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Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us
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Siemens
Siemens AG is the massive global conglomerate that makes everything from circuits to wind turbines to Maglev trains. It has almost half a million employees worldwide and is listed on every stock exchange imaginable. The company had its roots back in the 19th century when famed scientist Werner von Siemens got tired of discovering stuff and decided to make some money instead. Of course, he was dead long before the 1940s, so Mr. Werner von Siemens is guilty of nothing more than not entering the world of porn with that gift of a name. The company he gave that name to may as well have it's corporate headquarters inside a dormant volcano, because it probably couldn't have been more evil if it were trying its hardest. Job with Nazis:
Hundreds of thousands of slave workers were employed to build all sorts of goodies for the German military to use on both the western and the eastern fronts. Though they weren't the only company at the time supplying the German war effort, they were certainly the most prolific. Siemens was in charge of Germany's rail infrastructure, communications, power generation ... the list goes on. If the Reichstag was the brain behind the war, Siemens was definitely the right hand that stroked Hitler to ecstatic glory. So how evil were they?
Why else would the Allies destroy four-fifths of the company's factories during the war? Because they were bored? Fuck no. It's because they intended to blitz the marque brand of Nazi Germany back into hell where it belonged. These days Siemens is being forced to pay due to a series of lawsuits from survivors. So, at least they own up to it, right? Well, a few years ago, in an act of insensitive fuckery so colossal it could blot out the sun, Siemens tried to trademark the name "Zyklon" with the intent of marketing a series of products under the name. Including gas ovens.
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Stormfin so Bishop Hudal , ratlines including the Vatican ratline , celebrating Hitler's birthday and not to forgot Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican are okay and also if you think the Catholic Church were innocent and just protecting there followers you are f*****g retarded the Catholic church's hands were just as bloody and probably more so then any of the companies the catholic church looked after them selves , there wealth , there cronies , political allies and with who ever holds the power at the time. you are right about the get_awesome and Stormfin you are just a zealot who will no matter what refuse to believe your chruch is of any wrongdoing and fair enough it is to be expected however i take this subject very seriously.
You're f*****g retarded, get_awesome, and I quote:
"Pius XII, elected pope in March,1939, sought to prevent war by intervening with the leaders of European countries. After the war began in September 1939, he "sought to limit the extension of the conflict, to assist its victims, and to reach a just peace". Pius XII's October 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus condemned the invasion of Poland. Later, the 1940 invasion of additional European countries was condemned by Pius via the official Vatican newspaper. When Dutch bishops protested against the wartime deportation of Jews, the Nazis responded by increasing deportations, and rounding up 92 Catholic converts including Edith Stein, who were then deported and murdered. According to some scholars, "the brutality of the retaliation made an enormous impression on Pius XII" who felt that further denunciations would only lead the Nazis to extend their persecution to more people. When allied governments pressed the Pope to strengthen his condemnations, he feared that such action would be counterproductive and only provoke further persecutions. In Poland alone, the Nazis murdered over 2,500 monks and priests and even more were imprisoned."
If you read the article linked to "Zyklon", it means "Cyclone" in German. While the company clearly was evil as s**t in the 40's, some executive nowadays trying to name a product line "Cyclone" hardly means they are still Nazis. Unless the word "cyclone" is anti-semitic, in which case someone needs to notify all the Jews on the board at General Motors, as they've been using the name for decades.
You also forgot to mention the biggest corporation in the world, that was a pretty big supporter of the holocaust: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
Wow...humanity really sucks.
no, actually heroin does give u heroic properties. its just everyone else that sees u that thinks ur a shivering hobo ready to urinate on them at the drop of a nickel
I want a kitten!
The word is called Schutzstaffel, not Schultzstaffel! It's an article about German brands so please spell the few German words right...
Could the companies get in trouble now for what they did then? I'm sure most of the CEOs of said companies have all changed, but it was still basically treason.
