Donald Trump: # 39; My new order # 39; American fascism with a friendly face.
German diplomats Price Henry Ford, the center, the highest decoration of their nation for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in July 1938 AP Photo.
Michael Dobbs editor of the Washington Post Monday, November 30, 1998 Page A01.
Three years after Swiss banks have become the target of a rage in the world on their business relations with Nazi Germany, the major US car companies are in a similar debate.
As Swiss banks, US automakers have vigorously denied having helped the Nazi war machine or they greatly benefited from the use of forced labor in their German subsidiaries during the Second World War, but historians and lawyers research on class action on behalf of former prisoners of war are evidence of collaboration amassing occupied by automakers with the Nazi regime.
The stakes for American car companies go well beyond the relatively small amounts involved in the settlement of any action during the war, automakers have established a reputation for themselves as the arsenal of democracy transforming their production lines to make planes, tanks and trucks to the armies that defeated Adolf Hitler They deny that their huge commercial interests in Nazi Germany led them unwittingly or knowingly become also the arsenal of fascism.
Ford Motor Co has mobilized dozens of historians, lawyers and investigators to fight a civil case brought by the lawyers in Washington and New York that specialize in extracting large cash settlements from banks and companies insurance accused of defrauding victims of the Holocaust also a book scheduled for publication next year will accuse General Motors Corp. To play a key role in the invasion of Poland by Hitler and the Soviet Union.
General Motors was much more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland, said Bradford Snell, who has spent two decades researching the history of Switzerland's largest automaker the world was just a GM looted funds deposit part integral to the German war effort Nazis have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland They could not have done it without GM.
Both General Motors and Ford insist they bear little or no responsibility for the operations of their German subsidiaries, which controlled 70 percent of the German car market to the outbreak of war in 1939 and quickly retooled to become suppliers war material to the German army.
But documents discovered in German and US archives show a much more complicated picture In some cases, American managers of GM and Ford have accompanied the conversion of their German factories to military production at a time when the government documents of the United States show that they still resisted calls by the Roosevelt administration to increase military production in their factories at home.
After three years of national introspection, the biggest banks in Switzerland agreed last August to January 1, 25 billion settlement with Holocaust survivors, a step they had initially resisted far from dying down, however, the controversy over business dealings with the Nazis gave a new impetus to longstanding investigations of issues such as looted art, unpaid insurance benefits and the use of forced labor in German factories .
While some of the claims against GM and Ford resurfaced in 1974 congressional hearings on monopolistic practices in the auto industry, US companies have largely succeeded in devaluing their links with Nazi Germany as with Switzerland, but their success even in the projection of a healthy, patriotic image of themselves now turned against them by their critics.
When you think of Ford, you think of baseball and apple pie, says Miriam Kleinman, a researcher at the Washington law firm of Cohen Milstein Hausfeld and who spent weeks reviewing the records to the National Archives to try to build a case against slave labor company based in Dearborn You do not think Hitler a Henry Ford's portrait on his office wall in Munich.
Ford and General Motors declined requests for access to their archives during the war Ford spokesman John Spellich defended the decision to maintain business ties with Nazi Germany on the grounds that the US government has continued to have diplomatic relations with Berlin until the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor company in December 1941 GM spokesman John F Mueller said that General Motors lost control daily on its German plants in September 1939 did not help the Nazis in any way during the Second World war.
When American GIs invaded Europe in June 1944, they did so in jeeps, trucks and tanks manufactured by the Big Three automakers in a larger militarization of the accident ever undertaken programs it came as an unpleasant surprise to discover that the enemy was also driving trucks manufactured by Ford and Opel - a 100 percent owned by GM - and flying fighter jets built Opel Chrysler's role in the German rearmament effort was much smaller.
When the US Army released the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire documents and company touting the genius of the Führer, according to reports filed by soldiers at the scene AUS army report by researcher Henry Schneider dated September 5, 1945, accused the German branch of Ford to serve as an arsenal of Nazism, at least for military vehicles with the consent of the parent company in Dearborn.
Ford spokesman Spellich Schneider describes the report as a misinterpretation of the US parent activities and noted that the Dearborn managers were often kept in the dark by their German subordinates on events in Cologne.
