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Atlantic
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Hitler's Bogus Crisis of ‘Public Order'
Adolf Hitler was a master of manufacturing public-security crises to advance his authoritarian agenda. He used inflammatory tactics and rhetoric to disable constitutional protections for the Weimar Republic's 17 federated states, crushing their leadership and imposing his will on the country. 'I myself was once a federalist during my time in the opposition,' Hitler told Hans Lex, a Reichstag delegate for the Bavarian People's Party, in mid-March 1933, 'but I have now come to the conviction that the Weimar constitution is fundamentally flawed.' Federalism, Hitler said, encouraged states to pursue local interests at the expense of the nation. 'The rest of the world watched in astonishment and glee as democratic leaders of the individual states, relying on the Weimar Constitution,' Hitler continued, 'did not hesitate to attack the Reich government in the fiercest way possible at public rallies, in the press and on the radio.' Hitler vowed to end the 'eternal battle' between the states and the central government by dismantling the federated system, crushing states' rights, and forging 'a unified will' for the nation. In a statement to the press, Hitler said that the imposition of central authority should be seen not as the 'raping' of state sovereignty but rather as the 'alignment' of state policies with the central government's. Timothy W. Ryback: What the press got wrong about Hitler Hitler had been more circumspect when he addressed the Reichsrat, a federal body of state representatives intended to monitor the relationship between the Reich and state governments, on Thursday, February 2, 1933, three days after his appointment as chancellor. The country's federated states, Hitler had said then, were the 'historic building blocks of the German nation.' He insisted that he had no intention of intruding on state sovereignty. He would assert Reich control only 'where absolutely necessary.' Three weeks later, on February 27, the Reichstag fire provided Hitler with the 'absolutely necessary' excuse he needed. Hitler claimed that an arson attack on the Reichstag by a lone perpetrator—who was caught in the act— was the start of an attempted Bolshevik revolution, using that false claim to suspend civil liberties and suppress the voting rights of the German Communist Party, thereby enabling his supporters in the Reichstag to pass legislation granting him authoritarian power. At Hitler's urging, President Paul von Hindenburg issued an Article 48 emergency decree, 'Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State.' The first paragraph suspended civil liberties, providing Hitler the means to suppress political opposition in advance of the upcoming elections on March 5. The second paragraph gave Hitler the power to trample states' rights: 'If any state fails to take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, the Reich government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority.' That second paragraph sent alarm bells clanging in state capitals across the country, nowhere louder than in Bavaria, where concern over state sovereignty had run high from the outset of Hitler's chancellorship. Heinrich Held, the minister president—the equivalent of a U.S. state governor—of Bavaria, the second-largest federated state after its neighbor Prussia, was among the Weimar Republic's fiercest states'-rights advocates. He had a jurist's keen eye for legal loopholes and political subterfuge. Though the Weimar constitution was lauded by legal experts as one of the most democratic and progressive of its time, Held considered it to be disquietingly unclear and pliable when it came to states' rights. In the emergency-powers provision of Article 48, he detected the 'seeds of dictatorship.' 'The developments in public affairs in Germany fill the Bavarian state government with grave concern,' Held had written to Hindenburg five days into Hitler's chancellorship. 'Based on what has been announced, it seems the relationship of the states to the Reich could undergo a significant change.' By 'developments in public affairs,' Held was referring to what had happened in Prussia the previous year. In July 1932, a Reich governor had been installed there, ostensibly to restore public order following street violence between communists and National Socialists. Prussia claimed that the Reich government had overreached, and took the matter to the Constitutional Court. Fearing what a ruling for the Reich would forebode for other federated states, Held had Bavaria join the lawsuit. State of Prussia v. Reich Government placed the high court in a precarious position not just judicially but also politically—the Reich governor's installation in Prussia was a fait accompli. If the judges ruled in favor of Prussia, the Reich could simply ignore the court. But the greater danger, Held feared, was that