German industrialist and entrepreneur, the fifth head of the great steel industrial empire in West Germany and the last member of the Krupp dynasty of munitions manufacturers.
Born Alfried von Bohlen und Halbach in Essen, West Germany, he was the son of Bertha Krupp, the heiress of the Krupp works, and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. After his father grew senile during the early 1940s, Alfried took over as Chairman of the company in 1942. During 1943, Adolf Hitler issued a decree called the “Krupp Law,” which abolished the laws of inheritance and thus, in this case, preserved the firm as a family property. Alfried then assumed the name of Krupp and became sole owner of the family’s vast holdings.
His next act was to seize property in every country that was conquered by Germany, greatly expanding his holdings. When financier Robert Rothschild refused to sign over his French holdings, he was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp and gassed. Because of this incident and the use of concentration camp inmates as slave labor, Alfried was charged with war crimes at Nürnberg after World War II. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to forfeit all of his property. However, in the early 1950s, he was given amnesty, and his holdings were restored. He quickly brought the family firm back to its former position of supremacy, although they no longer manufactured firearms, and by the early 1960s, he was a billionaire.
He had one son, Arndt, who renounced his succession rights as well as his Krupp name. When Alfried died on 7/30/1967, Essen, Germany, the company went public. The Krupp industrial family is the subject of a biography titled “The Arms of Krupp.”
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