That brands, and the companies and stakeholders who wear those brands as a mask,
profited from the Second World War isn't news. War is a ravenous death-machine
that thrives on a diet of industry and flesh, and it pays handsomely.
While some companies later admitted to "shady," greed-driven profiteering among
other "shady" activities in World War II, it's likely many denied it or avoided that sort of
attention altogether, taking refuge not in the shadow so much as behind big, colourful signs.
Though, what makes a company "shady"? For instance, some companies may have profited
from World War II without intending to exploit it; some may have capitalised
on it just to stay afloat in an uncertain, terrifying time; and some may have profited
simply because their business was vital to their country's war effort. There are many other cases
in which companies may have profited from the war without intending to be "shady," as there
must have been many cases in which companies exploited the war under the guise of innocence.
While there is room for ambiguity, some companies were discernibly "shady." In this video,
we're going to look at some of the more obvious cases in which brands,
and the companies and stakeholders who wore those brands, succumbed to their
greed and profiteered from or were otherwise "shady" in World War II.
Nestle — yes, the guys who make Milo, KitKats, and just about every other
product keeping dentists in business — supplied the German military with sweet, sweet chocolate,
earning themselves hundreds of millions of dollars and arming the Nazi's with something
to lure Jewish children with, ultimately for transportation to concentration camps. Maggi,
a subsidiary of Nestle, also employed forced labourers from concentration camps in Switzerland,
and Nestle later payed out 25 million Swiss francs to Holocaust survivors and Jewish
organisations in compensation for the Jews who suffered in Maggi's/Nestle's facilities.
We've all heard of how Hugo Boss, the company, manufactured uniforms for the Nazis and how Hugo
Boss, the founder, had one stiff Sieg Heil. The company tailored not only uniforms for the army
but also for the Hitler Youth and Waffen SS. Now, as the founder was German and the
company's HQ was in Germany, I don't consider this sort of profiteering all that "shady,"
and — all evil aside — I must admit the Germans always looked pretty sharp. No, Hugo Boss earns
its "shady" stamp because it exploited French and Polish forced labourers, keeping them in
a camp outside of the factory, where food was scarce and hygiene poor. In 2011, the company
apologised for employing forced labour, though not for setting the bar so high for Nazi fashion.
While I'm head over heels for my Chanel cardigan, I think I have to burn it. It's
rumoured the founder of this French clothing, jewellery, perfume, and accessory company was
a Nazi collaborator and spy. When the Germans invaded France, Jew-hating Gabrielle "Coco"
Chanel was living in Hôtel Ritz Paris with her Nazi intelligence officer boyfriend,
Freiherr Hans Günther von Dincklage. Apparently, she even had a codename in the German military
intelligence service Abwehr. That codename was "Westminster," and Westminster reported to the
Nazi spymaster General Walter Schellenberg. When the Allies pushed the Germans out of France,
Coco was arrested and interrogated, though on her collaboration with the
Nazis there was insufficient evidence, and she was loosed back into the world.
The American photography-focused tech company Kodak had subsidiaries in Europe prior to and
during World War II. After America joined the war, Kodak's subsidiary in Germany continued
under Nazi control, ensuring to get a piece of that forced labour, while continuing
trade with other subsidiaries in some of the European neutrals. Kodak took it up a notch,
producing triggers, detonators, and other military hardware for use by the Germans,
and when the war was over, Kodak received the profits made by its German branch. The
company was later a target in Holocaust-related lawsuits, and it contributed $500,000 USD to a
fund which aimed to compensate the victims of forced labour, though it denied trading with
the enemy after America's declaration of war. Think about it — the Nazis probably snapped
wartime propaganda with a Kodak, and Hitler might have had his very own "Kodak Moment."
