Hjalmar Schacht Bio

The prosecution concedes, at the outset, that although Schacht believed that the Jews of Germany should be stripped of their rights as citizens, he was not in complete sympathy with that aspect of the Nazi Party's program which involved the wholesale extermination of the Jews, and that he was, for that reason, attacked from time to time by the more extreme elements of the Nazi Party. It further concedes that Schacht, on occasion, gave aid and comfort to individual Jews who sought to escape the indignities generally inflicted upon Jews in Nazi Germany Schacht's attitude towards the Jews is exemplified by his speech at the German Eastern Fair, Koenigsberg, on 18 August 1935, wherein he said:
"The Jew must realize that their influence is gone for all times. We desire to keep our people and our culture pure and distinctive, just as the Jews have always demanded this of themselves since the time of the prophet Ezra. …