German economy.

For Schacht, the problem with Nazi antisemitism wasn’t its inhumanity but its messiness. He preferred clean, bureaucratic expulsion to violent pogroms that disrupted commerce.

The Bilateral Trade Revolution

Parallel to domestic controls, Schacht revolutionized international trade through the “New Plan” announced September 1934. Germany suspended the Reichsmark’s convertibility, rationed foreign exchange, and required government approval for all trade.

Instead of using dollars, pounds, or gold, Germany negotiated bilateral barter agreements with over 40 countries by 1938. Germany exchanged manufactured goods directly for raw materials, machines for Romanian oil, tools for Hungarian wheat, vehicles for Argentine beef. No gold changed hands. No interest accrued. No banks intermediated.

These nations purchased 80% of German exports.[^6] Germany received essential materials without foreign currency. Trading partners got German manufactured goods. The international banking system, Morgan, Rothschild, Warburg, Rockefeller, got nothing.

Economist Jeffry Frieden confirms Germany’s system “reduced dependence on international markets and international finance” and operated “independently of the international economy.”[^12]

This threatened the entire architecture of international finance. If nations could trade without banks, gold, or debt, the institutions that had intermediated global commerce for a century became obsolete.

The Comparison: Sophistication Beyond Modern Central Banking

Modern central bankers are celebrated for innovations that seem primitive beside Schacht’s toolkit:

Greenspan’s “Put” (1987-2006): Lower interest rates when markets fall, creating moral hazard but maintaining stability. Simple verbal guidance (“irrational exuberance”) to influence behavior.

Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing (2008-2014): Print money to buy bonds from banks, lowering long-term rates and injecting liquidity. Transparent, debated, tracked in real-time.

Draghi’s “Whatever It Takes” (2012): Verbal commitment to unlimited bond purchases that calmed markets without actually buying much.

Compare to Schacht’s innovations:

Shadow Currency System: Created 12 billion Reichsmarks through MEFO bills invisible to observers, circumventing all legal restrictions through corporate shells.

Bilateral Trade Architecture: Conducted international commerce with 40 nations while completely bypassing the dollar, pound, and gold-based system.

Total Economic Control: Prevented inflation not through interest rates but through comprehensive wage and price controls, resource allocation, and capital controls, achieving full employment while hiding military buildup.

Selective Default Strategy: Strategically defaulted on some creditors while maintaining others based on trade leverage, saving 400 million Reichsmarks annually.

The technical sophistication is undeniable. Modern central bankers pull two levers (rates and money supply) within democratic constraints. Schacht orchestrated an entire parallel financial system, hidden from international observation, achieving results that orthodox economics said were impossible.

Greenspan needed Congress’s approval. Bernanke faced public scrutiny. Schacht operated in shadows, answering only to Hitler.

Why Conquest Became Economic Necessity

The eight tools created an economic system that couldn’t sustain itself within Germany’s 1933 borders. This wasn’t implementation failure, it was the inevitable result of attempting escape from international debt.

Military spending consumed resources at unsustainable rates. By 1938, military expenditures reached 18.9% of GDP, higher than any other major power. The civilian economy was systematically starved. But this militarization wasn’t choice, it was the only way to maintain the system without submitting back to international finance.

Germany still required raw materials it couldn’t produce, oil, high-grade iron ore, nickel, chrome, tungsten. Despite the Four Year Plan’s attempts at autarky through synthetic production (coal-to-oil, synthetic rubber), Germany still imported 33% of essential raw materials in 1939. The 1.5 billion Deutchmark debt of Versailles had been designed to make national self-sufficiency impossible, resources were deliberately concentrated in different regions to ensure perpetual dependency on trade mediated by banks.

The foreign exchange crisis persisted despite Schacht’s interventions. The mathematics were inescapable, without access to international banking, Germany needed to physically conquer resources.

The seizure of Austrian gold reserves in March 1938 following the Anschluss provided temporary relief. Austria held approximately 200 million Reichsmarks in gold and foreign currency. The occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 captured Czech gold reserves worth another 200 million RM. British historian Victor Rothwell noted these reserves were “invaluable in staving off Germany’s foreign exchange crisis.”[^13]

But these were temporary fixes. The economic system required continuous expansion to access resources and wealth beyond Germany’s productive capacity. This was Lebensraum as economic necessity, not just ideological choice. The Nazi concept of “living space” wasn’t merely about racial ideology, it was the mathematical requirement of an economy that had rejected international finance. This is the debt system’s most damning indictment, the only escape route leads to perpetual war.

