Many Lives

Back in 1931, the satirical little German magazine Simplicissimus published a prophetic bit of verse. It went:

And when we go to war at last,

Just fight and die, you duffer.

But win or lose, the war once past,

Be sure Herr Schacht won't suffer.

Purse-lipped, stiff-necked Dr. (of economics) Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht,* the seeming epitome of bankerly rectitude, has always known how to land right side up. Under Kaiser Wilhelm II he was an ardent nationalist; when the Weimar Republic was popular, he was an ardent Democrat and president of the Reichsbank; when Hitler's strength grew, he became an ardent Nazi: "I met Hitler and told him I was for him." .

Schacht, as Germany's economic czar from 1933 to 1939, provided the money and raw materials for the Nazis' war machine. But when Hitler crashed, Schacht stood in the war criminals' dock at Nuernberg and vowed: "I would have killed Hitler personally if given the chance." Commented Von Ribbentrop, no lily himself: "He sold himself to many people before, now he is selling himself to the Allies also . . ."

On the House. Schacht, the adroit, was acquitted at British insistence. He even turned his experiences to profit, sold more than 300,000 copies of his book, Settlement with Hitler, the biggest German bestseller since Mein Kampf.

Last year Herr Schacht, little the worse for wear and ever on the lookout for money, journeyed to Indonesia. The newborn island republic was hoping for an economic wizard to reinvigorate its lagging export trade and sickly home economy. Schacht and his prim wife put up at the rambling Hotel des Indes in hot, grubby Jakarta (with the government paying all his expenses, about $20,000). For three months he labored.

His newly published 30-page report (not yet translated into English) contained none of the expected wizardry. It urged: welcome foreign capital; cut down controls which discourage foreign trade; shun elaborate social welfare schemes; decentralize factories, to avoid building a citified, slum-dwelling proletariat. Said a Western businessman: "Did they have to send Schacht here to find all this out?" Indonesia's Finance Minister snapped that he agreed with none of the Schacht report except that "Indonesia has a great future."

Into the Future. Last week Indonesia abolished foreign exchange certificates, but made it clear that it had planned to do this anyway, with or without Schacht. It also devalued Indonesia's rupiah by two-thirds, against Schacht's advice.

Back home in Hamburg, undaunted, the Herr Doktor celebrated his 75th birthday and announced that he was considering an invitation from Egypt's government to survey that country's economy. When a newspaperman asked about his Indonesia report, he offered to show it to him --for a fee. "I've got to build a new existence," he said, beaming confidently.

*His father, during a six-year stay in the U.S., conceived a violent admiration for Editor Greeley.

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