I recently was in the BMW museum and they actually had a whole section dedicated to their Nazi past and how they want to never do that again. Do with that what you will but at least they're not shoving it under the carpet.
It's important not to forget the past. If America treated slavery the same way we'd be a lot further socially.
Reminder that the USA was a big inspiration for the nazis.
They pretty much wanted to make a USA II
It's not like they used IQ tests as justification for forced sterilization or anything... Wait what?
Yes and no. They also saw the US as ethnically impure and therefore weak. The 4th Reich wasn't going to have that problem.
I wish the UK would do the same. At least in the US they learn a bit about slavery - here in the UK we learn nothing about the British Empire and its atrocities. No wonder we have statues of slave traders everywhere.
I know there is regional variation on how the slave trade is taught, but when I was in school we had numerous, extended, and graphic discussions on the horrors of the slave trade starting from elementary school and extending into college.
Without doxxing yourself could you give an idea of where you went to school? I went to public school in the south and other than being mentioned I didn't learn much about slavery in school. I mean we learned about the underground railroad and generally knew about the slave trade and that being a slave was about the worst thing humanly possible. But other than getting whipped they didn't talk about much of the torture or punishments they'd went through. Civil rights I remember being discussed more in depth than slavery but when I was a kid I attributed it through the fact that most of my teachers remember the civil rights movement from when they were my age. Sorry I'm high so I'm rambling now.
I grew up in California
I’m not surprised about your experience though. I have also lived in the south and many of the southern states are still feeling the effects of decades of extensive lobbying on education by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
They DoC has historically pushed a narrative about slaves being happy and content overall, cared for by empathetic masters who valued their well-being. There are many monuments still standing glorifying the wartime deeds done by “loyal” and happy slaves. It’s really insidious.
That's actually very missleading, like most involved companies they tried everything to hide it till the shitstorm got too big and the damage to their image was smaller that way so we shouldn't give them any credit for that whatsoever!!!
Every single business in existence will sell out any value they say they hold for profit.
If they don’t another business will, welcome to capitalism.
TBF, Disney is not buckling under pressure from the Florida Nazi governor.
Disney don’t give a fuck about LBGTQIA+.
There’s just more profit in performative concern for that community.
They have a lot more to lose if they do.
I know that. But we still need to support the companies that do shit we want, so it's more profitable to do so.
I feel a little more sympathetic to them for the Nazi stuff than for any current shit they pull.
I have to wonder, had they said no, what the German state would have then done to them. Essentially any state can require a company to produce wartime goods.
If they don’t another business will
That's true, but just because the business that does sell out is more successful, doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't buy from the businesses that didn't sell out. Obviously they will be harder to find because they tend to be more local and/or niche (you gotta be, if you want to survive against businesses with no morals), but we all need to be doing what we can.
Of course with cars, there's little we can do because all the privately owned companies tend to be making multi-million dollar cars. But for things like food, clothing, etc, there are often alternatives to the big name brands. You just have to look for them.
better than IBM I guess
Just curious, what did they do?
They did what they were told and didnt argue.
Same as Hugo Boss made SS uniforms, a lot of german people and companies at the time just went along. Even if they didnt wholeheartedly swallow the propaganda, even if they quietly hated the Nazi regime, they saw those that spoke out beaten, killed or straight up vanish. Some of the companies willingly stuck their heads in the sand and just went along because they knew that to resist was to mark yourself, and to cooperate was to profit.
Oh I knew what BMW did, I was just asking about IBM
That is atrocious. According to that account, there is proof that they willingly participated in the Holocaust in exchange for profits, and not a single one of them faced justice.
Didnt realise you were asking specifically about IBM. IBM definitely knew they were doing something wrong.
Back when I worked at IBM, there were a bunch of flags hanging in the cafeteria that represented every country where IBM did business. We often wondered, why wasn't there a Nazi Germany flag? After all, IBM did sell a ton of machines to the Nazis to keep track of Jews and other undesirables, in order to commit genocide. I wonder why IBM wouldn't want people to know about that? /s
"In February 2001, an Alien Tort Claims Act claim was filed in U.S. federal court on behalf of concentration camp survivors against IBM. The suit accused IBM of allegedly providing the punched card technology that facilitated the Holocaust, and for covering up German IBM subsidiary Dehomag's activities."
Sadly, a majority of the lawsuits brought up against IBM in connection with it's dark past get dropped.
Doing business with Nazis because it's profitable. Nazis died, BMW regrets.
Doing business with fossil fuel because it's profitable. Earth dies, BMW regrets.
I see a pattern here
Hmmm... Maybe we shouldn't prioritize profits over all else?
Nah, nvm. That can't be right.
Get outta here with your pinko commie socialist gay woke agenda!!!
