The Nazi history of Adidas, the sportswear giant that took weeks to drop Kanye West over antisemitism
BY ANDREW LAPIN
OCTOBER 24, 2022
JTA— As rap star Kanye West continually refuses to back down from his antisemitic rants, some of the many institutions he has ties with have begun to jump ship. The fashion tastemakers Balenciaga and Vogue have announced they will no longer be working with him. Hollywood talent giant CAA has dropped him, and a planned documentary about him has been scrapped.
But one formidable company remained, until early Tuesday morning, in West’s corner: Adidas.
Despite the German sportswear conglomerate’s announcement earlier this month that it would be placing its partnership with West “under review,” it took six days after West boasted on a podcast that “I can literally say antisemitic s— and they cannot drop me” for Adidas to drop him.
The brand’s radio silence kept up even as neo-Nazi groups began using West’s words to go after Jews, unveiling an antisemitic billboard in Los Angeles that was condemned by the White House Monday.
The Anti-Defamation League mounted a growing public pressure campaign to get the company to cut ties with West, and celebrities including Kat Dennings, David Schwimmer and Busy Phillips have boosted it. Other celebrities, including Reese Witherspoon and West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian, have used their social platforms to condemn antisemitism without specifically referencing Adidas or West; Jessica Seinfeld, the Jewish cookbook author and wife to comedian Jerry Seinfeld, spurred a viral Instagram movement by encouraging her followers to share a post reading “I support my Jewish friends and the Jewish people.”
Observers are watching Adidas because of its enormously lucrative partnership with West – their shoes and clothes generated an estimated $2 billion last year and brought the brand cultural cache among young consumers. But the company also has a Nazi history that it has rarely addressed publicly. (The company’s CEO, Kasper Rorsted, announced in August that he would be stepping down in 2023.)
Here is an abbreviated version of Adidas’ history with Nazis, Jews and the superstar rapper who now goes by Ye.
Does Adidas really have Nazi origins?
Yes, but its founding pre-dates the Nazis’ rise. The company was founded in 1924 in Weimar-era Germany as the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory), or Geda for short, by cobbler brothers Adolf (“Adi”) and Rudolf Dassler.
Based in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, the Dassler brothers quickly made a name for themselves by pioneering some of the earliest spiked shoes – drilled through with nails to help runners on uneven terrain.
On May 1, 1933, with the company’s fortunes on the rise and Hitler having just assumed power in Germany, the Dassler brothers formally joined the Nazi party, according to journalist Barbara Smit’s book “Sneaker Wars,” a history of Adidas.
The Nazis embraced sports as a tool both to boost Germany’s public profile and to train its future armies of young men, so the pioneering shoe company fit nicely into their schema. Under Nazi rule, the Dasslers’ sneaker sales promptly exploded, and they grew the size of their company several times over.
During the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympic games, orchestrated by Hitler in an attempt to demonstrate Aryan athletic supremacy on the world stage, many of the German athletes sported Dassler shoes.
But so did Black American track and field star Jesse Owens, whose very presence at the games was a thumb in the eye of Hitler’s race theories. Even so, Owens was popular with both Germans and Americans, and Adi Dassler was able to convince him to don the company’s spiked shoes during his medal ceremony. The subsequent exposure helped the shoes make inroads among Allied markets after the war, even in spite of their German associations.
How devoted to the Nazis were the Dassler brothers?
Rudolf was a more ardent devotee of Nazi ideology than Adi, according to Smit, but both brothers carried their party membership cards and signed off their letters with “Heil Hitler.”
During the war, the brothers’ shoe factories were converted into munitions factories for the Nazi military. (Other German shoemakers would test their products on forced laborers in concentration camps.) Rudolf was called to join the war effort, but went AWOL as part of his bid to maintain control of the company from his brother, whom he became convinced was scheming against him.
According to Der Spiegel, some American troops were poised to destroy the Herzogenaurach factory, which employed some forced laborers, in April 1945 — before Adi’s wife Käthe approached them and convinced them that the building was only being used to make sneakers. It worked.
The factory was saved, and when the U.S. Air Force took over the Nazis’ Herzogenaurauch air base, American troops who were fans of Jesse Owens bought Dassler shoes and helped spread the word about the company back home.
What happened to Adidas after the war?
Ironically, the end of World War II was only the beginning of the fight between the Dassler brothers, each of whom (along with their wives) tried to wrest the shoe empire away from the other.
When Germany entered its postwar denazification period, Allies forced the town of Herzogenaurach — including, presumably, the Dasslers and their factory employees — to watch documentary footage of the horrors visited upon Jews at Nazi concentration camps. Rudolf was also arrested, suspected of feeding information to the Gestapo, and briefly sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp for his role on the frontlines, but was freed one year later owing to the backlog of cases against POWs.
Meanwhile, Adi was accused of having actively aided and supported the Nazis during the war, but was able to put together a dossier of people — including the town’s mayor — to support his claim that he was far from a party loyalist.
