Did any multinational pull out of Nazi Germany? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Inter-war period (1919-1938), Russian civil war (1917–1921) and other non World War topics (1914-1945).
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#1847532
I was just talking with a friend on business ethics and she was complaining about her Jewish profs overuse of the Holocaust in examples of ethics, anyways we got to talking about the Holocaust and businesses that profited from the Holocaust. Her stance was that its business and mine's was that we're human not robots and ethics counts. She said at the end of the day its money that counts and no one pulled their business out of Nazi-Germany till the Germans began to become unpopular abroad and even then they masked their business like Coca-Cola with Fanta. So did any multinational pull out of Nazi Germany but not due to PR?
Last edited by millie_(A)TCK on 25 Mar 2009 20:44, edited 1 time in total.
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By Dave
#1847533
This was also before leftist freakshows launched the CSR movement, so a man could make a nice profit roasting jews without worrying about a bunch of deranged smelly bafoons screaming at him
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By Dr House
#1847535
Of course they didn't pull out. Corporations are money-making machines. They have a duty to provide the greatest available return on investment to their shareholders.

It's not a corporation's job to regulate itself. That job falls in the hands of the government and the vigilant public.
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By Truth-a-naut
#1847554
Most internationals lost total control over their German assets once the Nazis came to power. Coca-Cola is one of them, they weren't working for the Nazis.

And if a company did pull out it's not like they could magically transport the factory back to wherever. The Nazis wouldn't let that happen.

Shouldn't you be making pork or something?
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By Oxymoron
#1847588
I suppose Matza Inc pulled out, although Badge makers made off like Bandits.
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By Heste
#1847639
They nationalized just about everything so don't think the corporations made much, if any, profit and it certainly weren't their choice to stay or not.

I would say there are worse examples with business ethics where corporations deliberately exploit countries/areas.
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By jaakko
#1847671
Heste wrote:They nationalized just about everything

Bullshit. The reality was quite the opposite and a proper war-management of the economy wasn't introduced before 1942.
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By NYYS
#1847677
you're right, it was a rampant free market, which means that if you support capitalism you support hitler. Good work, you nazis.
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By Dave
#1847683
jaakko wrote:Bullshit. The reality was quite the opposite and a proper war-management of the economy wasn't introduced before 1942.

The reality wasn't exactly "quite the opposite", unless you have some other way of explaining the expropriation of Junkers & Co. or the formation of Reichswerke Hermann Göring.
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By Erebus
#1847685
I was just talking with a friend on business ethics and she was complaining about her Jewish profs overuse of the Holocaust in examples of ethics, anyways we got to talking about the Holocaust and businesses that profited from the Holocaust. Her stance was that its business and mine's was that we're human not robots and ethics counts. She said at the end of the day its money that counts and no one pulled their business out of Nazi-Germany till the Germans began to become unpopular abroad and even then they masked their business like Coca-Cola with Fanta. So did any multinational pull out of Nazi Germany but not due to PR?


They do this everywhere. In fact, I believe professors should focus more on history further back, than only 20th century history.
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By jaakko
#1847706
quite =/= exactly
Dave wrote:The reality wasn't exactly "quite the opposite"

As I said, the reality was "quite" the opposite of "nazis nationalising just about everything".
the expropriation of Junkers & Co. or the formation of Reichswerke Hermann Göring.

Contrast that to the Nazi privatizations, or the expansion of the public sector witnessed in the other developed capitalist countries. Either way, the private-public composition of the Nazi economy was nothing extraordinary compared to the variations seen under liberal-parliamentarian forms of government.
NYYS wrote:you're right, it was a rampant free market, which means that if you support capitalism you support hitler.

privatisation =/= free market

nationalisation =/= planned economy
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By Dave
#1847709
jaakko wrote:As I said, the reality was "quite" the opposite of "nazis nationalising just about everything".

No, quite the opposite would be privatizing everything.

jaakko wrote:Contrast that to the Nazi privatizations,

Which privatizations?

jaakko wrote: or the expansion of the public sector witnessed in the other developed capitalist countries.

