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Overcoming Nazism: Big Business, Public Relations, and the Politics of Memory, 1945–50

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

S. Jonathan Wiesen
S. Jonathan Wiesen
Affiliation:
Brown University
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In 1973 Yad Vashem, the international organization commemorating Holocaust martyrs and heroes, extended its highest honors to one of Germany's most influential business leaders. Berthold Beitz, head of the Krupp Foundation in Essen, was declared one of “the righteous among the nations” and was inducted into a very small group of individuals who had risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Third Reich. As a young manager in German-occupied Galicia, Beitz had been considered a rising star in the firm of Karpaten Öl. A trustee acting on behalf of the board of directors, Beitz was in a key position to witness the brutality of the SS in occupied Poland. In 1943, as he began to suspect his government's murderous intentions, Beits grew determined to risk his career, and possibly his life, to protect Jews from a tragic fate. Through various means of trickery and bargaining with the SS, Beitz took under his wing both young and old, skilled and unskilled, and employed them in scattered oil installations in eastern Galicia, ultimately protecting many of them from deportation and probable death in Belzec.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 201 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1996

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References

1. On Beitz's heroism see “Wer mit dem Teufel handelt”, Die Zeit, 21 February 1992; also Paldiel, Mordecai, “To the Righteous among the Nations Who Risked their Lives to Rescue Jews”, Yad Vashem Studies, 19 (1988): 403–27;Google Scholar and Schmalhausen, Bernd, Berthold Beitz im Dritten Reich: Mensch in unmenschlicher Zeit (Essen, 1991).Google Scholar

2. “The Other Schindlers”, Deutschland 3 (July 1994); and “Die anderen Schindlers”, Die Zeit, 8 April 1994. Beitz himself rejects this comparison with Oskar Schindler. Conversation with Berthold Beitz, 5 December 1995.

3. Also referred to during this period as “Öffentlichkeitsarbeit”, “Öffentliche Meinungspflege”, “Imagepflege”, etc. “Public relations” is itself a term that must be carefully unpacked. See Binder, Elisabeth, Die Entstehung untemehmerischer Public Relations in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Münster, 1983)Google Scholar. Binder has written one of the few studies on postwar industrial public relations, arguing that industrial PR did not, in fact, emerge until the 1950s. Binder's definition of PR is, however, rather narrow, as she concerns herself almost exclusively with individual companies' attempts to exercise an influence in the realm of national Wirtschaftspolitik and ignores the NS experience, the occupation, and denazification altogether. Binder is, however, correct to locate the self-conscious use of the term “public relations” in the 1950s. For industrialists' discussions about the meaning of “public relations”, see e.g., Nachlass Hermann Reusch, File 40010145/306, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, Cologne (RWWA).

4. Maier, Charles S., Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton, 1975).Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 22.

6. Trials of War Criminals before the Nürnberg Military Tribunals (Washington, 1952). See vol. 6 (The Flick Case), vols. 7 and 8 (The I.G. Farben Case), and vol. 9 (The Krupp Case).Google Scholar

7. While the twists and turns in Allied policy toward German industry are coming into ever-increasing focus, the impact of Nuremberg remains one of the most strikingly overlooked aspects in postwar German business history. Even in the most detailed studies devoted to business, in which denazification, dismantling, and decartelization feature prominently, Nuremberg barely surfaces. For example, in one pathbreaking study on business mentalities after 1945. Nuremberg is barely alluded to; see Berghahn, Volker R., Unternehmer und Politik in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt, 1985).Google Scholar However, the proceedings of the three American-led industrialist trials have been a rich and indispensable source of insight into important economic, social, and political relationships and attitudes in modern Germany. See, for example, Hayes, Peter, Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (Cambridge, 1987);Google ScholarTurner, Henry Ashby, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford, 1985);Google ScholarGillingham, John, Industry and Politics in the Third Reich (London, 1987);Google Scholar and Stokes, Raymond, Divide and Prosper: The Heirs of I. G. Farben under Allied Authority, 1945–1951 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988).Google Scholar

8. On the disputes surrounding the legal legitimacy and political wisdom of the “industrialist trials,” see Susanne Jung, Die Rechtsprobleme der Nürnberg Prozesse, dargestellt am Verfahrengegen Friedrich Flick (Tübingen, 1992); also Tom Bower, The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britian and the Denazification of Postwar Germany (New York and Garden City, 1982), 287–354, and idem, “‘ Alle deutschen Industriellen sassen auf der Anklagebank.’ Die Nürnberger Nachfolgerprozesse gegen Krupp, Flick und die IG Farben”, in Gegen Barberei: Essay Robert Kempner zu Ehren, ed. Rainer Eisfled and Ingo Müller, (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 239–56.

