Money doesn't always buy a way out. In the early 1930s, a specific group of German industrial titans—the original 20th-century oligarchs—thought they could buy a politician. They viewed Adolf Hitler as a loud, useful tool. To them, he was a "drummer" who would beat back the unions, ignore the Treaty of Versailles, and get the factories humming again. They were half-right about the humming factories, but they were dead wrong about the control they thought they’d have.
By the time the bombs started falling on their own refineries, it was clear. These men, who controlled the steel, the coal, and the chemicals of Europe, had signed a pact with a regime that eventually viewed private property as a secondary concern to total war. Many of these oligarchs who came to regret supporting Hitler ended up in prison, in exile, or watching their empires get dismantled by the very "order" they helped fund.
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It's a messy story. It’s not just a tale of "evil businessmen," but of short-sighted greed meeting a level of fanaticism they didn't think was real. They thought it was all campaign rhetoric. It wasn't.
The Iron King Who Lost Everything: Fritz Thyssen
If you want to understand the archetypal story of the oligarchs who came to regret supporting Hitler, you have to start with Fritz Thyssen. He wasn't just a donor; he was the guy who literally wrote the book I Paid Hitler.
Thyssen was the head of United Steelworks. He was terrified of Communism. In 1923, he met Hitler and was charmed. He started funneling huge sums of money to the Nazi Party when they were still a fringe group of brawlers. He even joined the party. He honestly believed Hitler would restore the monarchy or at least a stable, conservative authoritarianism that favored big business.
The regret didn't take long to set in.
By 1935, Thyssen realized the Nazis weren't interested in a partnership with capital; they wanted to dictate to it. He started speaking out against the persecution of Jews and the rush toward a war that he knew would bankrupt Germany. When Kristallnacht happened in 1938, Thyssen resigned from the Prussian Council of State. He fled to Switzerland and then France, but his "friends" in the Gestapo caught up with him. They stripped him of his citizenship, seized his entire industrial empire, and threw him into a concentration camp. Imagine that: the man who helped fund the rise of the Third Reich spent the end of the war as a prisoner in Sachsenhausen and Dachau.
He learned the hard way that when you feed a tiger, you're eventually on the menu.
The IG Farben Trap: When Your Business Becomes a Crime Scene
Then there's the case of the IG Farben board. This wasn't just one guy; it was a massive chemical conglomerate—the largest in the world at the time. Men like Carl Bosch and Hermann Schmitz weren't necessarily raving ideologues at first. They were technocrats. They wanted "autarky"—self-sufficiency.
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The regret here was more gradual and, frankly, more pathetic. They became so entwined with the regime through the production of synthetic rubber and oil that they couldn't separate their business interests from the Holocaust. By the time they were building a factory at Monowitz (Auschwitz III), the "regret" was mostly about the looming realization that they would be tried as war criminals.
Hermann Schmitz, the CEO, went from being a global business titan to a defendant at Nuremberg. The company he helped build was literally broken into pieces—becoming what we now know as Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst. They thought they were building a global monopoly. Instead, they built a legacy of shame that still haunts German corporate history.
Why the Industrialists Miscalculated So Badly
You’ve gotta wonder: how did some of the smartest businessmen in Europe get it so wrong?
Basically, they suffered from the "CEO Complex." They assumed Hitler was a rational actor who understood economics. He wasn't. Hitler viewed the economy as a servant to the military. If a factory owner didn't want to pivot to war production, the state would just appoint a "commissar" to run the plant.
- Loss of Autonomy: By 1937, the "Four Year Plan" under Hermann Göring basically told oligarchs what to produce, what to charge, and who to hire.
- The Göring Works: When the traditional steel barons hesitated to mine low-grade German iron ore (because it was unprofitable), Göring just started his own state-owned steel company and took their resources.
- The Debt Bomb: The Nazis "paid" for their orders with Mefo bills—essentially IOUs. Smart industrialists like Hjalmar Schacht (who wasn't an oligarch but their main link to Hitler) realized early on that this was a giant Ponzi scheme.
Hjalmar Schacht: The Financial Wizard’s Bitter Exit
While not a factory owner, Hjalmar Schacht was the man the oligarchs trusted. He was the President of the Reichsbank. He was the "stabilizer." He liked Hitler’s ability to break the back of the unions, but he hated the "wild" spending.
Schacht is a prime example of someone who thought he could "steer" the radical elements from the inside. He ended up in a concentration camp too. By 1939, he was out. By 1944, after the failed plot to kill Hitler, he was arrested. He spent the last months of the war in Flossenbürg. He survived, but his reputation was in tatters. He spent the rest of his life trying to explain that he was "just a banker," but the world didn't really buy it.
The Krupp Family: Regret or Just Resilience?
Alfried Krupp is a bit of a different story. The Krupp dynasty had been the "Cannon Kings" of Germany for generations. They didn't initially like Hitler—they thought he was too "socialist" and low-class. But once the orders for tanks and U-boats started rolling in, they jumped on board.
Alfried Krupp eventually regretted the consequences of his support. He was sentenced to 12 years at the Nuremberg trials and had his property confiscated. He was later pardoned by the Americans (because of the Cold War), but the "Krupp" name became synonymous with slave labor. The regret in the Krupp family was often more about the loss of their social standing and the destruction of their ancestral plants than a moral epiphany, but the downfall was just as steep.
Lessons for the Modern Era
It's easy to look back and say "well, they were just evil." But the reality is more boring and more terrifying. They were opportunistic. They thought they could use a populist movement to protect their bottom line.
They forgot that radical movements usually eat their backers.
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The oligarchs who came to regret supporting Hitler prove that a stable legal system and a predictable government are actually better for business than a "friendly" dictator. When you trade the rule of law for the rule of a "Strongman," your contracts are only as good as the leader's current mood.
What to Look for in History (and Today)
- The "Useful Idiot" Phase: Watch for when business leaders think they can "tame" a radical leader through funding.
- The Pivot to Command: Notice when the state starts telling private companies what their "patriotic duty" is regarding production.
- The Exit Problem: Once you're in, you're in. By 1942, a German industrialist couldn't just "quit." That was considered sabotage, punishable by death.
If you’re interested in the deep mechanics of this, I highly recommend reading The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. It’s a dense book, but it completely destroys the myth that the Nazi economy was a well-oiled machine run by happy capitalists. It was a chaotic, cannibalistic system that eventually consumed the very people who built it.
To really wrap your head around this, start by looking into the "Keppler Circle" or the "Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft." It was a group of businessmen who thought they were the inner circle. Most of them ended up either bankrupt, imprisoned, or living in obscurity after 1945. It’s a stark reminder that in the game of power, the guy with the guns always beats the guy with the checkbook.
Next Steps for Deeper Research
- Research the "Keppler Circle": Look into how this group of businessmen tried to influence SS policy—and how it backfired.
- Read "I Paid Hitler" by Fritz Thyssen: It’s a primary source (though some parts were ghostwritten) that captures the exact moment a billionaire realizes he's made a deal with the devil.
- Trace the IG Farben Split: Look at how a single company responsible for the darkest chapters of the war was broken up into the pharmaceutical giants we know today.