Among Adi’s claims, according to Smit: he had continued to work with Jewish leather traders later than many other Germans would do business with Jews. He also found a mayor from a neighboring town who claimed to be half-Jewish to say that Dassler had sheltered him on his property in the waning days of the war.
The siblings’ relationship suffered a permanent rift in 1949, leading Adi to form his own company as Adidas, while Rudolf went off to start rival sportswear company Puma. Both companies remain headquartered in Herzogenaurach, and the town’s residents remain bitterly divided over brand loyalty to this day (though Adidas, currently the No. 2 global sportswear company behind Nike, seems to have come out ahead).
What kind of relationship does Adidas have with Jews today?
The company calls Adolf Dassler its “founding father,” but it remains tight-lipped about its founders’ Nazi associations. On its website, Adidas’ own official history defines its pre-1949 years simply as “only the start of our story,” without any references to Nazis or Owens.
Jewish athletes have worked with the company in the decades since the war. In 1972, at Adidas’ suggestion, American Jewish Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz carried a pair of their shoes to the podium during his medal ceremony. And last year, Adidas Israel built a campaign around a haredi Orthodox marathon runner.
Adidas has also occasionally waded into geopolitical waters with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2012 the company was boycotted by Arab states for sponsoring the Jerusalem Marathon, which ran through disputed territory. And in 2018, the company ended its sponsorship of the Israel Football Association, a development celebrated as a victory by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement because the association had included teams representing Israeli settlements. (Puma took over the sponsorship.)
Adidas did not respond to a JTA request for comment for this story.
So what’s next?
Adidas’ partnership with West is nearly a decade old, and extremely lucrative. His Yeezy line of sneakers and other products brought the company an estimated $2 billion in revenue last year, accounting for around 10% of its total revenue, according to The Washington Post. (West previously had an arrangement with Nike but was unhappy with it.)
Despite the “corporate social responsibility” movement that many companies have embraced in the aftermath of 2020’s racial justice protests, the idea of corporations like Adidas having a sense of social responsibility remains elusive, according to Josh Hunt, author of “University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education.”
“Sneaker companies, like all corporations, are amoral,” Hunt told JTA. “They will do what is unseemly until it becomes unprofitable, whether that means exploiting forced labor in Xinjiang or collaborating with Nazis.”
But Jews love sneakers, too. One of the most prominent Jewish sneakerheads is Rabbi Yoël Mendel, a Paris-based member of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement who goes by “Rabbi Sneakers” online.
On his Instagram page, Mendel uses sneakers as a tool for teaching Torah and shows off a variety of shoes and sports apparel-themed kippahs, including plenty of Adidas gear. (He praised one pair of leather-free Adidas shoes because he could wear them on Yom Kippur.)
“What can I say,” Mendel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “They make great, comfortable shoes.”
But one formidable company remained, until early Tuesday morning, in West’s corner: Adidas.
Despite the German sportswear conglomerate’s announcement earlier this month that it would be placing its partnership with West “under review,” it took six days after West boasted on a podcast that “I can literally say antisemitic s— and they cannot drop me” for Adidas to drop him.
The brand’s radio silence kept up even as neo-Nazi groups began using West’s words to go after Jews, unveiling an antisemitic billboard in Los Angeles that was condemned by the White House Monday.
The Anti-Defamation League mounted a growing public pressure campaign to get the company to cut ties with West, and celebrities including Kat Dennings, David Schwimmer and Busy Phillips have boosted it. Other celebrities, including Reese Witherspoon and West’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian, have used their social platforms to condemn antisemitism without specifically referencing Adidas or West; Jessica Seinfeld, the Jewish cookbook author and wife to comedian Jerry Seinfeld, spurred a viral Instagram movement by encouraging her followers to share a post reading “I support my Jewish friends and the Jewish people.”
Observers are watching Adidas because of its enormously lucrative partnership with West – their shoes and clothes generated an estimated $2 billion last year and brought the brand cultural cache among young consumers. But the company also has a Nazi history that it has rarely addressed publicly. (The company’s CEO, Kasper Rorsted, announced in August that he would be stepping down in 2023.)
Here is an abbreviated version of Adidas’ history with Nazis, Jews and the superstar rapper who now goes by Ye.
Does Adidas really have Nazi origins?
Yes, but its founding pre-dates the Nazis’ rise. The company was founded in 1924 in Weimar-era Germany as the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory), or Geda for short, by cobbler brothers Adolf (“Adi”) and Rudolf Dassler.
Based in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, the Dassler brothers quickly made a name for themselves by pioneering some of the earliest spiked shoes – drilled through with nails to help runners on uneven terrain.
On May 1, 1933, with the company’s fortunes on the rise and Hitler having just assumed power in Germany, the Dassler brothers formally joined the Nazi party, according to journalist Barbara Smit’s book “Sneaker Wars,” a history of Adidas.
The Nazis embraced sports as a tool both to boost Germany’s public profile and to train its future armies of young men, so the pioneering shoe company fit nicely into their schema. Under Nazi rule, the Dasslers’ sneaker sales promptly exploded, and they grew the size of their company several times over.
During the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympic games, orchestrated by Hitler in an attempt to demonstrate Aryan athletic supremacy on the world stage, many of the German athletes sported Dassler shoes.
