Equidad e integración social
104 ESTADO DE LA NACION EQUIDAD E INTEGRACIÓN SOCIAL CAPÍTULO
Rights Abuses ‘
“Go anywhere in the world today – to remote regions of the planet – find a native citizen of that country and say but one word, one syllable really: Ford. No matter the language, no matter the culture, no matter the vast gulf of differences separating you, eyes will register recognition… Ford has shaped the world around us.” Russ Banham116
Ford Motor Company’s global expansion began within the first year of its founding. Admirers and critics have for nearly a century used the company as a symbolic representation of American capitalism. Ford’s business practices inspired Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, to coin the term Fordism to describe modern industrial capitalism in the 1920s. Since then, theorists have continued to adapt the term to evolving capitalist contexts, inventing “post-Fordism” or “neo-Fordism.”117 The company has weathered the last century of extraordinary economic change, adapting to and actively shaping the contours of a global economy dominated by
multinational corporations. While Ford’s involvement in human rights abuses is not unique, even within the automotive sector, the fact that three of its former top executives will face trial in Argentina in 2015 is already having an impact on how transitional justice is being pursued in other countries.
Within the Southern Cone, Brazil is perhaps the most dramatic example of the evolution of thought regarding transitional justice and human rights. Brazil’s last military dictatorship (1964-1985) used the threat of guerrilla warfare to justify its repression of civilians. Although the Brazilian dictatorship’s repression was not as extensive as Argentina’s, it too engaged in a
116 Russ Banham, The Ford Century : Ford Motor Company and the Innovations That Shaped
the World (New York: Artisan, 2002) 18.
117 "Fordism". Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2015. Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1920809/Fordism.
systematic effort to eliminate left-wing opposition. A primary target was the labor movement.118 For much of the last 30 years, Brazil has only engaged in minimal transitional justice efforts; the amnesty laws passed by the military before the transition to democracy remain in place.
However, in 2011, President Dilma Rousseff, who was imprisoned and tortured by the military, announced the country’s first official National Truth Commission.119
While the creation of the Truth Commission is a testament to the efforts of Brazil’s human rights movement, Argentina’s ongoing trials and investigations have set an example for the region. Brazil’s report, released in December 2014, includes evidence that companies were complicit in the government’s repression of the labor movement. The report suggests that companies financed Operacao Bandeirante, a military intelligence unit created in 1969. The report specifically mentions Ford and General Motors as financiers of the group.120 The report also states that companies reported on the activities of their workers to the military and passed along essential information that was used in their detention or torture. The report further alleges that at times companies even physically turned over workers to the Department of Political and Social Order, or DOPS, a police intelligence agency. The commission’s findings are based on lists of workers found within the archives of the DOPS that contain information on workers that the commission believes could only have come from employers. The workers listed in the
118 Joan Dassin, ed. Torture in Brazil a Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of Torture by
Brazilian Military Governments, 1964-1979. Trans. Jaime Wright (Austin, TX: Institute of Latin American Studies, U of Texas, 1998).
119 Rebecca J. Atencio, Memory's Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil (Madison, WI: U
of Wisconsin, 2014).
120 Brazil Comissao Nacional da Vedade, Relatório/Comissao Nacional da Verdade (Brasilia:
CNV, 2014). <http://www.cnv.gov.br/images/relatorio_final/ Relatorio_Final_CNV_Volume_I_Tomo_I.pdf. 127>.
uncovered documents worked at over 80 companies, including Ford Motor Company’s Brazilian subsidiary, Ford Brazil.121
Ford’s complicity in gross human rights violations in Latin America is not an anomaly. Ford Motor Company and its subsidiaries have been implicated in two of the most universally condemned human rights violations in world history. The first is the well-documented case against Ford Motor Company and its German subsidiary, Ford-Werke, for participation in the German war effort. The second is the Ford subsidiary’s support of apartheid in South Africa and cooperation with the South African government’s repression. Both cases demonstrate the connection between gross human rights abuses and economic factors, as well as corporate reluctance to accept legal or moral responsibility for their actions.
