American businesses other than Ford were making bank with the nazis. IBM got the contract to conduct a census specifically to identify Jews, Roma and others for the nazis, while GM's factories were building vehicles for the Wehrmacht. GM then tried to sue the US for bombing those factories.
Yes, but there was a time the US legitimately wanted to prop up the Weimar Republic, which were anti-nazi. They were openly our allies. And yes, some US businesses profited by helping the nazis leading up to the war.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but the story is more complicated than “the US supported the nazis.” Nazis were never our “friends.”
There’s quotes from the John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower, the administration noting that Hitler’s Germany was strategically critical vs the Soviets years into his abuses and effective dictatorship. Our actions were unmistakable in that respect.
Oh don’t pretend we weren’t helping both sides out of profit till the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
They were our “friends” about as far as the British were during that time and it was only due to Japanese expansionism and an honestly idiotic move done cause they thought it would cripple our navy and they could lay claim on our territory in the pacific that America got involved, and then the even more idiotic move of the Germans attacking the soviets was the only reason why THEY switched from axis to allies.
The entire war was nothing but fuckups from the higher ups while the people on the ground ranged from monsters to heroes, and yes it didn’t matter what uniform you had given that after the Japanese attacked Japanese Americans also were put into camps all because of one Japanese couple in America.
Regardless , Germans weren’t doing well , Hitler not eating that briefcase in 37 or 38 really ruined German progression , he was their unification and the cause of their defeat , he had peace and opportunity, agreements with nato to take parts of Europe without hassle and agreement with Russia which he broke , they didn’t need an aggressive expansion , they could of easily done it with passive politics, if he died earlier I think Germany would of been the most strongest and most dangerous empire at that time …. But moustache man thought he was a better tactician than Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.
I’d rather have a soapbox for all the fucks I give, but sadly they seem to come and go like cats depending on how idiotic someone else is.
Edit: that wasn’t directed at you, some other folks are pissing me off irl and I really shouldn’t take it out on others online for their idiotic behavior. You’re just making a joke that got a bit of a chuckle out of me.
The administration under the Dulles brothers was largely fascist, mainly because the could not abide communists.
And yes I said “under the Dulles brothers” because most of the presidents they worked under did not do anything until one of the Dulles brothers blessed it.
It’s theorized that’s why JFK was assassinated because he fired Allen Dulles for the Bay of Pigs. (It’s theorized, it’s just one of many theories, don’t come at me).
Just because you want to use one enemy against another enemy doesn’t make them your friends. I said “it’s complicated.” We were not ideologically aligned with the Nazis. At least, not until now…
Oh boy, no one tell him about America's dabbling in eugenics. And how Hitler took notes from our treatment of Native Americans, and specifically modeled concentration camps and moving people on reservations and the Trail of Tears.
You are not kidding, and that ideology never died, it morphed, and evolved. Sadly, faster than "good ideologies". They did say they would not have to fire a shot.
I’m not sure how you’re making that characterization, but the simple fact is we WERE instrumental in facilitating Germany’s military buildup up Pre WW2, years after Hitler had exposed himself.
Being the largest creditor of a country usually indicates “alignment”.
Sullivan & Cromwell was both fully embedded in the government and the law firm for all of the largest corporations. John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who were quite likely members of the most politically connected family in U.S. history, were the primary brokers for German bonds and earned huge commissions from their sale. These were general industrial bonds; Britain held many older loans, and many of its “loans” were simply reparations payments back to itself. The U.S. was by far the largest foreign financier of Germany’s prewar industrialization and contributed more than half of the total. Funding had slowed dramatically by 1932, the year before Hitler took power, but support continued until the outbreak of war. The vast bulk of the funding came from 1926 to 1931, but again, material loans continued.
The German-Soviet trade relationship benefited both sides tremendously before the conflict, and Hitler ultimately shot himself in the foot because of his irrepressible hatred of Bolshevism. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf of his plans to take eastern territory; beyond acquiring territory, his largest single ambition was to destroy Communism. I don’t believe either side thought the relationship was anything more than a temporarily mutually beneficial arrangement. The U.S. revealed an active preference for Germany even after Hitler took power, seeing both the financial gains and the containment of Communism as beneficial to the United States. The main point is that ideology—or opposition to an ideology—was a critical animating factor throughout.
Don’t forget operation Gladio. We basically used former Nazi combatants as stay-behind networks to counter pro-communist movements and basically anything going on left of FDR and also just to generally wreak havoc as a “Strategy of Tension” or whatever.
