The Dassler brothers' shoe factory (1918–1945)
Adi supported himself while attempting to start up his business by repairing shoes in town.[3] Facing the realities of post-war Germany where there was no reliable supply for material for production or credit to obtain factory equipment or supplies, he began by scavenging army debris in the war-countryside: Army helmets and bread pouches supplied leather for soles; parachutes could supply silk for slippers.
Dassler became quite adept at modifying available devices to help mechanize production in the absence of electricity. Using belts, for example, he rigged a leather milling machine to a mounted, stationary bicycle powered by the firm's first employee.[3] The business was driven by Adi's vision of specialized sport designs. He produced one of the earliest spiked shoes, with spikes forged by the smithy of the family of his friend Fritz Zehlein. He constantly experimented with various materials, such as shark skin and kangaroo leather, to create strong but lightweight shoes. Years later his widow, Käthe Dassler, said: "Developing shoes was his hobby, not his job. He did it very scientifically."[4]
After the war, Rudolf wanted to become a policeman. But after he completed his training, he joined Adi's firm on 1 July 1923.[5] With the support of the Zehlein smithy producing spikes, Adi was able to register Gebrüder Dassler, Sportschuhfabrik, Herzogenaurach ("Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe Factory, Herzogenaurach") on 1 July 1924, where they were operating in a former washroom that was converted to a small workshop with manual electricity generation.[5][6] By 1925, the Dasslers were making leather Fußballschuhe (football boots) with nailed studs and track shoes with hand-forged spikes.[7]
Two factors paved the way for the transformation of the business from a small regional factory, which they moved to in 1927 from their parents' home, to the international shoe distributor it would become. First was the interest showed by former Olympian and then coach of the German Olympic track-and-field team, Josef Waitzer. On learning of the plant and Adi's experiments, Waitzer travelled from Munich to Herzogenaurach to see for himself. A long friendship developed between the two, based on interest in improving athletic performance with improved footwear, and Waitzer became something of a consultant to the company. The relationship proved extremely valuable in giving Adi access to the athletes, both German and foreign, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.[8]
As early as the 1928 Amsterdam Games, the Dasslers' footwear was being used in international competitions.[7] Lina Radke, for example, the German middle distance runner who won gold in 1928, wore Dassler track shoes.[6] Likewise, a German gold medal runner wore Dassler shoes at the 1932 Los Angeles games.[9] The second key factor for the shoe firm in the early 1930s was the role sport played in Adolf Hitler's racial-nationalist philosophy. With the rise of the Nazi Party, athletic teamwork was prioritized. The Dassler brothers did not fail to see how their economic interests would benefit from politics and joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933, three months after Hitler became Chancellor. Rudolf was said to be the most ardent believer of the three.[10]
In 1935, Adi decided that becoming a coach of and supplier to clubs affiliated with the Hitler Youth was essential to expanded production. During his denazification proceedings after the war, Adi pointed out that he had confined himself to coaching and avoided political rallies. He testified that he was involved in clubs with other political affiliations, such as a liberal gymnastic club, Herzogenaurach's conservative KHC football club and a workers' sports club named "The Union". Both Adi and Rudolf were members of the National Socialist Motor Corps, and in their correspondence both used the complimentary closing, "Heil Hitler."
In the early 1930s, Adi enrolled in the Schuhfachschule (the Footwear Technical College) in Pirmasens. One of the instructors was Franz Martz, a master producer of lasts. Dassler became a frequent house guest of Martz, who allowed him to begin a relationship with his fifteen-year-old daughter Käthe. On 17 March 1934, the two wed. Unlike Rudolf's wife Friedl (née Strasser), Käthe was somewhat self-assertive and suspicious of the brusque ways of Franconians. She had frequent run-ins with Adi's parents as well as Rudolf and his wife, all of whom lived in the same house.
Years later, in a letter to Puma's American distributor, Rudolf blamed the rift with his brother entirely on Käthe, claiming that she "tried to interfere in business matters". He claimed that the brothers' relations were "ideal" until 1933. Käthe gave birth to their son Horst in March 1936, their first daughter Inge in June 1938, and their second daughter Karin in 1941. After the war, two more daughters were born, Brigit in May 1946 and Sigrid in 1953.
Adi saw the Berlin Olympics as the key springboard for international exposure. Although his relation with Waitzer ensured that most German athletes wore Dassler footwear, he had another athlete principally in mind, American track and field star Jesse Owens. Adi found his way to meet Owens, who accepted a wordless offer and wore his shoes with two leather strips on the sides and dark spikes when he defeated Luz Long and set a new personal best in the long jump, in his two further individual gold-winning performances in track and as a member of the United States' upset of the German relay team.