But so did Black American track and field star Jesse Owens, whose very presence at the games was a thumb in the eye of Hitler’s race theories. Even so, Owens was popular with both Germans and Americans, and Adi Dassler was able to convince him to don the company’s spiked shoes during his medal ceremony. The subsequent exposure helped the shoes make inroads among Allied markets after the war, even in spite of their German associations.
How devoted to the Nazis were the Dassler brothers?
Rudolf was a more ardent devotee of Nazi ideology than Adi, according to Smit, but both brothers carried their party membership cards and signed off their letters with “Heil Hitler.”
During the war, the brothers’ shoe factories were converted into munitions factories for the Nazi military. (Other German shoemakers would test their products on forced laborers in concentration camps.) Rudolf was called to join the war effort, but went AWOL as part of his bid to maintain control of the company from his brother, whom he became convinced was scheming against him.
According to Der Spiegel, some American troops were poised to destroy the Herzogenaurach factory, which employed some forced laborers, in April 1945 — before Adi’s wife Käthe approached them and convinced them that the building was only being used to make sneakers. It worked.
The factory was saved, and when the U.S. Air Force took over the Nazis’ Herzogenaurauch air base, American troops who were fans of Jesse Owens bought Dassler shoes and helped spread the word about the company back home.
What happened to Adidas after the war?
Ironically, the end of World War II was only the beginning of the fight between the Dassler brothers, each of whom (along with their wives) tried to wrest the shoe empire away from the other.
When Germany entered its postwar denazification period, Allies forced the town of Herzogenaurach — including, presumably, the Dasslers and their factory employees — to watch documentary footage of the horrors visited upon Jews at Nazi concentration camps. Rudolf was also arrested, suspected of feeding information to the Gestapo, and briefly sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp for his role on the frontlines, but was freed one year later owing to the backlog of cases against POWs.
Meanwhile, Adi was accused of having actively aided and supported the Nazis during the war, but was able to put together a dossier of people — including the town’s mayor — to support his claim that he was far from a party loyalist.
Among Adi’s claims, according to Smit: he had continued to work with Jewish leather traders later than many other Germans would do business with Jews. He also found a mayor from a neighboring town who claimed to be half-Jewish to say that Dassler had sheltered him on his property in the waning days of the war.
The siblings’ relationship suffered a permanent rift in 1949, leading Adi to form his own company as Adidas, while Rudolf went off to start rival sportswear company Puma. Both companies remain headquartered in Herzogenaurach, and the town’s residents remain bitterly divided over brand loyalty to this day (though Adidas, currently the No. 2 global sportswear company behind Nike, seems to have come out ahead).
What kind of relationship does Adidas have with Jews today?
The company calls Adolf Dassler its “founding father,” but it remains tight-lipped about its founders’ Nazi associations. On its website, Adidas’ own official history defines its pre-1949 years simply as “only the start of our story,” without any references to Nazis or Owens.
Jewish athletes have worked with the company in the decades since the war. In 1972, at Adidas’ suggestion, American Jewish Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz carried a pair of their shoes to the podium during his medal ceremony. And last year, Adidas Israel built a campaign around a haredi Orthodox marathon runner.
Adidas has also occasionally waded into geopolitical waters with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2012 the company was boycotted by Arab states for sponsoring the Jerusalem Marathon, which ran through disputed territory. And in 2018, the company ended its sponsorship of the Israel Football Association, a development celebrated as a victory by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement because the association had included teams representing Israeli settlements. (Puma took over the sponsorship.)
Adidas did not respond to a JTA request for comment for this story.
So what’s next?
Adidas’ partnership with West is nearly a decade old, and extremely lucrative. His Yeezy line of sneakers and other products brought the company an estimated $2 billion in revenue last year, accounting for around 10% of its total revenue, according to The Washington Post. (West previously had an arrangement with Nike but was unhappy with it.)
Despite the “corporate social responsibility” movement that many companies have embraced in the aftermath of 2020’s racial justice protests, the idea of corporations like Adidas having a sense of social responsibility remains elusive, according to Josh Hunt, author of “University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education.”
“Sneaker companies, like all corporations, are amoral,” Hunt told JTA. “They will do what is unseemly until it becomes unprofitable, whether that means exploiting forced labor in Xinjiang or collaborating with Nazis.”
But Jews love sneakers, too. One of the most prominent Jewish sneakerheads is Rabbi Yoël Mendel, a Paris-based member of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement who goes by “Rabbi Sneakers” online.
On his Instagram page, Mendel uses sneakers as a tool for teaching Torah and shows off a variety of shoes and sports apparel-themed kippahs, including plenty of Adidas gear. (He praised one pair of leather-free Adidas shoes because he could wear them on Yom Kippur.)
“What can I say,” Mendel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “They make great, comfortable shoes.”
The Nazi Origins of Adidas and Puma
The history behind the dark secret of the world’s top sports brands.
by Calin Aneculaesei | Sep 8, 2022 | Culture |
Adolf Dassler, the founder of Adidas, with his new invention the screw-in studs.
