Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was a German armament manufacturer whose firm produced much of the equipment used by the German military during World Wars I and II. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Krupp secretly went about rearming Germany in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, which severely restricted the size and strength of the military establishment. Krupp, who enthusiastically supported Adolph Hitler and his Nazi government, used the forced labor of Jews, Poles, and Russian prisoners during World War II to keep his manufacturing facilities in production. Less than one-third of these workers survived the war. Though Krupp was charged with war crimes by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) after World War II, he was not tried due to poor health.

He was born Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach on August 7, 1870, in The Hague, Netherlands. Born into a family of bankers, he studied law at...