Warmonger Krupp Lived In Palace

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 153, 30 June 1945, Page 8

Warmonger Krupp Lived In Palace

J AM writing this attfuth century desk in one °f JAe 800 rooms of the fabulous jbsjsj n g owned, occu—till his. capture—byAlfred Krupp, 37-year-old multimillionaire warmonger,, said Edward J. Hart in a special dispatch to the Sunday Neither a house nor a mansion, it is a vast, ostentatious eight-storeyed showplace in the private park of a super Nazi who, like-his father and grandfather, amassed his wealth out of the world strife he helped to foment. , For It ' was • the Krupps and Thyssens and other big Ruhr industrialists .who first financed Hitler and then gave him the weapons. Now Krupp has had to say goodbye to all that, good-bye to power almost unlimited, good-bye to the absolute control of the destinies of

his 100,000 workers, good-bye to the 1200 acres of twisted, rusty steel and iron, girders which,, thanks to the R.A.F.,' alorte remain of the giant war machine that bears his name, good-bye to the £25,000,000 collection of art treasures he neither understood nor appreciated, except for their cost, good-bye to the Haroun al Raschid palace in which he had simultaneously banqueted and bedded 600 guests in separate suites and entertained all Nazi big shots, from his Fuehrer downward.

Barbaric Pile To-day, while Alfred Krupp eats his bully and biscuit in an Allied internment camp with many of his close associates, his Arabian Nights palace is the billet of a U.S. Ninth Army colonel, of whom I am a temporary guest. Krupp's name for this barbaric greystone pile—it is blue embossed on his parchment stationery—is Auf Dem Hugel (On the Hill).

With a grim chuckle, the colonel said to me: "It almost breaks my heart to think this racket happened outside the United States; I had always imagined we had the best rackets in the world!"

Seated in Krupp's once private study, sipping his 1929 Zeltinger Moselle, which the obsequious chief butler,' Friedrich Santer, offered on a solid gold ,tray, I heard the dramatic story of Alfred's arrest— Little Alfie they call him.

It was 10.15 one Wednesday morning when the colonel, at his command post six miles outside Essen, ordered his chief executive

officer, Lieut.-Col. Sagmoen to investigate this monstrous grey building on the hill across the Ruhr river. Sagmoen and his German-speaking adjutant drove over. They marched into the parqueted main hall 60 yards long and lined with priceless paintings—Van Goghs and Corots hanging side by side with huge, hideous daubs of Hitler and the exKaiser. Servants hurried, cringing, to receive them. "Who lives here?" , "My master, Diploma Engineer Alfred Krupp von Bohlem und Halbach." - "Where is he?" "He is upstairs." "Well, bring him down here at once—you understand, at once." A few seconds later down came Little Alfie, a picture of sullen arrogance, defiance—and fright. On his head was a grey snap-brim felt hat which he insolently retained. "What's your name?" Krupp gave his full titles, adding with dignity, "And I am the owner of this property. What do you want here?" The American captain cut him short. "Okay, buddy, you're the guy we want. Let's go." Describing the scene, the captain toid me: "The son of a gun started to make a speech, so I just grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him into the'jeep. He's just a little weed about sft 6in" and beautifully valeted." Sagmoen took up the tale. "I would have made him ride on the hood like any other Kraut prisoner, but the road back to our C.P. is bumpy, full of bomb craters, and I didn't want to lose the little so-and-so on the way, so I sat him in the rear with the captain.

Scared to Death "We returned here a little later and picked up eight of his personal servants. All the others are under guard on the estate. "I wish you could have seen the chief rat when we started to question him—scared to death, thin lips and hands trembling, and neck muscles working in and out like piston rods." Asked why he hadn't left Germany, Krupp told the intelligence officer, "I am a German and naturally wished to stay with my own people and my workers." That, the colonel assures me, was a lie. "We know that Krupp had received a letter from an associate warning him he could not get out as the Ruhr-armies were completely encircled.

"In one wing of this place that Krupp converted into a works office he eihployed several hundred key. personnel. They had been here since the R.A.F. put their old administrative block out of business." Under open arrest on the estate I saw the Krupp works director, Dr. Wilhelm Fritz Hardach, who offered me his card and testified that his chief is "a very fine, good man, always kind and thoughtful to the people working with him." Married Barmaid On the colonel's authority I am free to question any of the remaming members of the household staff. I tried to learn details of his private life, but, although I made the fullest use of my privileges, have yet to discover evidence that Alfred Krupp ever had a private life. Like Hitler, he seems to have lived only for power, luxury and international warmongering. There are rumours of an early marriage with a Berlin barmaid, dissolved immediately after she had borne him a daughter. According to this_ rumour, he had previously been rejected by a German society woman who sharply criticised Alfie's manners and tastes, and he married the barmaid, hoping for a son to perpetuate the Krupp line. All I could get from the head butler was his everyday routine and the fact that his master liked to travel, drive fast, meet interesting people, and was a gentleman of "simple tastes." When I raised my eyebrows the butler merely gave a deferential smirk. This, he says, is how the simple multi-millionaire spent his average day. Called at 7.30, he would glance at the papers while breakfasting in bed on a lightly boiled egg, an apple, toast and marmalade,, and coffee—=>n English breakfast he called it. .

At eight-thirty he drove himself to the works, two miles away, in a black 100 h.p. Mercedes-Benz limousine, of which make he owned nine or ten, besides a private fleet of Hispano-Suizas. He was at ' the works the day before his capture.

From 12 till two, lunch in Krupp's own marble-walled hotel, the Essenhof, close to the works, and staffed by French, Belgian, Russian and Polish chambermaids. Lunch, said the butler, was just a simple meal of hors d'oeuvre, soup, meat, and two or three vegetables, a salad, a sweet, and a morsel of cheese, with a sip of wine and coffee.

Then back to the office to work till three-thirty. At four he would return to Auf Dem Hugel for afternoon tea with muffins and cream cakes, and continue work in his own study till seven-thirty, when he dined. Dinner, the butler admitted, was fairly substantial, and invariably included omelette, souffle and fricasse of chicken. Then more work and a midnight supper of Gruyere sandwiches and Moselle. He always "slept as peacefully as a child," rarely used his bedside phone or disturbed the staff after retiring. • Going To Miss It Of the hundreds of ornate rooms I have explored, most are crowded with bric-a-brac and precious metals. The one that intrigues me most is Alfie's private reference library, an offshoot from the main library. On its shelves are most of the current British year books, including "Who's Who," imported through a neutral country. And in his subterranean works offices on the estate I saw typewriters with F.ussian and Arabic keyboards. The man of simple tastes is going to miss all this simplicity. No more private life for him, unless he is sentenced to solitary confinement.