How Hitler Came to Power

How Hitler came to power? The usual answer is short: unemployment, propaganda, fear of the communists. However, the question of who financed the Nazis and the whole of Germany is somehow always avoided. I will not lie and claim that American bankers handed the Führer suitcases of cash, because no such documents exist. Still, there are other facts, far more uncomfortable: Wall Street built the economic base on which the German war machine later grew, and when the money ran out, the Nazis came to power.

How Hitler came to power: first, Germany was given money

Let us begin at the starting point. After the First World War Germany was crushed by reparations and inflation, and in 1923 the mark turned into scrap paper. Besides, the way out was suggested by the Americans: in 1924 a committee led by the banker Charles Dawes, the future Vice President of the United States, proposed the Dawes Plan.

The centrepiece of the plan was an international loan of 200 million dollars at 7% a year for 25 years. It was organised by a banking consortium led by J.P. Morgan & Co., and Morgan’s partner Thomas Lamont took part in the negotiations. American investors bought about 110 million dollars of it. On top of that, the US State Department supervised the deal, and the loan was given priority over reparations: Germany had to pay the bankers before its former enemies.

Notice that the goal looked noble on paper: to stabilise the mark and restore payments. Moreover, without this money the story of how Hitler came to power would have looked different. But the money did not stop with that one loan. Meanwhile, I will not explain with conspiracies what is perfectly well explained by greed.

What this is worth in today’s dollars

All the sums of the early century look modest until you convert them into today’s money. Besides, I use the US consumer price index: since 1924–1930 prices have risen about 19 times, and since 1931 about 21 times. The calculation is approximate, but the order of magnitude is right.

The Dawes loan, 200 million dollars in 1924, is worth about 3.8 billion today. In fact, the share of American investors, 110 million, is about 2.1 billion. After that the scale only grows.

According to estimates from IMF materials, American investment banks in 1924–1930 placed 135 bond issues of German public borrowers worth more than 1.2 billion dollars. Today that is about 23 billion. And by 1931 Germany’s debt to American private creditors, counting short-term and commercial credits, exceeded 2 billion dollars, that is, about 42 billion at today’s prices.

For a small country that had just lost a war, this was colossal money. Yet it was precisely with these loans that Germany built factories, power plants and roads, renewed its machine tools and paid its workers.

Which banks stood behind how Hitler came to power, and who decided

Now to concrete people and firms. I write only what is confirmed.

J.P. Morgan & Co. It led the consortium that organised the 1924 loan. Decisions were made by the partners of the House of Morgan, above all Thomas Lamont.

Charles Dawes. An American banker and politician who headed the committee that prepared the plan. In 1925 he became Vice President of the United States and received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Owen Young. An American industrialist who headed General Electric. He took part in the 1929 Young Plan, which changed the terms of reparations once again.

Seymour Parker Gilbert. An American lawyer and financier, the Agent General for Reparations: he monitored German payments. Later he became a partner of Morgan.

Dillon, Read & Co. The New York bank of Clarence Dillon placed German bonds, in particular for large industrial groups, including those linked to Thyssen. Historians disagree about the exact sums.

American investment banks and lenders. They placed bonds and lent money to the state, cities and enterprises. Besides, both the banks (placement fees) and the investors (7% a year) took a profit.

The decisions were made in New York and in Washington, not in the committees of the Nazi party. Still, this matters: we are talking about business, not a conspiracy. But the result was what it was: when people ask how Hitler came to power, the banks of New York cannot be struck out of the answer.

How Hitler came to power: the money of German industry

The most concrete evidence of money for the party is the meeting of 20 February 1933. Moreover, Hitler and Göring gathered the industrialists, and they discussed money for the election campaign. The banker Hjalmar Schacht proposed creating a fund of 3 million reichsmarks. The materials of the Nuremberg trials describe the collection of roughly that sum. At the exchange rate of the time that is about 700 thousand dollars, or about 15 million in today’s money.

Among the participants and supporters were Gustav Krupp (the Krupp group), Albert Vögler (Vereinigte Stahlwerke), representatives of IG Farben and Emil Kirdorf. Fritz Thyssen had supported Hitler even earlier, although in 1939 he broke with the regime and left the country.

Notice that these people were Germans. But, for example, the Vereinigte Stahlwerke of Thyssen and Vögler grew on American bonds, and IG Farben was tied to America’s Standard Oil by patent agreements. So threads do run from Wall Street to those offices, and that is how Hitler came to power, not on an empty place.

American companies in the Reich

Now to the factories. Besides, what follows can be checked against documents and research.

General Motors and Opel. In 1929 GM bought 80% of Opel, and by 1931 it owned the entire company. Moreover, the Opel plant in Brandenburg made Blitz trucks for the Wehrmacht. In addition, GM chief James Mooney received a German decoration in 1938. According to an FBI report of 1941, he did not want to do anything that would “anger Hitler”.

