WAR CRIMES: Solid Citizen

Göring et al. were rooting for the prosecution. They smiled and nodded every time their accuser, Robert H. Jackson, scored a point. The wizard who produced this strange turnabout was Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht.

On the stand, Germany’s famed financier was iron-cold, well-dressed and superior. He seemed rather glad to be out of the dock where one had to sit with such dreadful people. He said that his fellow defendant Goring, for instance, was an ignorant and “immoral criminal type” who liked to play Nero at parties (complete with toga and rouged lips). At that, Göring rose furiously, had to be restrained by Admirals Raeder and Doenitz.

But nimble-minded, solid citizen Schacht juggled accusations as though they were blocked marks. He could not deny that he had gambled on Hitler’s success (once Schacht had said that with Hitler he was either “walking to a monument or a scaffold”). Now Schacht took the line that, as a good Christian and as a good businessman, he had always opposed war and wasteful cruelties. “Hitler deceived the world, Germany and me. . . . I would have killed Hitler personally if given the chance.”

Jackson was deferentially polite to Schacht, whom he called “Doctor.” Once, when Jackson listed the countries Hitler invaded, Schacht snapped impudently: “You are doing well, but you forget Nor-.way and Belgium.”

The spectators heard little to remind them of Schacht’s vast power as Reich Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, or of the bloodless crimes involved in his financial manipulation to strengthen the Nazis. Said a U.S. staff member: “He’s getting ready for his reception in America—probably brushing up his English.” Said a 22-year-old U.S. court stenographer: “My, he’s cute.”