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Who else feels weird about shopping at stores owned by former Nazi German Soldiers (Aldi, Trader Joes, etc)?
- Thread starter Masoyama
- Start date
OP
OP
I live in the US. The idea came from an article, I didn't even know Aldi was German. U really thought it was French
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.
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.
Fanta is legit my favourite fizzy drink. Look that one up, its a pretty interesting story.
But yeah you're overthinking this, OP. Genghis Khan was a mass murdering dictator, and 1 in every 200 men alive today is related to him, or something.
But yeah you're overthinking this, OP. Genghis Khan was a mass murdering dictator, and 1 in every 200 men alive today is related to him, or something.
I don't know, I mean food is food and the people behind the register don't look like Nazi's to me.
They are just trying to make a living. I'm just trying to eat, win / win.
They are just trying to make a living. I'm just trying to eat, win / win.
Damn, Nazis invented wheat based products? Learn something new every day.
Its more that the companies who invented wheat-based products created Zyklon B.
Didn't Siemans utilise forced labor from a concentration camp too? Or was it Motorola?
Do you also feel weird about American businesses build with slavery or owned by former slave owners?
I mean, I get the discomfort, but given the reality of mass conscription, this would basically be a policy of a generation-long embargo on all German business. As long as no profits are going to anyone who seems to have committed war crimes, I think you have to let everyone else go back to normal life, including shopping at their businesses. Every company is tainted by something, and honestly a few German grocers are nowhere near the worst of the bunch.
I refuse to eat or shop at any store that is willing to carry Fanta beverages. Dirty Nazi drink. Coke purchased them so I also avoid all coke products as well. It's very hard to shop to say the least.
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.
Fertiliser, my dude. Subsidiaries like Bayer have large crop science divisions. You may also be interested to know that Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018.
On a side note, the man who invented the nitrogen fixation process which allows for modern industrial fertiliser production was a German-born Jew called Fritz Haber. He was also responsible for inventing and directing the use of chlorine gas in WW1 and he was responsible for inventing Zyklon A, the predecessor to Zyklon B. The man who invented one of the most horrendous weapons known to mankind was at least in part responsible for saving millions of lives through the Haber-Bosch process.
If you search through enough layers of abstraction, you can probably link any facet of modern capitalism to a war crime of some sort.
OP
OP
I'm a Latino mestizo that emigrated to the US. I'm aware how the blood of my ancestors was spilled by my other ancestors to take over the land.
I'm more worried about companies that are committing CURRENT atrocities and funding awful legislature. For example, me and my family won't ever eat at Chick fil a, since despite the owner saying he doesn't want anyone to see his establishments as political, he continues to fund anti-LGBTQ+ ventures.
Emphasis on conscripted.
Don't conflate German soldiers with Nazis. Most of them didn't want to even be out there fighting and dying on the whims of a madman, but the Nazis kinda forced you to. It was like WW1 all over again - you either went and died for your country or they hanged you from a tree outside your village so everyone would know what happens to people who aren't "patriotic".
Soldiers fought because they were told to, not because they want to. Why do you think, when the Nazis surrendered, both sides came together and celebrated with each other? Nobody wanted to be there and were just glad it was over.
This.
So everyone who had to serve the army back then is automatically Nazi?
You did not have choice, and even as a woman you werent allowed to openly criticise the goverment. Just because hardly anyone spoke against them doesnt mean there werent people who were against those ideals.
Even inside those KZs soldiers secretly helped people to escape. Surely, not the majority, but to assume every survivor is a nazi (even if was stayed a nazi) seems rather harsh.
I'd be more concerned about nazi wear such as alpha industry etc. I dont want people to connect me to some nazi group cause we'd wear same clothes.
Wasnt there a bug in the former days of this community which lead to a rather big amount of menbers of the community purchase jackets for cheap from such a brand?
Or if you're going to feel weird about supporting companies, just go off the grid and become a farmer.
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.
Can't say that I do. I'm more concerned with modern business offenses and modern proponents of nazism.
They didnt have a choice.
Especially those in the camps who helped victims to escape would be judged by your standards.
Of course there was a choice, like those who fled Nazi Germany.
Also those who had a change of heart after getting duty at the camps don't deserve broad praise for morality. Their actions were minuscule to the suffering of people there. They were still wearing the Swastika and only had a change of heart after being confronted with the horror. So yes they still deserve scrutiny.
Besides everything else, the Albrecht brothers do not own these companies, what with being dead and everthing.
OP
OP
It's easy to just white wash history by removing agency from soldiers.
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.
Their only chance to survive was to obey. If you didnt, you faced brutal if not deadly consequences. After all it was a dictatorship.
This has nothing to do with whitewashing, people who supported the moral stance hitler's are nazis. The rest were victims of their time.
There were nazis among citizens, there were nazis among soldiers. There were people who did not share his view among both groups.
In my opinion it is the current mindset that counts. Is the person a nazi right now in the present? I mean they might use that money to make up, they will never be able to fully pay back but why would i not support them supporting organizations against racism?
Should Germans refuse to pay tax because there ARE soldiers among our military staff who are clearly nazis? AfD party? What about USA and Trump and his questionably views? Tax money is used to pay politicians.
It's just too easy to say "male, lived and served during ww2 - must be nazi". Those who didnt serve (because too old or w/e) built highways used to transport our heavy military. Are those nazis too "because they supported and helped germany to advance in war"? You are making this too easy for yourself.