Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach

Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (13 August 1907 – 30 July 1967) was a German industrialist and war criminal who was the last personal sole owner of the company Fried. Krupp. Born to Bertha Krupp, the owner of Krupp, and her husband Gustav, who ran it in her name, Alfried studied engineering and entered the family business in 1935. He became a patron of the SS and joined the Nazi Party in 1938. His father's failing health resulted in Alfried taking increasingly prominent roles in the company. He was eventually placed in charge of the company through a personal decree of Adolf Hitler, the "Lex Krupp", in 1943. Given the crucial importance of Krupp to the German war effort, it was empowered to seize assets in German-occupied Europe and massively utilized the forced labor of POWs and civilian captives, notably those interned at Auschwitz. For his role in the illegal seizure of foreign assets and use of slave labor, Alfried was arrested by American authorities following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. He was indicted in the 1947–48 Krupp trial and sentenced to twelve years in prison. After his sentence was commuted in 1951 by the US High Commissioner for Germany John Jay McCloy, Alfried regained his fortune and leadership of the company, reestablishing it as a leading German enterprise (albeit without its armaments component). He died in 1967. He was honored in West Germany, and the Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study, established in 2000, bears his name.

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