What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[The Brain]

Yeah I mean Hitler cited Ford in Mein Kampf and had a huge portrait of Ford in his office in the 20s.

Edit: Also were they really taken over in 1939, not 1941? That seems provocative - but it sort of makes sense.

I wonder how the factories got to Germany in the first place...

They were probably built in situ.

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder how the factories got to Germany in the first place...

I'm guessing they were built there.

[grumbler]

I wonder how the factories got to Germany in the first place...

I'm guessing they were built there.

Not brought in by the storch?

[The Larch]

Yeah I mean Hitler cited Ford in Mein Kampf and had a huge portrait of Ford in his office in the 20s.

Edit: Also were they really taken over in 1939, not 1941? That seems provocative - but it sort of makes sense.

GM claims that it lost control of its German branch in 1939, and Ford claims it lost theirs in 1941, but it seems to be a more complicated case, and I think that at least the German branch of Ford was never really under complete nazi control according to a couple of articles I've read on that. Ford has even refused to participate in the fund to compensate former slave workers as well, claiming that it was not really them the ones that used it.

Ford argues that company headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, lost control of its German plant after the United States entered the war in 1941. Hence, Ford is not responsible for any actions taken by its German subsidiary during World War II. "We did not do business in Germany during the war," says Lydia Cisaruk, a Ford spokeswoman. "The Nazis confiscated the plant there and we lost all contact."
(...)
That Ford and a number of other American firms–including General Motors and Chase Manhattan–worked with the Nazis has been previously disclosed. So, too, has Henry Ford's role as a leader of the America First Committee, which sought to keep the United States out of World War II. However, the new materials, most of which were found at the National Archives, are far more damning than earlier revelations. They show, among other things, that up until Pearl Harbor, Dearborn made huge revenues by producing war matériel for the Reich and that the man it selected to run its German subsidiary was an enthusiastic backer of Hitler. German Ford served as an "arsenal of Nazism" with the consent of headquarters in Dearborn, says a US Army report prepared in 1945.

Moreover, Ford's cooperation with the Nazis continued until at least August 1942–eight months after the United States entered the war–through its properties in Vichy France. Indeed, a secret wartime report prepared by the US Treasury Department concluded that the Ford family sought to further its business interests by encouraging Ford of France executives to work with German officials overseeing the occupation. "There would seem to be at least a tacit acceptance by [Henry Ford's son] Mr. Edsel Ford of the reliance...on the known neutrality of the Ford family as a basis of receipt of favors from the German Reich," it says.
(...)
In Germany the government and about fifty firms that employed slave and forced labor during World War II–including Bayer, BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler-Chrysler–reached agreement in mid-December to establish a $5.1 billion fund to pay victims. Opel, General Motors' German subsidiary, announced it would contribute to the fund. (As reported last year in the Washington Post, an FBI report from 1941 quoted James Mooney, GM's director of overseas operations, as saying he would refuse to do anything that might "make Hitler mad.") Ford refused to participate in the settlement talks, though its collaboration with the Third Reich was egregious and extensive. Ford's director of global operations, Jim Vella, said in a statement, "Because Ford did not do business in Germany during the war–our Cologne plant was confiscated by the Nazi government–it would be inappropriate for Ford to participate in such a fund."

Ford Motor set up shop in Germany in 1925, when it opened an office in Berlin. Six years later, it built a large plant in Cologne, which became its headquarters in the country. Ford of Germany prospered during the Nazi years, especially with the economic boom brought on by World War II. Sales increased by more than half between 1938 and 1943, and, according to a US government report found at the National Archives, the value of the German subsidiary more than doubled during the course of the war.

