krupp AG co
Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented Swiss banks accused of profiting from the Holocaust in their settlement negotiations with plaintiffs. The firm also represented Siemens AG, Krupp AG, and other German companies accused of exploiting forced laborers during the Nazi era.[11]
Since 2005, WilmerHale has represented Senator William Frist in regard to an SEC
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis
How Big Business Bailed Out the Nazis
A tragic tale of what can go wrong when profits are entangled with politics.
Ciara Torres Spelliscy
The views expressed are the author’s own and not necessarily those of the Brennan Center for Justice.
Considering the outcome of this year’s presidential primaries, where the best-financed candidates were defeated, I’ve been asked repeatedly whether corporate money in politics really matters. And I’ll grant, corporate money so far mostly gone to losing candidates. But history may give us some greater perspective on how corporate money in politics can prove decisive.
It’s a largely forgotten piece of history, but in 1932 the German Nazi Party was facing financial ruin. How did the Nazis move from being broke to being in control of the German government just a year later? The Nazi Party was bailed out by German industrialists in early 1933.
The industrialists who led the way were two huge German firms, I.G. Farben and Krupp. Leaders of both of companies were among the few civilians who were later charged with war crimes at the Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II. These trials placed the story of their financial and moral support of the Nazis into the historical record. Krupp was a huge arms manufacturer. I.G. Farben was a vast chemical company which made everything from Bayer aspirin to Zyklon B, the poison used in the gas chambers.
According to The Arms of Krupp, the Nazi Party was essentially bankrupt in late 1932. Joseph Goebbels, who would later become the Minister of Propaganda, complained, “[w]e are all very discouraged, particularly in the face of the present danger that the entire party may collapse….The financial situation of the Berlin organization is hopeless. Nothing but debts and obligations.”
Regardless of the party’s financial problems, Hitler was named Chancellor in late January 1933. He called for elections in early March. With less than two weeks left before the vote, Herman Goering sent telegrams to Germany’s 25 leading industrialists, inviting them to a secret meeting in Berlin on February20, 1933. Attending the gathering were four I.G. Farben directors and Krupp chief Gustav Krupp. Hitler addressed the group, saying “private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy.” He also told the men that he would eliminate trade unions and communists. Hitler asked for their financial support and to back his vision for Germany.
According to Robert Jackson, the former Supreme Court Justice and chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, “[T]he industrialists…became so enthusiastic that they set about to raise three million Reichsmarks worth about [$30 million today] to strengthen and confirm the Nazi Party in power.”
Gustav Krupp was the first executive to speak at the Berlin meeting, and pledged one million marks. As the United Nations summarized in a 1949 report, Krupp was a key financier for the Nazi Party, including through his corporation:
It was clear from the evidence that Gustav Krupp embraced Nazism shortly prior to the seizure of power by the Nazi Party and continued his allegiance thereafter.He played an important part in bringing to Hitler’s support other leading industrialists and through the medium of the Krupp firm… from time to time made large scale contributions to the [Nazi] Party Treasury.
Hitler awarded Krupp the title of Fuhrer of Industry later in 1933.
Krupp acted in concert with other businessmen, including the directors of I.G. Farben, then Europe’s largest corporation. I.G. Farben’s full name was Interessen Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft which translates to “Community of Interest of the Dyestuffs Industry, Incorporated” or as one of the Nuremburg prosecutors, Josiah DuBois Jr. in his book, The Devil’s Chemists, put it, the name was “like the cross between a service club and Easter eggs.” But what I.G. Farben did with the Nazis was no laughing matter, including using slave labor at a specially-constructed plant at Auschwitz called Monowitz.
In the opening of the tribunal against the directors of I.G. Farben, prosecutor U.S. Gen. Telford Taylor stated: “The indictment accuses these men of major responsibility for visiting upon mankind the most searing and catastrophic war in human history. It accuses them of wholesale enslavement, plunder, and murder.”
At the February meeting, the I.G. Farben executives gave the Nazis 400,000 marks, and a total of 4.5 million marks by the end of 1933, according to The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben. This infusion of corporate cash saved the Nazi Party from financial disaster. The rest, as they say, is history — tragic, tragic history.
