The land is so toxic it can never be used productively again. Bavaria is the first name in BMW. I’m not sure how they became residents of a place they, as you say, want to get rid of. As far as making amends with the victims, it’s a little late, since due to their stalling, the victims that survived have mostly died of old age. Because I don’t wish to believe that the Germans could still turn each other in, rat fink, and squeal on each other except for real reasons like, you know, environmental laws and because what the other person did was really, really irritating. Sarah Silverman’s is also critical of Jewish people who drive German cars: ‘If Mercedes could only have seen into the future …The amount of money they would be making from Jewish consumers … maybe they would have helped not kill the Jews but instead, they helped, ugh, er, you know, facilitate a genocide of a people who would ultimately become their best customers…. Everyone seems to have a pretty strong opinion here without having actually seen the documentary, which actually has nothing to do with BMW. The Quandt’s made their fortune in WW1 by massively delivering substandard-quality cloth for German soldiers. Edsel’s son Henry Ford II was, as far as I can tell, philosemitic. When Palestine grants the same level of freedoms to non-Palestinians as Israelis grant Palestinians, I’ll listen to their claims of victimhood. BMW dynasty breaks silence over Nazi past Telegraph. As for the owners of BMW, they’re pretty late to the party, and their unpaid reparations have only enriched themselves. An enemy sworn to your destruction should be crushed as long as such behavior continues. Günther Quandt (* 28. “Quandt escaped justice,” Ferencz told the filmmakers. Group – “HI DIETER!” You comprehend! Personal greed is no force majeur. Now they all work FOR ME. It is very interesting though at this time one would think VW as being more of a “Nazi supporter” STILL than BMW, a more internationl company with more diverse management and no ambitions to “conqure the world” unlike…. This apology probably should have happened back in January. The Silence of the Quandt family was broadcast by Norddeutsche Runkfunk (NDR), an affiliate of the national ARD network, and was based on five years of research by authors Eric Friedler and Barbara Siebert. We were wimps. Harald Quandt was a German industrialist, the son of industrialist Günther Quandt and Magda Behrend Rietschel. – AC. It was a dark time for any business in Germany at the time, and I imagine that a lot of what went on was rationalized on fear more than righteousness for a long time. http://www.jordanmaxwell.com/articles/bits/images/union-bank/bush-nazi-link.pdf, Copy of Vesting Order 248 here: http://www.mbpolitics.com/Bush2000/Vesting.htm. After World War II, Quandt and his older half-brother Herbert Quandt ran the industrial empire that was left to them by their father and that continues today, the family owning a stake in Germany's luxury car manufacturer BMW. American indistrialists lust over opportunities like that. Uh, to repeat an earlier post, the Quandt family didn’t have a majority ownership in BMW until fifteen years after the surrender. Herbert Werner Quandt (22 June 1910 – 2 June 1982), was a German industrialist who is regarded as having saved BMW when it was at the point of bankruptcy and made huge profit in doing so. Millions of Volksdeutsch we evicted out of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Not only did Goebbels and family know what was happening, they were appointed to the ministry. They are jacking up the price to unreasonable levels just to make the largest profits possible. However, there is one interesting family fact that is not in dispute—and not widely known by modern BMW enthusiasts. One of the Fords, I think it’s Billy’s cousin Benson Jr., is married to a Jewish woman and donated a Torah scroll to the temple they attend. The reclusive Quandt family responded to the documentary five days later, on Oct. 5, pledging to back a research project into the family’s Nazi past and its role under the Third Reich, opening family archives and documents to an independent historian. Why do you want to deny employment to willing workers? It’s not possible to independently verify that–or anything else regarding Dearborn’s wartime economic relationship with Cologne–because Ford of America was privately held until 1956, and the company will not make available its balance sheets from the period…, …An account by Robert Schmidt, the man appointed to run Ford Werke in 1939, states that the company used forced laborers even before the Nazis put the plant in trusteeship. This has to do with Guenter Quandt’s business dealings 15 years before his son Herbert invested in BMW. For five years the filmmakers hunted down and pieced together the evidence from archives all around Germany since the Quandts refused access to their own files. And we waged terrible war on them – including the killing (and incineration) of hundreds of thousands of women and kids in cities. The