Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History Of Germany's Wealthiest Families, De Jong - B+

           Three weeks after the Nazis came to power, they summoned Germany's leading industrialists to a meeting. Gunther Quandt, arms and battery tycoon, Friedrich Flick, steel magnate, Baron Finck, financier, Kurt Schmitt, Allianz and Munich Re executive, Gustav Krupp von Bolen und Halbach, as well as executives from IG Farben and potash giant, Wintershall, were in attendance. Hjalmar Schacht, former Reichsbank president chaired the meeting. Hitler spoke for ninety minutes, and advised them that he would be ending Germany's democracy, and rule as a dictator after an upcoming parliamentary election. Schacht asked the men for three million marks for the election campaign. They agreed.             

           This book is a history of how Germany's richest cooperated with the Nazis before and during the war, profited, escaped punishment afterwards, and how their families still dominate the country today. "Their dark legacies remain hidden in plain sight."

           Gunther Quandt's textile business prospered in WWI, but the Spanish flu of 1918 took his wife. He remarried Magda Friedlander, who would later be known as the First Lady of the Third Reich, when she was the wife of Joseph Goebbels. Their son, Harald, was born in 1921. Throughout the 1920's, Gunther began accumulating industrial businesses. He and Magda divorced in 1929.  Harald was the model for the future Hitler Youth and was heavily involved in the world of the Nazi's. 

          Hitler's appointment as Chancellor was effective January 30, 1933. Soon after the meeting between Hitler and the industrialists mentioned above, the Reichstag burned down and Hitler announced he would rule unilaterally. Because of the tensions between Quandt and Magda Goebbels, the Nazi state bullied Quandt, and at at one point, arrested him, held him in solitary confinement for six weeks, and released him on bail of over one million $US. 

         At the 1934 Berlin Auto Show, Hitler announced that the industry should not be focusing on cars for the rich, but rather build a car for the people. He summoned Ferdinand Porsche, who he had had a chat with a year earlier about race cars, to build the Volkswagen, proceeded to tell him its key features, and set the price for which the people's car should sell. Porsche and his son in law, Anton Piech began to work on the Volkswagen and, at the same time, bought out the firm's Jewish co-founder, Adolf Rosenberger, for a fraction of the value of his interest. Hitler blessed Porsche's design in 1936. In 1938, the Fuhrer lay the foundation stone of the VW plant in Wolfsburg. A year later, Porsche delivered the first VW to Hitler. Only 630 were manufactured prior to the conversion of the factory to the war effort.

         For August von Finck, the Nuremberg Race Laws and the acceleration of Aryanization of Jewish assets offered him the opportunity to greatly expand his private banking business. The Anschluss provided the extraordinary chance to takeover S.M. von Rothschild, Austria's largest private bank.

         When war came, it brought unimaginable wealth to many, but few were as successful as Quandt. His firms provided uniforms, Luger pistols, submarine batteries, and on and on to the Reich. Many of the firms that were part of Quandt's empire had been plundered through Aryanization from Germany's Jews. 

       Also riding high was Friedrich Flick, who built an arms industry in eastern Germany, arguing that it was important to diversify away from the Ruhr, home of Krupp and Thyssen. Flick "became one of the preferred partners for the army." In addition to being an effective manufacturer, Flick was a skilled deal maker, who understood the requirements of acting in the shadows so the world could not see that Germany was rearming. Like Quandt, he utilized Aryanization to buy Jewish businesses at a fraction of their value.

        The war brought to the magnates the acquisition of businesses and properties in Poland, the USSR, and throughout occupied Europe. Many of their sons were at war. Harald Quandt parachuted into Crete in the war's most successful airborne operation. From there, he fought on the front lines in the east. In late 1944, he was wounded in Italy and captured by the British. Rudolph Flick lost his life in the opening week of Barbarossa. With so many men in uniform, the German economy used the labor of twelve million men, women and children brought to the Reich as slaves, as well as prisoners forced to live and work in abhorrent conditions. 

        In the waning days of the war, Quandt, Flick, and Finck fled to Bavaria, where they hoped they would be able to have their future determined by the Americans. The US Treasury Dept. compiled a list of forty-three businessman to be indicted for war crimes. Quandt and Flick were on the list. The Allies planned to break up the industrial behemoths and prosecute their CEO's. Finck too was arrested, but as a financier, he had avoided the dirty work of arms manufacturing with slave labor. Porsche, Piech and Ferry Porsche, Ferdinand's son, were all arrested, but the three were released by year's end. A year later, the French arrested the automakers, but their prosecution floundered. Porsche and Piech negotiated a 1% licensing fee for every VW Beetle ever made, assuring the family's wealth for generations. During the first Nuremberg trial, both Schacht and von Papen were found not guilty, thus making the prosecution of businessmen less likely. The US turned over the evidence it had to German authorities. At Quandt's denazification trial in 1948, he was able to leverage Goebbels hostility into a very light penalty of court costs. He was soon a free man. Von Finck's trial was later in 1948 and led to a two thousand DM fine. The only people who faced serious charges were Alfried Krupp, Flick, and Farben's senior executives. The US indicted Flick for crimes against humanity and the use of slave labor. After a months long trial, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail. As the Cold War evolved, it became apparent that the US desired a strong W. German ally. Flick and many others were released from jail early. By the end of the 1950's, he was once again the wealthiest man in Germany.

       West Germany boomed in the post-war era, and those years eventually became known as the economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder).  Gunther Quandt died in 1954 leaving an estate of 55M DM to his two sons. Included in the inheritance was a 4% stake in Daimler. By the end of the decade, the Quandt's owned 15%, but the Flick family owned 40%. The two families cooperated in the management of the car company for decades. Herbert Quandt, Gunther's oldest son from his first marriage, began to accumulate BMW stock , and became the company's largest shareholder. He successfully restructured the company and built his ownership up to 40%. His two children still own the shares. West Germany joined NATO in 1955, and the Quandt's began making weapons for the Bundeswehr. Ferry Porsche designed and built the new Leopard tank. 

        In 1970, the magazine, Der Spiegel, published an article called Nine Zeroes, pointing out that four of the country's billionaire families had as the foundation of their wealth activities during the war. The Quandts, Flicks, Fincks, and Oetkers were all headed by Nazis. When Friedrich Flick died in 1972, he was one of the five richest men in the world. His heirs sold his businesses and became passive investors. In 1980, Finck died and his sons sold the private bank for 660 M DM. By 1982, both Herbert and Harald Quandt were dead and their half-dozen heirs inherited designated pieces of the empire. 

       By the new century, reunified Germany was taking a hard look at its past. The state and an alliance of major companies paid a settlement to the surviving slave laborers. In 2007, a documentary called The Silence of the Quandt's aired on television and led to a brouhaha when a Quandt dismissed its observations. The family had an 1187 page history published a few years later. And although it whitewashed some of the story, the family made a $6M contribution to a forced labor documentation center. Porsche also addressed the slave labor issue with a contribution. Nonetheless, "the scale remains tipped in favor of money and power. Many German business dynasties continue to sidestep a complete reckoning with the dark history that stains their fortunes, and so the ghosts of the Third Reich still haunts them."

     Seldom is the financial side of history's big stories ever told. I believe Manchester's 'Arms of Krupp' published in 1964 was the first I ever came across. It's a very important topic and one treated here by a journalist who does a superb job.