Chapter 13: Nazi connections
This chapter gathers several secondary but still revealing lines of connection around Deterding and Hitler: the Dutch royal link, the Georg Bell connection, and Alfred Rosenberg’s role as an intermediary. Not every item carries the same evidential weight, but together they show how persistently Deterding appeared in contemporary and later accounts of Nazi finance and influence.
Sir Henri was mentioned in the publisher’s annotations of an English translation of Mein Kampf288, Hitler’s infamous semi-autobiographical political tract.289 290 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler: Publisher: Reynal & Hitchcock. Place of publication into English: New York. First publication: 1939.291 The edition quoted below is dated 1941.292 Extract from the publisher’s annotation on page 184. Rosenberg and others have been convinced that British support could be gained for any serious attempt to undermine the Russian system and therewith stamp out the Third International as a fomenter of world revolution. Two reasons for this conviction are usually advanced. The first is the support received by White Russian revolutionists from English sources, which support has occasionally been deflected to Hitler. The second is the feud long since in progress between certain British financiers and the Soviet system. Sir Henry Deterding, the oil magnate, is the most manifest of the partisans of Germany; This provides further evidence that, at an early date, information had entered the public domain describing Sir Henri as one of Nazi Germany’s most prominent foreign supporters. The reference to a feud between “certain British financiers and the Soviet system” is almost certainly a further reference to Sir Henri Deterding.
Dutch Royal Family
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands293 granted a royal charter to a small oil exploration company founded in 1890 by Jean Kessler, together with Henri Deterding and Hugo Loudon, which evolved into the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company. Queen Wilhelmina was a shrewd investor and became one of the wealthiest women in the world. At one time, the Dutch royals reportedly owned as much as 25% of the company. Crown Princess Juliana,294 the only child of Queen Wilhelmina, married Prince Bernhard, a former Nazi Storm Trooper.295 Extracts from a Time Magazine article published on 18 January 1937, 342: “Marked was the vigor last week of the Knickerbocker aristocracy of Manhattan in observing the joyous marriage day of Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Juliana of The Netherlands.” “Prince Bernhard zu Lippe-Biesterfeld, at the time his engagement to Crown Princess Juliana was announced (TIME, Sept. 14), was a minor salaried employee of the great German chemical trust I. G. Farben-industrie Aktiengesellschaft, and a Nazi Storm Trooper.” In March 2010, The Daily Telegraph published an article, “Dutch Prince Bernhard ‘was member of Nazi party’”:296 Extracts: Prince Bernhard, the father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was a member of the Nazi party, a new book has claimed, contradicting the German-born Dutch war hero’s lifelong denials. Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch historian, found membership documents in Berlin’s Humboldt University that prove Prince Bernhard, who studied there, had joined Deutsche Studentenschaft, a National Socialist student fraternity, as well as the Nazi NSDAP and its paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung.
As “Wing Commander Gibbs”, an honorary rank he held in the RAF, the prince later flew Allied bombing raids over occupied Europe before returning in 1944 as a Dutch war hero. The Dutch royal family is also reportedly a major shareholder in Shell. Beatrix of the Netherlands297 reigned as Queen of the Netherlands from 1980 until her abdication in April 2013. She is the eldest daughter of Prince Bernhard and is said to be a billionaire in her own right. Extract from a Forbes.com article, “How Much Is Queen Elizabeth Worth,” published 26 June 2001:298 “…in the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix, 63, and the rest of the royal House of Orange share a much more respectable fortune of $3.2 billion. Most of the wealth comes from the family’s longstanding stake in the U.K. and Netherlands-based oil company, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. At one time, the royals reportedly owned as much as 25% of the oil company;” Extract from a Sunday Times article published on 21 March 2004, 346, at the time of the scandal arising from the Royal Dutch Shell oil and gas reserves securities fraud: Shell’s management will be further embarrassed by the revelation that the Dutch royal family has lost nearly £250m through the collapse in the company’s share price. The family is one of the biggest single shareholders in Royal Dutch. The family’s spokesman said its stake was “not more than 5%”, a figure that would equate to a loss since January of £244m. Queen Beatrix abdicated in April 2013 in favour of her son, King Willem-Alexander, whose investiture ceremony was, according to an FT article,299 marred by the arrest of peaceful anti-monarchist protesters objecting to the royal family’s holdings in Royal Dutch Shell.
According to an April 2013 article in The Telegraph:300 “The Dutch monarchy is one of the wealthiest in the world, with Forbes magazine estimating that Queen Beatrix had a fortune in 2011 of £142 million, largely thanks to property and shares in Shell Oil.”
The Georg Bell Connection
Dr. Georg Bell,301 a German spy, was an agent of Sir Henri Deterding who acted initially as an intermediary between Deterding and Adolf Hitler in forming an alliance between the oil titan and the Nazi leader. This arrangement appears to have been useful in disguising what the public might have regarded as an unsavoury relationship.302 Bell later acted as a joint agent or delegate of Hitler and Deterding. On page 313 of “The Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Sir Henri Deterding”, it says: “Bell had useful connections with business and politics, and it is reported by Johannes Steel that he had attended a number of meetings of the ‘Ukrainian Patriots’ in Paris as joint delegate of Hitler and Deterding.”303 Bell was an intimate of Storm Troop leader Capt. Ernst Röhm304 and was allegedly involved with Deterding in a counterfeiting operation against the Russian rouble. Bell was murdered in Austria in April 1933 by a death squad of Nazi Storm Troopers and the SS after “making revelations about Deterding and the Nazis.”305 He apparently knew too much about matters the Nazis and their financiers wanted hushed up.
