You did literally just say how you thought of Germany when shopping in an ALDI ;)
Have you ever used a plastic product, a computer, taken some form of painkiller or antibiotic, eaten a wheat-based product?
Congratulations, you are indirectly benefitting from the German Nazi-affiliated chemical conglomerate IG Farben. It's subsidiaries were responsible for, among other things, inventing heroin and Zyklon B - the gas used in concentration camps, utilising slave Labour from Auschwitz in their factories and deliberately spreading HIV in South America.
Its more that the companies who invented wheat-based products created Zyklon B.Damn, Nazis invented wheat based products? Leans something new every day.
Didn't Siemans utilise forced labor from a concentration camp too? Or was it Motorola?
MitsubishiDidn't Siemans utilise forced labor from a concentration camp too? Or was it Motorola?
Damn, Nazis invented wheat based products? Learn something new every day.
Or the space race.If you search through enough layers of abstraction, you can probably link any facet of modern capitalism to a war crime of some sort.
I mean, doesn't it? It's not exactly ancient history.Both my grandfathers literally fought in the German army in World War 2.
I must feel REALLY weird
No, it really doesn't.
No one who was a Nazi is benfitting from your money, you are overthinking things to an absurd degree. Why don't you give up your house to a Native American or descendent of a slave while you are at it, if dark histories concern you that much.
There are multiple companies that are owned by Germans born in the Weimar republic that were conscripted into the Nazi military.
This.Were they Nazis, or just in the German Army? There is a big difference.
So everyone who had to serve the army back then is automatically Nazi?Right, so that's where the line is so hard to draw. Young people in 1940s Germany could have been all for the Nazis and when the war was over pretend that it was all forced.
Or if you're going to feel weird about supporting companies, just go off the grid and become a farmer.If you're gonna feel weird supporting companies, it makes more sense to not shop at Amazon for treating their workers like crap at this very moment than to avoid Aldi just because it was founded by a nazi a century ago. (you can go too far with this kind of stuff)
So everyone who had to serve the army back then is automatically Nazi?
They didnt have a choice.If you fought to advance and protect the causes of the Reich, is there a functional difference?
On the topic it is case by case. If they did repent for their part and were not directly involved in the atrocities of camps and rounding up victims etc. then I don't have a problem. All of Germany did need to disassociate themselves and it has. So as long as those individuals did, then I hold no objections.
They didnt have a choice.
Especially those in the camps who helped victims to escape would be judged by your standards.
Just looked it up and Siemens was worse than I remembered http://holocaustonline.org/siemens/
The major private firm that used slave labor at RavensbrĂĽck was the Siemens Electric Company, today the second largest electric company in the world. In a separate camp adjoining the main one, Siemens "employed" the women to make electrical components for V-1 and V-2 rockets. The women usually worked for twelve hours a day, under conditions of extreme exploitation. Women also worked at some of the most difficult tasks, including construction. They were used like animals, with twelve to fourteen of them pulling a huge roller to pave the streets,
Basically title question. There are multiple companies that are owned by Germans born in the Weimar republic that were conscripted into the Nazi military.
They didnt have a choice.
Especially those in the camps who helped victims to escape would be judged by your standards.
Im not saying that nobody was at fault, but to claim everyone supported it back then is not true. Even worse to state that everyone who was called into service (which very often happened against their will). It was war, every male had to serve.It's easy to just white wash history by removing agency from soldiers.