(Newser)
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After the end of World War II, Hugo Boss said he had supported the Nazis to keep the company he founded afloat. But the fashion firm has admitted that there was another reason: He was a big fan of the Nazis. Boss—who was Hitler's favorite tailor and supplied the Nazis with uniforms from the party's early days onward—"did not only join the party because it led to contracts for uniform production, but also because he was a follower of National Socialism," writes the author of a history of the company during the Nazi years, which it commissioned itself, the BBC reports.
Records unearthed by the author show that one of the company's factories was staffed by 140 forced laborers kidnapped from Poland by the Gestapo, reports the Telegraph. The firm wishes to "express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule," it says on its website. The company's founder, who died in 1948, was tried and fined after the war for his links to the Nazis.
