Download or read book General Motors and the Nazis written by Henry Ashby Turner and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first ever based on unrestricted access to General Motors’ internal records, documents the giant American corporation’s dealings with the Third Reich. GM purchased Opel, Europe’s largest automaker, in the 1920s and continued to hold it through the Second World War. Historian Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., uncovers the fascinating story of how the American carmaker conducted business in Germany under the Nazi regime and explores larger issues concerning the relations between international corporations and the Third Reich. The book presents new and detailed information about General Motors’ interactions with Hitler and other Nazi officials, including the carmaker’s attempt to capture the Volkswagen project. It also reveals how American GM executives thwarted a sustained Nazi effort to gain control of Opel. The author concludes with an assessment of the extent of the company’s implication, through Opel, in the Nazi war effort and in the exploitation of forced labor.
Download or read book Ford General Motors and the Nazis written by Scott Nehmer and published by Author House. This book was released on 2013-09-04 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The threat of concentration camps, untimely strikes, and propaganda influenced Ford and GM's war efforts in the U.S. and Europe. Dealing with both the brutal Nazi regime and Communist attempts to influence American opinion, leaders at Ford and GM attempt to balance loyalty to their corporations and homeland.
Download or read book Working for the Enemy written by Reinhold Billstein and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Motors, the largest corporation on earth today, has been the owner since 1929 of Adam Opel AG, Russelsheim, the maker of Opel cars. Ford Motor Company in 1931 built the Ford Werke factory in Cologne, now the headquarters of European Ford. In this book, historians tell the astonishing story of what happened at Opel and Ford Werke under the Third Reich, and of the aftermath today. Long before the Second World War, key American executives at Ford and General Motors were eager to do business with Nazi Germany. Ford Werke and Opel became indispensable suppliers to the German armed forces, together providing most of the trucks that later motorized the Nazi attempt to conquer Europe. After the outbreak of war in 1939, Opel converted its largest factory to warplane parts production, and both companies set up extensive maintenance and repair networks to help keep the war machine on wheels. During the war, the Nazi Reich used millions of POWs, civilians from German-occupied countries, and concentration camp prisoners as forced laborers in the German homefront economy. Starting in 1940, Ford Werke and Opel also made use of thousands of forced laborers. POWs and civilian detainees, deported to Germany by the Nazi authorities, were kept at private camps owned and managed by the companies. In the longest section of the book, ten people who were forced to work at Ford Werke recall their experiences in oral testimonies. For more than fifty years, legal and political obstacles frustrated efforts to gain compensation for Nazi-era forced labor; in the most recent case, a $12 billion lawsuit was filed against the computer giant I.B.M. by a group of Gypsy organizations. In 1998, former forced laborers filed dozens of class action lawsuits against German corporations in U.S. courts. The concluding chapter reviews the subsequent, immensely complex negotiations towards a settlement - which involved Germany, the United States, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Czech Republic, Israel and several other countries, as well as dozens of well-known German corporations.
Download or read book At the Crossroads of Fascism written by Jason Weixelbaum and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this dissertation is to reassess and provide clarity to the contentious field of U.S. business in Nazi Germany. This is a qualitative study focused on a limited group of businesses: Ford Motor Company (FMC), General Motors (GM), and International Business Machines (IBM). The primary historical question involves corporate agency: How much freedom did American companies have to operate under the Nazis? These companies created corporate archives relatively recently to provide more transparency about their past. This study utilizes these internal documents. The analysis of those documents presented here demonstrates that FMC, GM, and IBM made deliberate choices to continue building war materiel for the Nazis despite the fact that they were unable to extract profits from their German subsidiaries. Internal documentation shows that American managers knew divestment was an option. In each case, American managers were aware that their company contributed significantly to German war aims. Although the companies have released documents, this study also found that all three companies continue efforts to obfuscate the history of their activities.
