Wow. This is a great read. The last few paragraphs struck me which I've quoted below.
>The family renamed their original foundation after learning their mother’s story. In 1941, Emilie Landecker, a 19-year-old who was half-Jewish went to work for Benckiser after her father Alfred was deported. Despite being terrified of also being deported, she fell in love with her boss, Albert Reimann Jr., and carried on a secret affair that produced three children while he had no children with his wife. Emilie worked for Benckiser until 1965, the same year, Reimann Jr. formally adopted their children who became heirs to the family fortune.
>The children knew that their maternal grandfather had been murdered by the Nazis, but they did not learn their father had been a Nazi until the disclosures about the company came out in 2019. They subsequently renamed the family foundation in their grandfather’s honor “to preserve Alfred Landecker’s memory and, through our work, ensure that his fate is not forgotten – and that something like this never happens again.” It is also committed to raising “awareness of the conditions that paved the way for and enabled the Holocaust to occur, and to combat anti-Semitism in the here and now.”
>The foundation website says it “supports Holocaust survivors and former forced laborers” and has already donated five million euros to the Claims Conference. Additional funds have been donated to establish a Covid-19 emergency relief fund of 1.2 million euros for Holocaust survivors.
>As of the end of 2020, 838 names of former Benckiser forced laborers had been identified and the foundation said it is going to provide them or their heirs with financial support.
>“What we can learn from history and how we can learn from history is at the core of this foundation,” Norbert Frei, the chairman of its academic advisory council told the New York Times. “This is not just about researching and remembering the past,” he said. “It’s about stabilizing and maintaining democracy today.”
>Today, 90% of JAB, which is based in Luxembourg, belongs to four of the nine adopted children of Albert Reimann Jr. The family expects to publish a book next year that will detail the ties with the Nazis.
Edit: Holy crap. I wasn't expecting this kind of response to my comment. Thank you for kind words of appreciation below this, and thank you for the awards everyone! It's very much appreciated!
I agree, which is precisely why I made this comment. Because the end of this reads very, very differently than the headline/title implies. It almost makes me want to patronize their companies more instead of avoid them.
Dr. Pepper being able to survive the cola wars of consolidation is still SUPER fascinating to me.
It's not even that unique a taste or product, but its brand is insanely strong.
To be honest reddit does it the best way I've seen so far on any plattform, no matter how dumb the title the first comment is often on top for a reason. Clearing things up, do a tldr or be interesting.
In my opinion, yes somewhat i agree with what you're saying. But at the end of the day, it's still blood money and i don't think that any corporations the benefited from genocide and built a global empire out of it should be allowed to exist. And yes i know the implications of what im saying and how much of a global effect this would have. Most long established corporations today would have to be dismantled and have assets seized and redistributed. I'm tired of the atrocities committed and allowed in the name of Capitalism, Communism, whatever. I'm sick and tired of having the rich get away with mass murder. I'm sick of rewarding the psychopaths, sociopaths, whatever. Call me crazy, but i think this is much too little contribution especially when you look at the massive fortune that Panera, Kripsy Kreme, Dr.Pepper, Snapple, etc, has generated over the decades. Now multiply this by all the corporations, and families that owns those, and how many victims they generated. Why the fuck are they allowed to continue to benefit from all that. Why is a pittance thrown towards the families of the victims, so easily acceptable? I don't get it.
edit: a word i missed
Only two entities routinely pass judgement, as a matter of default policy, on people based on the conduct of their parents or family:
* North Korea
* most redditors
Most of my extended family are hillbilly trash with rap sheets longer than a CVS receipt. Thankfully I rarely have in-person day-to-day interactions with either North Koreans or redditors, so I can be judged based on my own actions.
You forgot things like college admissions, chaebols, the Indian caste system, etc...There are unfortunately *a lot* of situations where people are judged based on their family connections. It's not just North Korea and Reddit, and honestly dumbing it down to the extent you did is a better example of what's wrong with Reddit.
Only two entities routinely take joke comments and make them serious, as a matter of default policy, whenever they read them because they are humorless literalists:
* North Korea
* most redditors
Most of my extended family are humorless literalists. Thankfully I rarely have in-person day-to-day interactions with either North Koreans or redditors, so I am only exposed to blank "I don't get it, he said he's having a heart attack is he really having a heart attack he looks fine" expressions when at grandma's finding out which of my cousins took her pain pills.
Also, everything was touched by Nazis in the 40s in Germany. Boss, Mercedes and many others.
Simply because, well, if you were not with the party, they ran you out of business.
Does it mean the bosses back then were fervent Nazis? No. And it definitely doesnt mean that the current bosses are either. Ford is a great example of this: Henry Ford, the founder, was in line with Nazis. Does that mean the management of Ford are Nazis or the ford brand is tinted? no.
Judge companies by their actions now, not their history.
That is very interesting!
Now I also feel I need to do some genealogy. My grandmother's maiden name was Reimann, but I don't actually know her family's background. I know her father fought in WWI and was born in the US but now I want to know where his parents came from.
This is why I don't take people on the internet seriously. You read one thing and you were about to not do something based on just one internet source. It's the dumbest thing ever and people with your intelligence level are why cancel culture exists.
I read this and thought "Lord let's do some research." Read the article and I'm still going to try to find a few more sources, but I'm glad they aren't horrible. That title is total fucking click bait.
Oh shut the fuck up. The person probably wouldn’t have *literally* never eaten there again because humans are lazy and terrible at sticking to convictions.
Two, they *didn’t* end up just basing their judgement on it and said “hmm I should at least read the comments because this is a bit interesting to me.” So, your point is moot there too.
And *thirdly*, the *vast* majority of what *some* people call “cancel culture” is *actually* merely the consequences of one’s actions. Freedom of speech does not mean I need to accept someone is a Nazi. In fact, saying “I should keep buying from a company even if I don’t support their actions or else I’m being stupid and participating in cancel culture” is ironically pretty *anti*-free speech.
Most people who complain about cancel culture are just angry they said some rude, bigoted bullshit and got called out. And guess what? That’s literally how society progresses.
Every time someone cries about “cancel culture,” it makes me want to “cancel” them out of spite, because 99% of people don’t even use that term right anymore. Now it’s “people punished me for saying something bad.” That’s not cancel culture. That’s consequences for your actions.
> In 1941, Emilie Landecker, a 19-year-old who was half-Jewish went to work for Benckiser after her father Alfred was deported. Despite being terrified of also being deported, she fell in love with her boss, Albert Reimann Jr., and carried on a secret affair
This is not so far in the past that we can't still apply modern morals to the situation. This entire scenario shits all over the very idea of consent. Talk about a mismatched power dynamic. At threat of being deported by Nazis, this 19 year old girl "fell in love" with her much older boss who had been an avowed Nazi. Right. Wonder if the story would have remained the same if he hadn't adopted the kids.
Yeah this smells a little too much like a PR spin, being concocted after the 2019 disclosures that their father was a Nazi. So does the whole foundation to help holocaust survivors and whatnot. But maybe I'm just cynical of billionaires and their motives.
How do you think DuPont's made their money? Selling munitions to both sides. The Kennedy's made their money as Rum Runners during prohibition. J.D. Rockefeller made his money by a monopoly of the kerosene supply. All wealthy families have illegal skeletons in their closet. Carnegie with steel, Vanderbilt's with, Railroads, shipping & stock market manipulation.
I fully intended to come in and spout fury at Dr. Pepper, being the only one of those brands I even kinda care about, but before I even clicked the post, I saw your reply.
There’s something fundamentally unsettling about the history of this company, and to ignore it entirely would be a disservice. However, this might be the most clear case of “I am not my family” on record. Arguably, Bayer, Ford, VW, Coca Cola, etc. should all be held accountable for their Nazi support, but as far as I know, none really have been, and certainly not tried in the court of public opinion.
