Guido Preparata's website

[Paul Rigby]

Some interesting bits and pieces in here:

When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse by Adam Fergusson (London: William Kimber, 1975)

http://thirdparadigm.org/doc/45060880-Wh...y-Dies.pdf

Page 2: "It is not always clear what events what popular uprising, or Allied ultimatum, or political assassination contributed to the inflationary panic; or which were themselves directly or indirectly caused by the ceaseless depreciation of the currency and rise in the cost of living."

Pages 25/6: "Frontkdmpfertag expressed a spirit of reaction that was rife in Germany from north to south. Flesh was being added to the skeletal myth of the Dolchstoss. Two days later, on August 36, Mathias Erzberger himself, to the Right the embodiment of civilian treachery, was murdered by Nationalist gunmen in the Black Forest. It is not fanciful to suppose that this deed was largely inspired by the speeches of the Nationalist (DNVP) leader Karl Helfferich, the wartime Minister of Finance under whose auspices the German inflation first got a grip. Erzberger was not only a civilian and a Republican but a Jew.

The outside world watched with deep misgivings. In an article in Le Peuple, a Belgian Socialist deputy remarked that

"assassination seems now to have become the rule in Germany, where militarist brutes, after having practised on thousands of Belgians whom they massacred, continue to adopt this means of suppressing those in their way … it is a very grave sign of collective criminal degeneration, which must strike all Germans who have retained feelings of respect for human life."

In Germany itself, the death of Erzberger, that most fearless exponent of Socialist taxation, let loose a torrent of abuse against the Right. In Berlin the Majority Socialists and the Independent Socialists joined forces in a demonstration to protest 'against the enemies of the Republic'. One Herr Harden, whom Lord D'Aber-non described as an acute if somewhat acid observer, explained to the British Ambassador that 'the followers of the Right were perpetually hunting for the old culprits responsible for the downfall of the empire and the old system, but instead of attacking the generals Ludendorff and company who were really the cause, or the old gang of princes and sycophants, they reviled the Jews and assassinated the leaders of the Left together with those who did not take their own perverted view.' More than three hundred assassinations among the leaders of the Left had been perpetrated since the Armistice, Herr Harden said, 'and no one is punished.' (He himself had had fifty telephone calls to warn him that he was next on the black list, and was leaving for America.)

Page 55: "In the middle of May 1922 Dr Schober's gallant, almost single-handed efforts as Chancellor to bring order to Austria's economy and moderation and common-sense to her politics came to an end. His administration was defeated in parliament a bare four weeks after he had persuaded the Allies at Genoa to relinquish their prior mortgage rights on all Austrian State property held to meet occupation and reparation costs an agreement which cleared the way for raising an Austrian loan. The politicians may have felt that Schober had served his turn, but the dismissal of the country's strongest statesman immediately sprinkled question-marks over the country's creditworthiness so long as she controlled her own finances. With the news of the ex-police chief's resignation the British credit promised by Lloyd George ran out, that from France and Italy never materialised, and the krone began to slip away again. Austria's condition stayed particularly critical, in contrast to that of Hungary or Germany, because of her heavy dependence upon foreign imports.

After June 1 the graph of the krone's fall became vertiginous. The June 5 figure of 52,000 to the pound, well over 10,000 to the dollar, produced something of a panic which contributed during the next two days to a further fall of 40 per cent. On June 9 the pound was at 70,000 kronen, the dollar at more than 15,000. Within a month of Rathenau's assassination in Germany at the end of June, the krone dived in sympathy with the mark from 100,000 to 125,000. In parallel with the fall came huge price increases, the index whose base had been 100 in July 1921 reaching 2,645."

So who was commanding & funding the death squads in German? One of the key figures is named below:

Former King wanted England bombed and an Anglo-German alliance, archives reveal

http://nsnbc.me/2015/07/19/former-king-w...es-reveal/

Duke of Coburg

Coburg was a grandchild of Queen Victoria destined for a privileged and unspectacular life. But the experiences of World War I changed him. After Germany lost the war, he turned to the radical right. In the 1920s he got involved with a German terrorist group that tried to overthrow the democratically elected German Republic. Members of the group were involved in several political murders in the 1920s. Though he did not pull the trigger himself, Coburg funded these murders.

