03/06/2026
"To this end, Hugenberg practiced what he called Katastrophenpolitk, "the politics of catastrophe" by which he sought to polarize public opinion and the political parties with incendiary news stories, some of them entirely fabricated articles intended to cause confusion and outrage."
Liberals really let Rupert Murdoch do this again because of a vague sense of free speech
The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hi**er: They helped him in pursuit of profit.
Many ended up in concentration camps.
He was among the richest men in the world...
He made his first fortune in heavy industry. He made his second as a media mogul. And in January 1933, in exchange for a political favor, Alfred Hugenberg provided the electoral capital that made possible Adolf Hi**er’s appointment as chancellor. Before Hugenberg sealed his pact with Hi**er, a close associate had warned Hugenberg that this was a deal he would come to regret: “One night you will find yourself running through the ministry gardens in your underwear trying to escape arrest.”
In my recent book, **Takeover: Hi**er’s Final Rise to Power**, I chronicled the fraught relationship between the tyrant and the titan, but my story ended in January 1933, so I did not detail the subsequent impact on Hugenberg’s fortunes, let alone the catastrophic consequences that lay ahead for other corporate leaders, their companies, and their country.
In the ’20s and early ’30s, the Hi**er “brand” was anathema to capitalists and corporate elites. His National Socialist German Worker’s Party was belligerently nationalistic but also unapologetically socialist—a true Arbeiter Partei, or “working man’s party.” Its 25-point political platform explicitly targeted bankers and financiers, calling for “breaking the bo***ge of interest,” as well as industrialists who profited from wartime production. Profits were to be confiscated by the state without compensation, and corporate executives charged with treason. Platform Point 13 was explicit: “We demand the nationalization of all existing corporate entities.”
Through the 1920s, businessmen preferred to place their political bets with conservative, centrist, business-friendly politicians, such as those in the Center Party or the Bavarian People’s Party or the right-wing but decidedly pro-business German Nationalists. Out of necessity, then, the National Socialists had to derive most of their financing via membership fees, storm troopers standing on street corners begging for contributions, and admission charges to Hi**er rallies. Among the exceptions to this were socialites—Viktoria von Dirksen, Helene Bechstein, Elsa Bruckmann—who were smitten with Hi**er. But the most significant exception was Fritz Thyssen.
Thyssen, heir to one of Germany’s leading industrial fortunes, had been an early financier of the N**i movement. He first met Hi**er in the autumn of 1923 after attending a beer-hall rally. “It was then that I realized his oratorical gifts and his ability to lead the masses,” Thyssen recalled in his 1941 memoir, **I Paid Hi**er**. “What impressed me most, however, was the order that reigned in his meetings, the almost military discipline of his followers.” Thyssen provided the party, by his own estimate, approximately 1 million reichsmarks—more than $5 million today—and also helped finance the acquisition and refurbishment of a Munich palace as the N**i Party headquarters. Most important, Thyssen arranged for Hi**er to speak to his fellow industrialists in Düsseldorf on January 27, 1932.
PHOTO: Hi**er sits next to Hermann Göring at the Düsseldorf Industrieclub, while Fritz Thyssen, a wealthy industrialist who was one of Hi**er’s early financial backers, speaks at the microphone, January 27, 1932.
“The speech made a deep impression on the assembled industrialists,” Thyssen said, “and in consequence of this a number of large contributions flowed from the resources of heavy industry into the treasuries of the National Socialist party.” This financing, estimated at a still-cautious 2 million marks annually, was channeled through a trusted intermediary: Alfred Hugenberg. Hugenberg had served as a director of Krupp A.G., the large steelmaker and arms manufacturer, during the Great War, and had subsequently founded the Telegraph Union, a conglomerate of 1,400 associated newspapers intended to provide a conservative bulwark against the liberal, pro-democracy press. He also bought controlling shares in the country’s largest movie studio. A reporter for Vossische Zeitung, a leading centrist daily newspaper, observed that Hugenberg was “the great disseminator of National Socialist ideas to an entire nation through newspapers, books, magazines, and films.”
