“At the end of February 1933 four members of the Vorstand of I.G. Farben, including Dr. Bosch, the head of the Vorstand, and myself, were asked by the office of the President of the Reichstag to attend a meeting in his house, the purpose of which was not given. I do not remember the two other colleagues of mine who were also invited. I believe the invitation reached me during one of my business trips to Berlin. I went to the meeting which was attended by about twenty persons, who I believe were mostly leading industrialists from the Ruhr.
“Among those present I remember:
“Dr. Schacht, who at that time was not yet head of the Reichsbank again and not yet Minister of Economics;
“Krupp von Bohlen, who in the beginning of 1933 presided the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie, which later on was changed in the semi-official organization ‘Reichsgruppe Industrie’;
“Dr. Albert Vögler, the leading man of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke;
“Von Loewenfeld from an industrial work in Essen;
“Dr. Stein, head of the Gewerkschaft Auguste Victoria, a mine which belongs to the I.G. Dr. Stein was an active member of the Deutsche Volkspartei.
“I remember that Dr. Schacht acted as a kind of host.
“While I had expected the appearance of Göring, Hitler entered the room, shook hands with everybody and took a seat at the table. In a long speech he talked mainly about the danger of communism over which he pretended that he just had won a decisive victory.
“He then talked about the Bündnis (alliance) into which his party and the Deutschnationale Volkspartei had entered. This latter party, in the meantime, had been reorganized by Herr Von Papen. At the end he came to the point which seemed to me the purpose of the meeting. Hitler stressed the importance that the two aforementioned parties should gain the majority in the coming Reichstag election. Krupp von Bohlen thanked Hitler for his speech. After Hitler had left the room, Dr. Schacht proposed to the meeting the raising of an election fund of, as far as I remember, RM 3 million. The fund should be distributed between the two ‘allies’ according to their relative strength at the time being. Dr. Stein suggested that the Deutsche Volkspartei should be included. . . .”