The Nazi Legacy

Not so long ago I remember there was an anti-baldness shampoo advertised on the telly which, like several other products at the time, made a positive virtue of being German. In other words it followed very much in the footsteps of car manufacturers such as Audi and of course Volkswagen (of which of course Audi has been a subsidiary since 1966) in proclaiming loud and clear that its German-ness was a mark of quality. In a country like England, which still has a passion for Holocaust movies and documentaries about the Battle of Britain, this was of course quite remarkable. But just imagine what other products could try the same trick.

Let's start with cars then. Not only was Volkswagen famously Hitler's favourite car manufacturer, but he actually named its most famous model - 'the Beetle'. And whether or not you drive a German car, you're quite likely to be insured by a German car insurance company - namely Allianz, whose director general in the early 1930s Kurt Schmitt went on to become Hitler’s Reich Economics Minister from June 1933 until January 1935*. Schmitt also became a member of both the National Socialist Party and the SS, rising to the rank of Brigadeführer, the equivalent of a one-star general. Eduard Hilgard, a member of the board of Allianz, became head of the Reich Group for Insurance in 1934. He represented the insurance industry in a conference summoned by Hermann Göring after the November Pogrom of 1938. Hilgard reported on the material damages caused during the Kristallnacht Pogrom and the estimated sums insurance companies had to cover.

Of course it was not merely German car manufacturers who invested in the Nazi war machine! Albert Speer himself acknowledged that the Blitzkrieg of 1939 would not have succeeded without the support of General Motors - or, more specifically, its German subsidiary Opel. And of course Ford too supported the Nazis - although his support was ideological and only in their early years. Time magazine though went so far as to make Hitler its Man of the Year for 1938. (The cover was an anti-Hitler cartoon by a German Catholic exile, but the magazine's founder, rather more ambiguously, referred to Hitler as the year's most influential man 'for better or worse'.)

But where better to drive your Nazi car than on a Nazi autobahn - on which, thankfully for the European economy, there is still no speed limit. At least one of Hitler's dreams lives on - even if it is the same as Jeremy Clarkson's! And if you need to refuel, there'll probably be an ExxonMobil, Chevron or BP somewhere along the way - the successor companies of Standard Oil, which was the Nazi war-machine's most important fuel manufacturer.

Not that it's just cars, of course! Various industries found much to be gained by cooperating with the Nazis. During the war years Siemens, who now make the trains I go to work on in the morning, were making switches for military use and even had their own slave labour camp actually inside Auschwitz. The most notorious beneficiary of the Nazi regime though was of course the chemical industry. Kodak and Agfa, who nowadays make cameras, and BASF, who make pesticides, as well as the pharmaceutical companies Sanofi-Aventis and Bayer - whom we have to thank for first producing aspirin - were all members of the German chemical conglomerate I G Farben, whose directors after the War eventually ended up being put on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.

Nazi culture has in fact survived in various other ways as well. Nobody had heard of Hugo Boss before he was chosen to design those beautiful SS uniforms. Nowadays he's one of the modern fashion world's biggest brands. Ditto IBM, until they helped to compute the numbers of Jews being rounded up during the so-called "Holocaust". The Swedish founder of Ikea too was also a Nazi sympathiser. And Fanta, which is nowadays simply an orange-flavoured version of Coca-Cola, was actually invented by Coca-Cola's German distributor as a wartime alternative to the (famously/notoriously American) soft drink because at the time they couldn't get the ingredients for the Real Thing. The German film company UFA, which distributed such Nazi hits as Triumph of the Will, is still going strong today - though it is now owned (ultimately) by the Nazi publishing giant Bertelsmann, who also own Random House. The Nazi holiday camp Prora has recently been reopened.

So, you can still wear Nazi designer clothes and use a Nazi computer whilst working for a Nazi investment bank. At the end of the day you can return from the office on a Nazi train to a home furnished with Nazi furniture. When you go on holiday you can drive a Nazi car, insured by a Nazi insurance company and fuelled at a Nazi petrol-station by the side of a Nazi road, and you can then stay the night in a Nazi youth hostel. You can even take your holiday snaps using a Nazi camera. If it all gets too much for you then why not take a Nazi painkiller and relax by reading a Nazi book published by a Nazi publishing house or by watching a Nazi film distributed by a Nazi production company - whilst sipping a Nazi soft drink.

So, where's all this headed? Well, in all probability the Euro-sceptics really have been right all along. The "new" Europe will, in fact, end up looking very much like it was always going to - at least from the 1930s onwards. Even such modern and politically correct causes as "ethnic diversity" nowadays have their own Nazi heritage. Many European ethnic minorities are today represented by FUEN, which was originally founded in 1949 to support displaced Germans who had supported Hitler but found themselves on the wrong side of the new borders that had been drawn up by the Allies. A similar organisation is the YEN or Youth of European Nationalities organisation. And if you're a budding young politician who has successfully contributed to the "harmony" of Europe's different peoples and nations then you may even end up being a candidate for the Robert Schuman Prize, which is presented by the Alfred Toepfer foundation, which was itself founded by (you've guessed it!) a German entrepreneur with close ties to the Nazi regime.

UPDATE: And if you fancy some Nazi running kit and training shoes (or at least some trainers made by a company founded by and named after a man who used to make jackboots for the Wehrmacht) then there's always Adidas. That's 'Adi' as in 'Adolf', the Adolf in question being Nazi Party member Adi Dassler (after whom the company was named). His brother Rudolf or 'Rudi' Dassler, who was also a Nazi, went on to found his own footwear manufacturing company, called Ruda - later renamed Puma.

*Schmitt's successor as Economics Minister was Hjalmar Schacht, who had been deputy director of Dresdner Bank. Dresdner Bank was also complicit in the Nazi regime, although since the war it has thrived and prospered, now owning investment bank Kleinwort Benson. Another bank that was useful to the Third Reich was Chase Bank.