Wine and War: Chasing the weinführers

by Don and Petie Kladstrup
Exclusive extract, plus new insight into the research process

It was only by accident that we heard about the weinführers. We were talking with Philippine de Rothschild of Château Mouton-Rothschild about how French winemakers struggled to survive under the Nazi occupation. Our book, Wine and War: the French, the Nazis & the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure, had yet to be written — we were still collecting information — but with what she was telling us, we knew we were on to a good story, one that had never been told before.

Philippine was just a child when World War II broke out but she vividly recalled how German soldiers marched into Bordeaux and took over numerous wine estates including Mouton. She described how their old cook ran around the grand salon trying to remove paintings before soldiers shot holes in them. As for Mouton’s wine, much of it had been removed and hidden at another château before the soldiers arrived. ‘So we were lucky there,’ Philippine said, ‘but we also had a saviour. His name was Heinz Bömers.’ Before we could ask who Bömers was, she quickly added,’ And you should talk to his son. He has a vineyard in Entre Deux Mers.’

Bömers, we learned, was a key figure in the Third Reich’s plan to take over France’s wine industry. Although Hitler didn’t like wine, referring to it as ‘vulgar vinegar,’ he understood how prestigious and profitable it could be and declared that Germany should obtain the very best of France’s wines. His point man was Field Marshal Hermann Göring who complained that France was ‘fattened with such good food that it is shameful’.

He admonished the Reich’s soldiers to ‘transform yourselves into a pack of hunting dogs, and always be on the lookout for what will be useful to the people of Germany.’ To get the best wine, however, the Nazi leadership did not want a pack; it wanted pointers, men who knew not only wine but also the people who made and sold it. So the Reich’s economic planners turned directly to the German wine trade, creating a corps of what some called ‘wine merchants in uniform’.

The French had another name for them: the weinführers.

Their job was to buy as much good French wine as possible and send it back to Germany where it would be resold internationally for a huge profit. To do the selecting and buying, the Third Reich assigned one weinführer to each wine region. The most important was Heinz Bömers who headed Germany’s largest wine importing firm, Reidemeister & Ulrichs. He was sent to Bordeaux.

German authorities, however, had made a mistake. The weinführers were indeed wine experts but they were much more than that. They were also friends of French wine producers. Their connection through generations of doing business together had long since transcended commercial matters; they had trained in each other’s firms and spoke each other’s language fluently. They were even godfathers to each other’s children.

The weinführers also were keenly aware of something else: the war would not go on forever and when it ended, France would still be next to Germany; they would still have to live together and hopefully do business again.

Much of what we learned came from Heinz Bömers, Jr. who described how his father was told he would lose the family business unless he became a member of the Nazi Party. ‘He had to think of his family, to protect them,’ Heinz Jr. said. ‘He had to make compromises and I know he suffered from that. But he was always convinced the Nazi time was a temporary time, so you had to do all you could to survive’…

Exclusive extract: Chapter Three, The Weinfuhrers
That is why when Bömers, forty seven, who had been excused from active military duty for health reasons, received a cable in May 1940 from the German Ministry of the Economy offering him the job of Beauftratger in Bordeaux, he agreed to go. ‘It was a job he could have refused I think,’ said Heinz Jr said. ‘But I think he felt that this was some place where he could help, could make things easier for everyone. He had many, many friends in Bordeaux’.

Bömers accepted the job on several conditions: that he not be paid by the Nazis and would pay his own way; that he be free to change as many marks into francs as he wished; that he would not be required to wear a uniform; and that he have the authority to ‘step in’ if he felt the actions of German troops were inappropriate. ‘He was afraid that some of those Nazis, like Göring, would like to have some very old Mouton-Rothschilds, and he could imagine that some of the soldiers will think they should just pick them up for him,’ Heinz Jnr said.

Bömers arrived in Bordeaux just after the armistice was signed. In a way, it was like a homecoming. Prior to World War I, his family had owned Château Smith Haut-Lafitte and made wine there until the French government confiscated it along with other German-owned property. In the years that followed, Bömers, working from his office in Bremen, imported French wines and developed close relationships with key producers.

