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Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us

By Mike Huang
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IBM

IBM is one of the few IT companies whose history dates back to the 19th century, a time when information technology presumably involved putting a helmet on your carrier pigeon. On the one hand, this means they've been a Fortune 500 company since 1924, giving them a 60-year head start on the likes of Microsoft and Macintosh. On the other hand, over a century of history gives you a lot of opportunities to make some monstrous PR blunders.

Job with Nazis:
You're probably thinking, "Wait a minute. IBM was American! The closest America ever got to the Nazis was when Indiana Jones wore that uniform as a disguise in Raiders of the Lost Ark!"

Actually, prior to the war, American business took what can be generously described as a morally ambivalent stance on the whole Hitler thing. American groups, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute, directly funded Nazi eugenics projects in the early '30s (where the goal was to find ways to breed a master race). Of course, once the war started, most American businesses cut ties with Hitler. IBM, on the other hand, decided to stick around and see where he was going with this whole final solution thing.

And, this is the point where things take a horrific turn. To get through this, we're going to try to offset the horror with some kittens playing on computers. We'll just look at them while we type.

Back in those days, the only way to keep track of huge databases was with an extremely complicated system involving punch cards, and IBM was the best at constructing and maintaining those databases. IBM's punch card databases could keep track of anything: financial ledgers, medical records, Jews.

OK, give us a moment here ...

OK.

According to a book a guy wrote about it, as soon as the Nazis invaded a country, they would overhaul the census system using IBM punch cards. Then they'd track down every Jew, Gypsy and any other non-Aryan until they were all rounded up onto cattle carts. And, next stop wasn't Space Mountain.

So how evil were they?
The unabashedly anti-corporate documentary The Corporation shows actual footage of IBM punch cards used in prison camps, about two minutes into this video:

That tracked people based on their religion, their location and even how they'd be executed. For instance, Prisoner Code 8 was Jew, Code 11 was Gypsy. Camp Code 001 was Auschwitz; Code 002 was Buchenwald. Status Code 5 was execution by order, and Code 6 was gas chamber. Holy shit, people. Seriously, IBM. What the fuck?

Hold on, we're going to watch this video of a kitten fighting a laptop seven or eight times.

These days, IBM claims they were a victim of circumstance. They had a subsidiary in Germany long before Hitler took over. They say the company just fell under Nazi control, like every other company over there at the time. The records show that's not completely true, though. IBM sent internal memos in their New York offices acknowledging that their machines were making the Nazis more efficient, and they made no efforts to end the relationship with the German branch.

IBM has never made an apology or admitted any need to apologize at all, hoping instead that with time everyone would just forget about it. And, we pretty much have, because, hey, they make such awesome computers!

Bayer

Bayer, the massive pharmaceutical company that's most famous for making Aspirin, also is behind such wonder drugs as Levitra and, at one time in their history, heroin.

Yes, we can go on for ages about how wonderful aspirin is to stop heart attacks, or how Levitra can give you wood for weeks, but really, Bayer is most important for given heroin its name. The drug was promoted as having "heroic" properties, which is ironic since it by all accounts turns you into a shivering shell of a man.

Bayer also lent its name to a German soccer team, and to be honest, we're not sure if it's such a good idea to have your team named after a company that sold smack. Just imagine what the mascot would have to look like. We're thinking a Pete Doherty decked out in a blue suit with furry antennae who passes out halfway through the chicken dance.


Pete Doherty, sans costume. We think.

Job with Nazis:
Then again, it's probably even worse to name your team after the company that made Zyklon B gas, the stuff that killed millions of people in the concentration camps. Yep, Bayer was once part of a large conglomerate, IG Farben, that churned out thousands of killer Zyklon-B gas canisters. The gas was originally invented by Fritz Haber, a man whose life is so incredibly pathetic that you almost forgive him for indirectly causing millions of deaths, while looking as evil as humanly possible.


Seen here soon after uttering the phrase, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."

After he oversaw the first use of chemicals in warfare, his wife killed herself in their garden with his service revolver in protest. Once Hitler took over, Haber decided to renounce Judaism to fit in, only to be told that he was still Jewish according to the Nazi rule book because his mother was Jewish. He died of a heart attack while fleeing the country he spent his life serving. The chemical he originally invented to kill insects was used to kill a number of his relatives in the Concentration Camps.

You know what? We think we're going to just pack up and sail off to a deserted island somewhere. We'll just walk away from this whole humanity thing. Us and our kittens.

So how evil were they?
On one hand, the company that actually manufactured the gas was just partially owned by IG Farben, and Bayer was just one part of IG Farben. It's like the way we don't think of General Electric as a military contractor, because they make so many other things.

