Hugo Boss: Hitler's Tailor? / VIDEO: Hugo Boss - Tailor to the Third Reich Documentary

Hugo Ferdinand Boss (8 July 1885 – 9 August 1948)[1] was a German businessman. He was the founder of the fashion house Hugo Boss AG.

 

He was an active member of the Nazi Party from 1931, and remained so until Nazi Germany's capitulation. His clothing company also utilized forced labour drawn from German-occupied territories and POW camps, to manufacture uniforms for the SS and later the Wehrmacht.

 

Early life

Boss was born in Metzingen, Kingdom of Württemberg, to Luise (née Münzenmayer) and Heinrich Boss, the youngest of five children. He apprenticed as a merchant, did his military service from 1903 to 1905, and then worked in a weaving mill in Konstanz. He took over his parents' lingerie shop in Metzingen in 1908, as heir. In 1914, he was mobilized into the army and served through World War I, ending it as a corporal.

 

Hugo Boss company

Boss founded his own clothing company in Metzingen in 1923 and then opened a factory in 1924, initially with two partners. The company produced shirts and jackets and later work clothing, sportswear, and raincoats. In the 1930s, it produced uniforms for the SA, the SS, the Hitler Youth, the postal service, the national railroad, and later the Wehrmacht.

 

Support of Nazism

Boss joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler came to power. By the third quarter of 1932, the all-black SS uniform (to replace the SA brown shirts) was designed by SS-Oberführer Prof. Karl Diebitsch, and graphic designer Walter Heck, who had no affiliation with the company.The Hugo Boss company produced these black uniforms along with the brown SA shirts and the black-and-brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth.Some workers were French and Polish prisoners of war forced into labour. In 1999, US lawyers acting on behalf of Holocaust survivors started legal proceedings against the Hugo Boss company over the use of slave labour during the war. The misuse of 140 Polish and 40 French forced workers led to an apology by the company.

 

After World War II, the denazification process saw Boss initially labeled as an "activist, supporter and beneficiary" of national-socialism, which resulted in a heavy fine, also stripping him of his voting rights and capacity to run a business.[citation needed] However, this initial ruling was appealed, and Boss was re-labeled as a "follower", a category with a less severe punishment.[4] Nevertheless, the effects of the ban led to Boss's son-in-law, Eugen Holy, taking over both the ownership and the running of the company.

 

Death

Boss died in 1948 of a tooth abscess[13] in Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Allied-occupied Germany. He was 63.

 

 

Hugo Boss: Hitler's Tailor? German Fashion House Tries To Quiet Wartime Rumors

Was Hugo Boss Hitler's Tailor? German Fashion House Tries To Quiet Wartime Rumors

 

Sep 27, 2011, 11:58 AM EDT

Updated Dec 6, 2017

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hugo-boss-hitlers-tailor_n_983244

 

The top German fashion house that bears the name of famed designer Hugo Boss has commissioned a study to try to clarify his role during the Nazi regime. The study says Boss was not Hitler's personal tailor, though his company did produce SS uniforms with forced labor.

 

The rumors that Hugo Ferdinand Boss designed uniforms for the Nazis, and was even Hitler’s tailor, have circulated for years in the press inside and outside of Germany. And that was an image problem for the company he founded, now an international brand of men’s and women’s clothing with an annual turnover of nearly 2 billion euros.

 

So the Boss Group commissioned a report on the company’s past from the University of Münster – a study that was not published because, a company spokesperson said, it lacked “historical context.” The firm then commissioned a second study that has just been published.

 

The German-language book, Hugo Boss, 1924-1945, sums up the company’s role in Nazi Germany as follows: founded in 1924, the company made uniforms for the Wehrmacht (armed forces), SS (security forces) and Hitler Youth. According to Roman Köster, the Munich historian of economics who wrote the book, the firm “derived demonstrable economic benefit” from National Socialism. Some 40 French prisoners of war and 140 forced laborers fabricated Nazi uniforms in Metzingen. Many of them were intimidated but, Koster says, Hugo Boss was not personally involved. There is however indication that Boss, who died in 1948, took action so that the laborers were given more food.

 

The book goes on to say that the Swabian entrepreneur was not Hitler’s tailor, did not design the uniforms, and was one of several manufacturers of Nazi uniforms, and not the leading producer. Much of what Köster writes already appeared in the unpublished first study, Hugo Ferdinand Boss (1885-1948) und die Firma Hugo Boss that was posted on the Internet by its author, ethnologist Elisabeth Timm. She mentions a slightly higher number of forced laborers working at the factory.

 

Roman Köster stresses that while the Boss company financed the book, it did not try to influence him. "My impression is that they are genuinely interested in working the issue through,” he says. The company, a majority share of which is owned by the British Permira group of financial investors, also apologizes for the past on its website. “Out of respect to everyone involved, the Group has published this new study with the aim of adding clarity and objectivity to the discussion. It also wishes to express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule.”