David de Jong reveals the links to the Third Reich of the German magnates and fortunes who exploited and enslaved millions of European workers
They exploited millions of enslaved workers. They financed and armed the army of the Third Reich. They were complicit in his atrocities and fortified fortunes that were already enormous. But it was free for big business and powerful German magnates to collaborate with the Nazis. So says David de Jong, author of ‘Money and power in the Third Reich’, an essay that reads like a novel and reveals the intra-history of the richest and most powerful dynasties in Germany: BMW, Oetker, Porsche, Varta, Krupp and others. , Daimler Benz, Siemens, Allianz, Volkswagen or DWM. And of magnates like Günther and Herbert Qandt or Friedrich Flick, in the antipodes of Oscar Schindler.
“It must be said that it was all free for them and that they have come a long way from the time Hitler came to power until the end of the war,” explains De Jong, an economic journalist who has covered the origins and evolution of these great fortunes that, far from shrinking, grew with the war and thanks to the genocidal Nazi barbarity.
He estimates that together they had “between twelve and twenty million enslaved workers from all over Europe in factories or mines”. And that they did it “for free”. “War is not profitable for anyone, but it was for them, who had almost free slaves and ended up winning far more than what they lost in the war,” he says.
De Jong shows how most businessmen went unpunished. And that an agreement between Germany and the United States in 1999 created a $5 billion fund for the victims of the atrocities they participated in. Half was supplied by Germany and the other half by eighty companies such as
“The serious thing is that they didn’t have to assume any guilt or moral responsibility. The highest compensation a slave worker received did not exceed $8,000, De Jong complains. Thus began an “effective money laundering process that continued throughout the 21st century.”
Most families “were opportunists and were already very wealthy before the war. Some prospered in the Weimar Republic, others with the arrival of Hitler and almost all with the war. But it’s surprising that they continued to thrive under any system, when the Cold War came and with democracy.
De Jong points out the Oetkers – that of Dr. Oetker pizzas- as “the most collaborative”. Like all major corporations and families he has investigated, “they were complicit in Nazi atrocities.” “They cooperated with the SS and many of them built concentration camps next to their factories, using the prisoners from the large extermination camps.” The chemical company IG Farben did it with the prisoners of Auschwitz; BMW with that of Dachau; Daimler Benz with those from Sachsenhausen; Siemens with Ravensbrück and Volkswagen, Porsche and Dr. Oetker with Neungame.
“They also had their satellite camps next to their factories and paid the SS for labour: six marks for a skilled worker and four for an unskilled worker. They were watched in factories, shot at, hanged and denied medical attention when they received amputations while working with heavy machinery. The food was lousy. They weren’t workers, they were just slaves,” De Jong repeats.
He assures that of all the pro-Nazi businessmen, the most sinister, perverse and notorious beneficiary of the barbarity of the Third Reich was Freidrich Flick, the richest German for four decades, who controlled an empire of steel, weapons and coal during Nazism. . “He was the only one to be tried and convicted in Nuremberg. Sentenced to seven years, he spent only three in prison. Ruined, he restructured his companies and was already the majority shareholder of Mercedes Benz in the 1960s. He died in 1972, with a fortune comparable to that of Getty or that of the royal line of Saudi Arabia.
After the war, almost all businessmen declared themselves “apolitical or anti-Nazi”. They said they had no choice for Hitler. “But there was. Fritz Thyssen, father of the baron who sold his art collection to Spain, was a member of the Nazi party. He voted against the occupation of Poland in parliament. He had to flee to Paris, where the Gestapo arrested him. Of course there was a choice, but with consequences’, concludes De Jong.
Money and power in the Third Reich’ is the first book by De Jong, a journalist specializing in economics and finance who spent four years researching to write it. Born in the Netherlands and based in Tel Aviv, he has worked for Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and the Duch Financial Daily.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
