28. The Rich Family Behind BMW
Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) is known today for high-quality luxury automobiles. When it was founded, however, and until 1945, it was more known for its 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 seriously rich 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 into the company’s Nazi past. To their credit, the current generation of Quandts, unlike many other companies with Nazi ties, eventually came clean and did not duck the issue or sugarcoat 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. The study’s conclusion proved awkward. In a nutshell, the family patriarch Gunther Quandt, and his son Herbert, were up to their necks in collaboration with Hitler’s regime.