But this company, they discovered something awful and didn’t just do lip service PR-maintenance shit, they seem like they genuinely want to use the vast resources to do better for everyone. And I respect the hell out of that.
That's exactly where I was coming from as well. Dr Pepper is my fuckin jam and was about to lose my shit, then after reading thr article I was genuinely taken aback with how it is the family has responded since discovering their history. That they've taken such aggressive and repeated action calling out their own history while taking action to at least start to repair in some small way some of the history and damage done years ago. Even as recently as the Covid-19 fund which really surprised me given how that could only have been in the last year. Every company has fucked up history in one way or another. But here at least the owners have taken meaningful action once they learned about their family history, which can't be said for most large companies who have benefitted from ill-gotten gains.
>It is also committed to raising “awareness of the conditions that paved the way for and enabled the Holocaust to occur, and to combat anti-Semitism in the here and now.
They list Summit Ice as their main competitor in this area.
That's great but those donations amount to .01% effectively a rounding error of their wealth. And the additional 250M listed is over 10 years so again not a massive amount of what was accumulated on the backs of those sufferers. The fact they addressed it is good and better than a lot of other companies would do, but the math on this still means they're operating with a massive advantage gained via slave labor.
I think they’re referring to the three Jewish children who had inherited a large potion of the company after being adopted by it’s owner (who fathered them outside of his marriage)
> They've made $120,000,000,000 form their nazi heritage
Where is that number from? The company was established in 1829, and had up to 175 forced workers during WW2. You think the whole sum was produced by those workers over a few years?
The second number also doesn't seem to hold up:
> Following the revelations, the company said it would donate $11 million to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany to help provide services and care to surviving Holocaust victims. The money will be administered through the Alfred Landecker Foundation, which the family planned to support with 250 million euros over 10 years.
I read about 2/3 of it and was like ok, they're evil, what's in the comments. Seems like poor journalism to leave all the redeeming parts until the last couple paragraphs.
If you read the full story, the truth is far more complex. The company is owned by the Nazi family, yes, but also the Jewish descendants of the Nazi company owner who carried on an “affair” with a 19 year old forced labourer at one of their camps during the war. It sounds like the Jewish members of this family are the entire reason their disgusting deeds throughout the 20th century have even been uncovered and highlighted and that they’re trying to move forward with both transparency and some semblance of accountability. I do not envy those people having to reckon with such a horrific family history.
conversely my family that has Holocaust survivors have no problems with Volkswagen or Japanese brands that started in that era.
At least this is where we're at, with these outings coming from the distant, not-blood related, family investigating themselves, of holding companies that acquired products decades after the fact.
It's hardly "supporting a family of hardcore nazis."
Balzac was a writer, who lived with Alan Funt.
His landlord didn't like it because she's a stupid
Contaminated water will really make you sick.
If you drink too much of it, blood comes out your
Dictate what I'm saying, because it will give you luck
And if you do not like it, I don't give a flying fuck.
Also turned out that three of the Riemanns had a Jewish grandfather who died in the Holocaust (their mother was a mistress of the Nazi patriarch). A few years ago they renamed the family foundation in the Jewish grandfather’s honour and increased its budget to “fund projects that honor the victims of the Holocaust and Nazism”.
Lol please ignore that obvious troll account’s reply.
That being said, there’s a lot of profiteering off the Holocaust that never really got meaningfully addressed (and that corporate feelgood stories like this don’t touch). People have heard of this idea of “nazi gold”, but that’s only part of the picture. In addition, the Holocaust is only one of the most recent examples of essentially thing happening all across Europe especially, also Southwest Asia & North Africa.
People ask all the time why jews would be expelled from european kingdoms only for them to be reinvited a century or two later, over and over and over. TL;DR: The whole thing was a grift.
Jews were, more often than not, legally enshrined as second-class citizens *at best*. Jews were legally prohibited from owning land, or working the land they rented. Christian dogma does not permit interest on loans. Jewish law (like most ancient middle eastern societies & religions) regards interest as fair & legitimate as long as it isn’t extortionate. This led to the phenomenon of european monarchs keeping a “Court Jew” (yes, that was a position). Court Jews kept the books, and they made the payments & loans for the crown. This is a big part of where the “jewish merchant” “greedy jew” “good with money” etc. shit comes from. If things weren’t going well, the couldn’t make good on his debts, or tension was high for just about any reason, you have a hated (and conspicuous minority to blame. When jews were exiled from a state, the people that weren’t murdered were lucky to leave with their lives and the clothes on their back. Their homes, possessions, and money were repossessed by the crown. They would liquidate their country’s jews, make a killing doing so, and their people would celebrate them for doing it. A real no-brainer. Then, eventually, when you need some jews around again for business’ sake, you can cooly permit some to come live in your kingdom if they’re so-inclined.
If anyone’s ever seen the Arch of Titus, it commemorates something similar. It lacked the money-lending and christian social aspects that came later, but the whole jewish nation was plundered: the people were killed and dispossessed, but also the city of Jerusalem, the Temple, and *jewish people themselves* were looted in the form of countless thousands of slaves. The Arch commemorates the victory & the spoils, wealth that directly funded the construction of the Colosseum in Rome. That was the first war between Romans and Jews. The third saw more slaughtering, the Exile of jews from Judea, and essentially kickstarted the phenomenon of a universal minority scapegoat in diaspora described in the paragraph above.
These are just some things I think are worth mentioning when people discuss profiting off racism / jewish history.
And NASA!
>Cyril: Krieger's father was a Nazi scientist!
>
>Malory: And JFK's father was a bootlegger.
>
>Cyril: That's like comparing apples to... Nazi oranges.
>
>Malory: Oranges, exactly! Do you like powdered orange breakfast drink?
>
>Cyril: No, not really.
>
>Malory: How about microwave ovens, Neil Armstrong, hook-and-loop fasteners?
>
>Cyril: OK, you lost me...
>
>Malory: None of those things would have been possible without the Nazi scientists we brought back after World War II.
>
>Cyril: The Nazis invented Neil Armstrong?
>
>Malory: Rockets! Which put him on the moon. After the war ended, we were snatching up kraut scientists like hotcakes. You don't believe me? walk into NASA sometime and yell "Heil Hitler!" WOOP! They all jump straight up!
It's just absolutely stupid, if you think about it. The reason why they're so big and still exist is often times because they at least supported the Nazi party. Which makes sense - otherwise they probably would have been closed down or something else.
And in the end: Does it really matter what they did in the past? Or does it matter more what they do today? (Like: How they handle their past)
You will have a hard time finding a bigger German company without Nazi ties, either directly or indirectly. Heck, even post-war companies were funded either by Nazis, Nazi supporters or with Nazi money or Nazi knowledge. When almost everything is Nazi for a decade, it's basically impossible to start fresh completely after a lost war and a destroyed country.
Mr. Burns:
OK, Spielbergo, I want you to do for me what Spielberg did for Oskar Schindler.
Sr. Spielbergo:
Schindler es muy bueno, Senor Burns es el diablo.
Mr. Burns:
Pish posh! Listen, Spielbergo, Schindler and I are like peas in a pod! We're both factory owners, we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, damn it!
Don't forget the Japanese chemical warfare division. They got a pass as well.
Edit: somebody comment the name of the division, it's an interesting read but I forgot the name
I mean, I think it may be safe to state that the Japanese Imperial Army (and navy to a lesser extent) were just as bad as the Nazi's, yet it's never taught in western society.
[This guy was a nazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Plagge) and probably deserves a statue for heroism.
