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Hugo Boss, BMW, Porsche and Co.: Some of the biggest German companies have a dark past. While some companies seek clarification, others try to keep their involvement with the Nazis a secret.

The Bahlsen family business, makers of the Leibniz biscuit, hid its machinations for a long time during the Nazi rule. Only after a scandal in 2019 did the family announce that they would deal with their past.

Statements by company heiress Verena Bahlsen were the reason. Her ancestors “paid forced laborers just like the Germans and treated them well,” she replied in 2019 to critics who accused her of the Bahlsen family’s prosperity due to the exploitation of forced laborers during World War II. A shitstorm followed, Verena Bahlsen left the company.

kidnapped workers

Her father, Werner Michael Bahlsen, who was head of the biscuit company at the time, subsequently announced that the company’s history would be reviewed by an independent historian. In particular, the company’s connections with Ukraine piqued the interest of historians at the time. Archive documents revealed that workers from Kiev were kidnapped and forced to work for Bahlsen in Hanover.

“I am shocked. I hear that for the first time today and it is a disaster. The described crime makes me very sad, “Bahlsen told the” Bild am Sonntag “. His moral responsibility has been forgotten, he responded to the newspaper’s information, according to which in 1999 and 2000 the company was fighting compensation claims from former forced laborers.

Bahlsen becomes an “operation important to the war effort”

In 2000, the court in Hanover rejected 60 compensation claims from former forced laborers. The announced investigation revealed more NS connections. The brothers Hans, Klaus and Werner Bahlsen were all involved in the Nazi regime.

Although they were not “top representatives of the NSDAP, they were in contact with NSDAP officials,” according to the family’s website. However, the biscuit maker’s economic successes during the Nazi era suggest deeper connections. During the shortage of raw materials, Bahlsen was assigned to an “operation essential to the war effort” and produced emergency rations for German soldiers.

Collaboration with the SS

From May 1940 to the end of the war in 1945, more than 700 forced laborers from Poland and Ukraine toiled in the Hanover biscuit factory to keep production going. “These people had to live in company camps and were subjected to discrimination according to the racist hierarchy,” the website said. Forced laborers were also exploited in the Gera branch from 1943 onwards.

However, the cooperation with the Nazi regime does not end there. In addition to the existing factories in Hanover and Gera, Bahlsen also took over a biscuit factory in occupied Ukraine in 1942 in cooperation with the SS. There, ten employees of Bahlsen from Germany checked more than 2,150 forced labourers.

Rapid recovery after the war

“Until September 1943, when the Red Army recaptured the city, the local branch earned the equivalent of nearly 11 million Reichsmarks by supplying the Wehrmacht,” writes the Bahlsen family in a summary of the events. Corrected for inflation, this amount corresponds to almost 72 million euros. According to a report in Die Zeit, the forced laborers were paid five to ten Reichsmarks a week. Most of the salary was withheld. The average gross wage at that time was around 44 Reichsmark per week.

The family’s Nazi connections had no repercussions after the war: “After the end of the Nazi dictatorship, as an indispensable food producer, the company quickly obtained a production license and regained its role and importance,” according to the family website. The new production conditions were quickly used for “significant company growth”.

In the end, however, one thing above all ensured Bahlsen’s success: “After the successful denazification of the owners, Bahlsen had opportunities for all-encompassing political and economic influence no later than Werner Bahlsen’s return in 1957.” Werner Bahlsen, the second son of founder Hermann Bahlsen, supported the SS during the Nazi era and was himself a member of the NSDAP. After the Second World War he joined the CDU and co-founded the Economic Council of the Lower Saxony CDU.

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