I hate that VW became the Nazi car when it was really a way to scam people, and BMW and Mercedes get a pass despite making war machines the whole damn time.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Don't ask about Porsche, Opel, Bayer, Adidas... basically any German company that existed in that period.
I used to work for a German chemical manufacturer. One of the things they highlighted in their history is that in the lead up to WW2 they moved their headquarters and German factories to the UK and started making aircraft paint for the RAF. Overall they were a good company to work for.
What's the name? I want to read about that kind of organization.
With one honourable exception: Leitz, who made Leica cameras. A privately held company, they hired German Jews and immediately posted them abroad as “sales representatives”, delivering them to safety. This was explicitly on the orders of the Leitz family, who also insisted on keeping the programme secret even after the war rather than claiming credit.
Hugo Boss designed all those cute uniforms.
Now we have Florsheim and WTF these are...
To be fair, the BMW museum in Munich has an entire section on their participation, and atrocities and an apology for it.
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Behind the Bastards has a really good episode on Volkswagen. I might have some of the details wrong, but the German government was subsidizing them for a while with the dream of having every citizen driving a Volkswagen. After the war they ended up getting involved in slave operated meat farms in Brazil.
Behind the Bastards has a really good episode on Volkswagen. I might have some of the details wrong, but the German government was subsidizing them for a while with the dream of having every citizen driving a Volkswagen.
Correct! The Nazi government tried to push a payment plan onto people, even. The people who paid into the ~~scam~~ fundraising effort but did not receive a car (ie all of them, as no cars were actually delivered) eventually sued after the war to get some small percentage of their money back.
They were never delivered?? I was familiar with the story but no one had ever mentioned that before, that seems pretty fuckin important 😅
Yeah they were called the KDFwagen too then (strength trough joy car).
They switched to buildings then as little jeeps and invaded Russia instead of delivering the cars to the buyers. Pieche ran the factories with concentration labor after they ran out of hitler youth to exploit. And the British passed over the car when the war read over because conditions at the factory are so bad the cars were being built like shit initially.
Sounds like a certain crypto coin, or watch, or whatever.
they ended up getting involved in slave operated meat farms in Brazil.
Just a hop, skip, and trip into slave-operated meat farms. The pipeline from car manufacterer to slaver is strangely efficient.
Explanation: The car manufacturer Volkswagen has its origins as a Nazi initiative.
... they are generally not very proud of these origins, and prefer to emphasize their post-war revival by occupying Allied powers.
It (volkswagen lower case) was part of the government prior and during the war.
It (Volkswagen, the company, upper case) only came into existence after the war. Not a single person involved in the first was involved in the latter.
It would be wrong to ignore the Nazi connection to the design of the Beetle. But it’s not quite right to say the Volkswagen that shipped the first Beetles was the same as that under the German Labour Front / KdF. The same cannot be said about Mercedes.
~~Why did you just say "uppercase" instead of actually making it uppercase?~~
Damn autocorrect!
I had meant to, and now have edited it. Autocorrect error.
Please stop spreading this myth. You and I had this same discussion last year.
There was never any “uppercase/lowercase” distinction.
For the sake of anyone else who hasn’t seen this, here is the number plate out of a 1943 Kubelwagen (Nazi military vehicle) with capital-V “Volkswagenwerk G.m.b.H” across the top.
And here’s the number plate from a 1959 beetle with the exact same name across the top over 15 years later, long after the factory had been returned to German control after being restarted by the British. The company didn’t become Volkswagen AG until 1960.
Even when referring to the car itself as “the Volkswagen,” it’s still a proper noun and Germans capitalize all of their nouns anyway.
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"Not a single person involved" seems like a strong claim, do you have any sources for that?
Debunked in the other comments responding to this.
Not a single person involved in the first was involved in the latter.
What a load of bullshit. The Volkswagen company has been more or less controlled by the Porsche-Piech family all the way from the 20s to today. Yes, some of the more prominent Nazis have been kicked out and briefly sentenced by the Allies, but as usual, shit floats to the top, as is obvious by the fact that they still practically run the show to a large degree.
It (volkswagen lower case) was part of the government prior and during the war It (Volkswagen, the company, upper case) only came into existence after the war
Volkswagen has been state-owned until 1960, way after the war by the way, and the state/province of Niedersachsen still holds a 20% minority in the stocks. Yes, they got privatised. No, it is still the same entity, operating out of (among others) the same factory.
Besides, how would you even, logistically, replace every single engineer, designer, worker, manager... of a company and keep it operational? The Allies had to sweep a lot of things under the rug in order to make post-war Germany functional. If you had sentenced every Nazi collaborator to prison, most of the country would have been empty. Whether that was a good or bad decision in hindsight, well, that's a whole other debate. That does not mean that the current leadership and workers are Nazis because of that, of course.
I get that they have a legacy to maintain and build upon, but then again, in the modern age… you’d think they’d address this head on, embrace the controversy and take it as an opportunity to rename the brand.
We’re no longer Volkswagen. Today we are proud to announce that Omniwagen is “a car not just for a people, but for everyone”.
Or whatever the fuck marketing comes up with.