Quandt dynasty began in 1883 when Emil Quandt took over a textile company from his father-in-law. While other German carmakers, first and foremost Volkswagen, came to terms with their past, the owners of BMW denied it until recently. But before everyone gets all holier than thou on the Quandts, America got a transcontinental railroad and other properties through exterminating Indians, and Britain, in just one example slaughtering the Kikuyu of Kenya, because they occupied a sunny spot of land Brits fancied. the son of Emil Quandt (1849–1925). Das KZ Hannover-Stöcken (Continental) in Hannover war ein weiteres Außenlager des KZ Neuengamme, das von Anfang September 1944 nur kurze Zeit mit etwa 1000 polnischen Juden bestand. Stunning on how people are attempting to rewrite World War II history from Pearl Harbor (FDR let it happen so he could pull the United States into WWII, so sayeth the tinfoil hat wearing masses) to the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary and didn’t save any lives, and Ford and GM helped the Nazi’s during World War II. So now we have a historian confirming all this after nearly five years more. They announced it openly, 1933 they won an election (about 30% gave them their vote) and power (due to an opposition, too diverse to act), and then they did what they announced, brutally. After the war, Quandt received his company, later renamed Varta (VARGK.F), back from the government and continued to build his industrial wealth—the fortune eventually wielded by his son Herbert in 1959 to buy BMW. Afa produced highly specialized batteries for the Nazi war machine, used in U-boats and V-2 rockets. Just ask Serbia/Croatia, Dafur, or Somalia where genocide is still going on today. They have the right to vote and about 10% of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, is made up of Arab politicians, many of who openly despise the state that pays their salaries. Harald lived with his mother and the Nazi minister until he joined the German army in 1939. Products at a low price. Günther Quandt . Eight of the hundred currently richest Germans are among his descendants. We have Kids strapping on bombs to repay a wrong a thousand years earlier. In one letter, penned shortly after France’s surrender, Dollfus assured Dearborn that “we will benefit from the main fact of being a member of the Ford family which entitles us to better treatment from our German colleagues who have shown clearly their wish to protect the Ford interest as much as they can.” A Ford executive in Michigan wrote back, “We are pleased to learn from your letter…that our organization is going along, and the victors are so tolerant in their treatment. While I won’t deny that there are civil rights issues in Israel regarding Israeli Arabs, the simple facts are that 10% of the Israeli population are Arabs and they enjoy full legal equality. There is not much use in an army winter coat, for example, that soaks so much that you freeze to death when in the field and forced to use it. paul-y The entire issue is being misunderstood…or intentionally ratchet up for the reason of flaming emotions. Did Henry Kissinger Really Plan ‘An Accident’ for Bud Zumwalt? 259). Günther Quandt’s second wife (and mother of their son Harald) ultimately married the notorious Joseph Goebbels—one of the most powerful and prominent Nazis of the Third Reich. They acquired a majority on deadly sick BMW well after WWII and, by their money, saved that company. I think you’ve missed the point. That doesn’t excuse anybody from their decisions, but it’s not a simple situation to empathize with, either. I am truly disheartened that a purported wordsmith would rely on Google or other internet searches to divulge as fact, what actually occurred during war. Günther Quandt (28 July 1881 – 30 December 1954) was a German industrialist who founded an industrial empire that today includes BMW and Altana (chemicals). His first wife was Antonie ‘Toni’ Ewald. For the most part, those refugees were absorbed and assimilated. Breaking the Silence: BMW’s Quandt Family to Investigate Wealth Amassed in Third Reich Spiegel Online International A 2002 biography covered much of the same ground. Exactly. There is no comparison between what America did and what the Germans did. One more reason to stay away from BMW. Herbert’s heirs, including wife Johanna, daughter Susanna Klatten, and son Stefan, today own a controlling 47% stake in BMW, which has a market capitalization of $42 billion. Perhaps worse the slaves, they were literally worthless, since they didnt cost anything. To say that “that was war” is just a real easy way out. windswords – +1 At the end of the war, Günther Quandt’s former wife Magda killed her six children in the Führerbunker, then committed suicide with her husband Goebbels. That being said they have not always traded in a fair manner (and the US is as much to blame for letting them get away with it as they are for doing it). Nothing in here or other news reports about what the Quandts could do to make some kind of amends. For car