FDR's promise of US Gold to Hitlers Germany 1940

[Andy H]

Hi

James Mooney the VP of GM was recruited by FDR to look into ways of 'placating' Germany after the invasion and conquest of Poland in 1939. In the early part of 1940 Mooney reported his findings to FDR on his most recent trip to Germany and its highest officials.

Recognizing that he (FDR) couldn't agree to the extreme political demands, he looked at disarmament and liberalized free trade as a substitute, but then going further by promising contributions to the Germany economy, including tariff reduction and a 'free gift' of American Gold!

Can anyone shed any light on this Gold proposal or the wider contributions to the Germany economy?

Regards

[Carl Schwamberger]

Want me to repost from the ACG forum

[Gorque]

Hi Andy:

There is a footnote on page 686 regarding James Mooney in William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

A quite unofficial American peacemaker was also in Berlin at this time: James D. Mooney, a vice-president of General Motors. He had been in Berlin, as I recall, shortly before or after the outbreak of war, trying like that other amateur in diplomacy, Dahlerus, though without the latter's connections to save the peace. The day after Welles left Berlin, on March 4, 1940, Hitler received Mooney, who told him, according to a captured German record of the meeting, that President Roosevelt was "more friendly and sympathetic" to Germany "than was generally believed in Berlin" and that the President was prepared to act as "moderator" in bringing the belligerents together. Hitler merely repeated what he had told Welles two days before.

On March 11 Thomsen sent to Berlin a confidential memorandum prepared for him by an unnamed American informant declaring that Mooney "was more or less pro-German." The General Motors executive was certainly taken in by the Germans. Thomsen's memorandum states that Mooney had informed Roosevelt on the basis of an earlier talk with Hitler that the Führer "was desirous of peace and wished to prevent the bloodshed of a spring campaign." Hans Dieckhoff, the recalled German ambassador to the United Staes, who was whiling away his time in Berlin, saw Mooney immediately after the latter's interview with Hitler and reported to the Foreing Office that the American businessman was "rather verbose" and that " I cannot believe that the Mooney initiative has any great importance."

DGFP, VIII, pp 865-66

Best regards,

Gorque

[Carl Schwamberger]

Shrier, bless him. Still usefull after all these years. Wish he had recorded more of his personal experince in Germany in those years.

[Hanny]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34240728/Unho ... and-Hitler

[Carl Schwamberger]

Unholy alliance indeed. Highams 'Trading With the Enemy' identifies some of the business connections between the US and nazi Germany, and how they were broken.

[Gorque]

Hi Andy:

I think this is the document that you seek: http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box3/a36h01.html

See page 3 for the "contribution".

For further reading, here is Mr. Mooney's report on his meeting with Göring: http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box3/a36j01.html

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Gorque

[waldzee]

"Maximum!" If only this were a lesson learned by contemporary politicians.

At the end of World War II American central planners were even more totalitarian when it came to economic policy than were the former Nazis. During the post-war occupation of Germany, American "planners" rather liked the Nazi economic controls, including price controls, that were in fact preventing economic recovery. The notorious Nazi Hermann Göring even lectured the American war correspondent Henry Taylor about it! As recounted by Schuettinger and Butler, Göring said:


Your America is doing many things in the economic field which we found out caused us so much trouble. You are trying to control peoples' wages and prices — peoples' work. If you do that you must control peoples' lives. And no country can do that part way. I tried and it failed. Nor can any country do it all the way either. I tried that too and it failed. You are no better planners than we. I should think your economists would read what happened here.

Price controls were finally ended in Germany by Economic Minister Ludwig Erhard in 1948, on a Sunday, when the American occupation authorities would be out of their offices and unable to stop him. This spawned the "German economic miracle."
http://mises.org/daily/1962
Giving gold to the Reich would be the equivelent of giving Heroin to street pushers.
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thanks D, it was a posted quote.
the name appears to be spellled, in the press, in different ways.

Andy, this senario appears highly unlikely. by 1934 the American administration was hoarding gold.
The US did propose a 'silver standard' for paper currencies with no chance of acquiring gold reserves.

[waldzee]

Reccomended Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Program_ ... d_Standard

Would the OP kindly post his sources? I Strongly suspect that the motive was GMC's attempt to salvage its investments in Opel at the American taxpayer's expense.

[Carl Schwamberger]

.... I Strongly suspect that the motive was GMC's attempt to salvage its investments in Opel at the American taxpayer's expense.

One occasionally runs across remarks about Stimson, Marshall, Arnold, & others receiving inquiries about the 'necessity' for bombing certain manufactoring sites in Germany & other locations in Europe. Marshall is susposed to have become more than a little annoyed by these.

[waldzee]

.... I Strongly suspect that the motive was GMC's attempt to salvage its investments in Opel at the American taxpayer's expense.

One occasionally runs across remarks about Stimson, Marshall, Arnold, & others receiving inquiries about the 'necessity' for bombing certain manufactoring sites in Germany & other locations in Europe. Marshall is susposed to have become more than a little annoyed by these.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks Carl
Onpage 976 of the jstor article quoted in ACG( le-in-the-Appeasement-of-Nazi-Germany) the rumour started in 'American Neutrality ' magazine in 1940!
There was an election being fought that year!

