Dear readers,
the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to define our private lives, and of course our professional lives as well. At Daimler, our production processes have been ramped up again, step by step, since the middle of April. At our plants we are implementing a comprehensive hygiene and safety concept. Wherever our colleagues’ tasks permit, they are working flexibly from home.
However, for all of us these are still not normal times. That’s why we have decided to postpone a return to normality for Daimler Magazine as well. The familiar two-week rhythm of our cover stories remains interrupted for the time being, and that also applies to the small entertaining formats. Many of our texts present authentic insights into people’s daily (work) routines — and to us it would seem strange to present them at a time when we have absolutely nothing that resembles a normal daily routine.
But there will be just a bit of movement nonetheless on the pages of Daimler Magazine. It will be part of a new series of texts that we believe fit into the present picture, in spite of — or perhaps because of — these non-routine circumstances, and will appear at irregular intervals. The current cover story is the first one to be published “out of turn.” It deals with a date that is so firmly established in our calendar that it nonetheless remains a subject of discussion today, in spite of our understandable focus on COVID-19.
This date is May 8, 1945 – the day on which the unconditional surrender of the German Reich ended World War II in Europe. On May 8 we commemorate the end of the war, but we also celebrate Germany’s liberation from National Socialism. Our author, Christian Scholz, has taken the 75th anniversary of this momentous event as an opportunity to examine the entanglements between the company then known as Daimler-Benz AG and the National Socialist state. In this article he asks what lessons Daimler has drawn from the darkest chapter of its history.
We wish you an interesting reading experience. And wherever you are as you read these lines, stay healthy!
Sincerely, The editors of Daimler Magazine
