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This chapter looks at the beginnings of the Krupp company, which were built out of the substantial investments left behind by the founder Friedrich Krupp's grandmother, Helene Amalie Ascherfeld-Krupp. After her death, Friedrich almost immediately merged his own trading firm into that of his grandmother and liquidated them both in order to concentrate on specialty iron known as Gussstahl or Tiegelstahl (cast steel) production. The venture looked like, and was, a wild speculation, giving up a solid business legacy for something that rested on an arcane and uncertain new mode of fabrication. The chapter traces Krupp's business decisions from that point on, taking note of his partiality for “English steel” as well as the eventual decline of his business later in life.

This chapter debunks the myth that Krupp had been a driving force behind the high-level making of Nazi policy, rather than a participant in a massive web of ideologically driven immorality. It examines the Nuremberg trial of the Krupp directors, considering the issue of the extent to which businessmen had choices or a freedom to maneuver in the Nazi era. Furthermore, though the prospect of rearmament was an issue within the company, the chapter argues that the rise and fall of profitability did not correspond directly to the political stance of the company, its owners, and its management. Financial incentives alone did not determine the political orientation of the Krupp business, particularly as the company soon found itself embroiled in the Nazis' politics and the Second World War loomed over the horizon.

This chapter discusses the next era in the Krupp corporate history, detailing the company's various innovations and setbacks during this period, as well as the Krupp family's latest representative—Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. It first details the contentions over the next heir to the Krupp business, a question finally resolved when heiress Bertha Krupp married the diplomat Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach. Gustav was initially treated with some reserve by the directors of the company, and was moreover increasingly at odds with the nationalist management of the company. Complicating matters further was the outbreak of the First World War.

This introductory chapter sketches a brief portrait of the Krupp company. It first explores the various symbolisms of the Krupp name over the years, the criticisms and praise leveled at the company, and considers how this company had become as iconic as was and is, especially in the world of business. The chapter examines three themes which it credits with the development of the Krupp company: the absence of an exclusive focus on profitability, an acknowledgement that technically advanced enterprises exist in an international and even global system, and the company's position between family affairs on the one hand and the establishment of a business organization on the other.

This chapter studies Krupp in the postwar world, particularly in the company's attempts at reinventing itself in the modern age. It first discusses the extent of the postwar German industrial recovery, as German business began the new era with very limited financial resources, and considers the new management approaches undertaken by the company following the war. The chapter also examines the company's weathering through yet another financial crisis as the German steel industry fell in decline. Yet throughout all this the chapter shows how the company has attempted to recover and reinvent itself, becoming more globalized in the process and yet somehow returning to the roots of German industrial culture.

This chapter sketches a portrait of Alfred Krupp. It describes how Alfred Krupp perfectly fits the mold of the heroic entrepreneur. Profoundly skeptical of joint-stock companies, banks, and capitalism in general, but also of big-scale science and modern research methods, he was a genius at extending to its utmost limits the possibilities of the craft entrepreneur. He developed an extraordinarily successful business model that allowed the principles of the small workshop to be extended on a gigantic and global scale. Moreover, the chapter credits him with a social philosophy which eventually created a community of Kruppianer, workers bound to the enterprise and the community by pride in the product of their labor.

This chapter turns to the next generation, and examines the business ethic and the political and personal life of Friedrich Alfred Krupp. Friedrich Alfred Krupp is described a rather kind and gentle person who tried to improve relations with the workforce, who also reflected endlessly about the problems of his age and tried to find answers based on modern science. Furthermore, the chapter shows that, in just the same way as the regime of Alfred Krupp had seemed to mirror the establishment of the German Empire and the Bismarckian political settlement, Friedrich Alfred's world corresponded to that of Wilhelmine Germany, and Wilhelminism was above all about size and power.

