German Automotive Giant Admits It Was a Nazi Accomplice - The New York Times - 0 views
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FRANKFURT — The auto parts maker Continental became the latest German company to issue a confessional study of its Nazi past Thursday, saying it was “a pillar of the National Socialist armaments and war economy” that employed around 10,000 slave laborers, often in inhumane conditions.
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During the war, when Continental supplied tires for military aircraft and vehicles, the company used concentration camp inmates to test products and the inmates often died as a result, according to the study by Paul Erker, a historian at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich commissioned by Continental to examine its past.
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Yet after the war, top managers of the company managed to escape punishment and pursue successful careers, according to Mr. Erker, who spent four years doing research for an 800-page book on Continental’s wartime history.
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Elmar Degenhart, the chief executive of Continental since 2009, said the study was “overdue” but could not explain why it had taken so long.
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Many prominent German companies have still not underwritten detailed studies of their behavior under Naziism. Mr. Erker lists some of them in a footnote in his book: the electronics giant Siemens, the detergent maker Henkel, and the chemical and pharmaceuticals maker Bayer, which during the war was a part of the notorious IG Farben conglomerate
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Ariane Reinhart, the chief of human relations at Continental, said the study by Mr. Erker, which drew on company archives not previously available to researchers, contained lessons relevant for business today. She was struck, she said, by how easily the Nazis co-opted Continental’s managers.
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“It shows me how fragile company cultures are,” Ms. Reinhart said. “In the 1920s, Continental was an open, international, liberal company. Within a few years, the Nazi system was able to smother all of these qualities.”
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Continental’s story contains a warning for modern society amid the rise of right-wing and authoritarian leaders, Mr. Degenhart said. Without naming names, he criticized leaders who “place their self-interest and quest for power above empathy and responsibility.”“That was true then,” he added, “and it’s true now.”