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“Quandt-’em” Mechanics: Kicking the Tires at BMW, Mercedes-Benz

COMMENT: We’ve received many e‑mails about the recent Bloomberg News sto­ry excerpt­ed below. 

In addi­tion to detail­ing that fas­cism was­n’t some kind of freak occur­rence, we’ve not­ed the spawn­ing of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work [1] from the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic forces under­pin­ning Nazi Ger­many. Con­trol­ling the Ger­man core cor­po­ra­tions as well as pow­er­ful inter­ests around the world, the Bor­mann group [2] is pre­em­i­nent on the world eco­nom­ic land­scape.

Not­ing that BMW is con­trolled by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels (whose stepchild inher­it­ed the Quandt indus­tri­al empire), the Bloomberg sto­ry notes that Mer­cedes-Benz also has sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion by the Quandts.

In FTR #155 [3], we pre­sent­ed Paul Man­ning’s research [4] indi­cat­ing that the Bor­mann net­work fea­tures the heirs of key Third Reich offi­cials and mil­i­tary offi­cers, hier­ar­chi­cal­ly struc­tured along lines deriv­ing from the pow­er struc­ture of the Third Reich itself.

The Quandt sto­ry excerpt­ed below pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant depth to Man­ning’s reportage on the Bor­mann group and the Under­ground Reich.

We also not­ed (in AFA #3 [5]) that Quandt served as the cor­po­rate cov­er for Eich­mann deputy Alois Brun­ner’s post­war work for the Gehlen spy out­fit. (The August, 1944 doc­u­ment detail­ing the Third Reich’s plans to go under­ground pro­vid­ed for Ger­man heavy indus­try to give accused war crim­i­nals jobs to help them sur­vive.) 

 

 

“Nazi Goebbels’ Step-Grand­chil­dren Are Hid­den Bil­lion­aires” by David de Jong; Bloomberg News; 1/28/2013. [6]

EXCERPT: In the spring of 1945, Har­ald Quandt, a 23-year-old offi­cer in the Ger­man Luft­waffe, was being held as a pris­on­er of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Beng­hazi when he received a farewell let­ter from his moth­er, Mag­da Goebbels — the wife of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels.

The hand-writ­ten note con­firmed the dev­as­tat­ing news he had heard weeks ear­li­er: His moth­er had com­mit­ted sui­cide with her hus­band on May 1, after slip­ping their six chil­dren cyanide cap­sules in Adolf Hitler’s under­ground bunker in Berlin. . . .

. . . Quandt was released from cap­tiv­i­ty in 1947. Sev­en years lat­er, he and his half-broth­er Her­bert — Har­ald was the only remain­ing child from Mag­da Goebbels’ first mar­riage — would inher­it the indus­tri­al empire built by their father, Guen­ther Quandt, which had pro­duced Mauser firearms and anti-air­craft mis­siles for the Third Reich’s war machine. Among their most valu­able assets at the time was a stake in car man­u­fac­tur­er Daim­ler AG. (DAI) They bought a part of Bay­erische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) a few years lat­er.

While the half-broth­ers passed away decades ago, their lega­cy has endured. Herbert’s wid­ow, Johan­na Quandt, 86, and their chil­dren Susanne Klat­ten and Ste­fan Quandt, have remained in the pub­lic eye as BMW’s dom­i­nant share­hold­ers. The bil­lion­aire daugh­ters of Har­ald Quandt — Kata­ri­na Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Ange­li­ka May-Thies, 58, and 50-year-old Colleen-Bet­ti­na Rosen­blat-Mo — have kept a low­er pro­file.

The four sis­ters inher­it­ed about 1.5 bil­lion deutsche marks ($760 mil­lion) after the death of their moth­er, Inge, in 1978, accord­ing to the family’s sanc­tioned biog­ra­phy, “Die Quandts.” They man­age their wealth through the Har­ald Quandt Hold­ing GmbH, a Bad Hom­burg, Ger­many-based fam­i­ly invest­ment com­pa­ny and trust named after their father. Fritz Beck­er, the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the fam­i­ly enti­ties, said the sib­lings real­ized aver­age annu­al returns above 7 per­cent from its found­ing in 1981 through 1996. Since then, the returns have aver­aged 7.6 per­cent.

“The fam­i­ly wants to stay pri­vate and that is an accept­able sit­u­a­tion for me,” said Beck­er in an inter­view at his Bad Hom­burg office. “We invest our mon­ey glob­al­ly and if it’s $1 bil­lion, $500 mil­lion or $3 bil­lion, who cares?” (Ital­ics added.) . . .

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile by Paul Man­ning; pp. 26–27. [2]

EXCERPT: . . . . A small­er con­fer­ence in the after­noon was presided over by Dr. Bosse of the Ger­man Arma­ments Min­istry. It was attend­ed only by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Hecko, Krupp, and Rochling. Dr. Bosse restat­ed Bormann’s belief that the war was all but lost, but that it would be con­tin­ued by Ger­many until cer­tain goals to insure the eco­nomic resur­gence of Ger­many after the war had been achieved. He added that Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists must be pre­pared to finance the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Nazi Par­ty, which would be forced to go under­ground, just as had the Maquis in France. (Ital­ics added.) . . .

. . . . From this day, Ger­man indus­trial firms of all rank were to begin plac­ing their funds—and, wher­ever pos­si­ble, key manpower—abroad, espe­cially in neu­tral coun­tries. Dr. Bosse advised that ‘two main banks can be used for the export of funds for firms who have made no pri­or arrange­ments; the Basler Han­dels­bank and Schweiz­erische Kred­i­tanstalt of Zurich.’ He also stat­ed, ‘There are a num­ber of agen­cies in Switzer­land which for a five per­cent com­mis­sion will buy prop­erty in Switzer­land for Ger­man firms, using Swiss cloaks.’

“Dr. Bosse closed the meet­ing, observ­ing that ‘after the defeat of Ger­many, the Nazi Par­ty rec­og­nizes that cer­tain of its best known lead­ers will be con­demned as war crim­i­nals. How­ever, in coop­er­a­tion with the indus­tri­al­ists, it is arrang­ing to place its less con­spic­u­ous but most impor­tant mem­bers with var­i­ous Ger­man fac­to­ries as tech­ni­cal experts or mem­bers of its research and design­ing offices. (Ital­ics added.)  . . .