SIX

BETWEEN ROOSEVELT AND HITLER: AMERICA'S ROLE IN THE APPEASEMENT OF NAZI GERMANY 

FREDERICK

W.

MARKS I11

Forest Hills,

brew

York

One of the outstanding questions still to be settled in the field of modern historyconcerns America's role in the appeasement of Nazi Germany. Current controversycentres on two inter-related issues. There is, first of all, Sumner Welles' tour ofEuropean capitals in early1940. Stanley Hilton, writing for the

Journal

o

American

Histoy

in 1971, argued that Roosevelt's principal purpose in sending his undersecretary abroad was to split the Rome-Berlin Axis. A secondary object was to buytime for the Allies by forestalling a German spring 0ffensive.l Other accounts, earlieras well as later, have assumed that Washington was genuinely prepared, if notanxious, to reach an understanding with the f~ehrer.~losely linked with the Wellesmission is a second topic which remains equally moot: namely FDR's prior role inevents leading to the Munich Conference of 1938 One scholar concludes that thepresident leaned heavily toward appea~ement.~nother maintains that he shunnedthe soft line in private but felt tactically bound to yield, thus propelling Franceheadlong into ~urrender.~ome have suspended judgement altogether, while othershave held that he 'dabbled' in appea~ement.~In short, historians continue to disagree on a variety of counts. The purpose of

'

Hilton holds that, inasmuch as FDR's hatred ofHitler was second to none, he would neverhave appeased him, much less negotiated a soft peace to sustain him in power; StanleyE. Hilton, 'The Welles mission to Europe, February-March 1940: illusion or realism?'

Jo~~rnalof American Histoyy,

LVIII

(1g71), 4,

100-1,

I

I

I, 120.See, for example, William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason,

The challenge to isolation,

1937-1940 (New York, 1g52), pp. 361-3; David Reynolds,

The creation of the Anglo-Americanalliance,

1937-1941 (Chapel Hill, 1982),p. 81.Arnold Offner,

America's appeasement: United States foreign poli~yand Germary,

1933--1938(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969), pp 27G80. This is the fullest and best account to date,yet it remains fragmentary as the author was unable to avail himself of official French sources(published or unpublished). There is no reference, for example, to crucial conversationsbetween Roosevelt and such Frenchmen as Thoumyre and Saint-Quentin. Neither does Offnerallude to key episodes as, for instance: the Fuller missions to Berlin; the Welles and Bullitttrips to European capitals in September and November 1937; Hugh Wilson's talks in Pragueduring August of 1938; Ambassador Kennedy's role in last-minute negotiations leading upto Munich; Truman Smith's discussion of Czech partition with a Polish colleague in Berlin;not to mention FDR's own effort to win a lion's share of the credit for Munich. The sameis true of Offner's sequel,

The origins of the Second TVorld War

(New York 1g75), which omitsall of the above and passes over the Mooney missions.John McVickar Haight, Jr., 'France, the United States and the Munich crisis',

Journalof

modern

Histoyy,

XXXII

(1g60),34-58,As an example of the former, see Langer and Gleason,

Challenge to isolation,

p. 58. For thelatter, see Donald F. Drummond,

The passzng of Americun neutralzb,

1937-1941 (Ann Arbor,'935)> PP. 78R.

"American Neutrality Magazine " appears to ahve vanished into the mist....

[waldzee]

There are a lot of 'evil Rooseveldt conspiacy sites' that disagree with me:

http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v10 ... 62-83.html

Teh Thrust of his administration was to use silve as an alturnative to fiat money for countries that coudlnot support a gold standard. Americal stabilised the Mexican peso in 1934-1940 by supplying dollars as liquidity for silver.

[Gorque]

Walther Funk complained to the Reichsbank's central board of governors on March 30, 1939 about the amount of gold that was in and flowing to the United States at the time:

Is a new 'dance around the golden calf' about to begin? Will the world sacrifice itself to the American Moloch? The world is now at the parting of the ways. Either it will yield to the might of American gold or it will accept the new methods of young, vigorous, striving nations.

At the time, the U.S. gold holdings constituted 57% of the monetary gold in the world, excluding the Soviet Union.

[waldzee]

Walther Funk complained to the Reichsbank's central board of governors on March 30, 1939 about the amount of gold that was in and flowing to the United States at the time:

Is a new 'dance around the golden calf' about to begin? Will the world sacrifice itself to the American Moloch? The world is now at the parting of the ways. Either it will yield to the might of American gold or it will accept the new methods of young, vigorous, striving nations.

At the time, the U.S. gold holdings constituted 57% of the monetary gold in the world, excluding the Soviet Union.

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then came Nixon....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock
American currency policy after 1932 was essentially benign. The FDR admin backed a bimetallic plan for economies such as Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_standard

[Gorque]

While the UK allowed the transfer of Czech gold to the coffers of the Reich to occur, I'm curious as to what happened to Czech gold, if any, held by the United States, as the U.S. considered the elimination of the Czech state as only temporary and that the nation would once again be restored.

Of course, we can assume the primary thrust of this thread to be whatever we perceive it to be as it appears that the O.P. has abandoned it.

Swamp Nazi's anyone?