ADIDAS: 2 German Brothers + 2 Wars = Not 1, But 2 Famous Shoe Brands

For Bizography’s first international episode, we brave a few hard to pronounce German names to bring you the story of the Dassler Brothers. Adi and Rudi started out all cool...brothers and partners in a shoe company that would change the sports world. Alas - their story turned ugly during WWII. Let's just say the Gestapo was involved. In the aftermath of the actual war and the brotherly war, Adidas was born, and yeah, another big name shoe company too.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Two brothers who were in business together had a falling
out that was so bad that they stopped speaking and
literally literally tried to have each other arrested. They split
the business into and both became famous shoe brands, one
of the two arguably changing sports and brand marketing forever.

(00:23):
This is Bisiography, the show where we dive into the
strange but true stories of iconic companies. Whether they're a
current bright star, in the midst of a massive dumpster fire,
or settling into the dust heap of history, they all
have a past worth knowing. I'm Dana Barrett. I'm a
former tech executive and entrepreneur and a TV and radio host,
and over the course of my career, I've interviewed thousands

(00:46):
of business leaders and reported on the bright beginnings and
massive flame outs of the brands we know and love.
Some of their stories are inspiring, some are super intertwined
with history, and some seem like they're right out of
a movie. Because Bography is a production of I Heart
Radio and dB Media and is co hosted as always
by my producer and today's official researcher, Nick Mean. Thank you, Damon. Yeah,

(01:10):
I think you're right right out of a movie is
a great example for why we've decided to do this,
and I think we probably need to get into a
little bit of that first. Why we chose Audidas the
company of the day, So Audidas, which I am going
to now forever referred to as Adidas, I don't know.
I may go back and forth. Actually I take that back,

(01:31):
but I think we have to point out that this
is the first non American company. Now, we have other
companies that had histories and other parts of the world
that the people came from other parts of the world,
but they from the most part, started as American companies.
This is not an American company. Adidas Audi Das is
a European company. It is a German company. It was

(01:52):
a German company. It still is a German company. It's
a German company. And I have to say that one
of the reasons I resisted doing companies from other parts
of the world is the pronunciation issues that tend to
come up. And the minute you brought the research in
from this one, we knew we were going to be
on the struggle bus. Yeah, there's a lot of German

(02:15):
that uh really, I don't think either of us have
the dialect to pull off and you're right. The moment
you pull up Adidas, the first thing you learned is
where their headquartered at, which is in Bavaria in Germany.
We can say that, Yeah, we can say Bavaria and Germany,
but the name of the actual town it's a little
bit harder. So we have the help of you know,
computer voice guy who always gets it right to explain

(02:37):
and to tell us what the name is and it
is how that's hard to say. Yeah, you say that
three times fast, so yes, it's very difficult to say.
So we're gonna go with what current CEO of Adidas
calls it when he's speaking in English and simply say
the name of the town is hurt So I can

(02:59):
handle herd so listen. The other reason we felt like
we really needed to do the story of Audi Das
is because we knew we wanted to do a shoe company,
an athletic shoe company, because athletic shoes have become such
an important part of culture in modern times, and so

(03:21):
many of the shoe brands are iconic. Absolutely, I mean,
isn't it kind of a big deal? What brand do
you have on your feet? It? I mean, in our
last episode, we dealt with Singer, the sewing machine company,
and I started that episode by saying, if I asked
you to name a sewing machine company, you probably could
only name one, and it would be Singer. But in

(03:42):
this case, if I asked you to name a famous
shoe company, you could probably name five easily off the
top of your head without even thinking about it. And
so we did do a little bit of research and
into some of the companies that are based in the
United States that started in the United States, like Pike Um,
like New Balance, and not that their stories were a

(04:04):
snooze fest, but their stories were kind of a snooze fest. Yeah,
they were very let's say, I know, this is a
business show, but they were very business e. There wasn't
really a lot of meat on the bone. And plus
we were doing kind of multiple surface level researches and
that's when we came across Adidas and Old Man. It
gets deep. So that's why we picked this exactly. This

(04:25):
is a drama, the story of the two brothers that
started essentially started Adidas. I mean really, it's one of
their companies. In the end, as we're we've already sort
of alluded to. But the story of these two guys
is literally it could be a blockbuster movie, right. I

(04:46):
have a feeling that this podcast maybe used in some
script writing in the near future, and if that happens,
we would like our our favor. Just let us know,
give us a call. It won't be a big fee.
We're easy, Um. But I think you know. The way
to start this story is almost with the timeline and
with Adolph Dossler ADDI of Adi das with his life.

(05:07):
Let's start with him. So he uh is actually the
fourth child in his family, the third son, but the
fourth child, and he's born in the year nine hundred
in Bavaria, Germany. Um, and he is uh, you know again,
one of four. His parents are His father, rather, Um

(05:31):
was a weaver, a textile maker who ultimately began to
make a version of a shoe, a felt slipper, when
Addie was just a little boy, and his name was Adolf.
I know I already said that, but I don't want
to be clear. His name was Adolf, his nickname was Addi.
His older brother was Rudolph, the next one up the chain,
and he went by Rudy. So Rudy and ADDI, how

(05:53):
cute is that? That they had an older sister, Marie
and an older brother Fritz. So I did that backwards,
but you got it. Yes, Okay is the oldest, youngest,
the oldest, So basically he's having a normal childhood that
one might have in the you know, nineteen how do
you say that? Right in the first decade of the
nineteen hundreds in Germany. Um, he finishes his formal education

(06:15):
at thirteen years old, as one was wanting to do
in that era. So nineteen thirteen, and he is apprenticed
off to a baker, and he wasn't really into that. Yeah,
I think at the time in Germany was very much
of a hey, we're going to kind of pay attention
to what you're good at in school, and then we're
going to tell you what you should do. And when
he got into the bakery, he went, yeah, not for me,

(06:37):
not at all, right, And also just so interesting to
think about these decisions, Like I feel like people today
have a hard enough time deciding what they want to
do at eighteen nine, one imagine that at thirteen. Yeah, like, dude,
I just want to go outside and play, Like I
don't I don't know what I want to be when
I grow up, but okay, sure fine. So a year later,
nineteen fourteen, Addie completes his apprenticeship at the bakery, but decides, no, no,