9. This question found its most urgent formulation during the autumn of 1945 with the arrests and internment of industrialists, who in some cases had already been working closely and cooperatively with the occupation officials for six months. For an exhaustive look at industry in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi defeat, see Henke, Klaus-Dietmar, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands (Munich, 1995), 449–571;Google Scholar and Hertzer, Gerhard, “Unternehmer und leitende Angestellte zwischen Rüstungseinsatz und politischer Säuberung”, in Vom Stalingrad zur Währungsreform: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland, ed. Broszat, Martin et al. (Munich, 1989), 551–91.Google Scholar

10. For industrialists' attempts to relativize their behavior, in particular their use of forced labor, see Wolfgang Pohle's speech to an unnamed industrial organization, NL Wolfgang Pohle, RWN 218, Nordrhein-Westfälisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Düsseldorf (HSta). See also Pohle's exchanges with Reusch regarding the latter's limousine driver, who had been a forced laborer in Yugoslavia, in Pohle to Reusch, 29 January 1948, NL Reusch, 40010145/165, RWWA. Also on this strategy of finding comparable practices in the Allied countries, see defendant Otto Steinbrinck's reflections (no date) in the papers of Wilhelm Salewski (in the private possession of Dr. Werner Bührer, Munich). I thank Dr. Bührer for his assistance.

11. Walter Pfeiffer to WilhelmSalewski, 28 July 1947, papers of the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Eisen und Stahl (press department), P2103, Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Cologne (IDW).

12. Pohle to Reusch, 19 February 1949, NL Reusch, 40010145/166, RWWA.

13. Throughout the trials, the Nagel Office received the bulk of its juridical documents from Göttingen. Later, as heavy industry debated the fate of Nagel and his office, the university asked that the collection be returned. Pohle to Reusch, 19 February 1949). NL Reusch, 40010145/166, RWWA. See also Pohle to Hartens, 6 July 1948, Bührer collection.

14. Also known as the “Nagel Information Service” or simply the “Nagel Office.” For information on the Nagel Office, see “Nagel Informationsdienst, 1948–1964,” papers of the Industrie- und Handelskammer Essen, 28–117–3, RWWA.

15. On this process of information gathering, see, e.g., Nagel to Wecker, 2 March 1949, and other letters in file VST/1422, Thyssen Archive, Duisburg.

16. “Bericht Dr. Nagel über die Arbeiten des Nürnberger Archives”, (undated), NL Reusch, 40010145/166, RWWA. Modified versions of this report are also to be found in IHK Essen, 28–117–3, RWWA.

17. Pohle to Reusch, 19 February 1949, NL Reusch, 40010145/166, RWWA.

18. See Reusch to Linz, 23 March 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/164, RWWA. See also in same file Reusch to Linz, 1 April 1947. For the receipts of the wire transfers from Mannesmann to attorney Siemers in Nuremberg, see M20.227, Mannesmann Archive, Düsseldorf. For the Treuhand's internal paperwork regarding these transactions, see papers of the Stahltreuhändervereinigung, B109/170, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BAK).

19. Reusch to Linz, 23 May 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/164, RWWA.

20. Linz to Reusch, 10 April 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/164, RWWA.

21. Linz to Reusch, 21 May 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/164, RWWA.

22. Reusch to Linz, 1 April 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/164, RWWA.

23. Heinrich Dinkelbach to Vorstand of Mannesmannröhren-Werke, 11 June 1947, M20.227, Mannesmann. Throughout the trial the Vereinigte Stahlwerke board members feared that there would be a future prosecution of their firm, with evidence drawn from the proceedings of the Flick trial. See Niemeyer to Wecker, 11 September 1947, VST 1422, Thyssen.

24. Swept up in the monopolistic spirit of the day, Flick willingly entered his firm Charlottenhütte into the Vereinigte Stahlwerke combine during the Depression; see Jung, Die Rechtsprobleme, 26. For more on VSt's thoughts about the trial, see esp. Fritz Wecker of the legal department to Wolfgang Linz, 19 June 1947, NL Dinkelbach, A9050 (files relating to the industry trials), Thyssen.

