Episode list

The rise of Krupp steel group to world's leading arms manufacturer is told from the cardiac death bed of Bertha Krupp who believes a single firstborn Krupp should be its absolute chief; albeit for the general good of family and fatherland, and her son Alfried nor grandson Arndt are deemed good enough anymore. Her mother Margarethe's first husband Friedrich 'Fritz Krupp' inherited Ruhr iron works and rose as the emperor Wilhelm's trusted 'court supplier' of heavy arms, while building up a worldwide trade network. However her refusal to remain discrete about Fritz's predilection for handsome local boys on his Capri health holidays and yacht trips caused the emperor to inspire Margarethe's psychiatric internment, but after the press gets wind of it Friedrich's suicide and her returns as board chair, with an imperially picked second husband, restyled Prussian career diplomat Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. Ruthlessly-prepped heir Alfried and his near-discarded siblings grow up frustrated and confused during the Great War, which loses Krupp the imperial favor before wrecking his throne, but increases their fortune, even paid for licenses afterward by British rival Vickers, and modernizing, cynically also in custom-made prostheses. When the bankrupt state crumbles, red revolutionaries turn even on the Krupp capitalists.

Even the mighty Krupp family suffers after the lost Great War, using most accumulated private capital to keep its staff employed while they seek new peacetime production, next must, after initial reluctance, commit to the Nazi rearming effort, despite Berta's disdain for the 'upstart' Hitler. Firstborn heir Alfried obtains a gymnasium instead of private education, while training to succeed as CEO, but is deemed 'unsuitable' when he insist to chose his own bride, commoner Anneliese Bahr, whom he met at Munich university and weds for -doomed- love. Anneliese, mother of Alfried's love child which Berta practically commandeered, must be dumped if he's to be named chief of the military growth division, which he refuses, but then patriarch Klaus dies at the news his 'spare heir' son Claus von Bohlen und Halbach is killed in action as military pilot.

After Hitler's utter defeat, with Germany in bombed ruins, Alfried stubbornly commits to an impossible inheritance. After years in allied jail as assumed 'armament war criminal', father Gustav dying as invalid in a home, he finds a way out a rebuilds the industrial group, without military division, legally advised by brilliant insurance director Berthold Beitz, his brothers being discarded. Finally released and restored to the family fortune, he can meet his eccentric gay son Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach, who is disappointed to be shipped off to another, Swiss boarding school, who shows no interest in business and is bought out to indulge in Gothic fantasies while the future is assured in modern stock-form, as required by the new federal republic.