Nah they literally used extermination camp forced labour, that much we know without doubt so they were pretty damn complicit. Tried to research whether BMW ever actually made gas vans, but couldn't find a definitive confirmation or good evidence to the contrary from a reputable source, so gonna say they might have.
Fun fact: The grandmother of the current BMW owner Gabriele Quandt was literally Magda Goebbels. No, seriously.
On a similar note Deutsche Bank literally funded the Nazis and to this day is still doing shady shit like the numerous money laundering scandals and also being involved in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal. For each of those, including funding the Nazis, they merely got a slap on the wrist as they're literally still allowed to exist as one of the top 10 biggest banks of Europe.
Should IBM also close shop?
Any company that existed in Germany during WWII, it seems.
Now that's a classic reddit comment right there. The more things change, the more they stay the same lol
It's missing the "Anne Frankly" opener.
Something something fuhrerious
i think that pun’s older than the internet
I imagine two soldiers in the trenches and one just says that when something unexpected happens and the other just smacks him in the back of the head.
Other than the giant swastika, does it bother anyone else that the kerning is uneven? The B is farther away from the M than the M is from the W.
Well it didn't
Other than that, how was the kerning, Mrs. Lincoln?
I thought Germans were supposed to be sticklers for detail!
I'd like to think they did that on purpose to spite Hitler.
Sloppy work like that is how you lose wars, son!
Now that you mentioned it, it does bother me, but it might have been on purpose.
BMW stands for Benelli (?) Motor Werk(s), so essentially it's:
(Location) -space- (Factory Type)
At least that's my assumption for it, because otherwise, it being Nazi Germany, if that was a typographical error, the person stamping those would probably be shot
It is Bayerische Motoren Werke. Funnily enough, that's wrong orthography, it should be Bayerische Motorenwerke, so you have a point.
Literal grammar Nazis.
Yikes, I also looked into the background of Ferdinand Porsche, and man, he was a real Nazi summabitch.
Hitler was directly behind the development of the VW Beetle with Porsche doing the engineering work.
Porsche also stole many of the innovative design elements of their cars from a Czech auto manufacturer called Tatra, after the Nazis took over the factory.
Hitler was not "directly behind" the development. You make it sound like he was the lead designer, accountant and test driver. He said "I want you to develop a car that will seat four, reach 110 km/h and cost a maximum of 1000 Reichsmark" because he wanted to make car manufacturing a significant industrial branch. The reality is that it was pretty much an empty promise. People invested in shares of VW so they could eventually get a Käfer, but very few were actually built during the war.
I literally said Porsche did the engineering. How would that make Hitler the lead designer?
Everybody employed nazis after the war, including NASA. To an extent, the winners of the war silently agreed to let that slide.
These shitposts are too real
Not a good look ehh?
Is that even legal to post in Germany?
Considering BMW is one of the worse profiteers from WW2 it probably classifies as satire or something else art related!
Yeah but facts like that hurt Germans too much, they get all uncomfortable about history.
They want all that profit and tech, but no shame about how it was obtained
This is not at all a view that is based in reality, Germany has made it mandatory in their curriculum to learn about the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the war and bring the schools to concentration camps to drive home the depravity of their history.
What a bullshit take. Germany is noted for how they have handled their history, in stark contrast to Japan who do not acknowledge the atrocities they committed and shy away from public knowledge of them.
While I disagree with the person you're responding to because I find it honestly a little bit disgusting to equate the population of Germany with big German corporations (no, BMW is not "the Germans"), it is true that Germany has historically had a blind spot for capitalist Nazi collaboration (and so has the US, by the way!).
Cory Doctorow wrote a great piece about this topic a few weeks ago. Really recommend reading it if what you've always heard is how well Germany does with its history.
Can confirm this.
I visited several concentration camps in different countries with my school (not mandatory on curriculum; but visiting Auschwitz is something that really brings home the horrors and that's why the school offers it to older students (together with psychological staff))
I learned about Nazi-History for 2, maybe 3 years in school.
Therefore I can say that in general we are not afraid to learn/teach about the time; to prevent that it happens again (which seemingly didn't work as a significant parts goes towards the right again... but I digress)
That said: There was never a focus on german companies. Sure, here and there you will find some references and images as a sidenote in a school history book; but nothing that was talked about long enough to got stuck in my brain.
So I wouldn't deny that some of us are a bit blind in regards to the still-running businesses that were involved with the nazis. And if someone brings it up it's often just dismissed with sth. alike "Well, at that time you had to cooperate with the nazis or ceise to exist".
But saying we're "uncomfortable" about the history is wrong in the way it was said; sure, we (at least those with my opinion) are not proud of what happened and it's not our favorite topic, but it's not like we just pretend it never happened
Iirc I’m pretty sure they haven’t apologized for all the horrible shit Unit 731 did to the Chinese and actively go out of their way to pretend stuff like the Rape of Nanking never happened.
