Germany: The Dark Secrets of the Super Rich

0:00Back in 2019

0:02on a cool Spring day in Hamburg

0:04a 25 year old woman took the stage

0:07at one of the largest digital marketing conventions

0:10in the world.

0:11and she'd say something

0:12that would make a lot

0:14of people angry.

0:30Bahlsen is a baked goods company,

0:32most known for their Leibniz butter biscuit,

0:34the choco Leibniz milk chocolate biscuit,

0:36as well as animal crackers.

0:39Their German family-run cookie cutter company

0:42with pastries that are profitable

0:44producing hundreds of millions in yearly revenue

0:47and that revenue is something that Verena made

0:50the mistake of appreciating a bit too publicly:

1:02This was cringe.

1:04Not only because she was a

1:0525 year old family made millionaire,

1:07who wanted a yacht.

1:08But also because her wealth came from a company,

1:11that had used forced labor during World War II.

1:14From around 1940 to the end of the second world war,

1:17the Bahlsen company obtained hundreds of forced labourers

1:20to be used at their factory in Hannover.

1:22What made things worse for Verena, though,

1:24is that she did not take kindly to the criticism against her speech.

1:28Later she told a German tabloid

1:30that the forced labourers were before her time,

1:32that they were paid exactly as much as German workers

1:35and that the company treated them well.

1:37Surprisingly,

1:38people didn't think it was a particularly clever comeback.

1:41Days later,

1:42Verena was taken out of the spotlight

1:44and issued a public apology.

1:46But it was too late.

1:48Bahlsen stirred the pot,

1:49so investigative reporters

1:51decided to add some more ingredients.

1:54They discovered that the owners of the Bahlsen

1:56biscuit empire

1:57had been members of the Nazi party

1:58and donated to the SS.

2:00Many of the involuntary labourers used in Hannover

2:03came from a factory in Kyiv.

2:05A factory that the Bahlsen family had taken over

2:07after Nazi occupation.

2:09So the Bahlsens hired a German historian,

2:12Manfred Grieger, to investigate them -

2:14only after it was convenient for them to do so.

2:17Now,

2:18whether the Bahlsens are a family to be upset about -

2:20we don't know.

2:22Verena Bahlsen is no Nazi.

2:24But we can tell you whether the Bahlsen family history

2:27and how they handled it

2:28is truly unique…

2:29It’s not.

2:31The Bahlsens aren't alone.

2:33And they're so,

2:34so far from the worst.

3:02Germany is the economic Powerhouse

3:04of the European Union.

3:05A country with an iron grip

3:06of the global manufacturing industry

3:08and a specialised, powerful mittelstand.

3:11But the strong German economy

3:13is built on top of a business tradition

3:15that’s quite different from other Western countries.

3:18Some of its largest and most important enterprises

3:20are largely, or fully controlled by families.

3:23And families have histories.

3:46This is a video about three of these families.

3:49Families that share a difficult Nazi past

3:52but also produce products

3:53that you likely know and can consume today.

3:56And three families who,

3:57instead of fully acknowledging that past,

4:00have twisted and turned

4:01and fought trying to hide it,

4:03until of course, it was convenient not too.

4:06Families that have accrued so much wealth

4:08and taught Financial leaderboards

4:10but with names and faces you don't know.

4:12So this story starts with a face you probably do.

4:20Heinrich Himmler was one of the leading figures

4:22of the Nazi party,

4:24and one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

4:27He was appointed by Hitler

4:28to the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel,

4:30which eventually led him to the position of Reichskommissar

4:33for the Strengthening of the German Ethnic Stock.

4:36Himmler could decide who was German in occupied areas,

4:39and how to efficiently handle those who were not.

4:42He established the first concentration camp,

4:44which impressed Hitler so much that Himmler was tasked

4:47with establishing the entire system.

4:50He was entrusted with implementing the Final Solution

4:52of the Jewish Question -

4:53and his Einsatzgruppen, alone,

4:55killed nearly two million people.

4:58But we're not here to talk about the atrocities of Himmler,

5:01we're here to talk about his friends.

5:04The Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft,

5:05was a group of German Industrialists

5:07that served as a middle ground

5:09between Nazi party and industry.

