Sloan's memoir presents a different picture of Opel's wartime existence. According to Sloan, Opel was nationalized (along with most other industrial activity owned or co-owned by foreign interests) by the German state soon after the outbreak of war. Sloan presents Opel at the end of the war as a black box to GM's American management—an organization that the Americans had had no contact with for 5 years. According to Sloan, GM in Detroit debated whether to even try to run Opel in the postwar era, or to leave to the interim West German government the question of who would pick up the pieces. But Opel was never factually nationalized and the GM-appointed directors and management remained unchanged throughout the war, dealing with other GM companies in Axis and Allied countries including the United States.