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In this third installment, the book Hitler’s Aristocracy: The Secret Power Players in Britain and America Who Supported the Nazis, 1923–1941 by Susan Ronald prompts a discussion about those mentioned in relation to Connecticut historical arts figures.
Here, the contextual ties involve Philip Johnson, the architect of the famous Glass House in New Canaan with a Nazi past, and Burton Tremaine, the Meriden industrialist and art collector. Both have recently been in the Connecticut and New York news.
As previewed in the book promo, “Hitler’s Aristocrats uncovers the battle between these influencers and those who heroically opposed them.” (See the list of key players.)
I. G. Farben, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the pro-Nazi DC society scene
Another of Philip Johnson’s Nazi-era associates was Georg von Schnitzler, convicted Nazi war criminal, and mentioned in Hitler’s Aristocrats. But Von Schnitzler didn’t make the star-studded preview shortlist. Instead his I. G. Farben decision-making colleagues, brothers Max and Rudolf Ilgner, did.
Georg was listed as a patron of the celebrated 1932 Modern Architecture exhibition co-organized by Philip at the fledgling Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, lauded to this day in architectural history circles for bringing European Modernist architectural thinking to America.
It’s fascinating that with so much scholarly attention on this historical exhibition that it seems no one ever noticed— or put forth— this rather shocking Von Schnitzler context.
Two Rockefellers were a museum trustee, and another on the board then. Coincidentally, the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil was in an I. G. Farben Germany business tie-up that continued after Hitler took power.
Georg’s wife Lilly was a colleague of Philip Johnson, at least in the early 1930s. She came from an industrialist family of note, the Von Mallinckrodts, and she was also a fabulous Modern art collector, based in Frankfurt and Berlin, that owned a number of works by Max Beckmann. For a time, she had a go-to salon filled with style.
The depth of ties between Philip Johnson and Georg and Lilly are not yet fully known. The Von Schnitzlers knew numerous decision-makers in the Nazi German business and political spheres. More unearthing has the real prospect of multiplying our knowledge about what Johnson was actually doing during long, annual stays in Germany from 1928-33 and especially 1938 and 1939.
Adding to the Von Schnitzler discussion, Georg and Lilly’s daughter, Frau Herbert Scholz, nicknamed “Lelo” was celebrated in the Washington, DC society pages starting in about 1935. Lelo’s husband was a First Secretary at the German Embassy, and was described as “Herr Herbert the Handsome”.
It was thought that the Führer himself had brought the dashing couple together.
Lilly herself was also celebrated on the DC society pages when visiting.
That was until 1939, when the European War broke out and wives of Nazi Germany embassy officials started to become deeply unfashionable. Herr Scholz had transferred to become the German Consul to Boston at the start of the year. Two years later, in July 1941, he and his diplomatic colleagues in the US were unceremoniously booted out of the country.
After WWII in early March 1946, news broke that Scholz was captured in northern Italy, and he was to be interrogated by a U. S. prosecutor sent over to interview him. The prosecutor, O. John Rogge, knew all about US-based Nazis. Scholz was described as an important Nazi in America while he was there.
In response, one renegade DC society columnist, Evelyn Peyton Gordon, slammed not Scholz, but the DC social set. She wrote bitterly in the Washington Daily News, “Capital society turned thumbs-down on me a decade ago when I wrote a story about Herbert Scholz, First Secretary of the German Embassy and the darling of socialites.“ (March 8, 1946).
Gordon continued, “I said that ‘Herr Herbert the Handsome’ was Hitler’s right hand man in this country and that his services at the embassy were merely a cover-up for the former Storm Trooper’s propaganda activities. Well long before yesterday most of the adoring socialites knew that I had been correct…”
“[His wife Lelo] worshipped Hitler, made no bones about it,” she added.
Reconsidering Lelo and Herbert after being expelled from the US
As it turned out, Nazi vixen Lelo was soon publicly thought to likely have been a Nazi spy, certainly after her husband Herbert was outed as head of the Gestapo in the US for Germany.