You forgot to mention something about IBM, they also built the machines that did the calculations so that a ship firing it's cannons would hit it's target spot on, did I mention they sold those machines to the Nazis.
Here is where the propagandistic piece of s**t, The Corporation, gets it wrong. Corporations aren't run by people out for some shadowy political agenda, they're run by people out to make money, snort coke, and f**k thai hookers FULL STOP.
I used to have a kitten similar to the one featured we named Junior. He grew up and became 23lb Maine Coon goofball.
Unfortunely, there are point to both sides of the arguements. On one side these companies did do evil things in the past and should face punishment. The other side is this was way in the past and if they actually admitted wrongdoing they'd be slapped with so many lawsuits that it would 100 years to make it through the courts.
Probably the best thing the companies could do is support anti-holocaust and WW II museums and such.
@Rasalom: Ummm, I don't think you get it. World War II was not so long ago. There are still people who are alive today that experienced it. My own grandfather had to flee from Europe to Uzbekistan to escape the Nazis during the war, and he only died last year. It's not really "something your ancestors did" if many of said ancestors are still alive...
Additionally, a lot of the issue is the fact that many American companies, IBM especially, were in violation of American laws by dealing with the Third Reich while we were at war with them, which is, by all accounts, treason. Yet they've never had to pay for their crimes.
Unfortunately about the kittens... http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1598#comic
While I was reading this article my little black kitten recognized my great need for his cuteness and proceeded to walk back and forth across the keyboard before finally collapsing in a purring pile on my chest. God bless kittens, goddamn Nazis.
@Pacey & a few others: After reading through the comments a bit I think it's pretty stupid of someone to want an apology from anyone because of something their ancestors did, whether it's for slavery(White people just bought the slaves, the people sold as slaves were actually captured & sold by other blacks so get pissed at everyone still in Africa's ancestors for selling your ancestors to white people. Also, slaves were used for thousands of years in Rome, Egypt, etc. before they were ever shipped to the Americas, so why is it black people only ever get pissed off at white people?), killing Jews, whatever.
Now I wanna read more about WWII atrocities and hug my cat.
I had no idea the numbers on the arms of concentration camp inmates were from a code that would designate how they would die. Christ.
sliderr21, if you seriously consider everyone before the twentieth century to be too stupid to have noticed that some people who stood around people with diseases or who handled their artifacts might also get sick, then please explain the isolation of plague victims going back to at least the Romans. Furthermore, there are documents indicating that intentional infection with smallpox via blankets was carried out by British commanders during the French and Indian War (lord Jeffrey Amherstm researcher: d'Errico).
Also, as DunatadaMan explained, corporations are artificial people, so if it makes you feel better, imagine that they're suing a really old guy names Siemens, because legally, they are. And I assure you that every capitalist you ever meet wants corporations to be considered artificial individuals and will call you a commie pinko for suggesting otherwise. It's that status that provides legal protection to the humans making up this artificial individual.
sliderr21: The reason people can still sue these companies, and the reason these companies still have to pay isn't because the people in charge of the company should be held responsible, it's because corporations are individually considered an entity in and of themselves.
That entity is considered ethically and legally responsible for its action into eternity, even if those responsible for the actions are no longer with the company.
If the company wants to be separate from the actions of those within it, then that unfortunately makes those within it responsible for their own actions. Something that would lead them to getting personally sued into poverty for giving people cancer.
While I agree the people in charge of these companies have no responsibility for the past, if they want the protection of the company for their current actions, they have to also accept those responsibilities.
@kai5757: sorry to rain on ur little speech, but i really felt like relieving myself. First of all, are you f*****g serious? biological warfare on such a massive scale 200 years ago when most people believed they could cure diseases with snake oil? The belief that the government handed out blankets laden with smallpox is not only incredibly false, but also IMPOSSIBLE. Im going to skip all the atrocities committed by the natives here or else id be as long winded as you. So how about, if your so sorry, give them your land, your house, your money, an for god's sake your f*****g computer. Finally, the idea that people or companies should be responsible for the actions of their forbears is just crazy. The current representatives of these companies didn't do s**t, they didnt make those decisions, they didn't make those mistakes, why the hell should they be held accountable? You want to us people's tax money to prosecute people who were not in control of the company at the time of the war? and most likely were not old to even be a part of the company? Some 50 year old guy becomes CEO of one of these companies and you want to sue the s**t out of him because of something the company did when basically there was a completely different EVERYBODY working there? really?
