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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
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join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| German History As appalling a corporate history as Bertlesmann had during Hitler’s reign, the current management of the company is too young to have had anything to do with it. And post-war Germans, for the most part, are very sensitive about not repeating their elders' trip into tyranny.
Bertlesmann is only the tip of the iceberg. You'll recognize these companies - - - Ford Werke (Ford Motor Company); Opel (General Motors); Audi; BMW: Daimler-Benz; Siemens; Leica; Volkswagon; Bayer; Farben; Krupp; Dresdener Bank; Deutsche Bank; and others.
One example: Ford Motor Company and Ford Werke A.G - Ford Motor Company (USA) owned from 55 to 90% of the shares of its subsidiary Ford Werke A.G. during 1933 to 1945. Edsel Ford served as a director of the German subsidiary throughout the Third Reich’s history, even after WWII started. Unlike most American operations in Germany, Ford was not taken over by the German government during the war. Henry Ford, on his 75th birthday in 1938, was awarded by Hitler the "Great Cross of the German Order of the Eagle" for his contributions to the Thousand Year Reich. And guess what? Slave labor was used extensively by Ford Werke. That's just one appalling example of "makin' a buck" regardless of all else...including basic human decency.
There is a $4.5 billion fund in Germany for payments to victims of corporate slavery - more than 6,000 companies are involved in this!!! And before you say “that’s a lot of money,” consider (1) Estimates of slave labor for Germany in WWII range from 8 to 12 million people; (2) There are maybe 1/10 of them alive today; and (3) Those who were held in camps or ghettos are entitled to about $7,000, and those forced to work in factories will be eligible for $2,200. Wow, huh?
Anyone can count the seeds in an apple; no one can count the apples in a seed.
[text was edited by author 2002-10-10 15:55:59] | |
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Roundel
Blau Und Weiss
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| Re: German History I agree tottaly with you, Almost every German company had a relationship with the Nazis. Volkswagen AG has already paid millions upon millions of dollars to familes and victims, Almost every company has done the same thing, every German company has had the same history has Bertelsmann has had, But as Bistro said, This is whole new generation of Germans, they realsise the awful mistake that their parents and grand parents made, and they are sure to take the consequences for them. This is a dfferent people now.
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Small, Dependable and Deadly! | |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
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Englewood, CO
| Re: German History I think one of the most onerous instances involves an American corporation – IBM. (See Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.")
Mr. Black alleges that IBM maintained a strategic alliance with the Third Reich (with its Hollerith punch-card machine) in which IBM licensed, maintained and custom-designed its products for use in the machinery of the Holocaust, up to and including the task of cataloguing and dispatching their millions of victims. IBM allegedly did more than just sell equipment: It controlled the monopoly on the cards and the technology. And they were the ones that had to custom-design all the forms and punch cards, including everything form counting Jews, to coordinating trains going into death camps, to the extermination by labor campaign. (See »www.edwinblack.com/index.html for more info.)
I lived with a German family in the late 60s on an exchange program, attended German high school and later studied at the University of Bonn. (My father and his siblings, who'd fought their way across Europe less than 25 years earlier, were a bit uncomfortable with the thought of "living with the enemy.") So one thing I did was make it a point to visit a number of the camps, both in then-West Germany and the East Bloc, in an attempt to understand my host country and its recent history and culture. From the elders there was a lot of “We didn’t know” or “What could we do?” But from the post-war generation there was generally outrage and shame at what their parents had been a part of, and a firm resolve not to repeat history.
Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. - - - W. Clement Stone | |
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keith2468
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Winnipeg, MB | Re: German History So are Ford and IBM paying reparations to forced labourers too? | |
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bistro777
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| Re: German History Ford is not a party to the 10 billion Deutschmark “German Fund.”
There were three classes of forced labor in Nazi Germany: (1) Auslandishce Ziviarbeiter – foreigners in response to advertisements placed in occupied countries - came freely, then many forced to stay; (1) Kriegsgefangene – POWs, mostly Poles and Russians; (3) Konzentration Haftlinge – concentration camp inmates. German industry bid on pools of labor – much like bidding on slaves here in the US – to satiate the call for more pre-war and then more wartime production. The Nazis had three methods of extermination: gassing, shooting and slave labor, known then as "Vernichtung durch Arbeit" literally "extermination through labor." (That gives a stark and literal meaning to the phrase "being worked to death", doesn't it?)
