(Mirror.)
“At this time (1931 at the earliest) I learned of the existence of friendly relations between Privy Councillor Dr. Emil Kirdorf, a leading man in the coal industry in the Ruhr, and the Führer. […] Through Kirdorf and later through Fritz Thyssen, the Führer was introduced to the circles of Rhenish-Westphalian industry, which supported him and the party financially.”⁸⁷
These words come from a statement made by Walter Funk to the Allied investigating authorities after the Second World War. Even before 1933, Funk was an intermediary between the NSDAP leadership and German major industry. Professionally, he was editor-in-chief of the Berliner Börsenzeitung and later also worked as Reich Economics Minister and Reichsbank President.⁸⁸ So these are the words of an insider.
The rôle of the major industrialists Emil Kirdorf and Fritz Thyssen has been greatly downplayed in historiography in order to deny the links between German major industry and Hitler.⁸⁹ The reasons for th[ese] apologetics are beside the point here. In any case, in later works on this subject, Kirdorf was in principle no longer dealt with at all and Thyssen was often assigned the rôle of a loner.⁹⁰
Fundamentally, it should be noted that these positions and accounts of Kirdorf and Thyssen have already been debunked in detail by the author of this essay, both in his dissertation (2012) and in later publications on the subject.⁹¹
As chairman of the supervisory board and major shareholder of Vereinigte Stahlwerke — the largest steel group in Europe at the time — and as a member of the board of the Bergbauverein, Thyssen was without question one of the 19 leading major industrialists of the Weimar Republic and was therefore certainly one of the absolute leaders of major industry in Germany at the time.⁹²
In the case of Emil Kirdorf, it was argued that he was over eighty-years old and in “retirement” when he met Hitler, and despite his fifty years as a leading industrialist and multiple association chairman, he suddenly had no political contacts and of course no political influence whatsoever, as well as no access to the money pots of big industry or the industrial associations. At most he was an old man who could at best be described as a kind of “ghost driver” or loner.⁹³
As already mentioned, the reality was quite different and the only grain of truth in this apologetic is that Kirdorf gave up his position as Chairman of the Board of GBAG — the largest German mining company — in 1926. However, this was not because he wanted to “retire”, but because his old company was suddenly to become the main shareholder of Vereinigte Stahlwerke.
Although Vereinigte Stahlwerke was the largest steel group in Europe, it was impossible for GBAG to become the main owner of this completely indebted group in the midst of the arms crisis. With this new rôle, the banks risked GBAG’s existence in the poker game for Vereinigte Stahlwerke.⁹⁴ This was the company that Kirdorf had built up since 1873 and he was understandably unwilling to accept this new situation. Kirdorf therefore resigned from the board.⁹⁵
In 1927, when Kirdorf met Hitler a year later, he was still deputy chairman of the supervisory board of “Discontogesellschaft” — one of the most important major German banks — and after the merger of this bank with Deutsche Bank in 1929, he moved first to the supervisory board and from 1932 to the main committee of Deutsche Bank.⁹⁶
In addition to Kirdorf, the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank alone included 13 corporate leaders from the coal and steel and heavy industry sectors, many representatives of other branches of industry, such as board members of IG Farben, Siemens-Werke and eight bankers from other banks.⁹⁷
Kirdorf was also a member of the Rhenish-Westphalian Committee of Deutsche Bank, where a “who’s who” of Rhenish entrepreneurship was also to be found. In addition to Kirdorf, the Rhenish-Westphalian committee included group leaders from Klöckner-Eisen-AG, Rheinische Braunkohlen AG, Rheinisches Braunkohlesyndikat, Deutz AG, Hoesch AG and others.⁹⁸
The coal industrialist Karl Wilke, a mine director at GBAG, reported on the extent of Kirdorf’s influence among German industrialists. He wrote in his memoirs that Kirdorf’s villa became a “place of pilgrimage” at the end of the 1920s, where the “Nestor of German heavy industry” — as Kirdorf was called — was revered as a “patriarch”.⁹⁹
That was no exaggeration. On Kirdorf’s birthday alone in 1927 — when he first met Hitler — over 300 industrialists undertook a torchlight procession to Kirdorf’s villa in pouring rain. The list of participants in this torchlight procession included Gustav Knepper, Ernst Tengelmann, Albert Hoppstetter, Karl Ruschen, Hermann Kellermann, Erich Fickler, Ernst Büskül and Gerd Haarmann — in short, the who’s who of leading coal industrialists who sat on the board of the mining association.¹⁰⁰
Arriving at Kirdorf’s villa, Alfred Hugenberg, who was also on the board of the mining association,¹⁰¹ gave a speech where he said the following about Kirdorf:
“Today the torches speak [...] As students, we honored our teachers and leaders with torches. Today, the managers and directors of the Ruhr coal mines honor their teacher and leader Emil Kirdorf.”¹⁰²
Little more needs to be said about Kirdorf’s influence in the economy and his political rôle — except that he had direct access to the Bergbauverein’s funds, as he was a member of the Bergbauverein’s executive committee until the early 1930s, and it was there that decisions were made about the use of the organization’s funds.¹⁰³ On a side note, the association’s correspondence also demonstrates clearly that Kirdorf was involved in the decisions on the use of these funds.¹⁰⁴
Finally, it must be said that the coal industrialists Emil Kirdorf, Fritz Thyssen and Albert Vögler were close friends.¹⁰⁵ All three were among the 19 leading major capitalists of the Weimar Republic.¹⁰⁶ It was precisely because of their close personal relationship that they played a major rôle in opening doors for Hitler and other [Fascist] leaders in the business world, giving them access to the political influence and money of German heavy industry.¹⁰⁷
(Emphasis added. Click here if you have time to read more.)
