“When on November 9, 1938 the Jews were looted in the most cowardly and cruel manner, and their synagogues were destroyed throughout Germany, I protested again. As a sign of protest, I submitted my resignation from the State Council position…” THYSSEN- HITLER Documentos ineditos relativos a este proceso – THYSSEN-HITLER “Unpublished Documents Relating to this Process” – Buenos Aires, 1940 – First Edition. Spanish. First publication of the letters from the German industrialist and member of the German Reichstag Fritz Thyssen to Hitler and the Nazi regime leaders in which he condemns the dictatorship path chosen by Germany under Hitler’s leadership – letters that led to his arrest by the Gestapo in France and being sent to concentration camps.
Friedrich “Fritz” Thyssen [1873-1951] a German industrialist and banker, one of the wealthiest people in Germany during the Weimar Republic era. Thyssen aided the Nazis’ rise to power by urging industrialists to donate to the Nazis, accumulating 3 million Reichsmarks to fund the crucial March 1933 election campaign. After the Nazis took power, Thyssen was given a seat in the Reichstag and the Prussian State Council. Towards the outbreak of World War II, he withdrew his support for Hitler after being exposed to the atrocities committed by the Nazis against Jews – particularly on Kristallnacht. On September 2, 1939, immediately after the outbreak of World War II, he sent a telegram to Hermann Goering expressing opposition to the war (this letter appears in the booklet before us). Shortly thereafter, he left for his villa on the shores of Lake Lugano in Switzerland. He was dismissed from his positions and his companies were nationalized. In December 1939, he sent a letter directly to Hitler warning that his policies would lead Germany and the Germans to ruin, demanding a democracy in Germany and freedom of expression for the individual (this letter also appears here).
Due to his change of views and opposition to the Nazi party, Thyssen was persecuted by the Nazis. In 1940 he traveled with his family to southern France, intending to continue on to Argentina. At the end of 1940, under pressure from the Gestapo, he was arrested by the French and handed over to the Nazis. Thyssen was first imprisoned in a mental hospital near Berlin, then from 1943 was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and from March 1945 was held in Dachau. He received relatively decent treatment and like other prestigious prisoners was transferred at the end of April 1945 to Tyrol, where he was liberated in May 1945. After the war, Thyssen was investigated by the Allied forces and paid compensation of 500,000 German marks to the families of his Jewish workers who he had fired in the 1930s. In 1950 Thyssen and his wife left for Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he died about a year later.
The booklet before us is the first publication of the letters Thyssen wrote to Hitler and Nazi regime leaders expressing his opposition to Nazi policy and submitting his resignation from party positions. The foreword to the booklet states: “With knowledge of our stance towards Hitler and Nazi Germany, we believe there is interest in offering the American public the opportunity to follow, through documents that have come into our possession and whose authenticity we guarantee, the process of the Thyssen-Hitler affair. The press has not yet uncovered the mystery.” And words written by Thyssen himself about the publication of the letters:
“If I publish the political documents today that led me from my position in the Reichstag to sharp opposition to Hitler, I do so…in order to prevent, as far as it depends on me, even at the last moment, countless blossoming human lives from being unnecessarily sacrificed again, after the last war has already caused so much grief and so many tears in Europe. Fritz Thyssen. April 1940”.
In the letters Thyssen sent to Hitler and Nazi leaders in 1939 that appear here, he expresses in the most explicit way, without fear, his opposition to Hitler, the Nazi party, and what it is wreaking:
“My conscience is clear. I feel free of all guilt. My only mistake was that I believed in you, the Führer Adolf Hitler, and in the movement you led, in which I believed with the ardent heart of an ardent German. Since 1923 I have committed myself to the greatest sacrifices for the National Socialist movement, I have done my utmost and fought for you, without wanting or asking anything for myself, in the hope of helping our unfortunate German people…When on November 9, 1938 the Jews were looted in the most cowardly and cruel manner, and their synagogues were destroyed throughout Germany, I protested again. As a sign of protest, I submitted my resignation from the State Council position…”
In another letter also from 1939 he writes: “When the greatest catastrophe occurred and Germany was dragged into war, without consultation with Parliament or the State Council, I stated very clearly that I reject this policy in the biggest decision… It is my duty to give my opinion and stand by it. It is a crime against the German people if I continue… Your Reichstag deputies, behind whom you seek to cover yourself from the outside, are not allowed to express their opinion freely. I do not submit to this violence. I refuse to cover up your deeds in my name, even after you declared on September 1, 1939 at the Reichstag session: “Whoever is not with me is a traitor and will be treated as such”…
Your new policy, Mr. Hitler, is leading Germany into the abyss, and the German people to disaster. Stop, while it is still possible”.
As stated, following these and similar letters appearing in the booklet, not only was he not received with understanding by the Nazi leadership, but he was further persecuted and sent to concentration camps until the end of the war. We don’t know how these letters reached the publishers in Argentina at such an early stage, even before being captured by the Nazis. However, this is a rare and first publication of the courageous letters of the Nazi who understood at an early stage where Hitler was leading Germany, expressed it explicitly, left the party, and paid for it with his personal fate.
Only two copies are listed in the world cat global library catalog – both in libraries in Germany.
31 p. Very good condition
