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BMW and the Nazis, Part III: Letter from Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, to his stepson Harald Quandt The Führerbunker on April 28, 1945. Dear Harald, We are locked down in the Führerbunker at the Reichschancellory, and we are fighting for our lives and honor. How will this fight end, God only knows, But I know it will end for us with honor and glory, dead or alive. I do not think we will see each other again. These will be the last words you will receive from me. I hope, if you come out alive from this war, that you will honor both your mother and I, as is not necessary for us to survive to influence our people. You will be the only one left to carry on with our family traditions. Always act in a way that does not shame us. Germany will survive this war, but only if our people has examples to guide them. and this is the example that we want to give. You can be proud to have a mother like you have now. Last night the Führer gave her the golden party pin he has carried for years on his jacket, and I think she deserves it. In the future, you will have only one mission: to be worthy of the great sacrifice we are willing to make. I know you will. Don’t let the noise that the world is about to start to disorientate you. One day, the lies will fall under their own weight, and the truth will triumph over them. The hour will come in which we will be above all, clean and without guilt like our faith and task were. Goodbye, dear Harald!! If we meet again, it depends on God. If it is not to be, I will always be proud of having belonged to a family, that, even in adversity, and up to the last moment, has been faithful to the Führer and his pure and holy cause. My best wishes and dearest greetings. Papa Letter from Magda Goebbels to her son Harald Quandt The Führerbunker on April 28, 1945 My beloved son! By now we have been in the Führerbunker for six days already — daddy, your six little siblings and I, for the sake of giving our national socialistic lives the only possible honorable end. You shall know that I stayed here against daddy’s will and that even on last Sunday the Führer wanted to help me to get out. You know your mother — we have the same blood, for me, there was no wavering. Our glorious idea is ruined and with it everything beautiful and marvelous that I have known in my life. The world that comes after the Führer and national socialism is not any longer worth living in and therefore I took the children with me, for they are too good for the life that would follow, and a merciful God will understand me when I will give them salvation (death). You will live and I ask only one thing from you, that you never ever forget you are a German, never do against your honor, and through your life, see that our deaths won’t be in vain. The children are wonderful … there never is a word of complaint nor crying. The explosions above are shaking the bunker. The elder kids cover the younger ones, their presence is a blessing and they are making the Führer smile once in a while. Last night, the Führer took off his golden party pin and pinned it to me. I am proud and happy. May God help that I have the strength to perform the last and hardest task (killing herself and her children). We only have one goal left: loyalty to the Führer even in death and to be able to end our lives with him is an honor. Harald, my dear son — I want to give you what I learned in life: Be loyal! Loyal to yourself, loyal to the German people and loyal to your fatherland … Be proud of us and try to keep us in dear memory … (Second page) It is difficult to start a new page, who knows if I can fill it, I would like to give you so much love and strength, and take away all the pain for our loss. Be proud of us and try to remember us with pride and happiness. We all have to die. Isn’t it more beautiful to live less, but with honor and dignity than to have a long life in shameful conditions? I must finish, Hanna Reitsch is taking this letter, she is leaving again, I embrace you with my most sweet, deep and maternal love. My dear son, live for Germany! Your Mother

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BMW and the Nazis, Part II: Given their complicity with the Nazis and the Holocaust, how did BMW ‘s Ptriarch, Gunther Quandt and his two sons, Herbert and Herald escape the hangman’s noose ? When put in context of the escalating tension between the West and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the question is easy to answer, but difficult to swallow. The example, below, illustrates the extent to which the United States was willing to go to protect Nazis and win the hearts and minds of ordinary Germans during the Cold War. The Malmedy Massacre – How the US government denied justice for its massacred servicemen: During the early morning of December 16th, 1944 Hitler launched his last ditch offensive on the Western Front through the Ardennes Forest, aiming to split the thinly spread Allied forces in Belgium and take control of the port of Antwerp. He assembled 450,000 men and 1,500 tanks while mustering reserves and transferring his most motivated and best equipped troops, including the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler", from the Eastern Front. The Offensive (which came to be known as the "Battle of the Bulge") was spearheaded by an element of this unit, "Kampfgruppe Peiper", named after its commander, Joachim Peiper, a young and decorated Nazi war hero and former adjutant to Heinrich Himmler. On the second day of the offensive Waffen SS troops under Peiper’s command massacred 84 American POW’s at a crossroads near the small town of Malmedy. This conduct was the norm for Nazi troops waging a war of extermination against the Soviets on the Eastern Front, but uncommon in the “Gentlemen’s War” fought in the West. A post War US war crimes tribunal sentenced Joachim Peiper along with 43 others to death while pronouncing 21 life sentences relating to the massacre. But, within a few years of the trial all the sentences were commuted and the perpetrators walked free, with Peiper being the last to be released in 1956 after spending eleven years in jail. The US government opted to deny justice for its fallen and massacred servicemen while seeking to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Germans and cultivate relationships with former Nazis to fight Communism. Not long before his death near the end of 1945, General Patton commented “We have defeated the wrong enemy”. This sums up America’s relationship with Fascism which it always preferred over Communism.

