Turner, 'Fritz Thyssen und I paid Hitler' (VfZ 1971) - the audit of canon's own backer claim

[Report #202] **In plain terms:** this engine says in four places that Fritz Thyssen was Hitler's earliest major backer. The historian who went through the court file and the memoir's own shorthand found about 400,000 Mark, more than half of it not freely given. This is that article, read in the original German this pass. THE ARTICLE: Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., 'Fritz Thyssen und ‚I paid Hitler‘', Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte 19/3 (1971), p. 225ff., retrieved from the Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte's open archive. WHAT THE COURT COULD ESTABLISH, verbatim: 'Insgesamt war das Koenigsteiner Gericht in der Lage, direkte Zahlungen Thyssens an die NSDAP in Hoehe von nur ungefaehr 400000 Mark, nachzuweisen. Davon hat er mehr als die Haelfte, naemlich ungefaehr 250 000 Mark, nicht ganz freiwillig gezahlt, einmal etwa 150000 Mark als Buerge fuer den Kredit auf das Braune Haus und zweitens schaetzungsweise 100000 Mark als Ersatz fuer das Geld, das Grauert an Funk aus dem Fonds der Arbeit-Nordwest gegeben hatte. Die restlichen 150000 Mark bestanden aus Unterstuetzungsgeldern fuer Goering.' In English: about 400,000 Mark in direct payments to the NSDAP; more than half of it - about 250,000 - not entirely voluntary, being roughly 150,000 as guarantor of the loan on the Brown House and an estimated 100,000 replacing money Grauert had given Funk out of the Arbeit-Nordwest fund; the remaining 150,000 were support payments for Goering. Granting even the money Thyssen claimed to have given Ludendorff in 1923 - which Turner thinks unlikely reached the party - the total comes to 500,000-600,000 Mark. TURNER'S OWN CAVEAT, carried because equal burden requires it: he notes the figures may be too LOW, since it was in Thyssen's interest at his own proceedings to minimise his support and the court had to rely mainly on his testimony. ON THE MILLION: 'muss die Zahl von einer Million Mark, die Thyssen 1940 genannt hat, als eine aus der Luft gegriffene Schaetzung, nicht als konkrete Angabe behandelt werden' - the one-million figure Thyssen gave in 1940 must be treated as an estimate plucked out of the air, not a concrete statement. Turner supplies the motive: the memoirs were planned as a bestseller at a time when Thyssen's property had already been confiscated, so he then had 'ein materielles Interesse daran, seine Bedeutung fuer den Aufstieg der NSDAP zu betonen' - a material interest in stressing his own importance to the party's rise. Turner's balance: Thyssen probably understated in 1948 and may equally have exaggerated in 1940. ON THE BOOK AS A SOURCE: 'Erstens sind es zweifellos keine authentischen Lebenserinnerungen, denn der ‚Autor‘ hat acht der insgesamt neunzehn Kapitel ueberhaupt nicht gesehen und vom Rest nur den Franzoesisch geschriebenen Entwurf, nicht aber die englische Buchfassung korrigiert und gebilligt.' Not an authentic memoir: the 'author' never saw eight of its nineteen chapters, and of the rest corrected and approved only the French draft, not the English book. Turner adds that the historian cannot assume Thyssen's statements are factually right even where they are demonstrably his, because he was far less well informed than the book's knowing tone suggests and was willing to treat far-fetched rumour as reliable information. The ghostwriting is attributed to Emery Reves, whose own account of the book's making differs sharply from Thyssen's; both were before the Koenigstein court. THE FINDING THAT LANDS ON THIS ENGINE'S METHOD, not just on its facts. Turner compared the published text against the shorthand and found that the sentence qualifying the industry-donation estimate appears nowhere in the stenographic material. Verbatim: it 'enthuellt er eine Vermengung der Situation nach dem 30. Januar 1933 mit den Verhaeltnissen vor diesem Zeitpunkt' - it reveals a conflation of the situation AFTER 30 January 1933 with the conditions BEFORE that date - 'entweder im Bewusstsein Thyssens oder, was wahrscheinlicher ist, desjenigen, der das fuenfte Kapitel des zweiten Teiles in seine publizierte Form gebracht hat' - either in Thyssen's mind or, more likely, in that of whoever put chapter five of part two into its published form. That is post-seizure complicity projected backwards onto pre-seizure causation, found INSIDE the source, by a historian reading it against its own shorthand. Canon holds that move at Concept #144; this is a new kind of instance for it, because the projection is in the document rather than in a later reader. A SCALE CHECK FROM THE SAME ARTICLE, which is useful for the whole question: Turner cites the Westarp papers at Gaertringen as the most complete compilation of industrial payments to a political party known to him, and records that for the entire 1928 Reichstag election the DNVP received 'nur 569 000 Mark von der westlichen Industrie' - only 569,000 Mark from western industry - adding that 1928 was a year of relative prosperity. SOURCE HYGIENE NOTE, recorded because it was encountered: a search for Turner's 1985 monograph surfaced a copy hosted by a Holocaust-denial organisation. It was not opened and must never enter a citation list. The clean route to Turner on this question is this article, which the IfZ publishes free. Held as scholarship; name no holder.