To this end, Hugenberg practiced what he called Katastrophenpolitk, “the politics of catastrophe,” by which he sought to polarize public opinion and the political parties with incendiary news stories, some of them entirely fabricated articles intended to cause confusion and outrage. According to one such story, the government was enslaving German teenagers and selling them to its allies in order to service its war debt. Hugenberg calculated that by hollowing out the political center, political consensus would become impossible and the democratic system would collapse. As a right-wing delegate to the Reichstag, Hugenberg proposed a “freedom law” that called for the liberation of the German people from the shackles of democracy.
Though both Hi**er and Hugenberg were fiercely anti-Communist, antidemocratic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic, their attempts at political partnership failed spectacularly and repeatedly. The problem lay not in ideological differences but in the similarity of their temperaments and their competing political aspirations. By late January 1933, the two men’s fates were inextricably entangled. Hugenberg had become the leader of the German National People’s Party, which had the votes in the Reichstag that Hi**er needed to be appointed chancellor. After cantankerous negotiation, a deal was reached: Hugenberg would deliver Hi**er the chancellorship, in exchange for Hugenberg being given a cabinet post as head of a Superministerium that subsumed the ministries of economics, agriculture, and nutrition.
The New York Times expressed astonishment that Hugenberg was suddenly in charge of the country’s finances. Hi**er’s “socialist mask” had fallen, the Communist daily Red Banner proclaimed, arguing that “Hugenberg is in charge, not Hi**er!” As self-proclaimed “economic dictator,” Hugenberg kept pace with Hi**er in outraging political opponents and much of the public. He purged ministries, dismantled workers’ rights, and lowered the wages of his own employees by 10 percent. The economy fell into chaos. The press dubbed Hugenberg the Konfusionsrat —the “consultant of confusion.”
In late June 1933, while Hi**er was trying to assuage international concerns about the long-term intentions of his government, Hugenberg appeared in London, to the surprise of everyone, including his fellow German delegation members. Hugenberg laid out an ambitious plan for economic growth through territorial expansion. “The first step would consist of Germany reclaiming its colonies in Africa,” Hugenberg explained. The announcement made headlines around the world.
Back in Berlin, confusion and embarrassment followed. Hi**er sought to mediate but Hugenberg wouldn’t back down: “It was a matter between Hi**er and me as to who was going to seize the initiative,” Hugenberg later admitted. Hi**er prevailed. On June 29, 1933, Hugenberg resigned his minister post. By then Hi**er no longer needed either Hugenberg’s corporate contacts or his Reichstag delegates.
The following three weeks delivered a series of blows to the Weimar Republic: the arson attack on the Reichstag on February 27, the March 5 elections from which the N**is emerged with a mandate for Hi**er’s reforms, and the passing of an “enabling law” on March 23, which established Hi**er as unchallenged dictator.
The German companies helped retool the Weimar Republic as the Third Reich: Ferdinand Porsche designed the Volkswagen. Mercedes-Benz provided Hi**er with bulletproof sedans. Allianz provided insurance for concentration camps. By the early 1940s, Siemens AG was employing more than 80,000 slave laborers. The life expectancy of inmates at an I.G. Farben facility at Auschwitz was less than four months; more than 25,000 people lost their lives on the construction site alone.
In August 1947, 24 senior I.G. Farben managers were placed on trial for their role in N**i aggression and atrocity. The 15,638 pages of courtroom testimony indicated that these Farben executives knew the exact number of airplane and truck tires and canisters of Zyklon B gas delivered to Auschwitz. The defense attorney for I.G. Farben’s supervisory board chairman argued that his client was just a senior executive doing what he was paid to do—run the company with an eye to the bottom line.
As for Alfred Hugenberg? Unlike other early private-sector Hi**er enablers, Hugenberg got off lightly. He was deemed to be a “lesser evildoer”—officially, a “Mitläufer”—and saw himself as a victim of the N**i regime. He appealed and won, being declared “untainted.” Unrepentant to his dying day, Hugenberg balked at even that lesser charge.
On the morning after enabling Hi**er’s appointment, Hugenberg reportedly said, “I’ve just committed the greatest stupidity of my life. I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in the history of the world.”
About the Author: Timothy W. Ryback is a historian and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. He is the author of several books on Hi**er’s Germany, most recently **Takeover: Hi**er’s Final Rise to Power**.
