1933

In his book Aggression, Otto Lehmann-Russbeldt tells us that “Hitler was invited to a meeting at the Schroder Bank in Berlin on January 4, 1933. The leading industrialists and bankers of Germany tided Hitler over his financial difficulties and enabled him to meet the enormous debt he had incurred in connection with the maintenance of his private army. In return, he promised to break the power of the trade unions. On May 2, 1933, he fulfilled his promise.” Present at the January 4, 1933 meeting were the Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles and Allen W. Dulles of the New York law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Schroder Bank. The Dulles brothers often turned up at important meetings. They had represented the United States at the Paris Peace Conference (1919); John Foster Dulles would die in harness as Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, while Allen Dulles headed the Central Intelligence Agency for many years. Their apologists have seldom attempted to defend the Dulles brothers appearance at the meeting which installed Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany, preferring to pretend that it never happened. One biographer, Leonard Mosley, bypasses it in Dulles when he states, “Both brothers had spent large amounts of time in Germany, where Sullivan and Cromwell had considerable interest during the early 1930’s, having represented several provincial governments, some large industrial combines, a number of big American companies with interests in the Reich, and some rich individuals.”

Allen Dulles later became a director of J. Henry Schroder Company.Neither he nor J. Henry Schroder were ever suspected of being pro-Nazi or pro-Hitler; the inescapable fact was that if Hitler did not become Chancellor of Germany, there was little likelihood of getting a Second World War going, the war which would double their profits.

On February 15th, Giuseppe “Joe” Zangara tries to assassinate president-elect Franklin Roosevelt but kills Chicago mayor Anton J. Chermak instead.

The depression deepens before Roosevelt takes office. More than 20 states declare bank “holidays” to stop panic withdrawals on March 2nd.

Roosevelt’s March 4th inaugural address is broadcast on the radio and does much to restore public confidence. In foreign affairs, he is a follower of Woodrow Wilson, wanting world peace, close friendship with Latin America and the British Empire, and more foreign trade. Roosevelt appoints Frances Perkins, a well-known social worker, as secretary of labor, the first woman Cabinet member.

When Congress ends its 99-day special session, an amazing number of laws have been passed. Roosevelt says he will be satisfied if he is right 60% of the time.

Congress passes the Securities Act.

Congress passes the Tennessee Valley Authority Act.

Congress Passes the Banking Act (’33).

Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. It is ironic that when the Nazis came to power in 1933 they found many of their ideas about human fitness already in place within the medical and scientific communities of Britain and America. A eugenic sterilisation law was enacted immediately, inspired partly by what was happening in the US. By the 1940s some 400,000 people had been sterilised on eugenics grounds. A whole bureaucracy was established: there were Erbklinik (genetic clinics), Erbgesundheitsgerichte (genetic courts), Erbømter (genetic officials).

In April of 1933, Hitler’s first anti-Jewish law was promulgated, stripping all “non-Aryan” academics of their teaching posts. The new law abruptly stripped a quarter of the physicists in Germany, including eleven who had earned or would earn Nobel Prizes, of their positions and their livelihood.

Under official Emergency Committee auspices thirty scientists and scholars arrived in the U. S. in 1933, thirty-two in 1934, only fifteen in 1935; but forty-three came in 1938, ninety-seven in 1939, fifty-nine in 1940, and fifty in 1941. Of these, approximately 100 were physicists.

Physicist Leo Szilard conceives the atomic chain reaction and patents it.

Rockefeller Foundation, beginning in 1933 and extending for more than 20 years, expends $1.5 million in identifying and assisting 300 scientists and scholars from Nazi Germany to settle in friendly locations; many relocate to U.S. universities.

Scandinavia. The month of December saw the beginning of the Swedish ‘Ghost Rockets’ Wave. It ended four years later with an accumulation of 1,000 reports that also covered neighboring Finland and Norway. Most sightings involved airplane-shaped craft and luminous phenomena, none identified.