Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

340 DER FUEHRERGerman Bourse, and helped psychologically to intensify the economiccrisis. The steel trust gambled heavily on the coming Third Reich, astate whose gigantic armaments program would require immensequantities of steel and steel products. Thyssen financed Hitler just asconfidendy as the foolish duchess who hoped to recover her lost throne.Even more important was a second contributor. Again history went itssecret and personal ways. Among Hitler's followers there was a youngjournalist who had studied economics and philosophy in Munich. Hehad worked in the Ruhr where the 'big men' were at home; then hereturned to Munich and became business editor of a 'bourgeois'newspaper, but secredy he remained a National Socialist. His name wasDoctor Otto Dietrich. In Essen he had married the daughter of a certainReismann-Grone who owned the Rheinisch-Westfalische Zeitung. Thisjournal was the mouthpiece and political bulletin of German heavyindustry, and Reismann-Grone was one of the political advisers of thesemen, most of whom knew little of politics and were sometimes evenaware of the fact. Two of their most important organizations, theBergbau-liche Verein (Mining Association) and the Verband derNordwest-deutschen Eisen-Industrie (Association of the NorthwestGerman Iron Industry), had raised a political slush fund, the so-called'Ruhr treasury'; this Ruhr treasury was administered by an old man, theindustrialist, Emil Kirdorf, who by his gift of organization had assuredRuhr coal a high price in the German market and a place in the worldmarket. Before the World War Kirdorf had been hated and feared by theGerman workers as a ruthless employer; he was an intense nationalist, apan-German, and even a bitter critic of the Kaiser, whom he found tooweak and mild. Otto Dietrich, with the help of his father-in-law,succeeded (1927) in interesting Kirdorf in Hitler. In the summer of1929, the eighty-two-year-old man went to Nuremberg to have a look atthe third National Socialist Party Day. On his return he wrote Hitler thefollowing letter, which in content and form says much regarding therelation between Hitler and his billionaire backer:Dear Herr Hitler: On our return home my wife and I are eager toexpress our thanks to you for asking us to attend the con-