Sept. 30 was shown German investigative television documentary film exposed the Nazi-era misdeeds of BMW’s controlling shareholder family, the Quandts. The reclusive Quandt family responded to the documentary five days later, on Oct. 5, pledging to back a research project into the family’s Nazi past and its role under the Third Reich, opening family archives and documents to an independent historian.
Automaker BMW is Germany’s most admired employer and a pioneer in profit sharing, so the film came as a shock The Silence of the Quandt Family highlighted how patriarch Gnther Quandt, grandfather to the generation now controlling BMW (BMWG.DE), built a blood-stained wartime fortune on the back of slave labor and how he sidestepped postwar recrimination.
Testimony from Former Slave Laborers
“The accusations that have been raised against our family have moved us,” said the family in a statement. “We recognize that in our history as a German business family, the years 1933 to 1945 have not been sufficiently cleared up.” BMW, which was taken over by the Quandts after the war, was not implicated in the documentary and made no comment about the allegations.

Based on documents unearthed by the filmmakers, Quandt estimated a “fluctuation of 80 prisoners per month,” in his battery factory — a likely reference to expected deaths per month, the film claims. It also says that Quandt, who joined the Nazi party in 1933, wielded close family ties to the Nazi elite to grow his battery business. Sven Quandt, a grandson of Gnther and the only family member to appear in the documentary, says that he and his siblings cannot be held responsible for their grandfather’s activities.

The program stunned Germany and triggered a raft of newspaper stories with headlines such as “The Quandts’ Bloody Billions” and “A Fortune Stained in Blood.” The hour-long documentary included interviews with former slave laborers who testified to the devastating conditions and atrocities which took place at Gnther Quandt’s battery company, Accumulatorenfabrik AG [Afa]. Afa produced highly specialized batteries for the Nazi war machine, used in U-boats and V-2 rockets. It also produced munitions. “We were treated terribly and had to drink water from the toilets. We were also whipped,” said Takis Mylopoulos, a forced laborer who worked in Quandt’s Hannover plant.