(07:01):
not going to do this bakery thing. So he was
a guy who who did what he said he was
going to do, even at that young age. He finished
out the year, but then he said, no, I don't
want to do this. So he goes back to his
father and learns to stitch, which again was his father's business.
And um, he, like I said, at thirteen, just kind

(07:21):
of wanted to go out and play, right. He was
a sports kid and he did that right. He was
in track and field teams. He did a lot of
you know, obviously they didn't have quite those sports stuff
back then, but he was involved in as much athletic
activity as he could possibly get involved in. Back then.
He was that guy he was He was a jock.
He was a jock and he and he was helping
his dad with his dad's business, and that way he

(07:44):
kind of had the best of all worlds. Yeah. Uh,
and he didn't have to be a baker. So, um,
nineteen eighteen, he's now eighteen years old, and think about
what's happening in history at that time World War One. Yes,
so he's conscripted in to the German army and um
again he's he's the youngest brother, so this is four

(08:06):
years after his two older brothers had already been conscripted,
so all the brothers essentially were uh, a part of
World War One, but only one year later. He comes
back from military conscription because now it's nineteen nineteen, and
goes back to work with his dad and starts making
sports shoes. But he's sort of like his dad's doing
shoes over there, and he's kind of in his mom's

(08:28):
kitchen in the laundry shed, uh, and he's starts to
experiment with shoes for sports, thinking like, you can't just
wear your normal shoes. You gotta have different specialty shoes
for sports. And the interesting part of it all is
that initially he wasn't really planning on that. He said,
you know what, dad made slippers. It's worked for him.
I'm going to get into it too. And it was

(08:49):
while he was out at some event one of his
shoes blew out, tore up, something happened with it, and
he's like, this isn't working. Wait a minute, I make shoes.
I don't just make shoes for myself to do this stuff,
and that was kind of the birth of sports shoes.
A little bit in the concept was Audi Dasler said,
I'm tired of having these piece of junk shoes that

(09:10):
blow up on me every time. Let's make them for
by track and field events, which I love because it's
the classic entrepreneur story. You have a problem, you yourself
have a problem, you look around, you see that others
maybe have the similar problem, and you come up with
a new innovative solution and solve the problem. That is
entrepreneurship and innovative big time. Because this is what a

(09:30):
year after World War One, which Germany lost, right, we
all know that story, and so there's not a lot
of money to go around. The entire nation is like
war torn. He's literally going out into fields and picking
up stuff left behind from these armies, like army helmets
and like AMMO patches or pouches and stuff like that,
and he's using these materials to make shoes. So yeah,

(09:54):
totally innovative in every way. Innovative and resourceful, and that's
the word for that. You know, he's looking around, he's saying, well,
materials are scarce. You know what, I could use that
thing over there, and I could use that thing over
there and coming up with something new. So you gotta
love that about the guy. So where does this whole
brother story fit in? ADDIE's brother Rudolph Rudy after the war,

(10:17):
So now you know early these guys are close, and
so Addie brings Rudy into the business and they officially
start the Dozzler Brothers Shoe Factory. And I wish I
could say, like the rest is history. They made brilliant
shoes and tons of money, but then we wouldn't have
a movie. So we'll get a little bit more into
the relationship of the brothers, uh, and where this all

(10:41):
goes right after this? All right, So it's nin Addi
Dossler is years old. His brother Rudy is just two
years old or tent seven years old. They now have
a shoe factory, the Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe Factory as

(11:04):
translated into English, and they start manufacturing shoes for what
they call football and what we call soccer. Uh. They
are shoes with nailed studs. And they also start making
track shoes, running shoes with hand forged spikes. So first
of all I think and correct me if I'm wrong here, Nick,
But they were really the first company to say you

(11:24):
need different kinds of shoes for different sports, right, So
they didn't totally invent the sports shoe. Addie had that
idea back in the day, but sports shoes became a thing,
but it was a sports shoe for soccer, for track
and field, for anything. Addie and Rudy were the ones
that went, no, no, no, no no, no, you need a
different kind of shoe for football versus running track and
high jump and pull vaulting. So yeah, they were the

(11:45):
first ones to make kind of sports specific shoes, and yeah,
that's started to spread throughout Germany. So basically, if you
felt like it, you could blame them sort of for
the modern shoe craze on the whole, because little bit
now you need like you need your your kicks for
going out, you need your kicks for going to the mall,
you need a different kind of kicks, you know, for

(12:07):
actual playing of sports. And we will get to the
casual part of Adidas much later, but you are spot
on that is exactly what it was. Yeah, of course
for them there those things were the difference between what
you needed for a football or a soccer shoe versus
a running shoe had to do with the sport itself
and the way that shoe was used, and so it
was really a practical decision. It's like a running shoe.

(12:28):
You just don't do the same thing with your feet
when you're running straight ahead as you do when you're
playing soccer. Right, And that was one thing apparently that
was really common back in the day, was that the
we've all had that at least once a pair of sneakers, right,
you stepped to the side and it just blows out
in your foot. We saw it was Zion Williams and
anyone who watches n C double a basketball. That happened
last year and was a big deal. And that was
what was happening on the football pitch. I mean, players

(12:49):
were breaking their ankles literally because they just had the
wrong shoes. And these guys went, no, no, no, no,
we'll fix that. Yeah. So crazy that happened recently, because
no one would ever expect that now. No, shoes are
not supposed to be like that now. Yeah, in any case,
very early on Audi uh, I should give the whole
company credit for this, because we don't really know exactly
who gets credit. But the Dozzler shoe company knew that

(13:13):
they should get involved in higher level sports, that they
wanted to be part of the competition that was happening
at a higher level. So very early on, like they
started the company and in Lena Radke, a German middle
distance runner, one gold at the Summer Olympics wearing Dossler
brother shoes. That was no accident. Um that got the

