A number of international companies have been accused of having collaborated with Nazi Germany before their home countries' entry into World War II, though it has been debated whether the term "collaboration" is applicable to business dealings outside the context of overt war. [1] [ who? ] Accused companies include General Motors, IT&T, and Eastman Kodak.
American companies that had dealings with Nazi Germany included Ford Motor Company, [2] [3] Coca-Cola, [4] [5] and IBM. [6] [7] [8] Ford Werke and Ford SAF (Ford's subsidiaries in Germany and France, respectively) produced military vehicles and other equipment for Nazi Germany's war effort. Some of Ford's operations in Germany at the time were run using forced labor. When the U.S. Army liberated the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found "destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire." [9]
Like Swiss banks, American car companies deny helping the Nazi war machine or profiting from forced labor at their German subsidiaries during World War II. [9] "General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland," according to Bradford Snell. "The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM." [9] In some cases, GM and Ford agreed to convert their German plants to military production when U.S. government documents show they were still resisting calls for military production in US plants at home. [9]
The Nazis reportedly made extensive use of Hollerith punch card and accounting equipment, and IBM's majority-owned German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag), supplied them with this equipment starting in the early 1930s. The equipment was critical to Nazi efforts through ongoing censuses to categorize citizens of both Germany and other nations under Nazi control. The census data enabled the round-up of Jews and other targeted groups, and catalogued their movements through the machinery of the Holocaust, including internment in the concentration camps. [10] Nazi concentration camps operated a Hollerith department called Hollerith Abteilung, which had IBM machines that also included calculating and sorting machines. [11] The history community has long debated whether IBM was complicit in the use of these machines, whether the machines used were IBM branded, and even whether tabulating machines were used for this purpose at all. [12]
In December 1941, when the United States entered the war against Germany, 250 American firms owned more than $450 million of German assets. [13] Major American companies with investments in Germany included General Motors, IT&T, Eastman Kodak, Standard Oil, Singer, International Harvester, Gillette, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Westinghouse, and United Fruit. [13]
General Motors' Opel division, based in Germany, supplied the Nazi Party with vehicles. The head of GM at the time was an ardent opponent of the New Deal, which bolstered labor unions and public transport, and admired and supported Adolf Hitler. [14] GM was compensated $32 million by the U.S. government because its German factories were bombed by U.S. forces during the war. [15]
On August 3, 1933, Adolf Hitler received Sosthenes Behn (then the CEO of ITT) and his German representative, Henry Mann, in one of his first meetings with US businessmen. [16] [17] [18] [ need quotation to verify ]
In his book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony C. Sutton claims that ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to SS-leader Heinrich Himmler. ITT, through its subsidiary C. Lorenz AG, owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the German aircraft-manufacturer, builder of some of the most successful Luftwaffe fighter-aircraft. In the 1960s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during World War II. [16] In addition, Sutton's book uncovers that ITT owned shares of Signalbau AG, Dr. Erich F. Huth (Signalbau Huth), which produced for the German Wehrmacht radar equipment and transceivers in Berlin, Hanover (later Telefunken factory), and other places. While ITT - Focke-Wulf planes were bombing Allied ships and ITT lines were passing information to German submarines, ITT direction-finders were saving other ships from torpedoes. [19] The payments to Himmler were noted in a 1946 banking investigation report by the Office of Military Government, United States. [20]
In 1943, ITT became the largest shareholder of Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH with 29%, and remained so for the duration of the war. This was due to Kaffee HAG's share falling to 27% after the death in May of Kaffee HAG chief Dr. Ludwig Roselius. OMGUS documents reveal that the role of the HAG conglomerate could not be determined during WWII. [21]Kodak's European subsidiaries continued to operate during the war. Kodak AG, the German subsidiary, was transferred to two trustees in 1941 to allow the company to continue operating in the event of war between Germany and the United States. The company produced film, fuses, triggers, detonators, and other materiel. Slave labor was employed at Kodak AG's Stuttgart and Berlin-Kopenick plants. [22] During the German occupation of France, Kodak-Pathé facilities in Severan and Vincennes were also used to support the German war effort. [23] Kodak continued to import goods to the United States purchased from Nazi Germany through neutral nations such as Switzerland. This practice was criticized by many American diplomats, but defended by others as more beneficial to the American war effort than detrimental. Kodak received no penalties during or after the war for collaboration. [22]
German financial operations worldwide were facilitated by banks such as the Bank for International Settlements, Chase and Morgan, and Union Banking Corporation. [13] Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. acted for German tycoon Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler's rise to power. [24]
"Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, including gold taken from the central banks of German-occupied Europe," according to PBS. Switzerland resisted returning these funds, and the Washington Agreement of 1946 merely required the resitution of 12% of the stolen gold. [25]
A forgotten document discovered in a Buenos Aires bank in the 1980s listed more than 12,000 accounts with Nazi ties, drawn up in 1938 after an investigation initiated by an anti-fascist government. The list shows transfers to an account at Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA), ancestor of Crédit Suisse. The account had which had ties to the Bank der Deutschen Arbeitsfront , controlled by the Nazis. [26]
In March 1939 the Bank of England surrendered to Germany 5.6 million pounds worth of gold that belonged to the National Bank of Czechoslovakia, six months before England entered World War II. [27] "The documents released by the Bank of England are revealing, both for what they show and what they omit. They are a window into a world of fearful deference to authority, the primacy of procedure over morality, a world where, for the bankers, the most important thing is to keep the channels of international finance open, no matter what the human cost." [27]
Both the Bank of Canada and the US Federal Reserve Bank helped to launder Nazi gold by transferring it from a Swiss account to one held by neutral Portugal. A single transaction in June 1942 by the Canadian bank moved 4.02 metric tons of gold. [28]
