The Nazi state forced Hugo Junkers to give up his patents and his company, and he died under house arrest on his 76th birthday

Hugo Junkers founded Junkers & Co. in Dessau in 1895 and pioneered all-metal aircraft. His Ju 52 entered service in 1930. He and his wife, Therese, had twelve children, and a son died in a plane crash abroad in 1923 while selling aircraft. After the Nazis took power in 1933, Junkers refused to join rearmament. The regime threatened him with charges of high treason. In late 1933 he was forced to hand his patents and a majority of the shares in his aircraft and engine companies to the Reich and to leave their management. He was banned from aircraft and engine work, barred from his own factories, and sent away from Dessau. From 1934 he was under house arrest in Bavaria. He turned to research on metal houses. He died at Gauting on 3 February 1935, his 76th birthday, while talks over his remaining shares were still going on. His widow then sold the remaining shares to a front company of the Air Ministry for a fraction of their value^†. The Junkers works grew into a major arms maker. After the war the plants in East Germany were nationalised. The West German plants were returned to private hands in 1957 and merged into Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm in 1965. The Junkers heating business went to Bosch, and the brand was used until 2019.