5:12The group coordinated around one million German marks

5:15to be used by Himmler outside of budget,

5:17which included the Aryan eugenics research.

5:19One of the especially passionate Nazis in that group

5:22was a CEO of a company

5:24most know a bit too well.

5:26Richard Kaselowsky

5:32He handed out signed copies of Mein Kampf

5:34to new employees.

5:35And in Himmler's inner circle,

5:37he attended practically every meeting

5:38at the Aero club in Berlin.

5:41Kaselowsky funded Himmler's Lebensborn,

5:43the plan to support aryanization

5:45by seizing children from parents,

5:46categorising them, and reassigning them to different ones -

5:49with the unwanted ones being murdered

5:51in concentration camps.

5:53Luckily for Kaselowsky,

5:55he was the step father of a child

5:56who would never be reassigned -

5:59Rudolf-August Oetker.

6:12Go to a frozen food section of

6:13your local supermarket or look for baking supplies,

6:16and you'll be sure to encounter that same name.

6:19Dr. Oetker is one of the largest family-run

6:21German multinationals on the planet,

6:23with yearly sales revenue in the multi-billions.

6:26Rudolf-August considered his step father

6:28Richard Kaselowsky, the CEO of Oetker, his real father:

6:42And like his real father, Rudolf-August was a real Nazi.

6:46Rudolf-August was not drafted,

6:48but volunteered to join the Waffen-SS.

7:03Rudolf-August later claimed

7:04that he didn't know the extent of the concentration camps,

7:07which was weird, because he trained in one.

7:34Yet, Rudolph's Nazi past

7:36never really mattered after the war ended.

7:39Although his family benefited from Aryanizations,

7:41the use of forced and slave labour,

7:43Rudolf-August was detained only for his role

7:45in the Waffen SS.

7:47The denazification of Rudolf-August Oetker

7:49never even went to trial.

7:51Instead, he was exonerated by an internal subcommittee,

7:54made up entirely of his company’s own employees.

7:57A few months later,

7:58British officials confirmed his exoneration.

8:01He lied that he was forcibly moved to the Waffen SS,

8:04even though he volunteered

8:05and also had a knack for arryanizing property.

8:07So instead, Rudolf-August was made CEO.

8:11And over the next few decades,

8:12he turned Dr. Oetker into a multibillion euro empire.

8:16When he died in 2007,

8:18the company was distributed among his eight children -

8:20making each of them individual billionaires.

8:32But Rudolph was a quiet man,

8:34so he was able to hide his past quite well.

8:37In a press statement to us,

8:39the Oetker group clarified that he in fact vetoed

8:41any investigation into the Nazi history of the company-

8:44until after his death.

8:47It wasn't until 2008,

8:48a year after his death,

8:49that Rudolf's children commissioned historians

8:51to truly understand their company's history.

8:54And an uncomfortable history they found.

8:57In 2013,

8:59August Oetker, his eldest son,

9:00acknowledged that his father was a Nazi.

9:04But this announcement does not mean that the family was

9:06suddenly okay with being fully transparent about their past.

9:10Rudolf-August married multiple times.

9:13Although the five older Oetker children were

9:14open to commissioning the study,

9:16the three younger children were less receptive.

9:19The mother of the three youngest, Maja,

9:21rejected the investigation’s claim

9:23that her late husband was a committed Nazi.

9:25But Rudolf was, of course, a quiet man.

9:29In order to maintain harmony and unity within his family,

9:31Rudolf-August had hoped that his eldest son August

9:34would train Alfred to take over the position of CEO:

9:37A forced power split between oldest and youngest.

9:41But when August gave up operational management,

9:43he’d promote his younger brother Richard instead.

9:46This was enough to split Dr Oetker into two.

9:49Today, they still remain ideologically divided.

9:56But where the eldest siblings decided to change

9:58the foundation named after their Nazi grandparents,

10:00The youngest siblings decided

10:02to keep their Rudolf-August Foundation

10:10In a statement to us,

10:12the younger siblings' communications team

10:14argues that the name of their foundation is kept

10:16because the family had already transparently dealt

10:19with the past,

10:20through their commissioned historical study

10:22and provenance research

10:23into the Oetker art collection.