Hindenburg would exercise his Article 48 powers to invoke a constitutionally permissible 'Reich Execution' that would permit the army to impose central authority on a state. If Prussia were to resist such an imposition, a constitutional crisis could quickly devolve into civil war. On October 25, 1932, the court ruled that although Hindenburg had acted within his constitutional authority in installing a Reich governor, Prussia nonetheless still retained administrative control over its territory. The tangled ruling baffled legal experts and general observers alike. Vorwärts, the Social Democratic newspaper, wrote, 'Only the gods know how this situation can realistically be resolved.' Hitler resolved the situation rather bluntly: After taking office as chancellor, he simply dissolved the Prussian state government. Having watched the Reich government do this, Held now feared a similar intrusion—or worse—in Bavaria: At Hitler's first cabinet meeting as chancellor, he had considered deploying the army to quell public unrest. Hitler's defense minister informed the new chancellor that ordering German soldiers to shoot German citizens on German soil was unthinkable—the army was trained exclusively to fight an 'external enemy.' In his letter to Hindenberg, Held had reminded the German president of his solemn oath to uphold the democratic principles and federated structures of the Weimar constitution. 'The Bavarian state government places its trust in Your Excellency as protector of constitutional rights and of justice,' Held wrote. Hindenburg wrote back offering reassurance. 'Neither the Reich government nor I personally,' he wrote, 'are pursuing plans designed to eradicate the sovereignty of the federated states and to establish a centralized state.' Hindenburg added that he also had no intention of 'inserting Reich Governors into the business of state governments.' Still, rumors of Hitler's designs on Bavaria's sovereign authority persisted. Timothy W. Ryback: How Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days Two weeks later, Fritz Schäffer, the head of the Bavarian People's Party, traveled to Berlin to meet with Hindenburg and reiterate the state's concerns about Hitler's anti-federalist designs. Schäffer did not mince words. 'If the Reich sends a Reich governor to Bavaria, he will be arrested at the state border,' Schäffer told Hindenburg. Further, if Hitler's storm troopers attempted to stage a coup in Bavaria, Schäffer said, the state government would mobilize the Bavaria Watch, a state militia of 30,000 men that was aligned with the Bavarian People's Party. The Bavarian militia, battle-hardened by the Great War, Schäffer warned, would crush Hitler's ragtag bands of brownshirt storm troopers 'with ruthless force.' Hindenburg assured Schäffer that even if the state government were not politically aligned with the Reich, he had 'no intention of installing Reich governors in states where order prevails.' Hindenburg said that he valued 'Bavaria and the Bavarian people and would avoid anything that would bring Bavaria into conflict with the Reich.' Ten days later, the Reichstag fire and ensuing emergency decree scrambled the constitutional calculus. A day after Hindenburg exercised his Article 48 authority, Heinrich Held was in Berlin for a meeting with Hitler. The Bavarian minister president informed the Reich chancellor in no uncertain terms that his federated state did not require Reich assistance in maintaining public order. After an hour and a half, Held emerged, with Hitler's assurance 'that there will be no use of paragraph two against states in which, like Bavaria, law and order are maintained by state authorities.' The March 5 Reichstag elections delivered Hitler 44 percent of the electorate and with that a claim on political power at every level of government. The next day, 200,000 National Socialist brownshirts stormed state and municipal offices across the country. Swastika banners draped town halls. Civil servants were thrown from their desks. But not in Bavaria. Held's solid block of more than 1 million voters, along with the threat of armed resistance by the Bavaria Watch, gave Hitler pause. So did Schäffer's threat to call on Bavaria's Prince Rupprecht to reestablish monarchical rule. Hitler huddled with his lieutenants to frame a strategy for Bavaria. Storm troopers would stage public disturbances, triggering a response under paragraph two of Article 48, enabling Hitler to suspend the Held government, and install a Reich governor in its place. Three days after the election, on Wednesday, March 8, Held was in his office when he heard Hitler storm troopers singing the Nazi Party anthem in a public square. Shortly before noon, three Hitler lieutenants—Ernst Röhm, Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf Wagner—all in brown uniforms and jackboots, stomped into Held's office. Noting the 'protesting' Nazi storm troopers outside Held's office—staged there per Hitler's secret decree—Röhm expressed concern about public safety, and demanded that Held agree to install a Reich governor. Wagner slapped a whip across Held's desk. Held rose to his feet. He informed the three men that, as minister president, he needed to consult his cabinet. Wagner demanded an answer by noon. Held refused. 