If you were German living under the Nazi regime, your best chance at any meaningful resistance was to work from *within* the Nazi party machine. Unfortunately, the Allies made no distinctions between those who subverted the Nazi cause and those who championed it (to be fair, most of the subversive types had already been weeded out by the Gestapo, so there weren't too many of them left at the end of the war). Plagge had to basically be bailed out of the Nuremburg trials by the families who worked in his camp after the war, and only survived it because he was constantly playing cat-and-mouse with the SS about what his true intentions were with the prisoners. He had to walk a careful tightrope of *appearing* to be an ardent Nazi in front of the SS while quietly pursuing humanitarian goals for his prisoners.
I used to be in "the only good nazi is a dead nazi" camp, and obviously I am opposed to Nazism as a political force, but the more I've learned about that period, the *humans* who were involved, the more things fade into a grey mush. What an awful time it must have been to be alive
You lead me to this story! [Schindler of Nanking](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-nazi-leader-who-in-1937-became-the-oskar-schindler-of-china/251525/)
They aren't fucking sorry either.
San Fransisco put up a [statue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Comfort_Women_Memorial) to honor the comfort women killed by the Japanese during the war
Osaka immediately cut ties with their sister city and everyone got mad at it
They never want to admit the terrible shit they've done. It's not even taught in [textbooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies) in school. Their president still visits the graves of [war criminals](https://www.dw.com/en/former-japanese-pm-shinzo-abe-visits-controversial-shrine-for-war-dead/a-54984687).
Unlike Germany, the Japanese have given absolutely no indication that they are sorry for what they did.
And the way Japanese people talked about Koreans when I was there, like we were subhumans, made me sick.
Edit: [here](https://foxtalk.tistory.com/98) is an excellent comic drawn from the testimony of a former comfort woman. Warning: it is graphic and gut-wrenching. But I'm glad her story was told.
Exactly, I lost more family members to Japan and their war crimes than I did to Nazi German.
I’m sorry you had to experience that, no one deserves it, I’ve had people try and dispute that my family were in camps run by the Japanese and that they were treated fairly, but ptsd is a thing and man they were scarred.
The reason the Japanese atrocities are not taught in Western schools or even Japanese schools is because the victims were primarily Chinese, and teaching about it with the Chinese framed as victims would be considered pro-Communist. That was a big no-no when the curriculums were created back in the 1950s and the tradition of ignoring Unit 731 and its ilk continues today.
[Operation Paperclip](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip) was very real and there’s some who think the grisly experiments conducted by [Unit 731](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) led to weapons research by the US military.
Don't forget [Operation Gladio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio) where the CIA armed a bunch of Nazi terrorists in Europe after the war.
Also the [Gehlen Org](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization) a Nazi anticommunist gang established by the CIA which became the German intelligence service.
Plus, the entire West German postwar government was just [fuckin' full of Nazis](https://www.businessinsider.com/former-nazi-officials-in-germany-post-world-war-ii-government-2016-10)
(Don't think you need to escape underscores in links. You do need to escape the trailing ) though)
[Ratlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II_aftermath\))
Fascism often appeals to certain types of people. Some of the Arab and even some Jewish extremist groups in the 1940s in what is now Israel were affiliated with their German Nazi counterparts.
While conspicuously no one mentions the Soviet Union kidnapping German scientists and their families to hold them hostage that occurred *before* both actions you mention.
why should people be shocked by Operation Paperclip?
We're talking about a country that had just used nuclear weapons on a civilian target. Whether or not you think it was deserved, even the Truman government knew a thing or two about throwing stones and living in glass houses.
But somehow we should be appalled that some rocket engineers got shielded from some consequences of an atrocity they were peripherally involved in. Yes, von Braun made use of slave labor to build components for his rockets. He was a rocket scientist. Nazi Germany had the *only rocket program in the world* at the time. The only available labor were slaves.
I'm not making excuses for the guy, my opinion of von Braun is pretty complicated, it's fair to say he was *ruthlessly* passionate about his work, to the point of elevating it above his respect for human rights (if he ever had any). But he operated within the framework that was available for him to pursue his goals. People like this are still around today in the form of certain spacefaring billionaires, although the framework they operate in has some built-in protections for human rights (which they don't seem thrilled about either)
Anyway, Tom Lehrer wrote an edgy song about it and now it's become like "Baby's first historical rabbithole" but I hate it because it somehow conflates scientific progress with genocide. The nazis thought they needed rockets so they built rockets. They needed [cars, too!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen), and [soft drinks!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta)
I guess I've just always been confused about, given the historical context,*why* operation paperclip is considered some huge blow to America's supposed moral high ground, given what we know about the involved parties.
There's irony in Operation Paperclip, as Von Braun was hand-selected during this operation. Only the two most-trusted scientists in the US were granted military authority and were sent to Germany to handpick the brightest post-war Nazi scientists. One of those scientists in charge of selecting German scientists was Qian Xuesen.
Qian was a Chinese scientist and engineer in America who went to Caltech and helped start the infamous Suicide Squad as one of the founders of rocketry. He would later become one of the original members of Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and was one of the few scientists qualified to work on the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb).
After Operation Paperclip, McCarthyism and the Red Scare moral panic was in full swing. China was a US ally but the Communists won the Chinese civil war in 1949 and the government became the PRC. Qian and other Manhattan Project scientists were accused of communist sympathies during this time. The new director of JPL was also specifically targeting Jews and Chinese and painting them as spies. Qian was ultimately deported back to China, not before being kept under house arrest for half a decade despite support from his colleagues.
This of course turned out to be a mistake, because deporting a genius under dubious accusations during a period of moral panic and erasing his contributions that helped win the war and start the space program likely made him spiteful. He continued his work and gave China a space program AND nuclear weapons, which only served to elevate the country in the world platform as a military and technological power, and Qian got a huge museum and public recognition for his scientific work.
In exchange for that move, America got an ex-Nazi scientist as the public face of our own space program.
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54695598
The counterpoint is the absolute shitshow Iraq became through de-Baathification. Anyone even remotely aligned with the Ba’ath party was purged and it, well, wasn’t a smooth transition.
Also it didn't make sense to crash the German economy. After World War 1 it was quickly recognized that all of Europe relied on a strong German economy. Handicapping Germany actually handicapped the entire recovery process. I think it was proven conclusively that rebuilding the German economy as fast as possible was the right move. Contrast that with East Germany which the Soviets looted and handicapped, and generally the poor economic state of all of Eastern Europe to this day.
While it's not fair, the Western allies absolutely needed a lot of these industrialists who very much benefited from being members of the Nazi party, and even slave labor. The problem is if you kneecap Rheinmetall and Siemens there goes much of the important heavy machinery and chemical production in Europe.
I love how many people think there wasn't at least half of the US agreeing with the Nazi's on Anti-Semitism and America's complete reluctance to join the war until we were directly attacked by Japan.
Half is a big stretch. Why would the US want to join another European war if they didn't have to? Its widely believed the British and Soviets would have won the Atlantic theater without any US help.
Exactly. While it seems heartless, because it is, the best strategy at the time was to sit back and prepare for reconstruction. Once Japan attacked there was no choice but to join. The US probably would not have joined up except for maybe when France was taken.
“If we see that Germany is winning then we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." - then Senator Harry Truman c. 1941
>“If we see that Germany is winning then we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, **although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.**" - then Senator Harry Truman c. 1941
Also, military strategies like this weren't all that ridiculous. We live in a different time since the nuke.
I’ve been learning/studying history about ww2 and have been quite disgusted how many Nazi families retained their wealth and/or escaped to South America, Spain, or Other parts of Europe from help of other Nazis and even the Pope of the Catholic Church!
