At this point in his career, Wohlthat embarked on a series of high-level foreign negotiations. In February 1939, he negotiated the
Rublee-Wohlthat-Plan with
George Rublee, U.S. President
Franklin Roosevelt's representative to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. The agreement set out conditions and a funding mechanism (via a trust fund financed by Jewish assets) for the emigration of 150,000 working-age Jews from Germany over a period of 3 to 5 years, to be followed by 250,000 of their dependents. The agreement was never implemented due to the outbreak of the
Second World War in September 1939. Wohlthat's next assignment was as the lead negotiator for
the economic treaty with the
Kingdom of Romania that was signed on 23 March 1939. By its provisions, Romania agreed to sell 90% of its oil, timber, grains and mineral ores to Germany. This was intended to relieve the Reich's scarcity of food and raw materials. Also, Germany gained the rights to develop additional Romanian oil fields, and was granted lease-free ports on the
Danube and
Black Sea. All these actions were aimed at securing Romania as a dependent ally in a prelude to the launching of the war. An analysis by
Time magazine concluded that the treaty: … converted Rumania from an independent nation to a German dependency. In no instance of modern times has one State made such humiliating, far-reaching economic concessions to another as Rumania's
King Carol II made in Bucharest last week to Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat, Führer Hitler's traveling salesman. Wohlthat's negotiations with
Francisco Franco's government in Spain did not yield quite as favorable an outcome. After recently emerging victorious in the
Spanish Civil War with the military help of Germany, Spain owed the Reich a great monetary debt totaling approximately $215 million. Germany was anxious to tie Spanish trade to Germany's future war needs by securing a near monopoly on Spanish trade as had been achieved with Romania. Germany intended for the Spanish debt to be repaid through yearly export surpluses. Wohlthat's first negotiating session from 12 June to 5 July yielded no results and when he returned in November, war had already been declared. Franco knew that he would likely face a boycott from the United Kingdom if he tied himself too closely to Germany and he sought to preserve his freedom of action, having already declared Spain's
neutrality at the outbreak of hostilities. Negotiations resumed on 2 November and concluded with an agreement signed on 22 December. It continued the existing trade agreements between Spain and Germany but granted no special trade status and acknowledged Spain's freedom to trade with other nations; Spain subsequently concluded trade agreements with the U.K. and
France. Despite initially not attaining all his objectives, Wohlthat's trade agreement eventually bore fruit when, after Germany's successes in the
Battle of France, Spain tilted in favor of the Axis powers. Spanish exports to Germany increased quite dramatically. From 1940 to 1941, their value increased ten-fold, with food exports increasing fifteen times. While food products flowed to Germany and Italy, the Spanish people "starved and endured great suffering". After the conquest and occupation of the
Netherlands, Wohlthat became the
Reichskommissar for the
De Nederlandsche Bank in
Amsterdam on 23 May 1940. In this position he controlled the Dutch foreign exchange flow and their entire foreign trade. In early April 1941, he was made the head of the German Economic Mission to the Far East and was sent to Japan. He was charged with purchasing needed raw materials such as rubber, soy beans, tin and
tungsten ore. Before the closure of the
Trans-Siberian Railway to German commerce by the German attack on the
Soviet Union in June 1941, Wohlthat was shipping 55,000 tons of cargo per month via that route. After that, he succeeded in shipping a total of about 240,000 tons of material to Germany via freighters and submarines between 1942 and 1945, though perhaps as much as half never reached its destination due to the Allied blockade. Wohlthat remained in Japan through the end of the war. In the post-war period, Wohlthat returned to Germany and held various
supervisory board positions in the private sector. From 1947 to 1973, he was an industrial consultant in
Düsseldorf at the
Henkel chemical company. On 10 September 1954, Wohlthat was nominated as executive director for the Federal Republic of Germany at the World Bank by Finance Minister
Fritz Schäffer and seconded by
Franz Josef Strauss, a minister for special affairs, while Economics Minister
Ludwig Erhard favored Otto Donner. In the vote, the majority of the
Second Adenauer cabinet chose Wohlthat, but due to the intervention of
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Donner received the post. Wohlthat died in 1982. == Honors ==