When big business rolled over for fascism — and cashed in: A lesson, or a warning?

At the beginning of 1933, the National Socialist German Workers Party, better known as the Nazis, found themselves on the brink of financial ruin. The party had spent down its reserves on a now-historic election campaign earlier that year in which it won a plurality, though not a majority, of seats in the Reichstag, Germany's parliament. Adolf Hitler, who now held executive power as chancellor — with the backing of mainstream conservatives who hoped to control him — parlayed his gains to call for new elections that spring, in hopes of riding his momentum, along with a heavy dose of political thuggery, to an absolute majority.

This was a major gamble. To feed its propaganda apparatus and pay for the "brownshirts," Nazi militias who stalked Germany's streets "discouraging" opposition, the party needed money it didn't have.

"We are all very discouraged, particularly in the face of the present danger that the entire party may collapse," complained Joseph Goebbels, a party leader who later led the Reich's propaganda ministry and "total war" economy. "The financial situation of the Berlin organization is hopeless. Nothing but debts and obligations.”

The aid that Goebbels and other Nazi leaders needed soon arrived, along with 20 or so bankers and industrialists who arrived in chauffeured cars at the official residence of Reichstag president Hermann Göring on the night of Feb. 20. The agenda for the meeting was set: Hitler would assure this group of Germany's richest men that their fortunes would be preserved, or more likely multiplied, under Nazi rule. In return, they would offer Hitler the money he needed to destroy the political opposition — forever.

After more than a decade of Nazi ascendance, the party and the barons who would bail them out still distrusted one another. One can debate how seriously the Nazis took themselves as a "socialist" party, but it was right there in the name — they were aggressively nationalistic and racist but also, at least rhetorically, a working man's party. In addition to demanding land and territory to "settle our surplus population," barring Jews from German citizenship and deporting any non-Germans who had entered the country after 1914, the 25-point NSDAP program published in 1920, before Hitler took control of the party, also called for "the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations." 

The key word in that clause is "all," because it was entirely deceptive. In his own words, and as manifested later in actual Reich policy, Hitler believed in nationalizing only some businesses, or some parts of businesses — those owned by people he deemed undesirable and/or subhuman — and dividing their assets between the Nazi state and loyal businessmen. Empowering the workers? Not so much.

"We have to bring a process of selection into the matter in some way, if we want to come to a natural, healthy and also satisfying solution of the problem, a process of selection for those who should be entitled — and be at all permitted — to have a claim and the right to property and the ownership of companies," he told Otto Wagener, his economic policy advisor, in 1930.

At his core, Hitler despised Marxism, viewing it as an insidious Jewish conspiracy. The international class struggle predicted by Karl Marx directly contradicted the Nazis' racial-nationalist and decidedly anti-egalitarian weltanschauung, which championed welfare only for healthy, virtuous and "useful" members of the master race. The feeling was mutual; in 1932, Leon Trotsky rebuked the NSDAP as a socialist party in name only that "conducts terrorism against all socialist organizations ... in its ranks one finds all classes except the proletariat." 

Hitler's avowed opposition to left-wing politics would later endear him to Germany's capitalists, though that moment had to wait for many years after he explained his beliefs in "Mein Kampf." Throughout the 1920s, most of Germany's wealthy industrialists preferred to support explicitly business-friendly conservative parties, who offered a less overtly destabilizing vision for the nation's future. At first, most wealthy Nazi supporters were a mixed bag of aimless socialites, heirs and heiresses who wanted to feel special (in this case, racially and culturally special; see Nordic Circle) and those who held antisemitic beliefs or were attracted to Hitler's call for national revanchism and perhaps to Hitler himself. But as the Weimar Republic's economy collapsed, so did the ruling coalition led by the center-left Social Democratic Party. Popular discontent emboldened both the Nazis and the Communists, and increasingly, industrial and banking leaders came to see Hitler as the weapon they could wield to crush the radical left.

"Not all capitalists were particularly enthusiastic about the Nazis, but their skepticism was relative and ended as soon as it became clear that Hitler was the only person capable of destroying the labor movement," recalled Albert Krebs, a Nazi Party official. That, of course, was not universally true; Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, a heavy industry magnate whose famous firm produced the bulk of German war materiél during World War I, was an enthusiastic Hitler backer well before the 1933 breakthrough, making large financial contributions to the party and distributing copies of "Mein Kampf" among his workers.

After the Nazis won a plurality of Reichstag seats in July 1932, a group of conservative elder statesmen from the Weimar government, largely representing business and aristocratic interests, collaborated to have Hitler appointed as chancellor the following January. In elevating Hitler as nominal government leader, while retaining 85-year-old military hero Paul von Hindenburg as president and Franz von Papen as vice chancellor (and presumed puppetmaster), the group hoped that Hitler would crush their opponents on the left and cede effective authority to them. He did the first, but not the second. 

A month later, Göring convened another group of leaders from Germany's capitalist class for an election fundraiser of sorts in his official residence. Among those who accepted the invitation were banker Hjalmar Schacht, who would later become the Third Reich's chief finance minister; Georg von Schnitzler, head of the chemical and pharmaceutical giant I.G. Farben; and industrialist Günther Quandt, who was also, oddly enough, the former husband of Goebbels' wife Magda. Krupp, the arms king, was also present.