I normally would say to look them up, but this one of the rare cases that I would say to do so if you can stomach reading some of the most disgusting shit.
When I was doing history in Year 11 & 12 (junior and senior?) I had this incredibly strict, serious teacher. He was known throughout the school for his intensity, and his lack of tolerance for bullshit. When we covered the Rape of Nanking, he had gone through and sharpied out a paragraph on a handout. He told us that he wouldn’t normally try to shield his students from a part of history, but that this particular part was incredibly distressing.
How many executives and shareholders were convicted for their crimes? Did any profits get dislodged? Seems like people who benefit front these crimes are still holding nice bags of profits and assets.
Also, you glossed over how BMW and other corps would import slaves to work their factories. Do they teach that in German schools or just topics in vogue like camps?
It's taught in schools, and anyway, you're glossing over the fact that the poster above proved your claim wrong (Germans are all uncomfortable with their history), which is just plain false.
You haven't made me fee uncomfortable, if that's what you're implying.
Man I just had a look at your comment history, and noticed you haven't posted anything at all.
Good luck trolling around the internet, uninvited, talking as if you're a fountain of wisdom.
Add another sad little troll to the ban pile.
That's not true at all, Germans make a big effort in remembering what they did and making sure it keeps being remembered.
As opposed to my country, Italy, where the attitude after the fall of Mussolini was "uh, oh well".
Let's just not talk about it was very common practice for like 40 years after the war in Germany, too. But today it's a totally different story (luckily). Can't be remembered enough especially when looking at the political directions the western world is heading to right now...
So lets stop to consider, regardless of that nazi memorabilia.
You live under a fascist dictatorial regime.
There are very few options available for you to live a relatively uneventful life.
Either you're an open, true, supporter, a passive one or a dissimulated dicident. Yes, there are more options available, but lets take these as the most broad categories.
Now let us consider that your regime an enacted several acts of domestic, unprovoked violence, internal purges and other assorted brutal and unpredictable actions against social peace and stability, in order to cement its unquestionable power over an entire nation.
Then, that same regime advances to a state of war, where all resources and infrastructure are comandeered to bolster the military.
At some point, companies are put a very simple option: either they cooperate and remain active or they refuse and suffer the consequences, that at best can be simple nationalization and purge of the heads.
Considering all of this, BMW supporting Germany's war effort is understanble.
Do I agree with that decision? No. But do I understand it? Yes.
Cooperate and live or refuse and die? Not an hard choice, especially if a lot of money is put on the table.
cool nazi apologia
thats a lot of words for "companies dont care about anything except money"
we get it, they followed what the country's trends did regardless of the cost
To be fair, while everyone likes to think they'd be resisting nazi rule, most people, including you, would have most likely fallen in line and at least pretended to be pro-nazi.
Okay...?
Okay, so I am from a country where we got rid of a fascist government less than 50 years ago, thus ending 4 decades of dictatorship. The memory of those days are still quite fresh in our collective memory, regardless the new right wing zealots going to far lenghts to retell a very well and publicly documented history.
And that history is an history of repression, social stagnation and political persecussion. And denunciation.
KGB, the famous KGB, created a reputation for repression by brutality but here it was impossible to tell who you could trust. Your neighbour, your loved ones, that person you encountered every day on the bus, your coworkers... besides the very easy to spot and identify agents that could at random approach you on the street, question and drag you off to the nearest police station or detention center, with no expected time to return home, if ever.
It took, technically a military coup, an inside job, to take this repressive regime. Luckily, it was never their intention to instate a military junta and democracy was instead established.
People could either support, tolerate or endure the regime. There was no other options. Thousands conspired for decades and died in the process. The slightest suspicion and any one could end behind bars, deported to one of the colonies, where prison conditions were even worse, as if such thing could be possible or simply gone, occasionally dragged out of their house, in the middle of the night, in a very loud and public exibition of force for everyone to see and never to comment but by whispers.
That is how fascism, and by extension, any dictatorship enforces complacency.
Not many are willing to become heroes and even less survive to tell the tale. The notion that when dark times arise a great hero will come is an hollywood creation.
Okay, so the people at the top of that company were terrified for their lives too. Everyone complied or died. They chose to comply. Just like you would have.
Do I think the money earned during that time should be given to survivors and their families? Yes. Do I blame them for complying? No.
You conveniently omit the third group: the ones that perpetrate and take advantage of the narrative for their own gain.
If "we'd all be nazis", maybe we all deserve criticism. That's not a defense.
Thousands might be being murdered a day in death camps but at least the shareholders are happy.
You mean like Nike in Bangladesh, but without the wire fences and just through the use of police enforced and government backed brutality, when the workers tried to rally for better work conditions?
If we don’t hold corporations accountable for these types of things, they’ll be more likely to go along with it next time. All of the corporations that helped the Nazis should have been dissolved, had their assets liquidated, and used to pay reparations.
