The Sunday Gentleman (57 page)

Actually, it appears that the Allies had intended to prosecute Gustav, as head of the Krupp firm. They had spent two years preparing a case against him. Since the old man was now ill, three nations sent doctors to examine him. They reported him incompetent. (He died five years later, at seventy-nine, in a servant’s cottage on his Austrian hunting estate.) The new reigning head of Krupp, Alfried, was substituted for his father. Justice Robert H. Jackson agreed that, while Alfried must be tried, he could be tried only as a minor war criminal. Although Alfried’s offenses were committed in the British zone of Germany, the British refused to touch him. Consequently, the United States was left to do the job. In August, 1945, Krupp, along with eight of his company’s directors, went on trial before United States Military Tribunal Number 4 in Nuremberg.

Since Krupp was going on trial before three American judges—the presiding judge was H. C. Anderson, of Jackson, Tennessee—he demanded the right to hire an American attorney. This the authorities refused. Meanwhile, two Americans, a civilian and an army officer, promised Krupp that they could get him proper representation. He retained them and waited.

The efforts of the two enterprising Americans came to the attention of Earl G. Carroll, an army captain in Frankfurt. Carroll, a beaky, kindly, middle-aged lawyer, had prosecuted the accused in the Kronberg jewel robbery, and Colonel Kilian in the infamous Lichfield case. Carroll accused the Americans of “out-and-out fraud” and said that he was going directly to the Krupp family.

The night before the trial, Carroll advised the Krupp family that they could expect no help from the Americans they had retained. At once, Alfried’s younger brother, Berthold, asked Carroll himself to represent the family. “I told him I’d try,” said Carroll. “A special permit was required in order to represent war criminals in court. I applied for the permit. I was turned down. I then filed a notice of appearance. Immediately, the Army sent over an armed guard. I was hustled to an airport and flown out of Frankfurt. I then had my partners in Hayward, California, Tom Foley and John Purchio, apply to defend Krupp. They, too, were rejected. So Krupp went on trial without an American attorney, without any attorney of his own choice. The court foisted a young German named Gunther Geisler on him. In arguing over a legal point, Geisler got angry, refused to apologize to the judges, walked out, and was therefore barred from the courtroom. So Krupp had no red representation at any time.”

Case Number X, at Nuremberg—
United States vs. Krupp
—lasted forty-six days. The prosecution, led by Joseph W. Kaufman, of New York, turned up 85 witnesses. The defense presented 141 witnesses. To the first charge—of planning aggressive war–Krupp replied, “As a member of the fifth generation which produced steel, the fourth generation which forged weapons, I should like to add one thing. Never in my parents’ home did I hear one word or experience one act which welcomed or promoted any war, at any place, or at any time. The symbol of our house does not depict a cannon, but three interlocked wheels, emblem of peaceful trade.” On this first charge, Krupp was acquitted.

Next, Krupp was accused of spoliation—looting and plundering of captive nations. A prosecution witness recalled a scene in 1940—like an exaggerated moment out of an old pacifist play—when he saw Gustav von Bohlen, and three other German industrialists, seated about a large table studying a map of Europe, while a radio blared forth news of German Army advances through Holland and Belgium. The witness said old Gustav pointed to locations on the map, and announced, “We will arrest this owner here, and take his three factories. Over there, I will take over. You will have the other one, and you the third.” On this charge, Krupp was found guilty.

In the final count, Krupp was accused of harboring and abusing slave labor. The prosecution revealed that the Krupp works had accepted and used 55,000 displaced persons, 18,-000 prisoners of war, and 5,000 inmates from concentration camps. Many of these forced laborers had suffered cruelly. In one case, a captive Russian laborer had tried to pick up a crust of bread instead of metal scrap and had been shot to death by a guard. Later, a Krupp director congratulated the guard.

Krupp replied that he had been forced, against his wishes, to take on slave labor. Goering and Speer had delivered the prisoners, and moved seventy-five Nazi officials into the works to supervise them. Krupp insisted that he and his father, appalled by the condition of the laborers, had set up special kitchens to feed them.

In its judgment, the tribunal decided that Krupp employed slave labor “in armament production plants and in unhealthy and dangerous occupations, a number of whom suffered mistreatment in that housing, food, air-raid shelter and medical care were inadequate and that certain physical mistreatments occurred.” On this count, also, Krupp was found guilty.