fans, Flick controlled both Daimler-Benz and Audi at one point. The seizure is confirmed by Vesting Order No. Assets that he controlled were seized not once, or twice but four times under the Trading with the Enemies Act. BMW, of which the Quandts became major shareholders 15 years after the war, was not implicated in the documentary. The VW “Thing” was little more than a World War II German staff car. That’s why I make a point of enjoying as many of their superb products as possible. My Grandfather told me many stories of German soldiers who did not want to go along with the atrocities that were being committed. ARD officials denied the speculation and said they decided to air the program only after the Film Festival premiere. How convenient. In the film, one of the Quandts (the only one who would even talk) says: “All families have dark sides.” Not like this, they don’t. Return what was stolen during the War? The Dearborn Independent) was pretty scathing about the old coot’s obsessions. On October 20, 1942, under authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. Congress seized UBC and liquidated its assets after the war. BMW is paying reparations to people at your synagogue by making the best cars in the world available for their pleasure. what APaGttH says in the first ‘graph. Have you actually visited any of the Nike factories? You mean the way Nike and other American companies used child labor in Asia? Günther Quandt was Emil’s son and became a wealthy German industrialist who built up his father’s businesses and assembled an even larger industrial business empire. Unless you are of German ancestry, you have no concept of the shame and embarrassment the majority of the German people feel over what occurred during WWII. I could be wrong but offhand I think no more than 100,000 of the 600,000 or so Jews in Palestine in 1947 were survivors of the Holocaust. That’s why you don’t read anything about a successful counter force within Germany against Hitler and his regime, aside from some heroic, suicidal efforts more or less limited to single persons or small groups. So Rosie the Riveter who volunteered and earned wages was just like the dying skeletal prisoner? Better late than never – the past can’t be undone, but apology has no statute of limitations. My own actions, my own failures…are job number one enough for me. FoMoCo’s current president for North America is Jewish and the corporate treasurer is an orthodox Jew. History is a tough but fascinating subject and, at secondary school levels, not taught well enough or with an eye towards critical thinking about claims and conclusions. “It’s for me a step in the right direction that the Quandt family, after so many decades, finally is willing to face its history,” says Carl-Adolf Sörensen, a former Danish resistance fighter who was sent to the Hannover-Stöcken concentration camp in 1943. In those cases, the hosting societies did the right thing. Others went to France and the United States. den Spitzenplatz auf der Liste der 500 reichsten Deutschen ein. Günther Quandt first married Antoine … A Bonn historian received access to the family archives and concluded in his 1,200 page report that “the Quandts were linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis. First…it is very important to understand the family did this research: Because there cannot be any honest progress without honest admissions. Here’s the first 3 parts of The Silence of the Quandts with English subtitles (I guess he/she is working on translating the other 4) With the assistance of W.M. NOBODY is suggesting there were NOT horrible sins comited. The senior German officers would then take a member of the soldiers family, hold a gun to their head and ask them what they planned to do next. Dieter – “I played a integral role in and profited from mass Genocide” The film revealed not only the slave laborers, but also that Günther Quandt had convinced Nazi contacts to send a Belgian competitor to a concentration camp after he refused to sell his company to Quandt. You will be the first to stand up and shout your innocence and demand to be judged by what you do. The senior German officers would then take a member of the soldiers family, hold a gun to their head and ask them what they planned to do next. Papers found at the National Archives show that the company was selling to the SS and the police as well. simply deal with hard facts and if not, stop this dirt throwing. The Silence of the Quandt Family highlighted how patriarch Günther Quandt, grandfather to the generation now controlling BMW (BMWG.DE), built a blood-stained wartime fortune on the back of slave labor and how he sidestepped postwar recrimination. If you are a parent, how would you feel if one of these workers was you child? I will not carry on battles and wars begun before my birth nor carry hatreds against people(s) I have no hatred for. The Quandt family fortune began when Herbert Quandt turned BMW from a struggling car company into one of the largest luxury car companies in the … It’s also