Franz Seldte
Toronto Daily Star, December 1 1933
By 1933, articles and photos about Adolf Hitler were starting to appear in Toronto newspapers, as this example shows.
Franz Seldte (1882-1947) lost his left arm in World War I. After the war, he founded Der Stahlhelm, an organization of ex-servicemen that was opposed to the Treaty of Versailles and German war reparations. The organization became increasingly anti-democratic during the time of the Weimar Republic.
In 1933, when Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, Seldte was given the post of Minister of Labor. He remained in this post through the war and even after Hitler's suicide, though he was marginalized by other Nazis.
When captured, Seldte claimed that he had stood against Hitler's dictatorship and advocated a two-chamber system of parliamentary governance. He was not believed. He passed away at a U.S. military hospital in 1947 before he could be put on trial at Nuremberg.
Created August 18, 2025.