Debunking Rumors that WEF Founder Klaus Schwwab's Father Was a Nazi

• Klaus Schwab's father, Eugen Wilhelm Schwab, worked for a company that supplied munitions to the Nazi regime during World War II.

• There is no evidence to support the claim that Eugen Schwab was an officer in the Nazi military. A photograph circulating online that purports to be of Eugen Schwab is in fact a photo of Walther Dybilasz, a major general in the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.

Over the past few years, various claims appeared on social media alleging that Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), was the son of a Nazi military officer.

Online claims about Schwab's father, Eugen Wilhelm Schwab, and his links to Nazism in Germany don't end with allegations of him having been a military officer in the Third Reich. Multiple social media accounts also assert that the elder Schwab was, among other things, a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (if not in the military) and a close personal confidant of Adolf Hitler, and that he worked for a Nazi contractor.

While some outlets have already disproven the claim that Eugen Schwab served in the Nazi military, there's no evidence supporting the claims of his having had a personal relationship with Hitler. However, he did help to run a company that supplied the Nazi military with munitions during World War II, and that Hitler acknowledged the company for its service to the Third Reich.

Let's start with the various viral claims. In October 2023, an account on X claimed without citing evidence that "if a former Nazi was the first Head of the UN…and a former Nazi was the first Head of NATO…is it really hard to believe that Klaus Schwab…the son of a Nazi…is posing as the 'Fourth Reich Leader' to rule over our World?" That post received more than 587,000 views.

A similar assertion, that the elder Schwab was an "intimate confidant of Hitler," was shared on the r/conspiracy subreddit in 2022, comparing two photos, one of Schwab and one of a man in a Nazi uniform, purported to be his father:

(Reddit)

In May 2022, conservative political commentator Benny Johnson posted to X an allegation that Eugen Schwab had ties to the German Nazi Party. The post claimed he "was a hardened Nazi party member who served the Third Reich war effort as the director of Escher Wyss AG — an industrial company that manufactured flamethrowers to kill Allied soldiers and burn down villages."

Snopes has reached out to the WEF, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Below, we outline our evidence for who Schwab's parents were, the identity of the man in the Nazi uniform in the viral image, and what the elder Schwab did for work in support of Nazi Germany.

Who Were Klaus Schwab's Parents?

In Klaus Schwab's 2021 book "Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet," he wrote of his father, who was born in 1899 in Bern, Switzerland, on page 174: "My father ran a company in Ravensburg called Escher Wyss." Throughout the book, Schwab referred several times to his father as "Eugen Wilhelm Schwab" and his mother as "Erika Epprecht," to whom the book is dedicated.

We should note the elder Schwab's photo and biography also can be viewed on the FamilySearch section of the Ancestors website (though no mention of a wife named "Erika Epprecht"). Epprecht's page on the same website lists her husband as "Eugen." Interestingly, neither of their respective pages mention either having a son named Klaus, although this is likely due to incomplete information shared to the platform rather than doubt about the son's parentage; Klaus Schwab's family tree on other genealogy websites, including Geni, does list Eugen Schwab as his father.

German fact-checking site Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) claimed a spokesperson for Klaus Schwab once confirmed that the man in the photo on Ancestors was indeed his father. DPA also linked to a photo on X purporting to show Eugen Schwab's Brazilian immigration visa from 1960. The photo on the immigration papers matched that of the photo on Ancestors, which also corroborated the elder Schwab's reported immigration to Rio de Janeiro that same year.

In 2022, Eugen Schwab's immigration document was shared to Facebook by the account Behind The Curtain - Forbidden Knowledge & Hidden Truth, which compared the immigration photo of Schwab's father to that of a man in a Nazi military uniform:

(Behind The Curtain - Forbidden Knowledge & Hidden Truth/Facebook)

Who Was the Nazi Officer in Photo?

