Lenin infamously wrote: “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Alfred Herrhausen wanted to loan the Soviets the money to pay for the rope. How very German of him, as Angela Merkel would surely agree. For his efforts, he was assassinated by the Red Army Faction (RAF). The banker’s final two years leading up to the assassination are dramatized in the four-part secular passion play, Herrhausen: The Banker and the Bomb, which premieres Tuesday on MHz Choice.
Herrhausen loved to be the banker people hate bankers loved. He first alarmed American banks by calling for international forgiveness of third world debt. He then alarmed American and British intelligence services with his plan to float billions in loans to the Soviet Union.
The banker saw it as an opportunity to secure a stranglehold on the Soviet market, once Perestroika reforms were successfully enacted. He also saw it as an opportunity to propel Germany into a leadership position in the EU, building it into an economic and diplomatic force that would upset the bipolar world order, at America’s expense.
Apparently, according to series writer Thomas Wendrich, Helmut Kohl shared this vision. Of course, the CIA Officer caricatures (like David Hunt, played by the very British Harry Michell) were losing control of their bladder control functions. Yet, despite his “progressive” concern for the Third World, the RAF still marked him for death, because he was still a capitalist. Despite their grisly history, the RAF found themselves down on their luck in the late 1980s. However, their Palestinian hosts in Syria slowly help hatch a plan to get them back to committing violent atrocities again.
As Herrhausen helps Kohl navigate American and NATO resistance to their Soviet overtures, he battles his Deutsch Bank board to pass a plan giving him greater centralized command over branches. Evidently progressivism was fine everywhere but his boardroom.
Wendrich essentially presents Herrhausen as a prophet, but his record is rather spotty. For one thing, he never anticipated the fall of the USSR. He just assumed Perestroika would work and Gorbachev would be their guy. He also argued the 1989 Stock Market crash would lead to the de-dollarization of the world economy. Perhaps the one thing he got right was his skepticism of unified European currency, arguing the persistent economic dysfunction of countries like Italy would lead to monetary headaches for all member states. He had a point there. Remember Greece and the other PIIGS?
Given the subtitle, Wendrich does not allow series Pia Strietmann much room to build suspense, since we know right from the beginning how it will all end. However, it certainly offers proof of lead actor Olive Masucci’s versatility. In recent years he has convincingly portrayed both Herrhausen and hedonistic filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Enfant Terrible, two extremely dissimilar Germans.
It is worth noting Wendrich and company clearly suggest Palestinian terrorists played a major role in the Herrhausen assassination, which perhaps made the series uncomfortably timely for its domestic audience. Perhaps it is time for Bonn to meaningfully sanction organizations that support Palestinian terrorists, including UNRWA. The revisionism is often unconvincing and the dream sequences are always a mistake. There are insights to glean from the series—but probably not enough to keep most viewers hooked, when Herrhasusen: The Banker and the Bomb starts streaming Tuesday (11/26) on MHz Choice.