After the failed Hitler Putsch of 1923, Coburg hid several Hitler supporters on the run in his castles. Hitler would not forget this great favour and later rewarded Coburg by making him a general. But he also needed him for something more secretive. In 1933 the Führer was short of international contacts and did not trust his own foreign ministry.

He therefore used members of the German aristocracy for secret missions to Britain, Italy, Hungary and Sweden. Coburg was particularly useful in London from 1935 to 1939 and was received in Britain due to his sister Alice Countess of Athlone's tireless work. She was Queen Mary's sister-in-law and fought for Coburg's acceptance. This resulted in him not just being welcomed in British drawing rooms, but most importantly, by the royals, including the Duke of Windsor.

Coburg as agent of MI6? Looks that way.

From the book Inspection For Disarmament
Edited by Seymour Melman

Columbia University Press, 1958 hardcover

from pages 203 -219

http://www.maebrussell.com/Articles%20an...ament.html

DISARMAMENT AND CLANDESTINE REARMAMENT UNDER THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

by E. J. Gumbel

[Note: This paper bears especially on the role of government in a clandestine rearmament effort that followed disarmament by law, and on the nationalist atmosphere which surrounded and supported this effort in Weimar Germany. E. J. Gumbel writes on this subject with special competence. He was one of the small group of pacifists who exposed the illegal rearmament and the terrorism connected with it. For this activity he was three times charged with high treason.Editor.]

Terror as an Instrument for Enforcing Support for Illegal Armaments.

During the period of illegal German rearmament, terrorist methods were wielded against the opponents of rearmament. These included acts of personal violence carried out by the terroristic nationalist groups supported by the manipulation of the legal system.

Altogether, there were about four hundred political assassinations of the nationalists' foes. A considerable literature was published in Germany which detailed such charges. In reply to these charges the Federal Minister of Justice published a brochure in 1923 (2) full of details which officially confirmed the nature and the actions of the terrorist campaign against the opponents of the rearmament, and the fact that the murderers, with few exceptions, were not brought to justice.

The nationalist terrorists who enforced acquiescence in the rearmament of the Reich included many of the men who later became Hitler's trusted adjutants for overseeing the mass extermination program which the Nazis carried out during the Second World War.

Many of the nationalist terrorists were at the same time members of different organizations. Therefore, it is not always possible to fix the higher responsibilities. Since the victims were "traitors to the national cause," the murderers did not try, as a rule, to hide their responsibilities. On the contrary, there were even imposters who claimed to have engaged in such activities without having done so. In their memoirs the different terrorists, such as Salomon (who participated in the assassination of the foreign minister Rathenau), never showed the slightest trace of repentance, a fact which strongly speaks for the sincerity of their convictions. Nationalist terrorists have their code of honor like the members of any other criminal organization. The first rule is that no appeal to legal institutions is permissible. The second rule is that its arms must be protected from those who are deemed to be traitors. "Traitors" existed everywhere: law-abiding citizens who realized that the Republic was threatened by the military gangs; the Republic-minded Prussian police; profiteering merchants dealing in arms; agents of competing organizations; agents of the Communist party; agents of foreign powers attracted by payments in hard currencyall fell under the heading of "traitors."

A reliable administrator of secret arms cannot ask the legal authorities for aid; he cannot ask his illegal or semi-legal superiors' advice. Faced with the danger that the whole organization may blow up, he has no choice but to administer justice as he sees it. Such was the case with the illegal arms in Germany. "Traitors" had to be eliminated at all costs, with the tacit or explicit approval of the legal superiors. Military orders which clearly indicated that traitors should be eliminated were produced in court at the law suits against some of the murderers.

The Role of the Law Courts.

The political assassinations committed by the members of the former Imperial and the secret armies put a heavy burden on the administration of justice. The murderers had to be acquitted and the victims had to be shown as guilty. This task was fulfilled by the employment of military courts which sided with military men when they were accused of murder, by the slowness of the justice-enforcing agencies, by inability to find the guilty, by issuance of false papers of identity by the police, etc.

Another procedure consisted in accepting at face value the claim of the accused murderer that the victim had tried to escape. Since arrest by an illegal gang was legal, the victim had to bear the consequences of his resistance by "trying to escape."