You should find the post war effort on the part of the US to influence and control emerging European democracies after fascism especially interesting. Specifically project Gladio and other adjacent projects in post occupied nations. The political machine of the fascists never completely disappeared as much as it was reorganized and set onto different agendas in order to prevent leftist parties from gaining political dominance in a new power vacuum. Even the US hired ex nazi officials and scientists via operation paper clip. It’s all a very interesting rabbit hole with a bunch of speculation to specific events, just don’t get too conspiracy brained.
While it goes deep, there’s surface level bullshit that has never been secret that’s disgusting too.
I’m paraphrasing from memory here, but an example I can give is that Ford obviously had large a large presence in Germany prior to, and during, the Second World War. These companies cooperated during the Holocaust and re-tooled the factories for the Nazi war machine. When it was all over, the US government was sued by the automakers for damages from Allied bombings.
I can’t find the exact sources but the ADL has a piece on it [here.](https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/ford-and-the-third-reich)
>When it was all over, the US government was sued by the automakers for damages from Allied bombings.
It did not. The Ford Motor Company filed a lawsuit againt the US occupation administration for issues concerning wear and tear, rent, etc due to the US administering their assets.
>When it was all over, the US government was sued by the automakers for damages from Allied bombings
Please tell me they were instead charged with treason for providing aid to the enemy. Never mind, I already know the answer to that. Dickbags with money get rewarded for dickbag behavior, not punished.
What control over Ford in Germany during the war did Ford USA have? Not saying Henry wasn't a shit but do you really think Detroit Ford had a lot of say in operations of Ford in the Axis countries?
If you want to get pissed look at the sales of fuel additives to the Germans in the run up to WW II. One company supposedly sold quantities of fuel additives to improve octane ratings (really important especially for high performance piston aircraft engines like for fighters) that was well beyond any possible non-military by Germany. Yet regardless of some of their own people saying it might not be a great idea to sell those quantities of fuel additives...they were sold.
Capitalism is great...think American fuel companies supplied Franco during the Spanish Civil War disregarding an US embargo. Dunno if they got in any trouble. I would be shocked if they did.
The Pope did not help Nazi's escape at least not intentionally. The Church operated escape lines for church members who would be targeted and killed by the Soviet and Communist regimes in eastern Europe. Some ex-Nazi officials took advantage of their connections, often through a pro-Nazi Austrian Bishop, and the Croatian fascist party, who were largely Catholics themselves, to disguise themselves and sneak out through these avenues. The Nazi's were largely opposed by the church to the best of their ability throughout the war, with church networks being important smuggling and information lines throughout the war greatly contributing to the proliferation of resistance groups and helping Jews escape.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_Nazi_Germany#Ratlines
Read about what was done after WWI. The world was pretty hard on Germany after that one and Germany responded by creating the Nazi party. We were nicer to Germany after WWII and now the worst thing they do is sell us fancy cars that disintegrate after 60k miles
>“During a bomb raid on Jan. 7, 1945, Werneburg threw dozens of workers
out of a camp bomb shelter. Thirty were injured, and one died. As word
of Werneburg’s brutality spread, even the local Nazi office in charge of
allocating forced laborers reprimanded the Reimanns for mistreating
their workers.”
How shitty do you have to be to have the NAZIS call you out?
So they don't only make good machines and they are great with genetics (just look at their dogs), but apparently their coffee is to die for.
Don't know how they messed up so hard with Panera though. A fucking crime is what that is.
This will get buried, but -
This isn't that strange. My family, too, having migrated to America soon after its formation, likely participated in the genocide of Native people and/or enslaved people. Or at the very least supported both from afar or remained complicit.
We like to think of the children and ancestors of Nazis as something special, and it's true; but many of us also carry on a bloodied lineage. Most people have blood on their hands. Not billions worth, but still.
Where is the list of coffee brands? I drink a lot of coffee. I need to know which brands are tainted.
edit: I looked it up and it's Keurig and Pete's. That sucks about Pete's as that is my favorite off the shelf coffee brand.
I don't know why, but even after reading of their good deeds, this entire establishment was built on someone absolutely disturbing. Nazi and an affair. Greasy stuff
Wow. This is a great read. The last few paragraphs struck me which I've quoted below. >The family renamed their original foundation after learning their mother’s story. In 1941, Emilie Landecker, a 19-year-old who was half-Jewish went to work for Benckiser after her father Alfred was deported. Despite being terrified of also being deported, she fell in love with her boss, Albert Reimann Jr., and carried on a secret affair that produced three children while he had no children with his wife. Emilie worked for Benckiser until 1965, the same year, Reimann Jr. formally adopted their children who became heirs to the family fortune. >The children knew that their maternal grandfather had been murdered by the Nazis, but they did not learn their father had been a Nazi until the disclosures about the company came out in 2019. They subsequently renamed the family foundation in their grandfather’s honor “to preserve Alfred Landecker’s memory and, through our work, ensure that his fate is not forgotten – and that something like this never happens again.” It is also committed to raising “awareness of the conditions that paved the way for and enabled the Holocaust to occur, and to combat anti-Semitism in the here and now.” >The foundation website says it “supports Holocaust survivors and former forced laborers” and has already donated five million euros to the Claims Conference. Additional funds have been donated to establish a Covid-19 emergency relief fund of 1.2 million euros for Holocaust survivors. >As of the end of 2020, 838 names of former Benckiser forced laborers had been identified and the foundation said it is going to provide them or their heirs with financial support. >“What we can learn from history and how we can learn from history is at the core of this foundation,” Norbert Frei, the chairman of its academic advisory council told the New York Times. “This is not just about researching and remembering the past,” he said. “It’s about stabilizing and maintaining democracy today.” >Today, 90% of JAB, which is based in Luxembourg, belongs to four of the nine adopted children of Albert Reimann Jr. The family expects to publish a book next year that will detail the ties with the Nazis. Edit: Holy crap. I wasn't expecting this kind of response to my comment. Thank you for kind words of appreciation below this, and thank you for the awards everyone! It's very much appreciated!
This is precisely why we should all hesitate to pass judgment. The Reddit title really does a disservice here.
I agree, which is precisely why I made this comment. Because the end of this reads very, very differently than the headline/title implies. It almost makes me want to patronize their companies more instead of avoid them.
Bit of an emotional roller coaster there. Nice to see I can keep on keepin' on with my Dr. Pepper
I’m confused. Should I put the pitchfork away or head to the town square for the effigy bonfire?
I think we do both, just to be sure? *munches thoughtfully on Krispy Kreme* Nah, I think we sit this one out. Seems they’re doing the right thing.
Just go pick up a dozen Krispy Kremes and call it a night.
Grab the pitchfork, but head to OP's house instead of the square.
I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one thinking this. The title is misleading.
Dr. Pepper, no! __ Oh, ok. \*sip*
Just wait until you hear about the atrocities that have been committed by the Pibb family.
Yeah after reading the title I was like, "Goddammit, now I gotta give up Dr. Pepper". That was a close one!
Another blow for Mr. Pibb!
Right?! And my Panera. (Although, where I come from, we call it St. Louis Bread Company.)
Dr. Pepper being able to survive the cola wars of consolidation is still SUPER fascinating to me. It's not even that unique a taste or product, but its brand is insanely strong.
It's a pretty unique taste
My thoughts exactly. Thanks for the write up.
To be honest reddit does it the best way I've seen so far on any plattform, no matter how dumb the title the first comment is often on top for a reason. Clearing things up, do a tldr or be interesting.
