The Untold Stories Behind Iconic Brands: Profiting from Dark Histories

Ever bragged about your new Adidas sneakers? Or perhaps a pair of Pumas? This might make you think twice.

In 1925, the Dassler Brothers Shoe Company was founded in Germany by Adolf (Adi) and Rudolf (Rudi) Dassler. Specializing in sports shoes, they quickly gained fame during the Olympics when notable runners donned their footwear. However, with Hitler's rise to power, the brothers joined the Nazi party and began producing footwear for Nazi requirements. Adi was particularly devoted, supplying boots to the Nazi Wehrmacht. The brothers eventually fell out. One of them, captured by the Americans and suspected of being an SS operative, believed his brother had betrayed him in a bid to seize their shoe empire.

After the war, a heated dispute led to their separation. Adi founded Adidas while Rudi established Puma, both achieving significant success. Their reputations and fortunes partly grew from their association with Nazism.

But they weren't alone. Other German companies that amassed wealth through Nazi atrocities employed Jews as forced laborers. Notable automakers acknowledged using forced labor during the Holocaust, including Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz (parent of Mercedes-Benz), BMW, MAN buses, Deutz, DKW (now Audi), and even Opel and Ford—German subsidiaries under American ownership (historians suggest Allied forces rarely bombed sites with joint American-German ownership).

Several other companies complicit in using Jewish forced labor included Siemens, Agfa, Bosch, and AEG. During the Nuremberg Trials, the heads of some of these companies faced judgment, but most walked away with lighter symbolic punishments or were found not guilty.

It took until 1999 for Germany to finally compensate the hundreds of thousands exploited under dire conditions. David Greenstein, Chairman of the Forced Laborers Association in Israel, detailed his bondage-like labor at a Volkswagen plant, recounting how a submachine gun was trained on him and others. In one incident, a Nazi supervisor toyed with Greenstein's life by shooting at his head, narrowly missing and hitting a tire instead. Eighty percent of Volkswagen's wartime workforce was Jewish, providing the German army with thousands of vehicles.

These laborers endured horrific living conditions. Factories were concealed underground, where workers toiled for hours without air, light, or food. Old tunnels and mines housed these facilities, forming vast underground complexes. The forced laborers' short life expectancy was compounded by the low monetary value Germans assigned to them, estimated at a mere 1,600 Reichsmarks, as captured in reports seized by the Allied liberation forces.

Deutsche Bank sold off gold and assets seized from Jews sent to concentration and extermination camps all over Europe. Post-war reports revealed that Deutsche Bank had laundered approximately 744 kilograms (over 1,600 pounds) of Jewish-owned gold. The bank was also implicated in 363 acts of Jewish property confiscation by 1938, provided banking services to the Gestapo, and financed the construction of Auschwitz and nearby IG Farben chemical facilities. At these facilities, 35,000 prisoners were forced into labor, with 25,000 perishing during the war.

Luxury fashion brands like Chanel and Hugo Boss willingly collaborated with the Nazis. Coco Chanel, the founder of Chanel, was married to a Nazi and during the war ousted her Jewish partners while expressing support for Hitler. Hugo Boss supported Hitler and even designed and produced the uniforms for Nazi generals.

Many today avoid buying from these companies, which seemingly committed "murder and robbery" while building a fortune from Jewish exploitation and death. Yet even if abstaining entirely is difficult, it's important to remember and not forget.