(13:34):
attention of the German track and field coach uh and
he went out to meet with them and that sort
of tradition became part of what they were doing. So
in two another German gold medal winner was wearing Dossler
brother shoes, right, and that was something that turned into
kind of a traditional most for Dossler Brothers. And then

(13:55):
later on, you know, Adidas was they were involved with
the Olympics, just in Germany to start with, but then
it turns internationals. So this is kind of their first foray,
like you said, into the higher level sports was the Olympics,
so they shot for gold. Pun intended right from the start.
I love a good pun. Okay, keep in mind this
is now the early nineteen thirties, Germany is for the

(14:18):
most part recovered from World War One, um, but they're
still suffering economically a little bit, which leads to the
rise of the Nazi Party. And it's now ninety three
and as that's happening. Now this is long before World
War two broke out, but just as the Nazi Power
Party is coming into power, they are prioritizing athletic teamwork,

(14:39):
and the Dossler brothers see the potential economic impact that
this could have for them, and so all three brothers, Fritz, Rudy,
and Addie all joined the Nazi Party. What yes, so right,
We're getting a little touchy here, folks, But the truth is, yes,
they all were active in the Nazi Party, because for

(15:00):
what it's worth, it seems like initially it was more
of just a business decision. They really weren't into the
Nazi stuff. But like you said, they were prioritizing athletics
so much they're like, hey, this huge market, we can't
not get involved here, right, So again, think about it,
like we're saying, joined the Nazi Party, and in my mind,
for whatever reason, that immediately puts them in uniforms marching

(15:20):
down the street. Not Nazi soldiers, just in the Nazi Party.
It's the political party, right, uh, and they joined it.
But it does make you like, it does kind of
weird you out a little bit, does it? Definitely did.
As we were doing research, I got to this point
in the research timeline and I sent you a text
and said, Hey, maybe we shouldn't do this because of
you know, they were Nazis. And I wasn't so funny

(15:42):
because in the middle of this research, I went out
shoes shopping, as I want to do from time to time,
and I was walking around like the racks of shoes
at I think it was TJ Max somewhere, and there
was a bunch of Adidas shoes on the racks and
I was like, oh, these are cute. Oh wait, do
I want to I don't, Right Like, I had that
moment of like, oh there's a Nazi connection. Yeah. Um. However,

(16:05):
to your point, Nick, they did it because it felt
right from a business perspective for them. Um. And so
obviously they didn't know what was going to happen. Uh
later correct with the Nazi Party at that moment. But
in any case, um, history now looking back, you know,
when you're looking back at a story like this, whose
story are you really telling, But according to some Rudy

(16:28):
was sort of the most heavily involved and the most
interested in the actual politics of the Nazi Party. Yeah,
basically it was business for all three of them, but
Rudy kind of got sucked in. Yeah, correct, Yeah, he
was feeling it. Four Addie gets married. He is now
thirty four years old, and he marries m Kata Mark

(16:49):
good job. That was my pronunciation. It's spelled almost like Kathy.
We might go with Kathy for the rest of the episode.
But Addi marries Kata and they are doing great as
a couple, but like many couples, they're not getting along
with the rest of the family so well. She allegedly
would have some spats, if you will, with Oddie's parents

(17:13):
and in particular with Rudy and his wife. And by
the way, they all lived together in one house. Yeah,
which I think with the in laws and yeah, that's
just not going to end well for anyone. So that
family dynamic is starting to bubble up. And in fact,
later um, when we get to it, you'll see that

(17:34):
the relationship between Rudy and Kata almost is a big
part of the problem. But business is continuing. It's now,
and Oddie sees that becoming a coach and a supplier
two clubs in the Hitler Youth movement was going to
be a really good way to expand production for the

(17:55):
Doscil Brothers shoe company. So he joins the Hitler Youth
as a coach his own team right there in that
he coaches for the Hitler Youth. Uh. Yeah, they get active,
active in the Hitler Youth overall because they are selling
sports shoes. Because that's right. The Nazi Party was big
about their imagery and they wanted these strong young men

(18:16):
to be the face of it. And that's how they
did it. They put them on sports fields and had
them break records and do these big things, and so
best way to get the shoes on them, right right.
It's so interesting, just on a total side note here
to think about the Nazi Party tactics and and how
they were doing what they were doing. I know so
much of it was brainwashing young kids. Um, you know

(18:38):
when you're that age, when you're young, you know, in
your early teens and even before that, all you really
want to do is fit in and belongs. So if
all the other kids are Nazi, you know, party members
and in the youth movement and playing on the Nazi teams,
then you want to do it too. And if you
have to sing the team song and you know, salute

(18:58):
the team logo and whatever it is, you're going to
do it because you want to fit in with the
other kids. It's just so interesting. Can you imagine? Um,
I guess, I guess there's some of that with like
young Republicans and Young Democrats, but mostly that's college age
in America, you know what I mean? But can you
imagine if we did that now, if we had like
the Young Democrats and at like ten, we were putting
them in like on Young Democrats soccer team. Could you

(19:20):
imagine that would be really awkward? How weird. It's just
interesting to think about the tactics and how you know,
how effective it was. I mean, it sounds bad, and
I know we've all heard them when it comes to
stuff like that, but stardom young and that was their
game plan. Yeah, it really was. In any case, it
was working for the Dossler brothers with their shoes because
here was an opportunity, to your point, to get their

(19:40):
athletic shoes on all those kids. And all they had
to do was sign up right, and it's really interesting
that that that's what they do in nineteen thirty five
is Addi joins the Hitler Youth because right after that
is probably the biggest moment pre Adidas, for Adidas and
the Dassler Brothers shoe company. Because the next year, in
nineteen third the six Addie is of course they're working

(20:02):
with the Olympic teams, and they go to the Olympics
in nineteen thirty six and while they're there, Oddie says,
we're doing great in Germany, but you know what we
could do is do great in other places. And he
sees one American athlete that's been standing out one Jesse Owens.
We've all heard that name, yeah, Jesse Owens. And nineteen

(20:25):
thirty six Oddie somehow gets him one on one and
convinces him to wear Dossler Brothers shoes in his nineteen
thirty six competition. The way that he sold it to
Jesse and his trainer was, listen, these shoes are much
lighter than any other shoe you're going to wear. And
also the spikes a recent innovation. At the time, most