As the book Hell’s Cartel explains, the history of the German industrialists’ support of Hitler shows “what can go wrong when political objectives and the pursuit of profit become dangerously entwined.” One can only surmise what might have happened if the businessmen had simply said “no” to Hitler that night.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Friedrich Krupp founded the Gusstahlfabrik (Cast Steel Works) and started smelted steel production in 1816. This led to the company becoming a major industrial power and laid the foundation for the steel empire that would come to dominate the world for nearly a century under hisson Alfred. Krupp became the arms manufacturer for the Kingdom of Prussia in 1859, and later the German Empire.
The company produced steel used to build railroads in the United States and to cap the Chrysler Building.
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During the time of the Third Reich, the Krupp company supported the Nazi regime and used slave labour, which was used by the Nazi Party to help carry out the Holocaust, with Krupp reaping the economic benefit. Krupp used almost 100,000 slave labourers, housed in poor conditions and many worked to death.[1] The company had a workshop near the Auschwitz death camp. Alfried Krupp was convicted as a criminal against humanity for the employment of the prisoners of war, foreign civilians and concentration camp inmates under inhumane conditions in work connected with the conduct of war. [2]He was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment, but served just three and was pardoned (but not acquitted) by John J. McCloy.[3]
Part of this pardoning meant that all of Krupp's holdings were restored. [4] Again, the company rose to become one of the wealthiest companies in Europe. However, this growth did not last indefinitely. In 1967, an economic recession resulted in significant financial loss for the company. In 1999, it merged with Thyssen AG to form the industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp AG.
Controversy has not eluded the Krupp company. Being a major weapons supplier to multiple sides throughout various conflicts, the Krupps were sometimes blamed for the wars themselves or the degree of carnage that ensued.[5][6]
ggl 8 23
Fascism in Germany. Robin Blick 1975
Marxists Internet Archive
https://www.marxists.org › subject › fascism › blick
Gustav Krupp, the son of Alfred, a fanatical enthusiast of Hitler's anti-labour policies, has already made haste to introduce Nazi methods into his own plants.
In the Room Where German Tycoons Agreed to Fund ...
Literary Hub
https://lithub.com › in-the-room-where-german-tycoo...
Apr 22, 2022 — The arms and steel tycoon Gustav Krupp, as chairman of the Reich Association of German Industry, was first among equals in the group of ...
ECONOMY OF NAZI GERMANY: KRUPP
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com › watch
Oct 14, 2021 — Joint stock company "Friedrich Krupp" - a private forge of the German military machine. What the company did during the Weimar Republic.
Economy of Nazi Germany
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Economy_of_Nazi_...
Among the slave laborers in the occupied territories, hundreds of thousands were used by leading German corporations including Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben, ...
Privatization and business ties · Social policies · Preparations for war · Forced labor
4 'Primacy Always Belongs to Politics': Gustav Krupp and the ...
Oxford Academic
https://academic.oup.com › book › chapter
It is important to know what the attitude and role of one of Germany's largest companies was during the economic depression and the rise of Hitler.
Nasty Nazi Business - Corporate Deals with Nazi Germany
The Union for Everyone
http://www.ranknfile-ue.org › ... › Feature Archives
The U.S. government charged GE and a corporate ally with conspiracy to monopolize a market, raise prices and drive out competitors. But this was no ordinary ...
How Hitler Conquered Germany
Slate
https://slate.com › news-and-politics › 2017/03 › how-...
Mar 14, 2017 — The Nazi propaganda machine exploited ordinary Germans by encouraging them to be co-producers of a false reality. By Nicholas O'Shaughnessy.
The Krupp Empire
The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 1960/10 › the...
Krupp went on designing and even producing guns. Within a few years Gustav was helping to finance Hitler and the Nazi Party at a time when their success was ...
Profits "Über Alles!" American Corporations and Hitler
JSTOR
https://www.jstor.org › stable
by JR Pauwels · 2003 · Cited by 18 — However, it is in terms of political economy, not psychology, that one can most profitably understand why corporate America embraced Hitler. In the 1920s many ...
