By 1943, important changes were also under way among the German economic elite, and these had an indirect but nonetheless important effect on political debate in the U.S. Up until the German defeat at Stalingrad in late 1942, Adolf Hitler remained the best thing that had ever happened to the German financial elite from a strictly business point of view—notwithstanding the Nazi party’s occasional flourishes of anticapitalist rhetoric. The sophisticated conservatives that dominated German business made the most of National Socialism. Virtually all major German enterprises adopted elements of Nazi ideology in their day-to-day operations, including the purging of Jews, decimation of labor unions, and exploitation of forced labor. Along the way, they invented a variety of triumph-of-the-will rationalizations for corporate brutality and theft.
But in early 1943, the German financial and industrial elite began to split on the future of Hitler. Increasingly, the very forces that they had helped set in motion were now dragging the whole of Germany toward catastrophe. Hitler had irrevocably blundered and, it was rumored, might even be mentally unbalanced. The banker Hjalmar Schacht-long the quintessential German establishment banker who had backed the Nazis since before Hitler came to power-left Hitler’s government. Even Oscar Henschel, whose weapons companies made extensive use of forced labor, claimed to have concluded as early as December 1942 that the military situation was hopeless.12
The economic elite turned their attention to self-preservation. But such planning, regarded by Hitler’s government as defeatist or even treasonous, could be carried out only under a thick veil of secrecy. Intriguingly, the existing social networks used by the economic elite to coordinate their actions and to secure influence within Hitler’s government provided some of the most effective “covers” for German corporate efforts to prepare for the postwar world.
The notorious Himmlerkreis, the Circle of Friends of Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, is a good example of the dynamics of Germany’s high-level business networks during the decline of the Third Reich. The Nazis and leading German businessmen had jointly created the Himmlerkreis in the early 1930s as an informal communication link between the financial and industrial elite and the SS. Himmler sought the political and economic support of the business elite, and the elite in turn sought influence outside of official channels with the increasingly powerful police leader. Senior business leaders active in the Himmlerkreis included Siemens’ general director Rudolf Bingel, Unilever and Kontinentale Öl director Karl Blessing, steel industrialist Friedrich Flick, Dresdner Bank’s Karl Rache and Emil Meyer, shipping and oil executive Karl Lindemann, and board members or senior managers from the Deutsche Bank, RKG, IG Farben, Krupp, and a dozen other companies central to the German economy.13 As the SS grew as an economic power, the SS members of the Himmlerkreis often migrated to new positions on corporate boards, where they could secure government contracts and embody corporate loyalty to the regime. SS men and Nazi party activists who made this transition included Wilhelm Keppler (of the BRABAG brown coal combine and SS enterprises), Fritz Kranefuss (BRABAG, Dresdner Bank), and Ritter von Halt, who joined the Deutsche Bank board.14
Officially, the Himmlerkreis meetings were not for conducting business, because that would have suggested corruption in National Socialist circles. As a practical matter, however, the encounters served as an informal coordinating point for German industry’s negotiations with the SS on policy matters. IG Farben appears to have used Himmlerkreis meetings to seek support for the company’s vast forced-labor complex at Auschwitz, for example. The companies represented in Himmler’s circle became pacesetters in Aryanization, exploitation of concentration camp labor, seizure of foreign companies in the occupied territories, and similar business ventures that depended on SS cooperation.15
How on God’s earth could the American people allow AIG to get a bailout?