“Chutzpah,” originally a Yiddish word and now part of the English language, usually suggests singular audacity, unmitigated gall. In this case no other word will do, for the leader to whom I refer recently displayed nothing so much as unmitigated, unadulterated chutzpah. He is the German-born Austrian businessman who leads Volkswagen.
Herbert Diess is Volkswagen’s chief executive officer and chairman of its management board. What did he do that was so outrageous? What did he do while President Vladimir Putin was promoting Ukrainian landgrabs and President Volodymyr Zelensky was railing against Russian atrocities? Diess had the temerity to say that in the interest of commerce the war should quickly be ended. “I think we should do the utmost to really stop this war and get back… to trying to open up the world again. I think we should not give up on open markets and free trade and I think we should not give up on negotiating and trying to settle,” opined Diess.
No surprise that his remarks drew this sharp retort from Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba: “The best strategy for major German business would be to fully sever business ties with Russia and then call on Russia to stop the war and return to diplomacy.” And no surprise that Diess’s remarks elicited this sardonic reply from Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany: “In Kyiv people would prefer the VW CEO to address President Putin personally, a man he knows well, and the man who has unleashed this war of destruction against Ukraine.”
On the face of it, what Diess said is not objectionable. All he did was to advocate a return to the negotiating table. But here five reasons why what he said and why him saying it were beyond the pale. First, his argument prioritized money and business over politics and principle. Second, his words were in direct opposition to the stand publicly taken both by NATO and the European Union. Third, the West has made clear that whatever the path to peace, it must be decided by Ukrainians, not by Germans or by anyone else. Fourth, Diess displayed a tin ear for timing. He spoke just as Putin reasserted on May 9, Russia’s Victory Day, that its troops were “fighting on their own land.” And, finally, most importantly, what Diess said was wildly inappropriate because all Russian rhetoric surrounding the war in Ukraine has been laced with the word “Nazis.”
When Putin invaded Ukraine in late February he said Russia would “strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” This “denazification” has been Putin’s most persistent theme, despite no evidence whatsoever that Ukraine’s government is riddled with Nazis. And despite Zelensky himself being a Jew who lost close family during the Holocaust. Still Putin won’t let go. Last week he sent a congratulatory telegram to separatists in eastern Ukraine declaring they and the Russian military were “fighting shoulder to shoulder to liberate their homeland from Nazi filth.” And on May 9, in his ostensibly celebratory Victory Day speech, he reiterated there was “no place in the world for executioners, punishers, and Nazis.”
If Diess were an ordinary CEO astride an ordinary company his remarks would have been ill founded. But he is not. He himself has a checkered history – Diess was prosecuted for his role in Volkswagen’s manipulation of its diesel emissions – and the company he leads has an even much more checkered history.
Volkswagen was established in 1937 by the Nazis. Chancellor Adolf Hitler was deeply involved in Volkswagen from start, decreeing the company should create an inexpensive “people’s car,” capable of carrying two adults and three children. During the Second World War Volkswagen’s mission changed. The production of cars for civilians stopped, while the production of vehicles for the German military started. To increase output and meet its targets Volkswagen used some 15,000 slave laborers, all recruited from concentration camps.
No reason for Volkswagen in the present constantly to atone for its past. But – especially given Putin’s repeated use of Nazis imagery – good reason for Volkswagen in the present to mind its own business. As to Diess, perhaps he likes being a chutzpadik. But it does not become him.