Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich (Hardcover: Illustrated: 300 pages)

Neil Gregor traces the early history of the Daimler-Benz company and examines how opportunities offered by Nazi rearmament in the 1930s led to its rapid expansion and a surge in profits. Focusing mainly on the war years, Gregor demonstrates how the company succeeded in exploiting the demands of the war economy while situating its operations most advantageously for resumption of commercial activity in peacetime. Despite Allied bombing, says Gregor, Daimler-Benz AG emerged from the war in good shape -- with a clear operating strategy, a largely intact inventory, and core production lines geared for the peacetime market. With its own interests and preservation as prime motives, the company acquiesced in the exploitation of forced labor, thereby actively intensifying the suffering of civilians, prisoners of war, and Jews and other victims of concentration camps. He concludes that the ability of Daimler-Benz to protect its interests during the war and to manage the transition to peace was predicated upon collusion in the racial barbarism of the Nazi regime.