(20:46):
spikes were, as we said, nailed in. They were literally
like big heavy metal spikes sticking out of the bottom
of the shoe. Addie said, well, you don't need to
have metal, so he was making spikes out of rubber
and canvas, which were much lighter and actually more durable.
Jesse Owen said, sure, I'll wear your shoes, and we
all know what happened in nineteen thirty six. So that

(21:08):
kind of grew them to international a success and appeal
right before the war starts and maybe actually saved the
history of the company a little later. We'll talk about
that after this. So after the coup of getting Jesse

(21:31):
Owens to wear their shoes, things are going pretty well
for the Dossler Brothers Shoe Company. It's six and from
that year through nine, all is well. They're selling about
two thousand pairs of shoes every year. And then World
War two starts and it goes down. Yes it does.

(21:52):
It goes down, of course for the whole world, but
it also goes down for the Dossler Brothers. So this
is where our story turns from two young brothers, you know,
working together to build a family company that will carry
its legacy into the future and turns into the Oscar
winning future movie starring George Clooney and somebody who looks

(22:13):
like um. So it's nineteen thirty nine and World War
Two begins, and of course all of that focus on
sports in the Reich now gets turned around and the
focus is now on war. So in nineteen forty Addie
U is conscripted into the Vermacht and he reports in

(22:34):
December of that year. It's really just a few months
later February of nineteen forty one where he gets to
go back home. He's relieved of his duty in the
Vermacht because it's deemed that he needs to be uh
in his hometown in the Gospeler Brothers shoe factory so
that they can use that shoe factory as part of
the war effort. Right, yeah, he was. He was basically

(22:56):
as a civilian, more valuable to the Reich than he
was as a soldier, and so they sent him home,
which is where some of the tension comes from in
the family. Right. So now he's at home, it's spring
of one, and the conditions in the home with all
of those people in it, and and more now because

(23:19):
there's kids are starting to boil over. There's one house
and you've got mom and dad that's the grandparents essentially.
Now Christoph and Pauline, you've got their kids, Rudy and
Addie and their wives. So what does that put us
at six and five grandkids, eleven people in a nineteen
forty one home. You know, it wasn't big, it wasn't

(23:40):
a mansion. They're cramped. I don't know how many bathrooms
they had, not enough, But there was a lot of
There had to be a lot of fighting. Uh So
that fact that they were all sort of crammed into
a house, and we already know there was tension between
Kata and Rudy and his wife, and between Kata and
really everybody. Apparently, I feel like I would have really
liked her. She was for everything I read, she was

(24:01):
a very strong willed woman. She was not afraid to
tell you what she really thought. That apparently is not
liked by many people for some reason. I'm saying, I
think I would have really really liked her. Um but
of course that was the case. And then um Marie,
the older sister, also got involved in the business, which
added to the tension, right because now you know when

(24:22):
family businesses, sometimes they go great, but often there's family
dynamics that you know, turn into a strke you bring
work home and take home to work with you and
everything else. Yeah, Rudy starts to now show his jealous streak.
He's kind of annoyed that his younger brother Addie is
seen by the Nazi Party to be the leader of

(24:42):
the Dostler firm, and which is why he's not having
to fight. And so Rudy begins to sort of, you know,
puff up his chest and say no, no, no, I'm
I'm the man here. And with that he actually started
a fight essentially with Marie by denying her kids jobs
in the company, saying there were enough family problems already, right,

(25:06):
which totally isn't untrue, right, But he didn't do it
to stop family drama. He did it, like you said,
to strong arm and show that he was the man
in charge. Well, this really upsets his older sister, right,
because it's right in the middle of World War Two.
It's one what the Americans haven't yet we almost about,
but they're the war movement is is is happening. And

(25:28):
her two sons are young, they're late teens, early twenties,
and she doesn't want them to get drafted because anybody
who's not already gainfully employed, is going to get drafted
into the war, into the Thermacht, and that actually ends
up happening, and her two sons never came home from
the war, and she blames her older brother. And by
the way, it's not even just that you had to

(25:48):
be gainfully employed, you had to be gainfully employed in
specific war approved industry to be saved from the draft essentially,
and their factory was one of those places. So Rudy
could have saved her sons by allowing them to work
in that factory and he didn't. Yeah, and because because
then that's the thing too. They are still making shoes,
they're still making sports shoes, but like half the factory

(26:11):
and not exactly, but he's making boots for the military there.
They start doing spot welding for like guns and bazookas.
So it's very valuable for the Nazi Party to have
these people here. And yeah, her both of her sons
end up dying in war. That's got to be tough.
I mean, I'd be pissed, let's be honest. And you
know what's so crazy about this part of the story too,

(26:32):
is that it's you know, that same year Addie is
reporting being so short staffed in his factory that he
had to actually ask for the use of some Soviet
prisoners of war on the production line. So imagine the
two boys, the two sons could have been useful, right.
That's the other thing that comes out later is that
they actually were short staffed and they could have used

(26:53):
her sons. But he was just being a big jerk
and it cost him there, It cost his nephews their lives.
That caused is the big tension ripped between Audi and
that I guess sect of the family and Rudolph's side
of the family. Yeah. I have to say, you know,
karma is a bit because three a year after all
that went down, Uh, Rudy himself is conscripted into the army,

(27:18):
and he blames Addie. He says, uh, there's a quote.
He says something like, I had to thank my brother
and his Nazi party friends for getting him conscripted again. Yea,
from right from the start. He says that his brother
obviously his brother had the connections because his brother got
out of service. And now I'm getting drafted at forty
five years old. Mind you, Rudolph is being drafted into

(27:39):
the army, right Nazi Germany was getting a little desperate
at this point, but yeah, right, I know. So, um,
this drama continues on because now Rudy is conscripted and
he's mad. So he sends a letter in April of
nineteen forty three to Addie that says, quote, I will
not hesitate to seek the closure of the factory so

