A TV documentary titled “The Silence of the Quandt Family” that aired in Germany in 2007 has forced the Quandt family, which is a major shareholder in the BMW Group, to commission an independent study on their ancestors’ actions during World War II.
But before we get into more details, let us note that the Quandt family acquired BMW 15 years after the end of the war in 1959, and the automaker is not involved in this particular issue nor was it implicated in the documentary.
The 1,200-page study carried out by historian Joachim Scholtyseck concluded that the patriarch of the family, Guenther Quandt, not only cooperated willingly with the Nazi regime, of which he became a member only a month after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, but also “employed” 50,000 slave workers in his factories that churned out machinery for the German army.
Moreover, Guenther Quandt used the Nazi regime’s “Aryanisation” program to gain control of Jewish-owned companies. He also received the title of “Wehrwirtschaftsfuhrer”, that is “leader of the armament economy”, by Hitler himself.
“The Quandts connected themselves inseparably with the crimes of the National Socialist” writes Scholtyseck. Even though Guenther Quandt was arrested after the defeat of Germany and was trialed in court, he was eventually found to be a “Mitlaufer”, or a party sympathizer who did not take part in Nazi crimes, and was subsequently released in 1948.
The study also shows that his son, Herbert, was aware of his father’s actions. “Herbert Quandt was a part of the system”, commented his son Stefan Quandt (pictured below) on the matter adding that his family still plans to award the Herbert Quandt Media Prize because “in the ensuing four decades, the values that he conferred made him a role model for me.”
Story source: Daily Mail & Bloomberg
