Thyssen’s real inspiration was the corporatist model of industrial organization pioneered by Fascist Italy. The distinctive feature of this vision was that it included employers and workers in a single organization, imposing social unity by government fiat. Not surprisingly, this was not the sort of thing that appealed to old warhorses of reaction such as Krupp and Reusch. And Thyssen’s social romanticism also found little favour with Kurt Schmitt at the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs and Schacht at the Reichsbank.