Download or read book Nazi Nexus written by Edwin Black and published by Dialog Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nazi Nexus is the long-awaited wrap-up in a single explosive volume that details the pivotal corporate American connection to the Holocaust. The biggest names and crimes are all there. IBM and its facilitation of the identification and accelerated destruction of the Jews; General Motors and its rapid motorization of the German military enabling the conquest of Europe and the capture of Jews everywhere; Ford Motor Company for its political inspiration; the Rockefeller Foundation for its financing of deadly eugenic science and the program that sent Mengele into Auschwitz; the Carnegie Institution for its proliferation of the concept of race science, racial laws, and the very mathematical formula used to brand the Jews for systematic destruction; and others.
Download or read book Hitler s American Friends written by Bradley W. Hart and published by Thomas Dunne Books. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers, nonintervention campaigners and other voices in America who advocated on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee. We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it.
Download or read book The American Axis written by Max Wallace and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-12-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how Charles Lindbergh's support for Nazi militarism and U.S. isolationism and Henry Ford's business dealings with Germany tarnished their idealized images. Drawing on original lsources, Wallace brings out some pertinent connections between the two men's anti-Semitism and their ties with the rising Nazi regime. Their influence culminated in an abuse of power that helped strengthen Hitler's regime and undermined the Allied war effort.
Download or read book Forging Global Fordism written by Stefan J. Link and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new global history of Fordism from the Great Depression to the postwar era As the United States rose to ascendancy in the first decades of the twentieth century, observers abroad associated American economic power most directly with its burgeoning automobile industry. In the 1930s, in a bid to emulate and challenge America, engineers from across the world flocked to Detroit. Chief among them were Nazi and Soviet specialists who sought to study, copy, and sometimes steal the techniques of American automotive mass production, or Fordism. Forging Global Fordism traces how Germany and the Soviet Union embraced Fordism amid widespread economic crisis and ideological turmoil. This incisive book recovers the crucial role of activist states in global industrial transformations and reconceives the global thirties as an era of intense competitive development, providing a new genealogy of the postwar industrial order. Stefan Link uncovers the forgotten origins of Fordism in Midwestern populism, and shows how Henry Ford's antiliberal vision of society appealed to both the Soviet and Nazi regimes. He explores how they positioned themselves as America's antagonists in reaction to growing American hegemony and seismic shifts in the global economy during the interwar years, and shows how Detroit visitors like William Werner, Ferdinand Porsche, and Stepan Dybets helped spread versions of Fordism abroad and mobilize them in total war. Forging Global Fordism challenges the notion that global mass production was a product of post–World War II liberal internationalism, demonstrating how it first began in the global thirties, and how the spread of Fordism had a distinctly illiberal trajectory.
Download or read book Daimler Benz in the Third Reich written by Neil Gregor and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the experience of one of Germany's most important armaments manufacturers - and automotive companies - during the period of the Third Reich. The book examines how the opportunities offered by the Nazi rearmament in the 1930s led to rapid expansion and a surge in profits.
Download or read book Business and Industry in Nazi Germany written by Francis R. Nicosia and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past decade, the role of Germany's economic elites under Hitler has once again moved into the limelight of historical research and public debate. This volume offers a brief but focused introduction to the role of German businesses and industries in the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich.
Download or read book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler written by Antony Cyril Sutton and published by CLAIRVIEW BOOKS. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities... Not only was an influential sector of American business aware of the nature of Naziism, but for its own purposes aided Naziism wherever possible (and profitable) - with full knowledge that the probable outcome would be war involving Europe and the United States.’ Penetrating a cloak of falsehood, deception and duplicity, Professor Antony C. Sutton reveals one of the most remarkable but unreported facts of the Second World War: that key Wall Street banks and American businesses supported Hitler’s rise to power by financing and trading with Nazi Germany. Carefully tracing this closely guarded secret through original documents and eyewitness accounts, Sutton comes to the unsavoury conclusion that the catastrophic Second World War was extremely profitable for a select group of financial insiders. He presents a thoroughly documented account of the role played by J.P. Morgan, T.W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric Company, Standard Oil, National City Bank, Chase and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, General Motors, the Ford Motor Company, and scores of others in helping to prepare the bloodiest, most destructive war in history. This classic study, first published in 1976 - the third volume of a trilogy - is reproduced here in its original form. (The other volumes in the series study the 1917 Lenin-Trotsky Revolution in Russia and the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States.)
