What do Coca Cola, Nestle, and Volkswagen have in common? Slavery, abuse and torture … behind their happy smiley adverts, these companies have a dark past.
Allianz has very famous Nazi ties — they insured Auschwitz, their CEO was one of Hitler’s advisers, and, during the Holocaust, instead of paying life insurance benefits to Jews, they sent that money straight to the Nazis.
Few years after Swiss banks became the target of a worldwide furor over their business dealings with Nazi Germany, major American car companies, Ford embroiled in a similar debate.
Check out 10 Big Businesses that worked with the Nazis to see whether your favorite brands are lurking behind the worst war crimes in history.
10Coca-Cola
During WW2 Coke featured on Nazi propaganda and used forced labor from concentration camp slaves to create Fanta. After the war Coke happily cashed in millions from Fanta´s slave labor production.
09Nestle
In 2000 Nestle gave 14 million dollar to a Holocasust survivor´s fund to apologize for its Nazi atrocities. It supplied chocolate to the German army, used slave labor in its factories and financed the Swiss Nazi Party.
08Allianz
Allianz´s CEO was also Hitler´s economic minister in WW2. The company even insured death camps, including Auschwitz, where it knowingly profited from the deaths of 1.5 million people sent to gas chambers.
07Volkswagen
12.000 slave laborers made military vehicles for Hitler in WW2. Volkswagen even had a “dying room” where women gave birth and their babies would be left to die of neglect.
06Kodak
Hitler´s personal advisor Wilhelm Keppler was close friends with US Company, Kodak. He persuaded Kodak to fire its Jewish employees and made money for Germany from Kodak photography purchases.
05Hugo Boss
Hugo Boss made uniforms for the Nazis party. 180 women were abducted, starved and then imprisoned at the textile factory where they were forced to make SS and Hitler Youth uniforms.
04Standard Oil
The US Company supplied fuel for the Nazis – even after the US entered WW2. Standard Oil refueled German submarines with secret tankers under Panamanian registry so they couldn´t be tracked by Britain.
03BMW
BMW had 50.000 slave laborers making munitions for the Nazis. 80 workers a month died from the poor conditions they were whipped, forced to drink toilet water and executed.
02Ford
In WW2, 50% of Ford´s German workforces were slaves from concentration camps. At least 10.000 men, women and children worked in freezing conditions and many were worked to death.
01IBM
IBM built computers for the Nazis to log the number of Jews being shipped to death camps. When Germany invaded Poland IBM even increased production to profit from the additional prisoners.
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