In the summer of 1936, Günther Quandt was helping a Jewish arms executive in order to benefit both men. That past November, Frankfurt’s Goethe University had sent Georg Sachs, a professor of metallurgy, on leave soon after the Nuremberg Race Laws came into effect. Just a few months earlier, Günther had installed Sachs on Dürener’s executive board as head of its research department. In Nazi Germany, whom you knew and how useful you were could mean the difference between life and death. Few understood that better than Erhard Milch, Hermann Göring’s deputy and the son of a Jewish pharmacist. Although Milch had a combative relationship with his boss, Göring shielded him from persecution, squelching a Gestapo investigation as rumors about Milch’s heritage swirled around the Ministry of Aviation in Berlin. “I’ll decide who’s a Jew!” Göring allegedly said. Milch’s value to the regime and to business lay in his authority over the Luftwaffe and its billions; Hitler would soon provide the Luftwaffe at least 40 percent of the entire war budget. Hence, Günther gave Milch a particularly warm welcome at Dürener’s showy anniversary party in 1935.
That same opportunism is what made Sachs, with all his expertise in metallurgy, almost as important to Günther. In April 1936, Goebbels’s Berlin district got wind that Günther had appointed a Jew to the board of one of his arms companies. Günther was forced to suspend Sachs, but Milch decided that Sachs could continue to be employed in a lower-profile role, despite his “dark spot.” After all, Milch knew about those all too well. However, in mid-July 1936, Sachs wrote a letter to Günther, asking to be let go “in the interest of both parties.” Günther initially refused his request, keen to keep the man because of his expertise, but he grudgingly acquiesced weeks later. Sachs was leaving Nazi Germany while he still could. Günther gave Sachs about thirty-six thousand reichsmarks to help him settle his emigration bill — Sachs had to pay a Reich “flight tax” of twenty-three thousand reichsmarks. Days before Sachs left for America, in early fall 1936, Günther visited him at his home to say farewell. Sachs quickly found a position as a professor of physical metallurgy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where his family joined him soon after. Sachs’s wife later said that “old Quandt” proved to be “an upstanding helper.” And Sachs came to return the favor, after the war.
A problem had been solved for both parties. Dürener soon proudly reported that no “foreign or Jewish capital” had a stake in the firm. In late 1937, Göring rewarded Günther for his mass arms production with the title of Wehrwirtschaftsführer (military economy leader), awarded to those business owners and executives whose firms were deemed crucial to rearmament. Friedrich Flick and Ferdinand Porsche received the title soon after. The benefits it bestowed were limited to an ornate gold badge and good standing with the regime, as long as one remained useful. Günther later said that the Ministry of Aviation had awarded him the title because of his work with Dürener. He figured the firm’s lavish anniversary bash had clinched the decision. The benefits of throwing a good party were certainly clear to Günther. But when he invited Milch to his sixtieth-birthday dinner, planning to seat the half-Jewish Nazi by his side, at the last moment the state secretary decided not to attend.