Americans are unceasingly reminded of the shared memories of the self-titled “Greatest Generation” that beat back the Nazis and saved the world from fascism. Although historians generally commend the United States as an instrumental force behind the undoing of Hitler’s Nazi regime, many prominent American companies and citizens knowingly aided the inception and military efforts of Nazi Germany. The study of this topic has, and will continue to have, an impact on scholarship of both American and European involvement in World War II. Fortunately, a growing body of research has created a foundation for continued inquiry into this contentious field.
The historiography of corporate complicity with the Nazis begins immediately after the end of the war. Major multinational corporations based in Germany, like the mammoth chemical combine I.G. Farben, drew publicity as they were drawn into legal fiascos by the Allied powers who sought to break them up.[1] It was in this environment that several researchers like Richard Sasuly, observed that the interconnectedness of corporate networks bestowed an unprecedented level of efficiency in fulfilling the goals of the Nazi Regime.[2]
The degree of focus on interrelated business activity between the Nazis and the U.S. seems to have tapered during the initial postwar years. Some authors working in this period contend this had to do with shoring up support of the American ‘military-industrial complex’ during the Cold War.[3] Other researchers have claimed that this silence is due to deliberate efforts to cover up such activities.[4] Still, some researchers such as Gabriel Kolko were brave enough to explore the issue. [5]
In any case, the landscape was altered by the controversial business historian, Henry Ashby Turner, who wrote several books on the subject, including the widely cited Big Business and the Rise of Hitler.[6] His basic argument was that major industries were not essential to the rise of Nazism. While this particular work focuses only on the early years of the Hitler regime, Turner has also written many other books that are decidedly pro-business and deflect some of the arguments of other researchers, particular those involving General Motors. Although it was later proven that Turner was paid by GM to produce a history that portrayed the corporation in a more favorable light, this may have had a freezing effect on some scholarship.[7]
As more time passed between the Allied victory and the present, new evidence of American corporate collaboration came to light. One researcher to emerge was Bradford Snell, a U.S. Senate staff attorney who was hired to inquire into anti-competitive practices of Ford and GM in 1974. What was surprising to both the Senate and the public was that the backdrop of this report contained new evidence that both of these organizations also monopolized the Nazi war effort.[8] This type of research was characteristic of a new era emerging, in which the push to explore further ties between business organizations and Nazis expanded. Researchers like William Manchester, James and Suzanne Pool, Anthony Sampson, and Anthony Sutton all published inquiries into this field of study during the 1970s.[9]
Though still a trickle, this groundwork was built upon by researchers throughout the following decade. Graham Taylor and Patricia Sudnick expanded upon the research done on I.G. Farben to explore Du Pont’s relationship to that entity, of which it had originally held a significant stake.[10] Other more controversial researchers, such as Charles Higham, began tying together all the various corporations involved in an attempt to paint a picture of widespread corruption.[11] This trend eventually gave way in the 1990s, when several polemical books aimed at American icons were published, illustrating their involvement in Nazi Germany in the process. This included Coca-Cola and Walt Disney.[12] Additionally, during this period in Germany, many historians were now coming forward as well, many of whom were also studying the financial and military side of this growing field.[13]
Finally, as we approach this last decade, the richness of material on this topic increased dramatically. One team of researchers, Reinhold Billstein, Karola Fings, Anita Kugler and Nicholas Levis, published Trading with the Enemy, which focuses specifically on the manufacture of war materials by Ford and GM.[14] To date, this has been the most detailed argument against these companies. Research on this book led directly to lawsuits against Ford from former slave laborers, and forced the company to come clean on some of their business activities.[15]
Investigative journalist and historian Edwin Black, looms large over this current era, bringing the issue of corporate complicity with the Nazis to the mainstream. Utilizing teams of researchers in multiple countries, he has written several books that focus on various facets of this topic. IBM and The Holocaust in particular, has sold millions of copies, and created significant controversy.[16] Another book by Black released a few years later, War Against the Weak, details the relationship between the American and Nazi eugenics movements.[17] This year, the book has been adapted into a documentary film, which is currently showing in various parts of U.S., Canada, and Europe. Building on this work and others, author Jacques Pauwels has followed in the footsteps of Charles Higham in creating a comprehensive appraisal of much of this research called “Profit Über Alles.”[18] Most recently in April of 2009, Edwin Black has also produced a short anthology called Nazi Nexus, which incorporates and summarized research from all of his books on this subject into a single text.[19] The fact that books on this topic are being published as recently as this year evidences a growing trend of research in this field. Additionally, works like this remain vital to the discourse of this chaotic and pivotal period in world history and will hopefully lead to a greater understanding of the geopolitical nature of our current situation.
1. Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology, IG Farben in the Nazi era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 37-38. The interests involved in this organization are truly dizzying. Behind GM, US Steel, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, IG Farben was the fourth largest corporation in the world. Additionally, it had interconnected business relationships with these other large institutions, such as Standard Oil, DuPont, GM & Ford, all of whom had members on I.G. Farben’s board of directors.
2. Richard Sasuly, IG Farben, (New York: Boni & Gaer Press, 1947) 8. Sasuly’s work joins the ranks of others such as Borkin and Welsh (Germany’s Master Plan) and Corwin Edwards, who focused their attention on I.G. Farben before the war actually ended. Edwards published a report for the Kilgore Committee, which was an effort on the part of the U.S. Senate to investigate the relationship of monopolies and cartels in the war effort.
3. Josiah E. Du Bois, The Devil’s Chemists (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1952) 357-63. Du Bois’ work also focuses on I.G. Farben, focusing on the involvement of its former executives and technocrats in American business in the latter half of the book. Du Bois and his team of researchers argue that these individuals had a direct effect on U.S. ‘bulwark’ policy toward the Soviet Union.
4. Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949, (New York: Delacorte Press, 1983) 210-223.
5. Gabriel Kolko published at least two works during the 1960s that explored the issue of U.S./Nazi collaboration. They are “American Business and Germany, 1930-1941”, The Western Political Quarterly, 25 December 1962, pp 713-28 and The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1943-1945 (New York: 1968).
6. Henry A. Turner, “German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler.” The American Historical Review 75.1 (1969): 56-70. Turner has also expanded the ideas in this article with his 1987 book, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler.
7. Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus (Washington D.C.: Dialog Press 2009) 123-25. This book is a collection of excerpts from the author’s work which includes sections from Black’s Internal Combustion (Washington D.C.: Dialog Press 2006), from which this particular argument is made.
8. Bradford Snell, U.S. Congress Senate Committee on the Judiciary, American Ground Transport, (1974) A-22. This prompted GM to write a rebuttal, which it successfully pressured the Senate (in an unprecedented move) into attaching to the report. It would take another three decades before researchers would come forward to contest GM’s argument.
9. The research referenced here explores the military/financial side of the topic: William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968, (New York: 1970), James and Suzanne Pool, Who Financed Hitler?, (New York: 1978), Anthony Sampson, The Sovereign State of ITT, (New York: 1973), Anthony Sampson, The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Made, (New York: 1973), and Anthony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, (Los Angeles: 1976).
10. Graham D. Taylor and Patricia E. Sudnick, Du Pont and the International Chemical Industry, (Boston: Twayne Publishers 1984)
11. Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949, (New York: Delacorte Press, 1983)
12. The book on Coca-Cola is a bit better sourced than the one on Disney, which is still highly controversial. See: Mark Pendergrast, For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company that Makes It (New York 1993) and Marc Eliot, Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince: A Biography. (Secaucus NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1993)
13. Many works from this period have been collected and translated by Jacques Pauwels in his work “Profit Über Alles,” which references the following articles: “VS-Banken collaborerden met nazi’s,” Het Nieuwsblad 26 (December 1998), Gian Trepp, “Ein Rückblick am Ende einer Ӓra: Das Gewicht der Vereinigten Staaten in der BIZ,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung 25 (November 1994), and Klaus Wiegrefe, “Hitler-Orden für Henry Ford,” Der Spiegel, December 7 1998.
14. Reinhold Billstein, et al., Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors and Forced Labor in Germany During the Second World War, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000)
15. Ford Motor Company, Research Findings About Ford-Werke Under the Nazi Regime (Dearborn, MI: Ford Motor Company, 2001) Section 2 Historical Background of Ford Motor Company and Ford-Werke, 2. This source is made possible due to the first group of slave labor related lawsuits, starting with Iwanowa vs. Ford, which is still in appeal. Although Ford states it lost control of its plant, its own report appears to contradict this claim.
16. Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, (New York: Crown Publishing, 2001) When this book was released, it immediately ignited a flurry of media attention. Simultaneously, a lawsuit was brought by scholars, Holocaust survivors and their families against IBM for the allegations presented in the text. Although the lawsuit was closed by the intervention of the U.S. State Dept in 2003, a concession was provided to have the corporation’s archives for further study. This has yet to occur.
17. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows 2003)
18. Jacques R Pauwels, “Profits uber Alles! American Corporations and Hitler.” Labour/Le Trevail (2003). 18-23. This work is also part of a longer essay published in Belgium (in Flemish/Dutch) last May.
19. Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust (Washington D.C.: Dialog Press 2009) This book includes information from IBM and the Holocaust, War Against the Weak, The Transfer Agreement, Banking on Baghdad, Internal Combustion, and such syndicated investigations as “Hitler’s Carmaker,” all published (with the exception of The Transfer Agreement, which was republished this year) in the last decade.
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