I still remember well, when we workers from Ford were sitting in the canteen at mid-day, how the young Ukrainians always came over the roof, driven by hunger and watched us while we ate.122 Former Ford-Werke worker, 1995 Germany
Ford Motor Company arrived in Germany in 1925 and established Ford Motor Company Aktiengesellashaft (AG), which became Ford-Werke in 1939.123 In 1929, the company expanded to a manufacturing plant in Cologne.124 After Hitler’s rise to power, Ford-Werke became an essential partner in German rearmament, producing both vehicles and ammunition for the
121 Brian Winter, “Documents Suggest Foreign Automakers Brazil’s Dictators.” Reuters. Aug. 5
2014. Web. March 2015. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/brazil- dictatorship-companies/.
122 Reinhold Billstein et al., Working for the Enemy : Ford, General Motors, and Forced Labor
in Germany During the Second World War (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000) 135.
123 Ford’s German subsidiary will be referred to as Ford-Werke throughout this thesis for
convenience.
124 Jonathan Huener, Business and Industry in Nazi Germany (New York: Berghahn Books,
military. Between 1934 and 1938, the company’s revenue increased by 400% and technology imported from the United States made it the second most advanced auto factory in Europe in 1938.125 Management at Ford-Werke had strong connections to the Nazi party. In response to the regime’s extreme nationalism, and the threat of being expropriated as “enemy property” during the war, Ford U.S. reduced its shares in Ford-Werke from 75% to 52% in 1941. However, Ford never relinquished its controlling interest.126 While Ford’s operations in Germany were dwarfed by its competitor, General Motors, the general manager of Ford-Werke during the war, Robert Hans Schmidt, estimated in 1945 that “of the 350,000 trucks which the motorized German army possessed in 1942, 100,000 to 120,000 were Ford built.”127 Ford-Werke also secretly established a “cloak company,” Ardent GmbH, to manufacture ammunition for the German army.128
In 1945, when American troops liberated Cologne, they found more than 500 forced laborers at Ford-Werke still imprisoned behind barbed wire. Hundreds more had escaped during the battle. According to a report by the U.S. military, the conditions they found at the plant were “foul in the extreme” and most of the women had likely been raped.129 By Ford’s own admission, Ford-Werke had between 1,000-2,000 forced laborers working at their Cologne plant during the war. In a report to Ford-Werke’s advisory council in 1943, Schmidt said, “about 50 percent of the employees are now foreigners, and of these about 1,200 are Russians, mostly women.”130 Many of the Russian laborers were women between sixteen and seventeen years of age. Approximately forty to fifty men were sent to work at Ford-Werke from Buchenwald
concentration camp, a small number compared to the thousands that worked at other automakers
125 Billstein et al. 111 126 Billstein et al. 98 127 Billstein et al. 115 128 Billstein et al. 115
129 Max Wallace, The American Axis : Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third
Reich. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003) 330.
during the war.131 Up until the 1990s, Ford-Werke and Ford Motor Company denied the use of forced labor in their plants.
In 1945, Drew Pearson, a controversial and widely read syndicated columnist, published a story in the Washington Post and other newspapers under the headline, “How Ford Helped Nazis.”132 The story was based on a memo that Heinrich Albert, the legal counsel for Ford-Werke since 1928, sent to executives in the United States just twelve days before Pearl Harbor.133 The memo confirms that Ford-Werke was receiving materials from the parent company to meet production needs in Germany long after Germany had begun its invasion of Europe and all the way up until the United States declared war.134 Eleanor Roosevelt reacted to Pearson’s article saying, “Business complications do strange things to our patriotism and to our ethics!”135 Ford Motor Company showed no remorse in its response, saying its actions were all done within the law since the memo was sent while the United States was not yet at war with Germany. An official response said their actions were consistent with “common business procedure.” The company stated, “It was a case of having a substantial investment in a country and attempting to protect it in hopes that eventually the general situation would improve so that we could continue our business in a more satisfactory manner.”136
By late 1945, world attention had turned to Nuremberg and the trials of top officials in the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Tribunal was a historical achievement; for the first time individuals were held responsible for violations of international law. Only one corporate executive, Dr. Gustav Krupp Von Buhlen und Halbach, head of the Krupp Group, the leading
131 Billstein et al. 135, 155. 132 Billstein et al. 109. 133 Billstein et al. 108.
134 Drew Pearson, “How Ford Helped Nazis”. The Gazette and Daily.(York, Pennsylvania, 17
July 1945): 12.
