logo
Letter From Westphalia, Germany; 6 June 1933

Letter From Westphalia, Germany; 6 June 1933

Scoop5 days ago
Friday, 18 July 2025
On Saturday I came into possession of this letter, transcript below.
I will note that the recipient of the letter is someone I know a bit about; I would like to know more about his time in London, circa 1930-1932. I understand that he attended the London School of Economics. I never met him; but, me being a student of the Great Depression, I wish I had known him while writing my MA thesis.
Eric Salmon lived from 1903 to 1990. Certainly a patrician, he was an Auckland City Councillor and associate of Auckland's 'Mayor Robbie'. He would never have had any sympathy with the Nazi cause. Nevertheless, I would like to think that, like me, he would have had some empathy for the German people in 1933; and the many other people then caught up in events – indeed zeitgeists – moving too fast, and on too great a scale.
Sadly, I will never be able to see Mr Salmon's letter to his German contact (probably written late in 1932). I do not know if he replied to the letter below:
________________________________________________________________________________
Home Address:
Schwelm (in Westfalen)
Kirkplatz 7
Schwelm, 6th VI. [June] 1933
Dear Mr. Salmon,
Your letter with the interesting account of your native [town?] and the economic position of New Zealand was a great joy to me, and I thank you very much for it. I hope, you won't take it amiss that my answer comes so late. During the last months I spent all my time in finishing the dissertation for my doctor examination. Some days ago I finally handed it to my professor, and I am now preparing for the oral examination which will take place in the end of July. – How are you getting on with your work?
In the course of rather a short time the political situation in this country has thoroughly changed, and the questions you put to me in your letter have found a sudden solution. I may add : also a good one. You are perhaps astonished to read that, for – as far as I know – most of the great newspapers of the world tell you just the contrary. The reason for it is that the European nations, above all France and Polonia [Poland], but England too, fear a new war, and this fear is in an inexcusable way nourished by all those German people who don't agree with the new spirit and the new methods. The Jewish question is also of great importance. The measures we took against the Jews were not at all cruel or unjustified, as you read in English papers. All we try is only to reduce the enormous influence and power of the Jews in Germany to an extent which compounds to their small number. More and more their influence has become a destructive force in our national life. What you see nowadays in Germany is not a warlike or an extremely militaristic spirit or a mass barbarism (as many foreigners suppose), but the will to build a new nation, in which no longer the unchecked liberalism of the postwar years reigns. We were standing just before a complete breakdown and the chaos of Communism, which would have been fatal for the whole world. In this dangerous moment came the revolution of our nationalist party under the great leader Hitler. It marks the beginning of something quite new in Germany. We know that a great many tasks are waiting for us, but seeing them we are no longer desperate as it was the case in the last years. The new Germany has a new hope, a new will, and a new energy, and with them we shall overcome all problems and difficulties.
What do you think about the change in Germany, and what do you read in the papers? I should be very glad to hear something about it from you. Hoping you are quite well I am with kindest regards, yours Theodor Hort.
________________________________________________________________________________
My Comments:
Herr Hort – presumably Dr Hort, soon after – is writing from Schwelm, eleven kilometres east of the Westphalian city of Wuppertal. To the west of Wuppertal is Düsseldorf, on the Rhine; Cologne is to the south, near where the river Wupper flows into the Rhine. To the north of Wuppertal is the Ruhr Valley, Germany's western industrial heartland. Between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal is Neandertal/Neanderthal. Most of the journey between Wuppertal and Schwelm can be taken on the 'world-famous in Westphalia' Wuppertal Schwebebahn, the suspension railway, built between 1897 and 1903, which runs above the Wupper River. I am privileged to have ridden on that railway in 1984.
I had hoped that, because the railway is still there, that Wuppertal had not been bombed by the RAF during WW2. No such luck. I found this article in the Burnie Advocate (Tasmania), 1 June 1943: Wuppertal raid one of heaviest of war. This was eight weeks before Operation Gomorrah decimated Hamburg. (On Wuppertal, refer also: Planning a Bombing Operation: Wuppertal 1943, My grandfather, the bomber pilot, When the singing stops on Christmas Eve, German tragedy of destiny, Wikipedia.)
I have no idea what Theodor Hort's fate was. Maybe he was recruited for the notorious Einsatzgruppen, which was top-heavy with academic doctors? More likely he turned away, at least in his mind, from the excesses of the New Germany; nevertheless serving his country in some capacity, albeit out of the kind of obligation that would have been hard to refuse. There is a high chance he died during the war. I'm guessing he would have been about 35 years old in 1943.
