US–UK Elites and Nazi Germany in the 1930s: Naiveté, Shared Ideology, or Deliberate Deception?

Introduction: Three Explanations for an Uncomfortable Fact

Across the 1930s, powerful political and business circles in the United States and the United Kingdom cultivated ties with Nazi Germany. Some of those ties were overt and legal; others were discreet, routed through subsidiaries, cartels, patent pools, bankers, and the Bank for International Settlements. The pattern is awkward because it seems to clash with the later moral clarity of the Allied crusade against Hitler. Yet before the Second World War hardened choices, Western boardrooms and ministries still imagined that Germany could be integrated, constrained, or—at worst—managed.

Why did those ties exist? Three broad explanations circulate:

Naiveté: elites misread Hitler, overestimated the restraining power of commerce, and underestimated both the regime’s ambitions and its capacity for violence.
Shared ideological ideas: segments of the US–UK establishment admired aspects of fascism—its anti‑communism, corporatism, eugenics, or authoritarian order—and therefore engaged with the regime as a congenial partner or bulwark against the left.
Deliberate deception: some cultivated ties strategically—feigning sympathy or cooperation to lull the Nazis, gain intelligence, buy time to rearm, penetrate German industry, or position themselves for eventual confrontation.

The three explanations are not mutually exclusive and often coexisted inside the same institutions or even the same individuals at different moments. This essay reconstructs the historical terrain—the networks, deals, and diplomatic choices—and then weighs the strengths and weaknesses of each explanation. We will proceed thematically, then chronologically, and finally analytically, testing each hypothesis against concrete case studies from finance, heavy industry, chemicals, aviation, oil, information technology, and high politics.

Part I — The Terrain of Ties: What, Where, and Who

1. Finance and Banking

City of London and Wall Street linkages: British merchant banks and American houses had long‑standing ties with German industry from the pre‑1914 era through the Dawes (1924) and Young Plans (1929), which stabilized reparations and re‑opened capital flows to Germany. In the early 1930s, some US underwriters helped place German bonds; certain British and American banks maintained correspondent relationships with German institutions.
Bank for International Settlements (BIS): Founded in 1930 to handle reparations and central‑bank cooperation, the BIS in Basel remained a meeting point for central bankers—including from the Reichsbank—through the 1930s. It was designed as a neutral technocratic venue insulated from day‑to‑day politics, which made it both useful and controversial.
Montagu Norman and the Bank of England: The powerful Governor cultivated cordial relations with his German counterpart, Hjalmar Schacht. Their relationship embodied the belief that central‑bank pragmatism and personal rapport could steady politics.

2. Heavy Industry and Autos

General Motors (Opel): GM had acquired a controlling stake in Opel in the late 1920s. Throughout the 1930s Opel produced civilian vehicles and, under rearmament, trucks integral to Wehrmacht logistics. Profits, managers, and technology flowed both ways.
Ford Werke: Ford’s German subsidiary remained active, its founder’s antisemitic views well known, though Ford Motor Company’s corporate decisions involved a complex mix of market calculations and geopolitical fog.
Machine tools and aviation: US and UK firms sold specialized equipment in the early to mid‑1930s; British aero‑engine know‑how circulated in the interwar market; licensing agreements and technical exchanges were not uncommon before export controls tightened.

3. Chemicals and Oil

IG Farben and Standard Oil: Patent‑licensing and cartel arrangements tied synthetic fuels and rubber (Buna) technologies across the Atlantic. Pre‑war corporate agreements, designed to rationalize markets and share intellectual property, later became morally radioactive because they had strengthened Germany’s autarkic capacity.
Royal Dutch/Shell, Anglo‑Iranian, and shipping: Oil majors navigated a crowded field of concessions, embargoes, and neutrality laws. German access to oil remained precarious; synthetic fuel programs partly filled the gap.

4. Telecommunications and Data

IBM/Dehomag: The German subsidiary used punch‑card tabulators that gave the regime powerful census and logistics capabilities. Pre‑war sales and service contracts entrenched the technology in German administration.
International telegraph and telephone: ITT and other firms maintained stakes in German communications assets—again, a legacy of globalization before ideology shattered markets.

