Wartime Subsidiary Research: Ford Motor Company

In 1998 Ford Motor Company approached HAI for help in conducting an investigation into the history of its subsidiary in Cologne, Germany, during the Second World War era. Asked to locate all relevant documentation dealing with the subsidiary's activities from 1930 to 1950, HAI conducted research throughout the United States and Europe, including the US National Archives, the British Public Records Office, and the German Bundesarchiv.

HAI historians assisted in gathering a collection of more than 90,000 pages of related materials, provided translations for foreign language documents, and helped develop an item-level database that described every document in the collection. HAI historians also worked as part of a multi-disciplinary team of archivists, financial analysts, and consultants to prepare a lengthy report documenting the investigation's findings. The collected materials and accompanying report were publicly released by Ford Motor Company and donated to the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village. This collection now represents an invaluable resource for scholars of American economic relations with Germany during this period.