Could you be so kind and explain how would you ensure those who would be losing their livelyhoods survive? And their families?
We tend to peg a face to a company and demonize the whole from one person, like the tweeter debacle and that hair enhanced loon that bought it out of a whim, motivated by spite.
How many have lost their jobs already and how many more would lose them if the company was to be dissolved for punishment in their spread of false information (thus, aiding and abetting) that have led to the terrible losses and even worst for many?
Or perhaps Facebook, with their assistance with covering and gagging the genocide in Myanmar?
This doesn't mean I disagree with severely punishing these entities. Fine them in millions and billions, force them to break into competing entities, severely regulate and control their actions. But kill a company because, and in this particular case for BMW, they could cooperate or cease to exist, perhaps in horrendous ways?
That would make the punishment as bad or worst than the crime.
Awe, poor multi million dollar corporation had to support the Nazi war killing a shit ton of people or they would lose monies...
What do you think the Nazis did to people who refused to support them?
What do you think would happen if everyone didn't support them? You think it's okay to genocide if someone threatens you with a spanking?
No, I don't think it's okay. Yes, I know that if nobody supported them, the Nazis would have never risen to power in the first place.
But "corporation bad" doesn't mean it's always a matter of "I did this horrible thing to save a bit of money." Sometimes there are lives on the line.
Please do not equate concentration camps with a spanking either. You don't need to belittle the actual suffering they caused to make the valid point that cooperating with them is evil.
Oskar Schindler spent millions and most of his personal wealth to continue operating while saving as many jews as possible.
The leadership at BMW had many options available to them and instead chose to actively support genocide that they knew was happening. They used slave labor from the concentration camps. Leadership at BMW knew full well what was happening.
Yes, it is fully reasonable to expect people exploiting slave labor and actively contributing to a genocide to either do the right thing and do everything in their power to help the people being murdered, like Schindler, while risking their own lived.
Yeah. Are you trying to prove me wrong, or just provide additional information/opinion? I'm having trouble figuring it out, because it sounds like the former, but I'm not seeing much conflict in the information itself.
Thanks for the info, though. I hadn't known that they used slave labor. I was only reacting to the initial meme. Of course that is far less understandable than just having made vehicles for the Nazis in wartime economy.
It's also important to keep in mind that the leadership of the company today consists of probably 0 people who were part of the wartime BMW, and they do own up to their predecessors' misdeeds, so I don't think it's fair to blame today's BMW for it any more than it is to blame today's Germany.
I'd risk, with a good degree of comfort, that the negotiations would have been more along the lines of "serve your country and be paid for it or don't serve your country and go to a concentration camp and die a miserable death", the last part as subtext.
You do not negotiate with any sort of dictatorial regime. The regime holds all the cards, including the cards the other players think they have in hand.
BMW and, by extension, any company, be it small or large, cooperating with any regime is understandable. It's that or risk a terrible, more or less public, demise. That is why dictatorial regimes go to great lenghts to ensure companies and business owners favor by putting large quantities of money and/or resources in their hands.
Self preservation is easy to turn into greed.
There wouldn't have been a dictator if THEY didn't make him one. They should have resisted. Their selfishness in preserving their greedy company at the cost of millions of lives does not make them innocent.
What ever you may be trying to convey it's completely lost on me, as I don't have the faintest idea of what that is or means.
For a moment I thought you were talking about the USA.
Heerily similar, isn't it?
Heerily
Can't tell if that typo was intentional or not...
Just plain stupidity. Did not bother to look it up in the dictionary and fumble it.
B - Banana M - Melon W - We do everything for money
Well this got disappointingly stupid in no time at all. What I see here is something roughly like the same proportion of idiots as one would typically expect on Reddit.
Maybe it's not just reddit. Maybe people in general are fucking stupid trolls when posting anonymously on the Internet. I've this kind of reply a lot as Lemmy gains users. I'm convinced it's not a reddit thing. People suck.
100 percent agree. The world is disappointingly full of morons and idiots.
There's a Bertrand Russell quote to the effect that "the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and arrogant, while the intelligent are full of doubt."
No doubt I've botched the actual quote, but the point remains regardless.
I recently was in the BMW museum and they actually had a whole section dedicated to their Nazi past and how they want to never do that again. Do with that what you will but at least they're not shoving it under the carpet.
It's important not to forget the past. If America treated slavery the same way we'd be a lot further socially.
Reminder that the USA was a big inspiration for the nazis.
They pretty much wanted to make a USA II
It's not like they used IQ tests as justification for forced sterilization or anything... Wait what?
Yes and no. They also saw the US as ethnically impure and therefore weak. The 4th Reich wasn't going to have that problem.
I wish the UK would do the same. At least in the US they learn a bit about slavery - here in the UK we learn nothing about the British Empire and its atrocities. No wonder we have statues of slave traders everywhere.
