On August 6, 2023, Koba Kusiani, the chairman of the “Euro-Asian Alliance” organization, published a post on Facebook, according to which the father of the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, Eugen Schwab, was a member of the German Nazi Party and the Third Reich and a director of the industrial company Escher Wyss AG. The company supplied weapons to Nazi Germany during World War II. Attached to the post are photos of Klaus Schwab and a man in a Nazi uniform.
Russian-language Facebook accounts have also been disseminating the same information at different times. (1,2,3,4) The posts of Russian-speaking users additionally mention that Klaus Schwab’s father was a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party, close to Adolf Hitler, and had his own concentration camp.
The claim that Klaus Schwab’s father, Eugen Schwab, was a member of the Nazi Party and was in the close circle of Adolf Hitler is disinformation. The man in the Nazi uniform depicted in the photo is not Eugen Schwab but the German general Walter Dybilasz.
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The man in the photo is not Eugen Schwab but the German general Walter Dybilasz
The man dressed in the Nazi uniform depicted in the photo is, in fact, German general Walter Dybilasz. His photos are posted on several World War II-themed forums. (1,2)
The same claims about Klaus Schwab were verified by the fact-checking service of АFP. According to АFP, other photos of Dybilasz are available in the German Federal Archives, and obvious similarities can be seen in the photos.
At the end of the Second World War, Walter Dybilasz was captured by the Americans and handed over to the USSR. He was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor for war crimes. Dybilasz died in 1950 in prison in the city of Stalino (today’s Donetsk).
As for Klaus Schwab’s father, Eugen Schwab, he was the commercial manager of the Swiss company Escher Wyss’ factory in Ravensburg, southern Germany, although he was not a member of the Nazi Party and had no connection with Adolf Hitler.
A photo of Eugen Schwab is available on the family archives site Family Search, where his photo can be found on the temporary visa of Brazil. Klaus Schwab’s representative confirmed to the German fact-checking service DPA that the photo does indeed show Klaus Schwab’s father, Eugen Schwab.
АFP obtained archival documents on denazification related to Eugen Schwab. Denazification was a program of the Allies after World War II that aimed to eliminate Nazism in Germany and Austria. Within the framework of the program, many people were interrogated in order to reveal their connection with Nazi organizations. Eugen Schwab’s file shows that he was interviewed twice in 1946. The file also reveals that he was neither a member of the Nazi Party nor had any connection with Adolf Hitler. It is also worth noting that during the Second World War, Escher Wyss, like other factories in Germany, used the forced labor of prisoners; however, in a comment to АFP, Niels Weise, a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich, noted that the use of forced labor by Escher Wyss during that period would be guaranteed and this process would not be directly related to the factory manager.
At different times, the said claim was debunked by a number of fact-checking organizations, including АFP Fact-checking, DPA Fact-checking, Verificador, and OBSERVADOR.
Disinformation that the ancestors of various politicians and influential people were members of the Nazi Party was disseminated a number of times in the past. For more information, see the articles prepared by “Myth Detector:”
- WERE THE GRANDFATHERS OF THE GERMAN MINISTERS OF HEALTH AND FINANCE HIGH-RANKING NAZI OFFICIALS? (in Georgian)
- Had George Soros Been Nazi SS Officer?
- DISINFORMATION ABOUT THE ANCESTORS OF EUROPEAN POLITICIANS? (in Georgian)
About the Source:
Koba Kusiani is the chairman of the non-governmental organization Euro-Asian Alliance. The Euro-Asian Alliance is one of the pro-Russian organizations that appealed to the Prime Minister of Georgia in February 2021 to import the Russian-made vaccine against COVID-19, Sputnik V. They claimed that, unlike Western vaccines, Sputnik V is safe and effective. On July 4, 2022, in the story aired on the Channel One of Russia, Kusiani voiced disinformation about the Lugar laboratory. In addition, Kusiani systematically spreads various fake news on social media. For more information, see:
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