HAMBURGO / BERLIN – Continental has played an important role in Nazi weaponry and war economy, forcing workers to manufacture products like fuel masks, according to a study presented Thursday through the corporate show.
Continental commissioned independent studies from historian Paul Erker to explore the darkest bankruptcy in the company’s history. It provides the opportunity to be informed from the afterlife to create a better future, the company said.
“The review shows that Continental is a vital component of Hitler’s war machine,” said continental executive Elmar Degenhart.
The research, which included the VDO, Teves, Phoenix and Semperit units, which were not components of Continental at the time, revealed how corporate culture was distorted and how the company went from production products to Nazi client society to arms.
The supplier used 10,000 occupied World War II and French forced workers, as well as Soviet prisoners of war, according to the study entitled “Supplier of Hitler’s War”. The continental organization in the Nazi era.”
In the later years of the war, inmates in the concentration camps manufactured fuel masks and moved production to underground sites with inhumane living and operating conditions, according to the study.
Many German corporations deserved forced labour because prisoners worked in abhorrent places for little or no pay. Many died.
Germany took until 2000 to create a forced labour payment fund that had paid more than 4.37 billion euros ($5.2 billion) to around 1.7 million sick people in 2007. The contributors were Volkswagen Group, Deutsche Bank and Bayer.
Thousands of people supported Hitler’s war economy. Some finance the effort, others make guns or even chemicals such as the Zyklon B, which is used in fuel chambers.
“Businesses have a duty to maintain democracy,” Degenhart told journalists, adding that the study would boost education systems to promote social duty and combat racist and radical views.
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