Talk:Hermann von Siemens

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Biography

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Third paragraph

I would like to suggestive the following changes to the page on Hermann von Siemens:

Paragraph 3 Before 1933 he was a member of the German National People's Party, a rival and opponent of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party. From 1941 until 1946 he succeeded his uncle Carl Friedrich von Siemens as chairman of the Supervisory Boards of Siemens & Halske AG and Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG and thus became head of the German electrical and electronics company. As head of a company important for the production of war materials, the German government enqueued him among the "Wehrwirtschaftsführer". (Remove the next sentence). (Insert the following:). The company operated in eight concentrations camps1 and profited from the labour of as many as 50,000 slave workers2 in the Nazi ‘death through work’ programme3. The company also profited from the Nazis programme of forced sales of Jewish companies at knock-down prices. The general director of the company, Rudolf Bingel, was close to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and became one of the senior business leaders in his Circle of Friends, Himmlerkreiss, which he supported financially. (End of proposed edit 1).

Paragraph 4 Arrested on 5 December 1945 by Allied Forces, von Siemens temporarily ceded the chairmanships to his father's first cousin Friedrich Carl Siemens (1877-1952). He was brought to the Nuremberg trials as a prisoner to deal with war crime charges, but finally no prosecution was filed, as there were said to be no personal misdeeds traceable. The charges were (insert the following:) later (end of edit 2), dropped, (Insert the following:) as they were with many other industrialists who were culpable of Nazi crimes, due to their importance in strengthening the West German economy to counter the perceived threat of the Soviet Union. (end of edit 3) Hermann von Siemens returned as head of the company in 1948.

1. Holocaustonline: Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Gross Rosen, Mauthausen, Neuengamme, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen. 2. Holocaustonline. 3. The company paid out around $15 millions in compensation in the 1990’s – as reported in various news outlets including LA Times, BBC, Independent.

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