Major Hollywood studios have also been accused of collaboration, in making or adjusting films to Nazi tastes prior to the U.S. entry into the war. [1] Universal Pictures edited All Quiet on the Western Front to remove scenes that had sparked outcry in Germany. [29] Georg Gyssling, the German consul in Los Angeles in 1933, threatened the American film studios with a German film regulation known as "Article 15": A company that distributed an anti-German picture anywhere in the world could see all its movies banned in Germany, a large market for American cinema. [29] He was unable to use this tactic against The Mad Dog of Europe , produced by an independent company that did not do business in Germany, but successfully prevented it from being made by telling the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America that if the movie were made, the Nazis might ban all American movies from Germany. [29] [30]
Robert A. Rosenbaum writes: "American companies had every reason to know that the Nazi regime was using IG Farben and other cartels as weapons of economic warfare"; and he noted that
"as the US entered the war, it found that some technologies or resources could not be procured, because they were forfeited by American companies as part of business deals with their German counterparts." [31]
The Associated Press (AP) supplied images for a propaganda book titled The Jews in the USA, and another titled The Subhuman. [35] The news agency reached a formal agreement with the Nazi regime, hiring Nazi propagandists as reporters. [36] For example when the Germans discovered mass killings by the Soviets after entering Lviv, SS propagandist Frank Roth sent AP photos of those bodies, but refrained when the Nazis carried out a pogrom against Jews. [36]
Spain and Portugal sold tungsten to Germany, which needed it to refine iron ore into steel for tanks and bombers; it also bought oil from Romania, chromium from Turkey and ball bearings from Sweden. [37] [38]
Swiss companies including Oerlikon-Bührle, Tavaro, Hispano-Suiza and Dixi sold the Nazis antiaircraft guns, cannon, military precision instruments and ammunition. [39]
After the war, some of those companies reabsorbed their temporarily detached German subsidiaries, and even received compensation for war damages from the Allied governments. [13]
Herman Hollerith was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting. His invention of the punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century.
A punched card is a piece of card stock that stores digital data using punched holes. Punched cards were once common in data processing and the control of automated machines.
Thomas John Watson Sr. was an American businessman who was the chairman and CEO of IBM. He oversaw the company's growth into an international force from 1914 to 1956. Watson developed IBM's management style and corporate culture from John Henry Patterson's training at NCR. He turned the company into a highly effective selling organization, based largely on punched card tabulating machines.
ITT Inc., formerly ITT Corporation, is an American worldwide manufacturing company based in Stamford, Connecticut. The company produces specialty components for the aerospace, transportation, energy and industrial markets. ITT's three businesses include Industrial Process, Motion Technologies, and Connect and Control Technologies.
Sosthenes Behn was an American businessman, and the founder of ITT. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.
Edwin Black is an American historian and author, as well as a syndicated columnist, investigative journalist, and weekly talk show host on The Edwin Black Show. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, academic fraud, corporate criminality and abuse, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany.
Dehomag was a German subsidiary of IBM and later a standalone company with a monopoly in the German market before and during World War II. The word was a syllabic abbreviation for Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen GmbH. Hollerith refers to the German-American inventor of the technology of punched cards, Herman Hollerith. In April 1949 the company name was changed to IBM Deutschland.
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later models were widely used for business applications such as accounting and inventory control. It spawned a class of machines, known as unit record equipment, and the data processing industry.
Much of the focus of the discussion about Nazi gold concerns how much of it Nazi Germany transferred to overseas banks during World War II. The Nazis looted the assets of their victims to accumulate wealth. In 1998, a Swiss commission estimated that the Swiss National Bank held $440 million of Nazi gold, over half of which is believed to have been looted.
In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion." Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops they believed would liberate their countries from colonization. The Danish, Belgian and Vichy French governments attempted to appease and bargain with the invaders in hopes of mitigating harm to their citizens and economies.
International Business Machines (IBM) is a multinational corporation specializing in computer technology and information technology consulting. Headquartered in Armonk, New York, the company originated from the amalgamation of various enterprises dedicated to automating routine business transactions, notably pioneering punched card-based data tabulating machines and time clocks. In 1911, these entities were unified under the umbrella of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).
IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation is a book by investigative journalist and historian Edwin Black which documents the strategic technology services rendered by US-based multinational corporation International Business Machines (IBM) and its German and other European subsidiaries for the government of Adolf Hitler from the beginning of the Third Reich through to the last day of the regime, at the end of World War II when the US and Germany were at war with each other.
German rearmament was a policy and practice of rearmament carried out by Germany from 1918 to 1939, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles which required German disarmament after WWI to prevent it starting another war. It began on a small, secret, and informal basis shortly after the treaty was signed, but was openly and massively expanded after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933.
Wilhelm Karl Keppler was a German businessman and one of Adolf Hitler's early financial backers. Introduced to Hitler by Heinrich Himmler, Keppler helped to finance the Nazi Party and later served as one of Hitler's economic advisors.
Both the United States and Nazi Germany used IBM punched card technology for some parts of their operations and record keeping.
International Business Machines Corporation, nicknamed Big Blue, is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York and present in over 175 countries. IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, having held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021.
Gerhard Alois Westrick was a German lawyer and businessman who represented several major American companies in Germany before World War II. He was known for his efforts during a trip to New York in 1940 to gain support for the Nazi government. Later he turned against the regime.
James David Mooney was an American engineer and corporate executive at General Motors who played a role in international affairs in the 1930s and early 1940s. His career was disrupted when he was accused of Nazi sympathies in 1940.