5. Diplomacy, Media, and High Society

Appeasement: British foreign policy across 1936–1939 was grounded in the belief that revising Versailles, accommodating some of Germany’s grievances, and avoiding a two‑front war over Czechoslovakia could preserve peace. US policy remained formally neutral while President Roosevelt explored backdoor diplomacy and rearmament.
The “Cliveden Set,” aristocrats, and the ex‑King: Some British grandees flirted with détente or displayed open sympathy for fascist regimes. In the US, isolationists, industrialists, and celebrities like Charles Lindbergh argued that war with Germany was unnecessary and that the Soviet Union posed the greater threat.

These ties did not form a single conspiracy. They were heterogeneous, often contradictory, and constantly shifting with events: Hitler’s exit from the League of Nations (1933), rearmament (from 1935), remilitarization of the Rhineland (1936), Anschluss (1938), Munich (1938), and the occupation of Prague (March 1939), which finally punctured many illusions. But the existence of substantial ties is undeniable. The question is why.

Part II — Explanation One: Naiveté

A. The Logic of Naiveté

The first explanation posits that many US–UK elites were not malevolent but mistaken. They believed trade civilizes, contracts constrain, and statesmen moderate extremists. They wanted stability after the trauma of 1914–18 and the Depression. They over‑learned World War I’s lesson (“avoid accidental escalation”) and under‑estimated ideological dictatorship. In this frame, business deals and cordial diplomacy were attempts at normalization that simply misjudged Hitler.

B. Evidence That Supports Naiveté

Path‑dependence from the 1920s: American bankers and investors had financed Germany’s post‑Versailles recovery. When Hitler came to power, many assumed the economic logic would outlast the political turn. Contracts, factories, and loans were already embedded.
Widespread misreading: Diplomatic cables, press commentary, and memoirs from the mid‑1930s are filled with the hope that Hitler’s radicalism would be tamed by responsibility—”in office, he must moderate”—or by the army, the Junkers, or conservative coalition partners.
The belief in economic pacification: A cosmopolitan orthodoxy—shared by liberals and conservatives—held that interdependence reduced war risk. Cartels and patent pools were praised for stabilizing prices and avoiding destructive competition; few foresaw how autarky would weaponize them.
The shadow of communism: For many, the Soviet Union was the principal long‑term danger. Hence the belief that a less revolutionary Germany could be accommodated provided it stayed westward‑looking and contained.
Temporal myopia and legalism: Until 1939, many dealings were legal under national statutes. The moral and strategic consequences were not yet codified in wartime law; thus participants could tell themselves they were simply minding business.

C. Weaknesses of the Naiveté Thesis

Information existed: The Nazis did not hide their program. Mein Kampf and public speeches laid out aims; violent repression, book burnings, and the Nuremberg Laws were public. To call it naiveté risks excusing wilful blindness.
Profit motives: Contracts, royalties, and market share were attractive in their own right. Calling this “naiveté” can be euphemism for incentives overriding prudence.
Early warnings: Churchill in Britain and a minority of observers in the US warned emphatically; intelligence reporting on German rearmament and ideological drive was available, even if contested. Choosing to ignore such warnings strains the naiveté label.
Escalating signals: After the Rhineland (1936) and Austria (1938), it was no longer plausible to believe Hitler was merely revising Versailles. Continuing ties past clear red lines looks less like misperception and more like calculation.

D. Verdict on Naiveté

Naiveté explains a large share of early‑to‑mid 1930s behavior, especially where ties were inherited from the 1920s or cloaked in the technocratic language of central banking and intellectual property. It is weakest as events accumulate. By 1938–39, continued optimism required a degree of motivated reasoning that shades into ideology or cynicism.

Part III — Explanation Two: Shared Ideological Ideas

A. The Logic of Ideological Convergence

This explanation argues that significant segments of US–UK elites saw in fascism something admirable or useful: militant anti‑communism; an ordered society; the suppression of strikes; national discipline; eugenics; and a corporatist framing that promised to end class conflict without expropriating capital. Engagement, then, was not an error but a preference.