135 Billstein et al. 122. 136 Billstein et al. 109.
German steel and arms manufacturer, was charged with complicity in the Nazi crimes.137 Within the U.S. zone of occupation, the U.S. Nuremberg Tribunal oversaw twelve trials that are known as the “Subsequent Nuremberg Trials” or the “Industrial Nuremberg Trials.”138 Three of the cases involved charges against a total of 41 German industrialists and one case against a German banker.139 None of the Ford-Werke executives were charged. The Tribunal found that
participation in slave labor could not be justified as an act of necessity committed under duress in a repressive regime and convicted 27 of the executives.140 Although the U.S. Nuremberg
Tribunal identified some corporations, including I.G. Farben, the company responsible for producing the chemical gas used in death chambers, as criminal organizations in its conviction of their executives, its jurisdiction was restricted to natural persons, preventing the tribunal from trying corporations.141
In the late 1980s, the issue of forced labor during World War II was “rediscovered” by historians researching World War II.142 The end of the Cold War and the opening of Eastern Europe allowed survivors to begin speaking out and sparked renewed political debate. At the same time, a new focus on the systemic conditions that contributed to the Holocaust helped draw renewed attention to corporate complicity.143 In 1995, the mayor of Cologne invited survivors of forced labor at Ford-Werke, six women and two men, to Cologne. The company initially refused
137 Michael Koebele, Corporate Responsibility Under the Alien Tort Statute : Enforcement of
International Law Through US Torts Law (Leiden, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2009) 384.
138 On December 20, 1945, The Allied Control Council overseeing German territory passed
Control Council Law No. 10, allowing the Allies to establish tribunals within their zone of occupation.
139 Koebele 384.
140 Doug Linder, “The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials: An Overview” (University of Missouri-
Kansas City School of Law, 2000) Available at: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/ projects/ftrials/ nuremberg/subsequenttrials.html..
141 Koeble 384. 142 Billstein et al. 136. 143 Huener 108.
to allow them into the plant, but eventually agreed to let them enter if “factory tour guides” accompanied them.144 Despite public statements by survivors of forced labor at Ford and by former German Ford-Werke workers, Ford-Werke continued to deny the accusations and refused to participate in a study of its history. The company stated in 1995: “In reality we comb carefully through our archives in response to such requests…and we speak with employees who might still remember that time. Never have we found documents or other information in Cologne about forced labor at Ford.”145
In 1998, inspired by the lawsuits against Swiss banks in the United States for profiting from the savings of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Elsa Iwanowa, by then a Belgian citizen, filed a class action lawsuit against Ford Motor Company for profiting from forced labor. It was the first class action lawsuit in the United States against a corporation for complicity in Nazi crimes, but it was soon followed by many more. Iwanowa had been kidnapped from Rostov, Russia in 1942 at the age of sixteen and forced to work at Ford Werke until 1945. She alleged that a representative of Ford Werke had “purchased her along with 38 others.”146 Although the suit was unsuccessful, it forced the declassification of government documents; negative media attention prompted the company to begin an internal investigation and make 98,000 documents public. These developments resurrected the debate over Ford Motor Company’s moral and legal responsibility for the actions of its subsidiary.
Ford Motor Company hired a team of researchers and historians led by Lawrence Dowler and Simon Reich to conduct the internal investigation, which took three years. The report, Research Findings About Ford-Werke Under the Nazi Regime, was released in 2001 and
144 Billstein et al. 136. 145 Billstein et al. 136.
146 Iwanowa v. Ford Motor Co. 57 F. Supp. 2d. 41.(D.N.J. 1999). LexisNexis Academic. Web.
confirms that forced and slave labor occurred at Ford-Werke during the war.147 However, in discussing the report, John Rintamaki, chief of staff at Ford Motor Company, maintained that the use of forced labor was a “process we could not influence or control.”148 He reminded the public, “In looking back, it must be remembered that all companies operating in Germany at that time had to use labor provided by the German government, and that the Nazi regime chose to provide forced and slave laborers to industry.”149
Simon Reich’s assessment of the investigation coincides with the company’s position. He wrote in Business and Industry in Nazi Germany, published in 2004: “Ford did not control its Cologne plant, knew little of what was happening there, and did not realize any material
benefit.”150 Reich contends that after 1939, Ford Motor Company was “often ill-informed” about Ford-Werke’s actions and was unaware that forced labor was being used.151 His argument that Ford received no “material benefit” is based on his finding that modest profit figures were recorded during the first few years of the war, but these were “wiped out by enormous losses in the last two years.”152 However, other historians have strongly criticized Reich’s conclusions.
