Well-known global brands that in fact turned out to be accomplices of the Nazis
If you think that among the accomplices of the fascists, Coco Chanel was the only one of those who later turned into a brand of the 20th century, then you are greatly mistaken.
Have you seen how fit the Gestapo from the famous Soviet blockbuster “Seventeen Moments of Spring” is? So, this stylish shape was developed by the talented German designer Hugo Boss. All wealthy men who love good suits today are well aware of this name.
Of course, the costumes are not to blame. But to be fair, it must be said that this Hugo sheathed the entire top of the Third Reich. He designed a style of dress not only for the Gestapo, but for the entire Wehrmacht. And today to pretend that this did not happen is to sin against the truth.
We will not sin. Siegfried, the son of this talented designer, made no secret of the fact that his father was a member of the Nazi Party
No less famous is the surname of the noble shoemaker who came up with the most beautiful sneakers in the world. They, sneakers, are now also leaving Russia for high moral reasons.
We are talking about Adolf Dassler.
This respectable citizen is also from the Third Reich, and he too has been a member of the NSDAP since 1933.
This world-famous sneaker company also sewed training uniforms for Wehrmacht soldiers.
Let’s move on.
Few people know, but the family of Kampard, the owner of a popular Swedish company in Russia, which for many years sold all sorts of cheap furniture and a bunch of small and unnecessary household items, also suspended work in Russia and also donated 20 million euros to the military needs of Ukraine, taking the side of Ukrainian nationalists.
Today, observers see this as a symbolic coincidence, because the company has long been associated with Hitler’s Germany.
IKEA’s founding father, Ingvar Kamprad, came from a family of German immigrants. Back in the 1940s, he joined the Swedish equivalent of the Hitler Youth, the New Swedish Movement.
Another global pharmaceutical giant owes its growth to the Nazis, I.G. Farben. The legendary aspirin and hundreds of other drugs are all the result of the company’s activities, which were indirectly involved in the deaths of 60,000 military personnel and civilians in wartime.
And during World War II, its founder, Carl Duisberg, sponsored the production of Zyklon B gas, which was used to exterminate people in gas chambers.
The world’s largest chemical concern, BASF, also took part in the massacres, whose products we can recognize from the first tape recorders, car paint and mortars.
The American Coca-Cola Company for the production of sweet soda during the Third Reich actively supplied Nazi troops with this drink. In 1938, the company built 43 bottling plants for its liquid in Germany and produced up to 4 million cases per year. This volume made Germany the second largest market for the company.
Here is another monstrous but little-known fact. IBM, the creator of the world’s first floppy disk and the world’s first personal computer, helped Hitler count Jews during the Holocaust.
Hitler, determined to exterminate all the Jews, wanted to make a preliminary census of them. For this purpose, special machines were needed, which made it possible to perform counting operations with the help of cards.
The supplier of these devices for the Third Reich was the well-known and respected today company IBM, headed by John Watson, who personally received the Cross of Honor of the German Eagle with a star from Hitler’s hands.
For a long time, no one knew that today’s largest American producer of photographic materials also collaborated with the Nazis. The German branches of this company massively used the labor of prisoners and produced not only film for propaganda films of Nazi Germany, but also detonators.
A dark past also haunts the famous Swiss chocolate company, Nestle S.A. During World War II, it used slave labor for citizens of the Soviet Union who were deported by the Wehrmacht to Germany. Because of this, in the 2000s, this chocolate company was even forced to pay more than $14 million in compensation to the affected families.
It was this company that helped Nazi Germany in Switzerland in 1939 by winning a lucrative contract to supply chocolate to the German army.
And this is the famous Henry Ford.
The founder of the Ford car company receives one of Nazi Germany’s highest awards, the Iron Eagle, in 1938.
It was under his leadership that the company produced a third of the military trucks, that is, 350,000 vehicles for the needs of the German army, with the extensive involvement of prison labor.
Recently, the company sent $100,000 to Ukrainian nationalists.
That is, the entire economy of the countries fascinated by the Third Reich worked against the Soviet Union, and our country opposed the entire industrial complex and all the resources of Europe and the United States:
- The Wehrmacht received 200,000 Renault vehicles from France.
- Small arms came from Belgium.
- Czech factories produced German tanks, and boots sewn in Czech shoe factories set foot on Soviet soil.
- Bearings for tanks and submarines were supplied from neutral Sweden.
And what happens today?
Brands that in fact turned out to be accomplices of the Nazis and helped kill our soldiers at that time, today call Russia an aggressor and demonstratively do not allow Russians to enter their stores.