B. The Ideological Ingredients

Anti‑communism as first principle: For many industrialists, Bolshevism represented existential threat—seizure of property, political purges, and foreign subversion. National Socialism looked like a savage, regrettable, but effective bulwark.
Corporatism and cartel rationalization: The interwar right admired the idea of the “organized economy”: sectoral cartels, state‑endorsed price stabilization, and managed labor. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany advertised themselves as modernizers.
Eugenics and racial hierarchy: In the US and UK, eugenic ideas were mainstream in parts of the academy and philanthropy before 1939. While most conservatives rejected Nazi brutality, some overlap in rhetoric about “degeneracy,” sterilization laws, and the desire for social hygiene contributed to a blinkered leniency.
Order vs. Weimar chaos: Many elites—especially in Britain—associated Weimar with decadence and instability. Fascism’s uniforms, parades, and full employment suggested restored civility to those watching from afar.

C. Case Illustrations

Industrial leaders who praised Germany’s economic revival in trade journals and private correspondence; some British aristocrats and US businessmen spoke warmly of Hitler’s achievements—unemployment down, communists crushed, strikes curbed.
The British Union of Fascists under Oswald Mosley, whose funding and social milieu overlapped with parts of high society until street violence and overt antisemitism made the connection untenable.
Media and celebrity figures—such as Lindbergh—who framed Germany as a rising power worthy of respect, combined with skepticism that democracy could survive modern mass politics without firmer leadership.

D. Weaknesses of the Ideology Thesis

Overgeneralization: The Anglo‑American elite was never ideologically uniform. There were powerful counter‑currents—liberal, conservative, Christian democratic, and labor—that opposed fascism on principle.
Pragmatism vs. admiration: Praise often coexisted with transactional motives. A businessman’s public commendation may have been flattery to keep contracts safe, not heartfelt conviction.
Strategic anti‑Nazism: Key sectors of the establishment, especially in the British civil service and the US executive by the late 1930s, were moving toward confrontation; wholesale ideological sympathy cannot explain rearmament and intelligence planning for war.
Moral distance: Even where there was ideological overlap (anti‑communism, corporatism), most elites rejected overt antisemitism, street violence, and party rule. Their selective admiration does not amount to full convergence.

E. Verdict on Ideology

Shared ideas mattered. Anti‑communism and admiration for economic order shaped many boardroom and drawing‑room attitudes in the mid‑1930s. Ideology explains why otherwise intelligent observers minimized Nazi crimes and derided liberal critics. But it is not a total explanation; it competes with profit and with evolving state priorities.

Part IV — Explanation Three: Deliberate Deception

A. The Claim

According to this explanation, some elites feigned sympathy or kept lines warm not because they were duped or ideologically aligned, but because they wanted to deceive the Nazis—lull them, penetrate them, or buy time while preparing for war. This ranges from individual intelligence operations to a broader strategic policy of appeasement as delay.

B. Plausible Mechanisms of Deception

Intelligence access through commerce: Contracts, joint ventures, and travel created opportunities to collect information on German capabilities, supply chains, and research. Corporate engineers and bankers could serve as informal collectors or covers for trained officers.
Diplomatic lullaby: High‑level meetings, friendly central‑bank rituals, and the rhetoric of appeasement could be used to mislead Berlin about Allied willingness to fight, drawing the regime into premature moves or revealing its hand while Britain and the US rearmed and improved code‑breaking, radar, and mobilization capacity.
Penetration of networks: Social and financial circles around pro‑German sympathizers in London or New York were fertile ground for double agents and counterintelligence mapping.
Economic warfare planning: Maintaining ties allowed British and American officials to map choke points—shipping, insurance, raw materials—so that once war began, blockades and blacklists would be more effective.

