Audi Used Camp Inmates

[SIZE=1.2em]Shocking is the word.[/SIZE]
"Car giant Audi employed thousands of concentration camp inmates during the Second World War and was 'firmly ensnared' in the Nazi regime, an investigation has found.
During the war years Audi was known as Group Auto Union and, in a deal brokered by the SS, hired 3,700 concentration camp inmates to work in what was then Germany’s second biggest car firm.
The academic study also revealed another 16,500 forced laborers, who were not imprisoned in concentration camps, were working in Auto Union plants.




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[SIZE=1.2em]Authors of the study, economic historian Rudolf Boch of the University of Chemnitz, and Martin Kukowski, head of the Department of history at Audi, were granted access to the Audi archives for the first time for their 'house cleaning' history of the firm.[/SIZE]

Their book, Wartime Economy And Labour Usage Of Auto Union Chemnitz AG During The Second World War, centres on the firm, which was the only serious competitor to Mercedes during the 12 year lifespan of the Third Reich, with a 20 percent market share for luxury cars."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639714/Audi-employed-thousands-concentration-camp-inmates-Second-World-War-firmly-ensnared-Nazi-regime-shocking-investigation-finds.html#ixzz32s1zFPhy[SIZE=1em] [/SIZE]

 

Good find, Gordon. I always presumed many if not most German war industries used slave labor or POW's . Interesting that VW owns Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini and now Ducati ! Maybe you can get a Porsche designed turret for your armored Bentley if you are a banker bloke working in the City!! LOL

Related to this I understand Krupp did the same. A few years ago Thyssenkrupp opened a huge steel plant just North of Mobile , Alabama. One of it's primary customers is the Ingall's Ship Yard in Mississippi, a primary contractor to the US Navy for frigates and destroyers at that location !

Who would have believed during WW2 that Krupp would become a major supplier to the US Defense Department ! Unfortunately for Krupp Navy cutbacks have reduced orders and it is rumored that the plant is for sale. My money is on India to buy it. Or far more bizarre, the Chinese.

My wife and I use to fly a Dornier turbo-prop commuter from Seattle to Eugene Oregon to visit our daughter.

Strange world.

Gaines

 

One among so many others. Why come up withwith this specific one now? It's a well known fact that slave workers were forced to produce goods for thousands of German facturies.

 

Name a single company that didn't use slave labour during the War in Nazi Germany.

It was a prerequisite in order to be able to do business. Either you had slave labour, and produced goods for the war effort, or you didn't, and produced nothing. Subsequently, your premises would be acquired by someone who did.

 

Right. Same with Beretta M9/92

 

Thought this was old news. I know I read about this several years ago. Given that Audi already paid its due a decade ago, I don't think I'm too far off. Agreed. Not many large industries did not take advantage of the slave labor. Wasn't this a way for Hitler to appease the industrialists during the war?

 

A funny aside; I bought a 1949 VW Beetle in 1957 from an Air Force officer who brought it back from Germany. Funny , wonderful car. Crash gear box, had to double clutch, wool interior, with the flower vase, split rear window and the signal arms that swung out but leaked oil live a sieve. I took it to a mechanic who was a veteran who took a look and said " Ahaw, proof it was made in the British sector !" No offense to my many current British friends but a later MG did drink oil, not that American cars of the time were clunkers too. It just struck me as a funny comment.

Of course I would feel better about it if one of you Limey's would ship me a British Racing Green Morgan.

Gaines

 

I'd be shocked if any large German company in WW2 hadn't used slave labor.

 

"Greed drove all too many "apolitical businessmen" to engage in odious conduct. This behavior, however, was not an exclusive function of capitalism. Rather, it was the result of the social and political realities that existed in the Third Reich. Most industrialists were opportunists who saw the occupation of Europe and the Nazis' persecution of the Jews as a chance to enrich themselves and their companies. Undoubtedly, latent and overt anti-Semitism, anti-Slavic sentiments, and German nationalism also allowed some industrialists to work with the regime out of a sense of patriotism, and without ever reflecting upon the moral boundaries they were crossing. Fear and the desire for self-protection were also important factors motivating businessmen. (Indeed, few Germans demonstrated the courage to speak out against the Nazi regime. Finally, as the war escalated, the desire to merely survive into the postwar period prompted many companies to take advantage of concentration camp labor. The point is that industrial behavior under Nazism cannot be reduced to simple structural explanations. Even within the context of a dictatorship that demanded high levels of production for war, industrialists made choices as individuals. They approached the SS for cheap labor; they decided whether to buy a Jewish company at a fraction of its value; they determined how forced and slave laborers would be treated in their factories.

