Thyssen and Krupp:
Germany’s own export laws contain contradictions: According to German export control guidelines, weapons should not be sold to countries engaged in active conflict or human rights abuses. Yet Germany remains a major arms supplier to Israel. This has led many jurists, scholars, and civil society groups to argue that Germany is violating its own arms export principles. To continue supplying arms to a state engaged in sustained, asymmetric warfare – under the justification of “defense” – is to ignore the basic logic that greater military capacity strengthens that state’s ability to act with force, whether defensively or offensively.
One of the main beneficiaries of Germany’s Staatsräson and its military support of Israel is the firm Thyssen-Krupp Martime Systems. This is historically speaking very interesting. The close relationship between a state and big corporations establishes the conditions for a political system called corporatism. Whereas in Germany corporatism has always been the main framework of its national political economy, there have been times that this was more explicitly so: namely between 1933 and 1945, which is the time better known as the Third Reich. Because linking named corporations to a currently ongoing genocide risks accusations if defamation and law suits, it is safer to dwell on actually documented historical facts, that have also been used during trials and have formed the basis of criminal convictions.
The industrial empires of Thyssen and Krupp were among the most powerful and influential in Germany during the early 20th century. Both companies played pivotal roles in Germany’s economic and military buildup, and their involvement with the Nazi regime during the Third Reich is well-documented and emblematic of the deep entanglement between German heavy industry and National Socialism. This essay explores the documented history of Thyssen and Krupp’s collaboration with the Nazi state, focusing on their war production, use of forced labor, political ties, and the legacy of their actions.
Both Krupp and Thyssen were already industrial giants by the early 20th century. Krupp, founded in the early 19th century, was synonymous with steel production and armaments manufacturing, supplying the German military with artillery and weaponry during World War I. Similarly, the Thyssen family built a vast industrial empire in steel and coal mining that became a cornerstone of Germany’s heavy industry.
The period between the two World Wars saw both companies recovering from the economic devastation caused by World War I and the Treaty of Versailles restrictions. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Thyssen and Krupp modernized their operations, preparing for renewed military production.
Fritz Thyssen, head of the Thyssen industrial empire during the Weimar Republic, was a notable early supporter of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP. He provided significant financial contributions that helped the Nazis rise to power in the early 1930s. His backing was not merely economic; Thyssen believed that National Socialism would restore Germany’s former glory and counter the perceived threat of communism and labor movements.
Thyssen was part of the influential circle of German industrialists who signed the “Industriellen-Notgemeinschaft” letter to President Hindenburg, urging him to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. This political maneuvering reflected the industrialists’ hopes for a regime that would stabilize the economy and suppress leftist movements. Krupp, meanwhile, was closely aligned with the Nazi regime once it took power. Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the company’s head during the Third Reich, was personally appointed a “Wehrwirtschaftsführer” (War Economy Leader), a title bestowed on key industrialists essential to the Nazi war effort. Krupp’s factories were integral to Germany’s rearmament program, producing tanks, artillery, and other heavy weaponry critical to the Wehrmacht.
Both Krupp and Thyssen rapidly expanded their production under the Nazi regime, benefiting immensely from state contracts. Krupp became a cornerstone of the Third Reich’s war machine, manufacturing tanks such as the famous Tiger and Panther, heavy artillery, submarine components, and steel for the Luftwaffe. Thyssen’s operations similarly focused on armaments and steel production essential to the war effort. Both companies profited enormously from rearmament and war production, which were key pillars of the Nazi economic strategy.
A well-known fact is the extensive use of forced labor as a core component of the corporations’ “success”. As Germany expanded its occupation across Europe, both Thyssen and Krupp exploited millions of forced laborers—including prisoners of war, civilians from occupied countries, and concentration camp inmates—to maintain production amid labor shortages. Krupp’s factories were directly linked to concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Ravensbrück. The company employed over 100,000 forced laborers, who endured brutal working conditions, malnutrition, mistreatment, and high mortality rates. Thyssen also used forced labor extensively in its steelworks and factories, contributing to the suffering of thousands. Forced labor was not a side effect but a systematic part of their business model during the war, enabling increased production at minimal cost while perpetuating Nazi atrocities.
Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, both Krupp and Thyssen were subject to investigations and legal proceedings regarding their role in the Nazi war economy. Alfried Krupp was tried in the Krupp Trial (one of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials) in 1948. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity for exploiting forced labor and supporting aggressive war efforts. He was initially sentenced to prison and had his assets confiscated. However, amid Cold War political realignments, he was released in 1951 and gradually regained control of his industrial empire. This pardon and restitution symbolized a controversial continuity of power among German industrial elites. Thyssen’s fate was somewhat different. Fritz Thyssen, who had broken with the Nazis and fled Germany in 1939, was interned during the war and later lost much of his influence. However, the Thyssen company itself survived denazification relatively intact and eventually merged into what became Thyssenkrupp AG in the postwar period.
