By Janet Levy
Supplying uniforms to the German empire, textile magnate Gunther Quandt made millions during World War I. Shortly after, when electrification was booming worldwide, he gained control of one of the world’s largest battery-makers. He soon acquired one of Germany’s primary arms and ammo manufacturers. This was just the beginning. He went on to gain stupendous wealth and power through deals with the Nazis. The story of Quandt, as told in David de Jong’s Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties, evokes awe and dread. For it is about soulless profiteering and participation without any qualms in the enslavement and massacre of millions of Jews.
It is well known that many dynastic German companies owe their standing to their complicity — even willful participation — in Nazi evil. De Jong investigated five key industrialists who funded Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, were complicit in horrendous crimes, and reaped billions from that cold-blooded investment: Quandt, automaker Ferdinand Porsche, Richard Kaselowsky of the Dr. Oetker Group, financier August von Finck, and industrialist Frederick Flick. His book details their deals and post-war cover-ups. It also tells how they were virtually absolved of all wrongdoing because the West needed Germany as a bulwark against Russia and its East European satellites.
Quandt’s first engagement with Nazism happened in the early 1920s. On a visit to the U.S. with his wife Magda, they were approached by Kurt Ludecke, an ardent German nationalist raising funds for the fledgling, cash-strapped National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Rejected by the anti-Semite Henry Ford, he hoped to convert Quandt to the Aryan cause. Quandt was noncommittal, but Magda was swayed. By the time the couple divorced in 1929, with a generous settlement for her, she was mingling socially with the Nazis. She devoured Mein Kampf and joined the party, where she worked for her future husband, Joseph Goebbels, later chief of propaganda minister for the Reichstag. Quandt, who remained friendly with Magda and Goebbels, came under their influence. He began to believe, like many in post-WWI Germany, that Jews and communists were responsible for all the country’s ills.