‘Sentries with bayonets’ 

So for many Bordelais, his arrival in 1940 posed a cruel dilemma: their old friend and business colleague now represented the enemy. To allay fears, one of Bömers first acts weinführer was to call wine people together and reassure them he was still their friend. ‘Let us try to resume our business as normally as possible,’ he said, ‘but when I leave one day, I hope you will have better stocks of wine than you have now.’ It was his way of telling them that he had their interests at heart and that when the war was over, that he hoped to continue doing business with them.’

‘He came around and said hello to all of us,’ said May-Eliane Miaihle de Lencquesaing. ‘Of course we all knew him from before the war, when he would come here, so we said to him, ‘As long as you are not wearing a uniform, you may come over in the evening and have dinner with us as usual.’

Nevertheless, many Bordelais were apprehensive. ‘Bömers was a very powerful man,’ said Jean-Henri Schÿler of Château Kirwan. ‘If you did not want him to sell your wine, he could order you to do so.’

Even Daniel Lawton, who had trained in the Bömers firm in Bremen, and who ran one of Bordeaux’s oldest brokerage houses, got a taste of Bömers temper. When he heard Bömers demands for wine and the prices the Germans would pay, Lawton had no hesitation about standing up to Bömers and refusing.

Bömers was incensed. Glaring at Lawton, he warned, ‘If you don’t agree to sell us wine on our terms, there will be sentries with bayonets in front of all Bordeaux cellars tomorrow!’.

‘Go right ahead, do it,’ Lawton replied.

It didn’t happen. Bordeaux wine merchants, however, had little or no alternative but to deal with Bömers. ‘We could no longer sell our wines to Great Britain, or the United States,’ said Schÿler. ‘It was all closed up. We had a choice: we could sell our wines to the Germans or we could throw them into the Gironde river’.

Hughes Lawton, whose father had defied Bömers, agreed. ‘You have to deal with a situation you did not want. Once you are defeated, you have to do what you are told.’

Although many Bordelais considered Bömers tough, even autocratic, they respected him. They had been worried he would go after Bordeaux’s finest wines, treasures that one producer said constituted, an ‘inestimable museum of wine’. Another worried aloud, ‘Will this integral part of French civilization be confiscated, pillaged, sent with the Renoirs, the Matisses, the Georges de La Tours to the other side of the Rhine?’

Bömers vowed that would not happen, even though his overlords in Germany were putting heavy pressure on him.

Instead he did the Bordelais a favor: he relieved them of massive stocks of poor-quality wine that had accumulated after the harvests of the 1930s. One of his purchases alone amounted to the equivalent of a million bottles’.

‘He was a very honest man,’ said May-Eliane Miaihle de Lencquesaing of Château Pichon-Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande. ‘My parents used to tell me, ‘Thanks to Mr Bömers, we still have our wine. He tried his best to keep a good balance, not to make the Germans angry and to take care of his friends.’

But it was a dangerous job. ‘Bömers had to walk a tightrope. It was a bit of a double-game he had to play,’ according to Jean-Henri Schÿler of Château Kirwan. On one occasion, Bömers received an order from Field Marshall Göring for several cases of wine from Château Mouton-Rothschild.

Bömers loathed Göring and thought, Mouton is too good for the likes of him. So he asked workers at the château, one of the few which did its own bottling, to help with a bit of deception. The weinführer sent them bottles of vin ordinaire and instructed them to glue on Mouton labels. The workers were only too happy to comply.

The bottles were then shipped to Göring’s office in Berlin. Bömers never heard a word of complaint from the field marshal.

‘He saved our wine,’ May-Eliane Miaihle de Lencquesaing said. ‘He made sure no one had to sell too much wine, and he made sure it was always paid for. After he came, no more wine was stolen’.

Extract is from the book WINE AND WAR: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Donald Kladstrup and Petie Kladstrup. Copyright © 2021 by Don and Petie Kladstrup. Published by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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