Hugo Boss apologises for founder's Nazi past

German fashion house Hugo Boss has apologised for its Nazi connections as details of the strength of its support for the Third Reich emerge in a new biography of the company.

BY Fiona Govan | 21 September 2011

Designer Hugo Boss won the contract to supply Nazi forces with their uniforms.

After the war he argued that he had supported Hitler "to save the company" rather than because of any National Socialism ideology, but new research shows that he was in fact a loyal Nazi.

A new book publishes records that show that during the second world war the company used 140 forced workers kidnapped by the Gestapo from Poland.

At its clothes factory based in Metzingen, Baden-Wurttemberg the work force also included 40 French prisoners of war in its production of Wehrmacht uniforms.

"It is clear that Hugo F Boss did not only join the party because it led to contracts for uniform production, but also because he was a follower of National Socialism," wrote Roman Koester, an economic historian at the Bundeswehr University in Munich in his book Hugo Boss, 1924-1945.

One of the company's first big contracts was to supply brown shirts to the early Nazi party.

By 1938, the firm was producing army uniforms, eventually manufacturing for the Waffen SS too.

From April 1940, Hugo Boss was using forced labourers, mostly women.

The company said on its website it wished to "express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule".

After the war Boss was tried and fined for his involvement in Nazi structures.