been known that Quandt’s wife Magda Ritschel, whom he divorced in 1929, remarried Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1931 and that Goebbels adopted Quandt’s son Harald. Similarly, when the behavior stops, you resume trade and normal relations with them. I’m no Bush family lover, but when an organization that is doggedly devoted to exposing antisemitism clears Prescott Bush of Nazi sympathies, I tend to believe it. Are EV Batteries an Environmental Hot Mess? Good grief. All I could think of comedian quote: But finger pointing and going, “ya, well so and so did this,” seems like little more than a weak defense from BMW fanboys who don’t want to feel guilty when they climb into their 5-series to drive to work tomorrow. My father fought in World War II. His parents divorced and his mother was later married to Joseph Goebbels. So all I am asking…demanding…is you do the very same for others and stop the drive by shootings here. I do blame Germans for killing both of my grandfathers during the war. His second wife Magda, which he had married when she was half his age, divorced him eight years later, only to marry propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as a witness. This has a taint of other long hate battles that people seem to want to rage on forever. BMW’s past? Unpatriotic at the very least to take advantage of your country’s misfortune. I’m not here to support or rationalize anything that is or was done to exploit people, but there is enough culpability to go around. Most of the Jewish population growth in Palestine took place between the start of Aliyah ~1880 and the British “white paper” that cut off Jewish immigration in the 1930s. a) democracy and stale bread. No one can undo the heinous and cowardly acts that were committed during WWII by the third reich. Of course they didn’t. “We were treated terribly and had to drink water from the toilets. In addition, forced labour (usually civilians from occupied countries) was used and the program showed a Danish man in his 80s who ended up at the battery plant and suffered ill health for his life. well…my point exactly. See, now doesn’t that feel better? Old Man Quandt signed a contract with the SS to obtain concentration camp inmates as workers, with expected turnover of 75 days as the chemicals would kill them all since they were given no protective gear. Thanx. I’m pretty sure that the Ford family knows that Henry was a crackpot about many things. Auotblog. But, and that’s the difference: this family got rich already in WWI by delivering substandard cloth and uniform material unfit for service, killing soldiers. Oh, and don’t forget to click on the little CC button to make the translation appear. BMW played a role in WWII for Germany, just the same way that GM did, but things get even more weird from there, seeing how German forces met up with Russian forces who were driving American Studebaker trucks that were given to them as a part of the Lend Lease Act! What I also do dislike about the Quandt approach is that they supported Hitler BEFORE he came to power (c.f. All they had to do is become the leaders of the Germans and the Germans did what came naturally to them. How did this happen? Apartheid? Günther Quandt is similar to these people: Herbert Quandt, Altana, Harald Quandt and more. I’m waiting for the BBC to admit to stealing television from Paul Nipkow. In keeping with its normal policy, the automaker made no comment about the Quandts, but noted that it has publically confronted its own wartime history via independent research projects. And this is well outside of a war situation. Or at the *very* least… all the ill gotten property, valuables, and cash should have been returned to the survivors (or the remains of their families). Did Henry Ford ever apologize for being a Nazi sympathizer and supporter? By 1941 Ford of Germany had stopped manufacturing passenger vehicles and was devoting its entire production capacity to military trucks. Tell me how Israel could treat them better while its very existence is under constant threat by its own residents. It also produced munitions. It is about time that on Rosh-Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration, The BMW family decided to finally come out and just say it. BMW, his most valuable asset, was inherited by his third wife Johanna Quandt and their children, Stefan Quandt, 46, and Susanne Klatten, 50. Thanks Ronnie, you took the keystrokes right from my fingers. Nazi Germany was execrable and required destruction. How could they keep companies they took, art, jewels, lives? Most factories in the US were feverishly feeding the American war machine during WWII, so why would Germany be any different? Are you implying that my Grandfather was a liar? The documentary prompted the Quandt family to do what other German companies had done many decades ago: Employ a historian to examine the family’s history during the Third Reich. Now how about Mitsubishi admitting the same, or other Japanese corporations who profited from American POW slavery?