Mighty Family

BLOOD AND STEEL: THE RISE OF THE HOUSE OF KRUPP--Bernhard Menne-- Furman ($3).

In the 17th Century there was a Krupp in Essen who made a neat parcel of money by selling small arms to the opposing armies in the Thirty Years' War. For two centuries Krupps were modest grocers, moneylenders and ironmasters. Then Prussia placed an order for solid shot with Friedrich Krupp's ironworks and they began to make money in a big way. Since then, war by war, Krupps have grown richer. It is the weary conclusion of German Exile Bernhard Menne, whose biography of the Krupp family was published in the U. S. last week, that there will be Krupps in Essen as long as there are governments and wars.

Alfred Krupp was the particular protege of Bismarck and Wilhelm I. The Franco-Prussian War advertised his products and the Krupp firm became the greatest manufacturer of armaments in the world. Alfred Krupp retired to his castle in the Ruhr Valley in quivering hypochondria, went to bed in a room overlooking the stables, for he was always stimulated by the smell of horses. His son Fritz, while the German Navy grew like a house afire and the family firm got most of the armor plate orders, went to Capri, founded a mock religious order with gold insignia in the form of projectiles, on his doctor's orders lay on his stomach each day for an hour after lunch. To keep him company, all his male guests lay on their stomachs too.

When he died in 1902, Kaiser Wilhelm II delivered a eulogy after the funeral.

Fritz's 16-year-old daughter Bertha became nominal head of the company, by 1913 was the richest person in Germany.

(Krupp cannon, as a delicate compliment to her, were called Big Berthas.) The Kaiser permitted her husband to change his name to Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach "to ensure at least an appearance of continuity of the Essen dynasty." Krupp von Bohlen built model huts for his workers but he was always "master in his own house"--meaning that he permitted no unions. Between 1914 and 1918 Krupp's profits were magnificent. But when the Kaiser came to address Krupp employes in the last days of the War and cried, "We will fight and hold out to the last man. So help me God! Let those who will do this answer me--Yes!"--the workers answered: "Hunger!" The Krupps were not much alarmed by the change of Government in Germany after the War. Their Wartime profits were about 800,000,000 marks and they were given a subsidy to compensate them for the War's sudden end. No longer allowed to manufacture munitions, they turned out trucks, machinery, artificial teeth. The Krupps were not among the financial backers of the Nazis, says Author Menne, but now they are earning (at least on paper) enough money to make their Wartime profits seem like BBs beside cannon balls.

Readers of Blood and Steel may be staggered by the Krupps' arrogant way with governments and their reckless profiteering, but Schneider, Skoda, Vickers, Putiloff, Armstrong, were as bad or worse.

Bernhard Menne, who worked for Krupps till Germany got too hot for him, would have written a better book if he had spent less time on Krupps under the Empire and more on Krupps under the Nazis.

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