Agreed, and policies of rationalization were internationally popular in the interwar period.

jaakko wrote: Either way, the private-public composition of the Nazi economy was nothing extraordinary compared to the variations seen under liberal-parliamentarian forms of government.

I'm not aware of any "liberal-parliamentarian" form of government that had a peacetime planning authority like the Office of the Four Year Plan, although you are quite correct that the Nazi economy was less socialist than is usually thought today (or perhaps we are more socialist--it's all relative). That image was painted largely by the West German government following the war, which sought to distinguish itself from the Nazi regime despite there be a fair degree of continuity in policy.
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By pikachu
#1847723
Coca-Cola is one of them, they weren't working for the Nazis.
o.0
I've read the exact opposite. The German branch of Coca Cola not only stayed in operation, it also stayed in contact with its HQ office in the US. They also invented Fanta while they were at it.
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By jaakko
#1847741
Dave wrote:No, quite the opposite would be privatizing everything.

Alright, that's not what I had in mind. Point conceded. So, the reality was "somewhat the opposite".
Which privatizations?


"The Great Depression spurred State ownership in Western capitalist countries. Germany was no exception; the last governments of the Weimar Republic took over firms in diverse sectors. Later, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership and public services to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in the Western capitalist countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s. Privatization in Nazi Germany was also unique in transferring to private hands the delivery of public services previously provided by government."

Against the mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930s Germany

That image was painted largely by the West German government following the war, which sought to distinguish itself from the Nazi regime despite there be a fair degree of continuity in policy.


In FRG there really wasn't a systematic academic research of the economic base of the Nazi regime despite the abundance of first-hand archival material, which one can assume was no less than what the GDR historians had at hand.
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By Dave
#1847752
jaakko wrote:"The Great Depression spurred State ownership in Western capitalist countries. Germany was no exception; the last governments of the Weimar Republic took over firms in diverse sectors. Later, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership and public services to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in the Western capitalist countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s. Privatization in Nazi Germany was also unique in transferring to private hands the delivery of public services previously provided by government."

Against the mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930s Germany

Interesting stuff. I will read the whole PDF later, but it would seem that the nationalizations were met with privatizations at the same time. This would be in keeping with the fact that the Nazi Party didn't have any particular economic ideology, and conducted policy on an ad hoc basis for both pragmatic and factional reasons.

jaakko wrote:In FRG there really wasn't a systematic academic research of the economic base of the Nazi regime despite the abundance of first-hand archival material, which one can assume was no less than what the GDR historians had at hand.

Such research was presumably not necessary given that FRG was the direct successor state and there was not much turnover in the civil service, universities, business, etc. The same entrepreneur associations, professional associations, and concerns which had dominated the German economy since the mid-19th century continued in tact, despite the efforts by Erhard to introduce American-style competition and anti-trust legislation.
By guzzipat
#1848637
The following is a list of German financiers and Industrialists who financed the Nazi party from about 1931.
It was in secret, these names were revealed during the interigation of Walther Funk for war crimes. Although the list is long, it is far from complete, Funks memory was "alledgedly" bad.

Emil Kirdorf Ruhr coal baron,
Fritz Thyssen, head of the steel trust,
Albert Voegler another power in the united steel works
Georg von Schnitzler a director of IG Faben, the chemical cartel,
August Rosterg and August Diehn of the potash industry,
Cuno of the Hamburg-Amerika Line.
The brown coal industry of central Germany,
The Conti rubber interests,
Otto Wolf a powerful Cologne industrialist,
Baron Kurt von Schroeder, a Cologne banker,
Deutscher bank,
the Deutsche Kredit Gesellschaft.
The Allianz, Germnaies largest insurer
Southern interests formed a "circle of friends of the economy" which raised milions of marks for Himmler.
Hugo Bruckman a Munich publisher.
Carl Bechstein piano manufacturer

Some refused including Siemens and AEG. Krupp von Bohlen orginally refused then became an enthusistic supporter, Krupp in the words of a repentant Thyssen he became a "super Nazi".

Source;
"The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich" William L. Shirer published Secker & Warburg 1959. The edition I have is from the 9th printing in 1973.