10:26A majority of Oetker sales are generated outside of Germany.

10:30But go to their English site and you’ll have a hard time

10:32figuring out who Rudolf-August Oetker

10:34or his step father really were.

10:36You can find the link to the study they commissioned,

10:38but you can only buy that book in German.

10:40In English, you can learn that Rudolf August rebuilt

10:43and helped diversify Dr Oetker on the company website.

10:46But you’ll see no mention of him voluntarily signing up

10:48to join the Waffen-SS.

10:51Today, his children are some of the wealthiest people

10:53on the planet.

10:54And although the Oetker children

10:55have put some questionable effort

10:57into bringing attention to their family’s nazi past…

10:59…there are some families

11:01who have put in no effort at all.

11:04In this video we are discussing dark family secrets,

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12:03In May of 2017,

12:05three people met at a restaurant outside of Munich,

12:08A publisher,

12:09a journalist from a Bavarian public state broadcaster,

12:12and a man named Ernst Knut Stahl.

12:14According to the publisher under oath,

12:17Stahl had said, "There's danger ahead,

12:19there's a street in New York with lots of investment bankers,

12:22lawyers and so forth.

12:24Coincidentally, they are all Jews, but that's not relevant here.

12:27They want to push Germany into ruin.

12:29They control everything.

12:31The publisher also said that Stahl followed up

12:34by saying that there should be a newspaper,

12:35one that actually writes the truth,

12:37and that Peter Bartels,

12:39a former editor-in-chief of Bild, would help.

12:42Months later,

12:42a newspaper did show up with Bartels helping write it -

12:45a paper openly supportive of the AfD.

12:48The AfD was a relatively young political party

12:51in Germany at this point.

12:52Initially Anti-Euro,

12:53it shifted course at the end of 2014,

12:55during the refugee crisis.

12:57Today it is considered right-wing extremist

12:59and racist by the German institute for Human Rights.

13:03Now, the question naturally arose,

13:06where did the newspaper’s funding come from?

13:09See, Ernst Knut Stahl,

13:11the man who talked about jews controlling everything,

13:13was not any man.

13:15He was the asset manager

13:16for one of the wealthiest German billionaires,

13:18August von Finck, Jr.

13:21August Jr. was a private man.

13:23The eldest of the von Finck empire.

13:26He passed away in late November 2021.

13:28And left behind a investment and real estate empire

13:31where the real estate is set to encompass

13:42But when August von Finck Jr. was alive

13:44you wouldn't find him living in Germany

13:46because he had moved to Switzerland for tax reasons.

13:50And it's that knack of evading any cost

13:52that he must've gotten from his father.

13:55Back in 1931,

13:57in Berlin's Hotel Kaiserhof,

13:58Hitler was meeting Germany's wealthiest

14:00to ask them to acquire weapons for the SA,

14:03the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

14:06The first man Hitler would speak to

14:08would be August von Finck, Sr.

14:10The father of August von Finck Jr.

14:13The Sr. controlled Merck Finck

14:14and held significant shares of Allianz and Munich Re

14:17because his father

14:25Von Fink known for being the stingiest man in Bavaria

14:28had little issues with raising money for Nazis.

14:31August von Finck Sr. helped promise five million reichsmarks

14:34via Allianz to arm the SA.

14:36And for his financial services,

14:37von Finck was rewarded with political advantages

14:40by being able to target his Jewish enemies.

14:59Finck wrote a letter to Munich's Chamber of Commerce

15:02that "the German private banking sector

15:03is still largely made up of non-Aryan firms.

15:07The gradual cleansing of this trade,

15:08which is so strongly influenced by the Jewish element,

15:11must not be halted by the granting of applications

15:14for exemptions,

15:15but must be promoted by all means."

15:19Aufhauser's bank was seized during Kristallnacht,

15:21and Von Finck got a taste of a forbidden fruit

15:24that he wouldn’t stop chasing.

15:26J.Dreyfus was one of the largest

15:28German Jewish private banks.

15:29And Finck put the Jewish owner, Willy Dreyfus,

15:37Finck also went ahead

15:39and did the same thing to the Rothschilds.