Ford eagerly collaborated with the Nazis, which greatly enhanced its business prospects and at the same time helped Hitler prepare for war (and after the 1939 invasion of Poland, conduct it). In the mid-thirties, Dearborn helped boost German Ford's profits by placing orders with the Cologne plant for direct delivery to Ford plants in Latin America and Japan. In 1936, as a means of preserving the Reich's foreign reserves, the Nazi government blocked the German subsidiary from buying needed raw materials. Ford headquarters in Dearborn responded–just as the Nazis hoped it would–by shipping rubber and other materials to Cologne in exchange for German-made parts. The Nazi government took a 25 percent cut out of the imported raw materials and gave them to other manufacturers, an arrangement approved by Dearborn.

According to the US Army report of 1945, prepared by Henry Schneider, German Ford began producing vehicles of a strictly military nature for the Reich even before the war began. The company also established a war plant ready for mobilization day in a "'safe' zone" near Berlin, a step taken, according to Schneider, "with the...approval of Dearborn." Following Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, which set off World War II, German Ford became one of the largest suppliers of vehicles to the Wehrmacht (the German Army). Papers found at the National Archives show that the company was selling to the SS and the police as well. By 1941 Ford of Germany had stopped manufacturing passenger vehicles and was devoting its entire production capacity to military trucks. That May the leader of the Nazi Party in Cologne sent a letter to the plant thanking its leaders for helping "assure us victory in the present [war] struggle" and for demonstrating the willingness to "cooperate in the establishment of an exemplary social state."

While Ford Motor enthusiastically worked for the Reich, the company initially resisted calls from President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill to increase war production for the Allies. The Nazi government was grateful for that stance, as acknowledged in a letter from Heinrich Albert to Charles Sorenson, a top executive in Dearborn. Albert had been a lawyer for German Ford since at least 1927, a director since 1930 and, according to the Treasury report, part of a German espionage ring operating in the United States during World War I. "The 'Dementi' of Mr. Henry Ford concerning war orders for Great Britain has greatly helped us," Albert wrote in July of 1940, shortly after the fall of France, when England appeared to be on the verge of collapse before the Führer's troops.

Ford's energetic cooperation with the Third Reich did not prevent the company's competitors from seeking to tarnish it by calling attention to its non-German ownership. Ford responded by appointing a majority-German board of directors for the Cologne plant, upon which it bestowed the politically correct Aryan name of Ford Werke. In March of 1941, Ford issued new stock in the Cologne plant and sold it exclusively to Germans, thereby reducing Dearborn's share to 52 percent.

At the time, the Nazi government's Ministry of Economy debated whether the opportunity afforded by the capital increase should be taken to demand a German majority at Ford Werke. The Ministry "gave up the idea"–this according to a 1942 statement prepared by a Ford Werke executive–in part because "there could be no doubt about the complete incorporation, as regards personnel, organization and production system, of Ford Werke into the German national economy, in particular, into the German armaments industry." Beyond that, Albert argued in a letter to the Reich Commission for Enemy Property, the abolition of the American majority would eliminate "the importance of the company for the obtaining of raw materials," as well as "insight into American production and sales methods."

As 1941 progressed, the board of Ford Werke fretted that the United States would enter the war in support of Britain and the government would confiscate the Cologne plant. To prevent such an outcome, the Cologne management wrote to the Reich Commission that year to say that it "question[ed] whether Ford must be treated as enemy property" even in the event of a US declaration of war on Germany. "Ford has become a purely German company and has taken over all obligations so successfully that the American majority shareholder, independent of the favorable political views of Henry Ford, in some periods actually contributed to the development of German industry," Cologne argued on June 18, 1941, only six months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