It has been reported, unlike most American-owned property in Nazi Germany, the Ford Werke plant near Cologne was never confiscated by the Nazi regime, and it continued to be owned by Ford Motor Company throughout the war. Ford Werke began utilizing French prisoners of war as forced laborers, and continued utilizing thousands of forced laborers throughout the war in violation of Article 52 of the Hague Convention and the provisions of the Geneva Convention Governing Prisoners of War.
Ford Werke became an aggressive (and successful) bidder for forced laborers. More than 50% of the workers at Ford Werke were unpaid, forced laborers - as well as many concentration camp inmates from Buchenwald. In 1938, Ford ceased consumer-oriented manufacturing and began making tracked vehicles for the transport of German troops and other military equipment. Military historians estimate that approximately 60% of the three-ton tracked vehicles produced for the German army were manufactured by Ford Werke.
If Ford Werke was from 1933-1945 a German-only company, then I guess all’s fair in love and war. But to be primarily owned/controlled by Ford USA during that time?!?
The dslr/bbr Equal Time ACt of 2002: Ford’s response when the fund was announced - - - - - Ford Motor Co. said in a statement that it had "lost all contact with and control over the plant during the war years, had no role in employing foreign labor and did not benefit from wartime operations." Its German plant, Ford Werke in Cologne, was confiscated by the Nazis, the statement said. Ford said its participation in the reparations agreement led by the U.S. and German governments to provide relief for victims was "inappropriate" because "Ford did not do business in Germany during the war." - - - Well, I can only say there are many scholars, researchers and historians who disagree…
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." -- Thomas Paine | |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
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| Re: German History... Here’s the IBM part - - - It is not a part of the Fund because it "wasn't involved." Earlier I’d mention’d Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.” His research indicates, among other things:
"The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number. The five-digit Hollerith number was part of a custom punch card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. Nearly every Nazi concentration camp operated a Hollerith Department known as the Hollerith Abteilung."
"The German IBM, Dehomag, was IBM's second most profitable company in the 1930s. IBM maintained sales quotas for all its subsidiaries during the Hitler-era. It did not simply sell the Reich machines and then walk away. IBM's subsidiary, with the knowledge of its New York headquarters, enthusiastically custom-designed the complex devices and specialized applications as an official corporate undertaking.”
“IBM did not sell any of its punch card machines to Nazi Germany. The equipment was leased by the month. Each month, often more frequently, authorized repairmen, working directly for or trained by IBM, serviced the machines on-site-whether in the middle of Berlin or at a concentration camp. In addition, all spare parts were supplied by IBM factories located throughout Europe. Of course, the billions of punch cards continually devoured by the machines, available exclusively from IBM, were extra.”
How much IBM (US) knew or didn’t know is a firestorm of controversy. Mr. Black claims “Some of it IBM knew on a daily basis throughout the 12-year Reich. The worst of it IBM preferred not to know-'don't ask, don't tell' was the order of the day. Yet IBM NY officials, and frequently Thomas Watson's personal representatives, were almost constantly in Berlin or Geneva, monitoring activities, ensuring that the parent company in New York was not cut out of any of the profits or business opportunities Nazism presented. When U.S. law made such direct contact illegal, IBM's Swiss office became the nexus, providing the New York office continuous information and credible deniability.”
Here’s a cnet link to an interview with him about this - - - »news.com.com/2009-1082-269157.html. You decide, but the book is a real eye-opener... And now from the "equal time" corner again - - - In its defense, I know that IBM (US) performed such critical wartime efforts as breaking the Enigma Code, forecasting the weather/date of the Normandy landing, and other worthwhile missions. But on the other hand, it must be nice to make money off BOTH sides in a war, huh?
This'll probably be my last post on Germany history. I apologize in advance for turning this site into the History Channel. 
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." - - Mark Twain | |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
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| Re: German History... One more example - - - ITT
ITT was founded in 1920 by Sosthenes Behn. In 1930 Behn and ITT acquired several German companies (Standard Elekrizitats, A.E.G., Berliner Fernsprech und Telegraphenwerk, and others) - - - telephone companies and a number of heavy-industry manufacturing plants.
In 1938, following several meetings with Luftwaffe chief Herman Goring, Behn encouraged ITT's (German) Lorenz subsidiary to purchase 28 percent of the Focke-Wulf firm - - manufacturer of the bombers that were to sink so many Allied ships during the war. In addition, the German army, navy, and air force contracted with ITT for the manufacture of switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and thirty thousand fuses per month for artillery shells.
There is no record that ITT made direct payments to Hitler before his grab for power in 1933. On the other hand, numerous payments were made to Heinrich Himmler in the late 1930s and in World War II as late as 1944 through ITT’s German subsidiaries.