'Noon is lunchtime,' he is reputed to have said. 'I never make decisions at lunchtime.' By the time Hitler's lieutenants reconvened with Held, at 3:40 that afternoon, this time in the company of a prospective Reich governor, Franz von Epp, Held had conferred with his cabinet. 'The Bavarian government is fully capable of maintaining peace and public order on its own,' he said, adding that he would not be coerced or intimidated. That evening, Held telegraphed Hindenburg. He requested support from Reichswehr Division VII, garrisoned in Munich, in case the National Socialists staged a coup. Hindenburg declined to help. That Friday, Franz von Epp made his first public appearance as Bavaria's Reich governor. Armed storm troopers swarmed state administrative offices. Still, Held didn't budge. A pair of Nazi storm troopers, intended to intimidate the intransigent minister president, were posted outside Held's office, rifles slung over their shoulders. Timothy W. Ryback: The oligarchs who came to regret supporting Hitler That weekend, Hitler flew south to try to resolve the crisis personally. He summoned Hans Lex, the Reichstag delegate who now headed the Bavaria Watch militia. Hitler told Lex he wanted to discuss, in confidence, a potential coalition. Lex cautioned Hitler that the degree to which the Bavarian People's Party would be willing to cooperate with the National Socialists was limited. For instance, Lex said, he could in good conscience imagine placing '1,000 Social Democratic functionaries' in protective custody—but only so long as they were detained within the parameters of the law and were 'treated humanely.' However, 'one could not,' Lex continued, 'align with Christian values, for example, a terrorist action that saw political opponents randomly snatched and thrown up against a wall.' Lex assured Hitler that Minister President Held had matters in Bavaria well in hand, and he explained that, having won more than 1 million votes in the latest election, Held represented 'a solid and unshakable' political force, supported by the martial force of the 30,000 armed men of the Bavaria Watch. Unable to close a deal, Hitler returned to Berlin. But Hitler didn't need a deal. Instead, he unleashed his own storm troopers—both the SA and the SS—on Bavaria. The Bavaria Watch did not mobilize. Prince Rupprecht did not intervene. Fritz Schäffer was accosted and beaten on the street, then hustled to the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich for interrogation. Held was forced from his official residence, and his family was threatened; eventually, he was forced to flee to Switzerland. With Held gone, the Reich governor assumed full authority over Bavaria. 'With the führer at midday when we receive the latest news from Munich,' Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on March 15. 'There can no longer be talk of resistance anywhere.' The New York Times reported that Hitler's efforts to 'steamroller' the country on his path to unchecked power were proving successful. The ironies of history can be multilayered. Heinrich Held understood the threat that Hitler posed to democracy long before most people had ever heard of National Socialism or its leader. And a decade earlier, at a moment when Hitler was effectively a stateless immigrant in Germany, Held had been unable to deport him from the country. In September 1924, the warden of Landsberg Prison, where Hitler was serving a five-year sentence for his failed Beer Hall Putsch, reported that incarceration had done nothing to temper the Nazi leader's authoritarian impulses. If anything, he wrote, Hitler had grown 'more mature, calmer, more calculating in his convictions.' 'There is no doubt that Hitler, after his release from the detention facility will return to political life,' the warden cautioned. 'He will seek to revive the nationalist movement according to his vision.' Held, then newly installed as minister president of Bavaria, moved to action. He prepared for Hitler's immediate deportation to his Austrian homeland upon release from prison. A Bavarian delegation was dispatched to Vienna to discuss the handover, only to be told that the Austrians would under no circumstances allow the return of their native son. Vienna argued that Hitler had forfeited his Austrian citizenship as a result of his service in a Bavarian regiment. 'Hitler is considered as stateless, and as a result of the refusal by Austria to receive him, his deportation is no longer possible,' Held lamented in an internal memorandum. 'The government fears nonetheless that incarceration has in no way sobered or calmed Hitler, rather compelled him to continue to pursue his goals with undiminished energy.'
