Nazi role-playing at Santa Monica High School causes stir

By Ryan Torok
Published on April 24, 2013

Generally, expert advisers counsel against teaching about the Holocaust by having students do exercises that re-create the experience. Role-play activities can reinforce negative views, stereotype group behavior and are pedagogically unsound, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Vienna Philharmonic acknowledges honoring Nazi war criminal

Published on March 11, 2013

The famed Vienna Philharmonic has acknowledged that many of its musicians were Nazi party members during Hitler's rule and that its director may have delivered a prestigious orchestra award to a Nazi war criminal two decades after the end of World War Two.

Rise of Golden Dawn: A presage of doom

Published on February 11, 2013

The undisguised extremism promoted by Golden Dawn is a chilling watershed in Greece's post-war democracy. Fascist gangs are turning Athens into a city of shifting front lines, seizing on crimes and local protests to promote their own movement, by claiming to be the defenders of recession-ravaged Greece.

Himmler’s Brain

By Jonathan Kirsch
Published on June 6, 2012

Oxford club members resign over anti-Semitism

Published on November 6, 2011

Four members of the Oxford University Conservative Association have resigned over anti-Semitism and snobbery.

Hitler’s carmaker: How General Motors helped jump-start the Third Reich’s military machine

By Edwin Black
Published on November 30, 2006

Just the day before, May 1, 1934, under a brilliant, cloudless sky, James D.Mooney, president of the General Motors Overseas Corp., climbed into his automobile and drove toward Tempelhof Field at the outskirts of Berlin to attend yet another hypnotic Nazi extravaganza. This one was the annual May Day festival.

Hitler’s carmaker: How General Motors helped jump-start the Third Reich’s military machine

By Edwin Black
Published on November 30, 2006

During the late 1930s, Hitler's persecution of Jews was building to a frenzy even as fears of a war escalated. Nevertheless, General Motors' German automotive subsidiary, Opel, remained a loyal corporate citizen of the Third Reich -- content to obediently do the Nazi regime's bidding, and unstintingly supporting Hitler's program on many fronts. These included economic and employment recovery, anti-Jewish persecution, war preparedness and domestic propaganda. In return, Opel prospered.

Hitler’s carmaker: How General Motors helped jump-start the Third Reich’s military machine

By Edwin Black
Published on November 30, 2006

The Last Word: How will posterity remember General Motors' conduct? The epilogue of the tumultuous saga of General Motors during the New Deal and Nazi era is still being written.That saga is the subject of a four-part JTA investigative series that concludes with this story.

Hitler’s carmaker: How General Motors helped jump-start the Third Reich’s military machine

By Edwin Black
Published on November 30, 2006

Within a few years of partnering with the Hitler regime, Opel began to dwarf all competition. By 1937, GM's subsidiary had grown to triple the size of Daimler-Benz and quadruple that of Ford's fledgling German operation, known as Ford-Werke.

Hitler’s carmaker: How General Motors helped jump-start the Third Reich’s military machine

By Edwin Black
Published on November 30, 2006

Opel became an essential element of the German rearmament and modernization Hitler required to subjugate Europe.

Hitler’s carmaker: How General Motors helped jump-start the Third Reich’s military machine

By Edwin Black
Published on November 30, 2006

Mr. Big Sloan lived for bigness. Slender and natty, attired in the latest collars and ties, Sloan commonly wore spats, even to the White House."Deliberately to stop growing is to suffocate," Sloan wrote in his 1964 autobiography about his years at GM. "We do things in a big way in the United States. I have always believed in planning big, and I have always discovered after the fact that, if anything, we didn't plan big enough. I put no ceiling on progress." For Sloan, motorizing the fascist regime that was expected to wage a bloody war in Europe was the next big thing and a spigot of limitless profits for GM.

Hitler’s carmaker: How General Motors helped jump-start the Third Reich’s military machine

By Edwin Black
Published on November 30, 2006

Hitler knew that the biggest auto and truck manufacturer in Germany was not Daimler or any other German carmaker. The biggest automotive manufacturer in Germany -- indeed in all of Europe -- was General Motors, which since 1929 had owned and operated the long-time German firm, Opel.Impressive production statistics aside, the Fuhrer was fascinated with every aspect of the automobile, its history, its inherent liberating appeal and, of course, its application as a weapon of war.

Reviews of “The Envoy” and “Hitler’s Head”

By Tom Tugend
Published on April 22, 1999

"You can't confront evil on its own ground without becoming part of it," muses diplomat Heinrich Zwygart in "The Envoy," and his self-recognition clearly applies to Switzerland, the country he represented faithfully in Berlin during the six years of World War II.