REFUSAL TO GIVE MORE CREDIT

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 14049, 2 May 1946, Page 3

REFUSAL TO GIVE MORE CREDIT

SCHACHTS EVIDENCE AT NUREMBERG Fought Against Payment Of Reparations Attempt, To Put Brake On Regime Of Coersion London, May 1. The former Nazi Finance Minister. Dr. Schacht, told the Nuremberg court o-day that as president of the Reichbank he had refused to give more credit to the Nazi Minister of Finance once a certain limit had been reached. Giving- more evidence in his own defence Schacht admitted .he had fought against the payment of reparations after the first world war. He said he had joined Hitler’s cabinet solely to put a brake on what he called a regime of coersion. On the subject of disarmament he said he had considered it absolutely necessary for Germany to have equality with other nations and he was of the same opinion to-day. Earlier in his evidence Dr. Schacht said he had always been essentially a democrat and a cosmopolitan. He had never been very interested in party politics, but had participated in founding the German Democratic party in 1919. Schacht said he had read Mein Kampf, also the Nazi party programme, for the first time while* en route to America in 1930. He saw nothing criminal in the party programme. It was remarkable that all foreign countries had maintained diplomatic relations with Hitler’s Germany all these years if they thought his programme was criminal. He, however, regarded Mein Kampf as a hysterical outburst and the worst kind of German propaganda written by a man who was a fanatic and a semi-intellectual.

Schacht said he was surprised to hear a reproach during the trial from the United States prosecutor about his attitude against the Treaty of Versailles. The American prosecutor was probably too young to know from his experience, but he should know from his education, that the United States had rejected the treaty. “My objections were the same and no person has said America was pro-Nazi simply because it rejected the treaty,” he said. Schacht added that at 50 meetings and lectures in America after his, resignation from the Rcichsbank presidency in 1930 he had said that unless tlie Versailles mistakes were rectified Hitler would rapidly win support throughout the Reich.

Schacht told the Court he was a strong German Nationalist and “proud to belong to a nation which for 1000 years had been one of the greatest and had given the -world men like Luther, Goethe and Beet-

hoven.” He considered the demand tor colonies right long before National Socialism came into existence. He disagreed with the exclusion of Jews from civil rights. Schacht said the election of Hitler as Fuehrer was not a mistake, but it was a mistake not to provide for a check at regular intervals to ascertain whether the people still wanted a dictator.