Atlantic
06-02-2025
- Business
- Atlantic
Hitler's Oligarchs
He was among the richest men in the world. He made his first fortune in heavy industry. He made his second as a media mogul. And in January 1933, in exchange for a political favor, Alfred Hugenberg provided the electoral capital that made possible Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor. Before Hugenberg sealed his pact with Hitler, a close associate had warned Hugenberg that this was a deal he would come to regret: 'One night you will find yourself running through the ministry gardens in your underwear trying to escape arrest.' In my recent book, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power, I chronicled the fraught relationship between the tyrant and the titan, but my story ended in January 1933, so I did not detail the subsequent impact on Hugenberg's fortunes, let alone the catastrophic consequences that lay ahead for other corporate leaders, their companies, and their country. In the '20s and early '30s, the Hitler 'brand' was anathema to capitalists and corporate elites. His National Socialist German Worker's Party was belligerently nationalistisch but also unapologetically sozialistisch —a true Arbeiter Partei, or 'working man's party.' Its 25-point political platform explicitly targeted bankers and financiers, calling for 'breaking the bondage of interest,' as well as industrialists who profited from wartime production. Profits were to be confiscated by the state without compensation, and corporate executives charged with treason. Platform Point 13 was explicit: 'We demand the nationalization of all existing corporate entities.' Through the 1920s, businessmen preferred to place their political bets with conservative, centrist, business-friendly politicians, such as those in the Center Party or the Bavarian People's Party or the right-wing but decidedly pro-business German Nationalists. Out of necessity, then, the National Socialists had to derive most of its financing via storm troopers standing on street corners begging for contributions and from admission fees to Hitler rallies. Among the exceptions to this were socialites—Viktoria von Dirksen, Helene Bechstein, Elsa Bruckmann—who were smitten with Hitler. But the most significant exception was Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen, heir to one of Germany's leading industrial fortunes, had been an early financier of the Nazi movement. He first met Hitler in the autumn of 1923 after attending a beer-hall rally. 'It was then that I realised his oratorical gifts and his ability to lead the masses,' Thyssen recalled in his 1941 memoir, I Paid Hitler. 'What impressed me most, however, was the order that reigned in his meetings, the almost military discipline of his followers.' Thyssen provided the party, by his own estimate, approximately 1 million reichsmarks—more than $5 million today—and also helped finance the acquisition and refurbishment of a Munich palace as the Nazi Party headquarters. Most important, Thyssen arranged for Hitler to speak to his fellow industrialists in Düsseldorf on January 27, 1932. Read: How Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days 'The speech made a deep impression on the assembled industrialists,' Thyssen said, 'and in consequence of this a number of large contributions flowed from the resources of heavy industry into the treasuries of the National Socialist party.' This financing, estimated at a still-cautious 2 million marks annually, was channeled through a trusted intermediary: Alfred Hugenberg. Hugenberg had served as a director of Krupp A.G., the large steelmaker and arms manufacturer, during the Great War, and had subsequently founded the Telegraph Union, a conglomerate of 1,400 associated newspapers intended to provide a conservative bulwark against the liberal, pro-democracy press. Hugenberg also bought controlling shares in the country's largest movie studio, enabling him to have film and the press work together to advance his right-wing, antidemocratic agenda. A reporter for Vossische Zeitung, a leading centrist daily newspaper, observed that Hugenberg was 'the great disseminator of National Socialist ideas to an entire nation through newspapers, books, magazines and films.' To this end, Hugenberg practiced what he called Katastrophenpolitk, 'the politics of catastrophe,' by which he sought to polarize public opinion and the political parties with incendiary news stories, some of them Fabrikationen— entirely fabricated articles intended to cause confusion and outrage. According to one such story, the government was enslaving German teenagers and selling them to its allies in order to service its war debt. Hugenberg calculated that by hollowing out the political center, political consensus would become impossible and the democratic system would collapse. As a right-wing delegate to the Reichstag, Hugenberg proposed a 'freedom law' that called for the liberation of the German people from the shackles of democracy and from the onerous provisions of the Versailles Treaty. The law called for the treaty signatories to be tried and hanged for treason, along with government officials involved with implementing the treaty provisions. The French ambassador in Berlin called Hugenberg 'one of the most evil geniuses of Germany.' Though both Hitler and Hugenberg were fiercely anti-Communist, antidemocratic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic, their attempts at political partnership failed spectacularly and repeatedly. The problem lay not in ideological differences but in the similarity