VW/Audi setting up fund for slave laborers (news)

["Brandon Hull" <brandon@cardinalventures.com>]

This press release just triggered a recollection of a piece in "Automobile
Quarterly" describing the history of VW in occupied Germany following the
war.  The gist of the story was that VW's plants, distribution networks and
personnel had been completely eradicated.  A small cadre of British
officers, as part of the Allied effort to jump start the German economy,
recognized the market potential of the Beetle and re-started VW from
scratch.  As I recall, the article concludes that these guys were
responsible for the existence of what today is one of the world's great
automakers, without taking any equity or salary beyond their military pay.
Is this common knowledge in the UK?  I'd be happy to dig up the article were
anyone interested.

Brandon Hull
'91 "Ersatz" S2  in progress...

Christian wrote:

>VW said its management
>board decided to establish a private fund to offer "humanitarian >help to
>individual victims who were forced to work in 1944-1945" at the >company's
>Wolfsburg headquarters.