It has been shown that, in contrast to everything which classical national economy has hitherto taught, not the producer but the consumer is the ruli… - Hjalmar Schacht

About Hjalmar Schacht

Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht (22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970) was a German economist, banker, centre-right politician, and co-founder in 1918 of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparation obligations. He served in Adolf Hitler's government as President of the National Bank (Reichsbank) 1933–1939 and became Minister of Economics (August 1934 – November 1937). While Schacht was for a time feted for his role in the German "economic miracle", he opposed Hitler's policy of German re-armament insofar as it violated the Treaty of Versailles and (in his view) disrupted the German economy. His views in this regard led Schacht to clash with Hitler and most notably with Hermann Göring. He was dismissed as President of the Reichsbank in January 1939. He remained as a minister without portfolio, and received the same salary, until he was fully dismissed from the government in January 1943. In 1944, Schacht was arrested by the Gestapo after the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944 because he allegedly had contact with the assassins. Subsequently, he was interned until the end of the Third Reich in the concentration camps Ravensbrück and later at Flossenbürg. Schacht was tried at Nuremberg, but was fully acquitted over Soviet objections; later on, a German denazification tribunal sentenced him to eight years' hard labor, which was also overturned on appeal.

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