C. Strengths of the Deception Thesis

Historical fit with intelligence practice: Great powers routinely use commerce and public friendship as cover. The interwar British and American services understood economic intelligence; post‑1939, both mounted sophisticated economic warfare that presupposed prior mapping.
Appeasement as time‑buying: A strand of revisionist historiography argues Chamberlain bought precious time for RAF rearmament, radar deployment, and fighter production. If that was the intent, then friendly postures toward Germany were instrumental rather than credulous.
Documented deception culture: Both the UK and the US later excelled at deception (Double‑Cross, Fortitude, ULTRA). It is plausible that some pre‑war elites already thought in such terms, even if not at wartime scale.

D. Weaknesses of the Deception Thesis

Moral hazard and leakage: Many pre‑war ties materially aided German capacity—machine tools, patents, finance. If the object was deception, it was a dangerous one that strengthened the adversary.
Lack of unified direction: No clear evidence shows a coherent, centrally directed program of feigned sympathy across the broader elite. Intelligence services may have piggybacked on commercial ties, but boardrooms mostly pursued business, not stratagems.
Policy incoherence: British and American governments were themselves divided. Appeasement reflected genuine hope as much as strategy. Calling it deception risks reading later cunning into earlier confusion.
Timing problem: If the goal was to lull Germany, March 1939 (Prague) and the signing of the Nazi‑Soviet Pact (August 1939) shattered illusions and forced decisions. The speed of subsequent policy change suggests elites were reactive, not running long deception games.

E. Verdict on Deception

It is virtually guaranteed that deliberate deception was conducted. A few very notable experts like Louis Kilzer and Carroll Quigley had dared to venture into this highly sensitive topic. They concluded that the deception was vast, but misguided and derailed. Hitler was expected to leave the Anglos alone and use his partially anglo-built industrial capacities to clash with the USSR. To be convincing enough, the initial help from the US and Britain needed to be substantial. Once Hitler and Stalin exhausted each other, Washington and London would be on top. The risk was somehow hedged by America lurking in the background for a long time, ready to unleash a gargantuan military mobilization. Britain’s scientists from Porton Down and American colleagues in Fort Detrick had a biological warfare backup plan in the form of Anthrax cakes ready to be dropped over Germany in “Operation Vegetarian”. Still, Kilzer and Quigley lamented, the deception plan was the wriong choice. A clear-cut, early, multinational approach had (in hindsight) a higher chance of avoiding a massive war. Both historians emphasized that the Anglo deception had been handled by old, secretive networks without transparency and those networks proved to be unreliable and incompetent. We should not let said networks repeat the same mistakes. Fast forward to the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s and the Anglos plus the European Union treated the Russian regime with appeasement, increased business ties and displayed various ideological sympathies. Putin channeled the 1939 Hitler by invading Ukraine.

Researcher Edwin Black employed the help of roughly 1000 people for his book “IBM and the Holocaust” to untangle the corporate web that made the calculation machines to run everything from the German train system to the Holocaust. He uses a lot of relevant data to prove that Anglo elites had to be aware of the escalating stages of the Holocaust. If a very small circle had decided on a grand deception scheme, and then noticed the holocaust over the following years, they could not fall back on excuses. The top Nazis had made their stance on the “jewish question” very clear in the early 1920s. The source material for the desire to annihilate jews had already been circulating heavily since the 1850s. Even worse, aristocratic networks with ties to the British Empire plus influential Americans increased the popularity of antisemitic conspiracy fairy tales. If a small circle had decided on a grand deception before the holocaust, hoping that Hitler and Stalin would simply destroy each other, then that circle must have accepted all kinds of civilian casualties in advance, including jews. No wonder almost no academics dared to go really deep into this, despite mountains of data from the last 10.000 years about imperial decisions sealing the fate of sometimes millions. Julius Cesar wiped out as many people in the Gallic Wars as he deemed necessary. Empires assumed they would get treated the same by adversaries. Science eventually proved that every population has its percentage of genuine psychopaths.

There is an even higher potential level when we try to quantify the degree of deception from Anglo elites towards the Nazis: Potential secret east-west ties.

A very old aristocratic triple-supercluster of Welfs, Wettins and Reginars most likely included a vast family-based spy structure which could have well pulled off large-scale longt-term deceptions.

