In 1998, the Justice Department declassified documents which showed that 300 American companies continued doing business in Germany during the war. Additionally, there have been allegations that Ford and General Motors' subsidiaries in Germany used slave labor. German factories also constructed factories and railroads throughout South America. Several of these corporations continued to keep subsidiaries in Germany during the war.

Approximately 50 corporations employed slave and forced labor during World War II. These included American companies -- Bayer, BMW, Volkswagen, and Daimler-Chrysler -- which reached agreement in December 1999 to establish a $5.1 billion fund to pay victims. Opel, General Motors' German subsidiary, announced it would contribute to the fund. Other American companies operating in Germany during the war included General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.

FORD MOTORS. The Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan opened Ford Werke, its first German plant in Berlin in 1925. Its second plant was completed six years later in Cologne. Ford Motors immediately cozied up to the Nazi regime after Hitler seized power in 1933. A large portion of the automobile manufacturer's close relationship with the Nazis is attributable to the anti-Semitism of Henry Ford. His pamphlet, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, was embraced by Adolf Hitler.

According to the American Army report of 1945, prepared by Henry Schneider, Ford Werke producing military vehicles for Hitler even before the war began. Ford Motors also established a war plant ready for mobilization day near Berlin "with the ... approval of Dearborn." After Hitler touched off World War II by invading Poland in 1939, Ford Werke became one of the largest suppliers of vehicles to the German Army. National Archives' documents showed that Ford Motor had contracts with the German SS and police.

According to The Nation (January 7, 2000), Ford Motors' home office in Dearborn, Michigan helped boost Ford Werke's profits by placing orders with the Cologne plant for direct delivery to Ford plants in Latin America and Japan. But in 1936, Hitler blocked the German subsidiary from buying needed raw materials. Ford Motor responded by helping bolster Hitler's war machine. It sent rubber and other materials to Cologne in exchange for German-made parts. The Nazi government took a 25 percent cut out of the imported raw materials and gave them to other manufacturers. In 1938, Ford Motors accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi regime's highest honor for foreigners.

Ford Motors continued its close ties with Nazi Germany. Ford Werke provided Hitler with a birthday gift of 35,000 Reichsmarks in April 1939. A letter from Ford Werke read, "The management of the Ford-Werke salutes our Führer with grateful heart, honesty, and allegiance, and -- as before -- pledges to cooperate in his life's work: achieving honor, liberty, and happiness for Greater Germany and, indeed, for all peoples of Europe." In 1940, Heinrich Albert, the director of Ford Werke in Cologne, wrote back to the Michigan plant, "The ‘Dementi' of Mr. Henry Ford concerning war orders for Great Britain has greatly helped us." And in October 1940 Edsel Ford commended Ford Werke for its operations in Germany. this subject as possible and we will have the benefit of your thoughts and suggestions at the proper time."

Just prior to the American entry into World War II, Ford Motors feared that Hitler would seize its German facilities. Management at Ford Werke wrote the Nazi government and "questioned whether Ford must be treated as enemy property," even if the United States were to declare war on Hitler's government. The June 18 memo read, "Ford has become a purely German company and has taken over all obligations so successfully that the American majority shareholder, independent of the favorable political views of Henry Ford, in some periods actually contributed to the development of German industry."

Production at Ford Werke continued to rise after the December American declaration of war, as the value of the German subsidiary more than doubled during the course of the war. The Nation (January 7, 2000) uncovered records at the National Archives indicating that Ford Motors continued its close ties with Germany during the war. The documents showed that before December 7, 1941, Ford Motor made huge revenues by producing war material for Germany and that the company chose a Nazi sympathizer to operate its German subsidiary.

Five months after the United States declared war against Germany, the Superior Court of Cologne made Ford Werke a "trusteeship," ruling that it was "under authoritative enemy influence." However, the Nazis never nationalized Ford Werke's factories. The home plant in Dearborn continued to control 52 percent control throughout the war.

