- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
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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.
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As a helpdesk tech this command made me chuckle
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.
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American here. What is this “slavery” you speak of?
I didn’t know either, so I consulted some textbooks from Florida. Turns out, it was a long-term internship program that the New World set up to help out the uncivilized savages from Africa.
As I understand it, it was a physically demanding program, and most of those who participated didn’t make it to the end, but those who did gained life skills that would continue to impact not only them, but generations of their dependents.
Some, especially teachers in Florida who wish to keep their jobs, might say it was the very first Affirmative Action program. When you look at it that way, we should be proud of this part of our heritage.
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!!!
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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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.
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Yes, but for justice they would have had to arrest half of Germany and find prison guards that do not sympathise with the prisoners, so 99% foreigners. It was just impossible without Germany collapsing. And they probably wanted to avoid another treaty of Versailles.
Honestly, after WW2 and the horrors of it and the Holocaust, I’m mildly surprised that Germany wasn’t intentionally “collapsed” in a permanent way. Not just its division into zones but permanently dissolved as a geopolitical entity, with the allies flooding their respective zones with people to settle, work, and live in the region, and encouraging the German people to travel to their countries to dilute/absorb/assimilate the people and culture to the point that the actual land effectively became something between a territory and a colony of each ally (or even an outright annexation), with no moves toward creation of East and West Germany, nor any consideration of reunification.
I guess time has a way of healing wounds, but given the impact of the war and the acts of the nazi regime, I would have expected the allies, post-war to do everything in their power to prevent a German state from ever existing again.
Admittedly, I’m not as familiar with that time period as I am with the war itself, and such ideas are always easier said than done…but that’s always seemed like a more realistic course of events, to me, than what actually happened.
That is what happened at the of WW1 which created conditions that were a straight line into WW2.
The reality it is far better to support a people back into democratic, peaceful self-governed society vs perpetuate the damage and trauma of a bestial dictatorship.
Most of the top Nazi officials escaped to Argentina, and the more talented scientists ended up working for the US government.
some of them also became Austrian (or stayed in Austria) and went into politics after a very short while… (which is the origin story of the Austrian populist right-wing party “FPÖ” - their first leader was the former Nazi Minister of Agriculture and an SS officer) No need to hide your nazism if you’re in Austria (even today)
Should IBM also close shop?
Any company that existed in Germany during WWII, it seems.
yes
Why though? Today it’s a different company with different people and values.
if IBM had such different values they could be paying reparations to the communities they helped tried to murder out of existence. even acknowledging the company’s role in the holocaust would be a start - instead as of 2021 they’re still in full denial mode
Europeans didnt care what the Nazis did. They embraced them as their own after the war. And the US created numerous government functions for high ranking Nazis, NATO (still a terrorist org), NASA, etc. All in an effort to stop communists who actually ended WWII
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 summaremoved.
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?
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Shit posting is educational?
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Generally as long as the symbol isn’t used to endorse nazi ideology it is fine.
You’re goddamn right it is
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.
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.
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
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.
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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…
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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.
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For everyone wodering, here is a good english video that also covers some of BMWs history! https://piped.video/watch?v=-WX5zOdMprc&t=1011
I mean, the famous Bf-109 fighters had BMW engines.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
I don’t agree with your dichotomy, but ignoring that for a second, saying “the punishment as bad or worse than the crime” makes it sound like you think someone losing their job is “as bad or worse” than genocide - maybe reconsider
Let’s be clear here too. There was real dissent in Germany and the Nazis shipped those who fought back to camps first. These people just doing their jobs made their choice.
Wherever you work, are you so powerful there that you can refuse to follow intructions or operational guidelines? Are you so financially secure you can just quit your job and leave if you are aware the company is involved in unethical practices? Don’t you those who depend or rely on you for security in their lives?
If so, congratularions.
But many, if not most, don’t have that power and security. They need to work in order to live and take care of others.
Going back to the tweeter/musk debacle: how many were purged from the company or left it for dissent, how many stayed, even though they knew the company was going to engage in behaviours and practices completely contrary to its history and how many have really signed up for the new boss’s “vision”?
Crude analogy but valid enough.
If the company was to be dissolved as punitive action, as you suggest, where would those who stayed because they had to find jobs, considering they would be condemned by association?
Wait, let me try to answer that on your behalf: it would be necessary to lead proper investigations, to determine who was voluntarily, willingly, involved and those who were stuck with no other option.
Or are you perhaps suggesting that no matter what, the moment you complied, regardless your personal agreement, you are as guilty as those who made the initial decision that turned the company on its head?
This isn’t a black and white world. Please stop to consider these downfall of your decisions onto others.
your analogy between twitter employees not quitting because of Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and BMW workers not quitting because of BMW’s active participation in the holocaust isn’t just crude, it’s appallingly disrespectful.
I ask you again to think about whether you really mean that losing one’s job is “as bad or worse than” genocide.
I’d be happy to discuss with you, what I think someone could do if they find themself working for an organisation perpetrating atrocities (or encouraging them, as Twitter and Facebook are) - a sneak preview of my opinion is “they could certainly do more than sit there” - but I don’t think there’s any chance of it a productive conversation unless we can agree that being rounded up and exterminated is universally, objectively, worse than being fired from a job.
Contrary to your expectations, I’m very open to have a dialogue.
Please, elaborate your point.
Contrary to your expectations, I’m very open to have a dialogue.
Please, elaborate your point.
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.
Oof