For decades after the war, both Krupp and Thyssen were reluctant to confront their Nazi-era activities. Only in the 1980s and 1990s did serious historical research, public debate, and survivor activism push for acknowledgment of their role in Nazi crimes. The companies have since engaged in “compensation programs” for surviving forced laborers, though these efforts have been criticized as insufficient by many historians and victims’ groups. The historical record firmly establishes that Krupp and Thyssen were not passive entities but active collaborators in the Nazi war machine. Their close integration with the Nazi state, exploitation of forced labor, and contribution to military aggression make them emblematic of the moral and ethical failures of German heavy industry during the Third Reich.
The documented history of Thyssen and Krupp reveals a troubling picture of how major corporations can become deeply entwined with authoritarian regimes and war crimes. Their story serves as a cautionary tale about the responsibilities of industry in times of conflict and the importance of transparency and accountability. While these companies have evolved and merged into today’s Thyssenkrupp AG, their legacy remains a stark reminder of the human costs of unregulated industrial-military collaboration. The history of Thyssen and Krupp in the Third Reich underscores the need for continued vigilance to prevent the complicity of industry in oppression and atrocity.
The second chapter of this deeply disturbing history is the return of corporatism with the rise of right-wing extremism. What seems to be the antithesis of the globalist neoliberal deregulation is, however, merely another version of it. Whereas corporations and finance markets have globalized under the neo-liberal jihad against social democracy, this has merely served the undermining of any form of nation-based political economics that might regulate the multinational practices of exploitation and extortion. This is why the ideas of Sarah Wagenknecht in Germany, Bernie Sanders in the USA and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK are destined to fail. They seek to increase national sovereignty over economic policy, while having no means to enforce anything. Moreover, should any of their policy ideas be implemented, they will be immediately sanctioned by global corporatism. A simple example of this is the way that the Trump regime sanctions Brazil for trying to hold Jair Bolsonaro accountable. This may also explain why Sarah Wagenknecht is increasingly aligning itself with right wing populism and emphasizing a future for Germany that is controlled by Putin’s Russia.
The decomposition of International Law did not start with Trump. If anything, it was always already a terminal patient. Joe Biden was perhaps the person who turned it into a cadaver, first by refusing to stop the genocide in Gaza and second by failing to stop the dismantling of checks and balances during the first two years of his office and then stopping the Democratic Party from engaging in a democratic procedure to choose his successor. Of course, failing to stop the genocide in Gaza, not just because of a lack of will but because of a continued expansion of military support for the genocide, ensured that many Americans who would have voted for Kamela Harris, decided not to vote. With hindsight, this accelerationist logic has if course proven to be total failure the Trump Regime has now turned what was left of democracy and the rule of law in the USA itself into a rotting corpse.
Thyssenkrupp AG, however, is doing extremely well. It did not need democracy in the 1930s and it certainly does not need democracy today. Democracy simply means that it cannot make easy money. War, Forced Labour and Genocide are much better for the securing of corporate interests. Just like in the 1930s, corporatism is alive and well today. Every decision to increase military spending or to support warmongering countries such as Israel benefits not only the corporations whose activities are part of the military industrial complex but also their shareholders. Many of these shareholders are involved in deregulated, international financial transactions; many of these shareholders are also decision-makers and the mouth-pieces of their propaganda.
As of publicly available reports, Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) has been a long-term supplier of military submarines to Israel, often with partial funding from the German government. This means that German taxpayers are funding both the Israeli state’s war machine and the dividends of shares of this company. These Dolphin-class submarines, some of which are capable of launching cruise missiles, are considered strategically significant in Israel’s military arsenal. While Thyssenkrupp is not directly involved in the Gaza conflict in a narrow operational sense (of course, they merely manufacture stuff that kills; the killing is done by others), the submarines—and broader military-industrial ties—contribute to Israel’s overall military capacity, which includes its operations in Gaza.
The irony that opposing the same corporatism that enabled the Third Reich is now considered to be anti-Semitic and against the interests of Germany is more than merely perverse. The fact that opposing the justification, that a genocide can serve the German Staatsräson, is being criminalized, is proof that we have not learned anything from that period of world history. The fact that two major enablers of the Third Reich – and therefore also enablers of the Shoah – are now profiteering from another genocidal war, should not be kept silent.
Disaffected Sociology 
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