To recognize the entanglements of Deutsche Lufthansa with the National Socialist regime, one only needs to look at the management staff. Erhard Milch sat on the board of Lufthansa and was also state secretary in the Reich Aviation Ministry under Hermann Göring. Milch recommended himself for this position. In 1933 he joined the NSDAP, retroactively to April 1, 1929 – before the seizure of power in 1933. He later rose to become commander of the Luftwaffe.
Such careers were not unique. Board member Carl August von Gablenz was also chief planner in Göring’s ministry at the beginning of the Second World War. Von Gablenz organized a squadron “for special use”, for which Junkers Ju52 aircraft were converted for wartime operations with Lufthansa pilots. The historian Manfred Grieger speaks of “makeshift bombers”.
Lufthansa presents new corporate history
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The company’s proximity to the NSDAP was pronounced. Adolf Hitler was given a plane during the 1932 election campaign. “Lufthansa was not a company during National Socialism, it was a company of National Socialism,” says Grieger from the Institute for Economic and Social History at Georg-August University Göttingen. The company served the purpose of “covert rearmament”.
While the historian is saying this, Carsten Spohr, the CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa, is sitting next to him in the company headquarters. There is no objection from him. Grieger has reviewed the entire history of Lufthansa on behalf of the company, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding this year. The results will be available in bookstores in March in a 400-page volume and will be presented to every Lufthansa employee – in a German or English version. Lufthansa wants to send a signal that the company is readjusting how it deals with its own past.
After the new beginning in 1955, Lufthansa ignored historical episodes that people didn’t like to talk about for a long time. The group preferred to celebrate anniversaries with reference to the second start of operations. The last time such a celebration was planned was in 2015 for the 60th anniversary. The only reason this didn’t happen was because the Germanwings tragedy, when a co-pilot from the subsidiary intentionally piloted a plane into a mountain, shocked the company. Lufthansa, on the other hand, used anniversaries related to 1926 more for folklore – like in 2001, when the company held a fashion show with flight attendant clothing from 75 years.
According to Spohr’s wishes, this should finally come to an end. According to his own statements, he also feels this will among the employees. “There was great concern that we were making things too easy for ourselves on the 100th anniversary of the founding when we looked at the old Lufthansa,” says Spohr.
Not the first study
These concerns are not without cause. The process of coming to terms with the company’s history did not begin under Spohr. As early as 2001, on the 75th anniversary of its founding, Lufthansa commissioned the historian Lutz Budraß to conduct a study of forced labor. However, they preferred not to publish the results. For 15 years, the study was only available on request. Lufthansa later published the results – as an appendix to an image-rich documentation of the company’s history. The historian Budraß published his supplemented work in his own book. The impression remained that the company did not want to hand over the power of interpretation to a scientist.
Spohr is contrite about this: “Today it is clear that dealing with Mr. Budraß was wrong.” The actions at that time damaged Lufthansa. “We have set a very clear course that we will now deal with the issue differently,” says Spohr. Another approach involves the company taking up the issue of more than 10,000 forced laborers again and having the Society for Corporate History prepare another study using newly available documents.
Andrea Schneider-Braunberger, the company’s managing director, praises the group. “Only eight percent of German companies have dedicated their own studies to the Nazi era,” she says. Banks, insurance companies, car manufacturers and chemical companies have primarily become active; There are only isolated studies from other sectors. “Lufthansa is one of the few companies that are addressing the issue,” says Schneider-Braunberger. This means that “no final line” is drawn, as the renewed investigation shows.
More air defense companies than airlines
Historian Grieger has already compiled some information from the Nazi era for the anniversary volume. In the 1930s, the company strategically aligned itself with the interests of the Nazi regime in terms of global standing. This brought Lufthansa a special phase of growth, but also limitations. Lufthansa was able to expand because the company took on maintenance and testing work for military aircraft. The orientation towards the Nazi regime had a restrictive effect because various efforts for intercontinental traffic fell victim to it. Lufthansa remained financially dependent on the state.
“It is better to speak of an air defense company than of an airline,” says Grieger. Not everyone supported the Nazi course. One critic was Klaus Bonhoeffer, the brother of the theologian Bonhoeffer, who was active in the resistance. The lawyer rose to become general counsel at Lufthansa and was considered indispensable for a long time, but after his arrest he was executed just a few weeks before the end of the war.
Overall, according to Grieger’s classification, there were few expectations within the group that there could be anything other than Nazi rule. Applied to the present, the historian sees this as a warning. If companies cooperate with authoritarian regimes, things usually first go up for them, but then they go down rapidly. At the end of the war, Lufthansa no longer had any aircraft of its own – they had either been transferred to the Luftwaffe or were destroyed. This was followed by liquidation by the Allies.
Thousands of forced laborers
Lufthansa needed a lot of personnel for the special tasks during the Nazi era – from maintaining air force aircraft to assembling radio measuring devices for air defense. Front-line repair centers were set up in occupied areas. The company employed foreign forced laborers and Jews forced into service. According to Grieger’s descriptions, this happened in a strangely bureaucratic manner. So Lufthansa addressed the issue of creating a Jewish toilet because these workers were not supposed to use the same toilets as Aryans. In 1942, Jewish workers stopped showing up because they had been transported to the concentration camp. There was no loud demand from the company, says Grieger.
There were also few inquiries about the new beginning in 1955. A new company was formally created. But people who had been involved with Lufthansa before the war were involved. The former board member Milch was no longer there. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for exploiting forced laborers – sometimes resulting in death – but was later released.
The former traffic manager Hans W. Bongers and the former ministerial director in the Reich Aviation Ministry, Kurt Knipfer, were involved in the restart. In 1951 he took over responsibility for aviation in the German Ministry of Transport and thus for the state-owned Lufthansa. Before the war he had sat on the Lufthansa supervisory board. Lufthansa took the existing skills that were necessary for the new beginning. The Allies approved this.
In the 100th year of its founding – based on 1926 – Lufthansa is making the traditional Junkers Ju52 aircraft, the “makeshift bomber”, visible again – but differently than in the past. Spohr remembers that guests of honor were flown in with the Ju52 for the 50th anniversary celebrations – related to the re-foundation in 1955. An example of the aircraft now stands prominently in the new conference and exhibition center at Frankfurt Airport, which will soon open. The exhibition of the Ju52 is a good way to show and explain, says Grieger, that it was an “ambivalent object”, a dual-use aircraft.