Calin Aneculaesei
Student of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. History fanatic. Contact: aneculaeseicg@gmail.com
The history behind the dark secret of the world’s top sports brands.
by Calin Aneculaesei | Sep 8, 2022 | Culture |
Adolf Dassler, the founder of Adidas, with his new invention the screw-in studs.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
oth Adidas and Puma are some of the most popular sports clothing brands in the world. Both hold big market shares in the sports clothing and footwear market, with Adidas having a 21% market share in sports footwear in the US and 10% in Western Europe. Being such big brands, both companies have to manage their public image well so that they appeal to the average consumer.
Thus both brands have had to pour millions into covering up their less than pleasant sides, such as using child labor in the building of many of their shoes. As well as their modern problems both brands have a past that they have been trying to distance themselves from for decades. Their Nazi origin.
Adolf and Rudolf Dassler
Adidas and Puma both started as the brainchild of two brothers living in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, initially working together to create the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Translated: Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory). This venture started in 1924, and for a while, the brothers were the only ones in Germany who produced sports shoes.
As a result, the factory would become a key supplier to clubs in the Hitler Youth after the takeover of the Nazis. Their shoes were even used as the official sports shoes for the German teams during the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin.
oth Adidas and Puma are some of the most popular sports clothing brands in the world. Both hold big market shares in the sports clothing and footwear market, with Adidas having a 21% market share in sports footwear in the US and 10% in Western Europe. Being such big brands, both companies have to manage their public image well so that they appeal to the average consumer.Thus both brands have had to pour millions into covering up their less than pleasant sides, such as using child labor in the building of many of their shoes. As well as their modern problems both brands have a past that they have been trying to distance themselves from for decades. Their Nazi origin.
Adolf and Rudolf Dassler
Adidas and Puma both started as the brainchild of two brothers living in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, initially working together to create the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Translated: Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory). This venture started in 1924, and for a while, the brothers were the only ones in Germany who produced sports shoes.
As a result, the factory would become a key supplier to clubs in the Hitler Youth after the takeover of the Nazis. Their shoes were even used as the official sports shoes for the German teams during the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin.
The Dassler shoe factory in Herzogenaurach, Germany circa 1930s.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The brothers would continue to work with the government leading to both of them joining the Nazi party with a variety of enthusiasm. It was said that Rudolf was a much more adamant supporter of National Socialism, whereas Adolf remained unsupportive of the regime. This developed into an ideological rift, increasing the already growing gap between the two brothers.
During the war, the factory was forcefully converted to produce military equipment for the Nazis, initially focusing on producing the Panzershrek, a shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket based on the American bazooka. Rudolf would try to convince the higher-ups of the Nazi party to allow him to produce patented army boots, a venture which proved to be fruitless. The Dassler factory would continue to produce equipment for the Wehrmacht until the allies pushed in and captured their town.
Denazification
The brothers would continue to work with the government leading to both of them joining the Nazi party with a variety of enthusiasm. It was said that Rudolf was a much more adamant supporter of National Socialism, whereas Adolf remained unsupportive of the regime. This developed into an ideological rift, increasing the already growing gap between the two brothers.
During the war, the factory was forcefully converted to produce military equipment for the Nazis, initially focusing on producing the Panzershrek, a shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket based on the American bazooka. Rudolf would try to convince the higher-ups of the Nazi party to allow him to produce patented army boots, a venture which proved to be fruitless. The Dassler factory would continue to produce equipment for the Wehrmacht until the allies pushed in and captured their town.
Denazification
Adolf ‘Adi’ Dassler. Source: Wikimedia Commons
After the end of the war, the brothers’ cooperation would be stifled by the American denazification program and the persecution of high-level Nazi party members. Rudolf was suspected to be part of this group of high-level Nazis and thus was interrogated by the Americans at the end of the war, being held at an internment camp in Hammelburg until his release on 31 July 1946 after the investigation into his Nazi background proved fruitless.
Adolf wouldn’t get off scot-free either. He was also taken into custody by those leading the denazification campaign and trialed for his cooperation. After some deliberation, Adolf was declared to be a Belasteter, the name given to a category of those who profiteered from the Nazi regime. This was considered the second most serious offense at the trials, just below actually being part of and engaging with the Nazi party, and thus it carried a 10-year sentence as well as the threat of Adolf being removed as head of the Dassler business. His early cooperation with the Hitler Youth and Nazi membership was used as proof of this high-level conviction.
He would only be saved by the mayor of Herzogenaurach, who was half-Jewish and a trusted allied co-operator. He testified that Adolf warned him of a potential Gestapo arrest and hid him on his own property, as well as supporting Adolf’s claims of non-involvement with the political side of the Nazi party.
As a result, he was reclassified to a lower rank of offender, a Minderbelasteter (Translated: Lesser Offender), which still carried a 2 to 3-year sentence, which would lead to Adolf still losing control of his the Dassler business, something his brother Rudolf sought to exploit.
