Wealthy family with controlling shares in BMW linked to Nazi war crimes

nist7

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Of course, before you even read the article you may very well assert that it is logical for large companies to have ties with the government, including times of war. This is true, as Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank both collaborated with the Nazi party during World War Two. VAG and BMW and other companies have setup a foundation to pay reparations for those alive today who were used as slave labor during World War Two.

What seems to be the news here is the apparent silence and reluctance of the Quandt family to come to terms with their past, publically. "Until now, the family has refused historians access to its Nazi-era historical archives and papers" In addition, the article asserts that the Quandts refuse direct contribution to the reparations payment but they have said that they would contribute an undisclosed amount of money to a fund that pays reparations to former slave workers.

Note: Although this is clearly a political discussion at first, I also want to hear feedback from people about how this will affect the publicity/brand/image/etc. of BMW. This trascends mere politics and may become an automotivepolitical issue. I wonder how many people shun anything from Germany because of Hitler & Co.

So, what do you guys think?

BMW's Quandt Family Faces Its Nazi Past
A shocking documentary aired on German TV exposes the family's shameful history of Nazi profiteering and use of slave labor

by Gail Edmondson

Automaker BMW is Germany's most admired employer and a pioneer in profit sharing. So it came as a shock Sept. 30 when an investigative television documentary exposed the Nazi-era misdeeds of BMW's controlling shareholder family, the Quandts. The Silence of the Quandt Family highlighted how patriarch G?nther Quandt, grandfather to the generation now controlling BMW (BMWG.DE), built a blood-stained wartime fortune on the back of slave labor and how he sidestepped postwar recrimination.

The reclusive Quandt family responded to the documentary five days later, on Oct. 5, pledging to back a research project into the family's Nazi past and its role under the Third Reich, opening family archives and documents to an independent historian.

Testimony from Former Slave Laborers

"The accusations that have been raised against our family have moved us," said the family in a statement. "We recognize that in our history as a German business family, the years 1933 to 1945 have not been sufficiently cleared up."

BMW, of which the Quandts became major shareholders 15 years after the war, was not implicated in the documentary. In keeping with its normal policy, the automaker made no comment about the Quandts, but noted that it has publically confronted its own wartime history via independent research projects.

The TV program stunned Germany and triggered a raft of newspaper stories with headlines such as "The Quandts' Bloody Billions" and "A Fortune Stained in Blood." The hour-long documentary included interviews with former slave laborers who testified to the devastating conditions and atrocities which took place at G?nther Quandt's battery company, Accumulatorenfabrik AG (Afa). Afa produced highly specialized batteries for the Nazi war machine, used in U-boats and V-2 rockets. It also produced munitions. "We were treated terribly and had to drink water from the toilets. We were also whipped," said Takis Mylopoulos, a forced laborer who worked in Quandt's Hannover plant.

Based on documents unearthed by the filmmakers, Quandt estimated a "fluctuation of 80 prisoners per month," in his battery factory?a likely reference to expected deaths per month, the film claims. It also says that Quandt, who joined the Nazi party in 1933, wielded close family ties to the Nazi elite to grow his battery business. Sven Quandt, a grandson of G?nther and the only family member to appear in the documentary, says that he and his siblings cannot be held responsible for their grandfather's activities.

Quandts Rejected Pleas for Reparations

Afa had factories in Hannover, Berlin, and Vienna and was supplied with slave laborers from concentration camps who died by the hundreds, according to the documentary. One former Danish slave laborer testified in the film that he and other survivors, who were deported to a German concentration camp and sent to work at Afa, returned to Germany in 1972 to plead for financial support from the Quandts, since the harsh working conditions at Afa had resulted in lifelong ailments.

The Quandts turned them away, the film says. "It's for me a step in the right direction that the Quandt family, after so many decades, finally is willing to face its history," says Carl-Adolf S?rensen, a former Danish resistance fighter who was sent to the Hannover-St?cken concentration camp in 1943. S?rensen wants the Quandts to admit that Afa relied on slave labor from the camp.

