Table Of ContentI PAID HITLER
by
FRITZ THYSSEN
Published in association with
COOPERATION PUBLISHING CO., INC.,
NEW YORK
HODDER AND STOUGHTON, LTD.
LONDON
First printed November, 1941
Made and P,illled in Grea;B,iIM"/0' Hoddtr c!l- Slough/on, Limiled. Lo"dOll
by Wyma'. & SO"sLimited, London, Readingand Fakenltam
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD
THIS extraordinary book has an extraordinary
story. And this story must be told.
When, at the outbreak of the war in September,
1939, Fritz Thyssen, the great German industrialist,
fled from Germany to Switzerland, almost all the
newspapers, magazines, syndicates, and publishers of
the world tried to obtain his memoirs, or at least the
true story of his rupture with Hitler and his escape
from Nazi Germany.
The story ofthe man who was the greatest industrial
power in Germany, who was an ardent German
nationalist, who organised the passive resistance in
the Ruhr in 1923; the man who for more than fifteen
years backed Hitler and financed his movement-the
story of the great German capitalist who helped the
Nazis into power because he believed that they were
the people who could save his countryfrom Bolshevism
and who have now confiscated all his property-this is
indeedoneofthemostunusualstoriesofthisworld crisis.
In this great competition among publishers to obtain
Thyssen's memoirs, I have taken part myself and it
happened to be that I won. I should like to tell in
a few lines, why and how.
S
6 PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD
During the past ten years I have directed, in
Paris, an international newspaper syndicate called
COOPERATION. The programme of this organisa
tion was to unite the leading international statesmen
and to publish their views on international affairs all
over the world. My first contributors were Lord Cecil,
Sir Austen Chamberlain, Arthur Henderson, Paul
Painleve, Louis Loucheur, Henri de Jouvenel, and
some others. As the organisation grew in the years
before the war, it obtained an almost monopolistic
position in handling the exclusive world rights ofthe
articles of abont a hundred leading statesmen such
as Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Alfred Duff
Cooper, Lord Samuel, Major Attlee, Hugh Dalton,
Paul Reynaud, Edouard Herriot, Leon Blum, P. E.
Flandin, Yvon De1bos,and manyothers from England,
France, Spain, Belgium, Scandinavia, and the Balkans.
These articles, issued almost daily, have been printed
all over the world in some four hundred newspapers
in about seventy countries. The American public
may recall these articles published before the war in
the United States by a group of over twenty leading
independent newspapers from coast to coast, headed
by the New York Herald Tribune.
I have tried to present all the conflicting views of
Europe and have often published also the articles of
the Fascist spokesman, Virginio Gayda, inasmuch as
it was possible for us to print also from time to time
foreign articles in Italian newspapers. But I have
never published Nazi articles. In fact, as the crisis
grew, the policy of my organisation became more and
more openly anti-Nazi until it was probably the only
organisation of this kind fighting Nazi influence and
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD 7
the Goebbels machine on the European continent.
These publications must have had some effect, as
one day I received the highest tribute from Hitler
himself when, in his first speech after the Munich
agreement at Saarbriicken, he shouted hysterically
that" this propaganda by Churchill, Eden and Duff
Cooper must stop...."
I am obliged to mention this because in connection
with the Thyssen memoirs I shall have to make a few
statements which, under the circumstances, can be
proved only by my past record.
When Thyssen arrived in Locarno he was unable to
reply to any request for publication because he had
given his word of honour to the Swiss government
that, while residing in Swiss territory, he would refrain
from any declaration or publication. Consequently,
I did not think it would be of any use to go to see
him myself and I therefore tried to approach him
through various friends. I received no encouragement
whatsoever. In March, 1940, Thyssen went from
Switzerland to Brussels to visit his dying mother and
I learned that from Brusselshe would go to Paris.
On the srd ofApril, I received in my officein Paris
a telephone call from the Sunday Express in London
and the Paris Soir, newspapers with whom I have long
had business relations, saying that they had been
doing their utmost to obtain the story of Mr. Thyssen
but Were unable to approach him. They asked me
whether I could help them.
I immediately went to see M. Paul Reynaud who
was Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as Premier. I
explained to him the political importance of the
publication ofThyssen's memoirs and he emphatically
8 PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD
agreed with me. The problem was how to persuade
Thyssen to write and publish without further delay.
I told M. Reynaud that I knew the man who could
introduce me to Thyssen and who could probably
persuade him to entrust the publication ofhis memoirs
to me. Unfortunately, this man, who was a friend of
Thyssen, was in London and it was extremely difficult
in view of the existing censorship and prohibition of
international telephone calls to put him in touch with
Thyssen. M. Reynaud instructed one ofhis attaches
to help me and permitted me to use the telephone line
ofthe Quai d'Orsay to the French Embassy building
in London.
I spent a most dramatic day and almost a whole
night in the attache's room at the Quai d'Orsay. I
left M. Reynaud's cabinet at about the same time as
the Paris-Brussels Express on which Thyssen was to
travel left Brussels. As we did not know where
Thyssen was staying in Paris, the Surete was charged
to report his movements. We received about half
hourlymessages: "Thyssen crossed the frontier ...,"
"Thyssen passed St. Quentin ... ," " Thyssen arrived
at the Gare du Nord ... ," and finally, "Mr. and
Mrs. Thyssen arrived at the Crillon Hotel. ..."
I immediately attempted to arrange a telephone
communication between Thyssen and our mutual
friend in London, but it took almost twenty-four
hours before we succeeded. Finally they were both
on the telephone, talking without censorship inter
ference on the official line of the French Foreign
Ministry for about half an hour. The following day
I received a note from Mr. Thyssen asking me to come
and see him at the Crillon,
PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD 9
Our first meeting was very cordial and lasted almost
two hours. He said that he was prepared to publish
immediately the letters which he addressed to Hitler,
Goering, and other officials after his rupture with
the Nazis and in which he explained why he had left
Germany. In fact, he had already sent these letters
to a friend of his in America with a view to publishing
them. He said he would be glad if these letters
could also be printed in England, in France, and in
as many other countries as possible, but that he
would not like to publish anything more at the
moment.
I saw Thyssen every day while he was in Paris.
I asked him point-blank, "Do you want to help us
destroy Hitler or not?" When his reply was an
unconditional "Yes" I tried to make him agree
with me that the things he had to say and the
documents andmaterial he possessedmust be published
during the war and not after ifthey were to produce
their full effect. After the third or fourth conversation
he came to understand that in the middle of a war
against Hitlerism there was no use having powerful
weapons in one's possession and withholding them
from instant use.
Once he decided to write his memoirs he was most
anxious to proceed as quickly as possible. He wanted
his letters to be published without delay, even before
the completion of his book. These letters appeared
in the United States in Life magazine on April 29,
1940. Simultaneously, they were published in London
in the Sunday Express, and in France in Paris Soir.
Thyssen was anxious to have some of his papers
which he had deposited in the vaults of a bank at