During Adolf’s appeal to lower his status from Minderbelasteter, Rudolf would submit a declaration that said that Adolf had organized the production of weapons himself and for his own profit rather than being forced to and that Rudolf resisted the change in production, but he wasn’t present to personally put a stop to the change as he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1943. This would be proven false by the financial record of the business, which showed a 100,000 German mark loss during the period of weapon production.
Adolf’s wife, Käthe Dassler, would contest most of Rudolf’s claims, successfully leading to her husband’s downgrade to Mitläufer (Translated: Follower), meaning that he could continue to manage the shoe factory, although some supervision from the denazification board was still required. On 3 February 1947, Adolf was formally allowed to resume his management of the firm.
After the end of the war, the brothers’ cooperation would be stifled by the American denazification program and the persecution of high-level Nazi party members. Rudolf was suspected to be part of this group of high-level Nazis and thus was interrogated by the Americans at the end of the war, being held at an internment camp in Hammelburg until his release on 31 July 1946 after the investigation into his Nazi background proved fruitless.
Adolf wouldn’t get off scot-free either. He was also taken into custody by those leading the denazification campaign and trialed for his cooperation. After some deliberation, Adolf was declared to be a Belasteter, the name given to a category of those who profiteered from the Nazi regime. This was considered the second most serious offense at the trials, just below actually being part of and engaging with the Nazi party, and thus it carried a 10-year sentence as well as the threat of Adolf being removed as head of the Dassler business. His early cooperation with the Hitler Youth and Nazi membership was used as proof of this high-level conviction.
He would only be saved by the mayor of Herzogenaurach, who was half-Jewish and a trusted allied co-operator. He testified that Adolf warned him of a potential Gestapo arrest and hid him on his own property, as well as supporting Adolf’s claims of non-involvement with the political side of the Nazi party.
As a result, he was reclassified to a lower rank of offender, a Minderbelasteter (Translated: Lesser Offender), which still carried a 2 to 3-year sentence, which would lead to Adolf still losing control of his the Dassler business, something his brother Rudolf sought to exploit.
During Adolf’s appeal to lower his status from Minderbelasteter, Rudolf would submit a declaration that said that Adolf had organized the production of weapons himself and for his own profit rather than being forced to and that Rudolf resisted the change in production, but he wasn’t present to personally put a stop to the change as he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1943. This would be proven false by the financial record of the business, which showed a 100,000 German mark loss during the period of weapon production.
Adolf’s wife, Käthe Dassler, would contest most of Rudolf’s claims, successfully leading to her husband’s downgrade to Mitläufer (Translated: Follower), meaning that he could continue to manage the shoe factory, although some supervision from the denazification board was still required. On 3 February 1947, Adolf was formally allowed to resume his management of the firm.
Käthe Dassler would become one of the heads of management of the newly formed Adidas after all of the managerial and sales staff moved to Puma with Rudolf after the brothers split.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Due to Rudolf’s accusations during the trials and his continuous campaign to subvert Adolf from the leadership of the company, the brothers would become mortal enemies. Both families became increasingly hostile to each other, blaming the other side for many of the problems they faced during the war. Thus came the genesis of Adidas and Puma.
A town divided
The year 1947 gave birth to what we now know as Adidas and Puma. Adolf, still having control of the previous Dassler shoe factory, sought to rebrand and thus came up with Adi (Adolf’s nickname) and Das (from his last name), creating Adidas AG. Rudolf also wanted to create a brand and took a similar route as his brother, initially creating Ruda (Ru from his first name and Da from his last name), something he would later change, finally coming up with the name PUMA Schuhfabrik Rudolf Dassler (Translated: Rudolf Dassler’s PUMA Shoe Factory).
Due to Rudolf’s accusations during the trials and his continuous campaign to subvert Adolf from the leadership of the company, the brothers would become mortal enemies. Both families became increasingly hostile to each other, blaming the other side for many of the problems they faced during the war. Thus came the genesis of Adidas and Puma.
A town divided
The year 1947 gave birth to what we now know as Adidas and Puma. Adolf, still having control of the previous Dassler shoe factory, sought to rebrand and thus came up with Adi (Adolf’s nickname) and Das (from his last name), creating Adidas AG. Rudolf also wanted to create a brand and took a similar route as his brother, initially creating Ruda (Ru from his first name and Da from his last name), something he would later change, finally coming up with the name PUMA Schuhfabrik Rudolf Dassler (Translated: Rudolf Dassler’s PUMA Shoe Factory).
Adolf ‘Adi’ Dassler on the left, Rudolf Dassler on the right.
Source: Author creation using Wikimedia Commons sources
Their hometown of Herzogenaurach would be divided by this bitter rivalry between the two firms. The town developed the nickname of “the town of bent necks” as it was said that everyone would look down to see what brand of shoe you were wearing.
Some took advantage of this rivalry, such as handymen who deliberately turned up at Rudolf’s house wearing Adidas shoes which would result in Rudolf telling them to go grab a free pair of Puma’s from his basement. Even the town’s two football teams were split between the two brands, with ASV Herzogenaurach being supported by Adidas and 1 FC Herzogenaurach being supported by Puma.
