The Industrialists' Petition, 19 November 1932 - industry asking Hindenburg to appoint Hitler
artifact
In November 1932 nineteen men from industry, banking and farming signed a letter asking the president to make Hitler chancellor. He said no.
Who they are
Nineteen signatories from German business and agriculture; Hjalmar Schacht, the banker who helped draft it; and Paul von Hindenburg, the elderly field marshal serving as president.
What they do
The letter urged Hindenburg to hand the chancellorship to Hitler. He did not act on it. On 2 December 1932 he appointed General Kurt von Schleicher instead — the last chancellor before Hitler.
How it works
This page exists because leaving it out would have been dishonest. The rest of this report carries a historian's findings that cut hard against the idea that business money created Hitler. This is the strongest single document on the other side, so it goes in alongside. It is also thin on purpose: the letter itself was not obtained, the signatures are not listed, and sources disagree on whether there were nineteen or twenty.
Why it matters
The honest version of 'did business put Hitler in power' has to hold both of these at once — a documented request from nineteen businessmen that the president refused, and a documented cash collection three months later that happened only after he already had the job.
The engine's record — word for word
[Report #202] **In plain terms:** the strongest single document on the side of the argument that business pushed Hitler into power. It is in this ripple because leaving it out, while minting the scholarship that cuts the other way, would be exactly the one-sided scrutiny this engine has been corrected for before.
WHAT IT IS: a petition to Reich President Hindenburg urging him to entrust the chancellorship to Hitler, signed by nineteen representatives of industry, finance and agriculture on 19 November 1932. Hjalmar Schacht - whom canon already holds at hjalmar_schacht - was involved in drafting it, and is described in the available account as the only member of the Keppler circle with significant political experience.
WHAT IT DID NOT ACHIEVE, which is equally part of the record: Hindenburg did not act on it. On 2 December 1932 he appointed Kurt von Schleicher instead - the man canon holds at kurt_von_schleicher as 'the last Chancellor of Weimar Germany before Hitler’s appointment'. Scholarship since Turner's 1985 study treats the petition as a failure, and a Schacht letter of 12 November 1932 is cited as evidence that industrial support was lukewarm. Sources differ on whether there were 19 or 20 signatures, with one (Beckmann) apparently never reaching the President.
SOURCE GRADE, stated honestly: this record rests on encyclopedia-tier material. The petition document itself was NOT retrieved for this record, the signatory list is not carried, and the '19 or 20' discrepancy is left unresolved rather than picked. Canon held zero hits for 'Industrielleneingabe' and zero for 'Keppler' before this record. It is minted thin and flagged for a sourced pass. Held; name no holder.
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