World War II
During World War II, the company's profits increased and it gained control of factories in German-occupied Europe.
Alfried became more active in controlling the company as his father's health declined. He became de facto head of the firm in 1941 when Gustav Krupp suffered a stroke. Under Alfried, the company used slave labor supplied by the Nazi regime and thereby also became involved in the Holocaust, assigning Jewish prisoners from concentration camps to work in many of its factories. Even when the military suggested that security reasons dictated that work should be performed by free German workers, Alfried insisted on using slaves.
He officially replaced his father as head of the family firm under the Lex Krupp ("Krupp Law"), proclaimed by Adolf Hitler on 12 November 1943, which set aside the usual laws of inheritance and preserved the Krupp firm as a family business. Under this law, Alfried formally added the Krupp name to his own. He was also appointed Reichsminister für Rüstung und Kriegsproduktion ("Minister for Armament and War Production"). The transfer of ownership was a gesture of gratitude by Hitler and was to be one of only a few major Nazi laws that survived the fall of the regime.
Krupp worked closely with the SS, which controlled the concentration camps from which slave labor was obtained. In a letter dated 7 September 1943, he wrote: "As regards the cooperation of our technical office in Breslau, I can only say that between that office and Auschwitz the closest understanding exists and is guaranteed for the future."
According to one of his own employees, even when it was clear that the war was lost: "Krupp considered it a duty to make 520 Jewish girls, some of them little more than children, work under the most brutal conditions in the heart of the concern, in Essen."
During the war, Krupp was a noted supporter of an Indian nationalist leader, Subhash Chandra Bose, who led the Indian National Army, a military force organized by Germany and Japan.
Read more about this topic: Alfried Krupp Von Bohlen Und Halbach
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