Sol Bloomenkranz - Charles Bedaux - Deciphering an Enigma

CHARLES BEDAUX
DECIPHERING AN ENIGMA

SOL BLOOMENKRANZ

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Charles Bedaux - Deciphering an Enigma

Copyright 2012 by Sol Bloomenkranz.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-2636-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-2637-8 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 06/29/2012

Contents

Charles Bedaux was a unique man. In a span of twenty years, he went from being an apprentice pimp on the streets of Montmartre to founder and CEO of the worlds largest consulting company. Only in America was this possiblethe land of opportunity, where ambitious immigrants were welcomed. But before another twenty years had passed, he committed suicide after being charged for conspiring with an enemy of America. How he went from here to there is the question I have attempted to answer.

Why did I decide to go into the Bedaux story? It gave me the opportunity to review an era in which I had lived and learned of events so cruel to mankindbut also an era so fascinating to professional and amateur historians. I count myself among the latter.

It has been a long time since Ive engaged in any kind of serious research. I would never have undertaken this project without the unflagging support and encouragement of my dear wife, Gisela Maria Gertrude. Our youngest grandson, Miles, with his bright, inquisitive questions and comments, has also helped me finish what I hope my readers will find to be a worthwhile effort. Finally, I would also like to thank my editor, Jill Andersen, without whom this never would have come together as a coherent book manuscript.

I must also express my thanks to the archive directors who, upon hearing of my attempt to solve the Bedaux puzzle, brought to my attention many personalities with whom Bedaux associated during the 1930s and 1940s. They shared several eureka moments with me. Thank you, Herr Gregor Pickro of the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, and the Institut fr Historische Wissenschaft in Munich were patient and kind in responding to my many queries.

A number of writers have examined the Charles Bedaux story. Most wrote about the contributions he made to the consulting world, for which he gained fame and fortune. Some delved deeper, investigating both the bright side and the dark side of his life. Janet Flanner wrote a three-part series in the September-October 1945 New Yorker magazine. Her work encouraged me to dig deeper. Jim Christy wrote a biography about Bedaux highlighting his bright side. Martin Allen wrote the book Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies in 2002, which is about the dark side of the Duke of Windsor and his contact with Bedaux. Charles Glass, in his 2010 work, Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation , was most helpful for his use of American archives.

My approach to Bedaux was first to engross myself in the literature that has been written about the era and the people he encountered. But most of my story is based on the subsequent information I found in German archives, such as the BAKoblenz, the MAFreiburg, the Deutsche Bank archive, and others.

As Bedaux might have said, it has been an interesting journey.

Charles Eugne Bedaux was born on October 10, 1886, in Charenton, a suburb of Paris. He was one of five children, and his father worked for the French railroad system. His two brothers, Daniel and Gaston, would become engineers, and his sister, Marcelle, would become a seamstress. Young Charles, however, was a school dropout, not completing the equivalent of high school. Atypical for this petit bourgeois household, Charles undoubtedly concerned his parents.

What did a young man without a trade or profession do in a village like Charenton? He headed to the big city, Paris, to seek his fortune. At the time, Paris was the third largest city in the Western world, had a population of more than three million, and had hosted the 1900 Olympics. The first Mtro line had recently opened and it led to Montmartreand that is where young Charles went to seek his fortune.

In Montmartre, a district noted for artists and an active nightlife, he was an apprentice to a notorious pimp. But shortly after his mentor was killed in a gang shooting, Bedaux emigrated to the United States. He arrived there on February 14, 1906. By the time he arrived, America had already welcomed about four hundred thousand French emigrants. In fact, America was booming: between 1900 and 1910, eight million immigrants came to the United States. Most of them worked for less money than their native-born brethren, and often took any kind of work. A reasonable wage was twenty dollars a week, and $745 a year was considered a subsistence income.

What was America like at the beginning of the twentieth century? The average life expectancy was forty-seven years, and only 14 percent of homes had a bathtub. The average worker earned between $200 and $400 a year, about twenty-two cents an hour. About 10 percent of adults were illiterate, and 6 percent had graduated from high school.

Like so many others, the young immigrant Charles Bedaux arrived with very little money. He worked a variety of menial jobs, such as washing dishes and construction. When he sold insurance for a short time, he discovered that he was a natural salesman, and outdid most of his competitors.

He traveled west to St. Louis in 1908 and worked as a laborer at Mallinckrodt Chemical. He met and married Blanche de Kressier Allen and had a son, Charles Emile, in 1909.

At the chemical plant, Bedaux moved up the ladder: he was ambitious and eager to learn, and constantly came up with ideas for the company. In 1912 he was able to visit Paris with his young family.

Once back in the United States, Bedaux began working in New York for McKesson-Robbins, a pharmaceutical wholesaler. It was there that he met A. M. Morrini, the Italian industrial engineer. Morrini was visiting the United States to study worker efficiency measurement methods and scientific management, which Fredrick Taylor had introduced a few years earlier. Morrini needed an interpreter, and hired Bedaux. They traveled the country together to hire a staff of American engineers, and Bedaux accompanied the group of engineers to Europe later that year.

Bedaux stayed in Europe through 1913 and worked for a French consulting company run by Louis Duez. With the outbreak of the war in August 1914, Bedaux enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, but by December he was discharged. According to war department military intelligence division file number 10505-17 national archives, as cited by Martin Allen in The Hidden Agenda , Bedaux was discharged from the legion because he suffered from bacillary hemoptysis, a condition that leads to the coughing up of blood. But there is no evidence that Bedaux suffered from this condition; it might have been staged so he could be released from the Legion.