The sins of their forefathers’ Nazi pasts are a legacy that some of Germany’s best-known brands, including Mercedes, Volkswagen, Porsche and BMW, still carry
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskIt’s the intoxication of the pursuit of power, the intoxication of building a huge corporation, the obsession with self-affirmation that is at the root of all this, and it’s the belief in the value of one’s own work, not only because work is something moral, but because building the corporation is the ultimate good, and because anything that resists building it out is bad.
After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, German companies benefited from lucrative contracts related to rearmament. They took over Jewish-owned businesses. Facing a shortage of workers during the war, German firms staffed their factories with concentration-camp inmates and forced labourers from occupied territories in Europe. Many of these 13.5m people died from starvation, abuse or poor living and working conditions.
The shameful role of Germany’s business dynasties during the Nazi regime has been known for decades, but Mr de Jong’s investigative work adds detail. “Initially, most business tycoons viewed Hitler and his Nazis as loud, violent, boorish, brutish uniformed curiosities from the uneducated and impoverished hinterlands,” he writes. That changed after the global stockmarket crash in 1929, which took a devastating toll on the German economy.
Quandt disliked the Nazis, yet he had no scruples about facilitating their rise. When Quandt met Hitler in 1931 he described him as “perfectly average”. A widower with two sons, Quandt married Magda Friedländer, the stepdaughter of a German-Jewish businessman, with whom he had another son, Harald. After divorcing Quandt, Magda married Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.
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