The Alfred Rosenberg Connection
Evidence indicates that Alfred Rosenberg had a role as a senior Nazi contact for Deterding. Rosenberg306 was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party.307 He was first introduced to Adolf Hitler308 by Dietrich Eckart309 and later held several important posts in the Nazi government. At Nuremberg310 he was tried, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging as a war criminal.311
Information and extracts from the book “Who Financed Hitler,”312 relating to Alfred Rosenberg, George Bell, and Johannes Steel:
Extract from the preface: Those who financed Hitler, both Germans and foreigners, are just as responsible for his coming to power as the active Nazis who spread anti-Semitic propaganda or fought in the streets. Yet, because of their influence and the power of money, few of them were prosecuted at Nuremberg.
Information and extract from page 319: This page contains reference to a weekend spent by Alfred Rosenberg as a guest at Sir Henri’s “palatial country home” at Buckhurst Park, near Windsor Castle. Extract from the reference on page 319 to Reynold’s Illustrated News, which published a news report about the meeting: In the light of the present European situation, this private talk between Hitler’s foreign advisor and the dominant figure in European ‘oil politics’ is of profound interest. It supports the suggestion current in well-informed political circles that the big oil interests have kept closely in touch with the Nazi Party in Germany.
Information from page 322:
This indicates that a trial took place in the 1930s, the “chervonetz forgery trial”, in which a number of individuals, including Georg Bell and Sir Henri Deterding, were allegedly implicated in a conspiracy involving currency counterfeiting, the ultimate objective of which was to create an uprising to break Ukraine away from Russia. Extract from the same page: Georg Bell, a mysterious German of Scottish origin, was said to be an agent of Deterding. He had attended a number of the “Ukrainian Patriots” meetings in Paris as a representative of both Hitler and Deterding.”
Extract from page 323: Johannes Steel, a German writer and former agent of the German Economic Intelligence Service, gave evidence at the Inquiry into the Reichstag Fire that Sir Henri Deterding was giving money to the Nazis. With regard to the forgery trial, the following is an extract from an article published by The Daily Express on 13 January 1930, under the headline “Mystery Document in German Forgery Trial”:313 Extract: The second denial came from Sir Henri Deterding, who is at present at St. Moritz. The oil magnate, interviewed by telephone, declared that he had never heard of the conspiracy against Russia until he read reports of the trial in the German newspapers and found to his amazement that his name had been dragged into it. “The first I knew of this case was when I saw reports in certain of the German newspapers,” Sir Henri said. “I was naturally astounded. I read the names of the accused and searched my mind in and out if I had ever met them. I can’t recall a single one. I am not connected with this case in any shape or form.”
Notes
288. Link to archive.org Mein Kampf (1941) webpage of American Libraries ↩
289. Link to Wikipedia article “Adolf Hitler” Source 1 ↩
290. Link to Wikipedia article “Mein Kampf” Source 1 ↩
291. Link to section of Wikipedia Meon Kampf article: “Reynal and Hitchcock translation" ↩
292. Link to royaldutchshellplc.com article “Extracts from Mein Kampf English Translation 1941” Source 1 ↩
293. Link to Wikipedia article “Wilhelmina of the Netherlands” Source 1 ↩
294. Link to Wikipedia article “Juliana of the Netherlands” Source 1 ↩
295. Link to Wikipedia article “Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld” Source 1 ↩
296. Link to article published in The Telegraph on 5 March 2010 under the headline: Dutch Prince Berhard ‘was member of Nazi party’ ↩
297. Link to Wikipedia article “Beatrix of the Netherlands” Source 1 ↩
298. Link to forbes.com article by John Pitman entitled “How Much Is Queen Elizabeth Worth?”: Published 26 June 2001. ↩
299. Link to an ft.com article by Matt Steinglass published 30 April 2013 under the headline: “Netherlands greets first king in 123 years” ↩
300. Link to an article by Harriet Alexander published 29 April 2013 by The Telegraph under the headline: “Willem-Alexander to become Europe's youngest king as Prince Charles watches on” ↩
301. Link to a Google Translation of a Wikipedia article “George Bell” ↩
302. Link to pages from a 1939 book by Joseph Gollomb “Armies of Spies” published by The Macmillan Company. ↩
303. Link to a royaldutchshellplc.com webpage containing two pages from the book by Glyn Roberts “The most powerful man in the world: The Life of Sir Henri Deterding”: Published by Hyperion Press Inc in 1938. ↩
304. Link to a time.com article “GERMANY: Co-ordination” published 17 April 1933. ↩
305. Link to shellnews.net webpage containing the entire book “The Secret War: The War for Oil”: By Frank C. Hanighen & Anton Zischka, published in London by George Routledge & Sons: 1935: Note webpage does take some time to load, even though the le is compressed. See page 99 of 123. ↩
306. Link to Wikipedia article “Alfred Rosenberg” Source 1 ↩
307. Link to Wikipedia article “Nazi Party” Source 1 ↩
308. Link to Wikipedia article “Adolf Hitler” Source 1 ↩
309. Link to Wikipedia article “Dietrich Eckart” Source 1 ↩
310. Link to Wikipedia article “Nuremberg trials” Source 1 ↩
311. Link to Wikipedia article “War crime” Source 1 ↩
312. From the book “WHO FINANCED HITLER” (The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power) 1919-1933. By James E. Pool III and Suzanne Pool: Published in 1979 by Macdonald and Jane’s Publishers Limited: ISBN 0 354 04395 1 ↩
313. Link to royaldutchshellplc.com webpage containing a Daily Express article “Mystery Document in German Forgery Trial” published on 13 January 1930. Source 1 ↩