The relationship of Ford and GM to the Nazi regime in the 1920s and 1930s, when US auto companies competed for access to the German lucrative Hitler was an admirer of American mass production techniques and an avid reader of Semitic leaflets penned by Henry Ford Henry Ford I see as my inspiration, Hitler told a journalist Detroit News two years before becoming the German Chancellor in 1933, which is why he kept a life-size portrait of the US automaker alongside his office.
Although Ford later renounced his anti-Semitic writings, he remained an admirer of Nazi Germany and sought to keep America's Coming War in July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, he accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could give to a stranger, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle the next month, a senior executive for General Motors, James Mooney, received a similar medal for distinguished service Reich.
The granting of these awards reflects the essential role that American automakers had in Germany's economy increasingly militarized In 1935, GM agreed to build a new factory near Berlin to produce the Blitz truck to its name which, by the German army would later be used for its Blitzkreig attacks on Poland, France and the German Ford Soviet Union was the second largest producer of trucks for the German army after GM Opel, according to reports US army.
The importance of the US automakers went beyond making trucks for the German army Schneider report, now available to researchers at the National Archives, said the US Ford accepted a complex barter agreement that gave Reich increased access to large quantities of strategic raw materials, particularly rubber Author Snell says that Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer told him in 1977 that Hitler would never have considered invading Poland without synthetic fuel technology provided by General Motors .
As war approached, it became increasingly difficult for American companies like GM and Ford to operate in Germany without work closely with the Nazi rearmament effort Under intense pressure from Berlin, the two companies after their subsidiaries appear to be German in April 1939, for example, German Ford made a personal gift to Hitler from 35,000 reichsmarks in honor of his 50th birthday, according to a Nazi documents captured.
The documents show that the parent companies have followed a conscious to continue to do business strategy with the Nazi regime, rather than part with their German assets Less than three weeks after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, President GM's Alfred P Sloan defended the strategy as a sound business practice, given that the company's German operations have been very profitable.
The internal politics of Nazi Germany should not be considered the activities of the Directorate of General Motors, Sloan said in a letter to a concerned shareholder dated April 6, 1939 We have to lead us in Germany as an organization German We have no right to close the plant.
After the outbreak of war in September 1939, General Motors and Ford became crucial for the German army, according to German contemporary documents and postwar investigations by the US Army James Mooney, director of GM for Operations abroad, held discussions with Hitler in Berlin two weeks after the German invasion of Poland.
Mooney typed notes show that he was involved in the partial conversion of the main GM car factory in Rüsselsheim for the production of engines and other parts for the Junkers Wunderbomber, a key weapon in the German Air Force, under a contract negotiated by the government between Opel and the airline company Junker's notes show that Mooney returned to Germany on February according to continue discussions with the Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering and a personal inspection of the factory Rüsselsheim.
Mooney's interest in the conversion of the Rüsselsheim plant undermines claims of General Motors that the American branch of the company has nothing to do with the Nazi rearmament effort in his testimony to Congress in 1974, GM has argued that American personnel resigned from all leadership positions in Opel following the outbreak of war in 1939, instead of participating in the production of war materials.
However, according to the documents of the Reich Commissioner for the treatment of enemy property, the US parent company continues to have a say Opel operations after September 1939, the documents show that the company issued a general proxy to American manager, Pete Hoglund Hoglund in March 1940 did not leave Germany until a year later at that time, power was transferred to a prominent Berlin lawyer named Heinrich Richter.
GM spokeswoman Mueller declined to answer questions from the Washington Post on the proxy granted to Hoglund and Richter or to allow access to personal records of Hoglund and other warlords He also declined to comment on a statement by Snell that Opel used French and Belgian prisoners at its Rüsselsheim plant in the summer of 1940, at a time when the American Hoglund was still looking after GM's interests in Germany.
The Nazis had a clear interest in keeping Opel and Ford Germany under American ownership, despite the growing hostility between Washington and Berlin At the time of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, US participation in German Ford had fallen to 52 percent, but Nazi officials argued against a full takeover of a memorandum of plant managers of November 25, 1941, acknowledged that such a measure would deprive the excellent German sales organization of parent company Ford and make it more difficult bring Ford other European companies under German influence.
