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Comment by dTal | Hacker News Reader

IBM is possibly the most famous, but several other American companies employed the gambit of supplying both sides - notably Ford[1] and GM. This[2] article is a wrenching overview. A particularly shocking extract:

"In fact, our government paid Ford Motor Company and GM millions of dollars for damages done by our bombers to their plants in Germany and France, and they were permitted to retain the same managers who had operated their factories under the Nazis."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany#Use_of_forced_lab...

[2]https://www.texasobserver.org/598-lets-talk-treason-how-corp...

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Also Standard Oil (have since changed their name) supplying $20MM oil to nazis prior to the bombing of England.

S O -> Esso -> Exxon

Standard Oil was broken up into lots of pieces. Esso -> Exxon and Standard Oil of New York -> Mobil were just two pieces.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-evolution-standard-oi...

Something I was pondering, since companies are treated as "people" as it pertains to law, free speech, political contributions, etc... then wouldn't that mean a company is guilty of war crimes? AFAIK there is no statute of limitations on war crimes. If a Nazi commander changed their name, that would not exclude them from being put on trial.

They also operated from South America during the war and continued to supply them with oil. That's why before UN's 1948 vote on status of Israel, Mossad agents came to president of SO, put a rope on his table and asked him politely to cobtact his extensive connections with the fascist regimes in South America so they vote in favour of creation of state of Israel.

Wasn’t Fanta created by Coca Cola in Germany during those times fall due to the shortage of Coca Cola ingredients?

The early eagerness of Ford to continue business in Germany is especially unsurprising because Henry Ford was a bit of a fan of fascism.

Ford was also a massive anti-Semite

Yep, every multinational capitalist corporation split themselves into Axis and Allies subdivisions, and continued business as usual during the war. You can point out American corps like IBM and GM, but European corps like Shell did the exact same thing.

That was one of those idealized arguments about how global capitalism is the 'end of history'. Because under ideal circumstances, you are only bombing yourselves...

Every company, American and otherwise, that had business in Europe during the war, and didn’t went out of them, profited from the Nazis in some form.

This includes a lot of American companies (even Israel’s oldest bank profited by not returning accounts held by people who were killed by the Nazis to their rightful heirs).

Few ever apologized, even fewer gave reparations.

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