Fritz Thyssen

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Fritz Thyssen
Fritz Thyssen in 1928
Born
Friedrich Thyssen

(1873-11-09)9 November 1873
Mülheim, Germany
Died8 February 1951(1951-02-08) (aged 77)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
OccupationBusinessman
SpouseAmelie Helle
ChildrenAnita

Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen (9 November 1873 – 8 February 1951) was a German businessman, born into one of Germany's leading industrial families. He was an early supporter of the Nazi Party but later broke with it.

Youth

Thyssen was born in

Gräfin Zichy-Thyssen), was born in 1909. Thyssen again joined the army in 1914, but was soon discharged on account of a lung
condition.

Weimar Germany

Thyssen was a

Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG), controlling more than 75 percent of Germany's iron ore reserves and employing 200,000 people. He played a prominent role in German commercial life, as head of the German Iron and Steel Industry Association and the Reich Association of German Industry, and as a board member of the Reichsbank
.

In 1923, Thyssen met former general Erich Ludendorff, who advised him to attend a speech given by Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party. Thyssen was impressed by Hitler and his bitter opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and began to make large donations to the party, including 100,000 gold marks ($25,000) in 1923 to Ludendorff.[2] In this he was unusual among German business leaders, as most were traditional conservatives who regarded the Nazis with suspicion. Thyssen's principal motive in supporting the Nazis was his great fear of communism; he had little confidence that the various German anti-communist factions would prevent a Soviet-style revolution in Germany unless the popular appeal of communism among the lower classes was co-opted by an anticommunist alternative.[3] Postwar investigators found that he had donated 650,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁ to right-wing parties, mostly to the Nazis, although Thyssen himself claimed to have donated 1 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ to the Nazi Party.[4] Thyssen remained a member of the German National People's Party until 1932 and did not join the Nazi Party until 1933.

In November, 1932, Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht were the main organisers of a letter to President Paul von Hindenburg to urge him to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Thyssen also persuaded the Association of German Industrialists to donate three million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the March 1933 Reichstag election. As a reward, he was selected to run as a Nazi candidate in the election, was elected to the Reichstag and subsequently was appointed to the Council of State of Prussia, the largest German state.

In 1933, the artist

communist magazine Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ, Workers' Illustrated Newspaper).[5] [6]

Nazi Germany

Thyssen welcomed the Nazi suppression of leftist organisations such as the

Social Democratic Party, and trade unions. In 1934, he was one of the business leaders who persuaded Hitler to suppress the SA, leading to the "Night of the Long Knives
".

Thyssen became a member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law.[7] He accepted the anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany that excluded Jews from business and professional life, and dismissed his Jewish employees. But as a Catholic, he objected to the increasing Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany, which gathered pace after 1935: in 1937 he sent a letter to Hitler, protesting at the persecution of Christians in Germany.[8] The breaking point for Thyssen was the violent pogrom against the Jews in November 1938, known as Kristallnacht, which caused him to resign from the Prussian Council of State. By 1939 he was also bitterly criticising Nazi economic policies, which focused on rearmament in preparation for war.[9]

World War II

On 1 September 1939, the invasion of Poland marked the commencement of World War II. Thyssen sent Hermann Göring a telegram saying he was opposed to the war,[10] shortly after arriving in Switzerland with his family.[11] He was expelled from the Nazi Party and the Reichstag, and his company was nationalised. The company was returned to other members of the Thyssen family several years after the war.

In 1940, Thyssen took refuge and moved to France, intending to emigrate to Argentina, but was caught up in the German invasion of France and the Low Countries while he was visiting his ill mother in Belgium.[citation needed]

In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany,[12] but he was arrested by Vichy France and sent back to Germany, where he was confined, first in a sanatorium near Berlin, then from 1943 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His wife Amelie did not escape to Argentina and spent the whole war in the concentration camp with her husband.

In February 1945, Thyssen was sent to

SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the 42nd Infantry Division and 45th Infantry Division on 5 May 1945.[13]

Later life

Thyssen was tried for being a supporter of the Nazi Party. He did not deny that he had been a Nazi supporter until 1938, and he accepted responsibility for his companies' mistreatment of Jewish employees in the 1930s, although he denied involvement in the employment of slave labour during the war. On 2 October 1948, a

Deutschmarks (equivalent to €1,652,535 in 2021) as compensation to those who suffered as a result of his actions, and was acquitted of other charges. In January 1950, he and his wife emigrated to Buenos Aires, where he died the following year. Thyssen was buried in the family mausoleum in Mülheim.[15]

Legacy

In 1959, Thyssen's widow Amélie and daughter Anita Gräfin Zichy-Thyssen established the

Deutschmarks (equivalent to €246 million 2021). Amélie Thyssen died in 1965. Anita Gräfin Zichy-Thyssen ran the Foundation until her death in 1990. The family has no say in the running of the Foundation.[citation needed
]

I Paid Hitler

Further information: Emery Reves § I Paid Hitler

While Thyssen was imprisoned in Germany, a memoir was published in the United Kingdom and the United States, in 1941, under the title I Paid Hitler. The book was ghostwritten by the journalist Emery Reves, the memoirs are seen as unreliable by historians.[16][17][18][19]

Thyssen, Fritz;

Archive.org
.

References

  1. ^ Brakelmann, Günter. Between Complicity and Resistance. Fritz Thyssen and National Socialism.
  2. ^ The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William H Shirer. 144.
  3. ISBN 978-0708817568
    .
  4. ^ The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William H Shirer. 145. There were post-war consequences of that activity .
  5. ^ John Simkin (2015). Fritz Thyssen, Spartacus Educational
  6. ^ Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Werkzeug in Gottes Hand? Spielzeung in Thyssens Hand!
  7. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8
    .
  8. ISBN 978-0-8050-7623-3
    .
  9. ^ Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Allen Lane. p. 372.
  10. Time Inc
    . 29 April 1940. p. 11. Retrieved 4 July 2024.
  11. ^ "I paid Hitler", 1941, p.38
  12. ^ Campbell, Duncan; Aris, Ben (25 September 2004). "How Bush's grandfather (Prescott Bush) helped Hitler's rise to power". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 July 2024. Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
  13. ^ georg-elser-arbeitskreis.de (German) Archived March 14, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ "Fritz Thyssen at his Spruchkammerverfahren in Königstein im Taunus (August 17, 1948)". The German Historical Institute. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  15. ^ "Thyssen Buried in Ruhr", New York Times, February 9, 1953, p. 27
  16. ISBN 9780241413470
    .
  17. ISBN 978-0-393-04671-7
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-19-503492-9
    .
  19. ISBN 978-1-59420-074-8
    .

External links
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