[6] After World War II, Bertelsmann, under the leadership of Reinhard Mohn, went from being a medium-sized enterprise to a major conglomerate, offering not only books but also television, radio, music, magazines and services.

[13] The C. Bertelsmann Verlag, originally specialized in theological literature, expanded its publications to include school and textbooks and in the 1920s and 1930s increasingly entered into the field of light fiction.

[16] Heinrich Mohn belonged to the patrons' circle of the SS and sought to turn his company into a National Socialist model enterprise.

[17] During World War II, the C. Bertelsmann Verlag became a leading supplier to the Wehrmacht,[18] even surpassing Franz Eher, the central publishing house of the Nazi Party.

[25][26] After World War II, the company portrayed itself to the Allied Control Authority as a Christian publisher that was part of the resistance to Nazism and allegedly persecuted.

[36] With the Kommissionshaus Buch & Ton (book and audio commissioning company), from which the Vereinigte Verlagsauslieferung (VVA) emerged, Bertelsmann laid the cornerstone for its service business.

At the same time, there was an increasing saturation of the German market for the Bertelsmann Lesering,[48] whereas the foreign book clubs earned the lion's share of revenues in this corporate division.

Dr. Juergen Kraemer, former Finance Minister of West Germany, who had previously headed up management of Gruner + Jahr, became the new chairman and chief executive officer.

[59] The affair concerning the forged Hitler diaries occurred at the beginning of his tenure, which damaged the reputation of Gruner + Jahr and Bertelsmann as a whole.

[66] Sonopress, a company established in 1958 to manufacture records, was not part of the Bertelsmann Music Group, rather it was assigned to the print and industrial division.

[99][100] Under the leadership of Thomas Middelhoff,[101] Bertelsmann increased its involvement in the Internet,[102] whereby above all the investment in Napster received major media attention.

[108][109] In order to finance additional growth of Bertelsmann, Thomas Middelhoff raised the idea of going public,[110] which led to fundamental disagreement with the Mohn family.

[111] In 2002, Gunter Thielen became the new chairman and chief executive officer of Bertelsmann,[112] and some members of the media viewed the change critically.

[124][125] In addition, Gunter Thielen initiated the buyback of the shares from Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, so that the Mohn family regained complete control of Bertelsmann from 2006.

[138][139] In 2012, Bertelsmann went from being an AG to its current incorporation as a partnership limited by shares ("Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien" or "KGaA"), with the general partner being a European stock corporation ("Societas Europaea" or "SE").

[140][141] In 2013, Bertelsmann floated part of its shares in the RTL Group on the stock exchange,[142][143] in order to finance additional growth from the proceeds of the sale.

[158] In 2017, Bertelsmann also undertook moves to further strengthen its core business, among other things increasing its share in Penguin Random House from 53 to 75 percent.

[159][160] Through the partial withdrawal of Pearson, Bertelsmann secured a strategic three-quarters majority in the world's leading trade publishing group.

[172] OnCourse Learning offers continuing education and professional development by providing digital courses for healthcare and financial services clients.

[173] Bertelsmann, itself a strong advocate of lifelong learning, donated tens of thousands of Udacity scholarships in 2017 and 2019 to enable the advanced training of talented participants, in fields including Big Data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

[178] The marketing arms of the Spiegel publishing house, Axel Springer, and Funke Mediengruppe have since joined the Ad Alliance as well;[179] its portfolio reaches over 99 percent of the German population.

[183] The Bertelsmann Content Alliance develops joint formats and delivers a full range of products and services for creative professionals.

[185] On 14 December 2020, Bertelsmann entered talks to sell the French magazine publisher Prisma Media, a division of Gruner + Jahr, to Vivendi.

[193] The company runs a commercial private television and radio channels in several countries, including RTL and VOX in Germany.

The BMG catalog encompasses rights to works by artists such as Céline Dion, Jennifer Lopez, Ronan Keating and Britney Spears.

[266] The Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (BVG) has key influence on the whole group: It bundles all the voting rights of the Mohn family and foundations with ownership shares.

[269] In 2012, Bertelsmann created the additional so-called Group Management Committee, in order to advise the executive board in important matters.

[290] They were precipitated by a speech given by the chairman and chief executive officer, Thomas Middelhoff, on the occasion of his receiving the Vernon A. Walters Award 1998 in New York City.

[291] Thomas Middelhoff portrayed Bertelsmann as one of the few non-Jewish media companies shut down by the National Socialists because it allegedly published subversive literature.

[293] The speech led to a broad public debate and ultimately in 1998 to the establishment of an independent historical commission (IHC) by the group.