I know there is regional variation on how the slave trade is taught, but when I was in school we had numerous, extended, and graphic discussions on the horrors of the slave trade starting from elementary school and extending into college.
Without doxxing yourself could you give an idea of where you went to school? I went to public school in the south and other than being mentioned I didn't learn much about slavery in school. I mean we learned about the underground railroad and generally knew about the slave trade and that being a slave was about the worst thing humanly possible. But other than getting whipped they didn't talk about much of the torture or punishments they'd went through. Civil rights I remember being discussed more in depth than slavery but when I was a kid I attributed it through the fact that most of my teachers remember the civil rights movement from when they were my age. Sorry I'm high so I'm rambling now.
I grew up in California
I’m not surprised about your experience though. I have also lived in the south and many of the southern states are still feeling the effects of decades of extensive lobbying on education by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
They DoC has historically pushed a narrative about slaves being happy and content overall, cared for by empathetic masters who valued their well-being. There are many monuments still standing glorifying the wartime deeds done by “loyal” and happy slaves. It’s really insidious.
That's actually very missleading, like most involved companies they tried everything to hide it till the shitstorm got too big and the damage to their image was smaller that way so we shouldn't give them any credit for that whatsoever!!!
Every single business in existence will sell out any value they say they hold for profit.
If they don’t another business will, welcome to capitalism.
TBF, Disney is not buckling under pressure from the Florida Nazi governor.
Disney don’t give a fuck about LBGTQIA+.
There’s just more profit in performative concern for that community.
They have a lot more to lose if they do.
I know that. But we still need to support the companies that do shit we want, so it's more profitable to do so.
I feel a little more sympathetic to them for the Nazi stuff than for any current shit they pull.
I have to wonder, had they said no, what the German state would have then done to them. Essentially any state can require a company to produce wartime goods.
That's true, but just because the business that does sell out is more successful, doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't buy from the businesses that didn't sell out. Obviously they will be harder to find because they tend to be more local and/or niche (you gotta be, if you want to survive against businesses with no morals), but we all need to be doing what we can.
Of course with cars, there's little we can do because all the privately owned companies tend to be making multi-million dollar cars. But for things like food, clothing, etc, there are often alternatives to the big name brands. You just have to look for them.
better than IBM I guess
Just curious, what did they do?
They did what they were told and didnt argue.
Same as Hugo Boss made SS uniforms, a lot of german people and companies at the time just went along. Even if they didnt wholeheartedly swallow the propaganda, even if they quietly hated the Nazi regime, they saw those that spoke out beaten, killed or straight up vanish. Some of the companies willingly stuck their heads in the sand and just went along because they knew that to resist was to mark yourself, and to cooperate was to profit.
Oh I knew what BMW did, I was just asking about IBM
There is a book about it: IBM and the holocaust.
here is a summary, hopefully not paywalled.
Yeah that is some great info, but what does IBM has to do with Nazi?
There is a book about it: IBM and the holocaust.
here is a summary, hopefully not paywalled.
That is atrocious. According to that account, there is proof that they willingly participated in the Holocaust in exchange for profits, and not a single one of them faced justice.
Didnt realise you were asking specifically about IBM. IBM definitely knew they were doing something wrong.
Yeah,This article should give you a good outline.
Hugo Boss, the guy, was a major nazi though. Active party member.
Like IBM!
and then there is Austria...
Their current symbol looks like a painted over swastika, so I'm sure their future will continue be a painted over swastika.
no, that's just the Bavarian checkers, pretty common across Bavaria
Actually it resembles an aircraft propeller, because that's what their engines were for.
So does OPs picture. It's a propeller, right?
And a cross is a swastika without arms... your point?
Back when I worked at IBM, there were a bunch of flags hanging in the cafeteria that represented every country where IBM did business. We often wondered, why wasn't there a Nazi Germany flag? After all, IBM did sell a ton of machines to the Nazis to keep track of Jews and other undesirables, in order to commit genocide. I wonder why IBM wouldn't want people to know about that? /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II
Eyebrow, meet ceiling
"In February 2001, an Alien Tort Claims Act claim was filed in U.S. federal court on behalf of concentration camp survivors against IBM. The suit accused IBM of allegedly providing the punched card technology that facilitated the Holocaust, and for covering up German IBM subsidiary Dehomag's activities."
Sadly, a majority of the lawsuits brought up against IBM in connection with it's dark past get dropped.
Doing business with Nazis because it's profitable. Nazis died, BMW regrets.
Doing business with fossil fuel because it's profitable. Earth dies, BMW regrets.
I see a pattern here
Hmmm... Maybe we shouldn't prioritize profits over all else?
Nah, nvm. That can't be right.
Get outta here with your pinko commie socialist gay woke agenda!!!