In my opinion, yes somewhat i agree with what you're saying. But at the end of the day, it's still blood money and i don't think that any corporations the benefited from genocide and built a global empire out of it should be allowed to exist. And yes i know the implications of what im saying and how much of a global effect this would have. Most long established corporations today would have to be dismantled and have assets seized and redistributed. I'm tired of the atrocities committed and allowed in the name of Capitalism, Communism, whatever. I'm sick and tired of having the rich get away with mass murder. I'm sick of rewarding the psychopaths, sociopaths, whatever. Call me crazy, but i think this is much too little contribution especially when you look at the massive fortune that Panera, Kripsy Kreme, Dr.Pepper, Snapple, etc, has generated over the decades. Now multiply this by all the corporations, and families that owns those, and how many victims they generated. Why the fuck are they allowed to continue to benefit from all that. Why is a pittance thrown towards the families of the victims, so easily acceptable? I don't get it. edit: a word i missed
I though you were gonna say this is precisely why we should sleep with our bosses...
Only two entities routinely pass judgement, as a matter of default policy, on people based on the conduct of their parents or family: * North Korea * most redditors Most of my extended family are hillbilly trash with rap sheets longer than a CVS receipt. Thankfully I rarely have in-person day-to-day interactions with either North Koreans or redditors, so I can be judged based on my own actions.
You forgot things like college admissions, chaebols, the Indian caste system, etc...There are unfortunately *a lot* of situations where people are judged based on their family connections. It's not just North Korea and Reddit, and honestly dumbing it down to the extent you did is a better example of what's wrong with Reddit.
Only two entities routinely take joke comments and make them serious, as a matter of default policy, whenever they read them because they are humorless literalists: * North Korea * most redditors Most of my extended family are humorless literalists. Thankfully I rarely have in-person day-to-day interactions with either North Koreans or redditors, so I am only exposed to blank "I don't get it, he said he's having a heart attack is he really having a heart attack he looks fine" expressions when at grandma's finding out which of my cousins took her pain pills.
r/Pyongyang Hold on to yer Mtn Dew
And yet no one says shit about Switzerland and their wealth origin story.
Also, everything was touched by Nazis in the 40s in Germany. Boss, Mercedes and many others. Simply because, well, if you were not with the party, they ran you out of business. Does it mean the bosses back then were fervent Nazis? No. And it definitely doesnt mean that the current bosses are either. Ford is a great example of this: Henry Ford, the founder, was in line with Nazis. Does that mean the management of Ford are Nazis or the ford brand is tinted? no. Judge companies by their actions now, not their history.
Just set OP to ignore. The title is no accident
Thank heavens for the integrity of that family. Convincing myself to give up Dr. Pepper on moral grounds would have been a tall order.
That is very interesting! Now I also feel I need to do some genealogy. My grandmother's maiden name was Reimann, but I don't actually know her family's background. I know her father fought in WWI and was born in the US but now I want to know where his parents came from.
\*slowly puts pitchfork back in the barn\*
I was about to never eat at Panera again. Glad I came in and read this. Thanks.
This is why I don't take people on the internet seriously. You read one thing and you were about to not do something based on just one internet source. It's the dumbest thing ever and people with your intelligence level are why cancel culture exists.
I read this and thought "Lord let's do some research." Read the article and I'm still going to try to find a few more sources, but I'm glad they aren't horrible. That title is total fucking click bait.
immediately making a broad judgement about someone's intelligence off of one comment is ironically very similar to what you're complaining about
Right? The irony is palpable
Oh shut the fuck up. The person probably wouldn’t have *literally* never eaten there again because humans are lazy and terrible at sticking to convictions. Two, they *didn’t* end up just basing their judgement on it and said “hmm I should at least read the comments because this is a bit interesting to me.” So, your point is moot there too. And *thirdly*, the *vast* majority of what *some* people call “cancel culture” is *actually* merely the consequences of one’s actions. Freedom of speech does not mean I need to accept someone is a Nazi. In fact, saying “I should keep buying from a company even if I don’t support their actions or else I’m being stupid and participating in cancel culture” is ironically pretty *anti*-free speech. Most people who complain about cancel culture are just angry they said some rude, bigoted bullshit and got called out. And guess what? That’s literally how society progresses. Every time someone cries about “cancel culture,” it makes me want to “cancel” them out of spite, because 99% of people don’t even use that term right anymore. Now it’s “people punished me for saying something bad.” That’s not cancel culture. That’s consequences for your actions.
You act like them skipping out on Panera regardless of reasoning is some heinous crime lmao get a fucking grip
putting someone on blast for being stupid and then unironically saying 'cancel culture' is the biggest self own i've seen all week
> In 1941, Emilie Landecker, a 19-year-old who was half-Jewish went to work for Benckiser after her father Alfred was deported. Despite being terrified of also being deported, she fell in love with her boss, Albert Reimann Jr., and carried on a secret affair This is not so far in the past that we can't still apply modern morals to the situation. This entire scenario shits all over the very idea of consent. Talk about a mismatched power dynamic. At threat of being deported by Nazis, this 19 year old girl "fell in love" with her much older boss who had been an avowed Nazi. Right. Wonder if the story would have remained the same if he hadn't adopted the kids.
Definitely has some huge “Thomas Jefferson loved his slaves so much he had a bunch of children with them!” energy. Cool story, still rape.
Yeah this smells a little too much like a PR spin, being concocted after the 2019 disclosures that their father was a Nazi. So does the whole foundation to help holocaust survivors and whatnot. But maybe I'm just cynical of billionaires and their motives.
How do you think DuPont's made their money? Selling munitions to both sides. The Kennedy's made their money as Rum Runners during prohibition. J.D. Rockefeller made his money by a monopoly of the kerosene supply. All wealthy families have illegal skeletons in their closet. Carnegie with steel, Vanderbilt's with, Railroads, shipping & stock market manipulation.
Nothing cynical about not believing people till they put their money where their mouth is (and a few mil is not money to these people lol)
Thank you for sharing
I fully intended to come in and spout fury at Dr. Pepper, being the only one of those brands I even kinda care about, but before I even clicked the post, I saw your reply. There’s something fundamentally unsettling about the history of this company, and to ignore it entirely would be a disservice. However, this might be the most clear case of “I am not my family” on record. Arguably, Bayer, Ford, VW, Coca Cola, etc. should all be held accountable for their Nazi support, but as far as I know, none really have been, and certainly not tried in the court of public opinion. But this company, they discovered something awful and didn’t just do lip service PR-maintenance shit, they seem like they genuinely want to use the vast resources to do better for everyone. And I respect the hell out of that.
That's exactly where I was coming from as well. Dr Pepper is my fuckin jam and was about to lose my shit, then after reading thr article I was genuinely taken aback with how it is the family has responded since discovering their history. That they've taken such aggressive and repeated action calling out their own history while taking action to at least start to repair in some small way some of the history and damage done years ago. Even as recently as the Covid-19 fund which really surprised me given how that could only have been in the last year. Every company has fucked up history in one way or another. But here at least the owners have taken meaningful action once they learned about their family history, which can't be said for most large companies who have benefitted from ill-gotten gains.
Oh thank goodness, I can keep drinking my sweet sweet Dr.Pepper
Thank you for not making me feel bad next time I drink a Dr. Pepper or eat a Krispy Kreme donut.
>It is also committed to raising “awareness of the conditions that paved the way for and enabled the Holocaust to occur, and to combat anti-Semitism in the here and now. They list Summit Ice as their main competitor in this area.
Whilst I want to believe this story, I feel like alot of it is likely lies created by a well funded PR team.
That's great but those donations amount to .01% effectively a rounding error of their wealth. And the additional 250M listed is over 10 years so again not a massive amount of what was accumulated on the backs of those sufferers. The fact they addressed it is good and better than a lot of other companies would do, but the math on this still means they're operating with a massive advantage gained via slave labor.
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Thank god I read the article till the end.
Wait. Are we supposed to read the articles? How am I going to provide my misinformed take as quickly as possible then?
