The break between Adolf Dassler and his brother Rudolf was not merely a family quarrel; it unfolded under the shadow of their Nazi past and the threat of postwar punishment. During the war, the brothers fought over control of the factory, military service, family employment, and access to scarce leather. Rudolf later claimed that Adolf and his Nazi Party contacts had helped ensure Rudolf’s conscription, while Adolf’s wife, Käthe, portrayed Rudolf as trying to seize control of the company. In 1945, after Rudolf returned from the Eastern Front, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Nuremberg and then detained by American occupation authorities on suspicion of links to the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS intelligence service.
Rudolf insisted that his Gestapo detention had been part of an investigation and later offered a dramatic account involving a supposed transfer toward Dachau, a driver ordered to kill prisoners, and liberation by advancing Allied troops. The American investigator rejected much of this testimony as an attempt to conceal unlawful activity. Adolf, meanwhile, faced his own denazification hearing: on 13 July 1946 he was classified as a Belasteter, the second-most serious category, associated with profiteers and potentially carrying a prison sentence of up to ten years. He appealed with testimony from local supporters who described him as politically moderate or protective of anti-Nazi figures. Although the source does not establish a final criminal conviction, the proceedings destroyed the possibility of restoring trust between the brothers. In 1948, they separated their enterprise, with Adolf building Adidas and Rudolf founding Puma—two global sportswear empires born from a bitter feud over wartime responsibility, political allegiance, and control of the family factory.
