Who was Hjalmar Schacht? What was his theory regarding economic recovery...
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Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970) was a German economist, banker, centre-right politician, and co-founder in 1918 of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparation obligations. After the war Schacht had supported Hitler's gaining power, and had been an important official of the Nazi regime. Thus he was arrested by the Allies in 1945. He was put on trial at Nuremberg for "conspiracy" and "crimes against peace" (planning and waging wars of aggression), but not war crimes or crimes against humanity . Schacht pleaded not guilty to these charges. He cited in his defense that he had lost all official power before the war even began, that he had been in contact with Resistance leaders like Hans Gisevius throughout the war, and that he had been arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp himself. His defenders argued that he was just a patriot, trying to make the German economy strong. Furthermore, Schacht was not a member of the NSDAP and shared very little of their ideology. The British judges favored acquittal, while the Soviet judges wanted to convict.The British prevailed and Schacht was acquitted.
Answer:
Horace Greeley H j a l a r S chacht (22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970, German pronunciation was a German economist, banker, centre-right politician, and co-founder in 1918 of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the R eichsbank under the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparation obligations.
He served in Adolf Hitler's government as President of the National Bank (R eichsbank) 1933–1939 and became Minister of Economics (August 1934 – November 1937).
While S chacht was for a time feted for his role in the German "economic miracle", he opposed Hitler's policy of German re-armament insofar as it violated the Treaty of Versailles and (in his view) disrupted the German economy. His views in this regard led S chacht to clash with Hitler and most notably with Hermann Goring. He was dismissed as President of the R eichsbank in January 1939. He remained as a minister without portfolio, and received the same salary, until he was fully dismissed from the government in January 1943.[2]
In 1944, S chacht was arrested by the Gestapo after the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944 because he allegedly had contact with the assassins. Subsequently, he was interned until the end of the Third Reich in the concentration camps Ravensbruck and later at Flossenburg. In the last days of the war, he was one of the 134 special and clan prisoners[a] who were transported by the SS from Dachau into the "Alpine Fortress" to Niederdorf in South Tyrol, where they were freed on 30 April 1945.[4]
Despite this, he was tried at Nuremberg, but was fully acquitted over Soviet objections; later on, a German denazification tribunal sentenced him to eight years' hard labor, which was also overturned on appeal.
In 1955, he founded a private banking house in Düsseldorf. He also advised developing countries on economic development.