Ford Werke stopped manufacturing passenger vehicles in 1941, and the plant switched its entire production capacity to military trucks. In the spring of 1941, the leader of the Nazi Party in Cologne sent a letter to the Ford Motors plant thanking its leaders for helping "assure us victory in the present (war) struggle" and for demonstrating the willingness to "cooperate in the establishment of an exemplary social state." Of the 350,000 trucks used by the motorized German Army in 1942, approximately one-third were manufactured by Ford Werke in Cologne. A secret 1944 American Air Force "Target Information Sheet" on the Cologne factory said that for the previous five years it had been "geared for war production on a high level."

Two of Ford Motors' top executives sat on the subsidiary's board during World War II. According to an American Army report written in 1945, German Ford served as an "arsenal of Nazism" with the consent of its headquarters in Michigan. But Ford Motors continued to cooperate with Hitler until at least August 1942. Nevertheless, Ford Motors maintained that his company's headquarters in Michigan lost control of its German plant after the United States entered the war in 1941. Ford Motors refused to accept responsible for any actions taken by the German subsidiary during the war. Lydia Cisaruk, a Ford Motor spokeswoman, said, "The Nazis confiscated the plant there and we lost all contact. After the United States entered the war, Ford threw its entire backing to the war effort."

By 1943, half of Ford Werke's work force comprised captured soldiers including French, Russians, Ukrainians, and Belgians. Robert Schmidt, who operated Ford Werke since 1939, said that the company used forced laborers even before the Nazis put the plant in trusteeship. A Ford Werke memo in 1945 stated, "(by 1940) many of our employees were called to the colors and had to be replaced by whatever was available. ... The same applies to 1941. Some 200 French prisoners of war were employed." After V-E Day, Schmidt told the American Army that the Gestapo began to play an important role at Ford Werke after the first foreign workers arrived. With the assistance of W.M. Buchwald, a Ford employee since the mid-1930s, the Gestapo carefully monitored plant activities. Schmidt said, "Whenever there was the slightest indication of anti-Nazi feeling, be it amongst foreigners or Germans, the Gestapo tramped down as hard as possible."

In August 1944, a squad of SS soldiers brought 15 prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp to Ford Werke. According to Karola Fings, co-author of Working for the Enemy, captured enemy soldiers worked 12 hours a day. They were fed 200 grams of bread and coffee for breakfast with no lunch, and their dinner consisted of spinach and three potatoes or soup made of turnip leaves.

German Ford had stopped manufacturing passenger vehicles in 1941, and the plant switched its entire production capacity to military trucks. In the spring of 1941, the leader of the Nazi Party in Cologne sent a letter to the Ford plant thanking its leaders for helping "assure us victory in the present (war) struggle" and for demonstrating the willingness to "cooperate in the establishment of an exemplary social state." Of the 350,000 trucks used by the motorized German Army in 1942, approximately one-third were manufactured by Ford Motor of Cologne. A secret 1944 American Air Force "Target Information Sheet" on the Cologne factory said that for the previous five years it had been "geared for war production on a high level."

Two of Ford's top executives sat on the subsidiary's board during World War II. According to an American Army report written in 1945, Ford Werke served as an "arsenal of Nazism" with the consent of its headquarters in Michigan. But Ford Motors continued to cooperate with Hitler until at least August 1942. Nevertheless, Ford Motor maintained that his company's headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan lost control of its German plant after the United States entered the war in 1941. Ford Motors refused to accept responsible for any actions taken by the German subsidiary during the war. Lydia Cisaruk, a Ford Motor spokeswoman, said, "The Nazis confiscated the plant there and we lost all contact. After the United States entered the war, Ford threw its entire backing to the war effort."

Production at Ford Werke slowed at the end of the war. Dearborn representatives from England and the United States traveled to Cologne to inspect the plant and plan for the future. In 1948, Henry Ford visited Cologne to celebrate the 10,000th truck to roll off the postwar assembly line there. Two years later, Ford of Germany rehired Schmidt -- who had been arrested and briefly held by American troops at the war's end -- after he wrote a letter to Dearborn in which he insisted that he had detested the Nazis. He was one of six key executives from the Nazi era who moved back into important positions at Ford Motors after 1945 and remained there until his death in 1962.