Throughout the twentieth century, many young Australians and New Zealanders studied at the London School of Economics. (William Pember Reeves was its Director from 1908 to 1919.) So did many upper-middle-class Germans; Herr Hort clearly fell into that class-category. Other Germans to study economics at the LSE included Heinrich Brüning and Ursula von der Leyen.
Brüning was Chancellor of Germany from mid-1930 to mid-1932. Brüning was the centrist politician most associated with the economic collapse of Weimar Germany during the Great Depression, thanks to his 'liberal' policies of stubborn fiscal conservatism. He sought to balance the Budget at any cost. Germany and the world paid a very high cost indeed. I understand that the "unchecked liberalism" Hort refers to is the economic liberalism of Brüning and others (think today's neoliberalism), and not so much the social liberalism of Berlin that was an icon of 1920s' Germany. (As a part of that social liberalism, Germany in 1918 – Germany's first annus horribilis last century – became a proper democracy, with proportional representation, and votes for women.)
I would imagine that Hort's parents would have voted for Bruning's Zentrum (Centre) party. While it started as a Catholic party, it was actually the foundation party of German 'Christian Democracy', having already broadened its base by 1930. Westphalia, Düsseldorf and Cologne represented the West German heartland of centrist Christian Democratic politics. And consistently these places cast the fewest votes for Adolf Hitler's party. (The city of Cologne, the least-Nazi-supporting city in Germany, was the first large German urban centre to be carpet-bombed by the British, in 1942.)
Nevertheless, at least in March 1933, young Theodor probably voted for the National Socialists. (Although his "great leader" epithet was probably a direct translation of 'führer' rather than an expression of devotion.) The Enabling Act of 1933, which ended democracy in Germany, had been in force for three months before Herr Hort wrote this letter. He, like many others in a desperate country, was willing to forego democracy if other goals might better be achieved without it. Further, by 1938, Hitlernomics – borrowing 'as much as it takes' to re-arm and reorganise along Spartan lines – was looking like a great success. (Something suspiciously similar took place in the Bundestag in 2025, exactly 92 years after the Enabling Act, using the outvoted 'lame-duck' parliament to get the necessary two-thirds majority. This time it was the 'fascists' – AFD – who were against borrowing to re-arm; and the outvoted fastidiously-anti-borrowing neoliberal FDP, who should not have been there.)
Finally, here, we should note that Germany as a whole – and certainly western Germany – while Judeophobic, was probably not much more Judeophobic than other European countries (including the USA); and that most German Jews, to 1918 at least, had seen themselves as more Germans than Semites, and played a significant role in the German armed forces in World War One. The circumstances of 1918, however, made it a relatively easy task for would-be-politicians with nationalist agendas to scapegoat Jews. There were vastly more Jews living in the countries east of Germany, and they from 1940 to 1944 ended up being very much in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Germany in 1933, 'Jewish' identity was used very much as proxies for the twin-devils who many Germans believed had 'stabbed Germany in the back' in 1918 (at a time when Germany appeared to be winning on the western front) and again in (and around) 1931; 'Bolshevik' Communists and big-finance capitalists. The 1918 claim of a 'stolen war' was an evidentially-false conspiracy theory which had the appearance of credibility to many desperate people looking for simple answers, and scapegoats.
On the Bolshevik matter, while Theodor Hort and others will not have known about it until much later – the winter of 1932/33 was the peak of the Holodomor where four million mainly-Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death by Josef Stalin's Moscow-based regime. Too many elements of the western press were looking the other way. Soviet Communism was being romanticised in certain middle-class and working-class circles in 'the West' (though demonised in others: refer Three Women who Launched a Movement); the mega-atrocities were downplayed by mainstream journalists such as Walter Duranty.
It was the full discovery in 1939 of the Holodomor and the later Great Purge (s) that enabled the Nazis to contemplate an even worse genocide, a substantial part of which became the Shoah. The Shoah, while the worst genocide in the last 100 years (at least outside of Mao's China), was neither the first nor the last real-world example of 'hunger games'.
-------------
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Keith Rankin
Political Economist, Scoop Columnist
Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s.
Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like.
Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

