William Manchester - The Arms of Krupp, 1587-1968: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War

The story is irresistible. It is the archetypal tale of material accumulation and growth to dehumanized power, personalized in a single family that habitually caricatured the best and worst excesses of the German character. The Arms of Krupp has everything.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

Why write a novel when one can write such a book as this about what is sometimes called the real world? Mr. Manchester may have asked himself this question as he worked on this book, for it is incredibly fascinating in many aspects as well as haunting. Mr. Manchesters portrait of each one [of the Krupps] makes a novel of itself. The Arms of Krupp is a positive contribution to the history of European upheavals which have shaken Western civilization to its foundations in this century.

Roland Sawyer, Christian Science Monitor

The essential ingredients of the Krupp saga can never fail to fascinate. In no other country have successive governments been so intimately bound to one industrial clan. To be the biographer of Krupp is to write the history of modern Germany. It is in Manchesters colorful, extremely readable account of the parallel rise of the Wilhelmine Empire and Krupps during the reigns of Alfred and Fritz that Manchesterin control of his material as well as his emotionis at his best.

Alistair Horne, New York Times Book Review

Krupp is a name that has become synonymous with coal, steel, Ruhr, and death; it even sounds like the crump of a field gun. As a historian, Manchesters principal contribution lies in giving the reader a feeling of what it meant to carry the name of Krupp. This is a key to understanding their position, for much of their power lay in the magic of being Germanys richest, most powerful family. The Krupps prospered under Hitler and outside the Krupp shops signs proclaimed that Slawen sind Sklaven (Slavs are slaves). Most Germans believe the Nazis forced the Krupps to use slave labor in World War II. But the facts are that the Krupps exploited foreign slaves, much as they exploited the German people for almost four centuries.

F. Yorick Blumenfeld, Newsweek

The name Krupp has for years been virtually synonymous with power. It still connotes ruthlessness, cynicism, greed, and, above all, war. There have been other international dealers in armaments but Krupp was the best known and the most successful. A veritable state within a state, its representatives abroad were often more influential than the German ambassadors. The Krupp influence on world affairs during the past century is beyond calculation. In this monumental study, William Manchester has written a melodramatic, often macabre account of the Krupp empire that fascinates from beginning to ironical end.

Henry C. Wolfe, Saturday Review

Manchester makes even the Krupps business machinations and the story of the Ruhr arms plants dynamic reading. A frank, intensively researched and compellingly dramatic book.

Publishers Weekly

The Krupps were known as Schlotbarone, smokestack barons of the Ruhr. Bismarck treasured them, and used their shells to break the power of France in Europe. The Kaiser presided over their marriage plans, and misused their steel and submarines to lose the First World War. Hitler was awed by them. Deep in World War II, he took time out to write a special law (the Lex Krupp) to keep their family fortune intact. In the minds of many men in many lands, the Krupp name became synonymous with the cold pursuit of cash, steel, and power, indeed, with the shame and fortune of Germany itself. Early in the century, H. G. Wells could place the dynasty at the very core of evil. At Nuremberg in 1945, the judges condemned the head of the house of Krupp for crimes against humanity. Trying to cope with the complex history of one of the worlds richest and strangest families, Manchester inevitably circles back to the origins of the German nation and finally weaves into his narrative much of the history of Germany from 1870 to the present. A largely fascinating chronicle.

Time

Mr. Manchester is at his most interesting when describing the idiosyncrasies of what by any standards is an eccentric family. He is rightly fascinated by the personal quirks of the succession of men who nonetheless pursued the greater glory and expansion of the firm with a single-minded ruthlessness.