THE
TIMES, October
17 1998
High-living
Hitler was obsessed with money and
corruptly amassed a fortune.
Roger
Boyes on
a new study of the Führer that
nails the image of an abstemious Nazi
lifestyle How
tax dodger Adolf became a
millionaire THE
SPARTAN image
of Adolf Hitler, cultivated by Nazi
propaganda and widely believed to this
day, was bluff according to a new book,
which demonstrates that the dictator
became a multimillionaire and did his best
to cheat the taxman. Wulf
Schwarzwoeller, the
independent German
historian,
paints a portrait of Hitler at odds with
the commonly accepted version of an
impoverished, struggling painter whose
demagogic energy propelled him to the head
of the Nazi movement. As the ruler of the
Third Reich, runs the popular legend, he
led an almost monastic existence; his
fanatical drive for world domination
eclipsed normal financial or personal
ambitions.  Not
so, says Herr Schwarzwoeller in
Hitlers
Geld.
Hitler was obsessed with money and, while
he may not have dug as deeply into the
honeypot as other member of the Nazi inner
circle, he was willing to go to
extraordinary lengths to amass a personal
fortune.
At
first, Hitler was more adept at spending
than making money. His father Alois, who
worked his way up the ladder to become a
senior customs officer, bought and sold
two houses for a profit, and when he died,
at the age of 66, his widow Klara
inherited the substantial sum of 5,000
Austrian crowns which, with a generous
pension, made her relatively well
off. Young
Adolf became a coffee house dandy, his
tailors' bills paid by his doting mother.
In Vienna, in the summer of 1906, his
mother paid his hotel bills and for
tickets to the opera over two months. When
he returned to Linz, announcing his
intention to become a composer, his mother
bought him a grand piano and paid for
expert tuition. Picture
from our Website archives] Hitler
thus grew up with a sloppy attitude to
money. His rough times in a Vienna
workingmen's hostel -- after the death of
his mother and rejection by the Academy of
Fine Art -- evidently triggered his
determination to become rich. After
the First World War, developing his skills
as a political speech-maker for far-right
groups, he discovered a talent for finding
rich patrons. Some did little more than
pay his coffee house bills. Others, like
Helene Bechstein, of the piano
dynasty, wanted to remodel him and paid
for a dinner jacket and patent leather
shoes. They so took Hitler's fancy that he
wore them throughout the day. In
the autumn of 1920 he worked up a passion
for Mercedes limousines and tried,
unsuccessfully, to persuade his
cash-strapped party to pay for one.
Eventually, Hitler got his Mercedes as a
gift, perhaps from Frau Bechstein or from
the car manufacturer himself (Hitler later
claimed to have sent his own design ideas
to Mercedes in Stuttgart). The car was at
the heart of a row with the Munich taxman,
who could not understand how Hitler was
able to live such a good lifestyle -- by
the late 1920s he was living in a
nine-room apartment in Munich -- on such a
low declared income. According
to Herr Schwarzwoeller's research, Hitler
received his first tax warning in May
1925. He was ordered to submit a
declaration for 1924 and the first quarter
of 1925. Grudgingly he replied: "I had no
income last year and earned nothing in the
first quarter. I have been living off bank
loans." He claimed that the Mercedes was
also had on credit. For
the last quarter of 1925 he submitted a
declaration. Income: 11,231 marks.
Professional expenses: 6,540 marks.
Interest payment to bank: 2,245 marks.
Taxable net income: 2,446 marks. The car,
he said, was needed for his work as a
political author, as was his private
secretary -- Rudolf Hess, who earned 3,000
marks a month -- a bodyguard and a
chauffeur. "I have neither property nor
capital, I don't smoke or drink, my meals
are eaten in the most modest of
restaurants," he complained to the tax
office. The taxman did not believe him,
disallowed half his expenses and continued
to pursue him. In 1933, when Hitler came
to power, the tax demands dried up and,
one can safely assume, the careers of
various tax inspectors took a downward
turn. But
the taxman was on to something. By 1929
Hitler's tax declarations no longer
claimed deductions for interest payments.
Somebody, presumably, had paid off his
debts. Mein Kampf, written in
prison (where he led a very cushioned
life, thanks to his various patrons), was
given as his main source of income. His
royalty cut was high -- 15 per cent -- but
the sales figures were initially modest.
