The origins of Adidas were entangled with Nazi Germany's wartime economy. Adolf Dassler and his brother Rudolf joined the NSDAP in May 1933, and Adolf later served as a Sportwart in the Hitler Youth from 1935 until the end of the Second World War. Their Herzogenaurach shoe factory, once known for producing athletic footwear—including the spikes worn by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics—became the last functioning sports-shoe factory in Germany during the war and predominantly supplied shoes to the Wehrmacht.
In 1943, civilian sports-shoe production was halted and the factory's facilities and workforce were redirected toward manufacturing anti-tank weapons. From 1942 to 1945, at least nine forced laborers worked at the company's two sites. The factory was nearly destroyed by American forces in 1945, but Adolf Dassler's wife reportedly persuaded the soldiers that the business and its employees were solely concerned with making sports shoes. The facility survived and was subsequently purchased from by American occupying forces, allowing the Dassler enterprise to re-emerge after the war. The episode remains a disturbing part of the brand's history: Adidas's celebrated postwar sports empire grew from a company whose owners had joined the Nazi Party and whose factory had participated in forced labor and armaments production.