This chapter details the Krupps' struggles during the aftermath of the war, as the company struggled to find a new role in a state that was reinventing itself dramatically. It describes workplace struggles, the postwar demilitarization efforts, Krupp's attempts at hidden rearmament, financial troubles, and other difficulties buffeting the company in the aftermath of World War I. The chapter also depicts a period of stabilization and recovery for the company, though the reprieve would be short-lived, as economic depression would strike Germany sometime during the 1920s. In addition, this period heralded the arrival of a new patriarch, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach II.

Chapter 4 explores how various conceptions of the Nazi totalitarian state influenced the findings and prosecutions of the Industrialist Trials at Nuremberg conducted against key officials in the Flick, Krupp, and I.G. Farben companies. The chapter considers the influence of the Frankfurt School and Franz Neumann’s theory of the Nazi state as Behemoth on the prosecution’s innovative theory of the Nazi regime. The tribunals’ legal reasoning rejected Neumann’s theory of Behemoth and insisted instead on a link being established with state authority, influence, or control as a basis for the responsibility of corporate officials. The chapter analyses the shortcomings of the tribunals’ approach in meeting the normative challenge of the Industrialist Trials, namely to develop principles for establishing responsibilities among businesspersons operating as such. Furthermore, it reveals how the tribunals’ conceptions of the corporate veil of the state, the company, and the relation between them served as a shield against individual responsibility.

Chapter 5 analyses the possible influence of competing conceptions of the corporate structure of authority, its ethos, and popular perceptions as a possible explanation to the treatment of corporate officials in the industrialist trials. The chapter draws inspiration from Max Weber’s typology of legitimate authority and analyses how the bureaucratic features of the Farben enterprise, the association of the Krupp officials with the tradition of German militarism, and the persona of the charismatic Friedrich Flick all contributed to their ascriptions of legitimacy and scope of their recognized responsibility. Furthermore, it analyses how conceiving the structure of authority of the German companies primarily as monopolies or cartels served to delegitimize them and thus justify harsh legal measures against them. The chapter develops a critique on the decision not to engage with a rigorous analysis of corporate structures of authority in the Industrialist Trials as part of the legal reasoning required to establish the responsibility of corporate officials in international law.

The discipline of sexology emerged between close of the 1860s and World War I. In Central Europe, a series of sex scandals mediated new sexual knowledge to a general public by means of sensational court cases and their reportage. The cases in turn relied upon the testimony of expert witnesses, just as police investigations utilized the findings of sexual science in their handling of crimes. Finally, individual subjects, whether the objects of psychological case histories or targets of criminal justice, understood themselves in ways that related to these scientific and sensational representations, and that fed into them. The chapter follows the career of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), whose work on sexual pathology was of monumental importance. The chapter relates the physician’s earlier interest in trance states and deliria to the focus on sexuality, and regards the relationship of self-identified inverts, contrary-sexuals, or homosexuals to the development of these sexological categories. Sensational reports and scandals are discussed, including: the case of Sandor/Sarolta Vay—the Hungarian “countess in trousers;" several exposés in the Viennese tabloid press; Germany’s Krupp and Eulenburg affairs; and the homosexual movements in Germany—the scientific-humanitarian committee and Hirschfeld’s camp of emancipation and the competing camp of “Die Eignenen”.

This chapter recounts how plans for a second international tribunal were abandoned in favour of separate proceedings by the four powers. The Nuernberg Military Tribunals would explore the narratives of divergence and betrayal in greater detail and with claims to historical authority, though hampered by deficits in terms of staff and funding. The NMT aimed at a comprehensive picture of the Third Reich’s workings, its crimes, and the German elites’ responsibility. Known as the ‘institutional approach’, this paradigm resulted in a trial design which targeted the military, police, big business, civil service, and German academia, each to be exemplified in court by outstanding representatives. The Krupp combine and the Wehrmacht’s Prussian generals were two groups who epitomized the sinister influences of imperialism and militarism since the nineteenth century. The chapter illustrates on which sources the prosecution narrative drew and why its success remained limited in the end.