Many companies had to let go most of their workforce. At the same time, Germany closed its borders to Swiss watches and movements forcing firms dependent on Switzerland out of production. Shortly after the war, German watchmakers founded “Deutsche Präzisions-Uhrenfabrik Glashütte in Sachsen GmbH” (German precision watch factory Glashütte in Saxony), known by its acronym DPUG. The idea was to go to mass production using latest technological machinery. Emil Lange decided not to follow this direction. In 1919, he retired and left the company to his three sons: Otto, Rudolf and Gerhard Lange. To counter inexpensive production of DPUG, Otto Lange launched a new brand “OLIW” (Original Lange Internationales Werk) and designed a 43mm diameter movement. It was protected in Germany under registered design No. 748 972. It took years to complete the OLIW and serial production did not start until the late 1920s. Between 1921 and 1923, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic triggered a wave of corporate bankruptcies. Prices ran out of control, for example a loaf of bread, which cost 250 marks in January 1923, had risen to 200,000 million marks in November 1923. At A. Lange & Söhne, sales of OLIW remained behind expectations. In the Glashütte watch industry, most of the workforce was laid off during 1920 and 1930s. Walter Lange describes the situation as follows: “I was born in the Weimar era; then came the crash in 1929 and the great unemployment. I can still see it today; it was a childhood trauma for me, when I looked out the living room window and saw all the unemployed men lined up, waiting across the street. I will never forget that view.” Germany's military buildup of the 1930s brought the demand for precision watches back to Glashütte. From the second half of the thirties to the end of World War II, A. Lange & Söhne was one of five watch manufacturers (the others being Stowa, Laco, Wempe and IWC) that built B-Uhren for Germany's air force (Luftwaffe). B-Uhren is an abbreviation of Beobachtungsuhren, literally: observation watches. The total military production amounted to about 13,500 precision watches, equipped with caliber 48 (small seconds) and caliber 48.1 (sweep seconds) with a movement diameter of 48mm. A. Lange & Söhne, as well as other Glashütte watchmakers, used slave labour to build chronometers, timers, and fuses. During this time Glashütte contained more prisoners than residents, most were women from other