Gustav Krupp Von Bohlen

German diplomat, industrialist and weapons manufacturer with the Krupp works. Born Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach in Blühnbach near Salzburg, Austria, he was a passionate patriot and during the Third Reich, one of Germany’s most ardent Nazis.

Throughout World War I, Krupp provided many of the weapons in Germany’s powerful arsenal including a huge cannon used to blast Paris and a 98-ton howitzer that was used to shell Liège and Verdun, named "Big Bertha," allegedly after his wife. Krupp profited from the war, and after Germany’s defeat, he began to work toward a secret rearming of the country, stating the company should be ready "again to work for the German armed forces at the appointed hour without loss of time or experience." In 1933, his financial aid helped tighten Hitler’s grip on the government, and as president of the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie, he expelled all Jewish industrialists. Through his connections to the Nazis, he used Jewish, Polish and Russian concentration camp prisoners as "employees," although it was later discovered that his son had really been the person in charge during this period.

He married the heiress of the Krupp family of industrialists, Bertha Krupp (1886-1957), after her father’s suicide in 1902. It was considered unthinkable that a woman would run the Krupp empire, so Emperor William II personally chose Gustav as an acceptable husband for Bertha, and upon their marriage on 15 October 1906, he added the Krupp name to his own. They had a son, Alfried, who took over the business in 1943.

Although the Allies proposed to indict him as a war criminal, he was in ill health from a stroke and was growing increasingly senile. He died on 16 January 1950, never having stood trial.