Adidas vs Puma

I was catching up on many of the shows I watch, including “Altered Carbon”, season 2.   That one threw the curve ball of recasting main character Tadeshi Kovacs from Joel Kinnamon, a white guy I recall as NY Governor Conway, Underwood’s Republican challenger in “House of Cards” and Rick Flag in “Suicide Squad”, to Anthony Mackie, a black guy I recall as Falcon in the Marvel films.  Fortunately many of the other characters, including Edgar Allen Poe, are still played by the same actors.  One character struck me as strongly resembling Ashton Kutcher, the actor being Torben Liebrecht, who plays Rudi Dassler in this film, Duell der Brüder - Die Geschichte von Adidas und Puma.  It’s a German film, in German, with English subtitles.

Some time in the 1920s, the Dassler brothers, Adolf “Adi” and Rudi, developed a shoe company, which became Adidas (from Adi Dassler).  Adi was the shoe guy, whereas Rudi was the business guy who knew how to run a company, pay the workers, keep the place running, etc.  The business continued into the 1930s, at which point the NSDAP took power.  The brothers joined the Nazi Party and were somewhat friendly with the leadership.   It’s intriguing that the film doesn’t make them either particularly enthusiastic nor reluctant:  with the war several years in the future and the horrors of the Holocaust well down the road, I suppose many Germans could be excused for some amount of support for the Nazi Party.  However, Dachau as a camp for political prisoners, the Gestapo, and the regime’s treatment of Jews, were all well known long before Poland was invaded. 

[Incidentally, of the six million Jews who perished in Auschwitz and the other death camps in Poland, most were Polish.  German Jews, for the most part, decided to “get the hell out” of Germany when they could.  Many came to the US, though US immigration policy tended to prefer Jews like Einstein who had some special skills.  Moreover, many moved to France and other countries which were later overrun by the Germans.  Denmark, for its part, allowed its Jews to escape to Sweden, and the Swedish not only let them in, but also gave them work permits.  Bulgaria earned the notable distinction of flat out refusing to cooperate with the SS in sending Jews to Poland to be executed.  It turned out that the SS was somewhat shorthanded with the war and all, so it relied heavily on local assistance in logistics of finding Jews and getting them on trains to be murdered in Poland.  When the locals, as they were in Denmark and Bulgaria, weren’t keen on helping out, there wasn’t much the SS could do to force compliance.  Sadly, Denmark and Bulgaria were the exception, not the rule, and in places like Romania the locals were extremely enthusiastic about helping get rid of their local Jews.]

Anyhow. 

In fact, the company ran into issues with Adolf & his buddies when the 1936 Berlin Olympics came by.  Adi felt that having Jesse Owens, the famous American athlete, wear Adidas shoes in the events would be good publicity for the firm, and the Nazis weren’t particularly happy with that marketing decision, as astute as it might have been.   At the very least it shows that the firm was willing to buck the ruling party when it came to making decisions.

When the war itself erupted in 1939, Adi somehow gained “exempt” status and remained home making boots, and later Panzershrecks (German copies of the US bazooka anti-tank weapon).  Rudi, much to his dismay, was not exempt, and had to put on field grey and serve in the Wehrmacht.  The movie does not say whether he served on the Eastern Front fighting the Red Army, or the Western Front fighting the Amis (Americans) and Tommies (English), but somehow he survived and came home. 

Fortunately for the brothers, their factory is in Herzogenaurach, a gingerbread village 14 miles northwest of Nuremburg, which is in northeast Bavaria.  This meant the enemy forces occupying it wore olive drab and spoke English with US accents.  I dare say if the company had been located in eastern Germany, with brown-uniformed soldiers riding T34s, speaking Russian coming in to take over, none of us would ever know Adidas or Puma.  Anyhow, the brothers initially ran into trouble, as they were both Nazi Party members, the company made those Panzershrecks, and like many other German companies during the war, relied on forced labor to make its war materiel.  Fortunately, Adi pulled out the Olympic archives showing Jesse Owens at the ’36 Games wearing Adidas shoes, and the Amis were satisfied.

However, by this point Adi and Rudi had come to blows about all these issues, each believing the other had ratted out about Nazi Party membership to the Americans, plus it seems there was some issue about the brothers sleeping with each other's wives, even to the point of disputing their children's paternity (!!!).  Moreover, Rudi felt that his business acumen was given insufficient credit for the company’s success.  They finally agreed, amicably, to part ways, and Rudi formed the company we know today as PUMA, which is also based in Herzogenaurach. 

Some time in the 1950s, Adi decided to differentiate his shoes from his brother’s by inventing the three stripes.   He provided the shoes to the 1954 German World Cup team which defeated Hungary in the World Cup Final in Switzerland.   The movie starts and ends with the German team facing off against the Hungarians in the rain, wearing long cleated Adidas shoes.

Shoes.  From the narrative, it appears that before Adidas, Germans wore normal boots when playing sports.  Adi came up with the idea of lighter, softer, more comfortable shoes to wear on the soccer field and elsewhere.  Again, a few decades later he added the distinctive three stripes.

Myself, I love Adidas shoes the most, in particular the Superstar model.  Usually it’s either black with white stripes or white with black stripes, but occasionally I’ve found them in black with red stripes (which I’m wearing as I write this).  I also love Adidas soccer jerseys, which generally tend to have the three stripes down the sleeves.  

For Puma, I've noticed I have several pairs of socks of that brand, and several boxers.  I'm fairly certain I've never owned a pair of Puma sneakers.  This was not out of any loyalty to Adidas - until recently I was oblivious to the brothers' history - but merely a an exclusive preference for Adidas shoes (a subtle distinction).   Rudi (died 10/27/74):  very sorry!