GR background

[pynchonoid]

First time I recall seeing a feature story in our
local paper about this sort of collaboration between a
famous US name brand company and the Nazis.  Of course
Thomas Pynchon brought this sort of thing to my
attention in 1973.  Glad to say I've never purchased a
GM vehicle.

Nazis rode to war on GM wheels
by Edwin Black
Sunday, January 7, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/07/INGPHNCLHH1.DTL&type=printable

[...] The next day, May 2, 1934, after practicing his
sieg heil in front of a mirror, Mooney and two other
senior executives from General Motors and its German
division, Adam Opel A.G., went to meet Hitler in his
Chancellery office. Waiting with Hitler would be Nazi
Party stalwart Joachim von Ribbentrop, who would later
become foreign minister, and Reich economic adviser
Wilhelm Keppler.

...This documentation and other evidence reveals that
GM and Opel were eager, willing and indispensable cogs
in the Third Reich's rearmament juggernaut, a
rearmament that, as many feared during the 1930s,
would enable Hitler to conquer Europe and destroy
millions of lives....

By the spring of 1933, the world was beginning to
learn about the lawlessness and savagery of the Nazi
regime, and the Reich's determination to crush its
Jewish community and threaten its neighbors.

Beginning in the late spring of 1933, concentration
camps such as Dachau were generating headlines
reporting great brutality.

By June 1933, Jews everywhere in Germany were being
banned from the professional, economic and cultural
life of the country. As state-designated pariahs, they
were forbidden to remain members of the German
Automobile Association, the popular organization for
the general German motorist. Hitler's anti-Semitic
demagoguery and the daily, semi-official, violent
attacks against Jews were discussed in the American
media almost daily.

GM's president, Alfred P. Sloan, knew what was
happening in Germany. Sloan and GM officials knew also
that Hitler's regime was expected to wage war from the
outset. Headlines, radio broadcasts and newsreels made
that fact apparent. America, it was feared, would once
again be pulled in.

Nonetheless, GM and Germany began a strategic business
relationship. Opel became an essential element of the
German rearmament and modernization Hitler required to
subjugate Europe. To accomplish that, Germany needed
to rise above the horse-drawn divisions it deployed in
World War I. It needed to motorize, to blitz -- that
is, to attack with lightning speed. Germany would
later unleash a blitzkrieg, a lightning war. Opel
built the 3-ton truck named Blitz to support the
German military. The Blitz truck and its numerous
specialized models became the mainstay of the
Blitzkrieg.

In 1935, GM agreed to locate a new factory at
Brandenburg, where it would be geographically less
vulnerable to feared aerial bombardment by allied
forces. In 1937, almost 17 percent of Opel's Blitz
trucks were sold directly to the Nazi military.

That military sales figure was increased to 29 percent
in 1938 -- totaling about 6,000 Blitz trucks that year
alone. The Wehrmacht, the German military, soon became
Opel's No. 1 customer by far. Other important
customers included major industries associated with
the Hitler war machine.

Expanding its German workforce from 17,000 in 1934 to
27,000 in 1938 also made GM one of Germany's leading
employers. Unquestionably, GM's Opel became an
integral facet of Hitler's Reich.

More than just an efficient manufacturer, Opel openly
embraced the bizarre philosophy that powered the Nazi
military-industrial complex. The German company
participated in cultic führer-worship as a part of its
daily corporate ethic. After all, until GM purchased
Opel in 1929 for $33.3 million, or about one-third of
GM's after-tax profit that year, Opel was an
established carmaker with a respected German persona.
The Opel family included several prominent Nazi Party
members. This identity appealed to rank-and-file Nazis
who condemned anything foreign-owned or foreign-made.

For all these reasons, during the Hitler years, Sloan
and Mooney both made efforts to obscure Opel's
American ownership and control. Of course, GM's
subsidiary vigorously joined the anti-Jewish movement
required of leading businesses serving the Reich.
Jewish employees and suppliers became verboten.[...]


 

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