(27:59):
that you be forced to take up an occupation that
will allow you to play the leader and as a
first class sportsman, to carry a gun. Can I put
a dude after that? Dude? That is the modern day
equivalent to as we say, right big time. He's like,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna I have to do this. You're
gonna have to do this to Oh, you think you're
the big guy at the factory. Do you think you're

(28:20):
the big sports guy? Well, why don't you get out
of here and lead a group of soldiers with a
gun in your hand? Exactly like I have to say.
Their language even granted this as a translation from German also,
but it's so much nicer than we would say it now.
I think cursing and call each other names probably the
facto for the forties in general. Yeah, but then the

(28:40):
worst part is later that year, when the Dazzler Brothers
factory in December gets put into full wartime mode. They
are nothing but war stuff for the Reich. Rudy hears
about this wherever he's stationed in Germany and goes back
home because he says, hey, this war is going to
end at some point, and we have a lot of
resources that are just sitting there and not being used.
He goes back to the factory to get leather to

(29:03):
take home take back with him so he can start
doing shoes after the war. He gets to the factory
and finds out Addie had already beaten him to it.
Addie had already gotten a lot of leather and stored
it away to use after the war. So Rudy decides
to report him to the local authorities. Wow. Yeah, And
according to Kata, the police, uh we're not nice to
Addie when they came to uh talk to him about this. Yeah.

(29:26):
So so essentially, I mean, think about that, Rudy gets
tries to get his brother put in jail. In he
tries to stab his brother in the back, and finding
was stabbed first, reports him to the cops. Man, right,
it goes beyond that, so now Rudy tries to use
his contacts. I can't say this word either in the

(29:48):
loose WAFFA. Okay, this is why we don't do international companies.
But in any case, he tries to use his contacts
to take control of the Dazzler factory. Fails at that,
and then Rudy deserts his unit in the Nazi Party
and returns to Halzel Olga. Thanks for that assist voiceover, guy,

(30:15):
But he goes home and uh, he gets arrested for
deserting by the Gestapo and is essentially held for the
rest of the war until the Allied liberation in May
of that year. Yeah, it's it's bad. So he called
the cops on his brother. He ends up leaving the unit,
comes back to the hometown. Addie says, what are you

(30:36):
doing here, and calls the Secret Service essentially the Gestapo,
to come and pick him up. Nuts The interesting part here, right, So,
like you said, he was held by the Gestapo until
the end of the war. As the Allies are marching
through Germany, the Americans thankfully get to Hazel and Bavaria first,
and as they're coming through, they're trying to completely dismantle

(30:59):
the jury and war machine. They see a factory it's
making war stuff. They get ready to go burn the
place down. Kata and Marie come running out of the
factory as the Allies soldiers are walking up and they
go no, no, no, no, please don't, please don't. And
they produced these newspaper articles showing Jesse Owens wearing the
Dazzler Brothers shoes in the n Olympics. And not only

(31:21):
does it make the Allies not burn down the factory,
a lot of the Allies right then and there on
the spot. So well, then go back in there and
make me some shoes, and they start buying shoes from
Dazzler Brothers. It's crazy. So, like we alluded to, the deal,
the early deal getting Jesse Owens to wear the shoes
may have saved the company and allowed Adidas as we

(31:43):
know it today to happen. Because if that had not
happened with Jesse Owens, it is quite possible, quite likely
in fact, that that factory would have been torn apart
by the Allied forces and maybe they would have been
able to start up over again, but maybe they wouldn't,
who knows. So that is the way history played out
in that case, and that for the purposes of our story,

(32:05):
was essentially the end of the wartime drama. You have
Addie and Rudy by this point now just literally trying
to get each other thrown in jail, and you have
a factory that still stands and a war that's over.
We'll tell you what happened after the war after this.

(32:28):
So the war ends, and it's like, you know, the
world is rebuilding and coming back to peace. But the
brotherly war, the war between between the two Dozzler brothers,
is in like full swing. Yeah, pinnacle of the battle here. Yeah.
And I think most families can relate to some inter

(32:49):
family fights. There's always like, you know, Uncle Joe and
Dad don't get along, or cousin Mary and cousin Sue
don't speak, and you've got to put them at different
tables across the room when there's a wedding, you know
that kind of thing. Everybody has that. But this is
like a whole other level a family feud. As we
were mentioning, you know, at the end of the war,

(33:10):
they were already sort of pointing the finger at each other,
um to the Gestapo and to the local authorities for
various reasons. After the war. That sort of continued for
some time because after the war they were both kind
of in trouble with the Allied forces in some way
or other. For Rudy it was um suspicion of working
for the Gestapo. For Addie it was just general purpose

(33:33):
UM suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. And so they
both had sort of battles to fight UM from a
legal perspective, UM sort of trying to get out of
any guilt around being a Nazi or sympathizing with them.
And for Addi, UM he ultimately got the charges all
the way dropped down almost as low as they could go,
and there was sort of an admittance that he had

(33:54):
to work with them, but he didn't really pay the
price for that too badly, but not because of Rudy.
Rudy was, oh, yes he did, Yes, he did, right.
And I just remind everybody this comes down to Rudy's
want to be the head of the shoot company, right
because all throughout the war, Addie is the face of
Dossler Brothers, and Rudy feels kind of, you know, slighted
by that. So he's doing everything he can to get

(34:16):
Audie locked up so Rudy can run the show. And
keep in mind, these are not kids like in the
nineteen late nineteen forties. These are forties something almost fifty
year old men that are fighting like little boys and
so um. You know, there came a point in in
addis like working through this, uh, the appeals process with
the with the Allied forces. There are the Allied troops
or the whatever they called it at that time. I

(34:37):
think they were technically the Allied or Allied occupying. I
knew it had something to do with the occupation, but
I didn't want to get it wrong. Well, but he
had gotten his his um you know, the accusations sort
of lowered down to the lowest level. But Rudy actually
went back to the authorities and said no, no, no no,
he wanted to make the weapons. It was his idea

