Overcoming Nazism: Big business, public relations, and the politics of memory, 1945-50

Central European History

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 201-226

  Wiesen, S Jonathan ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449293330     PISSN: 00089389     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0008938900013017     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. On Beitz's heroism, see "Wer mit dem Teufel handelt," Die Zeit, 21 February 1992
2. also Mordecai Paldiel, "To the Righteous among the Nations Who Risked their Lives to Rescue Jews," Yad Vashem Studies, 19 (1988): 403-27
3. and Bernd Schmalhausen, Berthold Beitz im Dritlen Reich: Mensch in unmenschlicher Zeit (Essen, 1991)
4. "The Other Schindlers," Deutschland 3 (July 1994)
5. Also referred to during this period as " Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, " "Öffentliche Meinungspflege," "Imagepftege," etc. "Public relations" is itself a term that must be carefully unpacked. See Elisabeth Binder, Die Entstehung untemehmerischer Public Relations in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Münster, 1983)
6. Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton, 1975)
7. Trials of War Criminals before the Nürnberg Military Tribunals (Washington, 1952)
8. 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 Volker R. Berghahn, Unternehmer und Politik in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt, 1985)
9. 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, Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (Cambridge, 1987)
10. Henry Ashby Turner, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford, 1985)
11. John Gillingham, Industry and Politics in the Third Reich (London, 1987)
12. and Raymond Stokes, Divide and Prosper: The Heirs of I.G. Farben under Allied Authority, 1945-1951 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988)
13. On the disputes surrounding the legal legitimacy and political wisdom of the "industrialist trials," see Susanne Jung, Die Rechtsprobleme der Nürnberg Prozesse, dargestellt am Verfahren gegen Friedrich Flick (Tübingen, 1992)
14. also Tom Bower, The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britain and the Denazification of Postwar Germany (New York and Garden City, 1982), 287-354
15. 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
16. 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 Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands (Munich, 1995), 449-571
17. and Gerhard Hetzer, "Unternehmer und leitende Angestellte zwischen Rüstungseinsatz und politischer Säuberung," in Vom Stalingrad zur Währungsreform: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland, ed. Martin Broszat, et al., (Munich, 1989), 551-91
18. 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
19. 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 "Personal 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
20. 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. Jūrgen Heinrichsbauer, 14 February 1995, Cologne. I thank Dr. Heinrichsbauer for his assistance. On Heinrichsbauer before 1933, see Reinhard Neebe, Grossindustrie, Staat und NSDAP, 1930-1933: Paul Silverberg und der Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie (Göttingen, 1981), 117-19
21. and Turner, German Big Business, 148-49
22. On Heinrichsbauer's career in Vienna, see Dietrich Orlow, The Nazis in the Balkans: A Case Study in Totalitarian Politics (Pittsburgh, 1968)
23. 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 G. V. Klass, Albert Vögler (Tübingen, 1957), 248-56
24. 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
25. 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 1949-51 that business publicists more consciously worked through these rhetorical subtleties. On the issue of branch-specific mentalities, see Peter Hayes, "Industrial Factionalism in Modern German History," Central European History 24 (1991): 122-31
26. On the political stance of industrialists vis-à-vis the Nazi regime, see Paul Erker, Industrieeliten in da NS-Zeit (Passau, 1993), 32-40
27. On Gregor Strasser's relationship to Heinrichsbauer, see Peter D. Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Hitler (London, 1983), 93, 118, etc.
28. and Turner, Gentian Big Business, esp. 148-49
29. 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, Crossindustrie, 207
30. Heinrichsbauer, Schwerindustrie und Politik, 68
31. 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, 1945-55, ed. Jeffry Diefendorf and Hermann-Josef Rupieper, (Cambridge, 1993), 135-53. Quoted from 139
32. On the High Commisioner's amnesty of industrialists and other prisoners see Frank M. Buscher, The U.S. War Crimes Trial Program in Germany, 1946-1955 (Westport, CT, 1989)
33. Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (New York, 1992)
34. and Thomas A. Schwartz, America's Germany: John McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge and London, 1991)
35. On the role of the Catholic Church in the release of Alfried Krupp, see Ernst Klee, Persilscheine und Falsche Pässe: Wie die Kirchen den Nazis halfen (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 61-82
36. See, e.g., Josef Winschuh, Das Neue Unternehmerbild: Crundzüge einer Unternehmerpolitik (Baden Baden, 1954)
37. August von Knieriem, The Nuremberg Trials (Chicago, 1959)
38. and H. E. Kannapin Wirtschaft unter Zwang, (Cologne, 1966)