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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 began his public support of the Nazi Party, or 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), was the bank's lawyer; he also represented Baron Kurt Von Schroeder, the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen banking companies.
Baron Kurt von Schroder, who was a business partner of E. Roland Harriman, W. Averell Harriman and W. Prescott Bush, and Johann Groening, were directors of a Thyssen steel foundry. Von Schroder later became treasurer of another investment group that helped finance the Nazi Party. Thyssen and the New York-based W.A.Harriman & Co investment bank open a new financial institution, the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), officially a purely American investment by its official stock holders, W.A. Harriman (3991 shares), Cornelis Lievense (4 shares), Harold D. Pennington (1 share), Ray Morris (1 share), H. J. Kouwenhoven (1 share), Johan Groeninger (1 share) and Prescott Bush (1 share) (share totals from http://www.gatt.org/bushhitler.html).
When Thyssen joined the movement, support for the Nazi party was approaching critical mass in and around Germany. Thyssen's Bank, voor Handel en Scheepvaart, and the millions of American investment dollars funneled through his financial institution, Bush-Harriman Union Banking Corporation (UBC), contributed to Hitler's sudden rise in popularity with the German people, along with Germany's political history, Adolf Hitler's charismatic speeches and magnetic persona, and the Great Depression. The financing his institutions provided proved instrumental in arming the Sturmabteilung or SA, a 500,000 member-strong private army that proceeded to wipe out all opposition in the street and intimidate the German public with its massive marches. The merging of the German Thyssen Steel empire with the Poland based Frederik Flick´s Silesian Coal and Steel Company, to become United Steel Works, was a financial event that generated large amounts of money used to support the Nazis. The Polish Government reacted angrily to such an important industry being in German hands and threatened Nationalisation on more than one occasion. To avoid such a consequence it was important to transfer nominal ownership into American hands. Payments to private accounts of high Nazi government members continued, including Hitler himself, took part until 1944. The payments always were effected by Union Banking Corporation. That bank had been seized by 1942, but operations continued from the postal address of the public office which had seized it. The preceding is pure opinion.
George Herbert Walker appointed Prescott Bush to help him supervise the new Thyssen/Flick United Steel Works. Walker, Bush and Harriman owned a third of Flick’s Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Company, Poland's largest industry, and called the holding company Consolidated Silesian Steel Corp. John Foster Dulles became director of Consolidated Silesian Steel Company. Its sole asset was the one third interest in Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Company (the remaining 2/3 of the shares were held by Fredrick Flick), which eventually came to depend, as did the United Steel Works, on slave labor from nearby Auschwitz. The Silesian American firm had been seized by Germany prior to any camp at Auschwitz, making these claims dubious.
In 1930 Thyssen, together with other industrialists, 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. The claim about his treatment is not documented.
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 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. The claims are not documented.
Thyssen was "freed" in 1945 but shortly afterwards was 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.
See also
External links
- http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/odessa.html
"Fritz Thyssen"