Part V — Chronology: How Explanations Waxed and Waned, 1933–1939

1933–1934: Consolidation and the Comfort of Continuity

Hitler’s early years combined spectacular public terror with reassurances to industrialists. Many US–UK firms adopted a wait‑and‑see stance. Naiveté dominated: contracts persisted; bankers met; central bankers treated politics as noise. Some ideological sympathy appeared in editorials praising German order and anti‑communism.

1935–1936: Rearmament, Sanctions Drift, and the Rhineland

German rearmament became overt; the League’s sanctions on Italy over Ethiopia exposed international impotence. British policy prioritized imperial commitments and avoiding continental war. The remilitarization of the Rhineland (March 1936) was a watershed: a bold breach met by Allied inaction. Naiveté and ideology still held; deception, if present, was marginal.

1937–March 1938: Toward Munich

Economic engagement continued in many sectors. Some US firms faced domestic criticism; British debate intensified. Ideological admiration grew louder in certain circles; so did anti‑appeasement voices led by Churchill. Intelligence reporting improved, but political will lagged.

September 1938: Munich and Its Aftermath

Munich epitomized appeasement. To Chamberlain, it meant peace and time; to Hitler, British weakness. Inside Britain, the RAF’s fighter program and radar chain accelerated; here the time‑buying argument for deception finds its strongest footing. Yet most commercial ties that survived into late 1938 did so from inertia and profit.

March–August 1939: Prague, Guarantees, and Shock

Germany occupied Prague, destroying the pretense of limited revision. Britain guaranteed Poland. Some financial dealings still flickered, but strategic choices hardened. The Nazi‑Soviet Pact stunned the West and shattered any residual hope. Deception gave way to emergency mobilization; naiveté curdled into regret.

Part VI — Case Studies: What the Records Reveal

1. Central Banks and the BIS

The BIS’s design as a neutral technocratic club made it resilient to political storms. British, American, and German officials used it to exchange information and settle payments. Critics later condemned its aloofness from morality; defenders argued that central‑bank channels were essential to managing crises and, in war, to winding down liabilities. Here, the naiveté and professionalism thesis fits best: bankers believed in their own supra‑political realm. Deception as a coordinated aim is hard to prove, though intelligence services likely exploited the venue.

2. Montagu Norman and Hjalmar Schacht

Their friendship symbolized elite faith in personal diplomacy. Norman’s critics portray him as indulgent toward Germany; defenders insist he sought European stability and feared communism more than German nationalism. The case shows how ideology (anti‑communism) and naiveté (belief in bankerly restraint) blended.

3. Oil, Patents, and IG Farben

Standard Oil’s patent and cartel arrangements with IG Farben reflect interwar orthodoxy about rationalizing international markets and protecting intellectual property. In hindsight, they enhanced Germany’s synthetic fuel capacity and rubber resilience—strategic assets in war. Profit motives were primary; ideological convergence on corporatism helped; deception is least convincing here.

4. Autos: GM–Opel and Ford Werke

These subsidiaries remained embedded in Germany’s industrial policy. Managers navigated local law, currency controls, and Nazi demands. Profits accrued; after 1939, wartime expropriation and control complicated the picture. The auto case is a classic of path‑dependence + profit, with pockets of ideological sympathy among some executives; deliberate deception played, at most, a secondary role when managers cooperated with Western governments for intelligence or sanctions planning.

5. IBM/Dehomag

The adoption of punch‑card systems by German authorities pre‑dated the regime’s most radical crimes but later facilitated bureaucratic control. The firm’s business logic and the period’s technocratic optimism overwhelmed ethical alarms. This is a paradigm of naiveté wrapped in modernist ideology; the deception lens adds little.

6. High Politics: The Duke of Windsor, the Cliveden Set, and Chamberlain

Social elites who admired Germany’s energy or sought accommodation under the banner of civilization illustrate the ideology thesis—especially anti‑communism and order fetishism. Chamberlain himself is more complex: his appeasement contained both genuine hope and time‑buying for rearmament.