(34:57):
to do it. He didn't just do it because someone
asked him to. He it was his idea. I mean,
that's how bad this was. In any case, they go
back and forth. Eventually both of them sort of for
the most part, wiggle themselves out of any real legal
problems with the occupying forces. But they still got a
business to deal with, and so Essentially the family is
split into with some of the sisters on one side,

(35:19):
you know, the sister on one side, the parents feeling
one way, the various kids feeling however they're going to feel,
and they split the business into essentially splitting it, you know,
employees one for one, the buildings one for one, and
the way it turned out, correct me if I'm wrong, Nick,
But there was literally two main buildings, just coincidentally, one
on either side of a river, right, right, Yeah, So

(35:40):
in in their hometown of they they got right before
the war started, they had opened a second factory because
they were mostly football shoes in one, but they were
doing you know, other normal shoes a little bit in
the other. So they did have two factories and you're right,
literally across the river from each other in their town,
and the staff was split down the middle. I think

(36:02):
the interesting part of this is, right, so the sister
Marie goes with Addie or Addie because Rudolf gets her
son's killed. The parents sign side with Rudolf and go
to the other side of the river. And Routolf, apparently
in the Dassler Brothers company, was kind of the salesman
of the group. So when he goes across the river.

(36:24):
They let everybody who worked for Dassler Brothers Shoes decide, Okay,
who do you want to go work for? We're not
gonna tell you where to go. Most of the sales
team went over with Rudolf across the river. Staying on
this side of the river was Addie and most of
the technicians and development production people. So that just goes

(36:45):
to show you kind of where the two companies then
went went on from that point kind of. Rudy got
all the sales folks in the marketing and Addie got
all the invention side right and correct me if I'm
wrong again. But initially when that happened, Rudy's side I
had actually did better because they had good salespeople and
they teamed up with German football teams and local clubs.
I mean, they were out there pushing, pushing, pushing, and

(37:07):
so they were initially the more successful of the two.
But then people realized that the quality was better coming
out of ADDIE's side and ended up over there in
terms of the consumers. So there was another a couple
of other fun little pieces to this story, which is
this this town of It was such a small town

(37:29):
that everybody was sort of aware of this fight, and
everybody kind of knew about it. Like I feel like
in Atlanta where we are, as an example, you know,
if there was a family feud over our company and
they ended up splitting and one took one building, we
wouldn't know. But this was a different era and it
was a small town, and so everybody in the town
knew about this, and the town was divided about it,
and the town ended up being known as the town

(37:52):
of bent next because everybody had to look down to
see which shoes the strangers were wearing. Right, this is
like probably and this is not confirmed. I'm just gonna
put it out there. This may be the first confirmed
case of foot watching, right, because that became a thing
for a while. What brand you got? What? What brand
are your kicks? Yeah, this was probably the first time.

(38:13):
It was a big deal. And if you were you know,
they saw if you were wearing Rudy shoes, you were
one thing, and if you were wearing Addie shoes you
or something else. Also it could be like the earliest
occurrence of um, what we now know is what like
cell phone neck Ye, Like this is incredibly weird. That's true.
And it's even down to the point where the town
had two football clubs in the in the same league,

(38:36):
and one team sided with Addie and one team sided
with Rudy. It was nuts, all right. We also have
to talk about what they ended up naming their company, right,
I think you've probably hint, hint already figured out where
Audi Das came from, Audi Dassler. Correct, his shoes became
Audi Das Adidas. There you go. Rudy originally along the

(38:56):
same line, was going to call his shoe company Rue
Da Ruda. Okay, Rudolph Dassler. Yeah, maybe Dad, that was
not good. But but ultimately, uh, and we're not really
sure exactly why. Maybe that just didn't roll off the
tongue as well or whatever. Um, but ultimately his shoe
company ended up being called Puma. Yea ever heard of it? Yeah?

(39:19):
That Puma. So two of the biggest shoe brands in
the world today are still right across the river from
each other and still have a kind of, um, what's
the word A A antagonism towards each other. Yeah, very

(39:40):
very much, so very competitive with each other, even when
now really they should be all competing with like Nike, Oh, absolutely,
they've got much bigger competition and the families themselves aren't
really involved anymore and nineteam. But the companies just like
literally cannot stand each other. It's weird. They still go

(40:01):
at each other and they still claim. You know, there's
all kinds of claims back and forth about which one
was responsible for this invention or that invention. No, no,
we did it, No we did it. UM. Anyway, Puma
and Adidas both coming out of the Dustler Brothers story.
Now you see why we felt like we had to
tell this story, because it's not just the story of Adidas,

(40:22):
but in fact both companies and UM pretty fascinating. I
was telling a friend of mine about the story UM
before we sat down to record it, and they were like, wait,
what those companies were started by Nazis? Like rights, who do?
Makes you think? Right? And you would never think that Adida.
I thought Puma was something maybe what South American African based,

(40:42):
because you know that's where cougars live. No, Germany, so strange.
There are some more interesting facts though, right that we
have to get through. One of them I want to
share with everybody. We all know Adidas and their logo,
the Three stripe right one to three. Do you do
you know where that came from at all? The thought
process behind that. I'm gonna cheat a little bit here,
cheating looking at the sheep, but I do know, and

(41:03):
I think it's interesting because now people spend so much
time and energy thinking about exactly what a logo should
look like. Um, there's actually came from literally the way
the shoe was made. There were three sort of structural
support bands around the middle of the shoe to make
it work for four sports, and that actually just sort
of ultimately became the logo just by turning in another color. Yeah.

(41:24):
The story is literally that Addie was walking through the
production line one day and was like looking at the
shoes being made and just being light bulb went off
and he said, why don't we paint these? Because this
group with this batch is going to a team or something.
Why don't we paint these and see if people notice?
And it's stuck and they were in with it. Yeah,
And that was I think still in the late ninety
that was still pretty early on. Yeah. Yeah, So it

(41:46):
was suffice it to say in the nineties, late nineteen forties,
post World War Two, the two companies are you know,
getting up and running, getting their branding together, their trademark,
their Puma name, the stripes for Adidas. Uh, and they're
they're you know, starting to blossom and do well. And
we'll kind of leave the Puma story because this is
an Adidas episode and will focus on Audi das UM.