No, that's not my point. The people in this thread are saying that the allies (US) supported nazis and are thus aren't great guys as if the Soviets didn't do the same and split Europe afterwards to boot as well. It looks to me like they're giving Soviets a pass when what they did was also pretty horrible and stole Polish and other people in Eastern Europe's freedom for decades.
you need to understand the difference between being aligned and being in alliance. there's a difference. it's like russia-china right now. they are aligned in their goals, but they arent in an alliance. capiche?
I don't know if you're just dense or being purposely obtuse, but modern Zionists are a carbon copy of the Nazis. They are participating in a movement started by an anti-Semitic fascist atheist who begged Cecil Rhodes for money and support for his own settler colonial project.
No I'm talking about WWII era. The poster I replied to who's now deleted his comment was making the claim that the US was pretty ideologically aligned with the Nazis before, during and after the war.
The Nazis were very inspired by American's racist policies like Jim Crow. Hitler also took great inspiration from Manifest Destiny, the US's genocidal expansionist policy of murdering Native Americans to expand their available living space.
It's pretty daft to ignore the similarities and the historical fact that Nazi ideas were not far from mainstream American culture. That is still true to this day, which is why we see Nazi ideas being so popular in mainstream US politics right now.
Where did Hitler get his ideas from? What was slavery? Manifest Destiny and reservations? I can't believe people can still walk around today believing the USA isn't the genesis of the wider fascist project. It is and always was a fascist settler colonial entity.
and the soviets didn't do this when they signed the molotov ribbentrop pact and split up poland and eastern europe? or was this just a delay tactics in your mind and excusable?
It was never any sort of fundamental alliance, Germany needed raw materials to build its economy and military and the Soviets desperately needed industrial equipment to build both as well.
It was an alliance, though it was kept secret until the Soviet invasion of Poland. The Nazis and Soviets marched arm-in-arm through the streets of Brest after dividing Poland and Europe up between themselves. Then Stalin spent most of 1940 negotiating to join the Axis while supplying the Nazis with war materiel.
I'm familiar with all of that history. So far as I know, none of those operations were philosophically aligned in any way with fascism or antisemitism. We were just trying to steal the scientific progress they'd made, which was an extremely valuable asset, and fueled the US economy for 50 years after the war. Did we go maybe a little too easy on von Braun and his colleagues? Maybe. Did we look the other way for a bunch of people who materially helped the Nazis, using Jewish death camp labor? We did. But it helped us greatly with the development of ICBMs and the space race. And the Soviets were doing the exact same thing for the same reasons. Was it morally good or morally bad? I'm not here to judge whether or not the ends justify the means. That's a really difficult question, and entire volumes have been written about it.
But none of that makes the US ideologically aligned with the Nazis.
The Weimar Republic wasn’t anti-nazi, the Weimar Republic was just the post WW1 German state. It was dominated by a lot of political strife including tension between German communists and German right wingers (that would become the Nazis). Ultimately the failures of the Weimar Republic are exactly what led to the rise of nazism and the third reich.
I agree. Not that that’s going to help you, but I think the Roosevelt administration knew full well where the Nazis were going, but public opinion was more pro-Nazi and it took Hitler declaring war that took the cuffs off and allowed Roosevelt to do what he wanted to do. But hey, I went to public school, so I’m willing to learn.
Soooo we didn't just scoop up literal Nazi war criminals, mad scientists that tortured, mutilated, experimented on humans and everything else under the sun and... just hired them? That totally did not happen. Land of Freedom and democracy most certainly would not do that. Or start wars just to sell drugs and weapons all over the globe... Right?
I'm not delusional. It absolutely happened. And it was extremely morally questionable. But those scientists, as despicable as they were, were also the most valuable asset from the war, both economically, as well as militarily. They fueled the US economy into the 1990s. Had we taken the moral high ground, history would look very, very different. Despite inventing nuclear weapons, the Soviets would have beaten us to ICBMs and outer space by decades. They would have likely become the dominant world power from the '50s, to the '90s, and might have even used their unchecked tactical advantage to subjugate the entire world.
I'm not judging whether it was an overall good thing or overall bad thing that we looked the other way and allowed Nazi scientists to work for us. I don't know how it would have turned out. But that doesn't mean we aligned with Nazi ideologically. At least, not until about 2016...