In 1925 he sold 9,273 copies and turnover
only picked up in 1930 when he sold
54,006. |
The
book made Hitler a millionaire, but he had
to wait for the cash to roll in. In 1933
sales exploded to 854,127 and until 1944
never faltered. There
was also a blurring of Hitler's personal
fortune and party funds -- so much so that
the party was beginning to ask questions
in 1925 about the true sources of his
income. It
was jewellery, from Frau Bechstein -- an
emerald necklace with platinum and
diamonds, a ruby set in platinum, a
diamond, a 14-carat gold ring -- that
served as security for a loan of
SwFr60,000 which allowed Hitler to buy the
Völkische Beobachter
newspaper. The
paper later became a party asset and it is
clear that Hitler did not personally
profit, although he cashed in with
unsually high fees for his articles and
the reprinting of his speeches. Other
money earners for Hitler included a clever
use of copyright. Every time his
photograph or image was used on a postage
stamp some cash came his way. Albert
Speer remembered seeing Hitler
receiving a 50 million marks cheque --
worth about £3100 million today --
for postage stamp rights. Herr
Schwarzwoeller says there were probably
several such payments. Speeches
collected in book form also generated a
good income. Hitler has a soft spot for
main-chance middlemen like his personal
photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, who
made money for both of them by selling
reproduction rights to Hitler's
watercolours. Once scorned by
gallery-owners in Vienna, these paintings
were in big demand after Hitler came to
power. Hoffman became one of several art
scouts for Hitler, searching and buying up
paintings for his personal use. Hitler's
dream was to create a cultural centre for
Europe in the sleepy Austrian town of Linz
where he had spent his early years. By the
end of the Second World War, Hitler had a
personal collection of 10,000 paintings
and other pieces of art, worth at least
DM1 billion (£3350 million) at
today's prices. "Packed
in cases, stored in dark cellars and mine
shafts, Hitler amassed the biggest private
art collection that any person had ever
possessed," Herr Schwarzwoeller said. The
paintings included Canaletto's Santa Maria
Della Salute and Van Dyck's Jupiter and
Antiope. Many had been surrendered by Jews
buying their freedom to emigrate. These
works were then auctioned. The payment for
the paintings and for property in Bavaria
came not from Hitler's usual sources of
income but from a slush fund set up by
industrialists such as Gustav Krupp
to express "gratitude to the
Führer" In
1936 Hitler complained to Speer that the
building work on his holiday home in the
Bavarian Alps was costing him a fortune:
"It's all so expensive -- I've used up all
the income from my book." That was a lie.
He was earning up to two million marks a
year tax-free for Mein Kampf and at
the time of his suicide he had seven
million marks waiting to be collected from
the publishers' bank account.
Herr
Schwarzwoeller estimates that almost 100
million marks a year was paid into the
special Hitler account by industrialists
during the 12 years of the Third Reich.
The fund administrator was Martin
Bormann. He took Eva Braun
shopping for clothes and jewellery, paying
with money drawn on the slush fund
account; he also bought property for
Hitler in the Alps and who paid off the
mortgage on Hitler's Munich
apartment. Hitler's
millions no longer exist. After the war
his fortune was regarded as a Nazi asset
and confiscated along with his art
treasures. Those works not returned to
their rightful owners were held by the
Americans until 1951 and then placed under
the supervision of the Bavarian Finance
Ministry. Bavaria owns Hitler's former
home in the Alps and all rights to Mein
Kampf. The
book is still banned in Germany and the
Bavarian Finance Ministry jealously guards
the overseas copyright, threatening legal
action against pirate editions. Hitler
made provision for his half-brothers and
sisters, but they were dead by the time
the will was declared legally valid.
"Until today," says Herr Schwarzwoeller,
"many people say that, despite the horror
Hitler inflicted on the world, one could
always make one point in his favour --
that he was not corrupt, that unlike his
colleagues he did not enrich himself, that
he led a modest life. Now it is time to
discard that once and for
all."  ©
1998 The Times Newspapers
Ltd |
There
is no such animal, at least not living
within the jurisdiction of the German
courts. 
write to David Irving