[…] In Europe their colleagues are even more active. Hitler has now become the symbol of the return of German militarism. Even before he managed to obtain supreme power there was speculation as to his financial backers. Obviously they included German industrialists fearful of socialism, communism, and the labor unions, nationalists smarting under the “insults” of the Versailles treaty, and a host of other discontented folk. But on the list of these contributors supplying funds to the Hitler movement were the names of two capitalists Von Arthaber and Von Duschnitz directors of Skoda, the great armament firm of Germany’s neighbor and enemy, Czechoslovakia.
Interlocking directorates are a familiar phenomenon in the United States. The real controller of industries is frequently found in the most unexpected places. In Europe the same system prevails. And so it appears that Messrs. Von Arthaber and Von Duschnitz represent a firm which is controlled by still another firm. The head of this holding company is neither German nor Czech. He is a French citizen, M. Eugene Schneider, president of the Schneider-Creusot Company which for a century has dominated the French arms industry and which through its subsidiaries now controls most of the important arms factories in Central Europe. Some of Hitler’s financial support, then, was derived from a company owned by a leading French industrialist and arms maker.
Arms merchants also own newspapers and mold public opinion. M. Schneider is more than just president of Creusot. He is the moving spirit of another great combine, the Comite des Forges. This French steel trust through one of its officers has controlling shares in the Paris newspaper Le Temps, the counterpart of the New York Times, and the Journal des Débats, which corresponds to the New York Herald Tribune. These two powerful papers constantly warn their readers of the “danger of disarmament” and of the menace of Germany. Thus M. Schneider is in a position to pull two strings, one linked to Hitler and German militarism, the other tied to the French press and French militarism. [�..]
