12. BMW Was Once Up to its Neck in Collaborating With the Nazis
Ever since its founding, Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) has been known for high-quality luxury automobiles, and until 1945, for aircraft engines. The company, which today makes a living off the innocent pursuit of manufacturing luxury cars and motorcycles, is a multinational with plants in Germany, the US, UK, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. Less known is that its major shareholders, the Quandt family, were close friends and admirers of Hitler and the Nazis.
After a 2007 TV documentary aired unpleasant revelations about BMW’s activities during the Third Reich, the Quandt family launched an investigation which reached a troubling conclusion about the company’s Nazi past. In a nutshell, the Quandt family patriarch, Gunther Quandt, and his son Herbert were up to their necks in collaborating with Hitler’s regime. To their credit, the current generation of Quandts, unlike many other companies with Nazi ties, eventually came clean and refrained from ducking the issue or sugarcoating things. They commissioned a respected German historian to research the company’s past and set him loose on BMW’s and the Quandt family’s archives and files.