28 Facts About Fritz Thyssen

Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen was a German businessman, born into one of Germany's leading industrial families.

Fritz Thyssen was an early supporter of the Nazi Party but later broke with it.

Fritz Thyssen again joined the army in 1914, but was discharged on account of a lung condition.

Fritz Thyssen was a German nationalist who supported Nazism, believing that limited government control of production and ownership of banking and transportation was a means of preventing the spread of full-fledged communism.

Fritz Thyssen was arrested, imprisoned and received a large fine for his activities, which made him a national hero.

Fritz Thyssen took over the Fritz Thyssen companies on his father's death in 1926, and that same year he formed United Steelworks, controlling more than 75 percent of Germany's iron ore reserves and employing 200,000 people.

Fritz Thyssen played a prominent role in German commercial life, as head of the German Iron and Steel Industry Association and the Reich Association of German Industry, and as a board member of the Reichsbank.

In 1923, Fritz Thyssen met former general Erich Ludendorff, who advised him to attend a speech given by Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party.

Fritz Thyssen was impressed by Hitler and his bitter opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and began to make large donations to the party, including 100,000 gold marks in 1923 to Ludendorff.

Fritz Thyssen remained a member of the German National People's Party until 1932 and did not join the Nazi Party until 1933.

Fritz Thyssen persuaded the Association of German Industrialists to donate three million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the March 1933 Reichstag election.

Fritz Thyssen welcomed the Nazi suppression of leftist organisations such as the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, and trade unions.

Fritz Thyssen became a member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law.

Fritz Thyssen accepted the anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany that excluded Jews from business and professional life, and dismissed his Jewish employees.

The breaking point for Fritz Thyssen was the violent pogrom against the Jews in November 1938, known as Kristallnacht, which caused him to resign from the Prussian Council of State.

Fritz Thyssen sent Hermann Goring a telegram saying he was opposed to the war, shortly after arriving in Switzerland with his family.

Fritz Thyssen was expelled from the Nazi Party and the Reichstag, and his company was nationalised.

Fritz Thyssen was returned to other members of the Thyssen family several years after the war.

In 1940, Fritz Thyssen took refuge and moved to France, intending to emigrate to Argentina, but was caught up in the German invasion of France and the Low Countries while he was visiting his ill mother in Belgium.

In 1941, Fritz Thyssen fled Germany, but he was arrested by Vichy France in a hotel in Nice and sent back to Germany, where he was confined, first in a sanatorium near Berlin, then from 1943 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

In February 1945, Fritz Thyssen was sent to Dachau concentration camp.

Fritz Thyssen was comparatively well-treated and transferred to Tyrol in late-April 1945 together with other prominent inmates, where the SS left the prisoners behind.

Fritz Thyssen was liberated by the 42nd Infantry Division and 45th Infantry Division on 5 May 1945.

Fritz Thyssen was tried for being a supporter of the Nazi Party.

Fritz Thyssen did not deny that he had been a Nazi supporter until 1938, and he accepted responsibility for his companies' mistreatment of Jewish employees in the 1930s, although he denied involvement in the employment of slave labour during the war.

Fritz Thyssen agreed to pay 500,000 Deutschmarks as compensation to those who suffered as a result of his actions, and was acquitted of other charges.

In 1953, Fritz Thyssen was buried in the family mausoleum in Mulheim.

Anita Countess Zichy-Fritz Thyssen ran the Foundation until her death in 1990.