(42:09):
But they had some big moments in sports really, and
that is in the nineteen fifties when they started to
have some really important moments that made the brand UM
become even more prominent, not only there in Germany and
in Europe, but worldwide. And the biggest one that came
was in nineteen fifty four at the FIFA World Cup. Right,

(42:32):
we know soccer football is the biggest aspect of what
Adidas cares about, right in the sporting shoe. So this
is West Germany and East Germany. West Germany is in
the World Cup at nineteen fifty four. This is a
country that at this point is what eight years old,
like still fledgling, still trying to recover from the war.
They go to the World Cup and just prior to that,

(42:52):
in fifty two, Adidas and the team and the team
coach of the West German national team got together and
said Hey, why don't you help us with our equipment.
This is not out of the ordinary. Adidas has done
this with a bunch of smaller teams and clubs. So
Adida starts working with them on doing their equipment well, brainstorming,
and Audie himself comes up with a new design for

(43:14):
shoes that comes into play while West Germany is playing.
It is screw in studs in your shoes, so if
you can replace it for different playing surface or different conditions,
you don't just have that one set of cleats, so
to speak, for the shoe that you're playing in. So
West Germany is taking these shoes and they're beating the odds.
They're beating huge teams at the time like Turkey, Yugoslavia

(43:37):
and Austria, and they end up in the final match
against Hungary in the nineteen fifty four World Cup. And
I love that the whole fact that what happens next
has kind of everything to do with the weather. Yeah,
it totally has to do. If it had been a
beautiful sunny day, maybe this story would not have happened. No,
absolutely not, because on the day of the game there

(43:57):
was like a light drizzle, and so the pitch, the
field they play on was kind of muddy, which made
West Germany kind of happy because their best player on
the team just so happened to be really good in
those kinds of conditions. So they're playing against the Hungarian
team and just as the playing field starts to get
really bad later on in the game, the head coach

(44:20):
turns around and looks it at Audie and apparently this
is what Adidas claims is one of their biggest lines,
pivotal moments in their history. He looks and goes, Audie,
screw them on. Addie had developed deeper, bigger screw them
on now, Yeah, but he bigger spikes essentially to work

(44:43):
in these adverse conditions, And so without having to change
shoes and everything else, they plug them on and the
West German team beats Hungary and they come behind match
three to two. It is what's now known as the
quote miracle in Burn because West Germany should have never
stood a chance. And this is really the coach after

(45:04):
the game comes out and on the podium saying we
have to think Audi Dostler and Audi Doss because this
equipment is what helped us win this game. It really
launched them to the International prominence that they're at, and
of course to prove that we're not making stuff up
about the family rivalry. Many many many years later, in fact,
just a few years ago in two thousand six, Puma

(45:25):
comes back with a statement that they were the first
ones to invent the screw in studs. Yeah, they actually had,
because obviously they sponsored different teams. They came out with
like a newspaper article that showed a German local team
that had won, like the German National Soccer Championship three
months before the World Cup, wearing shoes with screw in studs.

(45:46):
So Nick and I decided, we don't really know this,
but we decided that there's a good chance that there
were probably corporate spies in both cases running back and
forth between Adidas and Puma, and we think the world
will never really know, right who at the first or
whose idea it was. Some people, they're literally across the
river from each other. It's not that hard time. And
also it stands to reason that Addie is the one

(46:07):
that came up with the screw and studs. And the
reason I say that is because he was the one
inventing all along. He was the brains behind the science
of the shoes all along, whereas that was never Rudy's specialty,
so he was much more a businessman and less a shoemaker. Yeah,
so we're gonna we're gonna side with Addie. The biography
team will side with the Audie on this one. Um,

(46:29):
but the world will really never know. In any case,
the miracle and burn was a big moment for the brand,
and um kind of launched the shoe to be just
really popular among football teams, soccer teams worldwide. A lot
of national teams then reached out to the company and said, hey,
we want that give us those shoes. Um. So that
was the nineteen fifties and UM, you know, essentially at

(46:51):
this point we're kind of to the point in the
story where Adidas is on their way. They're becoming the
iconic brand we uh know and love today. But I
think there are a few kind of fun little moments
along the way that are worth highlighting. By the way,
um the family stayed in the business, one of you know,
one of the fun points is it wasn't just like
when Addie was done, somebody else took it over. So

(47:13):
Horsted actually got into the game in the nineteen sixties.
He was ADDIE's oldest son, so he was running the
company for a long time, I believe. Yeah. Um, but
the soccer ball had Adidas's name on it in the
nineteen sixties. Howd that happened? So the soccer ball was
a big deal for Adidas because that was the first
thing they did kind of outside of shoes, right, they

(47:34):
just did shoes and cleats, that was what Adidas did.
And then they started to make uh, soccer balls, and
they expanded into other equipment in general for sports, so
that started to help their marketability. Right, they were into
more than just shoes. And then two interesting parts of
that of the equipment story. Nine seven, they release the
track suit. Everybody knows the Adidas track suit with the

(47:58):
three stripes down the pants and down the arms. They're
still around today. Look up a picture. I'm not kidding you.
Really hasn't changed very much at all. It's pretty much
the same for the last fifty years. And then in
nineteen seventy, Adidas, having a great relationship with the World
Cup and World Cup teams, approaches FIFA and says, hey,
we're starting to get to the point in nineteen seventy

(48:19):
where a lot of these World Cup matches are getting
televised all over the world, and soccer balls then really
looked like volleyballs. They were just white with the patches together.
He said, hey, here is an idea for something you'll
see on black and white television, and it's what we
now know as a soccer ball. They called it the
tell Star, but it's a soccer ball with occasional black

(48:40):
patches so you can see it on a black and
white TV screen. That is in in nineteen seventy they
sent that to FIFA. FIFA said, cool, we love it.
We're gonna make it the official ball of the World Cup,
and Adidas has been the official soccer ball of the
World Cup every single time they've had it since. Insane. Yeah,
also interesting to think that the company which really sounds
started When did the actual name Adidas become the name? Okay,

