The Ford Motor Company responded to the lawsuit and the attendant public scrutiny by appointing an investigative team made up of historians and professional archivists whose mandate, company officials promised, was to provide an uncompromising assessment and report about Fordwerke's wartime activities. Ford's very existence in Nazi Germany was constantly threatened by low sales to a nationalistic general public and by the fear that the government would confiscate its facilities. America's declaration of war on Germany in December 1941 made it illegal for U.S. motor companies to have any contact with their subsidiaries on German-controlled territory. Ford Motor set up shop in Germany in 1925, when it opened an office in Berlin. I personally have found little evidence that Fordwerke made money during the war. He is the author of The Fruits of Fascism: Postwar Prosperity in Historical Perspective (Cornell University Press, 1990) and the coauthor of The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Cornell University Press, 1997). This entry was posted in and tagged germany, truck, wehrmacht. Henry Ford was a well known pacifist and publicly opposed U.S. entry into World War II. All of these efforts failed to prevent the government from appointing executives at Ford in Germany who were more attuned and indebted to the Nazi Party than loyal to the company. For many, I suspect, justice, recognition and accountability are of paramount importance. While not admitting any culpability, Ford has made a number of contributions in the name of corporate responsibility. German Ford V 3000 S A captured Ford truck type 79 T (1937) Ford G917 Tankwagen Ford BB France 1940 2 Ford V8-51 Summer ... Ford trucks used by German forces during WW2. German WW2 Vehicles. Light Army Car. Its factory in Germany … The highest confirmed number at any one time during the war was between 2,000 and 2,500. You will find here specs and performance data of all Ford (Germany) cars. He applauded Hitler's rise, mainly for economic reasons, but also for his battle against "Jewish control" of the economy. So Cologne's management attempted to assuage the Nazis' concerns about their and the company's loyalties in at least three ways. I continue to work in that role at this point, acting as an informed and critical outsider rather than as an intrinsic member of Ford's efforts. In July 1938 before the outbreak of World War II, German diplomats awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. The company was re-organised in 1939 and changed its name to Ford-Werke. Reprinted with permission; Photographs courtesy of Ford Motor Company Simon Reich is a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Week after week the newspaper set out to expose some horror of Jewish misbehavior. The British government often gave Ford preferential treatment, especially when it vocally complained about the allocation of scarce wartime resources. WW2 spies: The true story of the two traitors who spied for Nazi Germany and Russia ONE was an "accidental spy" snared by the Nazis, the other the most notorious British turncoat of all time. The meetings of the board of directors had already been suspended, and didn't resume until after the war. Ford's wartime German operation, based in … As we already mentioned in a previous post, the Ford Koln AG built thousands of these trucks in its various versions. The report, Research Findings About Ford-Werke Under the Nazi Regime, summarizes more than 98,000 pages of documents and other materials gathered and analyzed from more than 30 archival repositories, including Ford archives in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as outside archives such as the National Archives in Washington, D.C. At various times, more than 45 archivists, historians, researchers and translators worked on this project. Forced labor was used most of the time, but inmates from the Buchenwald concentration camp worked as slave laborers at Ford-Werke late in the war. An appeal is expected.]. Second, the Nazi government, before the war, wanted to increase the import of raw materials that were in short supply. Foreign and Jewish members of the subsidiary's management board were removed, despite, interestingly, the strenuous opposition of Henry Ford. Despite Henry Ford's anti-war views, his company contributed heroically to the war effort. I have seen no evidence to date that Ford has been behaving irresponsibly in its scrutiny of its conduct in the Thirties and Forties. This award for damages stands as important evidence of Ford's claim that it did not enjoy "unjust enrichment" in Germany during the war, and that it did not profit, even inadvertently, from the use of slave labor. If my account was correct, then how could an article appear in the Washington Post (March 5, 1998) declaring that Ford had been the "arsenal of fascism" rather than the "arsenal of democracy" -- thus staining an appellation that the company had sported with pride? The money, for the victims, becomes an indicator of their degree of vindication, and a way in which the behavior of the perpetrators can be made explicit. Frete GRÁTIS em milhares de produtos com o Amazon Prime. concerned international treaties between nations and foreign policy and were thus in the realm of the executive branch." "This study represents a massive undertaking by the company to determine how its German subsidiary, Ford-Werke, operated under Nazism," said John Rintamaki, chief of staff, Ford Motor Company. Several cars of the company's European line are produced by one of two Ford factories located in Germany. The advent of a Nazi government in 1933 only exacerbated Ford's problems with nationalist sentiments in Germany. The victims of slave labor -- at Fordwerke and elsewhere -- reject the notion that Germany should enshrine its past inhumanity in monuments and thereby consign it to convenient boxes, rather than relive it on a daily basis. Nov 8, 2020 - Explore Rob's board "WWII German trucks" on Pinterest. For instance, when a new plant was constructed in Cologne in 1931, the business faced immediate criticism because its owners were Ford's American company and British subsidiary, most of its directors were foreigners, and its exports were limited. Ford was also active in Nazi Germany's prewar preparations. Fordwerke became an instrument of the Nazi state. The first time that a Jewish manager was fired (in 1936), Ford himself was successfully able to reverse the decision. Sources: JTA, (December 6, 2001), Ford Motor Company, Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library, The Ford Motor Company and the Third Reich, Ford Motor Company, © 1998 - 2020 American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Subsequently, however (certainly by 1940), control of the subsidiary effectively shifted to Cologne, and Ford was unable to thwart further dismissals.
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