This brief history explores the relationship between Adolf Hitler and the industrial magnates who once reviled him, but ultimately empowered his rise. Figures like Alfred Hugenberg and Fritz Thyssen navigated their own ambitions while enabling a regime that would lead to catastrophe. Sound familiar?
After cantankerous negotiation, a deal was reached: Hugenberg would deliver Hitler the chancellorship, in exchange for Hugenberg being given a cabinet post as head of a Superministerium that subsumed the ministries of economics, agriculture, and nutrition. Once in the cabinet, Hugenberg didn’t hesitate to meddle in foreign relations when it suited him. Reinhold Quaatz, a close Hugenberg associate, distilled Hugenberg’s calculus as follows: “Hitler will sit in the saddle but Hugenberg holds the whip.”