23. A Film Giant’s Collaboration With the Third Reich
Kodak was a corporate giant and the world’s leading film company throughout much of the twentieth century. Then failure to keep abreast of digital camera technology doomed it to oblivion. What few knew for decades after the end of WWII was one of the company’s more evil episodes: it had collaborated with Nazi Germany and traded with it even after America had entered the war. Those ties were revealed in the early 2000s when evidence recovered from the US National Archives detailed the extent of Kodak’s collaboration with the Third Reich.
It was conducted through the company’s branches in neutral Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. All of them were directly controlled by Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, NY, and all of them did business with Germany. Acting through its branches in neutral European countries, the company bought supplies from Germany, and paid for them with hard currency that the Nazis desperately needed. That, however, was at the mild end of things. Kodak also had a close relationship with Hitler’s personal economic adviser, and through him, the company continued to exercise a measure of control over its German branch, even during the war.
