Bahlsen did take advantage of the economic opportunities offered by National Socialism. According to the findings of the historians, Nazi ideology was not the main driving force for most of the people responsible for the company at the time. They were concerned about the future of the company. In doing so, grave mistakes were made.
The Bahlsen brothers in charge at the time were all Nazi party members. Although they did not act as top representatives of the NSDAP, they were in contact with NSDAP functionaries. At time they also supported the SS financially.
In order to replace employees who had been drafted into the Wehrmacht or who had to work in other industries, Bahlsen used more than 800 foreign forced labourers from various European countries, mostly women from Poland and Ukraine, between 1940 up until the end of the Second World War. The forced labourers had to live in the company's own camps and were subjected to racial discrimination. Bahlsen also used forced labourers at a branch factory in the town of Gera, which was set up in June 1943.
In March 1942, after Nazi Germany occupied Ukraine, Bahlsen took over a large biscuit factory in Kiev, which had been handed to the company by the Nazi regime. Until September 1943, when the Red Army reconquered the city, Bahlsen also did good business there and supplied the Wehrmacht.
After the end of the Nazi regime, the company, as an important food producer, quickly received a production licence. In the years that followed, Bahlsen used the market conditions emerging after the currency reform of 1948 for considerable corporate growth.
For a long time, the company and the Bahlsen family addressed this part of the company's history only superficially. They relied on the accounts of their ancestors and did not thoroughly investigate the family and company history. With the comprehensive academic study by Manfred Grieger and Hartmut Berghoff, clarity and transparency about the company's history have been created.