of their temperaments and their competing political aspirations. Like Hitler, Hugenberg was inflexible, stubborn, and self-righteous. When challenged, he doubled down. Hugenberg had spoken of a 'third Reich' as early as 1919, well before Hitler was a force on the political scene, and he envisioned himself as the future Reichsverweser, or 'regent of the Reich.' His followers greeted him with 'Heil Hugenberg!' Joseph Goebbels noted that Hitler invariably emerged from his meetings with Hugenberg red-faced and 'mad as shit.' But by late January 1933, the two men's fates were inextricably entangled. Hugenberg, who had leveraged his wealth into political power, had become the leader of the German National People's Party, which had the votes in the Reichstag that Hitler needed to be appointed chancellor. Hitler had the potential to elevate Hugenberg to political power. As one Hitler associate explained the Hitler-Hugenberg dynamic: 'Hugenberg had everything but the masses; Hitler had everything but the money.' After cantankerous negotiation, a deal was reached: Hugenberg would deliver Hitler the chancellorship, in exchange for Hugenberg being given a cabinet post as head of a Superministerium that subsumed the ministries of economics, agriculture, and nutrition. Once in the cabinet, Hugenberg didn't hesitate to meddle in foreign relations when it suited him. Reinhold Quaatz, a close Hugenberg associate, distilled Hugenberg's calculus as follows: 'Hitler will sit in the saddle but Hugenberg holds the whip.' The New York Times expressed astonishment that Hugenberg, an 'arch-capitalist' who stood 'in strongest discord with economic doctrines of the Nazi movement,' was suddenly in charge of the country's finances. Hitler's 'socialist mask' had fallen, the Communist daily Red Banner proclaimed, arguing that 'Hugenberg is in charge, not Hitler!' The weekly journal Die Weltbühne dubbed the new government 'Hitler, Hugenberg & Co.' As self-proclaimed 'economic dictator,' Hugenberg kept pace with Hitler in outraging political opponents and much of the public. He purged ministries. He dismantled workers' rights. He lowered the wages of his own employees by 10 percent. 'The real battle against unemployment lies singularly and alone in reestablishing profitability in economic life,' one of Hugenberg's newspapers editorialized, arguing that the goal of economic policy should be to rescue 'the professions, and those most negatively affected: the merchant middle class.' Hugenberg declared a temporary moratorium on foreclosures, canceled debts, and placed tariffs on several widely produced agricultural goods, violating trade agreements and inflating the cost of living. 'It just won't do,' Hitler objected in one cabinet meeting, 'that the financial burdens of these rescue measures fall only on the poorest.' Let them suffer awhile, Hugenberg argued. 'Then it will be possible to even out the hardships.' The economy fell into chaos. The press dubbed Hugenberg the Konfusionsrat —the 'consultant of confusion.' Hugenberg didn't care about bad press. He was accustomed to being one of the most unpopular personalities in the country. Vorwärts, the socialist newspaper, depicted him as a puffed-up frog with spectacles. Hitler called him a Wauwau, or 'woof woof.' Even his close associates referred to him as 'the Hamster.' But Hugenberg lived by the golden rule: He who had the gold ruled. Earlier, when disagreements had arisen over the rightward turn of the German National Party, Hugenberg simply expelled the dissenters and financed the party's entire budget from his own resources. Hitler could aspire to be dictator of the Third Reich, but Hugenberg was already dictator of the economy. In late June 1933, while Hitler was trying to assuage international concerns about the long-term intentions of his government, Hugenberg appeared in London at an international conference on economic development. To the surprise of everyone, including the other German-delegation members present, Hugenberg laid out an ambitious plan for economic growth through territorial expansion. 'The first step would consist of Germany reclaiming its colonies in Africa,' Hugenberg explained. 'The second would be that the 'people without space''— Volk ohne Raum —'would open areas in which our productive race would create living space.' The announcement made headlines around the world. 'Reich Asks for Return of African Lands at London Parley,' read one New York Times headline. Below that, a subhead continued: 'Also seeks other territory, presumably in Europe.' From the March 1932 issue: Hitler and Hitlerism: a man of destiny Konstantin von Neurath, Hitler's foreign minister, tried to walk back the Hugenberg statement, asserting that Hugenberg had expressed only a personal opinion, not government policy. Hugenberg dug in his heels, retorting that, as economic minister, when he said something, he was speaking for the entire government. Foreign policy was just an extension of economic policy. Confusion and embarrassment followed. Back in Berlin, Neurath insisted in a cabinet meeting that 'a single member cannot simply overlook the objections of the others' and that Hugenberg 'either did not understand these objections, which were naturally clothed in polite form, or he did not want to understand them.' Hitler sought to mediate, saying that 'what had already happened was no longer of any interest.' But Hugenberg wouldn't back down: He wanted the issue resolved and on his terms. 