Adidas against Puma, feuds, betrayals (and Nazism): the history of the Dassler, the rival brothers who have changed sport forever

A few days ago, Puma announced the appointment of Arthur Haeld As CEO of the group, with effect starting from July 1, 2025. Haeld, previously, was responsible for sales of Adidas. Who knows the romance « biography » of these two sports brands, has caught the pungent irony behind this rotation of charges. It is, if we want, the last chapter (certainly not the definitive) of one of the most famous family feuds in the business world: that of the Dassler against the Dassler, or Adidas against Puma.

The beginnings

This story full of twists (and low blows) began in the 1920s, in a Germany that is preparing to fall into the hands of the Nazi horror and Nazism, for its part, to be formidable for the Dassler brothers and for their first footwear company, the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik. We are a Herzogenaurachtown of Bavaria (located about twenty kilometers from Nuremberg) with a long tradition of socks and slippers. Also Christoph Dassler, father of the protagonists of this story, even if he came from a family of textile entrepreneurs and dyers, embraced his profession. His wife Algirdas, on the other hand, manages a dyeing in the back of the house. Adolf, called Adi, should have become, mei projects of the parents, baker, but the boy prefers sport and learning the rudiments of the trade from his father. The First World War overwhelms everyone. Rudolf, called Rudi, and ADI start military and on their return the mother’s activity are closed due to the economic crisis that came with the conflict. ADI, which is already a visionary shoemaker, installs in the laboratory and begins to produce sports shoes capable of having a direct relapse on the athletic performance of those who wear themto. The company opens it with his brother, who with great talent for trade becomes the main seller of the company. The Dassler are good, they know how to do it, but all this is not enough for the big jump. The right astral conjunction is needed, the emphasis on Hitler’s sport is needed and, above all, the great opportunity that presents itself to the little Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik in the form of the Berlin Olympics from 1936.

Intuition

The intuition is by Adi. Make his top athletes wear his sneakersthose who generate the most enthusiasm between the public, would mean obtaining the greatest possible advertising. Adi then works hardly because the feet of the athletes with his shoes. And he succeeds. But it also does more: during the Olympics he manages to make them wear Hitler’s nemesis, that Jesse Owensan African American sprinter and length, who won three of his four gold medals wearing the shoes produced by ADI Dassler.

The Second World War

The Second World War marks another watershed in the life of the Dassler brothers and it is in this period that the relationships already tense between the two worsen. ADI and Rudi live under the same roof with their parents, but have not got along not since, in 1934, Adi married the young Käthe Martzwho badly stands the family of her husband and who will rude, subsequently, will take the only real cause of the disagreements with his brother, because the woman always puts mouth on the issues related to the company. In reality, Rudi does not accept that the younger brother has actually become head of the Dassler family. In addition, when in 1943 he was aware again, he believes he did not find help in his brother, a help that he had given him the previous year, making pressures between his knowledge in the Nazi party, in order to let him leave the army and stay in the factory. Rudi’s hatred becomes open hatred when, at the fall of Hitler, The brothers are put on trial by the allies because of their adhesion to Nazism. Rudi is accused of belonging to the SS and is convinced that the light was made by his brother.

The birth of Adidas and Puma

The accusations fell, the two Dassler in 1947 divided the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik. Rudi moved to the other side of the river, followed by the workers of the commercial sector, where he founded a competitor’s shoe company he calls Puma. The employees most linked to production and research remain with ADI, which founded theAdidas (Name that derives from the union of ADI with the first three letters of his surname) and records the brand of the three stripes, the technical tric that had started using since the Olympics as the lateral reinforcement of his shoes, highlighted by a different coloring.

The « city of the folded hills »

From this moment on, the rivalry between the two brothers becomes a corporate rivalry that divides the same town of Herzogenaurach into two factions and gives it the name of « City of the folded hills», Because of the widespread habit among the population to look at before starting a conversation which shoes are worn by the interlocutor. In the meantime, the Dassler brothers have stopped talking to each other and will never do it again. Thus, as they will never see again until Rudi’s death, which took place on October 27, 1974. Adi will follow him four years later, on September 6, 1978. The two are buried today in the cemetery of Herzogenaurach, but in two different lots, one as far as possible from the other, as per the disposal of ADI Dassler.

The inheritance

ADI and Rudi at their death have left their respective empires and also a legacy of hatred. In fact, the Dassler cousins ​​have never been on good relationships, despite a kind of pact of non -belligerentness in the early seventies, when the American competition of brands such as Reebok and Nike forced them to more mild advice. The agreement at that time is not to try to contract the greatest football player of the time, Pelè. Peace, however, is broken by Puma, with Armin, son of Rudi, who contacts the footballer and offers him sponsorship, infuriating the head of Adidas, or the cousin Horst.

The bribes

The essential point of Barbara Smit’s enjoyable book is that the feud between the Puma and Adidas branches of the Dassler family gave rise to millions and millionaire sponsorships, who forged in money what is modern sport, both professional and amateur. From the first post -war Olympics, in fact, the Dassler deliver money envelopes to athletes in a period in which the Olympic movement still tries to resist marketing. Smit, who wrote for the Financial Times And the economisthe cites an American sprinter who participated in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics: «It was like in James Bond films or thrillers. In Tokyo, an agent went to the bathroom and left an envelope under the door, and I entered immediately after him. You received an envelope with six, eighteenth -century tickets or even a couple of thousands of dollars in five or ten banknotes. You thought you had become rich ». And the athletes, embittered in order not to be paid for their Olympic labors, do not say no to playing puma against the Adidas, demanding over time more and more money from the reluctant shoe traders.

Horst Dassler

In reality, Smit still tells, leading the corruption of the Olympic movement was rather another family feud, the one between ADI and his son Horst. The scion, in fact, was sent to Alsatia To create a division of Adidas that must only sell in France (the brand Arena). But Horst, an extremely ambitious man, is not satisfied with quietly waiting for his turn and transforms his corner of company into a sort of secret empire that acts against the express will of his parents. Horst Founded shadow company To hide some product lines, He makes friends with all the most important officials in the Sport worldT, including the managers of the Olympics: he knows how to serve them and, above all, how to corrupt them. He immediately understands that having the rights of sporting events can be a multimillionary deal. When he died in 1987, at just 51 years of age, the deception of all his secrets almost collapses Adidas.

Nike’s competition

But on the tormented story told in this book, there is another black cloud that hovers. A cloud resulting from a small Oregon running shoe company, founded by Phil Knight, an ambitious man as Horst Dassler. That company, initially called Blue Ribbon Sports, is now known as Nike. Much more than Adidas or Puma, Nike has contributed to transforming sneakers into shoes that everyone, not just athletes, wear. He understood the marketing much better than his European rivals and finally passed them. As for the transformation of sport, a few moments are more important than Nike’s decision to hire Michael Jordan As a testimonial, pay him millions to wear his shoes and launch a brand with his name that one day would have cost even more than $ 100 per pair. Nothing, explains Smit, changed the sport business in a deeper way. But this is completely another story and another book.