I think a few of the commenter’s below don't realize the full extent of the American efforts of Genocide against the Native peoples of North America. It was full scale and plotted well for the time period it took place in. Some of the first recorded acts of germ warfare were committed then, when the US army gave blankets from polio and small pox outbreaks to the Native Americans, knowing they had not biological defense against these European diseases. Killing off MILLIONS of buffalo to try to starve out the Native Americans, and making them then dependant on US "aid". Marching them across many states on foot to God-forsaken places on the earth like North Dakota... waiting for the men to go out on hunting parties and then attacking all the elderly, women, and children. This was the ARMY killing civilians, and the weak. Can you imagine coming home and finding your whole family slaughtered? In Southern California, there are parks and schools named after the "Great American Hero" Kit Carson! This guy led many massacres against women and children and elderly. This is genocide folks. You can’t sugar coat it into just a dispute over land rights. And let’s not forget that the US government double-crossed the Native Americans on EVERY “peace treaty” ever signed. The Shoshone Nation still have a legal deed to half of So Cal and Nevada. Our US government has been blocking them in court for a century! Why shouldn’t they be paid reparations? There is a group of Navajo in AZ being starved out of their land because the US government has found huge coal deposits there, and they want at it. This is still going on today!
The Germans used technology to do the most systematic human slaughter in known history. They kept impeccable records of their activities. They were incredibly detailed. Which is why I find it amazing that there are still some fools in the world who try to say it never happened. There are more German created documents about the Holocaust than you can count. And yes the companies that helped in those atrocities need to be held accountable - in court and with our almighty dollar. I make decisions every day about the products I am going to buy, and the companies are listening. That is why you see things changing on the shelves. And yes even though the employees today of those companies were not involved in the decisions of the 1930's and '40's, the companies and governments are still responsible. They did make a profit by the actions they did with the Nazi’s – which enabled them to continue to be in business for many years later. They PROFITED by the killing of Jews, Gypsies, handicapped persons, etc. They could have chosen not to do what they did. They had the freedom of choice. The Jews did not.
The sad thing is that humans never seem to change. There is genocide going on all over the world even today. The governments try to make it sound less horrific by calling it "ethnic cleansing" like it's the newest face wash to get rid of pimples. It's not. It's Genocide. The mass-scale murder of a race of people. Look at Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, etc. We have to talk about it because we have to make sure it doesn’t keep rearing its ugly head. And now more than ever, as our planet continues to change, and access to clean water, food supplies, fuel, and land become more and more stressed, governments will continue to de-humanize certain populations of people in order to keep the resources under their own control.
We therefore can never forget. I suggest to some of you folks that can’t relate, to visit one of the Holocaust museums. See the lamps made out of SKIN - Jewish human skin - and proudly used on the desks of SS officers. The emaciated bodies, the experiments - horrific experiments, the mountains of shoes, the babies and children murdered.... All while the general population looked away. Let's also not forget that Hitler put some of the wealthiest Jews from Germany on a boat and offered them to different countries to test if he would be reprimanded, and everyone, including the US turned them away. That was Hitler's "green light" for all the hell that followed. EVERYONE has a stake in that horror. The US didn’t even want to get involved in the war about Jew's. If it wasn’t for Pearl Harbor, who knows if the US would have ever gotten involved. What a stain on our US history! If Germany had Oil or something, I am sure we would have been glad to go over there and bomb them.
Things to think about folks.
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sorry should say:
you are right about the nazis get_awesome **
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