Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the financial wizard who guided the economic destinies of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, has emerged from obscurity to congratulate a Quebec Social Credit leader for the Canadian’s endorsement of the Nazi “economic reforms.”
Real Caouette, Quebec leader of the Social Credit Party, and the man generally credited with its unexpected victory of 26 seats in the June elections to the Canadian Parliament, disclosed receipt of the commendation from Schacht in the course of a political debate. Caouette had stated that “I admire Hitler’s economic reforms and I am aware that he took his people out of its misery.” Schacht wrote to the Quebec politician from Germany “I was very pleased to see this statement because it is justification of the economic policy with which I was entrusted in the years 1933 to 1938.”
Caouette explained his position after publication of his original statement as regret that Hitler “used for war instead of for peace the ideas he had,” and said he opposed the dictatorial methods of Hitler and Mussolini.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
