TVP WEEKLY: It will so be 90 years since Hitler took power in Germany. And you wrote how the businesses built in this time still exists. How many from the list of 10 richest people in Germany have that kind of material heritage?

DAVID DE JONG: I don’t actually know what is the list for 2023 is but my guess is… half. And this isn’t a secret in Germany, but it is freely ignored. I’ve been reporting on these families for a decade, first as a reporter for Bloomberg News, then while writing a book about German business dynasties and their Third Reich histories. Unfortunately, these firms care more about protecting their reputations than about facing up to the past.

Let's start with the lexical issue. Nazis or The Germans? What do you think about political correctness addressing the history of 1933-1945?

You’re right. It is an interesting point that today’s the world uses the word Nazi as a name for this alien force which came from a different planet and took control of the German state. Technically Nazis were in Germany and Austria, and during 1939-1945 they controlled German-occupied Europe - that’s how we should name it. And I fully agree with you that we must use the word German rather than Nazi in the context of occupation, the concentration camps, and the army. They were German, for the most part. But I need to use the term Nazi in the title of the book. The title “German billionaires” wouldn’t work. It’s too general. The word ‘Nazi’ still says a lot about the topic.

So, if we talk about the book. Have you encountered some opinions that it’s just the past, why do you look back?

Yes, sometimes I do encounter those opinions. Particularly in Germany, And I think it’s the bottom line of the book, where people in general still don’t like to be confronted with the Nazi past, particularly the most powerful actors in the country whether, politically, financially economically, and that’s the reason why I wrote the book. I found that companies like BMW, or Porsche but most importantly the families that control them are whitewashing the past, erasing the history of their fathers and grandfathers who were successful in business but were also Nazi war criminals, voluntary SS officers, or Nazi party members or convinced anti-Semites.

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Now the heirs endow a professorship of corporate history at universities, charitable foundations, journalism awards, or talk about responsible leadership. So, they celebrate the business success of their fathers but erase their war crimes and celebrate them through global foundations and media prizes with misinformation. It's important for some of the wealthiest families, most economically powerful families in the world, to be transparent in terms of history, to show the good and the bad, because when you show only the good you can’t really learn anything from history.

You mention “whitewashing”. How do you put this together with officially written reports from the past produced by hired historians?

Named originally Persilschein , a Persil shine - after German laundry detergent. Persilschein was when the society granted a German defendant accused of Nazism a certificate of good standing, which allowed a person to return to a job or board position in the company. Whitewashing now is the process of re-writing parts of history; to make it seem less problematic. In my book I write about some of these studies published just only in German language, prepared by hired historians and researchers. The question: who do these studies reckon with? Not with the victims. Some of these studies whitewash history. A good example is Ferry Porsche's autobiography. He denied having voluntarily applied to the SS. Another study whitewashed the expropriation of Adolf Rosenberger, the Jewish cofounder of the company, driven out by Porsche.

Aryanization is the fascinating part of your book. Was it crucial to the Nazi political project since 1933?

Yes it was. The idea is primarily, to remove Jewish ownership and take or steal their businesses and assets. Before the war, a lot of German businessmen blackmailed their Jewish competitors, and the state took away their citizenship. Aryanisation was a cynical method for the acquisition of shares, companies and assets. Even the term is cynical meaning to remove the Jewish aspect of ownership of an asset. Günther Quandt got some of his companies from Jewish men who were forced to sell their businesses at below-market value and after 1939 from others who had their property seized in German-occupied countries such as Poland, the Netherlands, or France.

What was the most shocking part of your research?

All the stories were shocking to me. But most shocking was how deeply some of the Germans were involved with the Nazi regime. At every level, they were opportunistic in their contacts with Nazi elites and with the exploitation of Jewish businesses, mass arms production, doing business in German-occupied countries, using slave labor without any remorse. The second thing that shocked me is the complete lack of any sense of guilt and reflection. On the side of the tycoons as well as their heirs.

You wrote about names known from today’s German Economy, but who was the biggest mogul of slave work during the war?

It was Friedrich Flick, who used up to 100 hundred thousand slaves, men, women, and teenagers from all of German-occupied Europe. He was convicted as a Nazi war criminal in the Nuremberg process. Another was Günther Quandt, the first husband of Magda Goebbels and the father of her first son; the only one who survived the war (Joseph and Magda Goebbels killed their six children and committed suicide in Berlin on May 1, 1945). Quandt used about 60 thousand slave laborers and used more people from the concentration camps, one-third in Poznan. I remind you that the biggest was DWM (Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken) in the Cegielski weapon complex in Poznań. It was the largest arms and ammo complex in the Third Reich. In late April the factory was manufacturing some 400 million infantry bullets. After the war, his son Herbert Quandt built BMW into what it is today. These titans of industry played a central role in building the country’s postwar “economic” miracle.

What do I need to remember about the Nazi past when I prepare the dr Oetker pudding? This family was also mentioned in the book.

You shouldn’t necessarily remember their Nazi past, but you need to remember that the money you spend on these products from Dr. Oetker baking powder, to Volkswagen, BMW, or Porsche can be turned into dividends for these families and used to maintain foundations, museums, and awards in the names of their Nazi war criminal fathers and grandfathers. You need to know where your money goes. A good example is Günther Quandt’s name on the headquarter of his grandchildren’s family office, and the media prize named after Herbert Quandt. His son Stefan Quandt believes his father’s “life’s work” justified it. Today Porsche doesn’t only make cars but sponsors professorships. Together with their cousins the Piëchs, they control the Volkswagen Group, which includes Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Seat, Skoda, and Volkswagen. It is part of the backbone of Germany’s economy today.

In your book, you mentioned the Gardelegen massacre which was not only one act of homicide of the labor slaves just before the end of the War. Over 1000 Polish slave laborers were taken to the shed last and then burned together. Which enterprise employed these forced laborers?

Part of them came from AFA Akkumulatoren Fabrik A.G. owned by Günther Quandt. After World War II, the AFA became the battery company VARTA and most of the company shares passed from Günther Quandt to his son, Herbert Quandt. Today Sven Quandt, grandson of Günther, still sits on the supervisory board of Varta.

Was the Nuremberg trials for the business a historical farce?

Flick, IG Farben, and Krupp's convictions were too low. If we were looking for people responsible for the terrible part of human history we could find thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. But those that were indicted at the Nuremberg process was mostly a political decision. The most important thing for the Allies was to rebuild the economy of West Germany as a counterweight to the Soviet Unkons and East Germany during the Cold War. In the early 1950s an economic miracle happened in West Germany and all was forgotten. One of the accused businessmen at Nuremberg was Flick. In 1947 he was sentenced to seven years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity. After his early release in 1950, he rebuilt his conglomerate and became the controlling shareholder of Daimler-Benz, then Germany’s largest carmaker. Flick was soon back as the richest person in West Germany and never paid compensation to any of the surviving forced or slave laborers. The Flick conglomerate was sold in 1985 for five billion to Deutsche Bank.

In today’s Europe and in Poland we discuss reparations. Do you think that eight decades after the war they are justified?

If Russia or Germany didn't pay any reparations to the Polish state or the money paid by Germany to Poland was stolen by Stalin the topic seems to be still justified.

-Cezary Korycki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

David de Jong - Dutch journalist, now a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Daily, previously covered European banking and finance for Bloomberg News. Author of “Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties” - the book will be translated into more than twenty languages from English.