With an uncertain future weapons supply from other countries, Ukraine shifts to building its own
With an uncertain future weapons supply from other countries, Ukraine shifts to building its own

NZ Herald

time8 hours ago

  • NZ Herald

With an uncertain future weapons supply from other countries, Ukraine shifts to building its own

United States President Donald Trump's inconsistent support for Ukraine has called into question the continued backing of the US, Kyiv's biggest arms supplier. The Trump Administration recently paused some arms transfers but then reversed course, agreeing to sell weapons to European allies, which will then give them to Ukraine. But even with greater certainty about the flow of Western weapons, it still does not match what Ukraine needs to fend off the Russian invasion. That reality has produced a fundamental shift in Ukraine's appeals to its Western allies. Rather than pleading primarily for arms, as it did early in the war, Ukraine is increasingly asking for the money to build its own weapons. The effort involves an array of both private and government-owned firms involved in making vehicles, engines, electronics, weapons, and ammunition. At the start of the war in 2022, Ukraine relied mostly on artillery, shells, and machine guns donated by Western partners. Now, it produces about 40% of the weapons used at the front, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and it is looking to increase that amount sharply. The most striking example of this growing self-reliance is the use of drones, now omnipresent on the battlefield and produced almost entirely in Ukraine. 'This does not bring peace of mind, but it does provide greater moral confidence that we will not be left empty-handed,' Zelenskyy said in February of Ukraine's booming defence industry. To further increase production, Ukraine needs more money, which it sorely lacks. Olena Bilousova, a defence industry expert at the Kyiv School of Economics, said Ukraine had the industrial capacity to produce US$35 billion ($58.6b) worth of military equipment annually, but was producing only up to about US$15b, and was unable to afford more. 'The funding issue is a bottleneck for our defence industry,' Bilousova said in an interview. An employee works on a vehicle at a Ukrainian Armour factory in central Ukraine. Photo / Brendan Hoffman, the New York Times Growing self-reliance - About 40% of weapons used at the front are made in Ukraine. - The drones it uses are produced almost entirely in Ukraine. - Ukraine produces more artillery systems each month than all European countries combined. - It is said to be fully self-reliant for both mortar launchers and shells. Employees work on building mortar launchers at a Ukrainian Armour factory in central Ukraine. Photo / Brendan Hoffman, the New York Times Adding to the pressure to produce more weapons is Russia's own war machinery, which has expanded greatly during the war. Russia's defence budget this year is at least US$150b, about three times as large as Ukraine's. Russia now produces three times as much ammunition in three months as all of Nato does in a year, Mark Rutte, the alliance's secretary-general, said in a recent interview. The imbalance in arms production has given Russia an overwhelming firepower advantage on the battlefield, even in domains such as drones that Ukraine once dominated. Ukrainian soldiers defending the embattled city of Kostiantynivka in the east say Russian attack drones monitor the battlefield day and night, targeting anything that moves. Graffiti left on the bombed-out train station in Kostiantynivka tells the mood. Partly erased where the station wall was blown apart, the words, in English, can still be made out: 'Not asking too much. We just need artillery shells and aviation. Rest we do ourselves.' Unable to match enemy fire, Ukraine is forced to adapt. Using feedback from soldiers on the ground, Ukrainian Armour has started producing vehicles designed specifically to evade drones on the battlefield, including a light buggy capable of racing up to 145km/h to outrun drones. Its construction is bare-bones: an open-topped metal frame, suspension, two seats — and no speedometer. 