Thread by @JimmyFalunGong

the second episode for today is about WWII, and I introduce Alfried Krupp

Hjalmar Schacht, using financial trickery to keep rearmament off the books

Krupp and the other industrialists were not paid for their weapons in reichsmarks, but in “mefo bills”, which were IOUs from the Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, hence the “mefo”

This was a dummy company representing four banks and two government ministries, who were themselves backed by the Reichsbank...

All of these payments would be processed at the Central bank, where everyone in the chain would be paid without a single dollar appearing on anyone’s books or financial statements...

The mind is baffled at certain financial transactions, but there you have it: Schacht contrived flows of billions and billions, completely hidden off anyone’s books. He did it in 1933, and he did it later, after the war.

it's a terrible photo, but check it out - it's Alfried Krupp w/ Hitler on Hitler's birthday, 1939

this one's a little better - it's them giving Hitler a present

here's the top Nazi hierarchy w/ Gustav Krupp

for a few years, Alfried Krupp was happy, when he married a completely normal middle class Bavarian woman.

then his family forced him to divorce her if he wanted to inherit the Krupp Steel empire

the Krupp family's problems with her was that she had been married before and one of her sisters married a Jew

we know all the inside family politics through Tilo von Wilmowsky, Gustav's brother in law, who knew all the hot gossip and wrote several books

When Nazi Germany declared war on Great Britain, Gustav Krupp, ever the Anglophile, was very upset, and got it in his head to write two very important letters to help avoid war. Mind you, he wasn’t totally gone at this point.

He wrote one letter to “a leading British politician”, and said “I don’t know whether the gentlemen in Berlin have any idea what it means to become involved with the British Empire”

who might that have been, I wonder?

also, if you think about the privileged view Gustav Krupp had to observe geopolitics for decades and decades, that statement sounds much more foreboding.

Gustav also wrote another letter to a man “high in the industrial world of the United States”. I’d kill to know which US industrialist, and what he wrote

there's also the story of a Bavarian art dealer named Artur Rümann, who had a lunch appointment in an exclusive Düsseldorf club with three Ruhr industrialists including Alfried Krupp.

Unfortunately for Rümann, the meeting was interrupted by news of the invasions. They turned on the radio, and then the businessmen brought out a map. He saw them marking and circling on the map, divvying up factories amongst themselves.

Rümann said they resembled vultures around their carrion, and that he was deeply shaken by the sight of German industrialists planning their pillage and looting.

when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, capturing the Ukraine was one of the main goals, right?

it was a major food belt, and it had iron, coal, and steel factories to rival the Ruhr.

the long term goal was to create an independent colonial state allied to Germany, but in the short-term, all Ukrainian assets would be held by something called the Mining and Foundry Works Company East, Incorporated - Berg- und Hüttenwerksgesellschaft Ost

Guess who ran that? Alfried Krupp, of course. Krupp’s company also ran the entirety of the gigantic Molotov works. William Manchester suggested that the Krupps were probably the only people in all of Europe to make money off of Operation Barbarossa.

of course, it all ended for the Nazis at the Battle of Kursk, where the Reich had lost 70,000 soldiers and 3,000 tanks, which were made with Krupp steel

it's a good episode, check it out