Linde During National Socialism: 1933–45

Abstract

The rise of the National Socialists took place against the background of the world economic crisis of 1929–33; after a period of relative economic consolidation in the mid-1920s the worldwide economy collapsed. The German Reich – already economically weak during the Weimar Republic – was particularly impacted by this economic disturbance. Private assets were heavily hit by the infl ation of 1919–23. There has been a long-term debate over the role that reparation payments played in amplifying the crisis.¹ The finance and sales crises at the end of the 1920s led to dramatic cuts in industrial production, resulting in mass unemployment, above all in the industrialized regions of Germany and particularly in the big cities.² There were almost 6 million people unemployed in 1932. Considering the limited unemployment benefits at the time, this amounted in practical terms to poverty for a large sector of the population.³ Linde was not spared by the economic crisis either, despite the fact that sales of investment goods such as mechanical and plant engineering were delayed in terms of their response to this crisis. The crisis impacted the Linde Company ‘to its full extent’ first in 1931; contracts dropped, profits in all departments decreased substantially and there was a shortage of work.