NATION/WORLD
Friday, November 8, 1996
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
7A
Book explores VW's Nazi past
The Associated Press
BONN, Germany — It's no secret that Adolf Hitler masterminded the Volkswagen Beetle — the affordable "people's car." So in the spirit of openness about its Nazi past, Volkswagen paid $2 million for one of Germany's most respected historians to write a book about it.
Ten years later, the book is out but Europe's biggest car maker is wondering if its good intentions are going to hurt its business.
Volkswagen and Its Workers During the Third Reich, by Hans Mommsen, has renewed discussion of VW's use of slave labor during World War II. Complete with photos of Der Fuehrer admiring a Beetle model, it is the most comprehensive — and potentially damaging — history ever written about the Nazi-era birth of the company.
Chapter after chapter details how Volkswagen manufactured hardware for the Nazi war machine using slave laborers: Jews, Russians, Poles and others, many of them former inmates of concentration camps. Some laborers were beaten. Some were worked to death.
"Porsche walked through these crimes like a sleepwalker," says the book, which paints a more damning portrait of the industrialist than any previous account.
The book says Volkswagen founder, Ferdinand Porsche, Nazi party member and grandfather of current VW chairman Ferdinand Piech, was indifferent to the slave laborers' misery.
The German news magazine *Der Spiegel* has said that Ferdinand Piech was upset about the book's negative portrayal — not only of his
grandfather but also of his father, Anton Piech, VW's chief executive during the war.
Volkswagen also is apparently concerned that General Motors Corp. could use the book as a
public relations weapon in its battles with VW, Der Spiegel reported. The U.S. car maker has accused Volkswagen of stealing GM secrets, a case now in Detroit's U.S. District Court.
Adolf Hitler
The Volkswagen story starts in the 1930s, when Hitler called for production of a "people's car" — what "Volkswagen" means in English. The
idea was to do for Germans what Henry Ford did for Americans: make a car affordable to average people.
Porsche traveled to Ford's Detroit plant in 1936 and was impressed by the American car maker's assembly line and hard workers, the book says. He hired about 20 American automotive technicians of German origin, most of them Ford employees.
And with Nazi banners fluttering and Hitler beaming at Porsche's side, the cornerstone for the Volkswagen plant was laid on May 26, 1938.
But World War II interrupted plans for the "people's car" as VW joined other manufacturers in producing armaments, including V-1 rockets, warplanes, bazookas and bombs.
During the war, about three-quarters of Volkswagen's workers were
foreigners. The first were Italians, who built the Volkswagen plants. Because they came from an allied country, the Italians were paid twice what they could have earned at home and were treated to Italian films and plays, the book says.
Slave laborers were kept in barracks surrounded by barbed wire. In addition to former concentration camp inmates, the workers were prisoners of war and civilians taken from their homes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Guards beat those who grabbed for bread or potato peels lying on the floor, the book says. Soviet soldiers and Jews were treated especially brutally:
"The Russians were constantly suffering from hunger. The company kitchen delivered hardly anything other than trumps."
Boston College suspends 13
Athletes investigated in gambling scandal
The Associated Press
NEWTON, Mass. — Certainly there have been more scandalous incidents involving more serious charges and much more money.
But never has a gambling investigation implicated so many athletes from a single team than the one that resulted in suspensions for 13 players at Boston College, including two who bet against their own team.
"I will not, and the team will not, accept back to the program anybody that has bet against Boston College," coach Dan Henning said. "We want every player on our team this weekend to be those that are interested in winning the football game."
Middlesex County district attorney Thomas Reilly said he was confident that the two players did not influence the outcome of the Oct. 26 game, which Syracuse won 45-17.
Although the two players were not identified separately from the others. Reilly said one did not play against
Syracuse and the other played briefly on special teams.
"We have found absolutely no evidence, no indication, of any game, the outcome of any game, the score of any game, being compromised ... in any way by players at Boston College," Reilly said.
Gambling on professional or college sporting events is against NCAA rules. All 13 suspended players will miss Saturday's game against No. 17 Notre Dame — BC's biggest of the year. Those whom Henning will allow to return can apply to the NCAA for reinstatement.
"They realize that there are rules. They realize that they made a mistake." Reilly said. "And they realize that there are consequences for their mistakes and they will be held accountable."
The suspended players include starting tight end Scott Dragos and linebacker Jermaine Monk, and linebacker Brian Maye, who was a starter before he dislocated his elbow against Syracuse.
Other suspended players were identified as running back Jamall Anderson, offensive lineman Marcus Bembry, defensive back Paul Cary,
defensive linemen John Coleman and Dan Collins, wide receivers Chris Cosenza, Steve Everson and Brandon King, center Kyle Geiselman and tight end Rob Tardio.
There was no way to tell from the list of suspended players which ones bet from $25 to $1,000 on the World Series, college football or pro football, and which two placed $200 and $250 on Syracuse, giving 13 points against their own team on Oct. 26.
John McBride, Anderson's attorney, denied his client was one of the two. McBride also said Anderson had not been accused by Reilly of betting either for or against BC. Bembry's father, Moses Bembry III, denied that his son had bet against BC, the Globe said.
But the Boston Globe, Boston Herald and WBZ-TV reported that Bembry and Anderson were the two who bet on their own school. The Globe cited sources close to the investigation.
Henning conceded it was unfair that players with varying degrees of culpability were being suspended together.
"To me, that's like having your hand in the cookie jar when they rob the cash register," he said.
The Associated Press
NASA sends spacecraft to Mars in search of life
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA's Mars Global Surveyor sped toward the Red Planet yesterday, the first spacecraft in a series of orbiters, rovers and robots that could answer the question: Was there ever life on Mars?
A Delta rocket carrying the unmanned Global Surveyor lifted off at noon and propelled the boxy, 10-foot spacecraft toward Mars at 24.000 mph.
"We're on our way!" NASA space science chief Wesley Huntress Jr. said. "These are the kind of days you kind of live for in space science and space exploration."
The spacecraft will reach Mars after a journey of 10 months and 435 million miles.
Once in the desired 235-mile-high orbit, in March 1998, the Global Surveyor will begin mapping the Martian atmosphere and virtually the entire surface of the planet. The survey will last 687
days, or a full Martian year.
It will send images and other data back to Earth within 20 to 40 minutes. The images will be posted on the Internet for public viewing within a day or two after that.
One of the main objectives of the $230 million mission is to scout for landing spots for future landing missions, including one in which a spacecraft will bring Martian soil and rocks back to Earth sometime in the next decade.
NASA plans to send a pair of spacecraft to Mars every 26 months through 2005. The second in this series of 10, the Mars Pathfinder, is due to lift off Dec. 2 and land on July4.1997.
Neither of NASA's 1976 Viking landers found any conclusive sign of life on Mars, and Huntress expects it will take hard evidence
— like returned samples — to "put the nail on that."
If evidence of life is found, that could eventually lead to manned flights to Mars, Huntress said.
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