Back when Hitler came into power in 1933, American technology company International
Business Machines, IBM, owned most of its German subsidiary Dehomag. In that same year,
the German government announced a national census. The census would the Nazis to identify Jews,
Gypsies, and other "undesirable" ethnic groups for later extermination. The German IBM subsidiary
offered to facilitate the census, and the company's American HQ fattened the subsidiary
with a large sum of money, facilitating the construction of a factory in Berlin. Out of
this factory, IBM supplied the Nazis with punch cards and the devices to read them,
enabling the Nazis to bump their former estimations of 400,000 to 600,000 Jews
in Germany to 2 million. With this information, the Nazis could systematically find, transport,
and exterminate the Jews and other " " under Nazi racial policy — not only in
Germany but in German-occupied territories as well. After America got on the war bus,
IBM smuggled punch cards and machines to its German branch and continued to supply the Nazis
out of its other European subsidiaries, ensuring continued and lucrative "business as usual." While
IBM contributed to a Holocaust-survivor fund in 2001, it has not apologised for profiteering from
the holocaust, sticking with the story that the German branch was held at Mauser-point.
Bayerische Motoren Werke, or just BMW, built itself up making aircraft for the
Germans in World War I, making motorbikes and cars after World
War I and the limitations set on them in the Treaty of Versailles, and supplying
the Luftwaffe with aircraft right up to the end of World War II. Now, just like with Hugo Boss,
BMW was founded in Germany, though also in a climate of war. I can't bring myself to tag
BMW as "shady" just for this, though I can tag it "shady" for its employment of up to 50,000 forced
labourers, of which around half were prisoners from concentration camps. These labourers worked
in dangerous conditions and were often abused, with many perishing on the job. BMW, however, was
open about their history after the war, initiating public debates and making public apologies.
We've mentioned a German car company in Germany,
though what about American car companies in Germany and German-occupied territories?
Ford Motor Company's "shady" dealings stemmed from a mutual admiration between the company's founder,
Henry Ford, and the head of the Nazi snake, Adolf Hitler. Ford's admiration of the Führer blossomed
long before the Führer was the Führer, back when Adolf was struggling fanatic,
and it was born of a mutual hatred for Jews. On the other side of this dirty coin,
Hitler had wood for Ford back when he was writing Mein Kampf, and Hitler even kept
a life-size photograph of the Henry Ford in his Munich office. During the war, Ford Motor
Company was manufacturing military vehicles — mostly trucks — for the Allies and for Axis,
with plants in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, and France pushing out and repairing vehicles for
the Nazis. American management even went so far as to give the "A-okay" to military production
in Germany while denying similar ventures on home soil. As you might have deduced by now,
Ford's European subsidiaries made good use of that oh-so profitable forced labour,
with much of its Cologne plant workforce comprised of young women. The conditions were
terrible and the pay worse, ranging from a mid to high zero. Ford's American HQ even received
some of the profit of its German branch — up to $60,000 USD a year between 1940 and 1943 — though
representatives later claimed the company didn't know what ze Germans were up to under the covers.
While Ford Motor Company's gifts to lovesick Hitler were just fantastic, there would have
been no invasion of Poland, France, or the frigid wastes of the Soviet Union without General Motors
and its German subsidiary Opel. In 1935, Opel agreed to build a new plant in Berlin. Out of
this plant, Opel outfitted the Wehrmacht with the infamous "Blitz" truck, to which the success of
the blitzkrieg was owed. Though, trucks were not Opel's only contribution to Nazi materiel. The
company also produced armoured cars, tanks, aircraft-engines for the Luftwaffe, mines,
and torpedo detonators, as well as synthetic fuel which put the "lightning" in lightning war. While
severed ties with Opel — on paper, at least — after Pearl Harbour and America's entry into
the war, the parent company regained control of Opel after the war and claimed $33 million in
war reparations, paid in compensation of Allied bombing of its German facilities.
The Aluminum Company of America, Alcoa, had a monopoly on aluminium prior to and during
World War II. Following secret arrangements with the Nazis, the Alcoa plied them with aluminium,
enabling the growth of the Luftwaffe while stunting that of the US Air Force. In June 1941,
Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes said, "If America loses this war, it can thank the Aluminum
Corporation of America." It's safe to say Alcoa at least extended the war against Nazi Germany.