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BMW and the Nazis, Part I: After purchasing my first BMW in 1982, a solid running 1968 1600 Manilla, one of my neighbors, an old American GI who fought his way through France and Germany during 1944-45, made a sobering comment to me "If you only knew what BMW did to your people, you would never have purchased that car”. As an 18 year old I had a general awareness of the German Industry's complicity in the Nazi war effort. But, more poignantly I had a very good idea of what the Nazis had done to my people as many of my living family members at that time still bore both, the physical and emotional scars from their experiences under Nazi tyranny. With the 1600 being my first and very "Cool" car, though, I brushed it all aside. My old neighbor was on the mark, though. BMW utilized its far reaching industrial might in support of the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent war effort. It closely collaborated with the SS, benefiting from a slave labor force recruited from infamous concentration camps including Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and others. As the company transformed from peacetime to war production it increasingly relied on slave labor to amass a vast fortune. BMW's labor force expanded from 6,500 employees who generated over RM 35 million in 1933 to a predominantly slave labor force accounting for two thirds of its 56,200 employees in 1944 and generating RM 750 million. These Inmate laborers worked in 12 + hour shifts and faced starvation and severe punishment, including death, for minor infractions. Their average life expectancy was only six months. The marque is further clouded by the Quandt family, including its Patriarch and prominent German Industrialist Gunther Quandt, who controlled stakes in BMW, Daimler Benz, AFA-Varta batteries, IWKA, metal working and mining companies and various subsidiaries and factories manufacturing firearms, ammunition, textiles, electrical components, batteries, automobiles, motorcycles and aircraft engines. Gunther Quandt wasn’t a reluctant accomplice forced to contribute to the Nazi war effort, but rather a proactive supporter of Adolf Hitler from the inception of the Nazi movement in the 1920s. With Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933, Gunther joined the Nazi party, and in 1937 Hitler appointed him “Leader of the Defense Economy”. As the Nazis expropriated Jewish property during the late 30s, the Quandts were rewarded for their loyalty with the spoils including ownership of former Jewish businesses and assets. BMW's largest plants, which produced aircraft engines at Allach - Munich and Durrerhof- Eisenach, had their own concentration camps while an execution area with gallows was set-up at the AFA battery plant in Hanover. Female slave laborers were also transferred from Auschwitz to AFA’s Berlin-based subsidiary, Pertrix GmbH. With the onset of the Cold War during the late 40s the West quickly turned its attention away from retribution to appeasement as it sought to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Germans while cultivating relationships with key Nazis in support of the West’s geopolitical struggle against the Soviet Union. Other than Bruno Tesch and Karl Weibacher, who were executed for knowingly supplying a pesticide, Zyklon –B, for the gas chambers, most leading German industrialists such as BMW’s Gunther Quandt escaped the hangman’s noose as they were deemed indispensable to American and British militaries and post-war reconstruction efforts. Among them was Albert Speer, Hitler’s friend, architect and Minister of Armaments who ruthlessly and efficiently increased German arms production during the war, utilizing expendable slave labor. While the Russians protested, Western judges at the Nuremberg Trials spared his life. Gunther died at age 73 while on vacation in Egypt in 1954. He was survived by two sons, Herbert and Harald Quandt. Herbert was from his first wife, Antoine Quandt, who died of the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 while Harald was from his second marriage to Magda Behrend Rietschel which ended in divorce. Magda later married Joseph Goebbles , Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, with whom she committed suicide after murdering their six children in Hitler’s Bunker in 1945. Herbert, who became a Director of Personnel for AFA in 1940, went on to manage the family’s shares in Daimler Benz and BMW, taking full control of the latter in 1959, just as a new generation of modern sports sedans started rolling off BMW's assembly lines. Harald controlled the family’s fortunes in Karlsruhe Augsburg AG (IWKA), involved in mechanical engineering and arms manufacture. As leading German automakers such as VW and Mercedes turned to face their dark and horrid past while attempting to make token payments to the families they destroyed, the Quandts, one of Germany’s richest families with a $35 billion fortune, remained silent up until the airing of a documentary on their family history in 2006, after which they offered an official apology. Paradoxically, various publications and BMW enthusiasts often refer to the Quandts with reverence and veneration. But, the Quandts and BMW are forever tainted. If the Quandts had faced justice after the war, perhaps BMW would never have evolved to become one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers. But, just as the Hippies turned the VW into an iconic symbol of peace, I prefer to think of my old BMW sedan as something I have turned in a positive direction. However, BMW's role in support of the Nazis should never be simply dismissed. Pictured: Adolf Hitler and Gunther Quandt, BMW's Patriarch, inspecting a BMW VI -V12, 47 liter, 700hp aircraft engine. Pictured: Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Auto Show. Pictured: Inmate laborers from the Dachau concentration camp working at BMW's Allach-Munich plant.

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