You can’t change history
Although the rivalry between Nike and Adidas is more significant at the moment, the rivalry between Puma and Adidas still exists. With both companies being such giants in a very big and competitive industry, it is not surprising that the old town rivalry continues to show itself to this day.
Even though both companies have a dark past, their innovations should not be discounted from history. Adi Dassler revolutionized the sports shoe with his “screw-in studs,” something that would go down in history as the West Germans performed a miracle comeback against the Hungarians while debuting Adi’s innovation in 1954 winning the match 3–2, permanently securing both Adi and his company a spot in the history books.
Their hometown of Herzogenaurach would be divided by this bitter rivalry between the two firms. The town developed the nickname of “the town of bent necks” as it was said that everyone would look down to see what brand of shoe you were wearing.
Some took advantage of this rivalry, such as handymen who deliberately turned up at Rudolf’s house wearing Adidas shoes which would result in Rudolf telling them to go grab a free pair of Puma’s from his basement. Even the town’s two football teams were split between the two brands, with ASV Herzogenaurach being supported by Adidas and 1 FC Herzogenaurach being supported by Puma.
You can’t change history
Although the rivalry between Nike and Adidas is more significant at the moment, the rivalry between Puma and Adidas still exists. With both companies being such giants in a very big and competitive industry, it is not surprising that the old town rivalry continues to show itself to this day.
Even though both companies have a dark past, their innovations should not be discounted from history. Adi Dassler revolutionized the sports shoe with his “screw-in studs,” something that would go down in history as the West Germans performed a miracle comeback against the Hungarians while debuting Adi’s innovation in 1954 winning the match 3–2, permanently securing both Adi and his company a spot in the history books.
A picture from the ‘Miracle of Bern’, the nickname given to the 3–2 victory against Hungary.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Although both brothers were affiliated with the Nazi party, their membership should always be put in context. In a time when non-cooperation with the regime could lead to death, the brothers’ collaboration with the Nationalist Socialists became much more understandable and even justifiable considering the odds they faced if they did not comply.
When analyzing such situations, we must always look at the context to properly quantify its significance. In this context, their membership was not as significant as many make it out to be, but it’s still a factor we should take into account when we look at the history of both companies.
Although both brothers were affiliated with the Nazi party, their membership should always be put in context. In a time when non-cooperation with the regime could lead to death, the brothers’ collaboration with the Nationalist Socialists became much more understandable and even justifiable considering the odds they faced if they did not comply.
When analyzing such situations, we must always look at the context to properly quantify its significance. In this context, their membership was not as significant as many make it out to be, but it’s still a factor we should take into account when we look at the history of both companies.
Calin Aneculaesei
Student of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. History fanatic. Contact: aneculaeseicg@gmail.com
The dark history behind Adidas — how a bitter feud between Nazis built the world’s No. 2 athletic brand
Adolf and Rudolf Dassler made shoes that were worn by Jesse Owens in 1936. Then they split, and founded Adidas and Puma, respectively.
Amy Lamare
12.6.21
Adidas is currently the second largest sportswear company in the world, behind only Nike. Once a more modest operation, it started as a factory founded by brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler in 1924.
Over its 97 years in business, the company originally known as the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory – which started with Adolf making shoes in his mother’s laundry room after he returned from World War I – has reinvented itself several times. But along the way to success, it became part of a terrible chapter in German history, and sparked a feud between the brothers that divided the company, their family, and even the small Bavarian town they came from.
The Dassler brothers hailed from Herzogenaurach, Germany, a town with a population of just over 20,000 and a long tradition of shoemaking. In the early years of their company, electricity in the town was unreliable, so the brothers, known as Adi and Rudi, rigged up a stationary bike to create enough power to run the equipment they used to make their athletic shoes.
From these scrappy roots, they had their first big success at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. U.S. sprinter Jesse Owens agreed to run in their spiked athletic shoe and famously went on to win four gold medals, putting the Dassler brothers’ shoes, then known as Geda, on the map. Altogether, the athletes who competed in Geda shoes at the controversial games captured seven gold medals, five silver medals, and five bronze medals. Suddenly coaches and their athletes were aware of the company, and Adi and Rudi were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes every year in the years leading up to World War II.
Both Adi and Rudi were members of the Nazi party. During World War II, production of the Dassler brothers’ athletic shoes was discontinued so that their factory could be used instead to build an anti-tank weapon called the Panzerchreck (Tank Terror) – a rocket launcher capable of blowing Allied tanks into smithereens. At least nine forced laborers are known to have been working for the company at the time.
The Geda factory was almost destroyed by U.S. troops in 1945, but Adi’s wife managed to convince the soldiers that the only thing the company was manufacturing were athletic shoes. When American troops found out that this was the shoe factory that made the shoes Jesse Owens ran in, they started buying the Dassler brothers’ shoes in droves. This led to their shoes becoming popular amongst American soldiers occupying the area as the factory resumed its original purpose.
But after World War II, the decades-long working partnership between Adi and Rudi disintegrated. Rumors abound about what caused the brothers to go from partners to rivals. One theory holds that Adi and Rudi’s wives did not get along. Another potential cause for the feud was Rudi’s suspicion that his brother gave the Allies occupying Germany information on his whereabouts.