In May of 1942, the Superior Court of Cologne finally put Ford Werke in "trusteeship," ruling that it was "under authoritative enemy influence." However, the Nazis never nationalized Ford's German property–plant managers feared it would be turned over to Mercedes or the Hermann Goering Werke, a huge industrial network composed of properties seized by the Reich–and Dearborn maintained its 52 percent share through the duration of the war. Ford Werke even set aside dividend payments due to Dearborn, which were paid after the war. Ford claims that it received only $60,000 in dividend payments. It's not possible to independently verify that–or anything else regarding Dearborn's wartime economic relationship with Cologne–because Ford of America was privately held until 1956, and the company will not make available its balance sheets from the period.
(...)
An account by Robert Schmidt, the man appointed to run Ford Werke in 1939, states that the company used forced laborers even before the Nazis put the plant in trusteeship. His statement, sent to a Ford executive in England immediately after Germany's surrender, says that as of 1940 "many of our employees were called to the colours and had to be replaced by whatever was available.... The same applies to 1941. Some 200 French prisoners of war were employed."
(...)
Robert Schmidt so successfully converted the plant to a war footing that the Nazi regime gave him the title of Wehrwirtschaftsführer, or Military Economic Leader. The Nazis also put Schmidt in charge of overseeing Ford plants in occupied Belgium, Holland and Vichy France. At one point, he and another Cologne executive bitterly argued over who would run Ford of England when Hitler's troops conquered Britain.
(...)
The Ford family and company executives in Dearborn repeatedly congratulated the management of Ford Werke on the fine work they were doing under the Nazis. In October of 1940 Edsel Ford wrote to Heinrich Albert to say how pleased he was that the company's plants in occupied lands were continuing to operate. "It is fortunate that Mr. Schmidt is in such authority as to be able to bring out these arrangements," said Edsel, who died of cancer during the war. The same letter indicates that Ford was quite prepared to do business with the Nazis if Hitler won the war.
(...)
Ford's behavior in France following the German occupation of June 1940 illustrates even more grotesquely its collaborationist posture. As soon as the smoke had cleared, Ford's local managers cut a deal with the occupation authorities that allowed the company to resume production swiftly–"solely for the benefit of Germany and the countries under its [rule]," according to a US Treasury Department document. The report, triggered by the government's concern that Ford was trading with the enemy, is sharply critical of Maurice Dollfus, a Ford director in France since 1929 and the company's manager during the Vichy period. "Mr. Dollfus was required by law to replace directors, and he selected the new directors exclusively from the ranks of prominent collaborationists," says the Treasury report. "Mr. Dollfus did this deliberately to curry favor with the authorities." The report refers to another Ford employee, a certain Amable Roger Messis, as "100% pro-German."

The Treasury Department found that Ford headquarters in Dearborn was in regular contact with its properties in Vichy France. In one letter, penned shortly after France's surrender, Dollfus assured Dearborn that "we will benefit from the main fact of being a member of the Ford family which entitles us to better treatment from our German colleagues who have shown clearly their wish to protect the Ford interest as much as they can." A Ford executive in Michigan wrote back, "We are pleased to learn from your letter...that our organization is going along, and the victors are so tolerant in their treatment. It looks as though we still might have a business that we can carry on in spite of all the difficulties."

The Ford family encouraged Dollfus to work closely with the German authorities. On this score, Dollfus needed little prodding. "In order to safeguard our interests–and I am here talking in a very broad way–I have been to Berlin and have seen General von Schell himself," he wrote in a typed note to Edsel in August of 1940. "My interview with him has been by all means satisfactory, and the attitude you have taken together with your father of strict neutrality has been an invaluable asset for the protection of your companies in Europe." (In a handwritten note in the margin, Dollfus bragged that he was "the first Frenchman to go to Berlin.") The following month Dollfus complained about a shortage of dollars in occupied France. This was a problem, however, that might be merely temporary. "As you know," he wrote Dearborn at the time, "our [monetary] standard has been replaced by another standard which–in my opinion–is a draft on the future, not only in France and Europe but, maybe, in the world." In another letter to Edsel, this one written in late November of 1940, Dollfus said he wanted to "outline the importance attached by high officials to respect the desires and maintain the good will of 'Ford'–and by 'Ford' I mean your father, yourself and the Ford Motor Company, Dearborn."

All this was to the immense satisfaction of the Ford family. In October of 1940, Edsel wrote to Dollfus to say he was "delighted to hear you are making progress.... Fully realize great handicap you are working under." Three months later he wrote again to say that Ford headquarters was "very proud of the record that you and your associates have made in building the company up to its first great position under such circumstances."

