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Hitler's Carmaker from page 15

meeting: "Hitler is a strong man, well
fitted to lead the German people out of
their former economic distress ... He is
leading them, not by force or fear, but
by intelligent planning and execution of
fundamentally sound principles of gov-
ernment."
Few could imagine the menace that
Hitler would become.
Yet to the car company, its longtime
relationship with Hitler was always about
making money — billions in 21st-cen-
tury dollars.
At first, GM hoped it would become the
car of choice for all Germans. In 1928, just
before the U.S. Depression hit, one in five
Americans owned a car while in Germany,
ownership was one in 134. Hitler was
eager to mass-produce his dream, the
people's car or volkswagen, so more
Germans would have access to affordable
personal transportation and pleasure
driving.
Clearly, Hitler saw the mass adoption of
autos as part of Germany's gieat destiny.
But quickly, Sloan and Mooney realized
that the Reich military machine was,
in fact, the corporation's best customer
in Germany. Sales to the army yielded
a greater per truck profit than civilian
sales — a hefty 40 percent more. So GM
preferred supplying the military, which
never ceased its preparations to wage war
against Europe.
Along the way, GM became one of
Germany's leading employers, provid-
ing 17,000 jobs by 1934 and growing to
27,000 in 1938, plus slave laborers.
By 1937, GM's subsidiary had grown
to triple the size of Daimler-Benz and
quadruple that of Ford's fledgling German
operation, known as Ford-Werke. By the
end of the 1930s, Opel was valued at $86.7
million, which in 21st-century dollars,
translates into roughly $1.1 billion.

Anti - Nazi Boycott
Just days after Hitler came to power
on Jan. 30, 1933, a worldwide anti-Nazi
boycott erupted, led by the American
Jewish Congress, the Jewish War Veterans
and a coalition of anti-fascist, pro-labor,
interfaith and American patriotic groups.
Their objective was to fracture the
German economy, not resurrect it.
The anti-Nazi protesters vowed not only
to boycott German goods, but to picket
and cross-boycott any American compa-
nies doing business with Germany. In the
beginning, few understood that in boycot-
ting Opel of Germany, they were actually
boycotting General Motors. GM also
wanted Opel to appear German-owned, to
better appeal to the German people.

16

December 7 • 2006

Against this backdrop, GM president
Sloan and overseas president Mooney
worked hard to obscure Opel's U.S. owner-
ship and control.
Starting in 1934, they concocted the
concept of a "directorate," composed of
prominent German personalities, includ-
ing several with Nazi Party membership.
This created what GM officials variously
termed a "camouflage" or "a false facade"
of local management. But the decisions
were made in America, where GM was
Opel's sole stockholder.
By the spring of 1933, the world was
beginning to learn about the savagery
of the Nazi regime and the Reich's deter-
mination to crush its Jewish community
and threaten its neighbors. By late spring,
concentration camps such as Dachau were
generating headlines as well.
Meanwhile, GM's subsidiary vigorously
joined the anti-Jewish movement required
of leading businesses serving the Reich.
Jewish employees and suppliers became
verboten. Established dealers with Jewish
blood were terminated. Even longtime
executives were discharged if Jewish
descent was detected.
In 1938, just months after the
Nazis' annexation of Austria and only
months before vicious state-sponsored
Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews,
Mooney received the German Eagle with
Cross, the highest medal Hitler awarded
to foreign commercial collaborators and
supporters.

Oiling The Machinery
Among the decisions made in America
beginning in about 1935 was one trans-
ferring to Germany the technology to
produce the modern gasoline additive
tetraethyl lead, commonly called "ethyl:'
or leaded gasoline. This allowed the Reich
to boost octane, which provided better
automotive performance, yielding a faster
and more mobile fighting force.
As early as 1934, however, America's
War Department was apprehensive about
the transfer of such proprietary chemical
processes.
Yet GM moved quickly — in conjunc-
tion with its close ally Standard Oil. Each
company took a one-quarter share of the
Reich ethyl operation, while I.G. Farben,
the giant German chemical conglomerate,
controlled the remaining 50 percent.
The plants were built. The Americans
supplied the technical know-how.
Captured German records reviewed
decades later by a U.S. Senate investi-
gating committee found this wartime
admission by the Nazis: "Without lead-
tetraethyl, the present method of warfare

GM's Response: Nazis Took
Complete Control Of Opel

Bill Carroll
Special to the Jewish News

I

n response to allegations by author Edwin Black that General Motors
assisted Nazi Germany's war efforts before and during World War II, GM
, told the Detroit Jewish News that its executives in charge of its German
subsidiary Adam Opel A.G. "strove to evade Nazi demands to convert the
firm's main factory for production of dedicated war material. But this became
moot shortly after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, and the Nazis took com-
plete control of Opel, turning to forced labor to bolster its manufacturing
industry."
GM added that in 2000, Opel made a $15 million contribution to the
German multi-company Trust Fund Initiative to compensate these forced-
labor workers and their survivors.
"During the 1941-1945 period of the war, when harsh state-sponsored sanc-
tions against Jews and others grew into the horrOrs of the Holocaust, GM
had no role in supporting the Nazi regime," said GM spokeswoman Geri Lama.
Lama is based in GM's Detroit Renaissance Center headquarters.
"In fact," she added, "GM became a key part of the American war effort,
without which the Nazis might have remained in power for many years longer."
To help unearth the facts of the Nazi period,
GM commissioned Yale University Professor
Henry Ashby Turner Jr. in 1998, and Adam
Opel A.G. engage Professor Hans Pohl of
NAZIS
Germany to conduct independent investiga-
tions of GM and Opel activities before and
during World War II. They had unrestricted
access to GM's internal records.
The professors completed their research in
.14t
2000
and Turner subsequently published a
ONTRa Ct OHL
W) elt,C4S: (M4e.
book based on his findings - without partici-
pation or financial assistance from GM. The
book is General Motors and the Nazis: The
Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe's Biggest
Carmaker (Yale University Press; 2005).
Turner's papers were turned over to Yale's
Sterling Memorial Library in New Haven,
._
Conn.
Turner's 2005 book, General
The book tells that, like all German com-
Motors and the Nazis
panies, Adam Opel A.G. helped rebuild the
German industry during the 1930s. As Germany remilitarized in the mid-
1930s, Opel sold trucks and other vehicles to the German armed forces, as
did all other German vehicle manufacturers. The last GM executive departed
Opel in early 1941, many months before the U.S. entered the war.
Refuting any inferences of anti-Semitism on GM's part, Lama cites the
GM Foundation's long history of contributions to Jewish cultural and com-
munity organizations in the Detroit metro area. In the past five years,
the GM Foundation has made donations totaling about $300,000 to such
organizations as the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, the Jewish
Community Center in West Bloomfield, the American Jewish Committee and
the Shoah Visual History Foundation.
In retrospect, concluded Turner and Pohl, Western governments, corpora-
tions, churches and other institutions should have been more alarmed as the
economic revival of Germany came under the control of the Nazis and was
transformed into an engine of warfare and genocide.
"Like all who lived through this dark period, GM is resolved to do all in
its power as a corporation to make certain this never happens again," said
Lama. ❑

