- HAMBURG, Germany (AP) - More U.S. companies than generally acknowledged
were doing business in Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933,
a news weekly reported Wednesday, citing new research.
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- Bernd Greiner, a historian at the Hamburg
Institute for Social Research, established that 26 of the 100 largest U.S.
firms, were active in Germany in the mid-1930s, Die Zeit said in a report
released in advance of Thursday's publication.
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- The report comes as German companies
are being prodded to re-examine their activities during the Nazi era, some
under pressure from lawsuits in the United States on behalf of former slave
laborers. It did not list all of the firms.
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- The companies that were identified were
known to have operated in Germany before World War II, including Standard
Oil, DuPont, ITT and General Electric, Ford and General Motors' Opel subsidiary.
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- The activities of Ford and Opel, for
example, were examined during congressional hearings in Washington in 1974.
At the time, experts alleged that the automakers' German operations supplied
Hitler's army with more than two-thirds of its trucks and armored light
vehicles, and that GM's Opel produced mid-range bombers and jet engines
for German fighter planes.
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- Both companies deny that they helped
the Nazis before or during World War II or profited from the use of forced
labor at their German subsidiaries.
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- Last month, General Motors said it has
hired a historian to research its Nazi-era activities in connection with
its German subsidiary, Opel.
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