Ford Motor Company. In 1938 Henry Ford received the highest German award for foreigners. In addition, the Ford-Werke division in Cologne made cars and trucks, and during the war it used forced labour. Meanwhile, Ford acknowledges that slave labour was used there, but says that headquarters had lost control of the German plant. Besides, one must distinguish the decisions of local management, of the American centre and of the Nazi authorities, and to do this fully is still impossible.

Standard Oil and IG Farben. The American oil company and the German chemical concern exchanged technologies, including the synthesis of fuel from coal. In fact, this was critical for a country without its own oil.

IBM. The company’s chief, Thomas Watson, received a German decoration in 1937, and the German subsidiary Dehomag produced machines for censuses and record-keeping.

What did these ties give? Admittedly, Germany already had an industrial base and engineers. But American money, licences and methods of mass production accelerated the development of the car industry, engineering, chemicals and oil, that is, everything needed for rearmament. Here is one more part of the answer to how Hitler came to power and what he later fought with.

Americans in person: whom to check carefully

Now the slipperiest part. Which Americans personally sponsored Hitler? Moreover, I will say it straight: there are no documents about personal donations by American bankers to the Nazi party, and I will not invent them.

Henry Ford. Antisemitic views, the 1938 medal and ties with Germany are not equal to proven financing of Hitler’s campaign. Meanwhile, rumours about Ford’s money circulated from the 1920s, but there is no confirmation.

J.P. Morgan. Loans to Germany are not donations to the Nazis. This was money lent at interest.

Prescott Bush. He was a director of Union Banking Corporation, which the United States seized in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The company belonged to a Dutch bank from the Thyssen empire. No charges were brought against Bush. Besides, the claims that he personally financed Hitler are not confirmed by primary documents.

That very Prescott Bush was the father of George Bush senior, President of the United States in 1989–1993, and the grandfather of George Bush junior, President in 2001–2009. Under Bush senior the United States invaded Panama in December 1989 and began the war against Iraq in 1991. Under Bush junior the United States began the war in Afghanistan in October 2001 and invaded Iraq in March 2003.

The conclusion is simple: in the story of how Hitler came to power the responsibility here is not criminal but political and moral. They chose profit over principles.

Was there a plan to arm Hitler against the USSR

Now the question I am asked most often. In fact, I have found no documents proving that American financiers deliberately prepared Germany for a war against the USSR. But there are five facts that explain where such a version comes from:

1. American banks lent to Germany in the 1920s.

2. American corporations invested in German enterprises.

3. Moreover, enterprises with American capital produced goods used by the Wehrmacht.

4. Business circles did not always put morality above profit.

5. Nazi Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, and did so with an industrial might to which the West had put a hand.

Alongside stands the record of Hitler’s conversation with the Romanian politician Mihai Antonescu of 27 November 1941: it speaks of the colonisation and destruction of the Slavs, and Hitler says that his mission is to destroy Slavdom. The document was published in Russia in 2023; in the Romanian original, according to the publishers, there is a word that can also be translated more mildly, so the accuracy of the translation is debated. But the meaning of the conversation does not change. And then there are the words of Senator Harry Truman in The New York Times of 24 June 1941: let them kill as many of each other as possible. That is not a plan. But it is an attitude. I examined it in detail in my article on the Nazis in the service of the United States, and also in the piece on how US neutrality turned into entry into the war, and on the “neutral” arms embargo on Spain.

Nothing has changed: the same money and the same logic today

The words changed. Meanwhile, back then it was called “stabilisation” and “recovery plans”, today it is “help for partners” and “security”.

Argentina, 2025. In October the United States opened a 20 billion dollar swap line for Buenos Aires, and Trump directly linked the aid to Milei’s victory in the elections. Money in exchange for political loyalty.

Ukraine, 2013–2025. The United States openly intervened in the political struggle in Kyiv. In December 2013 Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Senator John McCain went out to the Maidan to the protesters. In February 2014 a conversation between Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt about who should hold posts in the Ukrainian government after Yanukovych leaked online. Nuland also said that since 1991 the United States had invested more than 5 billion dollars in Ukraine in “democratic aspirations”, including through USAID, which supported independent media and civic organisations. But US interference in the question of who would hold power is documented. Years passed, and on 30 April 2025 the United States signed a minerals agreement: Washington got access to the subsoil in exchange for “support”. Thus American capital is once again taking root where there is war.

Syria, 2025. After Trump met Ahmed al-Sharaa, sanctions on Damascus began to be lifted. A former militant became a “partner” within months, because that is more convenient.

Iraq, 2003–2004. After the invasion, contracts for rebuilding the country went without competition to American companies, for example KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Some started the war, and others got the profit.

The scheme is always the same. First money and “help”, then political dependence, then profit for their own. And what the people in those countries get interests no one. That is how it was with Germany in the 1920s, and exactly the same is happening now. It is precisely this, money without questions, that explains how Hitler came to power.