Word: thyssens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Miserly, always shabbily dressed, old August Thyssen used to drink beer and eat wurst with his workers. Consistently he kept away from politicians and society, and when it was suggested that he appear at the German Imperial Court he replied that he had no suitable clothes for such an occasion...
...Fritz, the second son, buckled down, learned the steel business, eventually became sole manager of his father's empire. During World War I the Thyssen works boomed, Thyssen the Younger turned tough as his dad when the French occupied the Ruhr in 1921 and began issuing demands to German industrialists. Fritz Thyssen refused to obey, was hauled before a French court-martial, was tried and imprisoned for a short time. Thereafter he was a strident nationalist, consistently anti-French. Instead of accepting with resignation the Weimar Republic, which accepted the Versailles Treaty, he put his money for a time...
...Vereinigte Stahlwerke, the gigantic German steel trust, was formed. Herr Thyssen headed this organization, which controlled 75% of Germany's iron-ore production and 50% of coal-mine output and which listed among its properties 33,000 acres of mines and factories, a 1,200-mile railway system, 14 private ports, 209 electric power stations, numerous cement factories, and tenements housing 60,000 employes' families. His total number of employes rose to 200,000. Fritz Thyssen's personal share of the property was 26%, valued at some...
...rising social consciousness of Republican Germany, bringing with it legislation for providing better wages at fewer hours, ate heavily into the Thyssen profits. Depression began, and not only did Herr Thyssen see that the "Socialists are our great enemies," but he also saw the need for an armaments race if his business was to be saved. About that time he became the first big industrialist to believe that a young, up-&-coming agitator named Adolf Hitler was fundamentally safe & sound for Big Business, that the National Socialism which Herr Hitler preached would freeze the status quo, protect the haves from...
...Herr Thyssen began to preach the Nazi good word among his colleagues. In the 1933 election, in which the Nazis finally won, he contributed some 3,000,000 marks ($1,200,000) toward the Hitler campaign fund. In early January, 1933, at the Cologne home of one of Herr Thyssen's friends, Adolf Hitler had met Franz von Papen, onetime Chancellor, and concluded a political alliance. Old President von Hindenburg, apprised that Papen's Nationalists as well as the big industrialists were behind Hitler, gave in at last and appointed Hitler Chancellor...