Reichsmarks were contributed by Flick's Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke. Seven days later the constitutional guaranties of freedom were suspended, and in the March elections Hitler won 44 percent of the total vote which, together with the Hugenberg vote, gave Hitler a majority in the Reichstag. Never has a political contribution had such far-reaching and devastating consequences.

After the Third Reich dictatorship was solidly established, Flick appears to have had little direct contact with Hitler himself. But his relations with Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler endured. Goering he dealt with chiefly to achieve the expansion of the Flick Konzern, and in connection with the reorganization of German industrial controls for rearmament and, later, for war. His close connections with Himmler developed out of the Keppler Circle.

Keppler's influence with Hitler declined as time went on, and after 1934, Himmler replaced him as the central figure in the circle. Indeed, the group was soon known as "the Circle of Himmler Friends." At about the time of this transition Flick himself began to participate in the meetings. The group started to make financial contributions to Himmler's private funds, aggregating about a million Reichsmarks per year. Flick's regular contribution was 100,000 Reichsmarks per year. We will return for a closer look at the Himmler Circle and its activities in our discussion of count four of the indictment.

B. Further Expansion of the Flick Konzern

Having cemented his credit and standing with the Hitler dictatorship, Flick turned again to the aggrandizement of his own enterprises. His immediate objectives were a better supply of bituminous coal to feed Maxhuette, and of brown coal and pig iron for Mittelstahl.

The bituminous coal was taken care of first. In 1933 and 1934, Flick succeeded in acquiring a 40 percent stock interest in the Harpen Bergbau A,G., the third largest group of coal mines in the Ruhr, with a stock capital of 90,000,000 Reichsmarks. In 1935, Flick persuaded the directors of Harpen to convert 30,000,000 shares into nonvoting debentures, which reduced the voting stock capitalization to 60,000,000 Reichsmarks. Flick thereupon sold the nonvoting debentures which he received in this conversion, and bought voting stock in Harpen with the proceeds, thus acquiring majority control. In 1936, Flick acquired control (through Harpen) of another large bituminous coal concern in the Ruhr, the Essener Steinkohlenbergwerke. After these purchases, the Flick Konzern resources of bituminous coal aggregated

some fifteen million tons per year-far more than the needs of Maxhuette-as compared with less than a million tons in 1932.

The Flick acquisitions of brown coal and blast furnaces to supply pig iron to Mittelstahl will be described in detail under count three of the indictment. Coal fields and blast furnaces alike were acquired by Flick from Jews, and were obtained by taking full advantage of the so-called “Aryanization" policies and laws of the Third Reich.

The blast furnaces of the Hochofenwerk-Luebeck were located on the Baltic Sea at Luebeck and Stettin. Iron ore from Sweden was brought by low cost sea transport to these ports, and the pig iron produced by the blast furnaces was shipped on to the plants of Mittelstahl near Berlin and Dresden. Hochofenwerk-Luebeck was "Aryanized" by Flick in 1938.

The acquisition of the blast furnaces opened wide Flick's eyes to the interesting and profitable possibilities of "Aryanization." Very extensive brown coal properties-estimated by Flick at 20 percent of the total tonnage of all kinds of coal mined in Germany -were owned by a large family of Jewish citizens of Czechoslovakia, known as the Petscheks. Part of these fields were controlled by a group headed by Julius Petschek; the larger portion was controlled by the Ignaz Petschek group.

In January 1938 Flick procured from Hermann Goering exclusive authority to negotiate with the Julius Petschek interests (NI-900, Pros. Ex. 411), and he commenced negotiations with certain American and English representatives of the group which resulted in a sale in May 1938, on terms very favorable to Flick. The Ignaz group proved much more intransigent, but their bargaining position, if any, was quite hopeless after Germany occupied the Sudetenland, where the Ignaz group maintained its principal offices. The acquisition was finally completed in December 1939, after an interesting but intricate interchange of properties with the Hermann Goering Works, which will be developed later.

Flick's last large acquisitions within Germany were made in 1939. In addition to the Ignaz Petschek brown coal fields, in that year the Concern purchased a 50 percent interest (the other half being owned by the State of Saxony) in the Saechsisiche Gusstahlwerke Doehlen, a high-quality steel concern situated at Freital, near Dresden in Saxony. This addition increased Flick's annual crude steel output to about 2,150,000 tons per year, equal to or slightly greater than the output of Krupp.

In a speech at a testimonial dinner in April 1940, Flick told his assembled associates and colleagues (NI-3345, Pros. Ex. 26):†

"Now it has gone far enough, and we shall call a halt. The era of expansion is finished."

1

† Speech by Friedrich Flick on the 25th anniversary of his appointment to the Vorstand of Charlottenhuette, 1 April 1940.

