page_title: Krupp
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: Krupp / Roles played in important historical events / World War I
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of a WWI gun breech block manufactured by Krupp, Essen, Germany
context_page_description: The Krupp family, a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is famous for their production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, and was the premier weapons manufacturer for Germany in both world wars. Starting from the Thirty Years' War until the end of the Second World War, it produced battleships, U-boats, tanks, howitzers, guns, utilities, and hundreds of other commodities.
  The dynasty began in 1587 when a trader named Arndt Krupp moved to Essen and joined the merchants' guild. He began buying vacated real estate from families who fled the city due to the Black Death, and became one of the city's richest men. His descendants produced small guns during the Thirty Years' War and eventually acquired fulling mills, coal mines, and an iron forge. During the Napoleonic Wars, Friedrich Krupp founded the Gusstahlfabrik and started smelted steel production in 1816.
context_section_description: Krupp produced most of the artillery of the Imperial German Army, including its heavy siege guns:  the 1914 420 mm Big Bertha, the 1916 Langer Max, and the seven Paris Guns in 1917 and 1918. In addition, Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft built German warships and submarines in Kiel. During the war Krupp modified also the design of an existing Langer Max gun which they built in Koekelare. The gun called Batterie Pommern was the largest gun of the world in 1917 and was able to shoot shells of ±750 kg from Koekelare to Dunkirk.
  Before World War I Krupp had a contract with the British armaments company Vickers and Son Ltd. (formerly Vickers Maxim) to supply Vickers-constructed Maxim machine guns. Conversely, from 1902 Krupp was contracted by Vickers to supply its patented fuses to Vickers bullets. It is known that wounded and deceased German soldiers were found to have spent Vickers bullets with the German inscription "Krupps patent zünder [fuses]" lying around their bodies.
caption: Detail of a WWI gun breech block manufactured by Krupp in Essen
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