Hjalmar Schacht (22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970) was the Reich Minister of Economics of Nazi Germany from 3 August 1934 to 26 November 1937, succeeding Kurt Schmitt and preceding Hermann Goering.
Biography[]
Hjalmar Schacht was born on 22 January 1877 in Tingleff, Schleswig-Holstein, German Empire to a German father and a noble Danish mother. In 1903, he joined the Dresdener Bank and met the famous banker J.P. Morgan and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 while on a business trip to the United States for the bank. In 1908, he joined the Freemasons. Schacht was sent to the staff of Banking Commissioner for Occupied Belgium Karl von Lumm during World War I, financing Germany's forces n Belgium; however, he was fired for corruption. In 1923, he became President of the Reichsbank, holding the title until 1930. After meeting Adolf Hitler, he decided to raise funds for the Nazi Party, although he was never a member. In 1933, he was re-elected as President of the Reichsbank under Hitler, and he was president until 1939. From 1934 to 1937, he served as Nazi Germany's Reich Minister of Economics, but in 1937 he resigned at Hermann Goering's request. After Kristallnacht, Schacht told Hitler to get the Jews out of Germany by other means like paying for their voyages to other lands, but Hitler wanted them to carry machinery with them to increase Germany's exports. Although the Governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman and prominent English Jewish nobleman Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted approved of the plan, the future President of Israel Chaim Weizmann (then the Jewish spiritual leader in London) opposed the plan. Schacht's opposition to the Kristallnacht and other policies of Hitler led to him making contact with the German Resistance, and on 23 July 1944 he was arrested after the Operation Valkyrie bomb plot nearly killed Hitler. He was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, but he was liberated and then rearrested by the United States in 1945. Thanks to the United Kingdom's intervention, Schacht's case that he was not in power at the time of the war and that he was not a Nazi led to his acquittal of all charges pressed against him. He died in Munich in 1970 at the age of 93.
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