It was through this activity, according to his biographer and others, that Deterding first established links with Nazism. Dr Georg Bell, a German businessman, political agent and fixer, became one of Deterding’s representatives, and attended conferences of the Ukrainian Patriots in Paris on his behalf (where Bell also represented Hitler). Bell, an extremely shady figure, was a close associate of Ernst Röhm (the senior Nazi who headed the SA, Hitler’s militia), and also a friend of Rosenberg’s; it was through Bell that Deterding began to channel financial support to the Nazis. One German source at the time reported that ‘from the day of the Ukrainian Conference [in Paris in 1926], Deterding has been supporting Hitler with considerable sums of money (which found their way into the Hitler exchequer through Dr Bell)’. Dutch newspapers reported that Dr Bell had facilitated a donation of ‘no less than four million guilders’ from Deterding to Hitler, at a time when the Nazis were extremely short of funding. But soon the Deterding–Nazi channels were to become more direct.
On a chilly October afternoon in 1931, two men arrived by boat at the port of Harwich on a delicate mission – to develop closer ties between the Nazi movement and the British establishment. But this was no official trip, hence the low-key arrival, and the fact that the two men then made their own way to London on the boat train from Harwich. The first man was Dr Rosenberg, at this time a newly elected NSDAP Reichstag deputy, who the year before had published The Myth of the Twentieth Century about the ‘degenerate’ nature of the Jewish race. Accompanying him was an Anglo-German journalist and Nazi sympathiser based in Berlin, Baron Wilhelm de Ropp. They were met at Liverpool Street station by a contact of de Ropp’s, Major Freddy Winterbotham, who had served with de Ropp in the RAF in the First World War. Winterbotham’s first impression of Rosenberg was of ‘a keen, intelligent and cheerful type … anxious to make a good impression and, above all, to talk about his beloved movement’. Rosenberg was taken to a luxury hotel, and then, over the next days – apart from an excursion into the Surrey countryside (where the Nazi was charmed by the manners of English country folk) – he was introduced to many key contacts in the British establishment.
As well as Deterding, the figures he met included Geoffrey Dawson of The Times, Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express and the Evening Standard, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and other top banking and financial representatives. The strategic aims of these meetings were clear – it wasn’t simply a charm offensive to reassure opinion formers in Britain of the legitimacy of the growing Nazi movement in Germany, but there were also serious, practical outcomes. More favourable press coverage was certainly one of these, with Dawson subsequently keeping news of Nazi excesses in Germany out of The Times. But, more significantly, Rosenberg prepared the ground for Montagu Norman to make loans to a future Hitler government. Norman, a Germanophile since his student days in Dresden, was already well disposed towards Germany, feeling the Versailles Treaty and reparations demanded of Germany in the 1920s had been ‘economic lunacy’. He was also, according to his biographer, ‘full of contempt for the Jews’, just like Rosenberg. No doubt the two men found plenty of common ground as they chatted in Norman’s Threadneedle Street office; they also had a mutual friend – Dr Hjalmar Schacht, former president of the Reichsbank in Germany, a supporter of Hitler, and a prominent fundraiser for the Nazis.fn5
Norman also opened doors to Rosenberg on this trip. Through his agency Rosenberg was able to meet Frank Tiarks, another director of the Bank of England, but more importantly from Rosenberg’s perspective, he was also managing director of the Schroders. Tiarks subsequently connected him to other senior representatives of this bank, including Baron Kurt von Schröder himself. Baron Schröder was a director of the Stein bank of Cologne too, and he was to become an important supporter of Hitler’s, and fundraiser for the Nazis, as we learn from Professor Antony Sutton’s Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. And, through Baron Schröder’s connections, the Stein bank later became a conduit for channelling financial support to Himmler’s SS.
Given the ‘under the radar’ nature of Rosenberg’s first visit to London, we only know some of the figures he met, and it is extremely difficult to quantify the amount of financial support raised. But Deterding’s biographer quotes contemporary newspaper reports (in the Daily Telegraph and the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung) that there had been a meeting in London between a major international business magnate and ‘the Hitlerite leader Rosenberg’, and that ‘big credits for the Nazis followed’. That such support became public knowledge at the time can be illustrated by the fact that on Rosenberg’s return to Germany, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that ‘it became a common taunt in the Reichstag to describe [Rosenberg] as a “tool of Deterding”’ – so much so that one session had to be adjourned when Rosenberg threatened to ‘box the ears of another deputy who had taunted him with the fact’. There were other reports in late 1931 and 1932 that Deterding had made a loan of between £30 million and £50 million to Hitler ‘in return for a promise of a petroleum monopoly’. The respected journalist Louis Lochner, head of the Associated Press bureau in Berlin in the 1930s, put the figure lower, but wrote that 10 million RM had been contributed by Deterding to the Nazi cause.
Rosenberg’s second visit to London, in May 1933, was a more official affair, as he was now head of the Foreign Policy Office for the new Nazi government in Germany. He had meetings with the British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, the minister for war, Lord Hailsham, and Roosevelt’s representative, Norman Davis, so you might have expected him to be based at the German Embassy in Carlton House Terrace for the duration of his visit. But apparently not. We learn from a contemporary account that ‘on 5th May 1933, Dr Rosenberg, the … official plenipotentiary of Hitler arrived in London … Before calling on the German Ambassador, Dr Rosenberg went to Buckhurst Park, Ascot, which is the home of Sir Henri Deterding. Only after this visit did he request the German Embassy to arrange an interview with the Foreign Office.’ News of Rosenberg’s visit was confirmed in the New York Times of 9 May 1933:
During the weekend Germany’s special envoy stayed at Buckhurst Park with Sir Henri W. A. Deterding, head of the Royal Dutch Company. With Dr Rosenberg’s long-standing interest in Russia, it is assumed they discussed the Soviet oil monopoly. Sir Henri is bitterly hostile to the Soviet Government, owing to the confiscation of the Baku oil fields, which his company owned.
Two British newspapers, the Evening Standard and Reynold’s Illustrated News, also reported Rosenberg’s stay with Deterding, the latter commenting:
In the light of the present European situation, this private talk between Hitler’s foreign advisor and the dominant figure in European ‘oil politics’ is of profound interest. It supports the suggestion current in well-informed political circles that the big oil interests have kept closely in touch with the Nazi Party in Germany.
But the third documented meeting of Deterding and the senior Nazi leadership is the most remarkable of all. Especially as – if you were to believe Shell’s historians – it never took place. The official Shell history asserts no fewer than three times that Deterding and Hitler never met. According to this ‘history’, Deterding ‘sought an audience with Hitler’ in March 1933, but was ‘rebuffed’; ‘the refusal to grant [Deterding] an audience with Hitler … was motivated … by keeping him firmly at arm’s length’; and, of this supposed request to meet the Führer it asserts that ‘Deterding was turned down without further ado’ by the Reich Chancellery.