Can companies be truly evil? Can a company’s actions in 2016 be affected by origins that stretch back to Adolf Hitler and the grandiose vision of the Nazi movement? We turned to award-winning New York Times reporter Jack Ewing, author of the explosive book, "Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal," to get his insight on the scandal that rocked what was until recently the world’s largest car company.

When you demand a lot of people, and then don’t set any limits for them...this type of thing is bound to happen. - Jack Ewing on the Volkswagen diesel scandal

Adolf Hitler was an angel investor in the Volkswagen Beetle

In a spectacular example of Nazi hubris, Hitler funded the development of the Bug with stolen union money and then commissioned the largest factory in the world to produce it. The factory is still among the largest in the world, and was built before they had ever produced a real car from the Beetle design. Once WW2 broke out, they had only produced a couple hundred VW Beetles, so the factory was converted over to war machinery production, and eventually was staffed by “conscripted workers” brought in from concentration camps like Auschwitz, among other sources.

Volkswagen committed one of the greatest frauds in corporate history

In 2015, the EPA revealed that Volkswagen had installed software in 11 million cars that basically cheated emissions-testing mechanisms. By early 2017, VW settled with American regulators and car owners for $20 billion, with additional lawsuits still looming, especially in Europe. The total settlements may well run over $50 billion.

Creating a culture of conformity lays the foundation for fraud, scandal and abuse

Volkswagen’s corporate culture of conformity helped prevent employees from blowing the whistle on the program, allowing it to continue for over 10 years.

Guest Bio

Jack Ewing is an award-winning journalist and author of "Faster, Higher, Farther: The Volkswagen Scandal". Jack writes about business, banking, economics and monetary policy from Frankfurt, and sometimes helps out on terror coverage and other breaking news. Jack joined the International Herald Tribune/New York Times in 2010. Previously he worked for a decade at BusinessWeek magazine in Frankfurt, where he was European regional editor. Jack first came to Europe in 1993 as a German Marshall Fund journalism fellow in Brussels, and wound up staying permanently. He won a New York Times publisher’s award in 2011 for coverage of the European debt crisis.

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