BMW

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
- 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.
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.
- I know that. But we still need to support the companies that do shit we want, so it's more profitable to do so.
- TBF, Disney is not buckling under pressure from the Florida Nazi governor.
- 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?
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
- 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.

- 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.
- 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

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.
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.
Can we leave that unfunny overdone joke on reddit?

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.
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?

- Shit posting is educational?
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

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.
- Thousands might be being murdered a day in death camps but at least the shareholders are happy.
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?
- 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.
- 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?

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.