It was also thought that Herr Herbert the Handsome was luring in socialite-spies in DC to join Team Nazi, with some ladies dazzled by his good looks.
And what happened to Lelo’s father, a 1932 patron of the acclaimed Modern Architecture show held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, co-organized by Philip Johnson? Guilty. He got nailed at the I. G. Farben trial at Nuremburg:
“Q[uestion]: What did you do when you heard that I. G. chemicals were used to kill, to murder people held in concentration camps?”
A[nswer]: I was horrified […] I kept it for me because it was too terrible. I was always under the impression that these gases were not manufactured by us.”
In 1976, scholar Antony Sutton wrote in Wall Street and the rise of Hitler that if Nazi industrialists brought to trial at Nuremburg were guilty of crimes against mankind, then their fellow collaborators in America should have faced a similar inquiry.
But that didn't happen.
1938, Johnson in Germany
Next up, in the summer 1938, Philip was off in Germany to attend a Nuremberg rally to celebrate the Führer and more— and taking a course for foreigners on Nazi politics, he claimed, which was more likely Nazi spy training.
Deeper research will clarify.
After all, his contemporaries in the culture sector, Sari De Hajek and later Countess Grace Buchanan-Dineen, from Toronto covering the Detroit Nazi spy beat in the early 1940s, did just that. After Grace's arrest reported in the national media, she handed over Sari’s list of US Nazi spy-building contacts across America that was handed to her.
Sari handed the list to Grace after she became persona non grata in the US and returned to her native Hungary.
The dodgy Fords, spilling right into Meriden
On July 31, 1938, Henry Ford was celebrating his 75th birthday in Detroit, and America was celebrating as well. Henry Ford is spotlighted as one of Hitler’s Aristocrats.
Awkwardly, from a Meriden history perspective, nine days before Ford’s birthday celebration, Burton Tremaine’s Miller Company fed an article to the Meriden Record newspaper celebrating a sizable business deal with the Ford Motor Company.
The day before Ford’s birthday, announced in the Meriden Record, at 11:30 AM, the WEAF radio station featured a half-hour program celebrating Henry Ford’s 75th birthday, with a salute by 9,000 children.
During the Detroit and national celebrations, among various activities, Ford was the recipient of a medal by Adolph Hitler, presented by the German Consul to Cleveland, Karl Kapp.
Henry Ford was not only a noted industrialist. He was also a well-known Jew-hater over two decades. In fact, Hitler admired the senior Ford so much, that the Führer had a large, framed portrait of Ford in his office in 1931, noted by an American journalist.
“I regard Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler explained to the reporter. This was stated in Rachel Maddow’s Prequel: An American fight against fascism (2023).
It is unclear at this juncture if the American media and those organizing events were aware that, within the birthday festivities, Henry Ford would receive a medal from the Führer. A photo of the ceremony, above, was released on wire services and published in American newspapers across the nation, but not directly calling it out.
This would seem to have been a real concern for some people, but not others. We can imagine, for example, that Herbert Scholz, Lelo, and Philip Johnson might be very excited about Ford receiving a medal from Hitler. But who else?
A day after Ford’s birthday celebration, Burton Tremaine married his second wife Sally in Connecticut, and the newlyweds were off on their honeymoon for six weeks in “Europe”, visiting unspecified countries.
After Ford’s highly publicized birthday and him receiving a medal from Hitler, a celebratory advertisement was published by the Miller Company a month later. This was while Burton was still “in Europe”.
Who could or would turn down a deal with the Ford Motor Company in 1938? Who would announce it and why? Who would announce it AGAIN after Ford’s birthday celebration— and receiving a medal from Hitler?
These are just one set of many… questions, with the toxic tentacles of Hitler’s Artistocrats whipping wildly across Europe— and America.
> Ronald, Susan. (2023). Hitler’s Aristocrats. St. Martin’s Press. 464 pp.
The fourth installment will be released later this week.
Six installments, Hitler's Artistocrats et al.: part 1 | 2a | 2b | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | + Assassination Plot | + Martha & Hitler | + Thomas W. Lamont
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