'It was a matter between Hitler and me as to who was going to seize the initiative,' Hugenberg later admitted. Hitler prevailed. On June 29, 1933, Hugenberg resigned his minister post. By then Hitler no longer needed either Hugenberg's corporate contacts or his Reichstag delegates. The bankers and industrialists who had once shunned the crass, divisive, right-wing extremist had gradually come to embrace him as a bulwark against the pro-union Social Democrats and the virulently anti-capitalist Communists. Six months earlier, three weeks before Hitler's appointment as chancellor, the banker Kurt Baron von Schröder had met with Hitler at Schröder's villa in a fashionable quarter of Cologne. The arrangements were cloak-and-dagger: Hitler made an unscheduled, early-morning exit from a train in Bonn, entered a hotel, ate a quick breakfast, then departed in a waiting car with curtained rear windows to be driven to the Schröder villa while a decoy vehicle drove in the opposite direction. Hitler walked out of the meeting with a 30 million reichsmark credit line that saved his political movement from bankruptcy. Once Hitler was in power, there was no longer need for secrecy or subterfuge. On Monday, February 20, 1933, Hermann Göring, one of two Nazis ministers in the Hitler cabinet and the president of the Reichstag, hosted a fundraiser at his official residence for the Nazi Party in advance of upcoming elections. The event was presided over by Hjalmar Schacht, a respected banker and co-founder of a centrist political party who saw Hitler as the best bet against left-wing political forces and had lobbied President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor. Among the two dozen industrialists, bankers, and businessmen in attendance, the most prominent was Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, known as 'the cannon king' for his armament production. 'I was astonished,' Schacht recalled, 'because I knew that this same Krupp von Bohlen had refused an invitation from Fritz Thyssen to attend an event with the Rhine-Westfalen industrialists four weeks earlier.' Perhaps equally surprising was the presence at this fundraiser of four directors from the board of the giant chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate I.G. Farben, which had to that point been staunchly pro-democracy, pro–Weimar Republic, and anti–National Socialist. (The Nazis derided the company, which employed many Jewish scientists, as 'an international capitalist Jewish company.') Hitler himself stunned party attendees by showing up as the unannounced guest of honor. Clad in a suit and tie rather than a brown storm trooper's uniform, Hitler addressed the assembled corporate elite, warning of the dangers of communism and trumpeting his appointment as chancellor as a 'great victory' that he saw as a mandate for radical change. He outlined his plans to restore the power of the military, assert totalitarian control over the country, destroy the parliamentary system, and crush all political opponents by force. 'Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy,' Hitler told them. Jeffrey Goldberg: Trump: 'I need the kind of generals that Hitler had' After Hitler departed, Schacht spoke of the need for additional campaign financing in advance of the upcoming elections. Hermann Göring added that the election, scheduled for March 5, 'will surely be the last one for the next 10 years, probably even for the next 100 years.' By day's end, the fundraiser had generated 3 million reichsmarks, the equivalent of $15 million today. The following three weeks delivered a series of blows to the Weimar Republic that resulted in its demise: the arson attack on the Reichstag on February 27, which saw the very symbol of parliamentarian democracy consumed in flame; the March 5 elections from which the Nazis emerged with a mandate for Hitler's reforms; and the passing of an 'enabling law,' on March 23, that established Hitler as unchallenged dictator. In a letter to Hitler, Gustav Krupp wrote, 'The turn of political events is in line with the wishes which I myself and the board of directors have cherished for a long time.' German corporations, large and small, helped retool the Weimar Republic as the Third Reich. Ferdinand Porsche designed the Volkswagen, a 'car for the people.' Mercedes-Benz provided Hitler and his chief lieutenants with bulletproof sedans. Hugo Boss designed the black uniforms for the SS. Krupp supplied armaments. Miele produced munitions. Allianz provided insurance for concentration camps. J.A. Topf & Sons manufactured crematoria ovens. A dismayed executive at Deutsche Bank, which was involved in the expropriation of Jewish businesses, sent a letter to the chairman of his supervisory board: 'I fear we are embarking on an explicit, well- planned path toward the annihilation of all Jews in Germany.' For the industrialists who helped finance and supply the Hitler government, an unexpected return on their investment was slave labor. By the early 1940s, the electronics giant Siemens AG was employing more than 80,000 slave laborers. (An official Siemens history explains that although the head of the firm, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, was 'a staunch advocate of democracy' who 'detested the Nazi dictatorship,' he was also 'responsible for ensuring the company's well-being and continued existence.') By October 1942, I.G. Farben and its subsidiaries were using slave laborers in 23 locations. The life expectancy of inmates at an I.G. Farben facility at Auschwitz was less than four months; more than 25,000 people lost their lives on the construction site alone. As corporate practices adapted to evolving political realities, the company aligned its wide technological and human resources with government priorities. Jews were purged from the corporate ranks. The I.G. Farben pharmaceutical division, Bayer, supported Nazi medical experiments. A postwar affidavit alleges that Bayer paid 170 reichsmarks for 150 female Auschwitz prisoners. 