THE SCHACHT-NORMAN AXIS
23rd December 1938 from the Tribune Magazine Archive
Topics
PoliticsOrganisations
Inner Cabinet, German army, Bank of England, National GovernmentPeople
Neville Chamberlain, NORMAN AXIS VANOC II, Montagu Collet Norman, Frederick Leith-Ross, Hitler, HORACE GREELEY SCHACHLocations
ViennaVANOC II
R. HJALMAR HORACE GREELEY SCHACH T, President of Germany's Reichsbank, is a highly:domesticated When When at home he breeds pigs He is said to dislike travelling.
Many other people dislike his travelling, too. Ask the Viennese bankers.
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Schacht crashed in on Vienna in the wake of the German army to remove Austria's financial assets. Before that he visited certain Balkan countries on credit-fixing missions. One of the results was the betrayal of Czechoslovakia.
Last week Schacht came to England.
He was met at Liverpool Street Station by his old friend Montagu Collet Norman, Governor of the Bank of England.
The two - were closeted for days in the domestic privacy of the " Governor's " Campden Hill house, while the world wondered.
It is an alarming mystery—alarming because secret meetings between these two men have never benefited anybody outside the ranks of reactionary monopoly capital.
SCHACHT is the most skilful credit manipulator alive, while Norman controls more financial assets than any other man outside the United States. A convergence of the twain at this critical juncture may be highly explosive.
HENCE THE UNEASINESS AMONG PEOPLE WHO HAVE LONG MEMORIES, WHO SEE DANGER IN A CLOSE AND SECRET ASSOCIATION BETWEEN THE CHIEF FINANCIAL PROP OF THE NAZI WAR-MACHINE AND THE CONTROLLER OF A LARGE SLAB OF BRITAIN'S FINANCIAL ASSETS.
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NORMAN keeps out of politics pubHely ; but his deeds through the Bank of England speak louder than any party membership card.
HE IS AT ONCE THE APOSTLE AND - SERVANT OF FINANCE CAPITAL, A SOUND " CITY " MAN.
HE WAS HAND IN GLOVE WITH THE POLITICAL GANG THAT PULLED OFF THE FINANCIAL SCARE WHICH GAVE BIRTH TO THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.
Norman must have watched the financial miracles performed by Schacht with professional admiration, seeing the mastery that monopoly capital exerts, even in economic bankruptcy, when strengthened by Fascism. Here the silly deception of non-political finance is as unnecessary as the fraud of " normal business transactions." It is known that not the least of Hitler's reasons for retaining Schacht is the latter's friendship with Norman. There is nobody else in Germany who could fill that particular bill. The old pre-Nazi gang, such as Jakob' Goldschmidt, Schacht's tutor, have gone, leaving no body but ignorant industrialists andParty stuffed-shirts.
J1 OWEVER framed and dressed as "business," the discussions between Norman and Schacht last week were political. They involved, in some unknown measure, the political policy of Britain, and they are thus of deep public interest. But no communiqu6 was issued, no official statement of any kind was published, although Schacht saw certain Cabinet Ministers privately and certain Treasury officials, including Sir Frederick Leith-Ross.
Neither Schacht's record nor that of Norman is such as to inspire any degree of confidence among democrats who are determined to resist Nazi aggression and National Government duplicity. What was talked in private between these two men may very well be translated into deeds by Neville Chamberlain in the near future.
But note this well : Neville Chamberlain himself avoided meeting Schacht.
More, one of the " Inner Cabinet," invited by Norman to meet Schacht at lunch, pleaded illness as an excuse to get out of it.
CHAMBERLAIN DARED NOT COMMIT HIMSELF PUBLICLY TO HITLER'S FINANCIAL DRUMMER ; HE- USED HIS TOOL, NORMAN, TO DRAW THE FIRE OF CRITICISM AWAY FROM HIMSELF, WHILE KEEPING HIMSELF FREE FROM ANY PROMISE TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN THE MATTER OF ACTION.
IT is widely said that Schacht and Norman discussed a scheme which would enable Germany to strip her Jews more thoroughly than at present, and then throw them on the charity of other eolith tries. That may well be ; but you may be sure there was more to the meeting than that, or even than the question of dividing up the trade of South-Eastern Europe.
Schacht has bigger problems to deal with. There is, for instance, the problem of Hitler's forthcoming drive towards the Black Sea, which must involve German finances heavily. Norman has never let Schacht down in the past, and he , will certainly 'advise Chamberlain accordingly in the future. Since 1923, Norman has backed Schacht to the limit. It was Norman who enabled Schacht to establish his gold bank for the purpose of cleaning up the deliberately created inflationary
mess.
Schacht has done the job he set out to do. Make no mistake about that. He wouldn't leave his pigs for nothing. He wouldn't come to England to see his friend Norman on a matter that concerned only Germany or Germany's .
Jews. These people don't work that way.
They proceed on lines of mutual interest.
Such a matter of mutual interest is Germany's coming drive to the East.