Though he had become one of Nazi Germany’s largest producers of arms, Günther Quandt didn’t want war. “Most disturbing news,” he wrote at the time of the Sudetenland crisis. He was glad when it seemed that war had been avoided: “Things are looking up again!” Günther had always considered German rearmament a defensive measure. “I didn’t believe they would let it come to war,” he wrote after the Third Reich had fallen. But when Germany invaded Poland, on September 1, 1939, he quickly adapted to the new reality. “The German people are fighting for their life rights. Full of confidence we look to our Führer and his Wehrmacht, which has already achieved unprecedented successes in a short time and fills us with pride and admiration,” Günther wrote to the employees at his AFA battery firm two weeks after the invasion.
War was good for his business. Günther projected that annual sales at AFA would grow to 150 million reichsmarks, a record revenue figure and a threefold increase from sales during the years of peace. And his weapons firm DWM soon surpassed that benchmark — even doubled it. A few days after the war began, Günther told one of his executives: “If there’s war, there’s war and then we must act as if it never ends. Let us be happily surprised by peace.” Günther’s elder son, Herbert, deemed his father’s stance a “sober corporate strategy.” Whereas his half brother, Harald, was about to volunteer on the front, Herbert had to prove himself to his imperious father on the equally merciless battleground of business succession. Neither field of conflict rewarded moral character.