Escaping Justice

The Silence of the Quandt Family was broadcast by Norddeutsche Runkfunk (NDR), an affiliate of the national ARD network, and was based on five years of research by authors Eric Friedler and Barbara Siebert. It premiered at the Hamburg Film Festival on Sept. 30 and was aired without notice on television later that night, at 11:30 p.m., reaching an estimated audience of 1.3 million.

Some German commentators surmise the broadcast was not announced in advance for fear of legal interference from the Quandts to block the program. ARD officials denied the speculation and said they decided to air the program only after the Film Festival premiere.

Despite his Nazi membership?and, as it now appears, his use of slave labor?G?nther Quandt was deemed after the war to have been more of a "passive follower" than a convinced Nazi. But Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor from the Nuremberg Trials interviewed in the documentary, said that the facts revealed today likely would have led to Quandt's conviction for war crimes?similar to those meted out to members of the Krupp and Flick families.

"Quandt escaped justice," Ferencz told the filmmakers. Industrialist Friederich Flick, by contrast, received a prison sentence of seven years at the Nuremberg Trials for deploying slave labor and for serving the Nazi war machine, but was freed in 1950.

After the war, Quandt received his company, later renamed Varta (VARGK.F), back from the government and continued to build his industrial wealth?the fortune eventually wielded by his son Herbert in 1959 to buy BMW. Herbert's heirs, including wife Johanna, daughter Susanna Klatten, and son Stefan, today own a controlling 47% stake in BMW, which has a market capitalization of $42 billion. The Quandts also own a controlling stake in pharmaceutical giant Altana (ALTG.DE). The family's holdings are worth an estimated $34 billion.

Damage Control

Despite its acknowledgement that the family's ties to the Nazis have been played down, the Quandt family members insist the details of G?nther Quandt's past are not entirely new. A 2002 biography covered much of the same ground. It's also been known that Quandt's wife Magda Ritschel, whom he divorced in 1929, remarried Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1931 and that Goebbels adopted Quandt's son Harald. Adolf Hitler acted as witness at the wedding.

Many German companies including BMW, Volkswagen (VOWG.DE), and Deutsche Bank (DB) already have explored their own wartime collaboration and misdeeds during the Nazi era, publishing books, turning over documentation to experts, and paying millions of dollars into funds distributed to forced-labor survivors. Volkswagen's book documents its deployment of 20,000 slave laborers during the Third Reich. In 1999, BMW and other German companies founded the "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" foundation, which provides compensation to former forced laborers.

The Quandts, by contrast, have remained silent about their past, perhaps fearing a global public backlash against the BMW brand. Until now, the family has refused historians access to its Nazi-era historical archives and papers?and it still has not acknowledged that Afa factories made use of slave labor from concentration camps.

The Oct. 5 statement by the family noted that Quandt-owned companies BMW, Varta, and Altana, as well as individual family members, contributed to national funds established to compensate former slave laborers but did not mention the sums contributed.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2007/gb20071010_765240.htm?chan=search
 
It's an interesting read. Although I don't think it'll change the image of BMW, I mean, VW designed the bettle for the Nazi's and Mercedes provided Hitler's personal staff car. Their reps seem to be untarnished.

All I can say is that I hope they throw Chris Bangle in the ovens.... (oooh, that was pretty low... now I feel bad.)
 
All I can say is that I hope they throw Chris Bangle in the ovens.... (oooh, that was pretty low... now I feel bad.)

Hangin's too good for him. Burnings too good for him. He should be torn into little bitty pieces and burried alive!


Really, though, I think that if someone were to base their buying decisions on the fact that a company is associated with the decendants of a Nazi asshole, they're not really looking to buy a car as anything more than a gasoline powered toaster.
 
Too bad I?ve missed it on Tv ... maybe it?ll air again in a couple of weeks and I?ll be able to watch it then.

