Karl Diehlran a notorious, if successful, family firm which used slave labour and PoWs to manufacture arms for the Third Reich. Later, though diversifying into other branches such as the sale of clocks, the firm continued to manufacture military hardware, including cluster bombs.
Diehl was born in Nuremberg in 1907, the only child of a small-scale industrialist Heinrich Diehl and his wife Margarete Schmidt.In 1917 Heinrich Diehl created a fully-fledged metal foundry taking in work from Man and Krupp, and specialising in arms manufacture. His son joined him after taking a degree in mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Munich and acquiring financial training at the Bayerischer Vereinsbank,
Diehl joined the company at the age of 23, just before the Wall Street Crash. In April 1933, the year the Nazis came to power, both Diehls along with many others in their home town, Nuremberg, joined the party. Diehl would later claim he was only a fellow traveller, that his cooperation with the Nazis was in the interest of preserving his family, his workers and a firm that was dedicated to arms manufacture — making millions of rounds and fuses for the Wehrmacht.
From 1945-48, his close involvement with the Third Reich debarred him from business while he was put through the process of denazification in the American Zone. When the Cold War occasioned a volte face in the Allied treatment of the Germans, Diehl turned swords into ploughshares and made money from left-over wartime scrap. He was a discrete metaphor for the German Economic Miracle or Wirtschaftswunder. By 1980 the company was already worth a billion marks. and one of the most prominent firms in Bavaria.
Weapons were still very much part of the portfolio, from tank tracks and sidewinder air-to-air missiles to clusterbombs which spewed out up to 644 warheads. He had branched out into fuses, timer and data equipment. Clocks too joined the portfolio. Military hardware represents more than a third of production to this day.
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One of Diehl’s most important markets was Israel, which he often visited in his private plane. Diehl created a fund named after his father in 1952, to protect his employees and a foundation in 1987 destined to help the people of Nuremberg. The family firm had a turnover of 2.2 billion euros at the time of Diehl’s death, and employed over 11,000 workers.
An enthusiastic donor to charity, Diehl also compensated his wartime forced labourers. His eldest son Werner went to Israel to apologise in person to them. Despite this, there was a furore when Nuremberg made Diehl an honorary citizen in 1997. Ten years later he gave the city a present of 100 million euros, specifically donated on the understanding that the city would restore some of the monuments destroyed by Allied bombing. Diehl married Irmgard Schoedel and is survived by three sons who also work for the company.
Karl Diehl, German businessman and arms manufacturer, was born on May 4, 1907. He died on January 19, 2008 aged 100