Dearborn maintained its communication with Ford of France well after the United States entered the war. In late January of 1942, Dollfus informed Dearborn that Ford's operations had the highest production level of all French manufacturers and, as summed up by the Treasury report, that he was "still relying on the French government to preserve the interests of American stockholders."

During the following months, Dollfus wrote to Edsel several times to report on damages suffered by the French plant during bombing runs by the Royal Air Force. In his reply, Edsel expressed relief that American newspapers that ran pictures of a burning Ford factory did not identify it as a company property. On July 17, 1942, Edsel wrote again to say that he had shown Dollfus's most recent letter to his father and to Dearborn executive Sorenson. "They both join me in sending best wishes for you and your staff, and the hope that you will continue to carry on the good work that you are doing," he said.

As in Germany, Ford's policy of sleeping with the Nazis proved to be a highly lucrative approach. Ford of France had never been very profitable in peacetime–it had paid out only one dividend in its history–but its service to the Third Reich soon pushed it comfortably into the black. Dollfus once wrote to Dearborn to boast about this happy turn of events, adding that the company's "prestige in France has increased considerably and is now greater than it was before the war."

Treasury Department officials were clearly aghast at Ford's activities. An employee named Randolph Paul sent the report to Secretary Henry Morgenthau with a note that stated, "The increased activity of the French Ford subsidiaries on behalf of the Germans received the commendation of the Ford family in America." Morgenthau soon replied, "If we can legally and ethically do it, I would like to turn over the information in connection with the Ford Motor Company to Senator [Harry] Truman."
(...)
Production at Ford Werke slowed at the end of the war, in part because of power shortages caused by Allied bombing runs, but activity never came to a halt. Soon after Germany's capitulation, Ford representatives from England and the United States traveled to Cologne to inspect the plant and plan for the future. In 1948 Henry Ford II visited Cologne to celebrate the 10,000th truck to roll off the postwar assembly line there. Two years later, Ford of Germany rehired Schmidt–who had been arrested and briefly held by US troops at the war's end–after he wrote a letter to Dearborn in which he insisted that he had fervently hated the Nazis. He was one of six key executives from the Nazi era who moved back into important positions at Ford after 1945. "After the war, Ford did not just reassume control of a factory, but it also took over the factory's history," says historian Fings. "Apparently no one at Ford was interested in casting light upon this part of history, not even to explicitly proclaim a distance from the practices of Ford Werke during the Nazi era." Schmidt remained with Ford until his death in 1962.

[Syt]

I wonder how the factories got to Germany in the first place...

I'm guessing they were built there.

Not brought in by the storch?

It would take way too long to bring in all the parts with such a small plane.

[Razgovory]

I wonder how the factories got to Germany in the first place...

I'm guessing they were built there.

That was what I was thought as well, but Grumbler said that Ford didn't' build vehicles for Nazi Germany.

[Eddie Teach]

The factories were built in Weimar Germany.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTdI3osbNmA

Hey Before, depending how this plays out we might have our bet on.

[11B4V]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTdI3osbNmA

Hey Before, depending how this plays out we might have our bet on.

What was it again? 

[Admiral Yi]

What was it again? 

It's in my sig you meat head.

[11B4V]

What was it again? 

It's in my sig you meat head.

Well so it is. 

[merithyn]

What was it again? 

It's in my sig you meat head.

Well so it is. 

You can interpret that? Because I read it like six times and am still lost.

[Eddie Teach]

Does a governor disobey an executive order? Don't recall which side each took.

[Admiral Yi]

Does a governor disobey an executive order? Don't recall which side each took.

I took the smart side. 

[grumbler]

Does a governor disobey an executive order? Don't recall which side each took.

How can a governor "disobey" an executive order?  Executive orders apply only to the executive branch of the federal government.  Governors can no more "disobey" presidential executive orders than they can "disobey" executive orders issued by other governors, or the POTUS "disobey" a governor's executive order.