Hugo Boss

Hugo Ferdinand Boss (8 July 1885 – 9 August 1948) was a German businessman who founded the fashion house Hugo Boss. He was an active member of the Nazi Party from 1931, and remained so until Nazi Germany's capitulation. His clothing company also utilized forced labour drawn from German-occupied territories and prisoner-of-war camps to manufacture military uniforms for the Schutzstaffel and Wehrmacht.

Early life Boss was born in Metzingen, Kingdom of Württemberg, to Luise (née Münzenmayer) and Heinrich Boss, the Hitler Youth, the postal service, the national railway, and later the Wehrmacht.

Support of Nazism

Boss joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler came to power. By the third quarter of 1932, the all-black SS uniform (to replace the SA brown shirts) was designed by SS-Oberführer Prof. Karl Diebitsch, and graphic designer Walter Heck, who had no affiliation with the company. The Hugo Boss company produced these black uniforms along with the brown SA shirts and the black-and-brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth. Some workers were French and Polish prisoners of war forced into labour. In 1999, US lawyers acting on behalf of Holocaust survivors started legal proceedings against the Hugo Boss company over its use of slave labour during the war. The company issued an apology in 2011 for the misuse of 140 Polish and 40 French forced workers.

After World War II, the denazification process saw Boss initially labeled as an "activist, supporter and beneficiary" of Nazism, which resulted in a heavy fine, also stripping him of his voting rights and capacity to run a business. This initial ruling was appealed, and Boss was re-labeled as a Mitläufer ("fellow traveller"), a category with a less severe punishment. in Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Allied-occupied Germany. He was 63 years old at the time of his death.