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Under Alfried Krupp's leadership, the Krupp empire promises to be bigger and more prosperous than ever before. Last year, sparking the historic revival of West Germany, Krupp-owned concerns rang up sales of $752 million, are climbing fast toward their 1939 total of $1.2 billion. Krupp now employs more than 91,000 workers, owns 69 factories in West Germany, is turning out locomotives, ships, trucks, airplanes, industrial machinery, giant bucket diggers, false teeth—almost everything but guns. Krupp has enough orders to keep busy for two years.
Price of Freedom. The only dark spot in this bright picture is that the House of Krupp, like Germany itself, is divided into two parts. As the price of regaining his freedom and his remaining properties, Alfried Krupp was forced to give up management of the coal, steel and iron-ore portion of his empire, totaling six large plants and mines worth more than $500 million, and agree to sell them all by 1958. Though Krupp owns and draws profits from the companies, the separation destroyed the vertical integration—from iron ore to finished products—that had always been the company's chief strength.
To offset this handicap, Krupp has thrown its industrial weight and know-how behind a spectacular missionary program of marketing, engineering and exploration around the world. Dozens of teams of Krupp engineers, geologists and metallurgists roam the globe, searching for new markets and new sources of raw materials. Krupp's exports last year totaled $102 million, about a fifth of it to underdeveloped nations. Half of its sales were made by its trade department, which runs 45 companies that do nothing but buy and sell industrial materials and products in world trade. When customers do not have ready cash, Krupp accepts raw materials that it can use or sell elsewhere. It is working hard, if with little success so far, to get U.S. companies to team up with it in what Krupp calls its "Point 4½" plan to raise capital and help industrialize backward nations. It is also pressing the U.S. and Bonn governments for long-term credit backing for the plan.
On the Spot. Though Krupp's well-trained corps of engineers and officials is the vanguard of the firm's overseas expansion, Alfried Krupp himself works hard at the job, flies abroad for two or three months a year to iron out big details or lay long-range development plans at top-level conferences. In the past year he has visited Turkey, South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, conferred with Egypt's Nasser. Turkey's Menderes, India's Nehru, Ceylon's Bandaranaike.
In Turkey he worked out a deal to expand the big steel plant at Karabuk to double its present capacity to 400,000 tons. In India, where Krupp is helping construct a $178 million steel-producing center at Rourkela, including 100,000 one-family houses for workers, he personally solved a major problem by suggesting a practical road-haulage technique for transporting heavy equipment from Calcutta. Next month Krupp will go to Canada to meet Cleveland Financier Cyrus Eaton to discuss the development of a large iron-ore deposit in Ungava, Quebec, will don prospector's apparel to inspect the site.