The American chemical company Dow Chemical not only supplied the Nazis with products
vital for the construction of medicine, flares, and explosives but also taught
them how to refine oil more efficiently. To put Dow's contributions in perspective,
90% of what it produced during World War II was in service of the war. Dow also created
napalm B for Allied use in World War II, and Allied incendiaries manufactured by Dow were
used to firebomb Dresden in February 1945; this was a highly a controversial operation in itself.
Backed by the German behemoth I.G. Farben since 1929, Standard Oil of New Jersey was the largest
petroleum corporation in the world by 1941. Standard Oil of New Jersey manufactured and
supplied the Luftwaffe with tetraethyl lead, an essential component in aviation fuel,
and, with the help of IG Farben, even sourced tetraethyl lead from the British Standard Oil
subsidiary "Ethyl." Standard Oil of New Jersey also shipped Allied fuel to the Nazis occupying
France through Switzerland and conspired with them prevent the development of synthetic rubber
in America, resulting in the US military being desperately short of rubber when it leapt into
war. SONJ went on to become Exxon, which merged with Mobile in 1999 and became ExxonMobile.
IG Farben was a colossal German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate at the start of World
War II — the largest corporation in all Europe and the fourth largest in the world. IG Farben
constructed a synthetic rubber plant as part of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex in
Poland, employing slave labour from the camps of Auschwitz, among other sources. As well as
synthetic rubber, IG Farben manufactured methanol and much of Germany's plastics, explosives,
nitrogen and solvents, pharmaceuticals, and synthetic fuel. A constituent of IG Farben,
Bayer, which is still going strong today, conducted medical experiments on prisoners
at Auschwitz, injecting them with a range of diseases, including typhoid, tuberculosis,
and Diptheria, and then testing drugs on them like pigs or monkeys, often killing them in the
process. One of IG Farben's subsidiaries even supplied Zyklon B, the cyanide-based pesticide
gas used to exterminate the Jews in gas chambers. IG Farben began to dissolve at the end of the war,
with its directors put on trial for war crimes, though many of these directors were acquitted and
those sentenced to prison got out way too early. Bayer apologised in 1995 and set up a compensation
fund for former captive labourers, though IG Farben took until 2012 finish its dissolution.
This final one is a bit of a bonus round, and I might be "putting my foot in it," as the general
consensus on smoking around the time of the war was that it was totally good for ya, but I
think it's worth mentioning that cigarette\tobacco companies like Lucky Strikes and Camels definitely
capitalised on the smoking culture of the time, specifically the culture in the military,
with "death sticks" being included in military ration packs. What are your thoughts on this one?
Do you think cigarette/tobacco companies supplying soldiers in World War II deserve a "shady" stamp?
The companies I mentioned in this video are only some of the many "shady" companies suspected
of somehow profiteering from or otherwise "getting up to no good" in World War II.
Hundreds of companies might sit somewhere on the "shady" spectrum, with those on the screen
right now being just some of the other ones I considered for this video, but didn't include
I've also not even touched "shady" banks — of which those in Switzerland, like Chase Manhattan
Bank and BIS were among the worst. Nor have I eluded to the potential connections between
some of the major companies, as, for instance, Charles Higham inferred in his book Trading With
the Enemy: An Exposé of The Nazi-American Money-Plot 1933-1949. Higham suggests that
companies like IG Farber, Ford Motors, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase Bank Manhattan,
BIS, ITT, and many other supposedly Nazi and fascism-sympathising profiteers are all a part
of some Illuminati-level "Fraternity." I won't be diving into that quicksand. It is, naturally,
rather complicated and controversial, as are each of the cases I mentioned, even in isolation.
Some of the cases I mentioned are based on rumour and speculation, while some companies,
like BMW and IG Farben, either undressed or were stripped naked after the war. Some of the cases
may have been exaggerated or even played down. At the end of the day, the information included
in this video is based on what is quickly available to the public, and this video
exists to inspire further research, from which you might formulate theories of your own.
You can dig pretty hard and still get nowhere. Many of these companies are still trading — many
under the same name. It's understandable why they would want to keep their history buried.