15:57Now, von FInck was not merely a financial opportunist.

16:00He was also a real Nazi.

16:12Hans Schimidt Polex,

16:13an Allianz executive and friend of von Finck

16:16stated after the war that von Finck

16:18believed that Hitler was “sent by God,

16:20to save the German people.”

16:22Finck remained a convinced Nazi

16:24“who would have died for his beliefs if necessary.

16:27But for his beliefs he did not have to die;

16:29Finck didn't actually have to do much at all.

17:07And so von Finck escaped Justice.

17:09Although he did have to pay around 2,000 marks

17:11towards a general restitution fund,

17:13but he appealed it on the basis of a knee injury

17:16that he had sustained during World War 1,

17:18which was actually granted.

17:27By 1970,

17:28August von Finck Senior

17:29became Germany’s second richest man.

17:31After his death,

17:32his eldest son August Junior inherited his fortune.

17:35And the Junior sold the Allianz and Merck Finck shares

17:38to Barclays bank.

17:39When August junior died in 2021,

17:42his wife and their children inherited a fortune

17:44estimated around 8 billion euros.

17:46However, attempt to find any acknowledgement by

17:49that family of their wealth’s past

17:51and it seems little can be found.

18:08But the von Finck family may not even be the most wealthy,

18:11but silent of the Nazi billionaire dynasties.

18:17In September of 2015,

18:19the richest woman in Germany,

18:21and one of the richest people in the entire world

18:23spoke at a press conference.

18:31Susanne Klatten is the one of the heirs

18:33of the most successful German business dynasties

18:35in history:

18:36BMW.

18:37But in a press conference

18:38where she references Germany’s great founders,

18:40there’s a reason that Klatten makes absolutely no reference

18:43to her innovative founder father or grandfather.

18:47On a February evening in 1933,

18:50a few billionaires met at the official residence

18:52of the Reichstagspräsident, Herman Goring.

18:55Present were Baron August von Finck,

18:57Kurt Schmitt,

18:58a few chemical company executives, Gustav Krupp,

19:00Friedrich Flick,

19:01and a man named Gunther Quandt.

19:03Only a few weeks earlier

19:05Adolf Hitler had seized power as Chancellor.

19:08And he met the businessmen that February night personally

19:10to tell them the future of the nation.

19:13On March 5, 1933 -

19:15the people of Germany would vote in Germany’s last election.

19:18If Hitler were to be elected,

19:20the titans of German industry

19:21would get a stable business climate,

19:24but only if he was elected.

19:27That night, the founder of BMW

19:29helped write off a check for thousands of reichsmarks

19:31to a man who had just told him

19:33that his goal was the end of German democracy.

19:37Gunther was one of the largest private industry users

19:40of forced and slave labour in Nazi Germany.

19:42And Gunther is special,

19:44because unlike the other military industrialists

19:47like Krupp and Flick,

19:48he was never held accountable for his crimes.

19:50And crimes he did commit.

19:52He became a leader of the armament economy,

19:55fueling the third Reich with munition and batteries.

20:22At his Accumulatoren-Fabrik in Hannover,

20:24by 1943, forced labour made around half of the workforce.

20:39In collaboration with the SS,

20:41they built a sub concentration camp on the factory complex.

20:45The concentration camp was set up with gallows

20:47and an execution area.

20:48Prisoners had accidents with boiling hot metal

20:51and hands and arms would get stuck in Gunther’s machinery

20:54with flesh and bones being ripped off while fully conscious.

21:02The company calculated

21:04that there would be a turnover rate

21:05of 80 people dying each month,

21:07with slaves lasting, on average, six months.

21:33Gunther Quandt, like von Finck,

21:35was deemed a fellow traveller

21:37who only had to pay a monetary fine.

21:39He got off scot free

21:40and never received any kind of criminal punishment.

21:44But Gunther Quandt had a stronger link with Nazi Germany

21:47than the supply chain of thousands of slave labourers

21:50in exchange for ammunition and batteries.

21:53His second wife divorced him

21:54and instead married one of the chief architects

21:56of the Nazi regime.

21:59Goebells, was the chief propagandist,

22:01and also doting stepfather of Gunther and Magda’s son -

22:04Harald Quandt.