25. Reusch to Linz, 1 April 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/164, RWWA.

26. Reusch to Linz, 23 May 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/164, RWWA.

27. August Heinrichsbauer, , Schwerindustrie und Politik (Essen-Kettwig, 1948), 78–79. Translation taken from English-version manuscript in IDW. This English version is not, however, an exact translation of the German publication, as it leaves out the key passage above which distributes blame for Hitler to “Personen in der ganzen weiten Welt,” a phrase whose relativizing tone would not have been received kindly by an English-speaking readership. I have thus supplemented the English translation with the more complete wording from the original German text.Google Scholar

28. Heinrichsbauer had been an active supporter of the prominent Nazi Gregor Strasser, gathering funds from heavy industry on behalf of this seemingly more innocuous and politically moderate Nazi. With Strasser's expulsion during Hitler's post-Machtergreifung consolidation of power, Heinrichsbauer automatically became a suspicious figure to the Nazi government and to two industrialists, Wilhelm Tangelmann and Fritz Thyssen, who supported Hitler. In early July of 1934 Heinrichsbauer was informed that Gregor Strasser had been one of the many political enemies murdered by the Nazis a few days earlier during the “Röhm Putsch.” Fearing that his prior connection to “the opposition Nazis” might spell his own death sentence, Heinrichsbauer immediately fled the country and spent the next three years in hiding in Mexico, waiting for the political tides to turn in his favor. Jobless until 1936, Heinrichsbauer eventually returned to Germany with the help of finance minister Walter Funk and found work in a coal syndicate in Mannheim. He later spent the war years in Vienna as director of a think tank devoted to forging cultural and business ties to the southeastern European regions of the new Greater German Reich, and as a coal industry advisor in upper Silesia. This information is based in part on a conversation with Dr. Jürgen Heinrichsbauer, 14 February 1995, Cologne. I thank Dr. Heinrichsbauer for his assistance. On Heinrichsbauer before 1933, see Neebe, Reinhard, Grossindustrie, Staat und NSDAP, 1930–1933: Paul Silverberg und der Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie (Göttingen, 1981), 117–19,Google Scholar and Turner, German Big Business, 148–49. On Heinrichsbauer's carrer in Vienna, see Orlow, Dietrich, The Nazis in the Balkans: A Case Study in Totalitarian Politics (Pittsburgh, 1968).Google Scholar

29. While Heinrichsbauer's testimony can be found in RG 238, T301, NI series (microfilm), National Archives, Washington DC, as well as in the Stiftung Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, Dortmund, the most accessible collection of his testimony is in the Nuremberg prosecution file “August Heinrichsbauer,” 1239/53, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich.

30. This manuscript would eventually be published by Heinrichsbauer under the title Der Ruhrbergbau in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft (Essen, 1948).Google Scholar

31. This is Heinrichsbauer's expression. Throughout his letters, he and Pohle emphasized the role this publication would play in influencing political decisions in the Ruhr and internationally.

32. Conversation with DrJürgen Heinrichsbauer, 14 February 1995.

33. Copies of Poensgen's unpublished manuscript can be found in almost every firm and chamber of business and commerce archive in the Rhein-Ruhr area. See also VS/4146, Thyssen for more extensive discussions regarding this manuscript. For a published excerpt see Klass, G. V., Albert Vögler (Tübingen, 1957), 248–56.Google Scholar Klaus-Dietmar Henke has recently hypothesized that the text was actually written by Walter Rohland, Poensgen's VSt successor and highly compromised mouthpiece for the Nazis' industrial policies. See Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung, 522–27.

34. For a sense of how closely eastern Germany was watching the behavior of “monopoly capitalists” like Hermann Reusch, see “Listen und biographische Angaben von ehemaligen Wirtschaftsführern während Faschismus,” V279/95, Stiftung Archiv für Massen Parteien- und Organisationen der ehemaligen DDR, Berlin (Stiftung). The SED, not surprisingly, followed the industrialist trials and their aftermath very carefully. See V280/90, Stiftung, on the release of Krupp and Flick from prison in 1951.

35. Röchling, the industrial giant of the Saarland, was prosecuted and tried by a French military tribunal made up of French, Polish, Dutch, and Belgian judges. For a newspaper clipping file on Röchling see V279/35, Stiftung.