Download or read book On a Global Mission The Automobiles of General Motors International Volume 3 written by Louis F. Fourie and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2016-12-27 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume One traces the history of Opel and Vauxhall separately from inception through to the 1970s and thereafter collectively to 2015. Special attention is devoted to examining innovative engineering features and the role Opel has taken of providing global platforms for GM. Each model is examined individually and supplemented by exhaustive supporting specification tables. The fascinating history of Saab and Lotus begins with their humble beginnings and examines each model in detail and looks at why these unusual marques came under the GM Banner. Included is a penetrating review of Saab through to its unfortunate demise. Volume Two examines unique models and variations of Chevrolet and Buick manufactured in the Southern Hemisphere and Asia but never offered in North America. Daewoo, Wuling and Baojun are other Asian brands covered in detail. This volume concludes with recording the remarkable early success of Holden and its continued independence through to today. Volume Three covers the smaller assembly operations around the world and the evolution of GM's export operations. A brief history of Isuzu, Subaru and Suzuki looks at the three minority interests GM held in Asia. The GM North American model specifications are the most comprehensive to be found in a single book. Global and regional sales statistics are included. GM executives and management from around the globe are listed with the roles they held. An index ensures that these volumes serve as the ideal reference source on GM.
Download or read book KL written by Nikolaus Wachsmann and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of the Nazi concentration camps In a landmark work of history, Nikolaus Wachsmann offers an unprecedented, integrated account of the Nazi concentration camps from their inception in 1933 through their demise, seventy years ago, in the spring of 1945. The Third Reich has been studied in more depth than virtually any other period in history, and yet until now there has been no history of the camp system that tells the full story of its broad development and the everyday experiences of its inhabitants, both perpetrators and victims, and all those living in what Primo Levi called "the gray zone." In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system. Examining, close up, life and death inside the camps, and adopting a wider lens to show how the camp system was shaped by changing political, legal, social, economic, and military forces, Wachsmann produces a unified picture of the Nazi regime and its camps that we have never seen before. A boldly ambitious work of deep importance, KL is destined to be a classic in the history of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Hell s Cartel written by Diarmuid Jeffreys and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-01-05 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable rise and shameful fall of one of the twentieth century's greatest conglomerates At its peak in the 1930s, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben was one of the most powerful corporations in the world. To this day, companies formerly part of the Farben cartel—the aspirin-maker Bayer, the graphics supplier Agfa, the plastics giant BASF—continue to play key roles in the global market. IG Farben itself, however, is remembered mostly for its infamous connections to the Nazi Party and its complicity in the atrocities of the Holocaust. After the war, Farben's leaders were tried for crimes that included mass murder and exploitation of slave labor. In Hell's Cartel, Diarmuid Jeffreys presents the first comprehensive account of IG Farben's rise and fall, tracing the enterprise from its nineteenth-century origins, when the discovery of synthetic dyes gave rise to a vibrant new industry, through the upheavals of the Great War era, and on to the company's fateful role in World War II. Drawing on extensive research and original interviews, Hell's Cartel sheds new light on the codependence of industry and the Third Reich, and offers a timely warning against the dangerous merger of politics and the pursuit of profit.
Download or read book Internal Combustion written by Edwin Black and published by Dialog Press. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An explosive, eye-opening expose of the corporate forces that have for more than a century sabotaged the creation of alternative energies and vehicles in order to keep us dependent on oil. There is enough truth in this book to revolutionize our way of life. Winner of four awards for editorial excellence: American Society of Journalists and Authors Best Book, Thomas Edison Award, Green Globes, and an AJPA Rockower Award.
Download or read book Trading with the Enemy written by Charles Higham and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Nazis Next Door written by Eric Lichtblau and published by HMH. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Newsweek Best Book of the Year: “Captivating . . . rooted in first-rate research” (The New York Times Book Review). In this New York Times bestseller, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis—from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich—who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war “refugees.” But some had help from the US government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler’s minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau reveals this little-known and “disturbing” chapter of postwar history (Salon).
