The dark history of Adidas has yet again come under the spotlight after the sportswear giant was forced to redesign the German football team kit following a Nazi symbol blunder.

Adidas launched the new jersey with excitement ahead of Germany hosting the European Championship this summer – but the company which was founded by a Nazi party member has instead found itself embroiled in another row.

When critics pointed out that the number 44 bore a striking resemblance to the ‘lightning bolts’ logo used by the Nazi SS units, Adidas was forced to ban German football fans from customising the shirts.

But amid growing outrage, the German football association last night announced that the font would be redesigned in its entirety. 

It comes just a month after the German national team and Adidas announced their iconic partnership that dates back to the 1950s would be coming to an end, paving the way for US sportswear rival Nike to swoop in and take over.

As Adidas faced mounting pressure to amend its new kit, the sport brand’s ties to the Nazi party have been thrust back into the limelight. From making shoes for Nazi dictator Adolf Hilter to its laboured response to rapper Kanye West’s vile anti-Semitic rants, Adidas is no stranger to controversy. 

Adidas founder Adolf ‘Adi’ Dassler and his Puma businessowner brother Rudolf were members of the Nazi party, joining in 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor and rose to power.

Both Adidas and Puma not only created sports shoes but made boots for Nazi soldiers as well as Panzerschreck bazookas, an anti-tank rocket launcher, which were used on the front line in World War II. 

The brothers – who engaged in a bitter feud for decades – would even sign their letters ‘Heil Hitler’.

The Dassler brothers founded shoe company Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik, or Geda for short, and began production in the 1920s in their hometown of Herzogenaurach, Germany, a hot spot for shoe making in Bavaria with more than 100 individual shoemakers.

What distinguished Rudolf and Adi was not just their willingness to become members of the Nazi party, ensuring their business success under Aryan domination, but their ambitions.

When the ‘Nazi Olympics’ came to Germany for the 1936 games, they snuck into the Olympic village to convince U.S. Olympic running star Jesse Owens to wear Adi’s custom-fitted spiked shoe. Owens brought home four gold medals for team USA.

Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect stated that the Fuhrer was ‘highly annoyed by the series of triumphs of the marvellous coloured American runner’.

‘People whose antecedents came from the jungle…with stronger physiques… should be excluded from future games’, he stated. Owens went on to become the sprinter of the century.

With the expansion of the war in December 1943, Hitler converted civilian business operations to military manufacturing.

Now instead of making sports shoes, the Dasslers produced boots for Nazi soldiers as well as the Panzerschreck bazookas in their factory.

In 1948, after over 30 years of working together the brothers separated. Rudi set up Puma that year while Adi launched Adidas a year later.

A lifelong grudge separated the brothers, which is believed to have stemmed from a tense relationship between their wives and Rudolf’s suspicion that his brother was behind his conscription into the army that led to being imprisoned by the Allies.

Both brothers were called to duty with Rudolf joining the Gestapo. Adi served only one year while his brother stayed in until the end of the war.

When Rudolf found himself in an American internment camp, he suspected he had been denounced by his brother who was now busy making baseball and basketball boots for Americans. 

More recently, Adidas sparked a backlash over its slow response to renounce Kanye West for his anti-Semitic comments, only doing so after organisations like the Anti-Defamation League and a social media campaign called the company out. 

West was obsessed with Hitler long before the troubled rapper went public with anti-Semitic remarks in 2022, yet Adidas bosses ignored his disturbing behaviour.

Among the allegations made in a jaw-dropping New York Times report was that West asked a Jewish company executive to kiss a picture of Hitler every day as a way to show unconditional love and drawing a swastika on a pair of sneakers during a visit to Adidas’ headquarters in Germany.

Adidas first partnered with the rapper in 2013 and the two sides would go on to broker a deal in 2016 that was described as the ‘most significant partnership ever created between a non-athlete and an athletic brand,’ according to USA Today.

The controversy behind the business fall out for West began when he and some of his models wore a shirt emblazoned with the phrase ‘White Lives Matter’ on its back for his Yeezy Paris Fashion Week show on October 3.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says the phrase is one that was adopted by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The controversy did not stop there for West, who then doubled down on his comments on Instagram, and later took to Twitter to use anti-Semitic rhetoric in his posts and in interviews.

One of the most infamous of his posts was when he appeared to threaten Jewish people in a tweet that came shortly after his Instagram account was restricted for content viewed by some users as antisemitic.

‘I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,’ he began in the controversial post on October 8, 2022.

‘The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,’ he wrote, in one of his first tweets in two years.

The post, which was criticised by various Jewish organisations, was later removed by Twitter for violating its rules. 

Adidas ended a major partnership with West in 2022 over his anti-Semitic statements and discontinued West’s line of Yeezy shoes.

In a statement at that time, the company said it ‘does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech.’

It added his ‘recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.’

Last month, it was announced that Adidas plans to sell the remaining stocks of the Yeezy sneakers for at least the price it cost to make them. 

It comes as Adidas fight to salvage the German football kit amid a backlash over the number 44’s resemblance to the Nazi SS logo.

SS units were the most responsible for crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis during World War Two.

The new kit, launched before Germany host the European Championship in June and July, debuted during their 2-0 friendly win over France last month. 

‘The DFB checks the numbers 0-9 and then submits the numbers 1-26 to UEFA for review. None of the parties involved saw any proximity to Nazi symbolism in the creation process of the jersey design,’ the German Football Association (DFB) said in a statement.

‘Nevertheless, we take the comments very seriously and do not want to provide a platform for discussions… we will develop an alternative design for the number 4 and coordinate it with UEFA.’

Adidas had earlier said that they would remove the number 44 from their range of customisation options.

‘We will block the number 44 as quickly as possible,’ Adidas spokesman Oliver Bruggen told German media. 

‘As a company we actively oppose xenophobia, anti-Semitism, violence and hatred in any form.’

Amid a backlash, historian Michael König wrote on X: ‘Historically it is very questionable to allow such jerseys for the home European Championship.’

Members of the SS, designed by the Nazi units in 1929, varied from Gestapo agents to concentration camp guards.

Duties of SS members included managing concentration camps where millions of Jews and other people were killed.