Die MAN im Dritten Reich

Belonging to the Volkswagen Group, MAN is one of the largest engineering companies in Europe today with more than 54,000 employees and a turnover of 14 billion euros. During the Third Reich, however, MAN played a major role within Germany’s armaments industry. The company not only manufactured trucks, but through the steady increase in its production of tanks, guns and diesel engines for battleships and submarines MAN became one of the most important suppliers to the Wehrmacht. But was this development actually the result of deliberate entrepreneurial decisions? This detailed study of the company is intended to illustrate that even the complete destruction of its production facilities in Augsburg, Nuremberg and Hamburg did not mean the end of MAN, but the significant increase in its production and fixed assets during the war formed the basis for the group’s ‘economic miracle’ in the Federal Republic.