Adolf and Rudolf Dassler made shoes that were worn by Jesse Owens in 1936. Then they split, and founded Adidas and Puma, respectively.
Amy Lamare
12.6.21
Adidas is currently the second largest sportswear company in the world, behind only Nike. Once a more modest operation, it started as a factory founded by brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler in 1924.
Over its 97 years in business, the company originally known as the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory – which started with Adolf making shoes in his mother’s laundry room after he returned from World War I – has reinvented itself several times. But along the way to success, it became part of a terrible chapter in German history, and sparked a feud between the brothers that divided the company, their family, and even the small Bavarian town they came from.
The Dassler brothers hailed from Herzogenaurach, Germany, a town with a population of just over 20,000 and a long tradition of shoemaking. In the early years of their company, electricity in the town was unreliable, so the brothers, known as Adi and Rudi, rigged up a stationary bike to create enough power to run the equipment they used to make their athletic shoes.
From these scrappy roots, they had their first big success at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. U.S. sprinter Jesse Owens agreed to run in their spiked athletic shoe and famously went on to win four gold medals, putting the Dassler brothers’ shoes, then known as Geda, on the map. Altogether, the athletes who competed in Geda shoes at the controversial games captured seven gold medals, five silver medals, and five bronze medals. Suddenly coaches and their athletes were aware of the company, and Adi and Rudi were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes every year in the years leading up to World War II.
Both Adi and Rudi were members of the Nazi party. During World War II, production of the Dassler brothers’ athletic shoes was discontinued so that their factory could be used instead to build an anti-tank weapon called the Panzerchreck (Tank Terror) – a rocket launcher capable of blowing Allied tanks into smithereens. At least nine forced laborers are known to have been working for the company at the time.
The Geda factory was almost destroyed by U.S. troops in 1945, but Adi’s wife managed to convince the soldiers that the only thing the company was manufacturing were athletic shoes. When American troops found out that this was the shoe factory that made the shoes Jesse Owens ran in, they started buying the Dassler brothers’ shoes in droves. This led to their shoes becoming popular amongst American soldiers occupying the area as the factory resumed its original purpose.
But after World War II, the decades-long working partnership between Adi and Rudi disintegrated. Rumors abound about what caused the brothers to go from partners to rivals. One theory holds that Adi and Rudi’s wives did not get along. Another potential cause for the feud was Rudi’s suspicion that his brother gave the Allies occupying Germany information on his whereabouts.
It is known that Rudi abandoned his duties on the front lines of the war and was then arrested and imprisoned by the Allies on his way home and accused of being a member of the SS. A third rumor posits that Adi was jealous of Rudi, a known womanizer, and suspected something had happened between his brother and his wife.
Whatever the real reason is, no one in either Adi or Rudi’s family has ever revealed it. The brothers shut down the Geda factory in 1948. Adi then founded Adidas, while Rudi set up another well-known shoe company, Puma.
The feud between the brothers divided their hometown, where at least one person in nearly every family worked for one of the two rival shoe companies. The Aurach river divided the town. Adidas occupied the area north of the river, while Puma established its business to the south of the river.
Employees of the two companies did not speak to each other. They also went to separate stores, barber shops, bars, and bakeries. Every business in the town was known to be loyal to either Adidas or Puma, but never both. The town of Herzogenaurach even earned the nickname “the town of bent necks,” because of its residents’ habit of looking at each other’s shoes to figure out whether or not they wanted to talk to a person.
The relationship between the brothers never recovered. When Adi and Rudi died in the 1970s, they were buried at opposite ends of the town’s cemetery.
In the meantime, with Adi at the helm, Adidas and its trademark three-striped shoe made massive headway into the athletics market with the introduction of its football boot. The 1954 World Cup was a turning point for Adidas. Adi’s football boots were half the weight of other boots and featured removable screw-in spikes that could be switched out depending on the weather conditions.
As a result of this innovation, the West Germans shocked the world by coming back from a two goal deficit to beat Hungary in the World Cup final. The televised match made Adidas a household name across the globe. Nonetheless, controversy remains over which brother was really responsible for the innovation that helped propel Adidas’ early success.
There is no question though that Adidas, perhaps spurred at times by the brothers’ bitter rivalry, continued to break new ground as time went on. In the 1960s, Adidas hit on an innovation that would become a wardrobe staple for people around the world when the company expanded its product line and introduced the tracksuit. Tracksuits were, of course, available to athletes prior to this. However, in 1967, Adidas brought its tracksuit, with its signature three-stripes down the arms and legs, to the masses. In the 1970s, when jogging became a fitness craze in the United States, Adidas’ tracksuit became a staple in every casual fitness enthusiast’s wardrobe, and it has remained one ever since.
And during the 1970s, Adidas established a relationship with the World Cup that has led to the company providing the soccer balls for every World Cup since then.
