He was a fierce critic of his country's post- World War I reparations obligations. He was also central in helping create the group of German industrialists and landowners that pushed Hindenburg to appoint the first NSDAP-led government. While Schacht was for a time feted for his role in the German " economic miracle ", he opposed elements of Hitler's policy of German re-armament insofar as it violated the Treaty of Versailles and in his view disrupted the German economy. He remained as a Minister-without-portfolio, and received the same salary, until he left the government in January In , Schacht was arrested by the Gestapo following the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July because he allegedly had contact with the assassins.
In the final days of the war, he was one of the special and clan prisoners [ a ] who were transported by the SS from Dachau to South Tyrol. This location is within the area named by Himmler the " Alpine Fortress ", and it is speculated that the purpose of the prisoner transport was the intent of holding hostages.
Schacht was tried at Nuremberg , but was acquitted despite Soviet objections. Later, a German denazification tribunal sentenced him to eight years of hard labour, which was also overturned on appeal.
His parents, who had spent years in the United States, originally decided on the name Horace Greeley Schacht, in honor of the American journalist Horace Greeley. However, they yielded to the insistence of the Schacht family grandmother, who firmly believed the child's given name should be Danish. After completing his Abitur at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums , Schacht studied medicine, philology , political science , and finance at the Universities of Munich , Leipzig , Berlin , Paris and Kiel [ 6 ] before earning a doctorate at Kiel in β his thesis was on mercantilism.
He joined the Dresdner Bank in In , while on a business trip to the United States with board members of the Dresdner Bank, Schacht met the famous American banker J. Morgan , as well as U. He became deputy director of the Dresdner Bank from to Schacht was a freemason , having joined the lodge Urania zur Unsterblichkeit in He was summarily dismissed by General von Lumm when it was discovered that he had used his previous employer, the Dresdner Bank, to channel the note remittances for nearly million francs of Belgian national bonds destined to pay for the requisitions.
