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General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe's Biggest Carmaker. By Henry Ashby Turner Jr. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. viii + 200 pp. Photographs, appendix, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $38.00. ISBN: 0-300-10634-3.
Following in the footsteps of other German historians, Henry Ashby Turner has written a focused examination of a single company during the Third Reich. But unlike previous studies, Turner's book looks at a major German corporation that was owned by Americans. This tantalizing shift toward U.S. industry invites a number of questions that have often been posed in a tendentious manner. What were the financial and personal links between American business and German industry during the Nazi period? Did American companies derive profits from their subsidiaries in the Third Reich? Did they contribute to the ideological, military, and genocidal projects of National Socialism? In his compact and meticulous case study, Turner offers measured and compelling answers to these questions.
In 1929 General Motors purchased the recently incorporated Adam Opel Company, a family-owned manufacturer of sewing machines and bicycles that had become a major producer of cars and trucks. Despite an unfavorable beginning during the Great Depression, within seven years GM's subsidiary grew into the largest automaker in Europe. As Turner demonstrates, the size of Opel inevitably made it a key player in the Third Reich, but its prominence also posed challenges for the firm. With Hitler railing against foreign-owned companies, Opel did its...