Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Corporate Deals with the Nazis

GM and Ford, through their subsidiaries, controlled 70 percent of the German automobile market when war broke out in 1939.
Those companies "rapidly retooled themselves to become suppliers of war materiel to the Germany army," writes Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post.

"When American GIs invaded Europe in June 1944, they did so in jeeps, trucks and tanks manufactured by the Big Three motor companies in one of the largest crash militarization programs ever undertaken," observes Dobbs.

"It came as an unpleasant surprise to discover that the enemy was also driving trucks manufactured by Ford and Opel — a 100 percent GM-owned subsidiary — and flying Opel-built warplanes."

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