'Why would you need one?' Belbas said with a smile, as he toured the factory. The New York Times agreed not to disclose the factory's precise location because Russia routinely targets weapons-production sites in Ukraine. Ukrainian Armour also makes a large, unmanned carrier that shows the growing robotisation of the battlefield. It is, in effect, a drone mother ship, designed to transport smaller remote-controlled vehicles to the front. The smaller drones, in turn, deliver food and ammunition to combat positions, while the carrier serves as a relay station for signal transmission. Belbas said robotic vehicles were designed to save the lives of Ukraine's limited number of soldiers, sparing them from risky missions such as resupplying troops at the front. 'Also, it's about money,' he acknowledged. The Ukrainian government pays 15 million hryvnia (about US$360,000) in compensation to the family of each soldier who is killed. Producing a vehicle like this is 'five times cheaper,' Belbas said. The Novator, an armoured vehicle manufactured by Ukrainian Armour. Photo / Brendan Hoffman, the New York Times These innovations make up only a small share of the company's output. Most of its production remains focused on battlefield staples such as mortars — weapons that are reliable in all weather conditions, unlike drones. 'The mortars are like the undying classic weapons,' Belbas said as he stepped into a warehouse lined with mortars mounted on two-wheeled chassis. Last year, the company produced about 1000 mortars, roughly double the previous year's output. Early in the war, Ukrainian troops used Caesar self-propelled howitzers — big cannons mounted on heavy trucks — to pound Russian positions. Now, they have largely turned to a homegrown alternative, the Bohdana, producing nearly 20 units a month, Ukrainian officials say. Bilousova, the defence industry expert, said Ukraine now produces more artillery systems each month than all European countries combined. As for mortars, Belbas estimated that Ukraine has been fully self-reliant for both launchers and shells since last year. It is a turnaround from the start of the war, when nearly all mortar shells were imported. Kyiv has also initiated plans to develop more advanced weapons such as air-defence systems — the type of munitions that were the subject of the Trump Administration's recent flip-flop. (Trump said he did not know who had paused the weapons delivery.) These sophisticated systems are expensive to develop and build, and Kyiv cannot afford to do so on its own. Belbas said contracts with the Ukrainian Defence Ministry to produce more mortars, a far more basic weapon, went unfulfilled because of a lack of funding. To broaden its options, Kyiv recently began a new initiative, inviting its allies to host production facilities within their borders for Ukrainian weapons-makers. Under this model, Ukraine would provide the expertise, while Western partners would provide money and production sites out of reach of Russian strikes. Denmark was the first country to officially endorse the plan, in early July, and Zelenskyy said that 'more such agreements will follow'. Facing the twin threats of Russian expansionism and a diminished US commitment to Nato, Europe is also ramping up military spending and weapons production. Ukrainian officials hope that will mean leaning on Ukraine's hard-won expertise to help rearm the continent. 'Ukraine needs investment. You need skills, you need technology,' Zelenskyy told Western allies this month in Rome. 'And everything we are building now to protect Ukraine will also help protect you.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Constant Méheut Photographs by: Brendan Hoffman ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES

China stood up to Trump and is pushing Europe, seeing more room to assert its interests
China stood up to Trump and is pushing Europe, seeing more room to assert its interests

NZ Herald

time15 hours ago

  • NZ Herald

China stood up to Trump and is pushing Europe, seeing more room to assert its interests

