The German tycoon sentenced to Nuremberg who rebuilt his fortune after Nazism

On Wednesday, November 14, 1984, the then Spanish Prime Minister, Felipe González, rose from his seat in the Congress of Deputies to defend himself against accusations of illegal financing leveled against the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). Hugging the microphone, he uttered a phrase that would go down in history: "Neither Flick nor Flock." His reference to Flick had no connection to the man who four decades later would coach FC Barcelona—who, incidentally, that season won the German Third Division league playing for SV Sandhausen—but rather to a German billionaire accused of financing the Spanish socialists.

The so-called Flick case had erupted in 1984, when it was revealed that the Friedrich Ebert Foundation—a front for the German secret services—had allocated one million marks to grease the wheels of Spanish politics in the early years of democracy. The case's name came from the German branch of the scandal and referred to the bribes with which Germany's richest man, Friedrich Karl Flick, subjugated a number of German politicians. However, he hadn't built that vast fortune himself, but rather inherited it from his father, Friedrich Flick.

It is often said of the patriarch that he built his fortune twice, once before World War II and again after the conflict. We will see why later. His first job was at a mining company, right after finishing his studies. In a meteoric rise, he was already on the company's board of directors at the age of eight. In 1926, he began investing in the steel company Vereinigte Stahlwerke, which he controlled four years later. This company was a conglomerate comprised of Germany's leading steel, iron, and coal companies. It was precisely this vast market dominance that led to accusations that the company manipulated commodity prices in the 1930s. In a masterstroke, Flick feigned interest in selling the conglomerate to the French state, forcing the German government to buy his shares for three times their actual value. With the fortune amassed from the sale of Vereinigte Stahlwerke, Flick laid the foundations for his empire, which encompassed diverse interests, from iron and coal mines to foundries, railways, aircraft, and armaments factories. But money also allowed him to gain a foothold in politics, and he became one of the main financiers of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. Thanks to this collaboration, part of his empire was built on the plunder of Jewish property and, more generally, the properties of territories occupied by Germany.

The German war disaster of 1945 caught Flick off guard, and he had to watch as not only was most of his empire expropriated, but he was also charged with war crimes at the famous Nuremberg trials. Three-quarters of his assets were seized, and he was additionally sentenced to seven years in prison, which he did not fully serve. According to recent studies, up to 40,000 workers may have died while working for Flick.

Having settled his accounts with the law, he used his remaining business holdings to build a great fortune for the second time. It should be noted that Flick, like other convicted German businessmen, benefited from the leniency policies that American authorities applied during the Cold War to some of those convicted of Nazism. From 1950 onward, he divested himself of all his mining investments and used the proceeds to acquire a large stake, 40%, in the automobile manufacturer Daimler-Benz, as well as in other industrial companies. All of this was done at bargain prices due to the country's economic situation. Furthermore, as a result of the aforementioned policies, a significant portion of his confiscated assets were returned to him, so that just five years later, his empire already comprised more than one hundred companies in diverse sectors (steel, locomotives, industrial machinery, paper, chemicals, explosives, and synthetic fibers, among others). He was once again the richest man in Germany. When he died in 1972, his son Friedrich Karl took over, and it was he who showered the German Parliament with marks, as we explained from the beginning.