JOURNAL ARTICLE
Review: Profits "Über Alles!" American Corporations and Hitler
Reviewed Works: IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation Edwin Black
Hitler, der Westen und die Schweiz 1936-1945 by Walter Hofer, Herbert R. Reginbogin;
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Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors, and Forced Labor during the Second World War by Reinhold Billstein, Karola Fings, Anita Kugler, Nicholas Levis; Research Findings about Ford-Werke under the Nazi Regime by
Review by: Jacques R. Pauwels
Labour / Le Travail
Vol. 51 (Spring, 2003), pp. 223-249 (27 pages)
Published By: Canadian Committee on Labour History
Tim Wu's Bad History: Big Business and the Rise of Fascism
https://www.niskanencenter.org/big-business-rise-fascism-bad-history-tim-wu/
lotta shuck jive hiar splitting, 1st ref is tyler cowen!
Alec Stapp is a research fellow at the International Center for Law and Economics.
ICLE President & Founder Geoffrey Manne’s father, Henry Manne (1928-2015), was one of the founders of Law & Economics, an honor he shares with Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase and US Court of Appeals judges Richard Posner and Guido Calabresi. Henry was Dean of the George Mason University School of Law and founder (in 1973) of the first academic center devoted to the development of Law & Economics.
https://laweconcenter.org/about/
Niskanen Center
https://www.niskanencenter.org › big-business-rise-fas...
Mar 11, 2019 —Thomas Childers, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, calls the idea that Hitler was bankrolled by big corporate donors a “ ...
German Industry and the Third Reich quite good
https://www.adl.org/resources/news/german-industry-and-third-reich
Anti-Defamation League
https://www.adl.org › resources › news › german-indu...
Jan 1, 2000 — Communist writers argued (incorrectly) that by bankrolling the Nazi party, powerful companies like Krupp (steel and weaponry), I.G. Farben ...
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German Business and the Nazis: The East German View
After 1945, the Allied occupying forces in Germany not only charged former Nazis with a host of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also tried to educate Germans and their own publics back home about what they perceived to be the origins and particular characteristics of National Socialism.
In the Soviet zone (later East Germany), overt anti-capitalism underpinned the "official" view that Hitler rose to and maintained power primarily through the support of German industry. Communist writers argued (incorrectly) that by bankrolling the Nazi party, powerful companies like Krupp (steel and weaponry), I.G. Farben (chemicals and pharmaceuticals), and Siemens (electronics) had undermined the fragile Weimar Republic. Throughout the entire history of East Germany, the connection between fascism and big business was a fundamental aspect of the country's ideology. Communist writers, however, focused more on the years leading up to Hitler's assumption of power in 1933, in order to reinforce East Germany's dogma about the dangers of "finance" or "monopoly" capitalism. The relationship between German big business and the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945 and the ugly practices that all too many companies were guilty of during that period — labor exploitation, the Aryanization of Jewish property — were of considerably less interest to these writers. As the Cold War escalated, the suffering inflicted on Jews and others by German industry became almost a taboo subject in East Germany (though the ordeals endured by communist "freedom fighters" were much celebrated). Indeed, the Holocaust itself disappeared from most of the literature on National Socialism in East Germany.
German Business and the Nazis: The Western Approach
After World War II, many people in Germany's Western zones of occupation, and in the United States, also argued that businessmen, even free enterprise as a system, were responsible for Hitler's rise, his wars of aggression, and his crimes against humanity. In 1947 and 1948, the communist countries watched with bemusement as the United States, the preeminent capitalist country, prosecuted dozens of executives of three of wartime Germany's largest companies for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the dock were directors of the Krupp and Flick (steel and coal) companies, both of which had built weapons of war and had employed forced labor, and board members of I.G. Farben, the chemical and pharmaceutical giant that had run a synthetic rubber factory at Auschwitz. During the trials at Nuremberg, the American prosecutors were careful not to portray the proceedings as attacks on the market economy, but rather as attempts to punish individuals who had committed crimes. Nonetheless, it was clear that they had established a strong link between German industry and all aspects of the Nazi economy and, more specifically, between German business and the crimes of National Socialism. The trials resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of a number of important company owners and directors.