Shiiiii throw Ford in there 2
I still am bewildered by IBM's role in the Holocaust.
The middle dude is the most tanned nazi this side of the Mississippi.
Which side of the Mississippi are you on?
The outside 👍
Is it "accidental Nazi collaboration" if they were formed by the Nazis? Like you wouldn't call the SS "accidental Nazi collaborators"
The title is being sarcastic. Framing itself as something the Volkswagen brand might say, which would include downplaying its Nazi ties.
Except Volkswagen is quite open about their Nazi connections
I know they don't like to talk about, but is it not common knowledge?
Yeah, and I'd say that VW wasn't the worst industrial company to live on after the war. Let's consider Bayer, for example. They did pharmaceutical experiments at Auschwitz and Dachau, were part of IG Farben (the conglomerate that supplied Zyklon B to the SS) and continued to make money with shady business after the war. Like, "manufacturer of Agent Orange" levels of shadiness.
The company's website gives the history all the way back to 1937. Not sure if they skipped anything, but it mentions forced labour and the V-1.
There was a VW ad not long ago that trumpeted VW's history.... back to the 1950s.
Understandable that the marketing team didn't want to jump into that meat grinder, but still hilarious.
It's probably not the best idea to start an ad with "we used to be a nazi company using forced labour to make cruise missiles and also did some shady shit in brasil" if you want to sell cars. But then it might be better to just avoid speaking about the brands history in ads.
It does make you wonder who the next companies will be trying to hide their participation in current other atrocities that have yet to be aknowledged as such?
[looks at widespread cooperation with the Palestinian genocide]
I think we've got a list already made...
It wasn't just bigger names like Volkswagen it was also the chemical companies manufacturing Zyklon B, it was the ventilation company that made the air ducts for the gas chambers. So many little pieces of cooperation that were needed to create an atrocity.
There were also plenty of businesses in America (like Chase bank) that made the decision to enable the Nazis and profit from the opportunity. Chase Bank knew what they were doing, and their willingness to financially assist Nazi Germany helped keep the German economy afloat.
Obviously for Trump/ICE it would be Amazon, Palantir, Geo Group, and Core Civic. I would guess all Meta platforms like Facebook and IG, Reddit, Spotify, all the airlines and transportation companies arranging deportations.
There's been a few articles about the individuals and companies profiting most from helping the administration suppress free speech by selling tear gas and other forms of crowd control:
•The men making millions selling pepper spray to ICE
Quantico Tactical, a weapons and armor distributor based in Aberdeen, North Carolina, is by far the biggest supplier of chemical weapons to ICE and CBP during Trump’s second term, per contracting records. Founded by North Carolina-based David Hensley
Safariland is owned by Cadre Holdings, which is run by billionaire Warren Kanders, a former Morgan Stanley banker who has acquired a small army of defense and law enforcement weaponry and armour businesses over the years.
Safariland also sells equipment through ADS, or Atlantic Diving Supply, founded by Virginia Beach-based Luke Hillier. It has sold over $400,000 in pepper spray and tear gas to ICE and CBP since Trump returned to the White House. As Forbes previously reported, **ADS is one of ICE’s biggest suppliers of military and AI technologies more generally, including Skydio drones, body armor, guns and ammunition.*"
•Meet The Former Banker Who Is Now A Private Defense Billionaire
Warren Kanders’ Cadre, which makes body armor and bomb suits, has gotten a boost from Trump’s defense spending and Europe’s race to rearmament. Now it’s preparing for the war on nuclear cleanup.
Also looks like in addition to CoreCivic and GeoGroup the administration is now bringing in some smaller companies to help build their warehouse concentration camps:
Defense contractor KVG LLC was awarded a government contract worth at least $113.1 million Security contractor GardaWorld Federal Services LLC was awarded its own contract worth at least $313.4 million
Basically any company big or small that is profiting off of the actions of this administration should be held accountable. Idk if anybody is keeping a single list, but we need one. A list of every deflection of responsibility and "They approached us, what were we supposed to do? Not take the offer? If it wasn't us it would have been somebody else."
We need a list like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust
Would be interesting to see a venn diagram showing involvement then and now bc I'm sure there's overlap.
No accidents. Nazi command all drove Mercedes and these were AUDI race cars in the 30s:
Ferdinand Porsche worked for the Nazis. Ferdinand Porsche was a prominent contributor to the Nazi war effort, holding high SS rank and using forced labor in his factories. A member of the Nazi party, he developed key military technology, including the Tiger tank and V-1 flying bomb, while leading Volkswagen and producing the Kübelwagen.
douchenozzles forgave him.
Mercedes with their infamous Damler Benz DB 605 inverted V12 engine that powered the Luftwaffe
Porsche with their infamous Elafant Tank Destroyers
BMW will their infamously funny looking Nazi motorcycles
You don't need to get that far into the past for human rights abuses at Volkswagen.
You don't even really need to go into the past at all.
(This is a tounge in cheek comment, of vours the scale of those violations is not comparable to the Holocaust)
The people's car
Well it was that or the camps I guess?
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
― Benito Mussolini
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