History Memes

The Ford company produced military hardware directly for the Nazi army, and Henry Ford profited from it. That's pretty obvious to me. Sure, at some point, they probably didn't have a choice. But in the 30s? They had every choice not to take the orders, or close down business, and chose not to, out of greed or even admiration.

Every man, woman, and company in Germany post war had to bear the burden of Nazism to some degree

There is a difference between doing what you have to do in order for you and your family to survive, and actively, enthusiastically, supporting the war machine. The average worker may or may not have had much of a choice (or rather, their choices were being sent to the front or camps, or keeping their mouth shut and their head down). But the leadership? Fuck no. Calling it a "burden" that the leadership "had" to meticulously plan using slave labour for sophisticated tanks and military trucks while living in (relative) luxury is spitting in the face of the PoWs and "lesser humans" that were worked to death.

The least post-war VW could/can do is acknowledge the mistakes of their predecessors. Instead, they went straight for another authoritarian regime in Brazil to collaborate with. They only "recognized" and paid damages to former slave workers from the Nazi era in the late 90s, after a court forced them to. They only admitted to the Brasil shit after a Brasilian court in 2019 found them guilty. That doesn't really scream "burden of Nazism" to me.