Bayer, though, has continued some of its old douchebaggery into the modern era. First off, Aspirin was invented by a Jewish man, Arthur Eichengrun, whose name Bayer still refuses to acknowledge. To this day, the "official" history of the company denies Eichengrun's involvement in the invention of aspirin, and states that an Aryan invented the drug, because as we all know, Aryans are better at everything.

One such Bayer-employed Aryan was a nice, thoughtful fellow by the name of Josef Mengele, who Bayer sponsored to seek out medical discoveries in the important field of torturing people to death.

We have some hard questions for Bayer. Actually, just one question, which is, "What the fuck, Bayer? Dude."



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346 Comments

And Ambassador Breckinridge, and Operation Paperclip, and support of the Japanese chemical scientists, and so on and so forth. A lot of people were in bed with the Nazis.

Posted on 4/12/2008 2:29:44 AM

What about G.M., DuPont, and standard oil prolonging the war by selling the nazi's high octane leaded gasoline? Or Henry Ford's support for hitler? Mary you are an idiot. Instead of the world speaking german, everyone speaks english... The American Reich.. 516 years and counting...

Posted on 4/4/2008 8:02:55 AM

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Posted on 3/30/2008 9:27:06 AM

Mary...get an education.

Posted on 3/30/2008 8:43:59 AM

Apparently Mary thinks it easy to manufacture evidence of a Holocaust, and doesn't know that even the German government recognizes the Holocaust as fact, and punishes those who perpetuate the Auschwitz Lie.

Posted on 3/29/2008 3:26:05 AM

Well this is somewhat depressing

Posted on 3/28/2008 10:00:14 AM

I was thinking the same thing Mike. And go to Hell Mary.

Posted on 3/27/2008 6:56:11 AM

Mary O'Brien

The Holocaust is just a big hoax. BTW: We should always capitalize "Hoax" so that people will know that we are refering to the Jewish Hoax. The NS just weren't all that bad; they were just like us in fact, but maybe more honest and decent. The Hoax is big money for the Zionistas. The kittens are cute though.

Posted on 3/25/2008 10:42:57 PM

Mike

Jesus, why the hell isn't Fanta on this list? It's the most important one!

Posted on 3/25/2008 4:50:55 PM

Hitler#1!

You forgot Jews. Germany's fertilier of choice for almost 60 years. This is how it's made: http://neilsnotes.com/index.php?page=13&catid=15&sku=ENGL-CD00266

Posted on 3/20/2008 10:30:46 PM

kate

you forgot Fanta! coke didnt want its brand to be associated with the Nazi party during WWII, but didnt want to miss out on emerging markets, so it created the Fanta brand to market in germany

Posted on 3/13/2008 6:46:58 AM

eboy

don't forget solingen knives. They made the cool but deadly shivs that the SS carried. Now, it's kitchen / psycho ware for the home

Posted on 3/10/2008 6:34:08 PM

OM'effingG

You forgot to include all of the world changing medical discoveries that were made whilest the Mengela's of Nazi Germany did haneous tests on the Jews. It sucks to admit it, but the we learned a lot about what the human body can withstand becase of the holocaust.

Posted on 3/10/2008 11:42:39 AM

fascist

I don't think that anyone in their right mind would justify IBM's involvement. And you are correct in your statement that companies only serve the almighty $. There are many companies in the US that have caused as many deaths. We need to learn from it. How many people die in africa by guns built in the US for example. I am just sick and tired of the germany slamming day in and day out. It's in the past. let's look at the present day.

Posted on 3/7/2008 7:16:13 PM

laudanum

Great article, the point is, people/corporation only serves $, it is amoral. A. Nonymous, please tell me you're not stupid enough to try and justify IBM's involvement with the holocaust.

Posted on 3/7/2008 5:28:40 PM

A. Nonymous

This kind of IS douchebaggy. Does anyone else know that IBM's US subsidiary built rifles for the US military during the war? C'mon, dude. Likewise, "Zyklon" is only the German word for "cyclone" and it does not carry the heavy baggage in German that it does in other languages. I could go on and on. You guys, if you're trying to be funny, try harder, and do a little more fact-checking, mmkay?

Posted on 3/7/2008 3:57:00 PM

fascist

it's actually a pretty douchbaggy article. It's always nice to point out others wrongdoings and ignore that we should have learned from it and not let it repeat itself. So you might want to keep your arrogant agression at home in the US and look around you. See some similarities lately? Or should we vote in another republican and then it'll really be too late...

Posted on 3/7/2008 12:18:12 AM

Actually, the Volkswagen was produced in Wolfsburg, a town they actually founded to make this car! Great article anyways!

Posted on 3/5/2008 3:39:48 PM

shiloh project

this reminds me of the 2004 movie csa the confed states of america

Posted on 3/5/2008 6:49:22 AM

Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy

What about NASA and all the technology we stole from them? I guess they aren't brand names, but still...

Posted on 3/4/2008 11:52:05 PM

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