Most prominently, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the sole owner of Krupp, was found guilty of employing slave labor and plundering businesses in France and the Netherlands. Krupp was stripped of all his property and business holdings and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
After these trials, the American government's interest in the prewar and wartime behavior of German industry abated -- until now. The long lull can be explained primarily by Cold War considerations. As the fear of Soviet communism grew, American and Western European leaders (political and otherwise) became uneasy with the continued imprisonment of German businessmen, influential figures who were perceived as integral to the creation of a vigorous capitalist economy in West Germany. In January of 1951, during the Korean War, those businessmen still in prison were released through a declaration of clemency by the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy, and almost all of their assets were returned to them.
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Despite German industry's lack of cooperation, academics and others continued in the 1970s and early 1980s to scrutinize and debate German business guilt. The debates became volatile at times. In 1981 the Princeton historian David Abraham published The Collapse of the Weimar Republic.6 The book, which was initially well received in academia, sought to demonstrate a connection between "organized capitalism" and the rise of the Nazi party during the Great Depression. While Abraham avoided the simplistic equation of capitalism and fascism, his structuralist-Marxist approach could not accommodate the findings of the Yale historian Henry Turner, whose prior articles (and his later book7) successfully disproved the suggestion that German industry, before 1933, supported Hitler to any great extent, either financially or ideologically.
When researchers checked the accuracy of Abraham's evidence, they found a number of serious errors in his footnotes. Abraham cited documents that did not exist and turned paraphrases into quotes. The controversy eventually became less concerned with the role of industry in the downfall of Germany's first democracy than with a scholar's use and misuse of sources, and with how historians' politics and ideological leanings affect their research and their response to others' works. However, what also emerged from the angry exchanges, in my opinion, was a more nuanced picture than had existed before of pre-1933 industrial behavior in Germany. It became clear that despite some financial links between individual industrialists and the Nazi party, big business did not, to use the German phrase, "in den Sattle heben" ("lift Hitler into the saddle"). On the other hand, German industrialists did little to help salvage the crumbling Weimar democracy during the Nazis' ascendancy in the early 1930s.
The "Abraham Affair," for all intents and purposes, marked the end of scholarly debates about German business and National Socialism before 1933. Researchers, with the cooperation of some corporations, now turned their attention to German industry's behavior after 1933. They examined the relationship between businesses and mass murder and attempted to understand the motivations of individuals like the executives of I.G. Farben, whose company worked people to death in Auschwitz.8 The research that emerged from these scholarly inquiries indicated thatGerman industrialists in the Thirties and Forties weren't, by and large, ideologues as much as opportunists; it was their eagerness for profits that led them to participate in a number of heinous endeavors: securing control of Jewish-owned companies, producing war matériel for the Wehrmacht, exploiting forced and slave laborers.
...
How Big Business Bailed Out the Nazis
Brennan Center for Justice
https://www.brennancenter.org › analysis-opinion › h...
May 20, 2016 — As the United Nations summarized in a 1949 report,Krupp was a key financier for the Nazi Party, including through his corporation:.
The Nazi Billionaires Who Made a Fortune During ...
Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com › Life & Culture › Books
Apr 21, 2022 — One particularly horrifying story concerns Adolf Rosenberger, the German-Jewish co-founder of one of the world's most iconic brands: Porsche.
Fascism and Monopoly
University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository
https://repository.law.umich.edu › cgi › viewcontent
by DA Crane · 2020 · Cited by 35 — B. German Heavy Industry's Support for the Nazi Regime....1337 ... effects of corporate consolidation brought about by lax antitrust.10 The ...
Harold James, Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm
SAGE Journals
https://journals.sagepub.com › doi
However, his son, Alfried Krupp, and 12 others from the company's top ... Gustav Krupp remained a person of the Kaiser's era, suspicious of Nazi demagogy.
How Nazi Germany benefitted America's corporations
Global Village Space
https://www.globalvillagespace.com › how-nazi-germa...
Feb 10, 2021 — Ambassador Dodd wrote that US aircraft manufacturers had developed relations with the German steel corporation, Krupp; which, like IG Farben, ...
