He was known as the Henry Ford of Europe, and with good reason. André Citroën was first to bring Ford’s mass production methods across the Atlantic, transforming his upstart new car company into Europe’s biggest. He built the largest industrial complex in Europe, the world’s second largest after Ford’s.
Citroën, the car maker, became Europe’s first truly international car company. Its success in France encouraged André to open factories in Germany (subsequently closed by Hitler), the UK (in Slough, opened in 1926), in Italy and in Belgium.
By the late 1920s, Citroën was the world’s fourth biggest car maker, after the US Big Three. He sold the same number of cars as longer-established Peugeot and Renault combined, a fact that particularly irked Louis Renault – who petulantly dismissed the brilliant André as ‘le petit Juif’ (the little Jew). So you don’t need to guess why the Nazis shuttered his Cologne factory.