The most bizarre aspect of the US/Nazi corporate partnership, was war reparations: ITT presented itself as an innocent victim of WWII, and it was recompensed for its “injuries.” In 196 ITT managed to obtain $27 million in compensation from the American government - - for war damage to Focke-Wulf plants! - on the basis that they were American property bombed by Allied bombers. Huh?!?!?
ITT was not alone: GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing. By 1967 GM had collected more than $33 million in reparations and Federal tax benefits for damages to its warplane and motor vehicle properties in formerly Axis territories. (Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne.)
And there's lots of history regarding Texeco, J.P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, John and Allen Dulles (real irony there!), and other mainstays of big business in the 1930s and 40s...
Timothy 6:10. 'For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.' | |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
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| Re: German History We all know the quote by George Santayana – “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And Norman Cousins wrote “History is a vast early warning system.” My point was that greed and avarice are as old as the business world. What we’ve seen recently with companies like Global Crossing, WorldCom, Enron, Qwest ad nauseaum is simply a continuing pattern of business “leaders” putting the almighty dollar above all else, including integrity and morality.
My posts were not, as perhaps inferred, to be used as “ammunition for those who want to exact some sort of ‘punishment’ or revenge TODAY.” There is, for example, a difference between the movement for “reparations” from US companies to the descendents of slaves and the German fund that is being paid directly to those who suffered. And I would hardly call that revenge. My Dad liberated one of those camps in WWII, and I have walked through several in both Germany and Poland. A more sobering sight you’ll never see.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." - - Aldous Huxley | |
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ScholarX
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| One small correction: Siemens was actually very much against the Nazis.
And you forgot to mention as Nazi supporters JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, the Rockefellers' Standard Oil, and the fact that George W. Bush's grandfather was Hitler's personal Wall Street Banker, selling German Bonds to finance the Nazi war effort. | |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
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| Re: German History- Well, I never really got into the American side of things, other than the Ford and IBM’s controlling interests in their respective German subsidiaries, because this thread started with a discussion of Bertelsmann. But you’re right in that Rockefeller’s Standard Oil as well as the banking/investment communities “love for the almighty dollar” are well documented as well in their dealings with Nazi Germany.
But I must differ with you regarding Siemens. - - - Siemens used salve labor and concentration camp labor in its factories at Ravensbruck and in the Auschwitz subcap of Bobrek, among others, and the company supplied electrical parts to other concentration and death camps.
1. According to company information, at least 50,000 workers were forced to work for Siemens during the war. The Berlin-based organization Action Reconciliation which works to assist those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, estimates that one-third of the employees in 1943 were slave laborers, prisoners of war or concentration camp inmates.
2. Reuters - September 25, 1998 - FRANKFURT -- Another German firm has reversed course and agreed to establish a fund for slave laborers it employed during World War II.
The announcement by the electronics giant Siemens of an $11.9 million fund to provide the humanitarian aid came just a year after the company rejected responsibility for compensation payments for the laborers. Siemens follows lead of VW in initiating slave laborers' fund. In a news release Wednesday, Siemens said it "continues to express its deepest regret for what occurred in those years."
3. LA Times, Sept. 24, 1998: "Siemens Offers $12 Million to WWII Slave Labor Victims" - In response to threatened lawsuits, Siemens announced that it would pay this amount into a fund for survivors of German exploitation, in addition to the $4.3 million it paid to the Jewish claims conference in 1961. It used both Jewish concentration camp inmates as well as up to 20,000 slave laborers captured in Poland and eastern Europe in its wartime factories. Just a year ago, when the electronics giant celebrated its 150th anniversary, its CEO said he "deeply regretted" that his company could do no more for its former slave laborers.
4. An excellent source is a couple of books by S. Jonathan Wiesen - - - German Industry and the Third Reich: Fifty Years of Forgetting and Remembering and West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945-1955.
5. And from the “Huh? They did what?” department - - - BBC News - Thursday, 5 September, 2002 - - - German engineering giant Siemens has hastily abandoned plans to register the trademark "Zyklon", the same name as the Zyklon B poison gas used in Nazi extermination camps, BBC News Online has learnt. A year ago, Bosch Siemens Hausgeraete BSH), the firm's consumer products joint venture, filed two applications with the US Patent & Trademark Office for the Zyklon name across a range of home products, including gas ovens. Siemens should know better because it was directly complicit in the use of slave labor," said Dr Shimon Samuels, head of the European arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization.
”Sometimes it is not enough to do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.” - - Winston Churchill | |
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Re: German History...
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