Nah they literally used extermination camp forced labour, that much we know without doubt so they were pretty damn complicit. Tried to research whether BMW ever actually made gas vans, but couldn't find a definitive confirmation or good evidence to the contrary from a reputable source, so gonna say they might have.
Fun fact: The grandmother of the current BMW owner Gabriele Quandt was literally Magda Goebbels. No, seriously.
On a similar note Deutsche Bank literally funded the Nazis and to this day is still doing shady shit like the numerous money laundering scandals and also being involved in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal. For each of those, including funding the Nazis, they merely got a slap on the wrist as they're literally still allowed to exist as one of the top 10 biggest banks of Europe.
Should IBM also close shop?
Any company that existed in Germany during WWII, it seems.
They did nazi that coming
Now that's a classic reddit comment right there. The more things change, the more they stay the same lol
It's missing the "Anne Frankly" opener.
Something something fuhrerious
i think that pun’s older than the internet
I imagine two soldiers in the trenches and one just says that when something unexpected happens and the other just smacks him in the back of the head.
Other than the giant swastika, does it bother anyone else that the kerning is uneven? The B is farther away from the M than the M is from the W.
Well it didn't
Other than that, how was the kerning, Mrs. Lincoln?
I thought Germans were supposed to be sticklers for detail!
I'd like to think they did that on purpose to spite Hitler.
Sloppy work like that is how you lose wars, son!
Now that you mentioned it, it does bother me, but it might have been on purpose.
BMW stands for Benelli (?) Motor Werk(s), so essentially it's:
(Location) -space- (Factory Type)
At least that's my assumption for it, because otherwise, it being Nazi Germany, if that was a typographical error, the person stamping those would probably be shot
It is Bayerische Motoren Werke. Funnily enough, that's wrong orthography, it should be Bayerische Motorenwerke, so you have a point.
Literal grammar Nazis.
Yikes, I also looked into the background of Ferdinand Porsche, and man, he was a real Nazi summabitch.
Hitler was directly behind the development of the VW Beetle with Porsche doing the engineering work.
Porsche also stole many of the innovative design elements of their cars from a Czech auto manufacturer called Tatra, after the Nazis took over the factory.
Hitler was not "directly behind" the development. You make it sound like he was the lead designer, accountant and test driver. He said "I want you to develop a car that will seat four, reach 110 km/h and cost a maximum of 1000 Reichsmark" because he wanted to make car manufacturing a significant industrial branch. The reality is that it was pretty much an empty promise. People invested in shares of VW so they could eventually get a Käfer, but very few were actually built during the war.
I literally said Porsche did the engineering. How would that make Hitler the lead designer?
Porsche employed nazis even after the war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Peiper
Everybody employed nazis after the war, including NASA. To an extent, the winners of the war silently agreed to let that slide.
These shitposts are too real
Not a good look ehh?
Is that even legal to post in Germany?
Considering BMW is one of the worse profiteers from WW2 it probably classifies as satire or something else art related!
Yeah but facts like that hurt Germans too much, they get all uncomfortable about history.
They want all that profit and tech, but no shame about how it was obtained
This is not at all a view that is based in reality, Germany has made it mandatory in their curriculum to learn about the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the war and bring the schools to concentration camps to drive home the depravity of their history.
What a bullshit take. Germany is noted for how they have handled their history, in stark contrast to Japan who do not acknowledge the atrocities they committed and shy away from public knowledge of them.
While I disagree with the person you're responding to because I find it honestly a little bit disgusting to equate the population of Germany with big German corporations (no, BMW is not "the Germans"), it is true that Germany has historically had a blind spot for capitalist Nazi collaboration (and so has the US, by the way!).
Cory Doctorow wrote a great piece about this topic a few weeks ago. Really recommend reading it if what you've always heard is how well Germany does with its history.
Can confirm this.
I visited several concentration camps in different countries with my school (not mandatory on curriculum; but visiting Auschwitz is something that really brings home the horrors and that's why the school offers it to older students (together with psychological staff))
I learned about Nazi-History for 2, maybe 3 years in school.
Therefore I can say that in general we are not afraid to learn/teach about the time; to prevent that it happens again (which seemingly didn't work as a significant parts goes towards the right again... but I digress)
That said: There was never a focus on german companies. Sure, here and there you will find some references and images as a sidenote in a school history book; but nothing that was talked about long enough to got stuck in my brain.
So I wouldn't deny that some of us are a bit blind in regards to the still-running businesses that were involved with the nazis. And if someone brings it up it's often just dismissed with sth. alike "Well, at that time you had to cooperate with the nazis or ceise to exist".
But saying we're "uncomfortable" about the history is wrong in the way it was said; sure, we (at least those with my opinion) are not proud of what happened and it's not our favorite topic, but it's not like we just pretend it never happened
Iirc I’m pretty sure they haven’t apologized for all the horrible shit Unit 731 did to the Chinese and actively go out of their way to pretend stuff like the Rape of Nanking never happened.
