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Unfortunately I cannot give you a specific source for this information. I know it to be fact though. From a logical standpoint alone, do you think the Germans in control of that plant or the German government was still making their payments to Ford or GM after declaring war on us? Can anybody believe (except a tin-hatted conspiracy theorist) that execs here in the states were in contact with thier German counter-parts by phone, even, on a daily basis while the war raged?

Whether the plant was wholly owned or built under license, once the shooting started, that was it.

Another fact that bears on this is the point that was made concerning all these "trucks" that supposedly helped the Germans carry out their blitzkriegs. The German army, except for the Mechanized Spearheads, was primarily horse-drawn. On the Russian front, for example, the Armor often had to lager for days waiting for the infantry and horse drawn artillery to catch up. There are a number of great book that explode the myth of the extent of the German army's mechanization - much of which was myth propagated by Goebbels to scare Germany's enemies. That is why there was such a lull between the attack on Poland and France. The Germans had neither the fuel nor transport to carry on sustained mechanized operations. Blitzkrieg was a neccessity. Troops, even German troops used to 30 miles a day, need time to rest and recoup.

The dearth of motor transport was such that captured trucks were considered a great prize. France and the low-countries were stripped of almost all rolling transport (civilian and military) to support the war effort in Africa and Russia. Captured tanks, too, were used by the germans (there were quite a few T-34's and captured French tanks prowling the steppes with black crosses on them).

Now that I have been going on about this, I believe that the details I gave on the Ford and GM plants came from Speer's diaries. One of these plants was converted to Aircraft production, I think.

For details on the Nazi's seizure of industrial assets, Ian Kershaw's two volume biography of Hitler covers the topic nicely. Alan Bullock's "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives" also does an excellent job.

Foreign and domestic industrial assets were seized and incorporated into the Hermann Goering Reichswerks. Ironically, the Thyssen family, one of the few German industrial families to proactively support the Nazis in their early days, were the first to have their family company seized by Goering's cronies in the economics ministry.

Remember, the Nazis were on a crusade against what they called the twin evils of Zionism: Bolshevism and Capitalism. They were no fans of private industry, although election politics limited their seizures until the late 1930s.