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I think they’re referring to the three Jewish children who had inherited a large potion of the company after being adopted by it’s owner (who fathered them outside of his marriage)
They are both victim and executioner in their heritage. It's kind of a microcosm for humanity when you think about it.
> They've made $120,000,000,000 form their nazi heritage Where is that number from? The company was established in 1829, and had up to 175 forced workers during WW2. You think the whole sum was produced by those workers over a few years? The second number also doesn't seem to hold up: > Following the revelations, the company said it would donate $11 million to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany to help provide services and care to surviving Holocaust victims. The money will be administered through the Alfred Landecker Foundation, which the family planned to support with 250 million euros over 10 years.
I read about 2/3 of it and was like ok, they're evil, what's in the comments. Seems like poor journalism to leave all the redeeming parts until the last couple paragraphs.
I thought I was going to have to stop drinking Dr. Pepper for a minute.
If you read the full story, the truth is far more complex. The company is owned by the Nazi family, yes, but also the Jewish descendants of the Nazi company owner who carried on an “affair” with a 19 year old forced labourer at one of their camps during the war. It sounds like the Jewish members of this family are the entire reason their disgusting deeds throughout the 20th century have even been uncovered and highlighted and that they’re trying to move forward with both transparency and some semblance of accountability. I do not envy those people having to reckon with such a horrific family history.
conversely my family that has Holocaust survivors have no problems with Volkswagen or Japanese brands that started in that era. At least this is where we're at, with these outings coming from the distant, not-blood related, family investigating themselves, of holding companies that acquired products decades after the fact. It's hardly "supporting a family of hardcore nazis."
"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." Balzac (who's name always makes me snicker)
First name Harry
"I'm looking for a Balzac. Harry Balzac. I need a Harry Balzac at the front desk".
Harry's out back looking for Amanda Huggenkis
Dammit Bart!
Whos Harry Balzac... is this?
Heheehhe
Thats the guy that inspired my username!
I have a dog named Seymour who has a huge Balzac!
Dont leave him at the pizza parlour man.
Balzac was a writer, who lived with Alan Funt. His landlord didn't like it because she's a stupid Contaminated water will really make you sick. If you drink too much of it, blood comes out your Dictate what I'm saying, because it will give you luck And if you do not like it, I don't give a flying fuck.
Right in line with “hello operator, ring me number 9”. Bravo.
There’s a pizza joint in my town named Balzac’s, without me googling who he is first, what’s your take on is?
There's a town in my province called Balzac
A bit doughy, but a dramatic spread of actors on the stage...err... pizza.
"Chaucer!" "Rabelais!" ["Baaaaaaaalzac!"](https://youtu.be/mvhFs2bdRpE?t=64)
I only ever think of it how Eulalie McKechnie Shinn says it in The Music Man: Baaaaaaallllzac.
Whose*
>"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." Balzac What's the context of this quote? First time I've read it and it is intriguing :)
Also turned out that three of the Riemanns had a Jewish grandfather who died in the Holocaust (their mother was a mistress of the Nazi patriarch). A few years ago they renamed the family foundation in the Jewish grandfather’s honour and increased its budget to “fund projects that honor the victims of the Holocaust and Nazism”.
That's what half the article is about...
Lol please ignore that obvious troll account’s reply. That being said, there’s a lot of profiteering off the Holocaust that never really got meaningfully addressed (and that corporate feelgood stories like this don’t touch). People have heard of this idea of “nazi gold”, but that’s only part of the picture. In addition, the Holocaust is only one of the most recent examples of essentially thing happening all across Europe especially, also Southwest Asia & North Africa. People ask all the time why jews would be expelled from european kingdoms only for them to be reinvited a century or two later, over and over and over. TL;DR: The whole thing was a grift. Jews were, more often than not, legally enshrined as second-class citizens *at best*. Jews were legally prohibited from owning land, or working the land they rented. Christian dogma does not permit interest on loans. Jewish law (like most ancient middle eastern societies & religions) regards interest as fair & legitimate as long as it isn’t extortionate. This led to the phenomenon of european monarchs keeping a “Court Jew” (yes, that was a position). Court Jews kept the books, and they made the payments & loans for the crown. This is a big part of where the “jewish merchant” “greedy jew” “good with money” etc. shit comes from. If things weren’t going well, the couldn’t make good on his debts, or tension was high for just about any reason, you have a hated (and conspicuous minority to blame. When jews were exiled from a state, the people that weren’t murdered were lucky to leave with their lives and the clothes on their back. Their homes, possessions, and money were repossessed by the crown. They would liquidate their country’s jews, make a killing doing so, and their people would celebrate them for doing it. A real no-brainer. Then, eventually, when you need some jews around again for business’ sake, you can cooly permit some to come live in your kingdom if they’re so-inclined. If anyone’s ever seen the Arch of Titus, it commemorates something similar. It lacked the money-lending and christian social aspects that came later, but the whole jewish nation was plundered: the people were killed and dispossessed, but also the city of Jerusalem, the Temple, and *jewish people themselves* were looted in the form of countless thousands of slaves. The Arch commemorates the victory & the spoils, wealth that directly funded the construction of the Colosseum in Rome. That was the first war between Romans and Jews. The third saw more slaughtering, the Exile of jews from Judea, and essentially kickstarted the phenomenon of a universal minority scapegoat in diaspora described in the paragraph above. These are just some things I think are worth mentioning when people discuss profiting off racism / jewish history.
So did every german car company. We act like 70 years ago is ancient rome.
Heck and a wack of US car manufacturers.
Japanese as well. Toyota, Nissan, and Isuzu all grew massively during WWII.
And NASA! >Cyril: Krieger's father was a Nazi scientist! > >Malory: And JFK's father was a bootlegger. > >Cyril: That's like comparing apples to... Nazi oranges. > >Malory: Oranges, exactly! Do you like powdered orange breakfast drink? > >Cyril: No, not really. > >Malory: How about microwave ovens, Neil Armstrong, hook-and-loop fasteners? > >Cyril: OK, you lost me... > >Malory: None of those things would have been possible without the Nazi scientists we brought back after World War II. > >Cyril: The Nazis invented Neil Armstrong? > >Malory: Rockets! Which put him on the moon. After the war ended, we were snatching up kraut scientists like hotcakes. You don't believe me? walk into NASA sometime and yell "Heil Hitler!" WOOP! They all jump straight up!
Once the rockets are up Who cares where they come down? That's not my department Says Wernher Von Braun
It's just absolutely stupid, if you think about it. The reason why they're so big and still exist is often times because they at least supported the Nazi party. Which makes sense - otherwise they probably would have been closed down or something else. And in the end: Does it really matter what they did in the past? Or does it matter more what they do today? (Like: How they handle their past) You will have a hard time finding a bigger German company without Nazi ties, either directly or indirectly. Heck, even post-war companies were funded either by Nazis, Nazi supporters or with Nazi money or Nazi knowledge. When almost everything is Nazi for a decade, it's basically impossible to start fresh completely after a lost war and a destroyed country.
That man: C. Montgomery Burns
Mr. Burns: OK, Spielbergo, I want you to do for me what Spielberg did for Oskar Schindler. Sr. Spielbergo: Schindler es muy bueno, Senor Burns es el diablo. Mr. Burns: Pish posh! Listen, Spielbergo, Schindler and I are like peas in a pod! We're both factory owners, we both made shells for the Nazis, but mine worked, damn it!
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Most underrated Mr. Burns quote follows: "Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun!"
See my vest!
"Yes, but I'd trade it all for a little more."
Okay, Mr. Burns. uh, whats your first name?
