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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| reply to Roundel
Re: German History...
One more example - - - ITT
ITT was founded in 1920 by Sosthenes Behn. In 1930 Behn and ITT acquired several German companies (Standard Elekrizitats, A.E.G., Berliner Fernsprech und Telegraphenwerk, and others) - - - telephone companies and a number of heavy-industry manufacturing plants.
In 1938, following several meetings with Luftwaffe chief Herman Goring, Behn encouraged ITT's (German) Lorenz subsidiary to purchase 28 percent of the Focke-Wulf firm - - manufacturer of the bombers that were to sink so many Allied ships during the war. In addition, the German army, navy, and air force contracted with ITT for the manufacture of switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and thirty thousand fuses per month for artillery shells.
There is no record that ITT made direct payments to Hitler before his grab for power in 1933. On the other hand, numerous payments were made to Heinrich Himmler in the late 1930s and in World War II as late as 1944 through ITT’s German subsidiaries.
The most bizarre aspect of the US/Nazi corporate partnership, was war reparations: ITT presented itself as an innocent victim of WWII, and it was recompensed for its “injuries.” In 196 ITT managed to obtain $27 million in compensation from the American government - - for war damage to Focke-Wulf plants! - on the basis that they were American property bombed by Allied bombers. Huh?!?!?
ITT was not alone: GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing. By 1967 GM had collected more than $33 million in reparations and Federal tax benefits for damages to its warplane and motor vehicle properties in formerly Axis territories. (Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne.)
And there's lots of history regarding Texeco, J.P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, John and Allen Dulles (real irony there!), and other mainstays of big business in the 1930s and 40s...
Timothy 6:10. 'For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.' | |
Roundel
Blau Und Weiss
Premium
join:2002-03-24
Westport, CT
clubs: |  reply to bistro777
I learned alot from your posts, and I like the history channel!
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Small, Dependable and Deadly! | |
bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| reply to keith2468
Here’s the IBM part - - - It is not a part of the Fund because it "wasn't involved." Earlier I’d mention’d Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.” His research indicates, among other things:
"The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number. The five-digit Hollerith number was part of a custom punch card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. Nearly every Nazi concentration camp operated a Hollerith Department known as the Hollerith Abteilung."
"The German IBM, Dehomag, was IBM's second most profitable company in the 1930s. IBM maintained sales quotas for all its subsidiaries during the Hitler-era. It did not simply sell the Reich machines and then walk away. IBM's subsidiary, with the knowledge of its New York headquarters, enthusiastically custom-designed the complex devices and specialized applications as an official corporate undertaking.”
“IBM did not sell any of its punch card machines to Nazi Germany. The equipment was leased by the month. Each month, often more frequently, authorized repairmen, working directly for or trained by IBM, serviced the machines on-site-whether in the middle of Berlin or at a concentration camp. In addition, all spare parts were supplied by IBM factories located throughout Europe. Of course, the billions of punch cards continually devoured by the machines, available exclusively from IBM, were extra.”
How much IBM (US) knew or didn’t know is a firestorm of controversy. Mr. Black claims “Some of it IBM knew on a daily basis throughout the 12-year Reich. The worst of it IBM preferred not to know-'don't ask, don't tell' was the order of the day. Yet IBM NY officials, and frequently Thomas Watson's personal representatives, were almost constantly in Berlin or Geneva, monitoring activities, ensuring that the parent company in New York was not cut out of any of the profits or business opportunities Nazism presented. When U.S. law made such direct contact illegal, IBM's Swiss office became the nexus, providing the New York office continuous information and credible deniability.”
Here’s a cnet link to an interview with him about this - - - »news.com.com/2009-1082-269157.html. You decide, but the book is a real eye-opener... And now from the "equal time" corner again - - - In its defense, I know that IBM (US) performed such critical wartime efforts as breaking the Enigma Code, forecasting the weather/date of the Normandy landing, and other worthwhile missions. But on the other hand, it must be nice to make money off BOTH sides in a war, huh?