Using the photo of the man in the Nazi uniform, Snopes conducted a Google reverse-image search, which led to the online platform Armed Conflicts and a page dedicated to Walther Dybilasz (alternatively spelled Walter Dybilasz), who was listed as a major general in the Wehrmacht, or unified armed forces of Nazi Germany. We also found the same photo on Traces of War. Both platforms shared details about Dybilasz, including his birth on Oct. 1, 1892, in Altona, a neighborhood in Hamburg, and his death in 1950 at a Soviet prisoner of war camp in Stalino, Ukraine.

In addition, in 2022 French news outlet Agence France-Presse (AFP) pointed to the German Federal Archives, or Bundesarchiv, which published documents on Dybilasz, listing him as a major general who was born Oct. 1, 1892, which match his date of birth listed on other websites, along with a photo that bears striking resemblance to photos of Dybilasz posted elsewhere.

So if the image doesn't show Eugen Schwab, is it still possible he was a Nazi? The Institute of Contemporary History's Simone Paulmichl confirmed to Snopes that "there is no evidence that Schwab's father played an important role in the Nazi Party."

AFP spoke with Niels Weise, a researcher at that institute, who claimed the elder Schwab's post-World War II denazification files did not indicate he was a Nazi, saying that "he was not even a member of the Nazi party (NSDAP)," and that "there are no signs that Schwab had a special (or any) relationship with Hitler."

While there is no evidence to support the claim the elder Schwab's was a Nazi military officer, party member or Hitler confidant, he did work as director of a mechanical engineering company Escher Wyss that contributed to the Nazis' war effort.

Elder Schwab's Ties to Weapons Manufacturing in Nazi-Era Germany

Per the National Library of New Zealand, "Swiss engineering firm of Escher Wyss & Co, Zurich, was founded by Hans Kaspar Escher in 1805. They produce water turbines, pressure pipelines, steam engines for vessels, steam turbines, high-pressure air compressors, paper making machines, steam boilers, pumps, motor launches, carbonic acid refrigerating machines, etc."

In an English translation of Jürgen Dunsch's 2016 German-language book "Hosted by the Powerful: Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum in Davos," the author wrote:

In Paul Tice's book "The Race to Zero," the author referenced Eugen Schwab and the company that he helped run in Ravensburg where his son was born, following the family's move back to Germany from Switzerland: "Eugen, who was also an industrial engineer, actively supported the German war effort during World War II. The elder Schwab worked for the Swiss industrial manufacturer, Escher Wyss & Cie., and moved his family back to Germany."

In addition, Tice writes the following of Escher Wyss:

Indeed, the National Swiss Press Agency provided a document, dated Aug. 24, 2000, to the Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation brought against Swiss banks, which listed Escher Wyss' factory in Ravensburg as having used "Swiss capital and forced labor in Germany," using around 200 forced laborers, likely from "nearby Nazi camps," per Politifact.

The U.S. National Archives made several references to Escher Wyss in the section of its website titled "Holocaust-Era Assets," as part of its efforts to trace assets looted by the Nazis from victims and survivors of the Holocaust:

Another English translation of a passage from Dunsch's book also noted that "after returning from the States, Klaus Schwab immediately made the jump to the board of Escher Wyss. This isn't entirely surprising, as Escher Wyss was the company whose factory in Ravensburg his father managed."

According to Schwab's résumé on the WEF website, he followed in his father's path, stepping into a lead role at Escher Wyss from 1967 to 1970, when he served on the managing board of "Sulzer Escher Wyss AG, Zurich, a manufacturing company with activities in several countries and with 10,000 employees."

So, while there is no corroborating evidence to support the claim that Schwab's father was a Nazi military officer, or that he was an "intimate confidant of Hitler" who was a member of the Nazi Party, he was indeed a Nazi-era industrialist who worked high up at Escher Wyss, an engineering company that was also used as a defense contractor, supporting Nazi war efforts by supplying munitions to the regime while using forced labor in its factories.

Klaus Schwab, who is 86, has long been the target of online conspiracy theories. They often point to a real initiative known as the "Great Reset," which he and the WEF introduced in June 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns. That initiative aims to inspire global policies that "reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future," Schwab once wrote.

Snopes has previously covered rumors about Klaus Schwab including that he was once hospitalized, and that he called Elon Musk a "dangerous extremist."

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