Most influential and powerful in Hitler’s rise to power was German industry: the likes of Mercedes, BMW, Leitz, and Deutche Bank (which financed the construction and operation of the Third Reich’s concentration camps) and hosts of other wealthy industrialists. More than any other aspect of German society, and they all virtually threw their lot in with the Nazis, they were the ones responsible for allowing Hitler to seize control and maintain that control until 1945, but only after a multitude of millions were killed worldwide, the six million Jews, gypsies and mentally infirm as just one aspect of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union itself lost over 26 million people to Hitler and his Third Reich.