The Warning and the Fall

By 1937, Schacht recognized this logic. The conflict with Göring wasn’t just personal, though Schacht held “the fat one” in utter contempt as an economic ignoramus. It was professional: Göring’s Four Year Plan, launched October 1936, gave him sweeping authority over Schacht’s Ministry. Göring’s approach was reckless, hugely expensive synthetic materials programs, accelerating rearmament regardless of economic consequences. He famously dismissed Schacht’s concerns: “If the Führer wishes it then two times two are five.”[^14]

On January 7, 1939, Schacht submitted a memorandum to Hitler co-signed by Reichsbank directors. The document urged “drastic curtailment of armament expenditures,” arguing continued military spending would trigger financial crisis. National debt had reached 38 billion Reichsmarks. Foreign exchange reserves were dangerously low, risking future imports of needed commodities. It would eventually cost them the war.

Schacht’s objection wasn’t moral, he had enabled rearmament. It was technical, the system required territorial expansion to continue. Without conquest, Germany faced either curtailing military production or economic collapse.

Hitler dismissed him January 20, 1939, thirteen days after receiving the memorandum, replacing him with Walther Funk, who would approve anything demanded.

The timing is crucial. When Schacht was fired in January 1939, Germany had already annexed Austria (March 1938) and the Sudetenland (October 1938), seizing their gold reserves. But the major conquests hadn’t begun: Germany wouldn’t occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia until March 1939, invade Poland until September 1939, or launch Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union until June 1941.

Schacht understood what Hitler apparently didn’t want to acknowledge: the economic system they’d built required Lebensraum (living space), the Nazi concept of endless territorial expansion eastward. The math was inescapable. Without access to international banking, Germany would have to physically conquer the resources it needed: Romanian oil, Ukrainian wheat, Soviet raw materials.

The dismissal was symbolic. The architect of Germany’s recovery, who’d engineered escape from international finance, warned the system was unsustainable without the very conquests Hitler was planning. Hitler chose expansion over restraint, validating Schacht’s warning even as he fired him for making it.

Photo: Wikipedia

But by then it was too late. Schacht had already provided the economic foundation for global war. Without MEFO bills, no rearmament. Without bilateral trade, no resources. Without the eight tools, no sustained recovery. The technocrat who thought he could control the dictator ended up imprisoned in Ravensbrück, Flossenbürg, and finally Dachau after the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt, but only after enabling the entire system that made war possible.

The Great Escape: Nuremberg and Rehabilitation

At Nuremberg, Schacht mounted history’s most audacious legal defense. Psychological tests revealed he had the highest IQ in the dock, a fact he relished. He displayed “extreme contemptuousness” for fellow defendants, especially Göring.[^16]

His behavior was defiant and theatrical. He threw coffee at a photographer, losing his coffee ration for a week. He claimed Nuremberg’s conditions were worse than Nazi concentration camps. His verbal sparring with prosecutor Robert Jackson became legendary:

Photo: alexautographs.com

Jackson: “You were misleading Hitler about your true motives?”Schacht: “I was not misleading him. I was leading him. I think you can be much more successful in leading a person if you do not tell him the truth.”[^2]

The prosecution’s case was straightforward: Schacht was the “chief architect of the financial plans which made possible the huge program of rearmament.”

His defense was formalistic brilliance, his key activities predated 1939’s war of aggression. He’d been pushed out by Göring. He’d been imprisoned by Nazis, making him opposition.

On October 1, 1946, Hjalmar Schacht was acquitted. The Soviet judge issued a scathing dissent. Chief prosecutor Jackson expressed public regret. But the verdict stood, building and loading the gun wasn’t the same as pulling the trigger.[^15]

A German denazification court later sentenced him to eight years, but he appealed successfully and was released in 1948.[^16]

Then came the second act, consultant to the developing world. Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, India, Vietnam, all sought advice from the “wizard” who’d twice saved Germany.[^19] He published self-justifying memoirs, “Confessions of the Old Wizard” (1956) and “The Magic of Money” (1967), portraying himself as a misunderstood patriot.[^20]

He died wealthy and free in Munich, June 3, 1970, age 93.

Why History Forgets Its Most Brilliant Economist

Hjalmar Schacht should be studied in every economics program. His innovations surpassed anything attempted by celebrated modern central bankers. His technical genius was undeniable.