Before Germany surrendered, it gave Ford Werke about $104,000 in compensation for damages caused by Allied bombings. But Ford Motors would not settle for that amount. In 1965, the company appealed to the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States and asked for an additional $7 million. Subsequently, the commission awarded the company $1.1 million -- but only after determining that Ford Motors had used a fraudulent exchange rate to inflate the size of the alleged damages. The commission also found that Ford Motors had sought compensation for merchandise that had been destroyed by flooding.

Ford Motors also had close ties with Vichy France during the German occupation. A Treasury Department report written during the war concluded that the Ford family sought to further its business interests by encouraging its executives in France to work with German officials overseeing the occupation. The report said, "There would seem to be at least a tacit acceptance by (Henry Ford's son) Mr. Edsel Ford of the reliance ... on the known neutrality of the Ford family as a basis of receipt of favors from the German Reich." Ford refused to participate in the settlement talks -- according to the director of global operations, Jim Vella -- "because Ford did not do business in Germany during the war -- our Cologne plant was confiscated by the Nazi government -- it would be inappropriate for Ford to participate in such a fund."

Ford Motors also collaborated with the Nazis in Vichy France during World War II. Maurice Dollfus was Ford Motors' director in France since 1929 and the company's manager during the German occupation. A Treasury Department investigation indicated that the company encouraged Dollfus to work closely with the Vichy government. A Treasury Department document read, "Mr. Dollfus was required by law to replace directors, and he selected the new directors exclusively from the ranks of prominent collaborationists. Mr. Dollfus did this deliberately to curry favor with the authorities." The report refers to another Ford employee, Amable Roger Messis, as "100 percent pro-German."

The Treasury Department also concluded that the company's headquarters in Michigan regularly contacted its officials in Vichy France. In one letter, Dollfus assured Dearborn that "we will benefit from the main fact of being a member of the Ford family which entitles us to better treatment from our German colleagues who have shown clearly their wish to protect the Ford interest as much as they can." A Ford executive in Michigan wrote back, "We are pleased to learn from your letter ... that our organization is going along, and the victors are so tolerant in their treatment. It looks as though we still might have a business that we can carry on in spite of all the difficulties."

In January 1942, Dollfus informed Edsel Ford that Ford Motors' operations had the highest production level of all French manufacturers and that he was "still relying on the French government to preserve the interests of American stockholders." During the following months, Dollfus wrote to Edsel several times to report on damages suffered by the French plant during bombing runs by the Royal Air Force. Edsel replied and indicated that he was happy that American newspapers did not identify it as a company property.

GENERAL MOTORS. Automobile manufacturer General Motors also corroborated with Nazi Germany. The Washington Post reported that an FBI document in 1941 quoted James Mooney, General Motors' director of overseas operations, as saying he would refuse to do anything that might "make Hitler mad."

CHASE MANHATTEN. NBC News reported in November 1999 that Chase Manhatten's French branch froze Jewish accounts at the request of German occupation authorities during the war. Chase Manhatten's Paris branch manager, Carlos Niedermann, worked closely with German officials and approved loans to finance war production for the Nazi Army.

IBM. The IBM-Nazi connected dated back to 1933 and continued throughout World War II. IBM provided Hitler with billions of punch cards per year for the technology heeeded to accelerate and automate all phases of its Jewish persecution. The six phases were identification, social expulsion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation and - finally - extermination. (Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust)

Even though IBM denied complicity with the Nazi machine, since 1993, 15 million people had seen its machine on display at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2001, IBM delivered several thousand pages of German subsidiary documents and newsletters to a business archive at Hohenheim University in Stuttgart. (Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust)

BOSCH CORPORATION. In 1940, Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the largest law firms in the United States, represented a Nazi engine-parts producer, Bosch Corporation. Immediately following the war, Treasury Department attorney Abe Weissbrodt prosecuted Bosch. Weissbrodt maintained that the law firm created a Swedish dummy owner for Bosch which enabled the Nazis to maintain control. This was overseen by John Foster Dulles who at the time was a Sullivan partner.

