Who were the financiers who provided the manufacturing and technical expertise which allowing Hitler and the Nazis to overrun so much of Europe and commit the Holocaust? And, after the war, what actions if any were taken against them not only for their material support of Hitler, but also for the use of slave labor on a scale not seen since the Roman Empire?
Mr. De Jong spent four years researching this book focusing on four major German families; the Quandts, the Flicks, the von Fincks and the Porsche-Piechs. How is it that the Krupps are so well known and yet these families contributed in so many ways to the Nazi war machine, producing tanks, guns of every caliber, ammunition, drugs, medicines and almost every other item that a nation needs for war.
Some of the named above were successful industrialists before Hitler’s rise to power, such as the Quandts while other took advantage of the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses. “Aryanization” was the concept that with the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, Jews were forbidden to own factories and businesses. In order to comply with the law, Jewish businesses were “bought out” by Germans for pennies on the dollar and then those few pennies were determined to be the cost of an exit visa from Germany as many of the Jews fled to other countries. Such theft was in itself a crime that these and other families committed but add to the list the inhuman treatment of the slave laborers and the wheels of justice should have centered on these families. Why weren’t these families the targets of justice?
One reason was that at the end of the war, the Soviets and Allies began to move into the next phase of their relationship which was the Cold War. Yesterday’s enemies suddenly became if not exactly todays friends, but they were necessary allies in the rebuilding of Europe’s ruined economies. Another was that lawyers, judges and others who served the Nazi judicial system, went right into the judicial system of occupied Germany. This included honorary SS men of high rank who had been part of Himmler’s “Circle of Friends”, attorneys who has practiced law during the time of the Nazis and others.
Although all of the above families (mostly the elderly patriarchs of each House), were initially detained and their assets seized, most were either given token sentences or small fines, especially if they could provide Persilscheine, known as Persil tickets. These were sworn statements from Jews who had known the German individuals before the war, stating that they either did not support Hitler (they only went along to save their businesses), or were kind to Jews, etc. With that, they were free to go back to their industrial empires.
It was not until the 1970s that a new generation of judges and attorneys took their places in the police and judicial positions that a new level of reckoning came about. By that time, the patriarchs were either infirmed or dead and it fell to the next generation who were in control of the companies and it was they who faced the hard questions of the past. Although many of that generation gave to charity, they refused to address compensation to the ex-slave laborers or their descendants. Instead, they concentrated on continuing to build their empires, often at the expense of on of the other families.
When his research was nearly complete, a story broke in Germany about another wealthy family, perhaps the wealthiest family in Germany, the Oetkers. There is a short section which was added to his original work but the author decided not to continue his investigations as he realized that there were other families who had managed to hide their wartime actions for so long.
An interesting section in the book discusses Magda Goebbels who was originally married to Gunther Quandt. She was smitten by Joseph Goebbels and left Gunther to become informally, “the First Lady of the Reich”. She adored Hitler and he her; it was said that he would have married her except Joseph saw her first. At the end of the war, poisoned her small children, then she and Joseph committed suicide (her son by Gunther, Harald Quandt survived and went into the family business. The suicide note she to her old friend tells her story:
“We have demanded monstrous things from the Germany people, treated other nations with Pitiless cruelty. For this the victors will exact their full revenge…Everybody else has the right to live. We have not got this right-we have forfeited it…I make myself responsible. I belonged. I believed in Hitler and for long enough in Joseph Goebbels…In the days to come Joseph will be regarded as one of the greatest criminals that Germany has ever produced. His children would hear that said daily, people would torment them, despise and humiliate them. They would have to bear the burden of his sins; vengeance would be wreaked on them…You know how I told you at the time quite frankly what the Fuhrer said in the Café Anast in Munich when he saw the little Jewish boy, you remember? That he would like to squash him flat like a bug on the wall…I could not believe it and thought it was just provocative talk. But he really did it later. It was all so unspeakable gruesome, perpetrated by a system to which I belonged. It has amassed such lust for revenge all of the world-I have no choice, I must take the children with me, I must! Only my Harald will survive me. He’s not Goebbels’s son…
The lesson of history is there; no matter what you do, try to have something of value to trade.
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