 Ilgner's rapid rise, his naked ambition and the feeling that he was being pushed only because of his family connections made him unpopular with many of his fellow executives but Schmitz held too much power in the company for such objections to be raised publicly.Ilgner was offered membership of the Nazi Party in 1933 but refused on the grounds that he wished to retain his membership of Rotary International, an organisation that Joseph Goebbels had declared incompatible with Nazism.Nevertheless, Ilgner was happy to work closely with the fledgling Nazi regime and encouraged public support for Nazism by the company's factory workers.