Adolf Hitler’s first weeks as chancellor were filled with so many excesses and outrages—crushing states’ rights, curtailing civil liberties, intimidating opponents, rewriting election laws, raising tariffs—that it was easy to overlook one of his prime targets: the German central bank.
The Reichsbank president was a man named Hans Luther, a fiscal conservative who subscribed to the “golden rule” of banking, which stipulated that a country’s indebtedness should never exceed its obligations. In his adherence to protocol and policy, Luther could be “holier than the Pope,” according to Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, who served as the German finance minister from 1932 to 1945.
On the afternoon of Monday, January 30, 1933, just hours after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, Luther stood in Hitler’s office with a complaint. Nazi storm troopers, known as the SA, had forced their way into the Reichsbank building in central Berlin, despite what Luther described as “emphatic protests” by bank personnel, and hoisted a swastika flag over the bank.
“I pointed out to Hitler that the SA actions were against the law,” Luther recalled, “to which Hitler immediately answered that this was a revolution.” Luther informed Hitler in no uncertain terms that the Reichsbank was not part of his revolution. It was an independent fiscal entity with an international board of directors. If any flag were to be flying over the bank, it would be the national colors, not the banner of his political party. The next morning, the swastika flag was gone.
On Hitler’s first full day in office, rumors circulated that he wanted Luther gone. Alfred Kliefoth, the chargé d’affaires at the United States embassy in Berlin, dispatched a memorandum to the State Department: “I have been informed, in confidence, by Dr. Ritter, the Chief Economist in the Foreign Office, that the new Government intends to exert pressure on Dr. Luther to resign.”
Hitler’s rumored plans to oust the Reichsbank chief came amid a massive purge of the Weimar Republic’s civil service. Senior officials who had served for decades were fired. Hitler assigned his chief lieutenant, Hermann Göring, to clean house in Prussia, the largest of Germany’s 17 federated states. When Göring entered the Prussian government offices in central Berlin, he told Rudolf Diels, the head of the Prussian political police, “I want nothing to do with the scoundrels sitting here in this building.” When Diels tried to defend one senior colleague, Göring responded by firing the colleague on the spot.
[Timothy W. Ryback: How Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days]
A memorandum was circulated to all state civil servants demanding blind loyalty to the Hitler government. Anyone who did not feel they could support Hitler and his policies, Göring added, should do the “honorable” thing and resign. The Berliner Morgenpost observed that Hitler was clearly working to “transform the state bureaucracy from the most senior positions down to the administrative levels to align with his political positions.” In a speech on March 11, Göring compared the Nazi’s draconian measures to cutting wood: “When you chop, chips fly.”
Despite Hitler’s heavy-handed assault on the government bureaucracy, he could not touch Hans Luther. According to a 1924 law, the Reichsbank was independent of the elected government; the Reichsbank president served at the discretion of a 14-member board, which included seven international bankers and economists. Even Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, the ultimate constitutional authority, possessed the power only to confirm the appointment of the Reichsbank president, not to dismiss him. The Reich president headed the state and commanded the military, and the Reich chancellor ran the government, but the Reichsbank controlled the currency and the economy.
Luther brandished his independence and power with confidence and control. He had already served as finance minister and had also done a stint as chancellor. He understood both politics and economics. In 1923, Luther had designed the rescue plan that saved Germany from the inflation crisis that saw Germans pushing wheelbarrows full of cash through the streets to buy a loaf of bread. After the global market crash of 1929, he had guided Germany back to employment stability and production growth by the spring of 1932. Great Britain emerged from the crisis with twice the national debt of Germany. France’s was fourfold. The New York Times reported that Luther had “stood like a rock” amid the global financial turmoil. The newspaper Vossische Zeitung described Luther as “equal to any storm.”
Finance Minister Krosigk attributed the Reichsbank president’s success in stabilizing the economy to Luther’s “intelligence, his clear-sightedness, his extraordinary work ethic, his common sense and his energy.” Luther was firm in his principles and policies, and he believed in meeting international obligations. But he was cautious with his pronouncements. As a central banker, Luther knew that a single word, or even a smirk or smile, could send markets tumbling.
