On 4 September (1923), a Munich court awarded Adolf Hitler 6 million marks (interesting number) after the Berlin SPD paper Vorwärts falsely reported that his Bavarian movement was financed by “American jews and Henry Ford,” or, in other contemporary wording, “American Semitic and Bolshevistic funds.” The paper did not/could not prove the claim. The jewish Telegraphic Agency and The New York Times recorded the judgment the same week.
By then the paper mark was already collapsing: ~1 September, a dollar bought on the order of 10 million marks, and by 3 September roughly 13 million, so 6 million marks was worth only about 50–60 U.S. cents (on the order of $10 in today’s money). The prize was theater and to mock him, not a fortune). Hyperinflation was already destroying the mark, so the cash shrank fast. The Beer Hall Putsch followed in November.
Rumors of Ford money were widespread then; later research has not shown Ford personally bankrolling Hitler, even though Ford’s “antisemitic publishing” was real (The International jew) and Hitler praised him for his honesty. What can be documented for 1923 is the opposite of a jewish lending syndicate. The movement was paid for, for the most part, by its own people: membership dues, collection plates at rallies, newspaper sales, and voluntary gifts from German nationalists who wanted that politics and put up their own money.
Early help came from Dietrich Eckart and Thule circles, a ~$1,000 interest-free loan from Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl for the Völkischer Beobachter, fundraiser Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter tapping White Russian émigrés and Bavarian conservatives, and Bavarian donors such as Gottfried Grandel and food wholesaler Richard Frank (none of them a jewish bank rolling the party from New York).
In October, 1923, Fritz Thyssen gave ~100,000 gold marks to General Ludendorff to split between the Nazis and Freikorps Oberland: German heavy-industry sympathy for the nationalist camp, not a hidden jewish note. Heavy industry’s large, systematic backing belongs mainly to 1929–33, after the party already had a mass following.
Vorwärts inverted the record. There is no evidence that “American jews” or jewish lenders financed Hitler in 1923; the cash was raised, by and large, from willing German and émigré-nationalist supporters. Ford’s role was ideological export of “antisemitism,” not a proven payroll.
– x.com/historyarcs
