'Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic morning welcome to the extra morning news show
My name is of course Philip DeFranco and today we are going to be talking about Krispy Kreme's Nazi ties?
And yes, you did hear me correctly the doughnut maker's Nazi ties
But we're gonna back up a little bit because it's not that simple.
And in fact today's topic is more about how the company that
owns Krispy Kreme recently uncovered its owner's ties to the Nazi Party.
Which I will say is not completely unique
In fact, many of today's well-known companies have profited based off of their ties to the Nazi Party
But of course since then German companies and of course the German government
have continually tried to make amends for the past all the way up to today.
But with all that said let's start with the people who own Krispy Kreme, the Reimann family.
They are one of the wealthiest families in Germany and own JAB Holdings.
And JAB actually has a wide range of investments under
its corporate umbrella. This including Panera, Peet's coffee, Einstein brothers bagels,
Keurig and Coty.
and JAB was started before the Nazis were around focusing on chemical manufacturing
and continued doing business after Nazi Germany.
By 1978, the Reimanns believed they found out all about their family and company connections to the Nazi Party.
Albert Reimann Sr. and Jr., the father and son duo
who helped build up the company in the 30's and 40's were also pretty quiet about the family's past.
But then fast forward to the early 2000's,
and the Reimann family stumbled across company documents that suggested that Reimann Sr. and Jr.
might have actually been larger supporters of Nazi Germany than previously known.
And since both Sr. and Jr. had died decades ago the Reimanns decided
to commission a historian to look into their family's past back in 2014.
And in March of this year an economic historian at the University
of Munich named Paul Erker released an interim report to the family.
And according to a spokesperson for JAB, the report show that the Reimanns
actually had a much closer relationship with the Nazis than the family had previously realized.
(Newscaster): "The family confirming their grandfather Albert"
"Reimann Sr. was a devoted follower of Hitler who used and possibly"
"abused slave labor in the family's chemical factories during World War II"
(Phil): Reportedly the Reimann's JAB Holdings used Russian civilian prisoners
and French prisoners of war as force or slave labor in their factories.
And at the height of World War II, reportedly one third of JAB's
workforce were these workers.
Also a quick side note before we continue:
There is a slight legal difference between slave and forced labor in Germany,
but the Reimanns also used both.
The family also reportedly use these workers in their private villas
and if any workers disobeyed orders, they were beat
Also, reportedly women who worked at their factories were forced to stand naked at attention in front of
their barracks, and if they refused, they were sexually abused.
Also in addition to force and slave labor,
some Reimanns were reportedly supporters of the Nazi Party
before the Nazi Party gained control over Germany.
Reimann Sr. apparently donated to Hitler's SS as early as 1931 and a note here,
Hitler wasn't even Chancellor until 1933.
In a 1937 letter from Reimann Jr. to Heinrich Himmler the head of the SS
sort of sums the situation up.
In that letter he describes their business as a quote:
And since this is just the interim report,
the family intends to publish all of the historian's findings in a book when he's finished researching.
And Peter Harf, the chair of JAB telling NBC news.
(Newscaster): "It's clear Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr."
"Were guilty and should have been held accountable and prosecuted"
"the family feels responsible for what happened"
Also, one of the big things here is that
after this, the family has quickly announced that they will be donating around 11 million dollars towards charity.
Although, as of recording this video they have not announced the specific charity.
But, one of the big things with this story
is that, the Reimann family really isn't an exception.
Right, in Germany, they're the rule
(Newscaster): "Conditions at Volkswagen were no worse than at other German companies."
"Siemens used tens of thousands of concentration camp inmates at its electric and communications plants."
"Daimler Benz and BMW built military trucks, tanks, and airplane engines using slave laborers."
(Phil): Right, Volkswagen was set up by the Nazi trade union organization and made civilian and military vehicles.
Volkswagen also reportedly use more than
15,000 slave laborers from concentration camps near its factories.
Also, the auto company Daimler used thousands of slave laborers up until the end of World War II.
And today, Siemens admits on its website
that it used more than 80,000 forced laborers.
But, those companies never really rushed to expose their use of labor or admit any sort of responsibility.
But, in the late 1990's, what we saw is that the German government
and German companies were facing class-action lawsuits in the United States over their past.
And under pressure from the US government and consumers,
the German government and companies worked on a deal to compensate those victims.
Other German laws after the war provided compensation to victims of the Holocaust
but until then there really wasn't anything that addressed forced labor victims.
And so, in the late 1990s, the German government created
the Remembrance Responsibility and Future Foundation to acknowledge and compensate those victims.
In total the fund came to
5.8 billion dollars and the German government and German companies split those donations.
But, interestingly enough the German companies that contributed to this fund
didn't just include those that had profited from slave labor like Daimler and VW.
Thousands of companies that had nothing to do with the war also joined in.
Now it's not exactly clear how the funding was divided among all of these companies
since those numbers haven't been released to the public yet.
but, 4,700 companies ended up contributing to the fund.
(Anchor): "In Germany today negotiators agreed on how to compensate Nazi laborers"
"former slaves and concentration camps will will receive up to 7500 dollars each.
"Forced laborers and factories will be paid up to 2500"
(Phil): And ultimately that fund paid out to around
1.7 million people in Europe, the United States, and Israel.
And following that, the German and US government agreed that those companies couldn't be sued
For those crimes anymore.
But with all of this, they're also a couple of questions wrapped up
in the Reimann's family history, other German businesses and how they tried to take
responsibility for their actions.
Should they, and how do you punish companies for actions that were taken so long ago?
Obviously, if those companies are still around, you have people that are benefiting from the horrors of the past.
But those people who are benefiting from the crime, who were a part of the crime. They're gone, right?
Is it someone's responsibility to hold on to that guilt?
I mean, when you look to the Reimann family, you can kind of see one of two situations.
You can see that they're interested,
maybe they feel responsible,
they want to try and be a part of the good.
Right, they're being proactive about it.
Or, you could look at it at another light.
Do you maybe see them as just trying to stay ahead of the story, to use this as good PR.
Even with difficult questions and debate out there,
many experts have said that Germany has actually done a very good job at atoning for its past.
(Narrator): "This is part of a much broader national effort underway in Germany"
"to wrestle with the legacy of the Holocaust."
"It includes the construction of memorials and museums at a record pace"
"The revamping of the nation's curriculum,"
"so that all German school kids get a fuller understanding of the Nazi era."
(Phil): But yeah That's where we're gonna end it today.
Of course, I'd love to know your thoughts.
And of course thanks so much for watching
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But yeah, that's where we're gonna end today
Of course, thanks for watching I love your face
and I'll see you right back here on this channel later today with a brand new Philip DeFranco Show.