The agreement between major industry and NSDAP ideology cannot be overlooked. The big industrialist Fritz Springorum himself stated that he and the big industrialist Albert Vögler were “sympathetic to Hitler” as early as 1923 because Hitler “had made a breach in the Social Democratic working class with his movement”.⁶¹
This aspect of the ideological agreement between big industry and NSDAP thinking also shows that the fight against the working class was precisely one of the two reasons for the sympathies of the coal industrialists and also many industrialists on the “iron side”, which led them to Hitler.
[…]
In August 1932, the association of industrialists demanded that the Reich Chancellor award armaments contracts.⁸³ The demand for a return to the armaments business was also openly voiced at the conferences of large industry associations and at general meetings of leading corporations.⁸⁴
However, the return to the arms business also meant breaking the Treaty of Versailles and this step in principle also meant the overthrow of the Weimar Republic, for which the Treaty of Versailles was an essential basis for the framework conditions of its existence in international political relations. Therefore, fundamentally different political conditions had to be created. Both Hitler and the leading industrialists were aware of this.
When Hitler held a meeting of representatives of all leading corporations in February 1933 and held out the prospect of overthrowing the republic and re-entering the armaments business to the major industrialists, the management of all major German corporations joined him.⁸⁵ The major industrialist Fritz Springorum reported on this meeting:
“In this meeting, Mr. Hitler gave an account of the political development of the last fourteen years and explained his fundamental attitude to political events, as well as to the economy, individual personality and private property in such a way that he probably received the complete approval of all 27 gentlemen who were present.”⁸⁶
It is clear that the revolution in Germany in 1918/1919 and the resulting political struggles with the German working class along with the dilemmas created by the armaments crisis, especially as the Depression deepened, made Hitler very attractive to German major industry and to heavy industry in particular, with the coal wing, leaning most strongly towards him.
[…]
“Gentlemen!
Words of introduction are actually unnecessary with the guest we have the honor of seeing with us this evening. He made a name for himself in a short space of time through his political activities. He only came to public attention after the end of the war. His manly advocacy of his convictions earned him respect and admiration in the widest circles. We are delighted that he has joined us this evening. The club members have also expressed this joy by attending in such large numbers this evening […] tonight's event is better attended than perhaps any other club event to date.”¹⁰⁸These words come from Dr. Vorwerk, the head of the “National Club” in Hamburg. The “National Club” was an élite organization of leading industrialists, bankers, aristocrats, right-wing conservative politicians and senior civil servants in Germany.
On the evening of 28 February 1926 in Hamburg, Dr. Vorwerk used these words to introduce Adolf Hitler to the approximately 400–450 members consisting of shipowners, shipyard owners, bankers and merchants. The chairman of the club, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, explained the significance of the “National Club” in a letter as follows:
“It is obvious that [...] the scope for action of a club like the National Club is extraordinarily large, especially in view of its very important goals and the composition of its membership.”¹⁰⁹
Other local “gentlemen’s clubs” made up of regional industrialists, large landowners and bankers also invited Hitler. The chairman of the so-called “Mecklenburg Gentlemen’s Society”, in which the “leading personalities” of a northern German region from the aforementioned upper-class circles socialized, invited Hitler several times from 1927 onwards to speak to the club’s “select circle of gentlemen” about the goals of the NSDAP leadership.
In October 1928, for example, he wrote that “Mr. Hitler” must be interested in speaking to the “gentlemen’s society”, as the circle of its select and influential members “could and would do very considerable things for the National Socialist cause if he were to win it over.”¹¹⁰
Hitler was as sought-after as a rock star among the “upper ten thousand” of Germany’s “high society” and therefore had to think carefully about which invitations he accepted due to time constraints. Hitler’s problem was that the NSDAP was banned for a time due to the putsch in Munich in 1923. Hitler himself was imprisoned during this time. All his early relationships with business circles and influential supporters had been severed.
The NSDAP had to be re-established in January 1925. All this cost a great deal of money. Hitler was forced to look again for financially strong and influential supporters and began a veritable advertising tour through the clubs and salons of the “upper ten thousand” of Germany’s “high society” in order to meet influential industrialists and bankers and convince them to support the NSDAP.
His travels primarily took him to the Ruhr region, as he was most likely to meet with interest from heavy industry, which suffered from struggles with German workers since the revolution and the armaments crisis.
Hitler’s tour began on February 28, 1926 and ran until February 20, 1933, when it ended with an intimate meeting between Hitler and almost the entire leadership of all major German corporations in Berlin. A total of more than 40 meetings between Hitler and various industrialists and bankers have been identified for this period.¹¹¹ Of course, these are only the meetings between Hitler and leading industrialists and bankers that can still be traced today.
@[email protected] care to explain your dissatisfaction?
You changed the title, different from the published paper, to make it more click-baity. The actual paper is fine.
In what way is the title "clickbaity"?
You make it sound like it was coal itself or the workers that are responsible for the rise of Hitler. Industry owners played that part, which is clear from the paper, but unclear from your "headline."
Better?
I'm not the author, but anybody with even minimal reading comprehension skills can easily understand exactly what the title meant.