36. In the summer of 1948, Dr. Karl Jarres of Klöckner, Dr. Hermann Wenzel of VSt, and Dr. Ludwig Kastl were also reviewing drafts. See Heinrichsbauer to Salewski, 6 September 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/147, RWWA.

37. In their attempts to answer this question, Heinrichsbauer and his colleagues touched upon the very issue of professional and branch identity that has been eternally debated within the circles of big business. A nuanced discussion of big business unity vs. branch loyalty falls outside the scope of this paper. Yet it is important to realize that for heavy industry during this period of strategizing, rhetorical consistency was not of paramount importance. The uneasy conflation of “heavy industry” and “industry” testifies to the multiplicity of professional identities found in the business world. While the defensive efforts by the chemical industry and heavy industry often coincided during Nuremberg, and the Nagel archive itself was to serve the purposes of “German industry” as a whole, it was not until the founding of industrial peak and PR organizations during 1949–1951 that business publicists more consciously worked through these rhetorical subtleties. On the issue of branchspecific mentalities, see Hayes, Peter, “Industrial Factionalism in Modern German History,” Central European History 24 (1991): 122–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Heinrichsbauer to Salewski, 6 September 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/147, RWWA. See also Heinrichsbauer's two letters to Salewski on 17 and 20 September 1947, Bührer collection.

39. Flick was found guilty of employing slave labor, plundering, and complicity with the SS.

40. Pohle to Reusch, 12 December 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/148, RWWA.

41. Pohle to Heinrichsbauer, 5 January 1948, NL Reusch 40010145/148, RWWA. The same letter can be found in M20.227, Mannesmann, with more pages of criticisms that do not appear in the Reusch files.

42. Having been unable to locate an actual copy of either the fall or December rough drafts, I am relying on the exchange of comments and suggestions that once accompanied these now missing drafts.

43. On the political stance of industrialists vis-à-vis the Nazi regime, see Erker, Paul, Industrieeliten in der NS-Zeit (Passau, 1993), 32–40.Google Scholar

44. Pohle to Heinrichsbauer, 5 January 1948, NL Reusch, 40010145/148, RWWA.

45. “I actively opposed National Socialism even before the seizure of power, and I continued to do so until the end of the war”. Heinrichsbauer to Reusch, 3 April 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/153, RWWA.

46. Reading through Heinrichsbauer's rather despairing letters to his friends and colleagues from the period of his Nuremberg incarceration, it is again quite obvious that his defense of heavy industry was motivated as much by a desire for personal exculpation as by an unswerving sense of loyalty to the defendants. Heinrichsbauer's concept of resistance is almost entirely autobiographical, and his attempt to share with his colleagues this selfperceived status of Widerstandskämpfer appears as a rather pragmatic rhetorical move in the name of business unity.

47. Heinrichsbauer to Blank, 21 February 1947, NL Reusch, 40010145/153, RWWA. It is unclear how Heinrichsbauer could consider his testimony for the Americans a sacrifice on behalf of the defendants. It becomes evident from his later exchanges with Reusch that he saw Heavy Industry and Politics as a means of both clearing his own name, in conjunction with the Strasser link, and ingratiating himself with postwar Ruhr industry, which he repeatedly supplicated for steady employment.

48. Conversations with Berndt Donay, Chefredakteur of Der Arbeitgeber, the central organ of the Bundesvereinigung der deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände (BDA), 22 February 1995, Cologne, and Dr. Jürgen Heinrichsbauer, Donay's retired predecessor, 14 February 1995, Cologne.

49. Pohle to Heinrichsbauer, 5 January 1948, NL Reusch, 40010145/148, RWWA.

50. Heinrichsbauer to Pohle, 8 January 1948, M20.227, Mannesmann.

51. On Gregor Strasser's relationship to Heinrichsbauer, see Stachura, Peter D., Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Hitler (London, 1983), 93, 118, etc.;Google Scholar and Turner, German Big Business, esp. 148–49.

52. With all of its problems, the pamphlet remains a valuable source of information on heavy industry during the Weimar Republic. Neebe considers it a useful, if “tendentious” source. See Neebe, Grossindustrie, 207.

