Gustav Krupp Passport 1926: Rare German War Industry Relic

The 1926 Passport of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach:
Witness to Germany’s Most Powerful Industrial Dynasty

What Makes This Passport Historically Significant?

The 1926 Krupp passport is a rare surviving document issued to the man who controlled Germany’s dominant arms and industrial empire across both World War I and World War II.

The passport contains several dozen visa stamps that map Gustav Krupp’s vast international travel network: Egypt, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, and Turkey. Almost all of these countries were, at some point, customers for Krupp products.

The document was sold at a US auction for $550 (including buyer’s premium) and came accompanied by a signed copy of The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1968, 942 pp.), signed and dated 1983 on the title page, in black cloth with a lightly worn dust jacket. A 1955 Krupp company brochure was also included. The book and passport are presented together in a custom one-quarter leather clamshell presentation box with a dedicated protective section for the passport.

Gustav Krupp and the Krupp Empire: A Brief History

World War I and the Near-Monopoly on German Arms

By the outbreak of World War I, Krupp held a near-monopoly on heavy arms manufacture in Germany. Losing access to overseas markets at the start of the war was more than offset by surging domestic demand from Germany and its Central Powers allies.

Krupp’s most iconic wartime products included the 94-ton howitzer known as Big Bertha, named after his wife Bertha Krupp, and the long-range Paris Gun. Gustav also secured the contract for Germany’s U-boats, built at the family’s shipyard in Kiel. In 1902, before his marriage, the company had licensed a fuse patent to Vickers Limited of the United Kingdom. Krupp’s estate, the Villa Hügel, maintained a permanent suite of rooms for Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Rearming Germany in Secret After Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles forced Krupp to dramatically scale back his labor force and prohibited Germany from manufacturing armaments and submarines. The company pivoted publicly to agricultural equipment, vehicles, and consumer goods.

Privately, using profits from the Vickers patent deal and subsidies from the Weimar government, Krupp secretly began rearming Germany almost immediately after the treaty was signed. Artillery development continued through subsidiaries in Sweden, and submarine construction infrastructure was built in the Netherlands. By the 1930s, Krupp had resumed full tank production, including the Tiger I, again operating through foreign subsidiaries.

The War Years, Forced Labor, and the Nuremberg Question

Krupp’s health deteriorated from 1939 onward. A stroke left him partially paralyzed in 1941, reducing him to a figurehead role until his son Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach formally took control of the business in 1943.

Under both father and son, Krupp industries accepted facilities in occupied eastern Europe and made extensive use of forced labor during the war. On July 25, 1943, the Royal Air Force targeted the Krupp Works with 627 heavy bombers, dropping over 2,000 long tons of bombs in a precision Oboe-marked raid. Gustav arrived at the works the following morning and suffered a fit from which he never recovered.

Plans to prosecute Gustav Krupp as a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 were abandoned: he was by then bedridden and mentally incapacitated. He died on January 16, 1950, at his residence near Werfen, Salzburg, Austria. His widow died in 1957. He was survived by eight children, including Alfried (1907-1967), the last private owner of Krupp, whose legacy continued through the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation.

A Primary Source from the Archive

This passport represents one of the most significant travel documents in the passport-collector.com archive. For collectors and historians, it sits alongside comparably important German documents such as the passport of Prince Maximilian of Baden, issued in 1918, and the first passport issued by Federal Germany.

If you hold a historically significant passport and want an expert evaluation, contact Tom Topol directly for a free assessment. You can also explore Tom’s published books on passport history or review the full recognition and reference list documenting decades of research featured in CNN, BBC, and Newsweek.

 

Tom Topol | Passport Historian & Author
Featured by CNN, BBC, Newsweek... Awarded by the U.S. Dept. of State
Ask | Recognition | Books | Set as preferred source