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Organization

Nazi Party

German political party led by Adolf Hitler, whose government took power in 1933.

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Also known as
NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers Party

Money given to it before 1933 is the subject of the claims about Fritz Thyssen.

Connections 10

members

  • Emil Kirdorf 1927 – Aug 1928 Scholarship & press 1
  • Emil Kirdorf Scholarship & press 1

    Turner says this came “years later”, after the Nazis took power, and that the regime then celebrated him as an old fighter.

led by

  • Adolf Hitler Scholarship & press 2

    Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor with two Nazi seats in the cabinet.

funded by

  • Fritz Thyssen 1923 Scholarship & press 34

    Historian Henry Ashby Turner writes that the Nazis “probably benefited” from his money in 1923; he doubts the often-cited memoir passage on the sum, because the memoirs were ghostwritten.

  • Nazi Party, Rhenish Gau Aug 1930 sent on over 30 percent of what its treasurer received Scholarship & press 1
  • Adolf Hitler Spende Scholarship & press 5

    This is the Harvard Nuremberg Trials Project’s gloss in its Krupp-case summary. Tooze describes the fund differently.

  • Fritz Thyssen Scholarship & press 3

    Countersigned a Dutch bank’s loan to the party; Thyssen later put it at 200,000 to 400,000 marks. Turner does not name the bank.

involved in

includes

  • Nazi Party, Rhenish Gau Aug 1930 Scholarship & press 1

    That was August 1930, the height of an election campaign. In the more normal months of September to November the rate was six to seven marks a member a month. Turner calls the one branch whose books survive a shaky basis for national figures.

Timeline 4 dates
  1. 1923 Fritz Thyssen funded Nazi Party
  2. 1927 – Aug 1928 Emil Kirdorf member of Nazi Party
  3. Aug 1930 Nazi Party, Rhenish Gau funded Nazi Party
  4. Aug 1930 Nazi Party, Rhenish Gau part of Nazi Party
Proof 6 sources
  1. German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1985; page numbers come from the running heads of a scanned copy and may be off by one), Oxford University Press, 1985. Scholarship & press
    Kirdorf joined the NSDAP.
    In August 1928, little more than a year after he joined the NSDAP, Kirdorf angrily submitted his resignation
    re-enter the NSDAP as the proud bearer of his old, prestigiously low membership number
    Of the money received by the Gau treasurer, over 30 percent went to the national headquarters in Munich.
    Hitler’s party failed to secure a parliamentary majority in the March election.
    the local units of the region delivered to the Gau treasurer money collected in the form of dues, registration fees, and other levies on the membership amounting to approximately eighteen marks for each member.
  2. Paul von Hindenburg, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia. Scholarship & press
    gave his Nazi Party two seats in the cabinet
  3. German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, by Henry Ashby Turner Jr., Oxford University Press (Internet Archive lending copy), 1985. Scholarship & press
    the Nazis probably benefited in 1923 from the largesse of another Ruhr industralist, Fritz Thyssen.
    Thyssen responded by countersigning a loan from a Dutch bank to the NSDAP in an amount he later variously estimated at sums ranging from 200,000 to 400,000 marks.
  4. Documents: Bush's Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler, Associated Press (as republished by Fox News), 17 Oct 2003. Scholarship & press
    an early financial supporter of Hitler
  5. NMT Case 10: USA vs. Alfried Krupp, et al., Harvard Law School Library, Nuremberg Trials Project. Scholarship & press
    Adolf Hitler Spende: a fund collected from German industry, banking, and agriculture, the largest private source of funds for the NSDAP, set up by Gustav Krupp in 1933
  6. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Viking, New York, 2007; quotes read from the text of the Penguin e-book, ISBN 978-1-101-56495-0, chapter 4), Viking, 2007. Scholarship & press
    He proposed an election fund of 3 million Reichsmarks, to be shared between the Nazis and their nationalist coalition partners.
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