Did Hugo Boss do work for the Nazis?

Injustice Facts tweet: Hugo Boss himself joined the Nazi party, and got a contract to make the Hitler Youth, storm trooper and SS uniforms.

Verdict: True 

By Shamma Saeed
Zayed University Communications Student

The clothing firm Hugo Boss, named after its founder Hugo Ferdinaned Boss, is a well-known clothing manufacturer famous for a classical men’s suits and ties.

Hugo Boss founded his textile factory in 1923, according to The New York Times. In 1931, Boss joined the Nazi Party. And two years after that, Boss started to manufacture Nazi uniforms, according to the New York Times. The newspaper reported he manufactured the uniforms to save his company from bankruptcy.

One of Hugo Boss’ missions was to provide the Nazis with their well-known brown shirts.  The company also manufactured the party’s uniforms. According to the New York Times: “The Nazis awarded contracts to thousands of companies to produce the black uniforms, worn by SS units, the brown shirts worn by SA storm troopers and the black-and-brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth, according to Eckhard Trox, a military uniform expert at the museum in Ludenscheid.”

BBC News confirmed this account by discussing Roman Koester’s book, “Hugo Boss, 1924-1945. A Clothing Factory During the Weimar Republic and Third Reich.” The company funded the book to look at the history of the the Hugo Boss company. It did acknowledge the fact that Hugo Boss was a “Loyal Nazi” known as “Hitler’s Tailor.”

“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 Koester.

Following the book’s publication, the company also posted a statement on its Website to express its regret and apologize to anyone who had been mistreated during that period of time.

Furthermore, according to NBC News, Hugo Boss employed “140 forced labourers, mostly women, between 1940-1941.”

Therefore, the tweet regarding Hugo Boss’ links to the Nazis is true, supported by the three sources used: NBC, BBC News, The New York Times.