(49:05):
so shortly after the war. It wasn't until seventy two
that they got that sort of three leaf trefoil logo
that we all know now that came a lot later.
It did this. It's kind of interesting. They had the
three stripes all along, but then they added that I
guess that's what it's called a trefoil does that word
means something I've I looked it up and every time
I saw it, it it just kept sending me back to

(49:25):
images of that. So it may just be an artistic
concept like a floor dai ly a little bit, something
very similar to that. I was very educated at you
okay any in any case, that is sort of the
sixties and seventies um, and they then continue to expand
the line over time. Uh Rudy passed away in nine
seventy four from lung cancer. He was seventies six years old,

(49:48):
I think at the time. So I loved a pretty
good life. But in the nineteen seventies there was another
sort of development that Adidas can kind of take at
least partial credit for, if not credit for, And that
is sort of what we know now is commonplace, which
is brands sort of becoming official worldwide sponsors of a sport,

(50:09):
in this case FIFA World Cup, and the Brandon question
was Coca Cola. Yeah, so Horsed uh ADDIE's oldest son
who would joined the company, got into kind of marketing
and stuff. He saw the potential in this partnering with
teams and groups, so he ended up working with a
British advertising executive named Patrick Nally, They went to the
FIFA World Cup, they went to Coke. Took him a while,

(50:32):
but lo and behold. In nineteen seventy six, the deal
is official. They have an eight million dollar deal that
makes Coca Cola the first exclusive worldwide sponsor of a sport.
Then right after that they went after big names like McDonald's,
Levi Strauss and essentially Horst Dossler, the son of Audi,
an executive at Audi Das, is considered one of the
fathers of sports sponsorship. The reason you go to a

(50:55):
game and you see billboards in the outfield or you
see the for example, Adidas or Nike on a jersey,
these sponsorships, this branding, it was birthed by Adidas essentially. Yeah,
it's pretty crazy, you know. Our story is sort of
winding down essentially in terms of the growth and popularity
and Adidas turning into what we know now. But it's

(51:19):
worth noting that Addie did pass away in nineteen seventy
eight at seventy eight years old from heart failure, and
that Kata, his wife, then became the chairman. Yes, she
did in eight. She passed away six years later four,
but she had a couple of years as the boss there. Yes,
she did. She stayed involved in the business from the
moment her and Addie got married, Yeah, which is obviously

(51:41):
for the times, very rare. Yeah. And especially to not
only stay involved. I think a lot of women, as
we are learning just doing this podcast, were involved in
the businesses, but they didn't always get the credit. But
she actually took over in that chairman role after he
passed away, so that was kind of cool. Uh, and
then Horst took over after her. The other thing I
think is worth noting that as we moved into modern times,

(52:01):
starting with let's say the mid eighties through the nineties
and into now, the cultural changes Adidas made over time
I think also has really kept them front and center
as a brand. They've had their ups and downs in
terms of sales. I mean, Nike sort of got into
the game, and Nike is the number one shoe company
in the world now, but Adidas is number one in
Europe still and it's number two in the world, and

(52:22):
so um. Some of the things they did partnering with
artists they were early on and doing that now we
see a lot of brand um influencers now, but at
the time when they started doing it in the nineteen eighties,
that was relatively new and they were one of the first,
and in a way, it happened backwards for them. So
I think we can sort of end this, uh you know,
our episode today with this sort of fun story because

(52:45):
it just so happened that in the mid nineteen eighties,
around six UM, somebody who worked at Adidas happened to
go to a run DMC concert and heard this song
through stage at so they're like, wait a minute, did

(53:07):
they just say may Adidas because I worked there? And
they go back. This employee goes back to the company
and says, did you know this was happening? And they
were like what No. So they partnered with run DMC,
who had written the song just cause it wasn't a commercial.
It was written because they were wearing Adidas and they
were looking cool in Adidas kicks. So they partnered with

(53:29):
run DMC, and that was sort of the beginning of
them beginning to partner with UM celebrities and of course
other brands doing the same thing. And that continues really
into modern times, right it does, because they partnered with
another currently well known artist, one man named Kanye West.
I've heard of him. Yeah, and they made yeasies and

(53:49):
they're still running them today, and they have lots of
partnerships with non athletic stars like that. Adidas has just
been into that for a long time. Yeah, So that
brings us really up to modern times. I mean, we
skipped through the modern times a little bit because I
think we sort of all know that Adidas is part
of our culture now. Between the track suits and the
three stripes and the trefoil logo and World Cup and

(54:11):
the soccer ball. Everybody knows Adidas. And they're not hurting
in revenues at Adidas or approximately twenty four billion US,
so not too shabby, right, And all of that too,
is because they got it together in modern days. I
just I can't. I don't feel like we can finish
the episode without letting people know. We've learned so many

(54:31):
through phisiography of companies owned by companies we had no
idea they were associated. One of the reasons Adidas is
so successful. They just own also Reebok. We all know
that brand and Taylor made the golf company. Yes, so
they actively own and run both of those. Yeah, they're
they're they're a huge, massive international company. Yeah, they learned,

(54:52):
like a lot of companies do, as they got bigger
and bigger to acquire when it was appropriate, and they
sold things off here and there as well. Um So
a lot of interesting history there too, um but we'll
leave that for your googling pleasure. You know, I'd like
to sometimes make predictions beyond what's going to happen, beyond
the now, and I think it is just a d
percent clear that Adidas is here to stay. I mean,

(55:12):
certainly for the foreseeable future. Who knows what's going to
happen in the long long term, but in the foreseeable
Adidas is forever in the culture. They've done a good
job of ingraining themselves, yeah, and staying relevant. So good
on you, Adidas, And uh, that's our episode. See you
next time. Phisography is a production of I Heart Radio

(55:33):
and dB Media. I'm your host Dana Barrett, My co
host is Nick Bean, our producer is Tory Harrison, and
our executive producer is Jonathan Strickland. Have questions I want
to give us feedback or have a company you'd like
us to cover. Email us at info at Phisiography dot Show,
or contact us on social. I'm at the Danta Barrett
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or just search for me

(55:54):
on LinkedIn. Thanks for your support, d