Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen (9 November 1873 – 8 February 1951) was a German businessman, born into one of Germany's leading industrial families.

Friedrich studied mining and metallurgy in London, Liège, and Berlin, and after a short period in the German Army, joined the family business.

On 18 January 1900 in Düsseldorf he married Amelie Helle or Zurhelle (Mülheim am Rhein, 11 December 1877 – Puchdorf bei Straubing, 25 August 1965), daughter of a factory owner.

Thyssen was a German nationalist who supported Nazism, believing that limited government control of production and ownership of banking and transportation was a means of preventing the spread of full-fledged communism.

In 1923, Thyssen met former general Erich Ludendorff, who advised him to attend a speech given by Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party.

Thyssen was impressed by Hitler and his bitter opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and began to make large donations to the party, including 100,000 gold marks ($25,000) in 1923 to Ludendorff.

In November, 1932, Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht were the main organisers of a letter to President Paul von Hindenburg to urge him to appoint Hitler as Chancellor.

Thyssen also persuaded the Association of German Industrialists to donate three million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the March 1933 Reichstag election.

In 1933, the artist John Heartfield depicted Thyssen as the puppetmaster manipulating Hitler on the cover of communist magazine Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ, Workers' Illustrated Newspaper).

[7] He accepted the anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany that excluded Jews from business and professional life, and dismissed his Jewish employees.

[8] The breaking point for Thyssen was the violent pogrom against the Jews in November 1938, known as Kristallnacht, which caused him to resign from the Prussian Council of State.