The American judges sentenced Krupp to twelve years in the prison at Landsberg. It was at this time that Earl Carroll, returned to Frankfurt as a civilian attorney, re-entered the picture. He approached General Lucius D. Clay, United States High Commissioner in Germany, and asked permission to visit Krupp in prison. Permission was granted. Carroll saw Krupp in 1948, and was retained by Krupp to plead his case further.

Carroll wrote a brilliant 230-page brief requesting executive clemency for Krupp.

The lawyer summarized, to me, his reasons why the Americans prosecuted Krupp. “First, American isolation made us ignorant of Germany. The only people in America with any knowledge of Germany were refugees, bitter, filled with hate. We sent them back to administer for us. Three of the Krupp prosecutors were German or Austrian nationals. One admitted that members of his family had been gassed at Auschwitz. I don’t condemn their hate. In their place, I would have felt the same. But, from a purely judicial point of view, there was too much prejudice in Krupp’s trial. Second, in meetings with the Allies, Stalin had insisted that war criminals be punished. And he included industrialists as war criminals. Naturally. As a Communist, he wanted to get rid of as many capitalists as possible. Third, the case against Krupp was prepared two years before the war ended, against Gustav, who was then alive. When Gustav couldn’t be tried, his name was crossed out, his son’s substituted, and this son was accused of the same crimes, even though the accusations made little sense.”

To the argument that Krupp was lily-white, and railroaded into jail in his father’s place, the prosecutor, Joseph Kaufman, recently replied, “Alfried Krupp was found guilty on the basis of his own personal misdeeds, not his father’s. By special Hitler decree in 1943, Alfried became owner and head of the entire Krupp empire; not even his father enjoyed such ownership, which was vested in his wife, Bertha. Alfried voted for, approved and signed a Krupp resolution to establish a plant at the notorious Auschwitz so that the Krupps could directly employ the slave labor available there. The five hundred Hungarian Jewesses, who were later to disappear and never to be heard of again, except two or three who managed to escape, were slave laborers at Essen itself, where Alfried actively maintained himself as head of the firm.”

When Carroll presented his defense brief, appealing for clemency, to General Clay, the High Commissioner agreed that clemency was deserved. But before he could set up a board to act, he was replaced by John J. McCloy. “I went to McCloy,” said Carroll. “He studied the brief, and also agreed Krupp deserved clemency. But he felt that he was too new to his appointment to grant it immediately. A year passed. And finally, McCloy released Krupp.”

Krupp had been a prisoner for six years. “In prison, I read a good deal,” Krupp told me. “Whatever they gave me. Mostly American history and biography. I worked in the locksmith shop making ashtrays and crosses. I had learned this art when I was a student.”

Immediately after his release, Krupp returned to the Villa Huegel. He took an inventory of the 117 rooms, and then announced that American GI’s and British Tommies had “liberated” from his home one and a half million dollars’ worth of furnishings. He requested that the FBI and Scotland Yard return an assortment of old masters. Gobelin tapestries, Ming vases, Persian carpets, and sterling silverware. No sooner had Scotland Yard begun the hunt than it was revealed that $750,000 worth of Krupp’s belongings had been pilfered by six Germans, who had used the villa as an air-raid shelter. The London press was furious. Roared one English daily, “For impertinence, gall, and unmitigated crust in high places, let the undisputed heavyweight championship be awarded to that scaly millionaire, Mr. A. Krupp.”

Meanwhile, Krupp, flanked by Carroll and another American attorney from New York, Joseph G. Robinson, went after bigger game. In 1951, Krupp began negotiating to recover his factories. After months of legal gymnastics, Krupp won back his one-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar empire. The Russians wanted Krupp’s holdings confiscated. The British and Americans did not. Justice Jackson had disapproved of confiscation of property, saying, “We have no such penalty, and for historical reasons, that would be extremely unacceptable to the American people.”

Krupp was returned his empire, on the condition that he get rid of his coal and steel holdings. “Alfried doesn’t get a dime from coal and steel today,” explained Carroll. “What he will get is the proceeds of the forced sale of securities. A banking group has been given five years to liquidate the coal and steel. If they don’t find buyers, the whole thing goes on the auction block.”

