would be unthinkable."
Years after the war, Nazi armaments
chief Albert Speer told a congressional
investigator that Germany could not have
attempted its September 1939 blitzkrieg of
Poland without the performance-boosting
additive.

Sloan's Stance
In the months leading up to the invasion
of Poland, GM president Sloan defended
his close collaboration with Hitler.
In an April 1939 letter to an objecting
stockholder, he stated that in the inter-
ests of making a profit, GM shouldn't risk
alienating its German hosts by intruding
in Nazi affairs. "In other words, to put the
proposition rather bluntly:' Sloan wrote,
"such matters should not be considered
the business of the management of
General Motors."
As the plans for the war progressed,
urgent orders poured in for Blitz truck

spare parts to be delivered to Reich
bases near the Polish border. Days later
in August, nearly 3,000 Opel employees,
from factory workers to senior manag-
ers, were drafted into the Wehrmacht
(German Army). Around the same
time, GM began evacuating most of the
American employees and their families
to the Netherlands. Soon, virtually all
Opel civilian passenger car sales were
eliminated in favor of military orders.
At 6 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany
launched its blitzkrieg against Poland,_
with troops arriving in Blitz trucks man-
ufactured by GM's Opel. The night before,
Sloan reportedly told stockholders that
GM was "too big" to be impeded by
"petty international squabbles:' accord- •
ing to a congressional investigation.
Still, GM was masquerading as if it
did not control its Opel operations. By
the summer of 1940, however, a senior
GM executive wrote a more honest

On The Home Front

To undermine
FDR's New Deal,
GM's Sloan aided
anti-Semitic, racist
activists.

Edwin Black

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

bile GM's German division,
Opel, was making millions
supplying its Blitz trucks
to the Third Reich, its corporate chief in
America was working to undermine the
Roosevelt administration.
Alfred P. Sloan Jr. despised the
emerging American way of life being
crafted by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. He hated Roosevelt's New
Deal — with its Social Security program,
government regulation and support for
labor unions.
In a 1934 letter to Roosevelt's
Industrial Advisory Board, Sloan corn-
plained bitterly that the New Deal was
attempting to change the rules of busi-
ness so "government and not industry
[shall] constitute the final authority."
Sloan become one of the central
behind-the-scenes founders of the

American Liberty League, a racist,
anti-Semitic, pro-big business group
bent on rallying Southern votes against
Roosevelt to defeat him in the 1936 elec-
tion. The American Liberty League arose
out of a series of private gatherings
organized in July 1934 by Sloan, DuPont
Co. board director Irenee du Pont and
other businessmen.
The businessmen sought to create
a well-financed, seemingly grass-roots
coalition that du
Pont declared should
"include all property
owners, the American
Legion and even the
Ku Klux Klan." Sloan
served on the group's
national advisory board
and was one of a num-
Alfred P. Sloan
ber of wealthy busi-
Jr., 1875-1966
nessmen who each qui-
etly donated $10,000
to its activities. The American Liberty
League, which raised more money in
1935 than the National Democratic
Party, in turn, funded an array of even
more fanatical, racist and anti-Jewish
groups.
One was the Southern Committee
to Uphold the Constitution. With help
from the du Pont family fortune, the
Southern Committee circulated pho-
tographs of Eleanor Roosevelt with
African-Americans. Sloan sent a $1,000

Nazi soldiers
work from a

partially camou-
flaged Opel Blitz.

assessment for internal circulation only.
He explained that while "the manage-
ment of Adam Opel A.G. is in the hands
of German nationals:' in point of fact,
GM is still "actively represented by two
American executives on the Board of
Directors."
Despite the facade, throughout the
war, GM in the United States controlled

all voting stock and could veto or permit
all operations. Like any nation at war,
however, the Reich alone determined
what weapons would be made by its mili-
tarized factories. That said, it was GM's
decision to remain operating in Germany.
As anticipated, Opel's Brandenburg

check directly to, the
Southern Committee
after those pictures
were distributed,
according to con-
gressional testi-
mony.
The American
Liberty
League
Sloan honored on
also
financed
the
Sept. 24, 1945
Sentinels of the
Republic, which, in turn, orchestrated
incendiary, anti-Semitic letter-writing
campaigns and otherwise provoked a
backlash against Roosevelt and what
was sometimes derisively labeled his
"Jew Deal."
True, the Sentinels of the Republic
bore all the earmarks of a rabble-rous-
ing extremist group. But behind it were
some of the nation's most affluent and
well-heeled,
supplying the
operating cash
and direc-
tion. Among
them: Sun
Oil President
Howard Pew;
investment
banker Alexander Lincoln, who served as
the group's president; and the president
of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, John Pitcairn.
Sloan himself wrote a $1,000 check
directly to the Sentinels of the Republic.
Only after an April 1936 congressio-
nal investigation was Sloan's financial
involvement in the Sentinels outed.

The GM chief continued to fund and
fundraise for another anti-Roosevelt-
agitation group, the National Association
of Manufacturers. Founded in 1895 as
a pro-business organization and still
prominent more than 100 years later,
NAM sowed anti-union and anti-New
Deal discord among Americans in the
1930s through clandestinely owned and
operated opinion-molding arms.
Roosevelt openly acknowledged that
Sloan, GM, the du Ponts and other cor-
porate giants hated him for his reforms
and his efforts to relieve Depression-era
inequities. In his final 1936 campaign
speech, the president threw down
the gauntlet, shouting to an overflow
Madison Square Garden crowd, "They
are unanimous in their hate for me — and
I welcome their hatred."
Roosevelt added that he wanted his

Hitler's Carmaker on page 18

"[Corporate giants] are unanimous
in their hate for me --- and I welcome
their hatred."

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

first four years to be remembered as an
administration where "the forces of self-
ishness and of lust for power met their
match."
Despite the lush opposition funding by
Sloan and other affluent anti-New Deal
nemeses, Roosevelt was re-elected by a
landslide. 1 1

December 7 • 2006

17