Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933

Februar 1933) was a secret meeting held by Adolf Hitler and 25 industrialists at the official residence of the President of the Reichstag Hermann Göring in Berlin.

The Nazi Party wanted to achieve two-thirds majority to pass the Enabling Act and desired to raise three million Reichsmark to fund the campaign.

[1] Together with the Industrial petition, it is used as evidence to support the idea that big business played a central role in the rise of the Nazi Party.

[2] The meeting was attended by the following business representatives:[3] According to historian Gerald D. Feldman[4] also present were: Georg von Schnitzler said in his 10 November 1945 statement before the Office of US Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality[5] that Paul Stein [de], chairman of Gewerkschaft Auguste Victoria, a mine owned by IG Farben, and member of the German People's Party was also present at the reunion.

On the contrary, for the same reasons for which I criticized democracy before, it was inevitable that communism, in ever greater measure, penetrated the minds of the German people.

Göring gave a short speech in which he pointed out the emptiness of the Nazi Party's campaign war chest and asked the gentlemen present to help remedy this shortage.

[citation needed] The money was made out to Nationale Treuhand, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht and deposited in the Bank of Delbrück Schickler & Co. A statement from the IG Farben Trial indicated a total of 2,071,000 Reichsmark had been paid.

The actual conclusion of this development, which was centrally supported by the meeting and the resulting payments, was when Chancellor Hitler seized power with the Enabling Act of March 23, 1933, which authorized his government to enact laws without the approval of the Reichstag.

According to researchers, including Kurt Pätzold, this meeting provides further evidence of the financing of the Nazi Party by big business.

[14] British historian Adam Tooze writes, however: The meeting of 20 February and its aftermath are the most notorious instances of the willingness of German big business to assist Hitler in establishing his dictatorial regime.