53. Heinrichsbauer, Schwerindustrie und Politik, 68.

54. On Paul Reusch's reservations, see Hermann Reusch to Paul Reusch, 12 April 1948, in private possession of Paul Jürgen Reusch, Backnang. I am grateful to Mr. Reusch and Dr. Gerhard Hetzer for providing me with information on Paul Reusch.

55. List of distributors and recipients, 18 March 1948, NL Reusch, 40010145/148, RWWA. As of April, the plan was to distribute a total of 120 copies. See Paul Jürgen Reusch collection, ibid.

56. Heinrichsbauer to Pohle, 28 January 1948, M20.227, Mannesmann.

57. See exchanges throughout M20.277, Mannesmann, including Heinrichsbauer to Pohle, 3 March 1948, regarding the tentative chapter titles in his book.

58. Heinrichsbauer to Pohle, 11 May 1948, M20.227, Mannesmann.

59. Heinrichsbauer hoped to point out, among other things, that the Americans had carried out malaria experiments which led to the death of unwilling Philippine subjects. Heinrichsbauer to Pohle, 5 February 1948, M20.277, Mannesmann.

60. In April of 1948, a joint committee of British and American officials recommended the appointment of Reusch to the Committee for the Support of Steel Production, a new board of industry experts. When the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), the umbrella organization for West Germany's trade unions, got word of the appointment, it immediately lodged a protest. The Communist and socialist press mounted a vigorous campaign to remind the public of Reusch's “Nazi past”. Throughout the Spring of 1948, Reusch developed into a symbol of the reactionary tendencies in German industry, which were supposedly being exposed in the dock in Nuremberg and in the debate over the socioeconomic future of the country. After the DGB threatened to unleash a massive strike on 1 June 1948, Reusch withdrew his nomination. See NL Reusch, 40010148/8, RWWA, and Erich Potthoff Collection, 101/5, DGB Archive at the Hans Böckler Stiftung, Düsseldorf.

61. Pohle to Heinrichsbauer, 20 July 1948, M20.277, Mannesmann.

62. Ibid.

63. For a good statement of the frustration over the Krupp verdict, see Pohle's speech (undated) to fellow industrialists, whom he had been briefing throughout the Flick and Krupp trials, NL Pohle, RWN 218, HStA.

64. Almost every industrial organization in West Germany raised an angry voice against the verdict. For a small sample of the extensive correspondences and letters of protest that followed the announcement of the verdict and sentence, see papers of the Industrie und Handelskammer Düsseldorf, 400–02, #2, RWWA.

65. Pohle to Heinrichsbauer, 2 August 1948, M20.277, Mannesmann.

66. An original plan to have various industrialists from around the Ruhr sign their names to the pamphlet's introduction had fallen through at the last minute, when Reusch, in particular, realized that he now had become such an object of the Left's wrath that signing his name to an apologetic text would be a disastrous public relations move. The final publication bore only the name of Heinrichsbauer, supplemented by a word of introduction from the publisher. See Theo Goldschmidt to Hermann Reusch, 30 August 1948, NL Reusch, 40010145/149, RWWA.

67. According to Werner Bührer, the U.S. Consulate in Bremen forwarded a copy of the pamphlet to Washington, cautioning that the work was “in effect an apology on the part of the leading Western German industrialists for the help rendered by them to the Hitler Regime”. See Bührer, , “Return to Normality: The United States and Ruhr Industry, 1949–1955”, in American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany 1945–1955, ed. Diefendorf, Jeffry and Rupieper, Hermann-Josef, (Cambridge, 1993), 133–53. Quoted from 139.Google Scholar

68. See Rhein Echo, 30 December 1948, and Heinrichsbauer to Schriftleitung des Rhein Echoes, 11 January 1949, NL Reusch, 40010145/149. RWWA. The most puzzling part of this story remains Heinrichsbauer's rather disingenuous insistence that a published selfdefense, actively distributed to key, albeit sympathetic public figures, could somehow remain confidential. Indeed industry had never wanted this manuscript to serve as simply a collector's momento for the already converted. The ostensible idea behind the book was to settle a historical score with the public. In the end, one must consider the professed “confidential” nature of the book and its limited distribution as a tactic in the broader public relations strategy. By downplaying the book's obvious role as a PR tool, Heinrichsbauer hoped to give the appearance of having directed his piece merely to his professional confidantes, thus presumably lending more credibility to his impassioned defense and leaving the impression of having been uninfluenced by public opinion and more by the pure historical truth. In a rather inexplicable contrast, however, Heinrichsbauer's longer work. which was still in progress during the publication of Heavy Industry and Politics, was never conceived as anything but an open plea to the public to dismiss industrial denazification as a wrongheaded and politicized exercise in revenge. The IDW, under their rules of confidentiality, also takes Heinrichsbauer's view of Heavy Industry and Politics seriously, refusing still today to provide upon request a copy of this almost 50 year-old publication. The decision is curious, as the book can be found in other libraries in Germany. The IDW will, however, provide a copy of the English translation, which is not marked as “vertraulich.”