Mark Wallace, the first independent researcher to gain access to the full set of documents used to complete the report, criticizes the company’s and Reich’s conclusions. In The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich, he argues that Ford Motor Company was in communication with and in control of Ford-Werke at least up until the
147 Lawrence Dowler and Simon Reich, Research Findings About Ford-Werke Under the Nazi
Regime (Dearborn, MI: Ford Motor Company, 2001).
148 Wallace 315.
149 Ford Motor Company, Ford Contributes $4 Million Toward Forced and Slave Labor Studies
and Humanitarian Relief (Michigan: Ford Motor Compaay. 6 Dec. 2001).
150 Simon Reich, “Corporate Social Responsibility and the Issue of Compensation: The Case of
Ford and Nazi Germany.” Ed. Huener, Jonathan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004) 123.
151 Wallace 315
152 Simon Reich, “Ford’s Research Efforts in Assessing the Activities of its Subsidiary in Nazi
Germany,” Ford Issues Report on Ford-Werke Under the Nazi Regime (Michigan: Ford Motor Company, 6 Dec. 2001).
United States declared war and perhaps even after.153 In addition to the memo first disclosed in 1945 from Heinrich Albert to Edsel Ford, Wallace cites a memo from July 1940 from Albert to Edsel Ford requesting that his son be hired to work at Ford-Werke. Wallace writes, “This evidence of Dearborn micromanagement almost a year after the war began hardly demonstrates the German subsidiary’s growing autonomy.”154
Wallace’s assertions are supported by a Treasury Department report from 1945 that was declassified in 1998. The report states,
The Reich used German Ford and its cooperative parent in Dearborn as a direct means of stockpiling the raw materials needed for war….Even prior to the War, German Ford arranged to produce for the Reich vehicles of a strictly military nature…. This was done with the knowledge and approval of Dearborn.155
The report was based on documents seized by the Treasury department from Ford Motor
Company’s headquarters and from the Cologne plant, as well as an interrogation of Robert Hans Schmidt over the course of three months.156 They suggest that Ford headquarters gave its written support for the subsidiary’s actions through memos and that Ford U.S. supplied the necessary resources for the military vehicles and sent machinery to the Cologne plant as late as 1941. The report also cites documents showing a top Ford Motor Company U.S. executive traveling to Germany in the summer of 1939 and supporting an expansion of the Ford-Werke factory.157
Testimony from Ford-Werke management also contradicts Reich’s assertion that Ford- Werke’s management was acting out of loyalty to the Nazi government and not at the behest of
153 There is limited evidence that suggests Ford U.S. was able to communicate with its German
subsidiary through other international subsidiaries (Wallace 315).
154 Wallace 312. 155 Billstein et al. 109.
156 Schmidt was placed under arrest for three months, but was ultimately released. In 1950,
despite his connections to the Nazi party, Schmidt was reinstated as Ford’s technical director. Billstein et al. 108-109.
Ford management in the United States. According to Hans Grande, who worked at Ford-Werke during the war and became Ford’s vice president of European operations after the war, “We didn’t have the impression we were working for the Government but that we were still owned by the [American] shareholders and that we were working for Ford, for the Ford Motor Company…. Our first priority was to look after the company’s interests even after Pearl Harbor.”158
Establishing whether Ford Motor Company was aware of forced labor at Ford-Werke is more complicated. The majority of the use of forced labor occurred after 1942, when Ford Motor Company U.S. had ended communication with the subsidiary. Wallace states that a thorough reading of the documents disclosed by Ford proves that forced labor was used at Ford-Werke before Pearl Harbor: 100-200 French prisoners of war were brought to Ford-Werke in 1940.159 Wallace also challenges the notion that Ford-Werke was compelled to use forced labor. He writes that in order to use forced labor, Ford would have had to “purchase” the workers or fill out