In February 1933, the future Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring sent out telegrams to 25 of Weimar Germanyâs leading businessmen, inviting them to a secret meeting with Adolf Hitlerâto discuss a potential alliance. Despite their growing success in the polls, the Nazi party was as good as broke, and desperately needed investment; Hitler was subsequently able to secure it by convincing his wealthy guests that they shared the same interestsâstopping the spread of communism, protecting private enterprise and breaking up trade unions. More alluring still was his oxymoronic belief that âprivate enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy.â
The connection between German industrialists and Nazi leadersâuntil recently a grossly overlooked aspect in World War II studiesâresembles the relationship thatâs currently developing in the U.S. between MAGA Republicans and big tech CEOs, Silicon Valley elites and hedge fund moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the latter of whom not only facilitated Trumpâs return to the presidency in part through his donations (and ownership of the social media platform X), but has since obtained a key role in the White House.
As Muskâs DOGE continues to decimate the federal workforceâgutting anti-Trump opposition under the guise of making the countryâs political apparatus more productive and cost-effectiveâmany Americans are wondering what comes next. Historical precedent gives us a possible answer. It isnât pretty.
The industrialists who answered Göringâs call for help went on to benefit from the Nazi regime in three big ways. First and foremost, they received lucrative government contracts for the production of arms, chemicals, food and textilesâcontracts that grew in scale and scope once World War II got going. GĂŒnther Quandt, whose ex-wife Magda married Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and infamously poisoned herself and her children inside the FĂŒhrerbunker, provided the Third Reich with rifles, ammunition, and batteries. Pharmaceutical conglomerate IG Farben produced Zyklon B, the cyanide-based pesticide used in concentration camp gas chambers, while âPudding Princeâ Rudolf August Oetker, of Dr. Oetker fame, was the German armyâs go-to caterer.
Through Aryanization, the industrialists grew their empires, buying out Jewish competitorsâat fractions of the companiesâ actual worthâand then folding them into their own. The twin heads of automobile manufacturer Porsche for example, used the Third Reichâs antisemitic policies as a pretext to oust their Jewish cofounder, Alfred Rosenberger, before going on to develop the Volkswagen and, subsequently, military vehicles like the amphibious Schwimmwagen and armored KĂŒbelwagen.
And they were able to save vast amounts of money by replacing paid employees with slave labor from concentration camps and PoW prisons. Not only did these workers work for free, but they did so for longer hours and with minimal rations. Those who couldnât perform their duties due to exhaustion or illness were killedâand replaced.
While many Nazi leaders were executed at Nuremberg (or committed suicide to avoid such a fate), the vast majority of German industrialists were never brought to justice. Some, like Quandt, went on to claim that they, much like the German population in general, had been tricked or coerced. Others offered to make themselves useful to the Americans, who came to see German capital as a valuable asset in the looming Cold War with the USSR, by helping rebuild the West German economy and supporting transatlantic trade. (Porsche, for example, began selling Volkswagens in the U.S. as early as 1949.) As a result, many formerly pro-Nazi companies are still around today.
Despite assertions like Quandtâs, or arguments that they had no choice, their relationships with the Nazi party were more than merely transactional, with many becoming honorary SS officers and entering the inner circle of Holocaust architect Heinrich Himmler.
Musk and other big tech CEOs, meanwhile, are not just cozying up to Trump for financial reasons, but because they appear to genuinely share the presidentâs worldviewâor, at least, are willing to make it seem like they do. In the U.S., Zuckerberg has firmly planted himself on the side of Trumpâs culture wars, axing Metaâs independent fact-checking services, loosening rules on hate speech, and claiming companies need more âmasculine energy.â Musk, having secured his place at Trumpâs side, is using his wealth and influence to support far-right movements in other countries, notably Germany, where he urged supporters of the Alternative for Germany (AFD), which won a record 152 seats in the German Bundestag following recent elections, not to âfocus on past guilt.â
The story of the German industrialists, then, serves as a warning for todayâs America and the Western world at large. Despite their claims to the contrary, neither the German industrialists nor their 21st-century American counterparts seem to care much about free markets and capitalism, at least not in the contemporary, neoliberal sense of the word. (Certainly they seem indifferent at best to many of the democratic institutions that guarantee these systemsâ existence.)
Rather, their business practices and goals increasingly appear to be pushing for an economic order more akin to colonial-era mercantilism or a kind of âtechnofeudalism,â as the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis argues in his 2023 book of the same name. Although they claim to champion meritocracy and free speech, the capitalists who have joined hands with Trumpâwhether Musk, Zuckerberg or many othersâappear to dream of a world thatâs more about a free-for-all than freedom for all.
That comes with quite a cost.
