World War II Database

1. Anonymous says:
27 Jul 2013 11:33:23 PM

I fail to see the need to lie in regards to either Bertha or Alfried Krupp. They treated their own workers better than other companies in the Ruhr Valley. Despite words from unconfirmed sources they themselves had little choice NOT to use prisoners of war for munitions work. Krupp would hardly desire someone putting in the measured cross hairs on their vaunted 88mm guns as the Waffen SS took their technical workers away to defend Hitler's Festung Europa. The offerings to those in camps by Bertha, the kitchen workers, the male employees, et al., helped them survive. Large parsnip/carrot/turnip/beef lard soup tourines were brought, bread, water - soap covered in mud to look like rocks was pitched "at them" while horses were lathered down then to be rinsed off by hoses. Soap so strong it killed nits on children, Bertha outsmarted the Todt Organization by getting multiple materials for guard dog houses and having them built facing away from a hill water came down from in torrents in the rain with 6 men sleeping in one - women and children in others - who were now dry and with bricks underneath turned away from the run off there were still 6, but in a kennel 2x's larger. Still crowded - but not as much upon each other - getting them as many blankets as possible. Women allowing their children and the men to eat while they took instead the rotten potatoes, squishy onions and moldy flour ersatz bread. It wasn't enough - some guards in the Works beat the men because they couldn't watch them all - so in warning beat them to prove to them not to try sabotage. But sabotage still happened. Work was slipshod since the barest training was done, but German's had to go fight - so more and more foreigners did the work. One guard for 50 men on the lines. The Krupp's weren't attacked when the Allies surrounded Essen. The prisoners could've murdered the one's there once freed but didn't. That should speak louder than any "Krupp Diamond" of Ms. Taylors on Larry King's show, etc.. No matter how "converted" - Ms. Taylor's mother was not Jewish so she was no more Jewish than that diamond was any longer der Krupp's. In any event - over 20 Years after purchase Mrs. Taylor could call it whatever she wished. The World knew it as the Taylor/Burton Diamond anyway. Krupp had no more choice in using slave labor as IG Farben, Messerschmidt, Mercedes, BMW, Siemens, Thyssen or any other industry of that time. Speer and Himmler demanded it. Gustav had a stroke over it all. Finally released after sentencing Alfried built - over objections of the French and British - steel production up enough to rebuild Germany so they no longer had to depend on others. Hitler was a horror - but even the military couldn't rid the nation of him. Not until enough information came back from the soldiers did the people stop to think what more people outside Germany knew than Germans themselves did. By early 1944 there was no more denying the "Final Solution". Only as the Allied Armies approached the borders of Germany and their own troops saw the camps (Heydrich and Himmler decided the tracks weren't to be near troop/supply trains) in their retreats did they see what was positively happening. Up to the very end of the War - Jews collected to die had priority over troop transport and supplies. By then - Germany knew the World wanted their blood. With Hitler alive along with his cronies, July 20th a failure - the cliff they'd followed him off seemed to make destruction a certainty. That Alfried was released before his sentence was up was more an action of the Western Allies requiring the build-up against the Soviets. Smoking himself to cancer and having only Arndt (who wanted his inheritance - nothing more) was a punishment indeed. One wonders about all the rest of the industrialists who went along fully from 1933 -> '34 Kristallnacht -> to War in 1939 as the conflagration and catastrophe lit Europe up in unquenchable flames and then set off a Cold War affecting - even now still - all people's of the World.