I normally would say to look them up, but this one of the rare cases that I would say to do so if you can stomach reading some of the most disgusting shit.
When I was doing history in Year 11 & 12 (junior and senior?) I had this incredibly strict, serious teacher. He was known throughout the school for his intensity, and his lack of tolerance for bullshit. When we covered the Rape of Nanking, he had gone through and sharpied out a paragraph on a handout. He told us that he wouldn’t normally try to shield his students from a part of history, but that this particular part was incredibly distressing.
How many executives and shareholders were convicted for their crimes? Did any profits get dislodged? Seems like people who benefit front these crimes are still holding nice bags of profits and assets.
Also, you glossed over how BMW and other corps would import slaves to work their factories. Do they teach that in German schools or just topics in vogue like camps?
It's taught in schools, and anyway, you're glossing over the fact that the poster above proved your claim wrong (Germans are all uncomfortable with their history), which is just plain false.
Concentration camps are so in vogue.
You must be so tired from moving those goalposts.
You really don't know what you're talking about.
"they get all uncomfortable about history."
Looks like I do ;)
You haven't made me fee uncomfortable, if that's what you're implying.
Man I just had a look at your comment history, and noticed you haven't posted anything at all.
Good luck trolling around the internet, uninvited, talking as if you're a fountain of wisdom.
Add another sad little troll to the ban pile.
That's not true at all, Germans make a big effort in remembering what they did and making sure it keeps being remembered.
As opposed to my country, Italy, where the attitude after the fall of Mussolini was "uh, oh well".
Let's just not talk about it was very common practice for like 40 years after the war in Germany, too. But today it's a totally different story (luckily). Can't be remembered enough especially when looking at the political directions the western world is heading to right now...
this reads like a joke, it's so far from what i see from germans and germany.
They were getting Germany confused with Florida and profit/tech with alligators/meth. Easy mistake.
I mean, the famous Bf-109 fighters had BMW engines.
For everyone wodering, here is a good english video that also covers some of BMWs history! https://piped.video/watch?v=-WX5zOdMprc&t=1011
So lets stop to consider, regardless of that nazi memorabilia.
You live under a fascist dictatorial regime. There are very few options available for you to live a relatively uneventful life.
Either you're an open, true, supporter, a passive one or a dissimulated dicident. Yes, there are more options available, but lets take these as the most broad categories.
Now let us consider that your regime an enacted several acts of domestic, unprovoked violence, internal purges and other assorted brutal and unpredictable actions against social peace and stability, in order to cement its unquestionable power over an entire nation.
Then, that same regime advances to a state of war, where all resources and infrastructure are comandeered to bolster the military.
At some point, companies are put a very simple option: either they cooperate and remain active or they refuse and suffer the consequences, that at best can be simple nationalization and purge of the heads.
Considering all of this, BMW supporting Germany's war effort is understanble.
Do I agree with that decision? No. But do I understand it? Yes.
Cooperate and live or refuse and die? Not an hard choice, especially if a lot of money is put on the table.
cool nazi apologia
thats a lot of words for "companies dont care about anything except money"
we get it, they followed what the country's trends did regardless of the cost
To be fair, while everyone likes to think they'd be resisting nazi rule, most people, including you, would have most likely fallen in line and at least pretended to be pro-nazi.
Okay...?
Okay, so I am from a country where we got rid of a fascist government less than 50 years ago, thus ending 4 decades of dictatorship. The memory of those days are still quite fresh in our collective memory, regardless the new right wing zealots going to far lenghts to retell a very well and publicly documented history.
And that history is an history of repression, social stagnation and political persecussion. And denunciation.
KGB, the famous KGB, created a reputation for repression by brutality but here it was impossible to tell who you could trust. Your neighbour, your loved ones, that person you encountered every day on the bus, your coworkers... besides the very easy to spot and identify agents that could at random approach you on the street, question and drag you off to the nearest police station or detention center, with no expected time to return home, if ever.
It took, technically a military coup, an inside job, to take this repressive regime. Luckily, it was never their intention to instate a military junta and democracy was instead established.
People could either support, tolerate or endure the regime. There was no other options. Thousands conspired for decades and died in the process. The slightest suspicion and any one could end behind bars, deported to one of the colonies, where prison conditions were even worse, as if such thing could be possible or simply gone, occasionally dragged out of their house, in the middle of the night, in a very loud and public exibition of force for everyone to see and never to comment but by whispers.
That is how fascism, and by extension, any dictatorship enforces complacency.
Not many are willing to become heroes and even less survive to tell the tale. The notion that when dark times arise a great hero will come is an hollywood creation.
Okay, so the people at the top of that company were terrified for their lives too. Everyone complied or died. They chose to comply. Just like you would have.