On Wednesday, November 23, 1932, Luther had been invited to address a group of industrialists and businessmen in the city of Düsseldorf, in the country’s industrial heartland, along with the jurist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was already renowned as the the most eloquent political theorist and advocate of authoritarianism in Germany. (Known as the “crown jurist of the Third Reich,” Schmitt would later supply legal justification for Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives, in 1934, and for the anti-Semitic Nürnberg Laws of 1935.) On that November Wednesday in 1932, Luther listened in dismay as Schmitt laid out his arguments for the “Hitler system” of authoritarian rule, which included ending representative government and parliamentary rule, as well as the eradication of political parties, press freedoms, due process, and rule of law in favor of “totale Diktatur.” Luther was appalled.
For the first and only time in his career as Reichsbank president, Luther took a public political stance. Speaking after Schmitt, he argued that a functioning economy required democratic structures and processes, and that industrialists and businessmen were duty bound to support constitutional democracy. “We all bear the responsibility,” Luther said, arguing that it was in everyone’s interest—financial, social, and political—to support the Weimar Republic’s constitutional democracy and the rule of law. “I believe that the private sector in particular has a tremendous interest in emphasizing the necessity of legal security across the board,” Luther said, “because legal stability is the foundation of all economic life.”
[Timothy W. Ryback: The oligarchs who came to regret supporting Hitler]
That same month, Luther cautioned Chancellor Franz von Papen against “experiments” with the recovering German economy. “I told Dr. Luther that if he was not prepared to accept the risks involved,” Papen later recalled, “the government would be obliged to disregard his advice.” Within a month, Papen was out as chancellor. Papen’s successor, Kurt von Schleicher, encountered similar resistance. When Schleicher informed his cabinet that his government would seek a 2.7 billion reichsmark credit line, he received a chastening reply, as recorded in the cabinet minutes: “The Reich Minister of Economics, who had also participated in the meeting with the President of the Reichsbank, declared that, based on all experiences in negotiations with the Reichsbank, further commitments would probably not be possible.” Schleicher’s government fell within the month. By the time Hitler assumed the chancellorship, Luther had already outlasted three chancellors, and there was reason to believe that Hitler could be the fourth. However much Hitler might want to remove Luther from his post, Vossische Zeitung reported, “existing legal frameworks make this hardly possible.”
But that still left extralegal frameworks. Luther knew all too well about these. Months earlier, on the evening of April 9, 1932, Luther had been shot by two assailants in the Potsdam Train Station in central Berlin. According to the court record, the attackers intended to “slightly wound” Luther—which they succeeded in doing—as a “protest” against currency policies they believed “were wrong and damaging to the German people.” Although the court said it could not rule on Luther’s currency policies, it did sentence the two assailants to 10 months in prison for their “choice of means” in expressing their policy objections.
Following the meeting about the swastika banner on his first day as chancellor, Hitler did not see Luther for six weeks. Instead, Hitler turned for economic guidance to Luther’s predecessor at the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht. The former central banker had become a key Hitler ally in the financial world, seeking to rally bankers and industrialists behind the Nazi government. Kliefoth, the U.S. embassy chargé, dined with Schacht shortly after Hitler ascended to the chancellorship. “Schacht took pains to impress me with the fact that he is Hitler’s financial and economic adviser and that he is constantly in consultation with the new chancellor,” Kliefoth reported. Kliefoth further noted that Schacht had told him German industrialists were backing Hitler and his program. “I have good reason to believe, however, that this statement is an exaggeration,” Kliefoth reported in a subsequent memo to the State Department. “A leading executive official of the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie told me only this morning that the four-year plan announced by Hitler last night was an absurdity and that this organization viewed the latest political developments with skepticism and reserve.”