In the 1980s, Adidas made a move into the U.S., setting up Adidas USA in 1986. The Adidas shoe and tracksuit transcended joggers to become a part of pop culture when the rap group Run DMC started wearing Adidas as their signature look and wrote the song “My Adidas.” The group’s devotion to the brand was organic – the company didn’t even realize what was happening until an employee attended a Run DMC concert and witnessed it firsthand.
The early 1990s were hard on Adidas, however, and the company came close to bankruptcy until investor Robert Louis-Dreyfus took over in 1994. He realized the company’s products didn’t need to be reinvented, but instead needed better marketing. Adidas went public in 1995, the same year the company debuted its first website.
As a public company, Adidas continued to innovate, partnering with fashion designer Stella McCartney in 2005. In a press release touting the new partnership, McCartney said: "Women take both - their sports and their style - seriously. Why should we have to sacrifice one for the other? Working with Adidas is a lifetime opportunity to give female sports enthusiasts a choice."
The addition of her line opened Adidas up to a world of women who wanted fashionable athleisure, just slightly ahead of the category’s steep rise in popularity. The relationship continues to bear fruit. In early 2021, Adidas and McCartney announced a new partnership for an eco-friendly line of sportswear.
In 2020, Adidas boasted worldwide sales of $22.4 billion. It is the number one athletic shoe and sportswear company in Europe and the second largest in the world. Puma, meanwhile, with $5.9 billion in totals revenue during 2020, continues to nip at its heels as the world’s third largest. Currently, neither company is controlled by descendants of the Dassler family.
Whatever the real reason is, no one in either Adi or Rudi’s family has ever revealed it. The brothers shut down the Geda factory in 1948. Adi then founded Adidas, while Rudi set up another well-known shoe company, Puma.
The feud between the brothers divided their hometown, where at least one person in nearly every family worked for one of the two rival shoe companies. The Aurach river divided the town. Adidas occupied the area north of the river, while Puma established its business to the south of the river.
Employees of the two companies did not speak to each other. They also went to separate stores, barber shops, bars, and bakeries. Every business in the town was known to be loyal to either Adidas or Puma, but never both. The town of Herzogenaurach even earned the nickname “the town of bent necks,” because of its residents’ habit of looking at each other’s shoes to figure out whether or not they wanted to talk to a person.
The relationship between the brothers never recovered. When Adi and Rudi died in the 1970s, they were buried at opposite ends of the town’s cemetery.
In the meantime, with Adi at the helm, Adidas and its trademark three-striped shoe made massive headway into the athletics market with the introduction of its football boot. The 1954 World Cup was a turning point for Adidas. Adi’s football boots were half the weight of other boots and featured removable screw-in spikes that could be switched out depending on the weather conditions.
As a result of this innovation, the West Germans shocked the world by coming back from a two goal deficit to beat Hungary in the World Cup final. The televised match made Adidas a household name across the globe. Nonetheless, controversy remains over which brother was really responsible for the innovation that helped propel Adidas’ early success.
There is no question though that Adidas, perhaps spurred at times by the brothers’ bitter rivalry, continued to break new ground as time went on. In the 1960s, Adidas hit on an innovation that would become a wardrobe staple for people around the world when the company expanded its product line and introduced the tracksuit. Tracksuits were, of course, available to athletes prior to this. However, in 1967, Adidas brought its tracksuit, with its signature three-stripes down the arms and legs, to the masses. In the 1970s, when jogging became a fitness craze in the United States, Adidas’ tracksuit became a staple in every casual fitness enthusiast’s wardrobe, and it has remained one ever since.
And during the 1970s, Adidas established a relationship with the World Cup that has led to the company providing the soccer balls for every World Cup since then.
In the 1980s, Adidas made a move into the U.S., setting up Adidas USA in 1986. The Adidas shoe and tracksuit transcended joggers to become a part of pop culture when the rap group Run DMC started wearing Adidas as their signature look and wrote the song “My Adidas.” The group’s devotion to the brand was organic – the company didn’t even realize what was happening until an employee attended a Run DMC concert and witnessed it firsthand.
The early 1990s were hard on Adidas, however, and the company came close to bankruptcy until investor Robert Louis-Dreyfus took over in 1994. He realized the company’s products didn’t need to be reinvented, but instead needed better marketing. Adidas went public in 1995, the same year the company debuted its first website.
As a public company, Adidas continued to innovate, partnering with fashion designer Stella McCartney in 2005. In a press release touting the new partnership, McCartney said: "Women take both - their sports and their style - seriously. Why should we have to sacrifice one for the other? Working with Adidas is a lifetime opportunity to give female sports enthusiasts a choice."
The addition of her line opened Adidas up to a world of women who wanted fashionable athleisure, just slightly ahead of the category’s steep rise in popularity. The relationship continues to bear fruit. In early 2021, Adidas and McCartney announced a new partnership for an eco-friendly line of sportswear.
In 2020, Adidas boasted worldwide sales of $22.4 billion. It is the number one athletic shoe and sportswear company in Europe and the second largest in the world. Puma, meanwhile, with $5.9 billion in totals revenue during 2020, continues to nip at its heels as the world’s third largest. Currently, neither company is controlled by descendants of the Dassler family.
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