69. Unsigned critique of Heinrichsbauer's book, 7 October 1948, in file “Sonstiges aus Nürnberger Prozessen (folder 2),” Bayer Archive, Leverkusen (BAL).

70. See “Report on the Industry Trials—1948,” Gutehoffnungshütte Papers, Wirtschaftsabteilung, miscellaneous files, 400129/137, RWWA. For varying versions of the introduction and conclusion, see M20.223, Mannesmann. The longest excerpt I have been able to locate encompasses the first 499 pages of what was clearly an even longer manuscript. See “Sonstiges aus Nümberger Prozessen (folder 2),” BAL. The manuscript reads as a jumbled and exaggeratedly biased patchwork of attacks on Allied hypocrisy.

71. Meanwhile Heinrichsbauer continued with his public relations duties, serving as the then newly-founded Federation of German Industry's (BDI) unofficial “connection-man” in Bonn, where he produced a weekly report on the latest political developments and their potential effect on big business. Heinrichsbauer was never a paid employee of the BDI, instead receiving his salary and a pension from the GHH, which also footed the bill for his work on the unfinished manuscript. On several occasions, Heinrichsbauer's past would pursue him rather unrelentingly, most notably when he was again called to testify in a public Bundestag hearing during a corruption scandal. Heinrichsbauer was accused of having used industry funds for unsavory purposes—this time to bribe politicians into supporting the construction of the new federal capital in Bonn instead of in Frankfurt. He was, in the end, not prosecuted.

72. For a list of the businessmen with whom heavy industry made or attempted to make contact, see Bührer collection, ca. February 1949. In the same collection see Reusch to Salewski, 14 February 1949.

73. On the High Commisioner's amnesty of industrialists and other prisoners see Buscher, Frank M., The U.S. War Crimes Trial Program in Germany, 1946–1955 (Westport, CT, 1989)Google Scholar, Bird, Kai, The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (New York, 1992)Google Scholar, and Schwartz, Thomas A., America's Germany: John McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge and London, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the role of the Catholic Church in the release of Alfried Krupp, see Klee, Ernst, Persilscheine und Falsche Pässe: Wie die Kirchen den Nazis halfen (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 61–82.Google Scholar

74. See, e.g., Winschuh, Josef, Das Neue Unternehmerbild: Grundzüge einer Unternehmerpolitik (Baden Baden, 1954).Google Scholar

75. Industry-funded apologies continued to appear throughout the 1950s, occasionally with the help of the Nagel collection, which after much negotiation was transferred to a room in the Essen Chamber of Commerce. During his short tenure in Essen, Nagel welcomed to his collection apologists for industry like German legal scholar Hans Ficker and American journalist Lochner, Louis, whose Tycoons and Tyrant (Chicago, 1954) remains today the most widely quoted defense of business behavior. Eventually, industry lost interest in financially maintaining the Nagel archive altogether.Google Scholar His collection was boxed up and deposited in the basement of the Essen Chamber of Industry and Commerce, were it stayed until the mid-1950s, when it was finally transferred to the BDI in Cologne. Today the collection of documents is not to be found, having most likely been destroyed when the BDI moved across town in the early 1960s. For industry's involvement in the preparation of Lochner's book, see “Nagel Informationdienst,” IHK Essen, 28-117-3, RWWA, and NL Reusch, 40010145/173, RWWA. Other apologies besides Lochner's include Frhr, Tilo. Wilmowsky, von, Warum wurde Krupp verurteilt? Legende und Justizirrtum (Stuttgart, 1950);Google Scholarvon Knieriem, August, The Nuremberg Trials (Chicago, 1959);Google Scholar and Kannapin, H. E.Wirtschaft unter Zwang, (Cologne, 1966).Google Scholar