Do I think the money earned during that time should be given to survivors and their families? Yes. Do I blame them for complying? No.
You conveniently omit the third group: the ones that perpetrate and take advantage of the narrative for their own gain.
If "we'd all be nazis", maybe we all deserve criticism. That's not a defense.
Thousands might be being murdered a day in death camps but at least the shareholders are happy.
You mean like Nike in Bangladesh, but without the wire fences and just through the use of police enforced and government backed brutality, when the workers tried to rally for better work conditions?
If we don’t hold corporations accountable for these types of things, they’ll be more likely to go along with it next time. All of the corporations that helped the Nazis should have been dissolved, had their assets liquidated, and used to pay reparations.
Could you be so kind and explain how would you ensure those who would be losing their livelyhoods survive? And their families?
We tend to peg a face to a company and demonize the whole from one person, like the tweeter debacle and that hair enhanced loon that bought it out of a whim, motivated by spite.
How many have lost their jobs already and how many more would lose them if the company was to be dissolved for punishment in their spread of false information (thus, aiding and abetting) that have led to the terrible losses and even worst for many?
Or perhaps Facebook, with their assistance with covering and gagging the genocide in Myanmar?
This doesn't mean I disagree with severely punishing these entities. Fine them in millions and billions, force them to break into competing entities, severely regulate and control their actions. But kill a company because, and in this particular case for BMW, they could cooperate or cease to exist, perhaps in horrendous ways?
That would make the punishment as bad or worst than the crime.
Awe, poor multi million dollar corporation had to support the Nazi war killing a shit ton of people or they would lose monies...
What do you think the Nazis did to people who refused to support them?
What do you think would happen if everyone didn't support them? You think it's okay to genocide if someone threatens you with a spanking?
No, I don't think it's okay. Yes, I know that if nobody supported them, the Nazis would have never risen to power in the first place.
But "corporation bad" doesn't mean it's always a matter of "I did this horrible thing to save a bit of money." Sometimes there are lives on the line.
Please do not equate concentration camps with a spanking either. You don't need to belittle the actual suffering they caused to make the valid point that cooperating with them is evil.
Oskar Schindler spent millions and most of his personal wealth to continue operating while saving as many jews as possible.
The leadership at BMW had many options available to them and instead chose to actively support genocide that they knew was happening. They used slave labor from the concentration camps. Leadership at BMW knew full well what was happening.
Yes, it is fully reasonable to expect people exploiting slave labor and actively contributing to a genocide to either do the right thing and do everything in their power to help the people being murdered, like Schindler, while risking their own lived.
Yeah. Are you trying to prove me wrong, or just provide additional information/opinion? I'm having trouble figuring it out, because it sounds like the former, but I'm not seeing much conflict in the information itself.
Thanks for the info, though. I hadn't known that they used slave labor. I was only reacting to the initial meme. Of course that is far less understandable than just having made vehicles for the Nazis in wartime economy.
It's also important to keep in mind that the leadership of the company today consists of probably 0 people who were part of the wartime BMW, and they do own up to their predecessors' misdeeds, so I don't think it's fair to blame today's BMW for it any more than it is to blame today's Germany.
I'd risk, with a good degree of comfort, that the negotiations would have been more along the lines of "serve your country and be paid for it or don't serve your country and go to a concentration camp and die a miserable death", the last part as subtext.
You do not negotiate with any sort of dictatorial regime. The regime holds all the cards, including the cards the other players think they have in hand.
BMW and, by extension, any company, be it small or large, cooperating with any regime is understandable. It's that or risk a terrible, more or less public, demise. That is why dictatorial regimes go to great lenghts to ensure companies and business owners favor by putting large quantities of money and/or resources in their hands.
Self preservation is easy to turn into greed.
There wouldn't have been a dictator if THEY didn't make him one. They should have resisted. Their selfishness in preserving their greedy company at the cost of millions of lives does not make them innocent.
What ever you may be trying to convey it's completely lost on me, as I don't have the faintest idea of what that is or means.
For a moment I thought you were talking about the USA.
Heerily similar, isn't it?
Can't tell if that typo was intentional or not...
Just plain stupidity. Did not bother to look it up in the dictionary and fumble it.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ludendorff-Spende
Oof
B - Banana
M - Melon
W - We do everything for money
Well this got disappointingly stupid in no time at all. What I see here is something roughly like the same proportion of idiots as one would typically expect on Reddit.
Maybe it's not just reddit. Maybe people in general are fucking stupid trolls when posting anonymously on the Internet. I've this kind of reply a lot as Lemmy gains users. I'm convinced it's not a reddit thing. People suck.
100 percent agree. The world is disappointingly full of morons and idiots.
There's a Bertrand Russell quote to the effect that "the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and arrogant, while the intelligent are full of doubt."
No doubt I've botched the actual quote, but the point remains regardless.