On the 80th anniversary of the proclamation of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, which led to the institutionalization of the incipient Nazism in the then Weimar Republic, we review the consequences -some negative and others not so much- of collaborationism on the part of the clothing industry. automobile with the III German Empire.
The most striking case is that of the Quandt family, which currently owns the BMW Group, and its patriarch Günther Quandt, who invested part of the family capital obtained from supplying uniforms to the German army in BMW and Daimler-Benz. In 1937, Quandt was recognized by the Hitler regime as Leader of the Arms Economy, like so many other decisive industrial players in the achievements of Nazism, for the contribution of his business in the supply of weapons and engines.
In exchange, Quandt obtained forced labor from concentration camps and even facilities and factories in the occupied territories. His recognized role by the Hitler regime helped Quandt to become one of the most prominent German businessmen of the Third Reich. His two sons, Harald and Herbert – the first of whom he had conceived with the later wife of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels – thus inherited the Quandt empire after his death.
But : half a century ago, when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, Günter’s youngest son decided not to sell his 30% shareholding and to increase it to 50%. Today, that shareholding package has a value of more than 15,000 million euros for the Quandts, whose main visible head has been Hebert’s granddaughter, Johanna, and her children.
Renault did not suffer the same luck
But not all car manufacturers benefited as much from their collaboration with the German army. This is the case of Louis Renault, founder of the company of the same name, who also collaborated with Hitler by supplying trucks and tanks to the Wehrmacht (the armed forces of Nazi Germany) during the war. When the allied army achieved the liberation of France, Renault was accused of being a collaborator and thrown into prison, where he died in 1944 while awaiting a date for his trial.
Just a few weeks later, Charles de Gaulle signed a decree requisitioning Louis’s 96.8% stake in the company he had founded, in a nationalization that deprived his heirs of the returns on that expropriated capital. More than 50 years later, in 1996, the French government, then led by Jacques Chirac, would end up privatizing Renault.
Comparative grievance by allies
Even today, the descendants, going so far as to initiate legal actions against the French State: they defend that, in occupied France, his family’s company had no choice but to work for the Nazi regime and denounce that “no other company was subject to this type of treatment, not even those in which the directors were found guilty of collaboration”, according to statements by their lawyer in 2011.
The Renaults could well refer to Günter Quandt himself, who was tried, found guilty and sentenced to prison, from where he would be released only two years later, for his connections with the leadership of the authoritarian German regime. The German and his family, unlike Louis Renault, kept all the capital accumulated until then.
More Nazi relations with other actors in the sector
Or also Daimler-Benz, from which they have come to recognize their responsibility for “helping to motorize the Nazi movement” with their activity, as stated in the book Mercedes in Peace and War: German Automobile Workers, 1903-1945. Nor did the Stuttgart conglomerate suffer adverse effects from its collaboration with Hitler; quite the contrary, like Quandt, he also benefited from the regime’s favors during World War II.
These are the most representative cases of how the Nazi regime influenced the European automobile order as it has been known in subsequent decades and up to the present day. But there are more examples of its effects: the relationship between Volkswagen and Nazism is also famous; It is said that Hitler came to propose to Ferdinand Porsche the design of a Volkswagen utility (seed of the later successful Type 1) marketable at popular prices, thus pursuing his goal that each German had precisely his own vehicle. Such was the decisive participation of the Führer in the future of the German automobile industry.
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