This is, in fact, considered a masterwork of
history, an eminently readable and elegantly stylish work by Manchester, a master of the trade.
Manchester, a retired history professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, is widely regarded as
one of this country's preeminent biographers and historian. The Krupp dynasty was extinguished in
1967, when the last surviving family member passed away. With his death the legacy of a four hundred
year span of contribution to the European armaments industry came to an end, and so brought to a
conclusion a tradition spanning wars and quite profoundly influencing outcomes of European history
for centuries. The Krupp Arms conglomerate was technologically innovative, devising new weapons such
as a superior cannon to an anti-air vehicle weapon designed to counter the reconnaissance
capabilities of aerial observation balloons to exotic and much more capable submarines, which they
then built for over four decades.

In so doing, they became fabulously rich, and rose to become
extremely influential and exceedingly conservative voices within the realm of German political
circles. No German leader could hope to marshal the resources or the weapons of war necessary to
mount a military campaign without first gaining the trust, confidence and support of the Krupp
family, which then cleverly and cynically manipulated this influence to vastly enrich themselves.
During World War One, their cannons helped to flatten the French city of Verdun, and at one point
succeeded in lobbing projectiles into Paris from as distant a location as some eighty miles away, an
unheard-of innovation at the time. Aiding the Third Reich in its secret rearmament effort after the
end of the First Word War, they provided a much advanced tank design that eventuated in the Panzer
tank, used subsequently so successfully in Hitler's blitzkrieg through France in the summer of 1940.

They were quite influential within the German society as well, having armed the forces of Kaiser
Wilhelm for battle before World War One, and then surreptitiously backed Hitler financially in the
so-called terror-campaign" of 1933. Incredibly, the Krupps participated in the war crimes of the
Third Reich, even controlling and operating more than 130 concentration camps during the war.
Afterwards, they help to rebuild Europe in the eventual development of the European Common Market.
This is a truly fascinating book written with all of the usual style and substance one come s to
expect of William Manchester, and it is certainly a book I can highly recommend to anyone with an
interest in European history. Enjoy!