Putting the Blitz in the Blitzkrieg

Germany’s military successes of 1939 and 1940 were based on a new and extremely mobile form of warfare, the Blitzkrieg, consisting of extremely swift and highly synchronized attacks by air and land. To wage ‘lightning war,’ Hitler needed engines, tanks, trucks, planes, motor oil, gasoline, rubber, and sophisticated communication systems to insure that the Stukas struck in tandem with the Panzers. Much of that equipment was supplied by American firms, mainly German subsidiaries of big American corporations, but some was exported from the US, albeit usually via third countries. Without this kind of American support, the Fuhrer could only have dreamed of ‘lightning wars,’ followed by ‘lightning victories,’ in 1939 and 1940.

Many of Hitler’s wheels and wings were produced in the German subsidiaries of GM and Ford. By the end of the 1930s these enterprises had phased out civilian production to focus exclusively on the development of military hardware for the German army and air force. This switch, requested — if not ordered — by the Nazi authorities, had not only been approved, but even actively encouraged by the corporate headquarters in the US. The Ford-Werke in Cologne proceeded to build not only countless trucks and personnel carriers, but also engines and spare parts for the Wehrmacht. GM’S new Opel factory in Brandenburg cranked out ‘Blitz’ trucks for the Wehrmacht, while the main factory in Rtisselsheim produced primarily for the Luftwaffe, assembling planes such as the Ju-88, the workhorse of Germany’s fleet of bombers. At one point, GM and Ford together reportedly accounted for no less than half of Germany’s entire production of tanks. (Billstein et al., 25,) Meanwhile ITT had acquired a quarter of the shares of airplane manufacturer Focke-Wulf, and so helped to construct fighter planes.

Perhaps the Germans could have assembled vehicles and airplanes without American assistance. But Germany desperately lacked strategic raw materials, such as rubber and oil, which were needed to fight a war predicated on mobility and speed. American corporations came to the rescue. As mentioned earlier, Texaco helped the Nazis stockpile fuel. In addition, as the war in Europe got underway, large quantities of diesel fuel, lubricating oil, and other petroleum products were shipped to Germany not only by Texaco but also by Standard Oil, mostly via Spanish ports. (The German Navy, incidentally, was provided with fuel by the Texas oilman William Rhodes Davis.) In the 1930s Standard Oil had helped IG Farben develop synthetic fuel as an alternative to regular oil, of which Germany had to import every single drop. (Hofer and Reginbogin, 588-9) Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and wartime armament minister, stated after the war that without certain kinds of synthetic fuel made available by American firms, Hitler ‘would never have considered invading Poland.’ As for the Focke-Wulfs and other fast German fighter planes, they could not have achieved their deadly speed without a component in their fuel known as synthetic tetraethyl; the Germans themselves later admitted that without tetraethyl the entire Blitzkrieg concept of warfare would have been unthinkable. This magic ingredient was produced by an enterprise named Ethyl GmbH, a daughter firm of a trio formed by Standard Oil, Standard’s German partner IG Farben, and GM. (Hofer and Reginbogin, 589)

Blitzkrieg warfare involved perfectly synchronized attacks by land and by air, and this required highly sophisticated communications equipment. IBM’s German subsidiary supplied most of that apparatus, while other state-of-the-art technology useful for Blitzkrieg purposes came compliments of IBM via its German branch plant, Dehomag. According to Edwin Black, IBM’s know-how enabled the Nazi war machine to ‘achieve scale, velocity, efficiency;’ IBM, he concludes, ‘put the ‘blitz’ in the krieg for Nazi Germany.’ (Black, 208)

From the perspective of corporate America it was no catastrophe that Germany had established its mastery over the European continent by the summer of 1940. Some German subsidiaries of American corporations — for example the Ford-Werke and Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Essen — were expanding into the occupied countries, riding the coat-tails of the victorious Wehrmacht. IBM’s president, Thomas Watson, was confident that his German branch plant would gain advantage from Hitler’s triumphs. Black writes: ‘Like many [other US businessmen], Watson expected’ that Germany would remain master of Europe, and that IBM would benefit from this by ‘[ruling] the data domain,’ that is, by providing Germany with the technological tools for total control. (Black, 212)
On 26 June 1940 a German commercial delegate organized a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York to cheer the victories of the Wehrmacht in western Europe. Many leading industrialists attended, including James D. Mooney, the executive in charge of GM’s German operations. Five days later, the German victories were again celebrated in New York, this time at a party hosted by the philo-fascist boss of Texaco, Rieber. Among the leaders of corporate America present were James D. Mooney and Henry Ford’s son, Edsel.

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