But with the triumphant march of the Wehrmacht and the extension of German hegemony over most of the continent of Europe, these conservative sentiments were soon forgotten. Within a few weeks after Flick so expressed himself, the collapse of France was so imminent, that the rich iron resources of Lorraine were as much of a magnet to Flick as to his fellow steel kings. Three days after the German Army entered Paris, Flick was already discussing the general schedule of allocations that were being made by the Reich, in accordance with prearranged agreements with the great German industrialists, in respect to the coal, iron, and steel properties to be seized in France. Shortly thereafter, valuable properties of the Société Lorraine des Aciéries de Rombas were allocated to Flick, and were subsequently administered by a newly-established company, jointly owned by Maxhuette and Harpener Bergbau. A year or more later, as the tide of war swept over Russia, Flick began to busy himself with acquiring so-called "trusteeships" of various industrial and mining enterprises in the areas occupied by the Wehrmacht. A plant in Riga which manufactured railway cars and equipment was allocated to him after strenuous negotiations on the part of his nephew, the defendant Weiss. In the industrial bend of the Dnepr River, Flick joined with the Hermann Goering Steel Works in the "trusteeship" of large mining and smelting properties. These industrial spoliations in France and the Soviet Union will be more fully discussed under count two of the indictment.

C. Structure and Organization of the Flick Konzern (1945)

Having traced its history, we may now examine the Flick Konzern in the form in which it existed at the end of the war, as shown in the chart displayed on the wall of the courtroom.* Flick's control of the Konzern was vested in a holding company called the Friedrich Flick Kommanditgesellschaft, shown at the top of the chart. In addition to being a holding company for the stocks of most of the companies comprising the Konzern, the Friedrich Flick Kommanditgesellschaft itself owned and operated large steel plants at Brandenburg and Henningsdorf near Berlin, which were formerly part of the Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke.

The steel and bituminous coal companies are shown on the left half of the chart. Directly, or through intermediate holding com

The chart reproduced on page 49 was drawn up from a handwritten chart, Document NI-3676, which was later received in evidence as Prosecution Exhibit 34. The handwritten chart was certified as "a true picture of the 1945 position" by the defendant Weiss and by Theodor Kurre, accountant of the Flick Concern.

panies, the Flick Kommanditgesellschaft owned 100 percent of the stock of the Maxhuette iron and steel complex, and 70 percent of the Harpen bituminous coal mines. Through a subsidiary company, Maxhuette and Harpen controlled the Rombach mines and plants seized in Lorraine. Harpen also controlled the other large group of bituminous coal mines, the Essen company. Essen and an intermediate holding company controlled the "Aryanized" Hochofenwerk blast furnaces at Luebeck and Stettin.

The Flick Konzern itself owned the entire stock interest in Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke, the other major steel complex. Mitteldeutsche held the 50 percent interest in the high-quality steel plant in Saxony. The Flick Konzern also directly controlled the Anhaltische Kohlenwerke, comprising the Petschek brown coal mines of central Germany used by Mittelstahl.

At the right of the chart are the companies which made finished steel products. All but one of these were controlled by an intermediate holding company called "Faguma". The Allgemeine Transportanlage Maschinenbau (ATG) at Leipzig was acquired about 1933 and originally made conveyors and other machinery used in coal mining; by 1935 it had been converted into an airplane factory. The Linke-Hofmann Works, manufacturing tractors, trucks, and railway cars, had been delivered over to the Stahlverein by Flick in 1926, but a controlling stock interest was repurchased by Flick in 1934. In that same year Flick acquired, from the Stahlverein and various banking syndicates, control of the Waggon- und Maschinenfabrik Busch (commonly known as Busch-Bautzen), located at Bautzen near Dresden, which also manufactured electric locomotives, railway cars, and railway equipment. Another small factory, the Leipziger Werkzeug- und Geraetefabrik, was established by Flick about 1936. It was a small tool and machine concern which was operated as an adjunct to ATG. The Fella Works, shown in the little box by itself at the top of the chart, manufactured agricultural machinery. It is located at Feucht, a few miles from Nuernberg, and appears to have been controlled by Flick personally.

The organization of the Friedrich Flick Kommanditgesellschaft and the division of labor between Flick and his principal associates is shown in the second chart in the brief, marked "C", now displayed on the wall of the courtroom. [See page VI.] The lower part of this chart shows the organization prior to 1940, and the upper portion the organization from 1940 to 1945.

During the last decade of Steinbrinck's connection with the Flick Konzern, as is shown in the lower half of the chart, he was Flick's principal associate in its general management. He was a general plenipotentiary in the top holding company, the Flick