Only after national elections on March 5, when National Socialists secured 44 percent of the electorate and a mandate to move forward with a major rearmament program, did Hitler again summon Luther to the chancellery. Hitler admitted that he’d been compelled to meet with Luther because, given that the government was already running significant budget deficits, it would have been “completely impossible to begin the work of rearmament” without substantial funds from the Reichsbank. After spending two hours explaining to Luther the need for expanded military capacities, Hitler asked him how much financing the Reichsbank would be able to make available. In response, Luther assured Hitler that, as a “nationally minded man,” he appreciated Hitler’s intentions, and would be willing to provide 100 million reichsmarks—not even one-20th of the billions Hitler had requested. Hitler was stunned. He thought he had misheard, so he repeated his question. Luther gave the same answer. He later observed that, beyond the gross violation of Germany’s international debt obligations the chancellor was calling for, Hitler’s preparations for the “mass-murderous poison of war” were not in Luther’s medicine cabinet of remedies for the German economy.
Hitler informed President Hindenburg that he wanted Luther removed as head of the Reichsbank. Hindenburg reminded Hitler that the Reichsbank was an internationally governed institution and thus beyond the reach of German authority. So once again, Hitler summoned Luther to the Reich chancellery. At his first meeting with Hitler, back in January, Luther had been struck by Hitler’s apparent moderation. The chancellor was not the ranting, raging fanatic—“the abnormal man”—depicted in press accounts. Six weeks later, that moderation was gone.
Although it was becoming ever clearer to Luther that Hitler was going to make it impossible for him to carry out his fiduciary duties to the government, Luther used the occasion to remind Hitler of the Reichsbank’s independence and his own immunity from dismissal.
Hitler acknowledged that, as chancellor, he did not have the legal power to remove Luther as central banker. But, he told Luther bluntly, as the new “boss” of the country, he had access to considerable alternative sources of power that he would not hesitate to employ “ruthlessly” against Luther “if the interest of the state demanded it.” The nature of Hitler’s threats was unmistakable. Luther—who had already been shot once before in protest of his monetary policies—did not need to be warned again.
On March 16, Luther submitted his resignation to the Reichsbank board. In an extended letter to Hindenburg, Luther explained his reasons for stepping down. Luther reminded Hindenburg “that the leadership of the Reichsbank must be stable and independent of partisan political currents, that a change in political parties, directions, and majorities must not in itself result in a change in the leadership of the Reichsbank.” Luther also reminded Hindenburg that he had served as Reichsbank president alongside three previous governments. Nevertheless, Luther continued, it had become clear to him that the strained relationship between the Reichsbank and the current government was not sustainable and would only damage the country and its economy. But Luther insisted to Hindenburg that his resignation was contingent on the assurance that “an independent Reichsbank be preserved for the sake of the German state, its people and its economy.”
[Timothy W. Ryback: What the press got wrong about Hitler]
The Berliner Morgenpost, like many mainstream newspapers, lamented the departure of the man whose “strict fiscal policy” had twice rescued Germany from economic ruin. The New York Times observed that regulatory safeguards designed to secure the independence of the Reichsbank proved to be “wholly illusory” with the current administration. “Under the pressure of the kind in which the National Socialists are adept at applying,” the Times wrote, “even high government officials in Germany do not now try to retain their posts.”
Amid the turmoil of his wrangling with Luther, Hitler had summoned Hjalmar Schacht to the Reich chancellery, where he posed to Schacht the same question he had asked Luther: How much did Schacht think the Reichsbank could provide in helping finance the Hitler government’s plans? Schacht dodged the question. Giving a precise amount was impossible, Schacht said.
“You must be able to tell me to what degree the Reichsbank can or should provide assistance,” Hitler pressed.
“Herr Reich Chancellor,” Schacht said, “I really cannot give you a specific amount.” Too many factors existed when it came to a massive rearmament program. But Schacht assured Hitler of one thing: that the Reichsbank would provide Hitler with as much money as he needed. Hitler paused. He studied Schacht in silence, then asked, “Would you be willing to resume the leadership of the Reichsbank?”
Schacht assumed office the same day Luther departed.
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Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Edward Bottomley / Getty; Dario Belingheri / Getty.
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