I PAID HITLER

The armament king who helped put Hitler in power presents here his apologia. This was first hand material dictated in Paris, after his escape from Germany and before his disappearance- Spring 1940. He acknowledges his complicity, his misplaced faith that a corporative economy, a middle way, could be established to bring Germany back to life. Then follows a meticulous record of the steps by which he reached the break, his protests against the economic front, the anti-semitism, the invasion of Poland. Hitler, he says, created no wealth, but exhausted resources; his message of economic recovery is a blind. He reveals the depths of depravity of the men and the machine they set up -- and makes some charges that will provoke plenty of comment- that Himmler's membership in the Oxford Group helped blind the English appeasers, that Hitler's resentment of his illegitimacy and his probable Jewish blood is back of his fanaticism, that Ley is a ""stammering drunkard"", Goering, a thief, etc. etc. He shows the steps by which the Nazis have destroyed the soul of Germany. But the aspect of his book which holds out some hope of an end to it all is his presentation of the hollowness of Germany's set-up, industrial, commercial, resources, etc. Bitterly anti-Communist -- very pro-Catholic (advocating a Catholic monarchical set-up) -- he will antagonize many. But his main cry is for a Europe safe from nihilism forever.