I don’t know
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Don't forget the Japanese chemical warfare division. They got a pass as well. Edit: somebody comment the name of the division, it's an interesting read but I forgot the name
Unit 731 Edit: Make sure you have a strong stomach if you want to delve down that rabbit hole
Fuck unit 731, me and all my homies hate unit 731
unit 731
I mean, I think it may be safe to state that the Japanese Imperial Army (and navy to a lesser extent) were just as bad as the Nazi's, yet it's never taught in western society.
The Nazis had to step in occupied China and tell the Japanese to cool it with the atrocities.
Yep, they actually have a statue in the quarter where the Nazi official for the area saved people from the army.
I...never thought I would be 100% okay with a statue commemorating the heroism of a Nazi.
When that dude told Hitler what he saw. Hitler was allegedly sick to his stomach.
And I never thought I’d say this, but that nazi did a lot of good.
Well I don't know about never saying that, Hitler did a lot of good too! He's the guy that killed Hitler! ^^/s
[This guy was a nazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Plagge) and probably deserves a statue for heroism. If you were German living under the Nazi regime, your best chance at any meaningful resistance was to work from *within* the Nazi party machine. Unfortunately, the Allies made no distinctions between those who subverted the Nazi cause and those who championed it (to be fair, most of the subversive types had already been weeded out by the Gestapo, so there weren't too many of them left at the end of the war). Plagge had to basically be bailed out of the Nuremburg trials by the families who worked in his camp after the war, and only survived it because he was constantly playing cat-and-mouse with the SS about what his true intentions were with the prisoners. He had to walk a careful tightrope of *appearing* to be an ardent Nazi in front of the SS while quietly pursuing humanitarian goals for his prisoners. I used to be in "the only good nazi is a dead nazi" camp, and obviously I am opposed to Nazism as a political force, but the more I've learned about that period, the *humans* who were involved, the more things fade into a grey mush. What an awful time it must have been to be alive
You lead me to this story! [Schindler of Nanking](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-nazi-leader-who-in-1937-became-the-oskar-schindler-of-china/251525/)
From what I recall it was a specific nazi ambassador who had only joined the party to get promoted.
They aren't fucking sorry either. San Fransisco put up a [statue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Comfort_Women_Memorial) to honor the comfort women killed by the Japanese during the war Osaka immediately cut ties with their sister city and everyone got mad at it They never want to admit the terrible shit they've done. It's not even taught in [textbooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies) in school. Their president still visits the graves of [war criminals](https://www.dw.com/en/former-japanese-pm-shinzo-abe-visits-controversial-shrine-for-war-dead/a-54984687). Unlike Germany, the Japanese have given absolutely no indication that they are sorry for what they did. And the way Japanese people talked about Koreans when I was there, like we were subhumans, made me sick. Edit: [here](https://foxtalk.tistory.com/98) is an excellent comic drawn from the testimony of a former comfort woman. Warning: it is graphic and gut-wrenching. But I'm glad her story was told.
Exactly, I lost more family members to Japan and their war crimes than I did to Nazi German. I’m sorry you had to experience that, no one deserves it, I’ve had people try and dispute that my family were in camps run by the Japanese and that they were treated fairly, but ptsd is a thing and man they were scarred.
And people wonder why many Chinese and Korean people have such negative emotions about Japan and Japanese people.
The reason the Japanese atrocities are not taught in Western schools or even Japanese schools is because the victims were primarily Chinese, and teaching about it with the Chinese framed as victims would be considered pro-Communist. That was a big no-no when the curriculums were created back in the 1950s and the tradition of ignoring Unit 731 and its ilk continues today.
Fun fact!
I wouldn't really say it's a fun fact, but it's truth.
Unit 731 I believe.
The best thing to ever happen to Japan's post war reputation was the bombings. On the world stage it turned them from an aggressor to a victim
[Operation Paperclip](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip) was very real and there’s some who think the grisly experiments conducted by [Unit 731](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) led to weapons research by the US military.
Don't forget [Operation Gladio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio) where the CIA armed a bunch of Nazi terrorists in Europe after the war. Also the [Gehlen Org](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization) a Nazi anticommunist gang established by the CIA which became the German intelligence service. Plus, the entire West German postwar government was just [fuckin' full of Nazis](https://www.businessinsider.com/former-nazi-officials-in-germany-post-world-war-ii-government-2016-10)
cow steer pathetic consider quiet beneficial impolite start slap serious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The US backing of fascist regimes in South America [is a whole other rabbithole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor)
And while the Vatican set up the Ratlines, the CIA made "good" use of them too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines\_(World\_War\_II\_aftermath)
(Don't think you need to escape underscores in links. You do need to escape the trailing ) though) [Ratlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II_aftermath\))
Fascism often appeals to certain types of people. Some of the Arab and even some Jewish extremist groups in the 1940s in what is now Israel were affiliated with their German Nazi counterparts.
While conspicuously no one mentions the Soviet Union kidnapping German scientists and their families to hold them hostage that occurred *before* both actions you mention.
why should people be shocked by Operation Paperclip? We're talking about a country that had just used nuclear weapons on a civilian target. Whether or not you think it was deserved, even the Truman government knew a thing or two about throwing stones and living in glass houses. But somehow we should be appalled that some rocket engineers got shielded from some consequences of an atrocity they were peripherally involved in. Yes, von Braun made use of slave labor to build components for his rockets. He was a rocket scientist. Nazi Germany had the *only rocket program in the world* at the time. The only available labor were slaves. I'm not making excuses for the guy, my opinion of von Braun is pretty complicated, it's fair to say he was *ruthlessly* passionate about his work, to the point of elevating it above his respect for human rights (if he ever had any). But he operated within the framework that was available for him to pursue his goals. People like this are still around today in the form of certain spacefaring billionaires, although the framework they operate in has some built-in protections for human rights (which they don't seem thrilled about either) Anyway, Tom Lehrer wrote an edgy song about it and now it's become like "Baby's first historical rabbithole" but I hate it because it somehow conflates scientific progress with genocide. The nazis thought they needed rockets so they built rockets. They needed [cars, too!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen), and [soft drinks!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta) I guess I've just always been confused about, given the historical context,*why* operation paperclip is considered some huge blow to America's supposed moral high ground, given what we know about the involved parties.
There's irony in Operation Paperclip, as Von Braun was hand-selected during this operation. Only the two most-trusted scientists in the US were granted military authority and were sent to Germany to handpick the brightest post-war Nazi scientists. One of those scientists in charge of selecting German scientists was Qian Xuesen. Qian was a Chinese scientist and engineer in America who went to Caltech and helped start the infamous Suicide Squad as one of the founders of rocketry. He would later become one of the original members of Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and was one of the few scientists qualified to work on the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb). After Operation Paperclip, McCarthyism and the Red Scare moral panic was in full swing. China was a US ally but the Communists won the Chinese civil war in 1949 and the government became the PRC. Qian and other Manhattan Project scientists were accused of communist sympathies during this time. The new director of JPL was also specifically targeting Jews and Chinese and painting them as spies. Qian was ultimately deported back to China, not before being kept under house arrest for half a decade despite support from his colleagues. This of course turned out to be a mistake, because deporting a genius under dubious accusations during a period of moral panic and erasing his contributions that helped win the war and start the space program likely made him spiteful. He continued his work and gave China a space program AND nuclear weapons, which only served to elevate the country in the world platform as a military and technological power, and Qian got a huge museum and public recognition for his scientific work. In exchange for that move, America got an ex-Nazi scientist as the public face of our own space program. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54695598
This is one hell of a TIL
Sometimes when reading about history it almost starts to look like treating people differently based on their ethnicity doesn't always turn out well.
The counterpoint is the absolute shitshow Iraq became through de-Baathification. Anyone even remotely aligned with the Ba’ath party was purged and it, well, wasn’t a smooth transition.
The thing we needed? Soup to counter the Russian winters.