While the lengthy negotiations proceeded, Krupp had a great deal of time on his hands. “I have been active in the works only since March of this year,” he said to me. “In the two years before, while negotiations were going on, I was permitted to do nothing. Once, just to see the extent of the devastation to my factories, and to let my employees know I was alive, I visited the works. The next day, my manager was called to Duesseldorf by the Allies and ordered to explain what in the devil I had been doing in the plant.”

On the social side, Krupp was more active. In May, 1952, in the mayor’s office at Berchtesgaden, he married attractive forty-year-old Baroness Vera von Hohenfeldt, an American citizen. It was Krupp’s second marriage and Vera’s fourth. She had come to the United States in 1939, the wife of a German movie director named Frank Wisbar, who now makes television films in Hollywood. She became an American citizen in 1946, and divorced Wisbar three years later. She then went to work as a receptionist for Dr. Sigfried Knauer, a Los Angeles physician, married him, and divorced him in 1952, five months before returning to Germany to marry Krupp. Once, she had sold cosmetics in a Los Angeles department store, and roughed it in a small apartment. After marrying Krupp, she wrote her friends in Hollywood, “Now I carry out no more garbage cans!”

This year, as his wife busied herself furnishing their new California-style home in the shadow of the old villa, Krupp returned to manage the works. Except for business appointments, he has refused to see outsiders. Especially, he has avoided the foreign press. For two months, I tried to contact him from Paris, but received no reply. Just when I had about given up hope of his granting an interview, I received a telegram:
WOULD BE PLEASED TO SEE YOU NEXT WEEK AT MY OFFICE ESSEN ALTENDORFERSTRASSE 103. ALFRIED KRUPP BOHLEN.

It was a Tuesday morning when I saw Krupp. There were four of us in the spacious room—Krupp, tall and serious; his wife, Vera, bright and brisk in a brown suit; myself; and a large stately oil portrait of great-grandfather Krupp. We gathered at one end of a long directors’ table, and sat and talked through the morning. Krupp’s English was labored but accurate. He said that he had learned it in his German school, during a brief stay in England, and from his American attorneys, since their German was limited to
auf Wiedersehen
.

His wife, on the other hand, spoke a breezy American English. She was proud of her American citizenship, said that she visited the States regularly, and that she voted in the last presidential election. She begged me not to refer to her as “a former actress.” She had never been an actress, she said. A girl friend had once got her a bit part in a German movie. In Hollywood, she had not acted at all. She went on to say that she had met Krupp twenty-three years before, “at someone’s home in western Germany.”

During my talk with Krupp, Vera constantly and gently interrupted her husband, elaborating on or revising statements he made, fearful that everything he said would be misinterpreted. Usually, Krupp ignored her interruptions, and went doggedly on with what he was explaining. I had the overall impression of a man who, right or wrong, was extremely candid. He dodged no questions. I will give one startling example.

While I was determined to ask him about Adolf Hitler, I was afraid that he would not be direct with me. When the average German is questioned about Hitler today, he assumes an expression which seems to say, “Hitler? How do you spell it?” I expected Krupp to suffer similar amnesia. Consequently, I did not ask him if he knew Hitler. Instead, I told him that I had been reading a book, recently published in London, that recorded all of Hitler’s luncheon conversations, taken down at the command of Martin Bormann. Had Krupp read the book? He said that he had not.

“Well,” I went on, “this book quotes Hider as saying that he used to enjoy greatly coming down to Essen to see the works and to see you.”

Immediately, Vera interrupted. “Hitler visited all the plants in Germany, not only Krupp!”

Krupp did not look at her. He stared at me a moment, then he said, “Of course, I knew Hitler. I would see him when he came here. He was very smart about industry, about technical problems, and about new weapons. He knew absolutely nothing about economics. He had one obsession. With him, everything had to be not just big, but the biggest. I think that is why he liked me, liked to come to Essen. My plant was the biggest. My cannons were the biggest. My villa was the biggest. I remember once in Berlin, he pointed out the Olympic Stadium, which had held the 1936 games, and seated over a hundred thousand people. ‘You know,’ he said to me, ‘if I had built that, I’d have made it really big!’”