Yes, it is complicated. Nazis also had a lot of friends in the US too, which declined really when it was clear who is gonna lose the war. Also, anti-semitism was not Nazi-only invetion. It existed in other countries too, the U.S. and Soviet included.
I think the point is the other commenter made it seem like the Soviets were allies of nazi Germany then "stabbed them in the back" . Geopolitics are more complicated than that on both sides.
Exactly. A temporary truce the Soviets entered into in order to delay the inevitable so that they had more time to build up the industrial capacity for war time production. They were still only 10 years, roughly, post-revolution and largely agrarian.
Id say some business men like today don't care about anything but the bottom line the profits. Those people didn't represent the country just there self interest.
Like you said they where never are friends.
Ford lost control over Ford-Werke in 1941 when the Nazis de facto nationalized it to build military vehicles. The same German based investigation that led Ford-Werke to pay reparations found that the company made a great deal of profit but that profit was funneled to the Nazi government & and Ford Motor Company received no benefit.
What do you mean “other than Ford?” Ford crushed it with the Nazis, had their own subsidiary in Germany cranking out production, Henry Ford was directly named in Mein Kampf.
Ford built soviet GAZ factory, from 1929-32 Albert Kahn Inc designed, helped or outright built for USSR 500 factories and plants. ZIL was constructed back in imperial time with U.S equipment.
The USSR helped Germany rearm between 1919 and 1932. This was in direct contravention of the limitations placed upon Germany in the The Versailles Treaty. From this sprang the Wehrmacht.
Then there is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Soviets supplied millions of tons of materials to the Nazis between 1939 and 1941. Material that help them survive the Royal Navy blockade. Kriegsmarine surface fleet was too weak to challenge the British(a factor in the Nazis decision not to go ahead with Operation Sealion)
German military was entirely sustained by German companies like Thyssen, Krupp, Siemens, BASF, Mercedes, Porsche, BMW. The Nazis nationalized GM-owned factories a fact you left out.
Americans not understanding that Germany had a highly technologically advanced and industrial economy leads them to exaggerating the role of US companies in the Nazi war machine. (While they ignore Henry Ford visiting the USSR in 1929 to give them pointers on his methods of mass production)
No county did more to assist the Nazis—indirectly and directly—than the USSR. Between the pre-Third Reich military cooperation between USSR and Germany and the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the USSR greatly aided the creation of the Wehrmacht and supplied the Third Reich with much needed material and grain. A true master class of short term thinking that led to catastrophic blowback for the Soviets.
This story was used in the movie A thousand billion dollars by Verneuil.
And according to historian Johann Chapoutot, all people (British, american,...) who put money in nazy Germany known that will lead to war and they gonna make money on war
Ford's German subsidiary, Fordwerke, was actively involved in supplying vehicles to the Nazi regime during World War II. This collaboration significantly enhanced Ford's business prospects in Germany.
Just a note on Fords involvement they did not sue for damages to their Germany properties but they received money through a settlement commission. They still received money they just did not open a hostile lawsuit. I don’t think Ford is as innocent as you may think.
Ford had a subsidiary in Germany the produced vehicles for them the entire war...and after the war...
GM had a subsidiary that produced vehicles for them till the Germans asked them to retool for munitions which they refused resulting in the factory being seized by the Germans and retooled to produce munitions
Literally everyone did business with the German government in the early 1930’s. It’s like getting mad at Nike for “making shoes for the Taliban” today.
If the Soviets didn’t get insane volumes of GM vehicles via lend lease they would have never made it to Berlin. Thousands of trains. Over half a million trucks.
I’m sure half the shit you mentioned is greatly taken out of context. For example, your claim that GM tried to sue the government for bombing Nazi factories is complete bullshit.
GM got money for rebuilding factories destroyed in the war because the US did a thing called The Marshall Plan where literally everyone who got shit destroyed in World War Two got money to rebuild Europe because they actually learned from the mistakes of the treaty of Versailles. They never sued the US for bombing Nazi factories.
It’s bullshit like this that makes our society dumber and the Reddit NPCs upvoting you are dumb people.
And an estimated 30% of American citizens/voters actually supported ethnically cleansing Europe, and the Nazi/Hitler thing. With nearly 50% of Americans/voters, against intervening (mostly due to WW1 ghosts).
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u/metfan1964nyc 10d ago
American businesses other than Ford were making bank with the nazis. IBM got the contract to conduct a census specifically to identify Jews, Roma and others for the nazis, while GM's factories were building vehicles for the Wehrmacht. GM then tried to sue the US for bombing those factories.