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it seemed inevitable to many observers of the German scene that 

Hitler was also ready for a toboggan slide into oblivion. Despite the 

fact that he had done well in national campaigns, he had spent all the 

money from his usual sources and now faced heavy debts. In his book 

Aggression, Otto Lehmann-Russbeldt tells us that "Hitler was invited to a 

meeting at the Schroder Bank in Berlin on January 4, 1933. The leading 

industrialists and bankers of Germany tided Hitler over his financial 

difficulties and enabled him to meet the enormous debt he had 

incurred in connection with the maintenance of his private army. In 

return, he promised to break the power of the trade unions. On May 2, 

1933, he fulfilled his promise."64

Present at the January 4, 1933 meeting were the Dulles brothers, John 

Foster Dulles and Allen W. Dulles of the New York law firm, Sullivan and 

Cromwell, which represented the Schroder Bank. The Dulles brothers 

often turned up at important meetings. They had represented the 

United States at the Paris Peace Conference (1919); John Foster Dulles 

would die in harness as Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, while Allen 

Dulles headed the Central Intelligence Agency for many years. Their 

apologists have seldom attempted to defend the Dulles brothers 

appearance at the meeting which installed Hitler as the Chancellor of 

Germany, preferring to pretend that it never happened. Obliquely, 

one biographer Leonard Mosley, bypasses it in Dulles when he states,

__________________________

64 Otto Lehmann-Russbeldt, Aggression, Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 

London, 1934, p. 44

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