'The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition,' the affidavit reads. 'However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments,' and 'we would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price.' Although recent investigations have questioned the veracity of this particular affidavit, Bayer's involvement in medical experimentation on Auschwitz inmates is undisputed. The I.G. Farben company Degussa owned a chemical subsidiary that produced a cyanide-based pesticide known as Zyklon B, used primarily for fumigating ships, warehouses, and trains—and, after 1942, as a homicidal agent at Nazi extermination facilities. Company logs confirm the delivery of an estimated 56 tons of Zyklon B from 1942 to 1944; more than 23.8 tons were sent to Auschwitz, where it served as the primary instrument of death for the more than 1 million Jewish people murdered there. In August 1947, 24 senior I.G. Farben managers were placed on trial for their role in Nazi aggression and atrocity. In his opening statement before the court, the prosecutor Telford Taylor said of these executives, 'They were the magicians who made the fantasies of Mein Kampf come true. They were the guardians of the military and state secrets.' The 15,638 pages of courtroom testimony, along with the 6,384 documents submitted as evidence—purchase orders, internal memos, board minutes—indicated that these Farben executives knew the exact number of airplane and truck ties, the running feet of tank tread, the amount of explosives, as well as the precise number of canisters of Zyklon B gas delivered to Auschwitz. The defense attorney for the chairman of I.G. Farben's supervisory board argued that his client was 'no robber, no plunderer, no slave dealer,' but rather just a 60-year-old senior executive doing what senior executives were paid to do—run the company with an eye to the bottom line. If he collaborated with the government, it was out of 'a feeling of personal responsibility to the company.' Twenty-three I.G. Farben directors were eventually charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity; 13 of them were convicted and sentenced to prison. From the February 1937 Issue: Hitler looks eastward At the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945, Gustav Krupp was indicted as a major war criminal alongside the likes of Göring and Hans Frank, but he was too ill to stand trial. Instead, his son was tried in 1947, in The United States of America v. Alfried Krupp, et al. The indictment charged the younger Krupp, alongside 11 Krupp corporate directors, with crimes against humanity and war crimes, for participating in 'the murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, and use for slave labor of civilians.' Alfried Krupp reportedly never expressed remorse, at one point telling a war-crimes trial observer, 'We Krupps never cared much about political ideas. We only wanted a system that worked well and allowed us to work unhindered. Politics is not our business.' As for Alfred Hugenberg? Unlike other early private-sector Hitler enablers such as Fritz Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht—both of whom ended up in concentration camps after crossing Hitler—Hugenberg got off lightly. Hugenberg withdrew to his sprawling estate, Rohbraken, in the former feudal province of Lippe, where he lived as the local regent while his business empire was gradually whittled away. The German Nationalist Party was disbanded as soon as Hugenberg stepped down from his cabinet post in June 1933. In December of that year, the Telegraph Union was taken over by the ministry of propaganda and absorbed into a newly created entity, the German News Office. In 1943, Hugenberg's publishing house, Scherl Verlag, was acquired by the Nazi publisher, Eher Verlag. By war's end, the defrocked cabinet minister and disenfranchised media mogul was diminished and dissipated but still defiant. On September 28, 1946, Hugenberg was arrested by the British military police. He was detained for five months, and his assets were frozen. After a formal hearing, Hugenberg was deemed to be a 'lesser evildoer'—officially, a ' Mitläufer,' the lowest order of complicity in the Nazi regime—on the grounds that he had left his cabinet post in the first months of the Hitler regime and had never been a member of the Nazi Party. With undiminished temerity, Hugenberg balked at even that lesser charge. Having been stripped of most of his business empire, Hugenberg saw himself as a victim of, not a participant in, the Nazi regime. He appealed the hearing's determination and won. He was declared 'untainted,' which allowed him to lay claim to his frozen assets. Unrepentant to his dying day, Hugenberg refused to publicly countenance any suggestion of guilt or responsibility for Hitler's excesses. On the morning of Tuesday, January 31, 1933, less than 24 hours after enabling Hitler's appointment as chancellor, Hugenberg reportedly spoke with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a fellow conservative and the mayor of Leipzig. 'I've just committed the greatest stupidity of my life,' Hugenberg allegedly told Goerdeler. 'I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in the history of the world.'