BERTELSMANN CORPORATION. Another American corporation, Bertelsmann, cooperated with the Hitler government. The company is presently the world’s third largest publisher of English-language trade books with annual revenues of $14 billion and with operations in countries. The company owned book clubs, magazines, newspapers, and music labels such as RCA. Additionally, Bertelsmann co-owns CLT-UFA, Europe's biggest television and radio company; and has had a major stake in America Online. In the United States its holdings include Random House and Bantam Doubleday Dell, and it is a partner with Barnes & Noble in a new Internet bookstore. Bertelsmann has removed from its Web pages all references to its history in the Nazi era.

Founded in 1835 in Germany, Bertelsmann published prayer books and hymnals. Bertelsmann began to publish books during the early Hitler period that were used by Nazi propagandists. According to The Nation, the company issued a book geared for Nazis: Dr. Martin Luther's Little Catechism for the Man in Brown (Der kleine Katechismus Dr. Martin Luther’s für den braunen Mann), edited by Werner Betcke, which praised Hitler and the Nazi movement. In 1936 Bertelsmann brought out a popular edition of People Without Space (Volk ohne Raum) by Hans Grimm, an ardent Nazi supporter. The book was used to justify Hitler's expansionist attacks on Germany's neighbors. Throughout the thirties, Bertelsmann published bestsellers by authors favored by Göbbels's propaganda ministry. They glorified battles and in an attempt to win Germans over to their side in the war. For example, one book stated that Jewish civilians massacred Ukrainian women and children, and they contained pictures of forlorn men with beards above the caption: "Jews look at you." In the late thirties and during the war, the publishing house printed "blood and soil" action stories by the hundreds of thousands for soldiers. Shortly before Christmas 1939, Bertelsmann brought out special editions that could easily be sent by military posts to soldiers at the front. These editions were so successful that Göbbels appealed to other publishers for such materials of religious works, was forced to close its Der Rufer theological division. However, the corporation continued to publish other types of books. In 1943, it was investigated by an army court for illegally procuring paper and profiteering, and several senior executives were arrested in 1944. Heinrich Mohn, a member of the founding family of the firm as well as principal owner and chief executive, was not arrested. The company’s executives were released after some months; and Bertelsmann continued in business.

When Bertelsmann applied after the war for a second publishing license, it was turned down by occupation authorities. Mohn had "forgotten" to mention that he had been a "passive" member of the SS, as well as a supporter of the Hitler Youth and a member of the National Socialist Flying Corps. In 1947, Bertelsmann wrote to the Allied authorities that because of illness and age, Mohn was replaced by his son Reinhard Mohn who immediately and successfully applied for the license. Mohn controlled the majority voting power when Bertelsmann served in the Luftwaffe under Hitler. He was taken prisoner by the Americans in 1943 and was released in early 1946.

NAZI INSURANCE COMPANIES. In 1998, several state insurance companies pressured giant European insurance companies to divulge information about their Holocaust-era policies. The state insurance companies threatened to reveal the names of all people insured between 1920 and 1945.

However, in 2003, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-to-3 vote overturned California’s law as unconstitutional. The high court ruled that states were prohibited from meddling in foreign affairs and that only the federal government could implement foreign policy. (Christian Science Monitor, June 24, 2003)

Lawyers representing the state of California argued that the law did not interfere with foreign policy. They had heard examples of state residents who were unable to find out whether some of these foreign insurance companies had insured their families. The insurance companies found that tracking the information was a complex process. During the Holocaust, the Nazis set up companies to cash in the insurance policies of people being sent to the concentration camps. Still other companies cancelled policies after Jewish victims were sent to the camps and could not continue to pay premiums. (Christian Science Monitor, June 24, 2003)