The House of Krupp by Peter Batty

Author:Peter Batty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461741534
Publisher: Cooper Square Press
Published: 2018-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

“We take great pride in the fact that our products have come up to expectations”

JUST HOW massive a contribution Krupp’s Armaments Division made to Hitler’s war machine can be judged from an official German military document prepared in February 1942. It extols in particular the Krupp 88 mm. anti-aircraft gun that had already been put through its terrible paces in Spain on behalf of Franco long before the Second World War had even started. But it also lauds Krupp anti-tank guns and Krupp self-propelled guns. It especially praises the Krupp 105 mm. recoil-less gun with which the German paratroopers had been equipped for the invasion of Crete “where it gave an excellent account of itself”. It lists too Krupp rocket-assisted shells and Krupp armour-piercing shells. It boasts of the effectiveness of Krupp tanks and Krupp fuse-setting machines. It commends the high quality of the Krupp naval guns and the Krupp armour-plating as fitted to the pride of the German Fleet: the battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, the cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. And it records of course the contribution of the U-boats Krupp’s were building by the score. All of which must have been extremely gratifying to Alfried, the director in charge of armaments. It allowed him to declare in his annual report, “We take great pride in the fact that our products have come up to expectations.”

As the German Army overran one country after another, Krupp experts were sent to see that the captured factories were quickly tied into the Nazi military machine. On Berlin’s instruction, Alfried himself flew out to the Ukraine in the summer of 1942 to supervise the taking over of the iron and steel industry there, while other directors made certain that the Essen firm got the biggest slice possible in the pickings of machine-tool factories in France, shipbuilding facilities in Holland, metal works in Belgium, nickel mines in Greece, and chromium deposits in Yugoslavia. Even the great Philips electrical complex at Eindhoven in Holland fell into Krupp’s grip.

Nor was it always simply a matter of plundering the output on the spot—in many cases Krupp technicians dismantled whatever machines they could lay hands on for transshipping to Krupp sites elsewhere. For example, in 1943 the Russians’ modern electro-steel mill at Mariupol was broken down to be re-erected as part of Krupp’s new Berthawerke near Breslau in eastern Germany. Towards the end of the war Krupp’s despoliation of the occupied countries became quite wilful. In France for instance most of the Austin factory at Liancourt, the Almag plant at Mulhouse, and the Alsthow works at Belfort, were manhandled bodily back to Essen.

In view of such devotion to the Nazi cause, it came as no shock to anyone when in March 1943 Alfried was awarded the Nazi Cross for Meritorious War Service. He had already that same year been made a War Economy Leader by Hitler who had charged him with the main responsibility for mobilising the full resources of the nation’s armament industry. To accept this post,

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