For the protection of secret armaments, the law courts, following the Supreme Court, introduced a new notion: high treason committed by the press. In English the phrase "high treason" has two aspects. First, to prepare for revolution or to aid the enemy in time of war. This corresponds to Hochverrat in German. Second, stealing secret documents with the intent to transmit them to a present or potential enemy foreign power. This corresponds to Landesverrat which, of course, was a rare crime. Now, public opinion, as expressed by the leading newspapers, was strongly opposed to the secret rearmament. However, such publications, aimed at stopping illegal actions committed by branches of the government, were interpreted as high treason.

Accusation of "high treason" was the big weapon of defense of the illegal rearmament effort. Even the spread of well-known news and publication of facts concerning the relation between the army and the military groups, especially the Nazis, led to a lawsuit of "high treason." As a rule, no proof of the illegal activities was admitted in court. By this procedure, the Supreme Court could affirm at the same time that secret armaments did not exist and that any publication of such a fact was a crime. To insure sentences, officers of the Reichswehr responsible for the secret armament were called as witnesses of the prosecution. In order to terrorize the public, many more trials were started than could ever be completed.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Castellan, G. Le réarmement clandestin du Reich 1930-1935 (vu par le 2e bureau de l'état-major français). Paris, Plon, 1955.

2. Denkschrift des Reichsjustizministers, edited by E. J. Gumbel. Berlin, 1924.

3. Engelbrecht, H. C. Merchants of Death. New York, Dodd-Mead, 1934.

4. Fried, H. F. The Guilt of the German Army. New York, Macmillan, 1942.

5. Görlitz, W. History of the German General Staff. New York, Praeger, 1953.

6. Guhr, H. 7 Jahre Interalliierte Mililitär-Kontrolle. Breslau, W. G. Korn, 1927.

7. Gumbel, E. J. Verräter Verfallen der Feme. Berlin, 1929.

8., ed. Deutschlands Geheime Rüstungen? Berlin, Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte, 1926.

9. , "Life and Death of a Spy Chief," Social Research, XIX (No. 3, 1952), 380-7.

10. Heuss, Theodor. Kapp-Lüttwitz, Das Verbrechen gegen die Nation. Berlin, 1920.

11. Kirk, Grayson. "German Disarmament under the Versailles Treaty," American Interests in the War and the Peace, No. 14, pp. 11ff. New York, Council on Foreign Affairs, 1944.

12. Lefebure, V. Scientific Disarmament. London, Mandanus, Ltd., 1932.

13. Melville, Cecil F. The Russian Face of Germany, An Account of the Secret Military Relations Between German and Soviet Governments. London, 1932.

14. Morgan, I. H. Assize of Arms: The Disarmament of Germany and Its Rearmament, 1919-1936. New York, 1946.

15. Nollet, Gen. C. Une experiénce de désarmement. Paris, NRF, 1932.

16. Reitlinger, G. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. London, 1954.

17. Roddie, S. Peace Patrol. London, Christophers, 1932.

18. Russell of Liverpool, Edward F. L. Russell, 2d baron. The Scourge of the Swastika. New York, 1954.

19. Salomon, Ernst von. Der Fragebogen (The Questionnaire). Hamburg, 1951.

20. Sasuly, R. IG Farben. New York, Boni & Gaer, 1947.

21. Schüddekopf, O. S. Heer und Republik. Hanover, 1955.

22. Schwendemann, K. Abrüstung und Sicherheit, Vol. 2, Berlin, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, November, 1935.

23. Seldes, G. Iron, Blood and Profits. New York, Harper, 1934.

24. Thyssen, F. I Paid Hitler. New York and London, 1941.

25. Wheeler-Bennett, I. W. The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics. New York, 1954.

E. J. Gumbel was Professor of Statistics at the University of Heidelberg, from 1923 to 1932. He has been responsible for extensive scientific research and publications. Under the Weimar Republic he wrote numerous articles, brochures, and books against political murders and secret armaments, was therefore dismissed from the University under Nazi pressure, and expatriated by the Nazi government on its first list. He then went to France and became Professor at the University of Lyon. Threatened by extradition, according to the Armistice of 1940, he came to the United States and is now Adjunct Professor of Industrial Engineering at Columbia University. During the summers of 1953 to 1957 he was Visiting Professor at the Free University of Berlin, West Germany. His dismissal of 1932 from Heidelberg was declared void twenty-four years later.