The Ford Motor Company and
The Third Reich
By Simon Reich
To what extent -- if any -- and in what ways, did Ford in Germany cooperate with the Nazi regime? And, if it did, what motivated such cooperation: racist ideology, or a concern for corporate profitability?
In 1990 I published a book entitled The Fruits of Fascism (Cornell University Press), in which I attempted to offer a compelling and novel thesis. I argued that the different degrees of success enjoyed by the Ford Motor Company's subsidiaries in Britain and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s were heavily influenced by the policies of each country's government. Ford in Britain was then favored by a government seeking to encourage foreign investment in order to boost the nation's floundering manufacturing base. The British government often gave Ford preferential treatment, especially when it vocally complained about the allocation of scarce wartime resources.
[Ford's German subsidiary] remained an isolated and marginalized business, despite Hitler's personal admiration for the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford and the mass production techniques Ford had made famous.
Such allocations enabled it to support its widespread claim that it acted as the "arsenal of democracy" for the wartime Allies.
In contrast, Ford had continual problems in Germany, fueled by growing German nationalism, from the time it established a presence in that country in 1925. (The German subsidiary was renamed Fordwerke in 1939.) For instance, when a new plant was constructed in Cologne in 1931, the business faced immediate criticism because its owners were Ford's American company and British subsidiary, most of its directors were foreigners, and its exports were limited. The advent of a Nazi government in 1933 only exacerbated Ford's problems with nationalist sentiments in Germany. The company became alarmed by slumping sales and responded by trying to placate the Nazi government. But it remained an isolated and marginalized business, despite Hitler's personal admiration for the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford (1863-1947) and the mass production techniques Ford had made famous. Ford's foreign ownership meant that it lacked the "authenticity" and "credibility" of other businesses; furthermore, Ford lacked the size and, thus, the strategic importance of Opel, General Motors' German subsidiary. Ford was treated by the Nazi government as "the producer of last resort" when it came to the allocation of government contracts. Ford's very existence in Nazi Germany was constantly threatened by low sales to a nationalistic general public and by the fear that the government would confiscate its facilities.
http://archive.adl.org/braun/dim_13_2_ford.html#.V5YgiTX0SFp