Beijing has learned that it has leverage it can use against outside pressure. It stood up to the Trump Administration's punishing trade war by demonstrating how dependent global industry was on China for its supply of critical minerals. And Beijing likely assesses that it is in a stronger position because Western unity is fracturing, analysts say, with United States President Donald Trump's 'America First' foreign policy weakening the historical bonds between Europe and the US. 'Beijing perceives that the global order is in flux,' said Simona Grano, a China expert at the University of Zurich. 'From its perspective, the US is overstretched and preoccupied with multiple conflicts around the world and domestic polarisation.' 'And with signs of division or fatigue within the transatlantic alliance, the Chinese leadership sees more room to assert its interests, not least in trade, tech and security,' Grano said. That calculation has been evident in China's approach to the summit talks on Thursday, which will include its top leader, Xi Jinping, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, as well as other senior European leaders. The two sides will be commemorating 50 years of diplomatic ties — the type of anniversary that ordinarily would be a chance for Beijing to showcase its partnerships. Yet each detail of the meeting appears to underscore China's view of the power dynamic. The summit is being held in Beijing even though it was Brussels' turn to host the rotating event. The meeting will only last one day, according to the EU, despite having been billed earlier as a two-day affair. Expectations for any concrete results from the summit are low. The 27-nation European bloc is caught between wanting to cut a trade deal with the US, which is putting pressure on the region to commit to taking a harder line on China, and the need to maintain stable ties with China. But Brussels has grown more confrontational with Beijing in recent years about a massive trade imbalance that amounted to more than US$350 billion last year, as well as Beijing's alignment with Russia. In a speech this month in the European Parliament, von der Leyen accused China of 'flooding global markets with cheap, subsidised goods, to wipe out competitors', and of discriminating against European companies doing business in China. She also warned that China's support for Moscow in its war with Ukraine was creating instability in Europe. She said she planned to raise these concerns with Chinese officials at the meeting in Beijing. China is unlikely to be accommodating of such criticisms at the summit, if its recent muscle-flexing is any indication. Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, fired back at von der Leyen, saying it was the EU's 'mindset' that needed 'rebalancing', not China's trade relationship with Europe. This year, China slowed exports of rare earth minerals to Europe, sounding alarms at high-tech firms across Europe and triggering a temporary shutdown of production lines at European auto parts manufacturers. And this month, China hit back at EU curbs on government purchases of Chinese medical devices by imposing similar government procurement restrictions on European medical equipment. Despite its combative stance, Beijing cannot afford to push Europe too far. China needs European markets to absorb the glut of electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels its factories are making. Domestically, huge price wars have shrunk profits, prompting even Xi and other leaders to warn companies against engaging in 'disorderly and low-price competition'. And Europe's importance has only grown as the Trump Administration tries to close off other markets to China. 'Europe remains an indispensable economic partner for China. But if Beijing overplays its hand, it could find itself more isolated,' Grano said. Still, China has remained defiant when it comes to its close relationship with Russia — which Beijing considers an invaluable partner in counterbalancing the West. Europe has long complained that Beijing's purchases of Russian oil and its supplying of dual-use technologies has enabled the Kremlin to prolong its war in Ukraine. China claims neutrality over the conflict, a position that has been met with deep scepticism in the West, in part because of the closeness of China and Russia. Xi called for Beijing and Moscow to 'deepen' their ties and 'safeguard' their 'security interests' when he met Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, in Beijing last week. And this month, China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, privately told EU officials in Brussels that it was not in Beijing's interests for the war to end because it might shift US attention towards Asia, according to a European official briefed on the talks, who spoke to the New York Times on condition of anonymity. Wang's remarks were first reported by the South China Morning Post. China has not commented on what Wang reportedly said. But Victor Gao, a former Chinese diplomat and vice-president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, a Beijing-based think-tank, argued that the assertion attributed to Wang did not make sense because China believes the US is able to project its influence in both Asia and over the fate of Ukraine at the same time. Gao was dismissive of European criticisms of China's relationship with Russia, saying that the region should essentially mind its own business and focus on improving the lives of its people. 'From the Chinese perspective, they are not qualified as a geopolitical rival,' he said. 'They think too much of themselves.' China's strategy towards Europe is essentially to divide and conquer. It saw the EU as hawkish and sought to minimise the impact of its policies while courting Europe's leading businesses, namely from Germany and France, Gao said. Hopes that Beijing will ever help Europe pressure the Kremlin to end its war have 'faded away', said Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Centre for China Analysis, who is no more optimistic that Brussels and Beijing will compromise on trade. 'There is no trust between the two sides,' he said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: David Pierson and Berry Wang ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store