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leave Krupp again and only desisted from doing so, because at the
same time a new and large field of activity opened out for him in which he was
given full scope. The pronouncement of the German Reich’s military
sovereignty caused a great number of foreign countries to take up business
connections with Krupp as a supplier of arms connections that had been severed
by the First World War and, in the course of the next years, Mueller developed
a number of new guns for the armies of these countries. In doing so, he could,
free from the tutelage common in German Wehrmacht agencies, give full
expression to his development ideas. The guns for foreign countries, therefore,
had quite generally a better performance than those developed for the German
Wehrmacht before that date.
This did not at all, per se, affect
considerably the close relationship to the German Wehrmacht. The relationship
to them was running along lines fixed by custom. Any advisory activity in the
only sector concerned, the technical development sector, was neither asked for
nor given. What was done, was the adjustment between specifications and
technical execution, as it is usual everywhere. A relationship of trust between
Krupp and the ordnance offices could, at the most, be said to have existed with
respect to the sector dealing with heavy artillery beyond 17 cm. It was a
tradition with regard to the navy. The relationship to the Army Ordnance Office
was decidedly bad. Then the Second World War came. Dr. Mueller was as little
prepared for it and was as much surprised when it broke out, as were the
majority of Germans whose political opinions had been formed only on the basis
of the German sources of information.
He never concerned himself with
political associations and very definitely lived only for his work.
Mobilization plans for the industry, which existed in Germany just as well as
in foreign countries, did not make him think of a war of aggression; these
plans were never carried out in the intended form anyway and he himself was not
concerned with it directly since he had nothing to do with the production.
The outbreak of this war was for Dr. Mueller everything but the
achievement of his greatly desired aim, for the very simple reason that the war
destroyed or paralyzed for an undetermined period what he by his technical
ability had again made possible — the weapons business with foreign
countries by the Krupp firm.
4. Since, however, this was the case, it
became the devious patriotic duty for Dr. Mueller to place his abilities at the
disposal of the German Wehrmacht during the war. He had no other choice.
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