22:06Harald Quandt grew up in

22:07one of the most radical families in the third reich,

22:22After the war,

22:23he became one of the wealthiest men in West Germany,

22:26but he passed away in an aeroplane accident

22:28at the age of 45 - leaving his descendants

22:30with hundreds of millions.

22:33Today his daughters and Goebbels step grandchildren,

22:35maintain a low profile,

22:37having their wealth managed

22:38through the Harald Quandt Family Office,

22:40which reports to have three sole

22:42and one majority shareholding

22:43in several financial service companies

22:45with approximately 17 billion dollars in assets.

22:50The inheritors of millions, are now silent billionaires today.

22:54But as interesting as Harald Quandt and his daughters are;

22:56it’s Herbert Quandt that deserves a bit more attention.

23:11Today, you can still find a BMW foundation in his name,

23:15which promotes responsible leadership.

23:18And Herbert Quandt was quite the responsible leader.

23:38Herbert Quandt, like his father, escaped justice.

23:40According to Benjamin Ferencz,

23:42a Nuremberg trial prosecutor,

23:44if all the facts had come out at the time,

23:46Herbert Quandt would have been prosecuted.

23:48But he wasn’t.

23:50Instead, he’d stay one of Germany’s wealthiest,

23:52leaving a fortune to children

23:54who still remain some of the richest people on the planet.

23:57Both Susanne Klatten and her brother, Stefan Quandt,

23:59have a near half ownership of BMW,

24:02with both serving on the supervisory board.

24:04And they still run a foundation

24:06in the name of their Nazi war criminal father,

24:09and even today seem to avoid full transparency.

24:48In a press statement to us

24:49the Quandt family office press team mentioned several ways,

24:53in which the family deals with their ancestors nazi past:

24:57One, Stefan and Gabriele Quandt have openly spoken about it

25:01in an interview with a german newspaper in 2011.

25:05Two, Since 2011,

25:07the family has supported the documentation centre

25:09for Nazi forced labour in Berlin.

25:12Three, Stefan Quandt and other family members

25:15met some former forced labourers in person.

25:18And four, Susanne Klatten supports different

25:21jewish organisations

25:22and has received a prize for her engagement.

25:25We also asked why the Quandts only commissioned research

25:28into their nazi past after a German documentary

25:31about this past came out in 2007.

25:34The documentary put immense pressure on the family.

25:37In their answer,

25:38the press office seems to suggest

25:40that the family was shaken by the reporting,

25:41but did not have all the facts

25:43prior to them being made public on TV.

25:46However, the documentary also showed

25:48the family’s unwillingness to help journalists investigate their past.

26:11The family also did not answer some of our questions.

26:14Questions like why they chooe to keep awarding the

26:16much criticised Herbert Quandt Media-Prize for journalists.

26:19Or if they are planning to change the name

26:21of the Herbert Quandt foundation.

26:23The biographies on both websites

26:24were sent to us by the press office.

26:26They mention some of his crimes,

26:27but commend him nonetheless.

26:29He supposedly was, quote:

26:39After the second World War,

26:41the German population was initially unwilling to discuss

26:43and accept guilt.

26:45This slowly changed over the years

26:47through an emerging culture of remembrance -

26:49zu Deutsch: Erinnerungskultur.

26:51This is seen as a national responsibility to accept,

26:54remember and learn from the collective radicalization

26:57of the country and the horrendous crimes of the nazi regime.

27:01This is formalised in the government financing memorials,

27:03museums and archives.

27:05Through history lessons and political education,

27:08the nation strives to make National Socialism

27:10and the Holocaust graspable on the one hand.

27:12And on the other, it intends to form personalities

27:15who can resist mass or genocidal violence.

27:18It’s meant to develop civil courage

27:20and a citizens' ability to take part in the democratic process.

27:24Erinnerungskultur is much debated in Germany -

27:26has it become too symbolic, maybe too self-serving?

27:29But only the fringes ever question its existence.

27:43To not partake in Erinnerungskultur

27:46is extremely questionable.

27:47Especially if significant parts of one's wealth

27:50originate in war crimes and exploitation.

27:53It should not be hidden;

27:54but remembered.