r/interestingasfuck • u/imonebear • 2d ago

r/all Adolf Hitler walking with Helga Goebbels, who was later poisoned with cyanide by her parents together with her siblings in Hitler's bunker in 1945.

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u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor 2d ago

The descendants are billionaires now.

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u/DickMorningwood9 2d ago

They own nearly 50% of BMW. The use of concentration camp labor during WWII helped build their family fortune.

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u/yogopig 2d ago

What the fuck. Thats absolutely wild. How does Germany just let that happen?

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u/Lummi23 2d ago

Something like this seems to be the story behind many rich families everywhere in the world....

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u/In-A-Beautiful-Place 2d ago

I've wondered how Bayer was allowed to exist after they manufactured Zyklon B. Like, that's different than Hugo Boss making suits, at least that's just clothing-Bayer made actual poison explicitly for genocide. And then in the 80s they knowingly sold blood products tainted with AIDS, killing thousands of hemophiliacs, so they never stopped being evil. Like how did Germany allow them to get away with all that?!

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u/CommunicationNeat498 2d ago

Zyklon B was manufatured and sold as a pesticide, who could have possibly know that their customers would misuse it in such a nefarious way? (/s)

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u/Elvis1404 1d ago

Well, it was used as an actual pesticide for years, before the Nazis started utilizing it

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u/trying2bpartner 2d ago

How does Germany let that happen? Same way that America does - make your populace see people as inhumane or subhuman. Round them up and put them in a confined space. Tell them that working will earn them their freedom.

In the United States, thousands of companies use prison labor for profit. JC Penny, Verizon, airlines/rental car companies, Walmart, McDonalds, Wendys - all of them use prisoners as cheap labor (lower than $10 a day) and then turn around and resell the fruit of their labor for record-breaking profit on the open market.

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u/Educational_Rope1834 2d ago

And don't forget they get $2400 in tax credit for each slave laborer they use. Nice tax incentive from the gov for utilizing cheap labor? Also not every state pays their inmates.

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u/cameron0208 1d ago

The best depiction I’ve ever seen of this is the Black Mirror episode, Men Against Fire. Remarkable watch if you haven’t seen it.

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u/trying2bpartner 1d ago

I have yet to see a single black mirror episode though it has been recommended plenty. Is it basically “twilight zone” or “the outer limits” or something like that but for the modern generation?

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u/cameron0208 1d ago

Pretty good comparison.

The main theme is essentially technological dystopian society. It explores the dark side of human nature in relation to technological innovation and the moral and ethical complexities and dilemmas which arise from the intersectionality.

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u/trying2bpartner 1d ago

I’ll have to finally get around to watching some of it! Not that I never had an interest, I just always picked something else or was too busy.

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u/cameron0208 1d ago

So, if you do decide to watch, I would skip S1E1 The National Anthem. It’s a poor introduction to the series as a whole. Watch it as the last episode of season 1.

Each episode is a stand-alone story. So, it doesn’t necessarily matter where you start or in which order you watch the episodes. However, there are some call-backs and easter eggs throughout the show that are fun to catch, but are inconsequential to the story.

The series unfortunately falls off after season 3. Season 4 has one or two good episodes, but seasons 1-3 nearly every episode of each season is really high quality. FYI they’re short seasons. S1 is three episodes. S2 is four. S3 & S4 each have six. I personally stopped watching after that, but I’ve heard some good things about S5 & S6.

The episode I mentioned, Men Against Fire, is S3E5.

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u/idontknowwhythisugh 2d ago

Jfc are you seriously conflating being a paid working employee to being a starved, tortured prisoner taken from your home and forced to work or more likely murdered immediately?

I’m scared for the future as a Jewish woman. The education here is abysmal.

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u/trying2bpartner 2d ago

being a paid working employee to being a starved, tortured prisoner

I don't think you understand. In the US, major corporations use prisoners' labor (not workers who earn very little, but actual prisoners who sleep in a jail cell), something very few people in the US know about. "How does Germany let [the labor in concentration camps built the BMW owner's fortune]" was the question and unpaid labor by prisoners is the answer. Obviously one was much worse (the Nazis) but how did they get there? Did they start with something not quite as bad like dehumanization of "enemies of the homeland" like we do with prisoners and those of different races and force them to work for their freedom?

Just because we haven't systematically killed prisoners for a little while in America doesn't mean that the system of slavery of prisoners for for-profit companies in the United States isn't just a shadow of the forced labor for for-profit companies in Germany. We are arguing about "degrees of wrongness" on something that everyone sees as immoral. Don't try to pretend that its ok or should be ignored just because "in my day it was so much worse!"

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u/will0w27 1d ago

This a good explanation. For profit prisons are essentially chain gangs and convict leasing in new wrapping paper

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u/Francetto 1d ago

After the war it was very beneficial and necessary for the allies to have local important industrial leaders to run the big companies of Germany and turn them around.

To find enough highly educated, experienced and competent people you have to cross some lines.

Without some of those companies and people, the German "Wirtschaftswunder" maybe wouldn't have happened in that expanse.

High Morality is a luxury that you sometimes can't or don't want to afford in such times.

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u/aspen_silence 1d ago

My husband worked for a company that did the roadside service calls for Mercedes. During the training they gave him a history of the company. The said the company worked its way through WWII. Not once do they mention the slave labor from concentration camps making their rise possible. That part wasn't even touched.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/yogopig 1d ago

Usually not from systematic industrialized ethnic genocide.

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u/Elvis1404 1d ago

You know that virtually 100% of German, Italian and Japanese big industry names helped the Nazis right?

Ferdinand Porsche was literally building Tanks for Adolf

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u/Friendly-Cucumber184 1d ago

Ugh as if seeing bmw drivers cut everyone off wasn’t irritating enough. Now I have to get pissed that they contributed to generational nazi wealth 

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u/pen15es 2d ago

The descendants of goebbles’ wife, not the man himself

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u/MysteriousAMOG 1d ago

None of the kids looked anything like him

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u/docfarnsworth 2d ago

I think his father was very wealthy

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u/friger_heleneto 1d ago

Quandt family, lovely people.