Overview
- Chief executive Carsten Spohr said the pre-1945 Luft Hansa was “clearly part of the system,” publicly accepting the company’s deep entanglement with the Nazi regime.
- Company-commissioned historians describe the predecessor as an enterprise of National Socialism that aided covert rearmament, supported military operations and exploited thousands of forced laborers.
- A 400-page history by Hartmut Berghoff, Manfred Grieger and Jörg Lesczenski will be published in March and presented to employees, with a public exhibition opening in April at Lufthansa’s new conference and visitor center.
- Lufthansa pledged further research into forced labor using newly located sources in Polish and Czech archives, with additional findings expected from this project next year.
- The modern airline is legally distinct from the prewar entity but inherited its name and crane logo, and management now concedes it mishandled earlier scholarship, including the suppressed Budraß study.