The Corporate-Capitalists who saved Hitler

Just somethin I read.
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link:https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis

“…..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 February 20, 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….
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….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.”