The documents suggest that the main motivation of both companies during this period was to protect their investments An FBI report of 23 July 1941 Mooney quoted as saying he would refuse to take any action which could make Hitler crazy in the fall 1940, Mooney told the reporter Henry Paynter he would not return his Nazi medal because such action could jeopardize 100 million GM investment in Germany Hitler all the cards, Paynter was quoted as saying Mooney .
Mooney probably thought the war would be over soon, so why should we give away our wonderful company, said German researcher Anita Kugler, who used Nazi archives to trace the company's relations with Germany Nazi.
Although GM executives were aware of the conversion of its Rüsselsheim plant to the production of aircraft engines, they resisted these conversion efforts in the United States, telling shareholders that their assembly lines Car in Detroit are not adaptable to the manufacture of other products such as aircraft, according to a company document discovered by Snell.
In June 1940, after the fall of France, Henry Ford personally vetoed a plan approved by the government under U S to produce Rolls-Royce license for airplanes of British fighter, according to accounts published by his associates.
The declaration of war on Germany in December 1941 made it illegal for car companies U S America to have contact with their subsidiaries in the territory controlled by the German.
GM and Ford plants in Germany, the use of forced labor has increased the story of Elsa Iwanowa, who brought a class action against Ford last March, is typical at the age of 16, she was abducted from her home in the southern city of Rostov Russia by German soldiers in October 1942 with hundreds of other young women to work at the Ford plant in Cologne.
The conditions were terrible They put us in barracks, on bunk beds in three levels, she recalled in a telephone interview from Belgium, where she lives now very cold; they did not pay at all and we just fed us The only reason we survived was that we were young and fit.
In a presentation to the court, American Ford recognizes that Iwanowa and others were forced to endure a sad and terrible experience at its plant in Cologne, but maintains that the correction of such tragedies should be a concern of government to government Spellich, spokesman Ford insists the company has no management control over its German subsidiary during the reporting period.
Ford declined his initial request that it did not profit in any way forced labor in its Cologne plant Spellich said that the company's historians are still researching the issue but found documents showing that, after the war, American Ford received dividends from its German subsidiary of approximately $ 60,000 for the 1940-1943 years, he declined a request to interview historians, saying they were too busy .
The extent of contacts between American Ford and its German subsidiary controlled after 1941 is likely to be challenged at any Simon Reich trial, an economic historian at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert of the German car industry says -it has not yet seen convincing evidence that American Ford had no control over its plant in Cologne after December 1941, he added, however, that both Opel and Ford did absolutely everything they could to get well to the Nazi state.
Although there is no direct contact between US Ford and its German subsidiary after December 1941, it appears to have been indirect contacts In June 1943, the Nazi guard of the factory in Cologne, Robert Schmidt, visited Portugal for talks with Ford managers there in more, the Treasury Department has studied Ford after Pearl Harbor for possible illegal contacts with its subsidiary in occupied France, which produces trucks Germany army took survey end no charges laid.
Although American Ford now condemns what happened at its plant in Cologne during the war, he continued to employ managers in charge at the time after the war, Schmidt was briefly arrested by the Allied military authorities and forbidden to work for Ford, but he was reinstated as technical director of the company in 1950 after writing contender Henry Ford II that he had always hated the Nazis and was never a member of the party a letter signed by a Nazi leader Cologne February 1942 described Schmidt as a member of the Ford trust group argues that the name of Schmidt does not appear on the lists of Nazi members.
Mel Weiss, an American lawyer for Iwanowa, argues that American Ford received indirect benefits of forced labor in its factory in Cologne due to the overall increase in the value of German operations during the war, he noted that Ford had looking forward to demand compensation from the US government after the war, the losses due to bomb damage to its German plants and thus should also be responsible for all the benefits of forced labor.
Similar arguments apply to General Motors, which was paid for by the US government 32 million for the damage to its German factories Washington lawyer Michael Hausfeld, who is involved in the Ford lawsuit, GM also confirmed on our list as a possible target .
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