This'll probably be my last post on Germany history. I apologize in advance for turning this site into the History Channel. 
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." - - Mark Twain | |
bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| reply to keith2468
Re: German History
Ford is not a party to the 10 billion Deutschmark “German Fund.”
There were three classes of forced labor in Nazi Germany: (1) Auslandishce Ziviarbeiter – foreigners in response to advertisements placed in occupied countries - came freely, then many forced to stay; (1) Kriegsgefangene – POWs, mostly Poles and Russians; (3) Konzentration Haftlinge – concentration camp inmates. German industry bid on pools of labor – much like bidding on slaves here in the US – to satiate the call for more pre-war and then more wartime production. The Nazis had three methods of extermination: gassing, shooting and slave labor, known then as "Vernichtung durch Arbeit" literally "extermination through labor." (That gives a stark and literal meaning to the phrase "being worked to death", doesn't it?)
It has been reported, unlike most American-owned property in Nazi Germany, the Ford Werke plant near Cologne was never confiscated by the Nazi regime, and it continued to be owned by Ford Motor Company throughout the war. Ford Werke began utilizing French prisoners of war as forced laborers, and continued utilizing thousands of forced laborers throughout the war in violation of Article 52 of the Hague Convention and the provisions of the Geneva Convention Governing Prisoners of War.
Ford Werke became an aggressive (and successful) bidder for forced laborers. More than 50% of the workers at Ford Werke were unpaid, forced laborers - as well as many concentration camp inmates from Buchenwald. In 1938, Ford ceased consumer-oriented manufacturing and began making tracked vehicles for the transport of German troops and other military equipment. Military historians estimate that approximately 60% of the three-ton tracked vehicles produced for the German army were manufactured by Ford Werke.
If Ford Werke was from 1933-1945 a German-only company, then I guess all’s fair in love and war. But to be primarily owned/controlled by Ford USA during that time?!?
The dslr/bbr Equal Time ACt of 2002: Ford’s response when the fund was announced - - - - - Ford Motor Co. said in a statement that it had "lost all contact with and control over the plant during the war years, had no role in employing foreign labor and did not benefit from wartime operations." Its German plant, Ford Werke in Cologne, was confiscated by the Nazis, the statement said. Ford said its participation in the reparations agreement led by the U.S. and German governments to provide relief for victims was "inappropriate" because "Ford did not do business in Germany during the war." - - - Well, I can only say there are many scholars, researchers and historians who disagree…
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." -- Thomas Paine | |
keith2468
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-03
Winnipeg, MB | reply to bistro777
So are Ford and IBM paying reparations to forced labourers too? | |
bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| reply to Roundel
I think one of the most onerous instances involves an American corporation – IBM. (See Edwin Black's book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.")
Mr. Black alleges that IBM maintained a strategic alliance with the Third Reich (with its Hollerith punch-card machine) in which IBM licensed, maintained and custom-designed its products for use in the machinery of the Holocaust, up to and including the task of cataloguing and dispatching their millions of victims. IBM allegedly did more than just sell equipment: It controlled the monopoly on the cards and the technology. And they were the ones that had to custom-design all the forms and punch cards, including everything form counting Jews, to coordinating trains going into death camps, to the extermination by labor campaign. (See »www.edwinblack.com/index.html for more info.)
I lived with a German family in the late 60s on an exchange program, attended German high school and later studied at the University of Bonn. (My father and his siblings, who'd fought their way across Europe less than 25 years earlier, were a bit uncomfortable with the thought of "living with the enemy.") So one thing I did was make it a point to visit a number of the camps, both in then-West Germany and the East Bloc, in an attempt to understand my host country and its recent history and culture. From the elders there was a lot of “We didn’t know” or “What could we do?” But from the post-war generation there was generally outrage and shame at what their parents had been a part of, and a firm resolve not to repeat history.
Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. - - - W. Clement Stone | |
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