A three-hour flurry of fear lest Adolf Hitler become Chancellor of Germany and topple the mark like Humpty Dumpty off the Gold Standard, gave Wall Street a black afternoon last week. Leading Man hattan bank stocks dipped as much as 20 points. German 5½% Young Plan bonds (quoted earlier this year at $84) sold for $25.50.
Germans were tardy about scotching Wall Street's scare. The Reichsbank in President Hans Luther's own good time denied officially that the mark would go off gold. Followed an official Foreign Office denial and at the Chancellery it was said that Dr. Brüning, far from handing the Government over to Herr Hitler, planned to attend the World Disarmament Conference next February as Chancellor.
Earlier in the week Fascist brownshirts invaded Berlin's Jewish quarter, shouting: "Down with Judea!" Having jostled a Jewish pedestrian, they were chased by a Jewish mob, read in the evening papers that Leader Hitler had exhorted his followers that very day in Munich thus:
"With inexorable certainty the inherent law of Fate will give power into our hands! Therefore do not allow yourselves to be provoked, incited and led astray —he who fails in the last testing days is unworthy to witness the victory."
On the Atlantic bound for Basle and then Berlin* was Board Chairman Albert Henry Wiggin of Manhattan's Chase National Bank, hurrying to defend the interests of U. S. holders of German short-term credits against the demand of France that Reparations be given priority (TIME, Dec. 7). To Berlin just ahead of Banker Wiggin hurried Politician Hitler. Flinging himself into a big armchair at the Kaiserhof Hotel on the afternoon that Wall Street had its Hitler scare, he surprisingly declared: "Germany cannot pay both her political [Reparations] and her commercial [short-term credit] debts. For my part I reject the payment of political debts which are the result of extortion and have no legal basis. On the other hand, I accept the obligation to pay commercial debts which have been contracted as between businessmen."
Never was the favor of U. S. bankers sought more openly. Mr. Wiggin's approach seemed to have been the signal for Herr Hitler, long a bogeyman to bankers, suddenly to transform himself into the Bankers' Friend. As for his repudiation of Reparations, many U. S. bankers have become so concerned about the safety of their short-term credits that "the sanctity of Reparations" begins to sound like an old French song sung off key.
Lambasting France from his Kaiserhof armchair last week, fiery Fascist Hitler boomed: "As a party we emphatically reject the system of political extortion indulged in by a nation saturated with arms and gold! . . . We are not Carthage nor is France Rome, and it should be recalled that Rome subdued Carthage single handed" (i.e. France subdued Germany only with the aid of allies who may yet desert France).