Fritz Thyssen
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Fritz Thyssen (November 9 1873 - February 8 1951) was a German industrialist associated with the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler.
He was the son and heir of August Thyssen, owner of an empire of factories. During World War I the Thyssens were producing armament and ammunitions for the German army.
Being a member of the DNVP, he started to support the NSDAP. By 1926, when Fritz inherited the empire, they controlled two thirds of Germany’s ore supplies. Since 1923, Fritz Thyssen, through the family's Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam, loaned the Nazi Party money to build the very first Nazi headquarters in Munich. Allen Dulles, of New York City's Sullivan and Cromwell (and future director of the CIA), is the bank's lawyer; he also represents Baron Kurt Von Schroeder, the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen banking companies.
Baron Kurt von Schroder and a business partner of Prescott Bush, Johann Groening, are directors of a Thyssen steel foundry, and von Schroder later becomes treasurer of another investment group that raises money to arm the Nazi Party. Thyssen and the New York based W.A.Harriman & Co investment bank, open a new financial institute, the United Banking Corporation (UBC), oficially a pure american investment by its oficial stock holders, W.A. Harriman and Prescott Bush.
When Thyssen joins the movement, the Nazi party is gaining critical mass around Germany. The charismatic speeches and persona of Hitler, the Depression, Thyssen's Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, and the millions of American investment dollars funneled through the Bush-Harriman United Banking Corporation (UBC) all contribute to Hitler's sudden rise in popularity with the German people. Bush-Harriman and their financial allies in the US investment establishment are partially responsible for the rise of Hitler, caused by the strong financing of his party and the arming of a 500.000 members private army, called SA, that wipes out all opposition in the street and intimidates german public with its massive marches, as by merging the german Thyssen Steel empire with the Poland based Frederik Flick´s Silesian Coal and Steel Company to be United Steel Works - a financial event that generates large amounts of money used to support the Nazis. Payments to private accounts of high Nazi government members, including Hitler himself, take part until 1944. The payments allways are efected by United Banking Corporation, also that bank had been seized by 1942, but operatations still go on by the bank now located under the postal direction of the public office which had seized it.
George 'Bert' Walker appoints Prescott Bush to help him supervise the new Thyssen/Flick United Steel Works. Walker, Bush and Harriman own a third of Flick’s Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Company, Poland's largest industry, and call the holding company Consolidated Silesian Steel Corp. John Foster Dulles becomes director of Consolidated Silesian Steel Company. Its sole asset is the one third interest in Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Company (the remaining 2/3 of the shares are held by Fredrick Flick), which will eventually depend, as will United Steel Works, on slave labor from nearby Auschwitz.
In 1930 Thyssen, together with other industrials, bought the "Braunes Haus" in Munich and financed its remodelation to be NSDAP headquarter. They also started a campaign to encourage other industrialists to work with the NSDAP. In 1930, first May, he officially becomes a member of the NSDAP.
He was also an ideological supporter, since he backed repression against trade unions and left-wing parties. However, he was in strong disagreement with the religious persecutions of Jews. One of his strongest motivation to join the NSDAP was likely his dislike for the Treaty of Versailles.
Following the Kristallnacht, Thyssen resigned from all his political offices and fled to Switzerland and then to France. Hitler confiscated all his property and demanded his capture. The Vichy government of occupied France promptly obeyed and Thyssen was sent to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. He however was not treated like a "common prisoner" there.
He was also reported to have attended an August 10, 1944 "secret meeting of top German industrialists and bankers" held "at the Maison Rouge hotel in Strasbourg to devise a means of insuring a secure future for Nazis. Among those attending were coal tycoon Emil Kirdorf, Georg von Schnitzler of IG Farben, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, steel magnate, Fritz Thyssen, and banker Kurt von Schroeder." If Thyssen attended this meeting before he had been freed this then this raises some questions as to his real status in Nazi Germany. In any case he was part of a privileged meeting of Germany's industrial elite in which they made plans about how best to accommodate to the now approaching defeat.
Thyssen was "freed" in 1945 but shortly afterwards arrested and convicted for being a former member of the Nazi Party. The "conviction" was however not a very harsh one, allowing him to regain financial power quickly. He lost about 15% of his property to war victims. He died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1951.