For those who missed the news, a documentary aired late last month at the Hamburg film festival and on German television in which the Quandt family, principal shareholders in BMW, have been implicated in Nazi war crimes stemming from the family's past during the Holocaust and concurrent Second World War.
The result of five years of research into the Quandt family's wartime activities, The Silence of the Quandt Family asserts that Afa, the family's battery company that supplied specialized power cells and munitions to the Third Reich, employed slave labor provided by the Nazis. Documents unearthed as part of the research show that the company appallingly estimated that approximately 80 of its forced laborers would die each month at its factories. The film included testimonies from survivors who attested to the subhuman working and living conditions, as well as from former Nuremberg war-crimes prosecutors who asserted that, based on the evidence previously hidden by the Quandts and now revealed, the family would have been convicted of war crimes.
The Quandts, the documentary asserted, had close ties to high Nazi party officials. Adolf Hitler himself acted as witness to the second marriage ceremony of family patriach Gunther Quandt's first wife Magda to Nazi propoganda mastermind Joseph Goebbels, and the infamous couple raised Gunther's son Harald. The Quandts, according to the research, used the wealth amassed from the suffering of victims of the Nazi regime fifteen years after the war to buy BMW, and continues to hold 47% stake in the automaking conglomorate.
Even in the face of the publicly revealed evidence, the Quandts continue to refute any wrongdoing during the wartime period, have evaded justice and refused to contribute to restitution programs. They have, however, finally pledged to open the family records to independent historians for examination. While BMW itself, like other German companies, has acknowledged its role in the Nazi war machine, the Quandt family that owns it continues to deny any culpability.
[Source: BusinessWeek]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Random Task @ Oct 25th 2007 7:34PM
Shocker! Major Family of German industrialists have Nazi past! In other news, the sun will rise in the West and the sky will be blue today....
BirdmanSTX @ Oct 25th 2007 7:44PM
Sun rises in the west?? You sure??
MixiM @ Oct 25th 2007 7:48PM
Lol, Birdman STX, don't you know that all good comes from west? geez..
Frankenstein Black @ Oct 26th 2007 11:29AM
QUESTIONS: With all that we know (and more that we don’t), why would any Jew buy German Steel? There are so many that do! Why continue to fill the family coffers of the tormentors and murderers of your ancestors? Boggles the mind!
Brett- BMW Advocate @ Oct 25th 2007 7:34PM
Sad to acknowledge but of course one of the most wealthiest families in Germany, at that time, would be in contact with the current government.
We all know BMW engines were used on airplanes during WWII. That alone should tell you that BMW and the Nazi regime were connected somehow.
But its the past and we should look toward prosperous future.
Little Lord Poopy-Pants @ Oct 25th 2007 9:48PM
Unbelievable. Just because you like the product you're willing to gloss over gross injustice and inhumanity by the product maker? That is crass and cynical and disgusting.
If there is evidence to support the charge, the responsible family members (if alive) should be prosecuted. I can only hope the Mossad read the BusinessWeek article.
Brett- BMW Advocate @ Oct 25th 2007 9:54PM
If you were rich to no means and your country needed your support, would you support them?
Regardless if I like the product, this wasn't the work of BMW, it was done by a shareholder.
I'm not condoning what the Nazis' did. I'm simply stating that in the time of war, financial aids and services were required from businesses in order to stay in business.
Little Lord Poopy-Pants @ Oct 25th 2007 10:06PM
Nope - we're not talking about mere "services" we're talking about slave labor and people dying from mistreatment ON THE FACTORY floor. There is no excuse for a civilian contractor to do that. Other suppliers managed to avoid accepting forced labor and many who did use it mitigated the effects. The Quandts did not. Shame on them.
Michael @ Oct 25th 2007 7:37PM
I believe a crime is a crime, even if it comes to light 60 years later. Shame on this family, they can burn in hell.
R @ Oct 25th 2007 7:51PM
I commend you. There are some people who believe injustices just sort of expire, like milk, and unresolved justice along with it. Even just admitting it and apologizing would be some justice.
chucho @ Oct 25th 2007 7:43PM
past is past, every mayor company of any combatant country at that(and at this) time would helped it's own goverment, and how others said, lets aim for a better future.
R @ Oct 25th 2007 7:46PM
And yet, the Allies, other than the possibility of Russia, didn't resort to death-causing slave labor. You really only saw that with the Axis (Japan and Germany anyway).
Derek @ Oct 25th 2007 7:49PM
Yes, the past is the past, but there is a big difference between companies which acknowledge and have repented for their wrongdoing through offering compensation, and public apologies, and those that still refuse to face up to they past. For example, VW came out about 10 years ago, offering compensation for to survivors who had been mistreated as "prisoner labour" at their plants. In contrast, companies like Mitsubishi, which was a LARGE corporation even in those years, continues to deny its role in the exploitation of Korean, Chinese and others during the war. If one was to simply search through the the archives, Mitsubishi was practically acting in unision with the Imperial Japanese Army in orchestrating some of the most attrocious acts in the 1930s and 40s... may they burn in hell...just like the subject family in this article.
Maestro1 @ Oct 25th 2007 8:10PM
R you might wanna read up on your History before you make those uninformed comments.
