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.
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Is that a face or are you referring to the asterisk wildcard and implying you can put any social evil instead of the asterisk?
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You don’t need the dot unless you want to exclude files without extensions.
Just an asterisk. . Doesn’t include files without an extension.
As a helpdesk tech this command made me chuckle
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.
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American here. What is this “slavery” you speak of?
I didn’t know either, so I consulted some textbooks from Florida. Turns out, it was a long-term internship program that the New World set up to help out the uncivilized savages from Africa.
As I understand it, it was a physically demanding program, and most of those who participated didn’t make it to the end, but those who did gained life skills that would continue to impact not only them, but generations of their dependents.
Some, especially teachers in Florida who wish to keep their jobs, might say it was the very first Affirmative Action program. When you look at it that way, we should be proud of this part of our heritage.
Reminder that the USA was a big inspiration for the nazis.
They pretty much wanted to make a USA II
It’s not like they used IQ tests as justification for forced sterilization or anything… Wait what?
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.
Without doxxing yourself could you give an idea of where you went to school? I went to public school in the south and other than being mentioned I didn’t learn much about slavery in school. I mean we learned about the underground railroad and generally knew about the slave trade and that being a slave was about the worst thing humanly possible. But other than getting whipped they didn’t talk about much of the torture or punishments they’d went through. Civil rights I remember being discussed more in depth than slavery but when I was a kid I attributed it through the fact that most of my teachers remember the civil rights movement from when they were my age. Sorry I’m high so I’m rambling now.
I grew up in California
I’m not surprised about your experience though. I have also lived in the south and many of the southern states are still feeling the effects of decades of extensive lobbying on education by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
They DoC has historically pushed a narrative about slaves being happy and content overall, cared for by empathetic masters who valued their well-being. There are many monuments still standing glorifying the wartime deeds done by “loyal” and happy slaves. It’s really insidious.
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.
Disney don’t give a fuck about LBGTQIA+.
There’s just more profit in performative concern for that community.
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
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
Actually it resembles an aircraft propeller, because that’s what their engines were for.
So does OPs picture. It’s a propeller, right?
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
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!!!
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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.
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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.
Honestly, after WW2 and the horrors of it and the Holocaust, I’m mildly surprised that Germany wasn’t intentionally “collapsed” in a permanent way. Not just its division into zones but permanently dissolved as a geopolitical entity, with the allies flooding their respective zones with people to settle, work, and live in the region, and encouraging the German people to travel to their countries to dilute/absorb/assimilate the people and culture to the point that the actual land effectively became something between a territory and a colony of each ally (or even an outright annexation), with no moves toward creation of East and West Germany, nor any consideration of reunification.
I guess time has a way of healing wounds, but given the impact of the war and the acts of the nazi regime, I would have expected the allies, post-war to do everything in their power to prevent a German state from ever existing again.
Admittedly, I’m not as familiar with that time period as I am with the war itself, and such ideas are always easier said than done…but that’s always seemed like a more realistic course of events, to me, than what actually happened.
That is what happened at the of WW1 which created conditions that were a straight line into WW2.
The reality it is far better to support a people back into democratic, peaceful self-governed society vs perpetuate the damage and trauma of a bestial dictatorship.
How do you measure that, there’s no crime in Germany that’s in anyway related to the horrors of WW2 (I’m assuming). Most remnants feel guilty or ousted by society if they mention being part of war crimes. Very few would have found support in different parts of the world encouraging supremacy or something shady.
The purpose of punishments and prison system if to avoid repeat behavior which mostly happened anyways. So does still punishing them have any real value except for feelings of revenge?
Well, if you don’t even try to punish wrong behaviour it’s a bit like agreeing with it. Hey son, you did nothing wrong in killing the neighbors. Keep it up, Kyle.
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
Why though? Today it’s a different company with different people and values.
if IBM had such different values they could be paying reparations to the communities they helped tried to murder out of existence. even acknowledging the company’s role in the holocaust would be a start - instead as of 2021 they’re still in full denial mode
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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.
Can we leave that unfunny overdone joke on reddit?
That pun was not created by anyone on Reddit
Can we still leave it there?
No
No u
Can we leave the judgmental and overly controlling posts there?
Unlikely, those predate historical record.
A big part of Reddit getting to where they are now in size and popularity was that the comment sections got predictable and less fun and informative. I think hoping for better here isn’t judgemental or controlling, it’s part of why we left reddit.
Everyone here is talking about how this reminds them of early reddit and early internet but these low effort comments getting common place are very late stage reddit which is boring.
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No
All dad jokes have been banned until father notice
I’m here to sign up for the band
No
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
Literal grammar Nazis.
It is Bayerische Motoren Werke. Funnily enough, that’s wrong orthography, it should be Bayerische Motorenwerke, so you have a point.
These shitposts are too real
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.
I literally said Porsche did the engineering. How would that make Hitler the lead designer?
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.
Not a good look ehh?
Is that even legal to post in Germany?
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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
This is not at all a view that is based in reality, Germany has made it mandatory in their curriculum to learn about the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the war and bring the schools to concentration camps to drive home the depravity of their history.
What a bullshit take. Germany is noted for how they have handled their history, in stark contrast to Japan who do not acknowledge the atrocities they committed and shy away from public knowledge of them.
Iirc I’m pretty sure they haven’t apologized for all the horrible shit Unit 731 did to the Chinese and actively go out of their way to pretend stuff like the Rape of Nanking never happened.
I normally would say to look them up, but this one of the rare cases that I would say to do so if you can stomach reading some of the most disgusting shit.
How many executives and shareholders were convicted for their crimes? Did any profits get dislodged? Seems like people who benefit front these crimes are still holding nice bags of profits and assets.
Also, you glossed over how BMW and other corps would import slaves to work their factories. Do they teach that in German schools or just topics in vogue like camps?
It’s taught in schools, and anyway, you’re glossing over the fact that the poster above proved your claim wrong (Germans are all uncomfortable with their history), which is just plain false.
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Concentration camps are so in vogue.
You must be so tired from moving those goalposts.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about.
“they get all uncomfortable about history.”
Looks like I do ;)
You haven’t made me fee uncomfortable, if that’s what you’re implying.
Man I just had a look at your comment history, and noticed you haven’t posted anything at all.
Good luck trolling around the internet, uninvited, talking as if you’re a fountain of wisdom.
That’s not true at all, Germans make a big effort in remembering what they did and making sure it keeps being remembered.
As opposed to my country, Italy, where the attitude after the fall of Mussolini was “uh, oh well”.
Let’s just not talk about it was very common practice for like 40 years after the war in Germany, too. But today it’s a totally different story (luckily). Can’t be remembered enough especially when looking at the political directions the western world is heading to right now…
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Add another sad little troll to the ban pile.
this reads like a joke, it’s so far from what i see from germans and germany.
They were getting Germany confused with Florida and profit/tech with alligators/meth. Easy mistake.
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
Oof
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.