Despite holding political power, the Nazis badly needed those men. The party's financial situation remained perilous, and they needed to assure the invited audience that their alliance would remain useful even after the Communists had been defeated or destroyed. Clad in a civilian suit and tie rather than his Nazi stormtrooper's uniform, Hitler outlined plans to purge the government of leftists and eliminate trade unions, arguing that the moneyed assemblage's economic interests were best served by assertive militarism and the outright destruction of Germany's parliamentary system. "Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy," he declared.

After Hitler departed, Schacht asked the other attendees to deposit as much money as they could into his private trust, which the Nazis could use however they liked heading into the March 5 election. Göring added that the election "will surely be the last one for the next 10 years, probably even for the next 100 years," a situation that would ease the "financial sacrifices" asked of them. In the end, the fundraiser generated 3 million reichsmarks, about $30 million in today's money.

Even if Göring was technically incorrect — the Nazis continued to stage elections, for a while — effective political opposition ceased to exist, and by July of 1933, all non-Nazi parties were banned. Two years later, the Nuremberg Race Laws, which designated Jews, Roma and Black people as "enemies of the race-based state," allowed the government to officially expropriate Jewish property and businesses and distribute the spoils to non-Jewish Germans. Adolf Rosenberger, the Jewish co-founder of Porsche, was convicted of "racial crimes" because of his relationship with a Gentile and stripped of his stake in the company. (Rosenberger was luckier than most other German Jews; he fled to the U.S. and spent the rest of his life in California under the name Alan Robert.) 

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Hitler, honoring the promises made at this "Secret Meeting," disbanded and outlawed all independent trade unions, then imposed a centralized, party-governed "union" called the German Labour Front, which was effectively an instrument for the Nazis to exert control over workers' lives. Strikes and collective bargaining were not permitted, and the union's primary purpose was to fuel the Nazi war economy, which was largely contracted out to private industry.

Indeed, it was these major capitalists who reaped the greatest rewards from Germany's early wartime victories. The conquest of Poland and several other territories in Eastern Europe brought to Germany an influx of slave laborers — drafted civilians, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates — who were forced to work dangerous machinery without protective clothing, denied medical attention and adequate food, and summarily executed for minor infractions. The life expectancy of slave laborers at the I.G. Farben facility at Auschwitz was less than four months; more than 25,000 died at the construction site alone. That, of course, was the point — if someone was useful enough to work but not worthy of normal life, they were worked to death. Replacements were almost endlessly available; an estimated 12 to 20 million people were deported to Germany as laborers during the war, and at least 2.5 million died.

Under Nazi patronage, German corporations offered generous, bloody tribute, and were well compensated. Krupp supplied heavy armaments, including tanks, artillery and U-boats; Allianz provided insurance for the concentration camps; Hugo Boss furnished (but did not always design) the uniforms of the SS, SA, Wehrmacht and Hitler Youth; and Degussa, a subsidiary of I.G. Farben, produced and delivered more than 56 tons of the pesticide known as Zyklon B to Nazi extermination facilities from 1942 to 1944. Its only use was to fulfill the "Final Solution" as far as possible — that being the extermination of Europe's Jewish population — as well as to murder millions of other camp inmates.  

After the war, 24 I.G. Farben executives were put on trial for their role in the Holocaust. In his opening statement, prosecutor Telford Taylor declared that "they were the magicians who made the fantasies of 'Mein Kampf' come true ... They were the guardians of the military and state secrets.” In this case, the stereotypical German penchant for record-keeping doomed the defendants; 6,384 documents submitted as evidence — purchase orders, meeting notes, inventories, internal letters and memos — indicated beyond doubt that they knew exactly how many Zyklon B canisters were sent to Auschwitz and what they were being used for. The defense argument that they were just bureaucrats punching the clock didn't fly, and 13 of them were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Some of them got off lightly. Schnitzler, one of the convicted I.G. Farben executives, was released after four years and returned to the business world. Quandt, the ex-husband of Goebbels' wife, was judged to be a Mitläufer, meaning someone who accepted Nazi ideology but did not directly partake in its crimes. Schacht, tried with other leading Nazis like Göring, Albert Speer and Joachim von Ribbentrop, was acquitted on charges of conspiracy and crimes against peace, largely because he'd been imprisoned by the Nazis after the July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler (although Schacht was not involved).

The 75-year old Krupp was supposed to be tried alongside Schacht, but had become senile and was deemed medically unfit. His son Alfried and 11 other corporate directors faced charges in a later trial for participating in “the murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, and use for slave labor of civilians.” The younger Krupp was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but reportedly never expressed remorse during or after his detainment. When a Daily Mail journalist asked him in 1959 if he felt any guilt for his role, he responded: "What guilt? For what happened under Hitler? No. But it is regrettable that the German people themselves allowed themselves to be so deceived by him."

It was unclear from that phrasing whether Krupp considered himself to be among the deceived.