But acknowledging that genius means confronting an uncomfortable truth, brilliance without morality becomes monstrous. The same creativity that stopped hyperinflation rose Hitler to power. The innovations that achieved full employment built the Wehrmacht.

So we celebrate Greenspan’s simple rate cuts and Bernanke’s transparent bond purchases while forgetting the man who created shadow currencies, circumvented international finance, and achieved impossible economic results, because his success enabled history’s greatest catastrophes.

We should also recognize that Schacht’s efforts did save his country from financial devastation and decades of national indebtedness via Versailles while Greenspan and Bernanke only enabled Wall Street to further plunder more Americans’ savings and extract more wealth from them.

Schacht proved something terrifying, with sufficient technical sophistication and absence of constraints, a central banker can transform a broken nation into a war machine. The tools exist. The knowledge remains. The only barriers are democratic oversight and human conscience.

Perhaps forgetting Hjalmar Schacht isn’t historical amnesia. Perhaps it’s a necessary act of collective repression, burying the knowledge of what economic genius without ethics can achieve.

But buried knowledge has a way of resurfacing. As modern nations struggle with debt, inequality, and the constraints of international finance, some may be tempted to study the dark wizard’s spellbook.

They should remember how that story ends, in ruins, at Nuremberg, with the architect himself claiming he was only following the logic of his innovations.

Technical brilliance is not wisdom. Economic genius is not virtue. And some knowledge, once applied, cannot be undone.

Footnotes:

[1] Schacht, Hjalmar. My First Seventy-Six Years: The Autobiography of Hjalmar Schacht. London: Wingate, 1955. Details his early career and university education across multiple institutions.

[2] Schacht testimony at Nuremberg Trials, quoted in Avalon Project, “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Volume 2.” New Haven: Yale Law School, 1946. Schacht admitted MEFO bills “enabled the Reichsbank to lend by a subterfuge to the Government what it normally or legally could not do.”

[3] TIME Magazine profile of Schacht, 1933. Describes him as “Monkish little” with “Bismarckian manner” yet “genial, kindly” among friends.

[4] Peterson, Edward N. Hjalmar Schacht: For and Against Hitler. Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1954. Documents his conversion to fascism after reading Mein Kampf in 1930.

[5] Turner, Henry Ashby. German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 228-232. Details Schacht’s role in organizing industrialist support for Hitler.

[6] Statistisches Reichsamt. Monatliche Nachweise über den Auswärtigen Handel Deutschlands (January 1933-June 1939). By 1938, Germany had concluded clearing agreements with over 40 countries purchasing 80% of German exports.

[7] Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin, 2005, pp. 322-326. Documents unemployment falling from 6 million to 300,000.

[8] Tooze, Adam. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. London: Allen Lane, 2006. Comprehensive analysis of Nazi economic policy and Schacht’s role.

[9] Overy, Richard. The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Industrial production statistics showing tripling from 1933-1939.

[10] German History in Documents and Images. “Indices of Cost of Living and Workers’ Wages (1913/14-1943).” Real hourly wages remained near Depression lows despite employment gains.

[11] Manchester, William. The Arms of Krupp. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968, pp. 342-379. Documents industrial profits from rearmament contracts.

[12] Jeffry A. Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006, pp. 237-239. Germany’s bilateral trade “reduced dependence on international markets and international finance.”

[13] Rothwell, Victor. Origins of the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971. Czech and Austrian gold reserves “invaluable in staving off Germany’s foreign exchange crisis.”

[14] James, Harold. The Nazi Dictatorship and the Deutsche Bank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Details Schacht’s financial mechanisms and conflict with Göring.

[15] Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Vol. I, Judgment, pp. 307-310. Schacht’s acquittal at Nuremberg.

[16] Davidson, Eugene. The Trial of the Germans. New York: Macmillan, 1966, pp. 351-373. Details Schacht’s behavior at Nuremberg and controversial acquittal.

[17] Forbes, Neil. Doing Business with the Nazis: Britain’s Economic and Financial Relations with Germany 1931-1939. London: Frank Cass, 2000. Selective debt default strategy.

[18] Barkai, Avraham. From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews 1933-1943. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989. Schacht’s calculation of 8 billion RM in Jewish assets.

[19] Simpson, Christopher. The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law and Genocide. New York: Grove Press, 1993. Documents Schacht’s post-war career as consultant to developing nations.

[20] Schacht, Hjalmar. Confessions of “The Old Wizard”. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956. Self-justifying autobiography portraying himself as misunderstood patriot.

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