In 33 years, GMs market share dropped from 40% to under 20%. Even 40% was a shadow of GMs prior dominance. GMs Nazi past is a point to consider.
General Motors was an ally of Hitler. General Motors has been profitable in eight of the last 33 years.
General Motors was an indispensable cog in the Third Reich’ rearmament. General Motors’ market share has dropped from 40% to under 20% in the last 33 years.
General Motors’ subsidiary, Opel, was a stalwart of the Nazi regime, not just a car maker. General Motors went bankrupt in 2008 and survived only because it was bailed out by the US government.
General Motors’ president, Alfred P. Sloan, knew what was happening in Germany. He motorized Hitler’s fascist regime; this was a spigot of limitless profits for General Motors. Sloan was driven by more than profits. “He admired the strength, irrepressible determination and sheer magnitude of Hitler’s vision,” wrote Edwin Black, the dauntless researcher who helped bring to light the role of General Motors in building the Nazi regime.
German industries who forced Jews and others into slave labor have had to pay reparations. Germany itself has paid billions in reparations. General Motors has paid nothing in reparations for its key role in bolstering the Nazi regime. Perhaps General Motors is paying in other ways. Perhaps the chickens are coming home to roost in the seemingly irreversible decline in the fortunes of this once impregnable American industrial giant.
Alfred P. Sloan became president of General Motors in 1923 and chairman of the board in 1937. He retired in 1956 — a 33-year span of leadership. In the last 33 years, 1981-2014, General Motors has gone through five CEO’s and is now on its sixth. Even accounting for the difference in tenure of top business leadership over the past decades, General Motors, any way you slice it, has become the picture of unstable and uncertain leadership. Perhaps there is a reason for all this beyond the cold numbers on balance sheets.
Perhaps more than economic strategy has determined General Motors’ fate. Adam Smith spoke of the “invisible hand” in the capital markets. Perhaps there is an invisible moral hand in the fate of General Motors. Perhaps history delivers some justice, however ragged, against evil based on greed. Perhaps General Motors’ current, ceaseless need to reinvent itself, to switch strategies, to switch leaders, to beg for bailouts, to deal with massive recalls and lawsuits, has something to do with its ignominious history of major support for Hitler.
Perhaps the reparations that General Motors seems to be paying — imposed by its own errors, and by the market — are far steeper than the reparations it should have paid, just like the Nazi industries did. In the Hitler era, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between them.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