It is virtually a who's who of 1930's German industry & finance. It is certain that many other shave managed to remain secret.
Why that high level of support?
Hitler personally under took a series of meetings with indutrial and finnacial leaders during 1931, assuring them that the Nazis had no intentions of wholsale nationalisations or massive increases in corporate taxation. He offered the Nazis as a bulwark againts the spread of Communism and Socialism, in fact as the "saviour of capitalism". They bought it, they thought they could control him and that the plans for a rapid expansion of military and infrastucture spending would mean big profits.
The result of that miscalculation is history.

Sorry to break into the discusion with some facts but some here were clearly ignorant of the real history.

Incidently I can also supply a similar but more public list, for Mussolini's support.
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By albionfagan
#1848778
You can have nationalisation without a planned economy, just look at the Labour governments of Britain 1945-51.

I don't really buy the argument that Hitler was a pawn of big business, it's too easy. Nazi Germany was no Capitalist haven, the Nazi's were constantly interfering and there was a quasi-corporatist system brought in. It was far from socialist or planned BUT there was a general direction the Nazis pushed for; war. Obviously some business benefitted, but not all. Anyway, just look at the Nazis attempts to destroy department stores, big corporations. The Nazis were not Capitalism's best friend, despite Marxists desperately trying to prove it with arbitrary stats and Marxist dogma.
By guzzipat
#1848783

I don't really buy the argument that Hitler was a pawn of big business



I agree, but they thought they could make him one, and he wouldn't have got into power without them.
When he was made chancellor the Nazis had alreay gone down on the elction from 33% to 30%, they had lost 2m votes.
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By jaakko
#1849132
albionfagan wrote:You can have nationalisation without a planned economy

On the condition that the commodity status of the means of production is not abolished, the abolition which is the smallest imaginable stepping stone between state-capitalism and socialism.
I don't really buy the argument that Hitler was a pawn of big business, it's too easy.

No one is making such an argument here. Hitler was a dictator of a bourgeois state, and the nazi regime had to be a "pawn" of capital like any regime intending to rule on the basis of a capitalist mode of production.
Nazi Germany was no Capitalist haven

Is there a point you're trying to make with this comment in relation to the content of this thread?
the Nazi's were constantly interfering and there was a quasi-corporatist system brought in.

Corporatism is a fairly normal element in any form of capitalist political system, be it fascist or liberal. The nazi corporatism was far more openly pro-capital than what witnessed in liberal systems, where corporatism is usually presented as a mechanism of impartial, or "three-partite" (employer-state-employee) conciliation of capital-labour contradictions.
BUT there was a general direction the Nazis pushed for; war.

That was not a nazi invention. It was a strikingly clear reality that WWI had left Germany, unlike England or France, in such isolation where the only way of expansion was through war in Europe. This militarist expansion was needed to remove the economic basis of the revolutionary crisis that had necessitated fascism in the first place.
Obviously some business benefitted, but not all.

And obviously not all business benefitted, while some did. What's the point of such overly general, overly obvious comments?
Anyway, just look at the Nazis attempts to destroy department stores, big corporations.

Show me. The nazi approach to nationalisations and privatisations wasn't any less pragmatic than in the capitalist countries in general.
The Nazis were not Capitalism's best friend, despite Marxists desperately trying to prove it with arbitrary stats and Marxist dogma.

Try to address what has actually been said here, instead of implicated straw-men.
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By albionfagan
#1849325
:roll:

I haven't the book to hand, but in R.Evans' The Third Reich in Power, there's a brilliant chapter on the economy. Dealing intricately with the Nazis attacks on Corporations, and especially the department stores, I'll try and dig it up tomorrow

I like how you dismiss many of my points as being too general, without understanding them. There was a substantial change in how the economy was run, you're right in that it was nothing new for a German government to drive for war, but it was on a far grander, quicker scale. Capitalism was the tool of the Nazis, not the other way round, they were not 'pawns', that infers that Capitalism and Capitalists dictated the Nazis aims and actions, which is frankly ridiculous and I would have thought even an indoctrinated robot such as yourself could admit it.

Obviously not.

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