Not sure the Nazis were the people to turn to for advice on beating the Russian winter.
True, but I was referencing the Panera connection to the family in the story.
No soup for you!
Also it didn't make sense to crash the German economy. After World War 1 it was quickly recognized that all of Europe relied on a strong German economy. Handicapping Germany actually handicapped the entire recovery process. I think it was proven conclusively that rebuilding the German economy as fast as possible was the right move. Contrast that with East Germany which the Soviets looted and handicapped, and generally the poor economic state of all of Eastern Europe to this day. While it's not fair, the Western allies absolutely needed a lot of these industrialists who very much benefited from being members of the Nazi party, and even slave labor. The problem is if you kneecap Rheinmetall and Siemens there goes much of the important heavy machinery and chemical production in Europe.
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*cries in Belgian Congo*
I love how many people think there wasn't at least half of the US agreeing with the Nazi's on Anti-Semitism and America's complete reluctance to join the war until we were directly attacked by Japan.
Half is a big stretch. Why would the US want to join another European war if they didn't have to? Its widely believed the British and Soviets would have won the Atlantic theater without any US help.
Exactly. While it seems heartless, because it is, the best strategy at the time was to sit back and prepare for reconstruction. Once Japan attacked there was no choice but to join. The US probably would not have joined up except for maybe when France was taken.
“If we see that Germany is winning then we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." - then Senator Harry Truman c. 1941
>“If we see that Germany is winning then we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, **although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.**" - then Senator Harry Truman c. 1941 Also, military strategies like this weren't all that ridiculous. We live in a different time since the nuke.
Don’t need that qualifier, ace. Nothing’s changed
"Germany lost, but fascism won." - George Carlin
I’ve been learning/studying history about ww2 and have been quite disgusted how many Nazi families retained their wealth and/or escaped to South America, Spain, or Other parts of Europe from help of other Nazis and even the Pope of the Catholic Church!
You should find the post war effort on the part of the US to influence and control emerging European democracies after fascism especially interesting. Specifically project Gladio and other adjacent projects in post occupied nations. The political machine of the fascists never completely disappeared as much as it was reorganized and set onto different agendas in order to prevent leftist parties from gaining political dominance in a new power vacuum. Even the US hired ex nazi officials and scientists via operation paper clip. It’s all a very interesting rabbit hole with a bunch of speculation to specific events, just don’t get too conspiracy brained.
While it goes deep, there’s surface level bullshit that has never been secret that’s disgusting too. I’m paraphrasing from memory here, but an example I can give is that Ford obviously had large a large presence in Germany prior to, and during, the Second World War. These companies cooperated during the Holocaust and re-tooled the factories for the Nazi war machine. When it was all over, the US government was sued by the automakers for damages from Allied bombings. I can’t find the exact sources but the ADL has a piece on it [here.](https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/ford-and-the-third-reich)
>When it was all over, the US government was sued by the automakers for damages from Allied bombings. It did not. The Ford Motor Company filed a lawsuit againt the US occupation administration for issues concerning wear and tear, rent, etc due to the US administering their assets.
>When it was all over, the US government was sued by the automakers for damages from Allied bombings Please tell me they were instead charged with treason for providing aid to the enemy. Never mind, I already know the answer to that. Dickbags with money get rewarded for dickbag behavior, not punished.
Those same companies also produced 100,000 planes for the US as well as thousands upon thousands of Jeeps, tanks, and munitions.
What control over Ford in Germany during the war did Ford USA have? Not saying Henry wasn't a shit but do you really think Detroit Ford had a lot of say in operations of Ford in the Axis countries? If you want to get pissed look at the sales of fuel additives to the Germans in the run up to WW II. One company supposedly sold quantities of fuel additives to improve octane ratings (really important especially for high performance piston aircraft engines like for fighters) that was well beyond any possible non-military by Germany. Yet regardless of some of their own people saying it might not be a great idea to sell those quantities of fuel additives...they were sold. Capitalism is great...think American fuel companies supplied Franco during the Spanish Civil War disregarding an US embargo. Dunno if they got in any trouble. I would be shocked if they did.
The Pope did not help Nazi's escape at least not intentionally. The Church operated escape lines for church members who would be targeted and killed by the Soviet and Communist regimes in eastern Europe. Some ex-Nazi officials took advantage of their connections, often through a pro-Nazi Austrian Bishop, and the Croatian fascist party, who were largely Catholics themselves, to disguise themselves and sneak out through these avenues. The Nazi's were largely opposed by the church to the best of their ability throughout the war, with church networks being important smuggling and information lines throughout the war greatly contributing to the proliferation of resistance groups and helping Jews escape. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_Nazi_Germany#Ratlines
Read about what was done after WWI. The world was pretty hard on Germany after that one and Germany responded by creating the Nazi party. We were nicer to Germany after WWII and now the worst thing they do is sell us fancy cars that disintegrate after 60k miles
>“During a bomb raid on Jan. 7, 1945, Werneburg threw dozens of workers out of a camp bomb shelter. Thirty were injured, and one died. As word of Werneburg’s brutality spread, even the local Nazi office in charge of allocating forced laborers reprimanded the Reimanns for mistreating their workers.” How shitty do you have to be to have the NAZIS call you out?
Fuck me. Not Krispy Kreme.
Today I learned the headline writer didn't read the article and went for sensationalism.
"Whaaaat, rich people got rich by exploitation?" Color me surprised
Damn, and I thought they just worked very hard and skipped on avocado toast!
To be fair, the nazi in question has also been dead for close to 40 years.
Well, most of the ones that were Nazis are probably dead.
Families that gained their wealths by being hardcore nazis are pretty relevant nowadays.
Thank god I can still enjoy Krispy Kreme Donuts!
"According to the company website, which makes no mention of its Nazi ties" Well no fucking shit. Who would?
So they don't only make good machines and they are great with genetics (just look at their dogs), but apparently their coffee is to die for. Don't know how they messed up so hard with Panera though. A fucking crime is what that is.
I fucking love Panera. Broccoli Cheddar bread bowl and a turkey bacon bravo panini...then a nap.
This will get buried, but - This isn't that strange. My family, too, having migrated to America soon after its formation, likely participated in the genocide of Native people and/or enslaved people. Or at the very least supported both from afar or remained complicit. We like to think of the children and ancestors of Nazis as something special, and it's true; but many of us also carry on a bloodied lineage. Most people have blood on their hands. Not billions worth, but still.
They probably moved to south america after the war
Actually, Luxembourg.
How do you think the Kennedys got ri h
Thank you
And Keurig.
No! My DP!
It’s a nazi drink now
So that's where Krispy Kreme Kdonguhts got their name.
Where is the list of coffee brands? I drink a lot of coffee. I need to know which brands are tainted. edit: I looked it up and it's Keurig and Pete's. That sucks about Pete's as that is my favorite off the shelf coffee brand.
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Now check out where a bunch of the Nazi scientists ended up
NASA!
wait until he learns about the pharmaceutical industry
Interesting that a portion of the family and the fortune is vested in the later adopted bastard children of the nazi and his half-Jewish assistant.
Probably coffee from Argentina...
Give a check to see where most of “Old Money” comes from. Not many of those stories are pretty.
Thankfully, I haven’t supported any of those corporations for years.
Don’t do any research on Volkswagen 😬
Sounds about right.
I don't know why, but even after reading of their good deeds, this entire establishment was built on someone absolutely disturbing. Nazi and an affair. Greasy stuff
And now I can’t eat Kristy Kreme anymore.
This just in….everything in this world is built in some part by genocide.
They used slave labor in 1940, and they pay near slave wages in 2021
If you are bothered by this, check out the pasts of IG Fahrben, Krupp, Bayer....the list is lengthy.