March 29 (1886) is the birthday of Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach--namesake of the original Big Bertha.
n. any very large cannon
n. any very large cannon
—Webster’s New Universal
Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition
After Bertha Krupp’s father committed suicide in 1902, she
became the sole inheritor of the most powerful armament and munitions empire in
Germany, provided the moniker for some freakishly large artillery, and
eventually saw her name attached to a munitions factory that employed and
abused concentration camp inmates.
Bertha Krupp was born in Essen, Germany, in 1886—home of
her family’s steelworks since 1811. Her father, Friedrich “Fritz” Alfred Krupp,
had successfully expanded the company into a world-class arms manufacturer and
was creating cannons that used Alfred Nobel’s improved gunpowder (see Nobel Prize) by the turn of the twentieth century.
Unfortunately, Fritz also seemed to have a penchant for young boys and was
caught in a sordid scandal of alleged pederasty that landed his beleaguered
wife in an insane asylum and caused his death (reportedly by stroke, but most
believe by suicide) in 1902. The kaiser, Wilhelm II, decided that
sixteen-year-old heiress Bertha could not possibly take over of one of
Germany’s most important manufacturers, so he forced her to marry diplomat
Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, who assumed the name Krupp and administrative
control of the company.
Frau Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach proved to be more
formidable than the kaiser (or her husband) anticipated, and she was
instrumental in helping Gustav run the company. In 1914, the Krupp factory
produced an extraordinary 420-millimeter, short-barreled and high-trajectory
(howitzer) monstrosity. Its designers called it Dicke Bertha
(Fat Bertha) in honor of the Krupp heiress and owner, and it wreaked havoc on
French and Belgian forts during the early part of World War I.
The original Fat
Bertha paved the way for even larger and longer-ranged howitzers that were all
generally dubbed “Big Berthas” by the Allied troops that suffered under their
shells. The “Paris Gun” was one of the later Bertha types used to bombard the
City of Light in 1918. Its shells weighed more than two hundred pounds and
traveled so high (twenty-five miles) and so far (more than eighty miles) that
gunners had to factor in the rotation of the Earth when making their trajectory
calculations.
Incredibly, the heavy howitzers of World War I are not
even Bertha Krupp’s most notorious namesakes. By 1942, intense aerial attacks
led the Third Reich to spread out its artillery production beyond the range of
Allied bombers. The Krupp company opened a munitions plant in Markstädt
(occupied Poland) and named it after its matriarch—the Berthawerk.
Unfortunately, labor was scarce, so the Berthawerk used prisoners from the
nearby Fünfteichen concentration camp for its frantic production. Bertha’s son
Alfried eventually assumed control of the company, was indicted for crimes
against humanity (for using and mistreating camp inmates), and was sentenced to
twelve years in prison during the postwar Nuremberg trials. His conviction was
overturned in 1951 by the U.S. high commissioner in Germany, in part because
the United States believed it needed strong German industry to help Europe
recover and stave off a new global threat—communism (see McCarthyism).
As the mere heiress to the Krupp dynasty, Bertha was never
accused of any wrongdoing. She was reunited with Alfried in 1951 and moved with
him back to Essen, where she lived until her death in 1957.