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The Dark Pre-History of the World's Favorite Sports Car

Officially, history began for Porsche in 1950. But the company existed before that as a supplier for Hitler's war machine. New research suggests that the company benefited much more from its Nazi ties than it has admitted to.

Pass the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart and continue across Porsche Square, you'll come to a factory gate. Behind it stands a barrack, its wooden slats still bearing the faded lettering "Reutter" -- a company which once provided Porsche with its first car bodies.

"This is where it all began in 1950," declares company historian Dieter Landenberger. Yet Porsche's history is older -- and bitterer -- than that.

Jan Karolczak, for example, worked for the automobile manufacturer starting in 1942 -- as a forced laborer.
Read entire article at Spiegel Online