Roland Berger discovers his father’s dark secret

IT HAS HAPPENED before and will almost certainly happen again. Offspring of Germans who were adults during the 12 years of Nazi rule shied away from asking too many questions about their elders’ relationship with the regime. Many parents did not want to talk about it. And when they did so, most children went along with whatever version of the family’s past was presented to them. Sometimes that was not the whole truth. Few, however, have told their father’s story of defiance as frequently and publicly as Roland Berger, a celebrated management consultant. It was thus a shock for Mr Berger when a newspaper investigation revealed that his father, Georg, was a profiteer from the Nazi regime rather than the committed Christian hounded by the Gestapo as he had always claimed.

The account given in interviews and speeches by Mr Berger, who set up Germany’s largest consultancy and advised the government of Helmut Kohl on the privatisation of companies in eastern Germany, was one of an inspirational transformation of a former member of the Nazi party. When Georg witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in 1938, he tore up his party-membership card and became an opponent of the regime. He was even sent briefly to Dachau, a concentration camp.