US car giant collaborated with Nazis
By Norm Dixon
The Ford Motor Company reaped "enormous profits" from collaboration with Hitler's Nazis, a class action suit claims. Ford used slave labour to build tens of thousands of military vehicles at its factories in Germany during World War II.
The case, filed on March 4 in a US federal court in Newark, demands that the company turn over all profits derived from slave labour to the labourers involved. The claimants allege that Ford's senior US executives were aware of the practice, which began in 1941.
Ford Werke AG, Ford's German subsidiary, was "an eager, aggressive and successful bidder for forced labourers" after the Nazi government introduced forced labour, say lawyers for the claimants. By 1943, 50% of Ford Werke's workers were slave labourers, most non-Germans. As many as 10,000 men, women and children were forced to work for Ford during the war.
Ford admits that slave labour was used at Ford Werke's plant in Cologne but claims its US head office lost contact with its German operations before the US entered the war in December 1941, regaining control only seven years later.
"Relieved of the necessity of paying wages", Ford Werke doubled its profits by 1943, charge the claimants' lawyers. The lawsuit said the "personal friendship" between Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler led to favourable treatment for the Ford company even after the US entered the war.
The plaintiffs allege that Henry Ford each year gave birthday gifts to Hitler, and Hitler awarded him the Great Cross of the German Order of the Eagle in 1938.