Translations:Siemens/11/en

The international network of subsidiaries and associated companies was broken up with the outbreak of World War I. Property, material assets as well as patents and property rights abroad were confiscated. The international business had to be rebuilt again when the war ended. Former subsidiaries, such as the English Siemens Brothers & Co., were now competitors. As before the war, Siemens succeeded in keeping the business going with the aid of large orders. The largest of these projects was the electrification of the entire Irish Free State, which was completed in 1930. Siemens had re-established 193 overseas branch offices before the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

1971 advertisement for Siemens kitchen appliances. (Source: Siemens Corporate Archives)

Siemens benefited in National Socialist Germany from the flow of orders stimulated by preparations for war. With revenue of 1.3 billion Reichsmark, the company group became the most successful German electrical company. The labor shortage that ensued during the war years was increasingly compensated for by forced labor in the 1940s, with the result that some 50,000 of Siemens' entire 244,000 strong workforce were working as forced laborers in 1944. In 1942, the "Siemenslager Ravensbrück" camp was established in the immediate vicinity of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where detainees manufactured telephone sets, radios and measuring instruments for Siemens. Siemens products deemed important for the war effort were produced additionally in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Lublin.