Today, companies are finally addressing this shameful record. Since the unification of Germany in 1990, increasing numbers of German businesses -- Volkswagen, Krupp, DaimlerChrysler, to name a few -- are allowing scholars to study their archives."

From
http://archive.adl.org/braun/dim_13_2_forgetting.html

 

Another aside. Daimler bought Chrysler for approximately 36 billion dollars , later sold it to a US private equity firm for roughly 5 billion. One problem was that the executives of failing Chrysler were making far more than their successful counterparts at Daimler. It continued to falter under the new owners and declared bankruptcy. FIAT ended up buying it from the US government and interestingly it is near thriving under FIAT.

FIAT was a major weapons supplier to the Italians in WW2 and now a giant conglomerate making weapons, cars, including Ferrari, locomotives, heavy industrial machinery, lorries, coaches, and planes and nautical components.

I cannot imagine a major Axis company that did not use "tainted labor".

 

They were all 'at it'......

 

I’ll show my ignorance and admit I don’t know how the German economy worked.I think companies and property were privately owned and companies issued stock .
Is that true? But they also had to do whatever the party told them to do, right?

It seems the government/party confiscated anything they wanted from Jewish owners and could give it to anyone they wanted. Could they do that with any property, no matter the owners? Did property given to different owners than show up as assets on their balance sheets? What if Jewish owned property had been used to secure debt to non Jewish creditors? Were they then out of luck? How about if a weathy Jewish stockholder held a larger number of shares in a company like Mercedes. Who voted his shares if they were confiscated?

Did anyone officially profit from running or being given ownership of factories in conquered or occupied countries?

How did the government pay for things like armaments or anything else? Did they collect taxes? Did party members and Hitler receive salaries?

[SIZE=12pt]I don’t know any of this stuff.[/SIZE]

 

Quick synopsis here-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazis_and_the_german_economy.htm

 

That's it in a nutshell. It was a socialist economy (National Socialism) where the government dictated all aspects of production. Labor came from the National Labor Front under Robert Ley, which replaced all unions in existence prior to this. After the war started they began replacing these German union workers with forced labor as German workers were inducted into the armed forces.

 

I'll bet that somebody is looking for "reparations" or some sort of discount at the least.

 

I guess all manufacturers in Germany used forced labor at one point or another, attached you will find an advertisment from Mercedes Benz. Just like Audi, not exactly the profile they want to promote today!


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There is one great book on this that I recommend everyone read: The Vampire Economy by Guenter Reinmann - Reinmann was part of the Communist underground during Nazi Germany, and later a well respected economist that was sought by several US Presidents. Yeah, he was a Commie, but the book is very revealing of the hyper-centralization in Hitler's National Socialism. There was no getting around Hitler's government.

There are many other sources that describe the extent to which the National Socialist government micromanaged all of industry. Well, actually, part of this hyper-centralized form of government is that they also decided on what was "necessary" and what was "superfluous". There were significant and crippling resource shortages and any business deemed to be superfluous simply was no longer allowed to exist. Those that were deemed necessary had to contend with having a permanently installed Nazi Party operative in the management of the company affairs.

Any import or export had to be done with the Party officials. Any purchase of raw materials or supplies had to be approved by the Party officials. Any sale price between industries and to the consumer had to be approved by the Party. Companies were not allowed to invest in new machinery if it did not conform with the economic and war plans of the regime.

Even profits and savings were regulated. "Excess profits" or savings were forced to be "invested" in whatever the regime deemed to be necessary, or confiscated altogether.

In other words, anything and everything businesses did was highly regimented and regulated by the regime.

In fact, I would also recommend that people read Amity Shlales The Forgotten Man to see what similarly restrictive regulations did during the New Deal in the United States.