Who invented concentration camps? It was the British during the Boer War in Africa (1899-1902).
Who also used concentration/containment camps during WWII? America did, as it placed all Japanese immigrants into these camps in the US after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Granted, no Japanese were eliminated in genocide-type methods but a great deal of Japanese people died in those camps and faced bad conditions.
And for all those who are quick to place the blame, yes these people are stupid for not apologizing and paying restitution, but you also have to understand that there wasn't very much in the way of choice during the time. It was either help or be subjected to some form of punishment from the government.
michelle @ Oct 25th 2007 8:51PM
Derek, while it's nice that VW came out 10 years ago and offered some compensation to the victims but it was more of a publicity stunt more than anything. If any of those companies wanted to be fair they would have paid the compensations right after the war when most of the survivors actually lived and not 50 years later when most of the survivors are dead anyway.
Reality is that VW, Mitsubishi, BMW were and are in it for the money and they produced products that their respective governments needed and it's the governments that are supposed to be held responsible and not individual companies. Mitsubishi didnt start the war, Japanese Emperor did, VW didn't start the war, Hitler did.
Little Lord Poopy-Pants @ Oct 25th 2007 10:43PM
So Chucho, you are saying if you were in a position of authority at a company, you'd help the US government in time of war? Somehow, I doubt it. But I doubt you'll ever be in a position of authority, so the question is moot.
And you're saying that "helping" one's government by employing government-supplied slave labor is the same as producing war material under a simple procurement contract using unionized labor?
Well, I don't know how to say "you need remedial moral and ethical training" in language you'll understand, so I'll just say it using polysyllabic words and leave it to your mom to explain it to you.
R @ Oct 26th 2007 2:31AM
Maestro:
Woa, woa, woa, first off, we're talking about WW2 here. Some countries were able to go by without slave labor, that implies others could, too at that time period. If you go back far enough, we're drawing cave paintings, and clubbing each other over the heads with animal bone.
Second of all, do not even try to imply that I need to read up on my history if you're trying to compare the Japanese-American concentration camp conditions with the concentration camps of Japan and the Germans. The former is a cake walk in comparison, a stay at Holiday Inn in comparison. Statistically, if you set aside the anti-Jewish campaign of the Germans and just look to Russian and Allied POW's, the survival rate in a Japanese prison camp as a POW or a civilian was far worse due to mistreatment. Nevermind things like the Bataan Death March, or Nanking. Hmm let's see, would I rather have my property seized and placed in a remote desert camp, but fed and clothed, or be starved to death, tortured, and experimented on. Hmmmm...
Thirdly, we're talking about apologizing and setting the record straight now, 2007, not 1939, not 1942, not forming a resistance to a long dead Nazi/Imperial government. There is no excuse other than being a cowardly ass to not come clean in 2007. There is no government with a firing squad waiting.
Spankee @ Oct 26th 2007 10:09AM
@ R
You might want to plug the words "Tuskeegee Siphyllis Experiments" into google.
While WWII is often called "the last good war" when you read up on what the allies were doing at the time (Hey, look, Russian genocide!!!!) you realize it wasn't so much "good vs. evil" but "bad vs. unbelievably bad"
R @ Oct 26th 2007 2:57PM
@Spankee
Thanks for the heads up. I wasn't aware of that, and I'm always interested in new information. *And* your example is in the proper time period.
But I just want to clarify again, my point is that this Quandt family has not come clean. Even the Tuskegee victims got an official apology from a US President. I'm sure if we kept digging, we could find something from WW2 that the US did not come clean about (in fact, I can already think of something), but for something as major as the anti-Jew program in Germany, it's a bit odd for this family to actively sweep under the rug. US citizens may as well start denying atom bombs were dropped.
pkh540 @ Oct 26th 2007 4:02PM
This is troubling news indeed... but not wholly unexpected (and upfront I will confess that I own a BMW).
Wartime leads to despicable acts and sadly a perverse justification for the suspension of one’s moral compass and NO COUNTRY is exempt from horrible actions or committing atrocities against their enemy. (Beyond examples such as Japanese and Russian POW camps, and Hanoi Hilton, our own modern-day short list includes Abu Ghraib, the CIA's "rendition" program, Guantanamo Bay as well as many others we have yet to hear about... and let's not forget our own sad chapter in American history... slavery).
Granted these fall far short of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps (I visited Dachau and it was a most humbling experience!) and in no way excuses any country's behavior but the point is it happens and we have yet to learn from our past. And few, if any apologize and I suspect it is out of embarrassment and an unwillingness to admit guilt.
In this "age of enlightenment" we should admit our mistakes and do our best not to repeat them... but we don’t and we end up RE-ELECTING officials who clearly are guilty of their own atrocities (don’t blame me I voted for the other guy!).
So while so many are quick to point fingers, we need to take a look at our own actions be it through the officials we elect, the cars we drive, the electronics we use daily and realize one way or another we all share in the guilt.
I think our own personal opportunity for redemption comes from a song by Crosby, Stills and Nash:
"Teach your children well"
As for those guilty, I believe they have and will answer to a higher authority in the end.
OK, enough pontificating from the soap-box; I’m going to go for a drive… which of course will lead to the unnecessary production of green-house gasses! Gosh, we just can’t win!