by Paul Win­kler
1943, Scrib­n­er, 380 pages
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Paul Winkler’s The Thou­sand-Year Con­spir­a­cy traces the ori­gins of Ger­man chau­vin­ism to the ascent of the Teu­ton­ic Knights with­in Ger­man­ic soci­ety, fol­low­ing the Papal Bull of Rim­i­ni and the Knights’ mil­i­tary defeat of the Hanseat­ic League. Win­kler labels the enablers of the dark side of the Ger­man char­ac­ter “Prus­so-Teu­ton­ics” and notes that, in their pur­suit of Pan-Ger­man goals, the “Prus­so-Teu­ton­ics” do not hes­i­tate to deal in a cyn­i­cal and ruth­less man­ner with their own cit­i­zens. Of par­tic­u­lar note for con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­cans is Winkler’s account of the delib­er­ate, Machi­avel­lian manip­u­la­tion of the Ger­man econ­o­my by Hjal­mar “Horace Gree­ley” Schacht, the Amer­i­can-born financier who even­tu­al­ly became the finance min­is­ter of the Third Reich. Take note of Winkler’s account of how Schacht re-struc­tured the Ger­man econ­o­my with an eye to—among oth­er things—driving the cit­i­zen­ry to such a point of hys­te­ria that they would will­ing­ly fol­low the likes of Hitler. Com­pare Winkler’s analy­sis with what is tak­ing place today in the Unit­ed States. Will the Amer­i­can peo­ple respond to the even­tu­al, inevitable “cor­rec­tion” of the per­ilous U.S. debt sit­u­a­tion as the Ger­man peo­ple did to the run­away infla­tion of the 1920s? Will the Amer­i­can peo­ple lend their sup­port to a “man on a white horse” as did the Ger­mans of the 1920s and 1930s?

Writ­ing in 1943, Win­kler fore­saw that the Prus­so-Teu­ton­ics would real­ize their goals through the cre­ation of a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed cen­tral Euro­pean eco­nom­ic union (bear­ing a strik­ing resem­blance to today’s Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union.) One of the prin­ci­pal influ­ences on List’s think­ing was the “con­ti­nen­tal” con­cept of Napoleon, who attempt­ed to eco­nom­i­cal­ly unite Europe under French influ­ence.

“Charles Andler, a French author, summed up cer­tain ideas of List in his work, The Ori­gins of Pan-Ger­man­ism, (pub­lished in 1915.) ‘It is nec­es­sary to orga­nize con­ti­nen­tal Europe against Eng­land. Napoleon I, a great strate­gist, also knew the meth­ods of eco­nom­ic hege­mo­ny. His con­ti­nen­tal sys­tem, which met with oppo­si­tion even from coun­tries which might have prof­it­ed from such an arrange­ment should be revived, but, this time, not as an instru­ment of Napoleon­ic dom­i­na­tion. The idea of unit­ed Europe in a closed trade bloc is no longer shock­ing if Ger­many assumes dom­i­na­tion over such a bloc—and not France. [Empha­sis added.] Bel­gium, Hol­land, Switzer­land, will­ing­ly or by force, will enter this ‘Cus­toms Fed­er­a­tion.’ Aus­tria is assumed to be won over at the out­set. Even France, if she gets rid of her notions of mil­i­tary con­quest, will not be exclud­ed. The first steps the Con­fed­er­a­tion would take to assure uni­ty of thought and action would be to estab­lish a joint rep­re­sen­ta­tive body, as well as to orga­nize a com­mon fleet. But of course, both the head­quar­ters of the Fed­er­a­tion and its par­lia­men­tary seat would be in Ger­many. [Empha­sis added.]”

(The Thou­sand-Year Con­spir­a­cy; by Paul Win­kler; Charles Scribner’s Sons [HC]; 1943; pp. 15–16.)

The poli­cies of List were put into prac­tice by Hjal­mar “Horace Gree­ley” Schacht, Hitler’s finance min­is­ter.

“Var­i­ous first­hand reports have giv­en us a fair­ly accu­rate pic­ture of the man­ner in which Nazi Ger­many is apply­ing the prin­ci­ple of ‘eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion’ to the ‘occu­pied’ coun­tries, and how, through her agents, she has seized con­trol of all the great indus­tries of France, Bel­gium and Hol­land. We have also seen how she has allowed the whole of her eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy to be dic­tat­ed by Schacht. All this indi­cates clear­ly that Hitler is mere­ly apply­ing the cen­tu­ry- old the­o­ries of List in the eco­nom­ic sphere.”

(Ibid.; p. 16.)

This book, in addi­tion to the Du Bois, Mar­tin, Ambruster and Borkin-Welsh texts, pro­vide essen­tial his­tor­i­cal back­ground for com­pre­hend­ing Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile. The gen­e­sis of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work was not hap­haz­ard. Rather, it was the out­growth of major his­tor­i­cal, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic trends that dom­i­nate today’s glob­al­ized cor­po­rate econ­o­my.