Adi's association with Owens proved crucial to the success of the Dassler brothers' firm and immediately catapulted it into an international competitor in sportswear. When American GIs discovered that the Dassler factory was where the shoes for Owens' Olympic victories were made, they decided to let the works remain. Large orders for basketball, baseball and hockey footwear from the U.S. gave the Dasslers "the first boost on the road to becoming a worldwide success story."[9]
Once war began, the Dasslers' ability to profit from Nazi enthusiasm for sport ended as the Reich became a war machine. The Dassler firm was permitted to operate, but its production was severely curtailed. On 7 August 1940, Adi received notice of his conscription into the Wehrmacht. Although he reported in December to begin training as a radio technician, he was relieved of duty on 28 February 1941 and sent back to continue running the shoe factory.
In the early years of the war, the firm was partially converted to a factory for the production of military material. Staff were reduced and supply was hard to come by. It continued to produce Waitzer shoes, although some of its football line became known as "Kampf" and "Blitz". By October 1942, worker shortages became so severe that Adi requested the use of five Soviet prisoners of war to man his production line.
Wartime conditions exacerbated the simmering dispute between Rudolf's and Adi's families. The house that Christoph, Pauline, sons Rudolf and Adi and their wives, and five grandchildren all lived in together seemed stifling, and forced family association at work was further complicated by the brothers' sister Marie's employment there. Rudolf, angry that Adi aimed to be the leader of the Dassler firm and therefore released from the Wehrmacht, began to assert himself among family members. He used this assumed authority to deny employment to two of Marie's sons, asserting that "there were enough family problems at the company."
The decision devastated his sister, since those not employed in permitted industries were nearly guaranteed to be drafted as the army's manpower needs increased. Marie's sons were eventually conscripted and never returned. Fritz Dassler, who was not on speaking terms with Adi, made a similar decision, laying off a teenaged seamstress who worked for his lederhosen manufacturer, but had worked previously for four years for Adi, who managed to provide her a job at the shoe factory for the rest of the war.
Rudolf, who had already served four years during the Great War, saw his rage boil over when he was called up again in January 1943 as part of a total mobilization program. He later expressed to the Puma American distributors the belief that he was unfairly repaid for getting his brother "released for the factory" in 1942, and claimed that for his own immediate conscription he "had to thank my brother and his [Nazi] party friends …". Stationed in Tuschin in April 1943, Rudolf wrote to his brother: "I will not hesitate to seek the closure of the factory so that you be forced to take up an occupation that will allow you to play the leader and, as a first-class sportsman, to carry a gun."
Six months later, the factory was shut down but as part of the Reich's Totaler Krieg—Kürzester Krieg (Total War—Shortest War) campaign, part of which involved converting all industry to military production. On leave at the time of the shutdown, Rudolf intended to take some of the leather inventory for his own later use. Stunned to find that Adi had already done so, he denounced his brother to the Kreisleitung (the county level Party leaders), according to Käthe, who treated her husband "in the most demeaning manner."
In December 1943, the Dassler firm had their equipment replaced by spot-welding machines designed to make Panzerschrecks instead of shoes.[11] These anti-tank weapons were originally made at the Schriker & Co. plant in nearby Vach, which shifted assembly to Herzogenaurach to avoid Allied air raids.[9]
Back in Poland, Rudolf continued to make good on his resolve to wrest the plant from his brother. Using contacts at the Luftwaffe, he attempted to have the production of Panzerschrecks replaced by government-ordered production of army boots under a patent he personally held. The patent proved defective and his plan came to nothing. Unable to obtain permission to leave his outpost, Rudolf turned to his own devising. Several weeks before 19 January 1945, the Soviets overran Tuschin (which then reverted to its original name, Tuszyn) and decimated his unit. Rudolf fled to Herzogenaurach, where a doctor provided him a certificate of military incapacity owing to a frozen foot.
The sources for what Rudolf did between his desertion from Tuschin is among records disputed in American denazification panels. On the day after his and Adi's father Christoph Dassler's funeral on 4 April 1945, Rudolf was arrested and taken to the Bärenschanze prison run by the Gestapo in Nürnberg. He remained there until the Allied liberation in early May.
When American troops reached Herzogenaurach, tanks paused before the Dassler factory, pondering whether to blow it up. Käthe immediately approached the troops and argued that the plant was simply a sports shoe producer. The troops spared the plant, taking over the family house in the process. Two weeks after the liberation of Herzogenaurach, Rudolf returned. As denazification proceeded, the threat of liability from their Nazi past drove an irreconcilable rift between brothers Rudolf and Adi, each seeking to save himself.
