Business | Self
Puma And Adidas Were Born Out of Betrayal By Two Nazi Brothers
A cautionary, true story.
I sometimes meet people who have cut-off family members.
If you come from a close family as I do, it makes you wonder what it would take to reach that point.
The Dassler brothers had good reason. Their’s was a feud that reshaped the entire shoe industry.
The Nazi Implosion
Adolf and Rudolph Dassler were in huge trouble — and were trying to revive the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory. Years earlier, they’d begun sewing shoes in their parent’s basement.
They quickly had dozens of employees. They innovated the first spiked running shoes which were later worn, ironically, by Jesse Owens.
It was ironic because they were both members of the Nazi party and that fact eventually led to the birth of Adidas and Puma. But not before the family imploded.
The late 1940s.
The Dasslers had been forced to convert the facility into a war factory for Hitler’s war effort.
They were reversing the “Nazification” of their goods, which had shifted their shoe production to anti-tank weapons.
