Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us

Check out this article at cracked.com: Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us. Including what they did for the Nazis and how evil they were. Don't worry, kittens are used to balance the material.

From the page: IBM
You're probably thinking, "Wait a minute. IBM was American! The closest America ever got to the Nazis was when Indiana Jones wore that uniform as a disguise in Raiders of the Lost Ark!"

Actually, prior to the war, American business took what can be generously described as a morally ambivalent stance on the whole Hitler thing. American groups, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute, directly funded Nazi eugenics projects in the early '30s (where the goal was to find ways to breed a master race). Of course, once the war started, most American businesses cut ties with Hitler. IBM, on the other hand, decided to stick around and see where he was going with this whole final solution thing.

1 comment:

Michael Skaggs said...

Ahh the Eugenics rears its ugly head.

IBM had established a punch card computer that used those "tatooed numbers" on the prisoners arms to determine how much work they could get out of them, how much food they could survive off of, how much rest, etc. Good ole IBM.

Be well Dedroid!