But I guess it just shows the Desire to forget the personal Involvment of Relatives in the third Reich over here. Couple of Years ago there was a study about how People in their 20ies thought about what happend before and in WW2. The Result was quite remarkable. People knew about the Nazis and what they did pretty well. People didn?t play that down or anything in that way. But when it came to their own Families, specifically their Grandparents, the Results were different. The Conclusion or the generall Impression was more or less, that there were terrible Things going on and happening between 33 and 45 ... but no one seemed to really have been involved. <_< They didn?t tell that, but the researchers found it hard to find anyone who said he or she knew their Grandparents were Nazis or Soldiers or in any other way involved. On the contrary, the researchers gotten more the impression there had been quite a lot of restiance going on, no one ever heard about. When they then did research and showed people how involved their Grandparents really had been, it was quite a shock to many people. I guess when it?s your Family, you don?t want to see those Things. You know they happend, you know (or have a good guess) how terrible it was ... but your nice, old Grandparents involved? That must have been other People ...

I guess that?s a bit what?s going on there. I don?t want to excuse it, but I guess when you look at your Parents, your Grandparents or other close relatives you just don?t see stuff like this because you don?t want to.
 
Why is this such a controversy? Most german fighters during WWII ran on BMW engines, ffs!
 
So that explains Ford's new adverts..

http://img511.imageshack.**/img511/6070/fotdli9.jpg

Then again..Henry Ford..
 
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Isn't it funny how the countries that were the Axis of Evil in WW2 make some of the best cars? Audi, BMW, Merc, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi. And the good guys make... Fords and GM... *wince*
 
I've thought about that too, it's because we're too busy building stuff like this:

sr71_high.jpg


But it's true. After the war, the Axis countries had huge limitations on what they could manufacture, and they obviously couldn't develop new war machines for fear that it might happen all over again. So where do their best and brightest engineers go? To the car companies, where they dream about winning the Targa Florio instead of to the defense contractors that suck up America's finest slide rule pushers. Most engineers would rather get a prestigious, well-paying, stable job at Lockheed Martin or even NASA instead of working for a mere car company like GM and building Malibus.
 
And the good Fords and GM motors are designed in . ... Germany.
If the LS7 was designed in Germany it would have 3 too many cams and weigh 700lbs :p.

I can't say whether or not this actually hurt BMW sales, it just makes the Quandts look like assholes.
 
I'm sorry, but axis or allies, what company wasn't involved in the war somehow? Sure the Quandt guy is a asshole, and should be punished, but that doesn't really mean anything about BMW.

I'll try to get the name and a article if i can, but remember hearing about a Michigan business man during the great depression that led many 100s, if not 1000s of laborers to their deaths knowingly, and he had no encouragement socially or politically to do so, so why is it sooo shocking that business men will exploit people in a time where its acceptable to be a hateful bastard?

What i would like to know is if it was even a viable option to be German and opposed to Hitler during 1933-1945, that is if you wanted to stay alive. I mean hell, Hitler killed off his own troops (the SA) because they happened to be a bit gay, so what do you think he did to people who didn't pledge allegiance to the feurer?
 
But it's true. After the war, the Axis countries had huge limitations on what they could manufacture, and they obviously couldn't develop new war machines for fear that it might happen all over again. So where do their best and brightest engineers go? To the car companies, where they dream about winning the Targa Florio instead of to the defense contractors that suck up America's finest slide rule pushers. Most engineers would rather get a prestigious, well-paying, stable job at Lockheed Martin or even NASA instead of working for a mere car company like GM and building Malibus.

I cannot roll my eyes far enough to satisfy the extreme eye-rolling surge I feel at the moment.
 
I cannot roll my eyes far enough to satisfy the extreme eye-rolling surge I feel at the moment.
Like this? :roll:

So did you not notice that either? I never said it was a bad thing...
 
i say i cloud damage quite badly the bmw brand, that mercedes provided hitler his car and the bettle was designed by hitler seem to be forgoten, but this was never heard before, if it goes global on all news programs it'll be really bad for BMW.
 
I doubt it will have an impact on sales. At least here people are slowly getting tired of all that nazi business.
 
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