A brilliant financial brain, Schacht was chief architect of Germany's economic recovery in the 1930s, when inside a few years she moved from being an inflation-racked, unemployment-ridden nation to a relatively flourishing one. Most of the credit for this went to Hitler, who in fact knew little about economics but had the sagacity to trust Schacht and implement his ideas. Schacht was no Nazi, however, and he soon ran foul of the Party for his open criticism of its anti-Jewish and racial policies, as well as its generally simplistic outlook. For this he served a term in Dachau, then after the war was arrested in turn by the Allies and had a hard task in clearing himself at the Nuremberg Trials. Though devious, manipulative and icily ambitious, the man whom John Weitz portrays might have been a considerable - and respected -- figure in more auspicious or normal times.