Zeiss and the War -- OFF-TOPIC

[Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>]

At 01:02 PM 11/24/96 -0500, Brian Levy, J.D., asked:

>Does anyone have information regarding the contract sales from Zeiss Ikon
>and F&H as well as Leica to the government during the war years? Such as
>numbers of camera units used by the services, etc.?
        

I wish you hadn't asked this:  I know so much, I could write a book.  Oh, I
HAVE written a book which covers this very point, among many other
interesting and worth-while tidbits (hint, hint, not very subtle hint).

From '41 onwards, the German optical industry was run by a committee headed
by Heinz Kuppenbender of Zeiss.  This committee divied the work up and taxed
it out -- the local companies had little choice to '42, and none thereafter,
as to what work they did.  Most optical work was on rangefinders, gunsights,
aerial recon gear, medical lab equipment, periscopes, and the like, as there
was relatively little demand for cameras.  

Cameras were primarily Leica (purchased through the Luftwaffe), Zeiss Ikon
(purchased thorugh the Navy -- Doenitz' father being a Zeiss technical
type), and Exakta (probably purchased through the Army, though the only
military lens in Exakta BM I have knowledge of is a Zeiss lens bearing
Kriegsmarine markings).  Binoculars were primarily made by Zeiss (at
Eisfeld), Leitz, and Hensoldt (owned by Zeiss but located, as was another
Zeiss company, confusingly called Leitz but of no relation to our Favorite
Camera Making Family, at Wetzlar).  I do not know what Voigtlander and F&H
did during the war, but they were fully occupied throughout the hostilities.

In terms of war crimes, Leitz and F&H used the highest percentage of slave
labour, followed by Zeiss, and only Voigtlander refused the services of such
conscript workers.  Kuppenbender ensured that the Zeiss slave labourers,
most of whom were Jewish, were declared as 'essential' to save their lives:
this got him hauled before a Party Court in '43 where only Speer's
intervention saved him from death.  (Kuppenbender also had to go through the
reverse in '47 when he was tried by the Allies for war crimes, and acquitted
unanimously, some of his witnesses including former slave labourers whose
lives he had saved and a bunch of US Army officers aware of his humanitarian
interests.) Kuppenbender, of course, had saved Emmanuel Goldmann, the father
of the Contax, from the camps by sending him to France in '36.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!