Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach

Born in The Hague in 1870, Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach was a Prussian consul at the Vatican when Emperor Wilhelm II arranged his marriage to Bertha Krupp, heiress to the Friedrich Krupp empire; he added her name to his own and took the chairman's seat in 1909. By the outbreak of the First World War, Krupp held a near monopoly on German heavy arms and produced Big Bertha, the Paris Gun, and the U-boat. An avowed monarchist, he began secret rearmament shortly after Versailles, initially resisted the Nazis, then became a fervent Hitler supporter and bankrolled the NSDAP. Deteriorating health reduced him to a figurehead by the late 1930s; his son Alfried formally succeeded him in 1943. At war's end he was bedridden and senile - deemed unfit for Nuremberg - and died in Austria in 1950.