Alfried Krupp
Spartacus Educational
https://spartacus-educational.com › ... › Nazi Germany
Krupp and his father were initially hostile to the Nazi Party. ... from occupied countries back to Germany where they were rebuilt by the Krupp company.
FASCISM IN ACTION
ProQuest
https://li.proquest.com › CRS-1947-LRS-0003
Fascist Germany and Japan used the boasted efficiency of fascism ... industrial corporations and the operators of international cartels? By.
219 pages
Why Do Stanford, Harvard and NASA Still Honor a Nazi ...
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › 2022/12/13 › opinion › stanf...
Dec 13, 2022 — Alfried Krupp was an industrial baron and was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Nuremberg. His company had a slave-built ...
Business Collaboration within the Nazi War Machine: ...
Wiley Online Library
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com › doi › abs › cars
by CYH Lo · 2019 — Each mode is illustrated by a case study of a German corporation that acquires an Austrian firm: Krupp (traditional mode); the Reichswerke state ...
Nazi Olympics Tangled Politics and Sport
NPR
https://www.npr.org › 2008/06/07 › nazi-olympics-tangl...
Jun 7, 2008 — The first Olympic torch was made by Krupp, the German steel company that produced weapons for the Nazis in defiance of the Versailles Treaty ...
The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936 - Holocaust Encyclopedia
Holocaust Encyclopedia
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org › content › article › t...
Learn more about this new ritual, Nazi propaganda, and the Olympic Games in ... The torch itself was made in 1936 by Krupp, a German company better known ...
Profits & Persecution: German Big Business and Nazi Crimes
https://www.facebook.com › ... › Videos
1:19:21
Our Lunch & Learn program will feature Peter Hayes, PhD, who will share an analysis of why and how Germany's largest corporations became ...
Facebook · Holocaust Center for Humanity · Jun 6, 2023
GIs in Germany: First Impressions of the Former Third Reich
The National WWII Museum
https://www.nationalww2museum.org › war › articles
May 16, 2020 — By the time the Nazi government unconditionally surrendered on May 8 ... Krupp, whose family owned the largest arms manufacturing company in ...
Kristallnacht of 1938 shattered glass -- and unleashed a ...
The Conversation
https://theconversation.com › kristallnacht-of-1938-sh...
Nov 8, 2019 — Boys in the Hitler Youth movement were encouraged to become the tough, resilient soldiers who were prototypes ofGerman fascist masculinity.By ...
Condemn Rising Fascism, Fight For Working-Class Unity
AFL–CIO
https://aflcio.org › resolutions › resolution-47-condem...
Oct 24, 2017 — WHEREAS, Wall Street and the corporate powers counter workers' unity and ... WHEREAS, one of the first acts of Nazi Germany was to ban trade ...
Nazi Billionaires by David de Jong: How Hitler's ...
World Socialist Web Site
https://www.wsws.org › articles › 2022/11/02 › nazi-n...
Nov 1, 2022 — David de Jong, Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's ... on five oligarch families whose past—unlike that of Krupp, Thyssen, ...
The German Fortunes Built on Nazi Plunder
New Republic
https://newrepublic.com › article ›german-fortunes-b...
May 27, 2022 — They confirmed that her grandfather and great-uncles, who ran the Bahlsen company during the Third Reich, had been Nazis and donated money to ...
Blood and Steel | Origins
The Ohio State University
https://origins.osu.edu › review › blood-and-steel
Manchester roundly condemned the corporation and its leaders, ... the name Krupp has become synonymous with war profiteering, armaments and the Nazi regime.
The Vampire Economy
Mises Institute
https://cdn.mises.org › the_vampire_economy_20...
Oct 22, 2020 — keeping entries of the company (or individual business ... The original German is written in the Nazi idioms that have become.
Reading the History of Nazi Germany as a Cautionary Tale ...
The Wire
https://thewire.in › books › reading-the-history-of-naz...
Feb 10, 2019 — The heads of these corporations, the Krupps, Opals,Fincks are “but a tiny mound of skin and bone, like you and me”. It's the companies – BASF, ...