Kodak Did Business With Nazi Germany During the War, and Profited From the Use of Slave Labor
Throughout most of the 20th century, Kodak was a corporate giant and the world’s leading photographic film company, before its failure to keep abreast of digital camera technology doomed it to relative oblivion. What few knew for decades after the end of World War II was that Kodak had collaborated with Nazi Germany, and traded with the Germans even after America had entered the war.
Kodak’s Nazi ties were revealed in the early 2000s, when evidence recovered from the National Archives detailed the extent of the company’s collaboration with the Third Reich. It was conducted via the company’s branches in neutral Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal, all of which were directly controlled by the company’s headquarters in Rochester, NY, and all of which did business with Germany.
Acting through its branches in neutral European countries, Kodak bought supplies from Germany, and paid for them with hard currency that the Nazis desperately needed during the war. That, however, was at the mild end of the company’s cooperation with the Third Reich. Kodak also had a close relationship with Hitler’s personal economic adviser, and through him, the company continued to exercise a measure of control over its German branch, even during the war.
During the war, the American embassy in London noted that Kodak was making “fairly substantial purchases from enemy territory“. The embassy also noted “[t]hat the idea that he has been helping the enemy seems never to have occurred” to Kodak’s Swiss branch manager when he made substantial purchases from Germany. An American official got in touch with the Swiss manager, and reported in late 1943: “I pointed out to him that our sole interest is to shut off every source of possible benefit to our enemies, regardless of what American commercial interests might suffer“.
As to Kodak’s German branch, it expanded operations during the war to produce detonators, triggers, and other military hardware, and used slave labor in its factories. After the war, Kodak resumed control over its German branch, and absorbed the profits it had made during the conflict. Things had also gone great for Kodak’s branch in occupied France. It made so much money during the war that it was able to invest its profits into purchasing real estate, coal mines, and rest houses for the staff. As with its German subsidiary, Kodak resumed control of its French branch after that country was liberated.