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Comment by llao | Hacker News Reader

I am German and "IG Farben" means nothing to me. Monsanto on the other hand is popular to hate and omnipresent on and off the web.

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That’s really interesting... I guess they’ve managed to repair their brand domestically? But for me, I’m Australian, and the first thing I think of is (of course) “gas chambers” when I see the name... I would assume many in the US, UK etc. would do the same.

I'm from the UK and don't recognise the name at all. If I was to associate an existing corporation to the Nazis, the first name in my head would be Hugo Boss.

Also Volkswagen and Fanta.

And I suppose IBM warrants a mention for doing business with Nazis.

I didn't know about the history of Fanta until just now looking it up on wikipedia. Very weird that such a drink would still be marketed (even with a "75th Anniversary Edition" special formulation). There really is no shame in profiting from just about anything.

Why wouldn't or shouldn't they market it? Coca-Cola Germany improvised a new soft drink during the war and called it Fanta, and later it was adopted by the parent company. It's not like they helped build the gas chambers or anything.

Well a soft drink developed to work around trade restrictions is pretty much unrelated to crimes against humanity. They even discontinued the line it once reunified corporately (now that the restrictions were gone) but demand remained so it was returned to production.

LOL, wow.

The Fanta drink originated as a cola substitute in Germany under a World War II trade embargo for Coca-Cola ingredients in 1940. . . . In February 2015, a 75th-anniversary version of Fanta was released in Germany. Packaged in glass bottles evoking the original design and with an authentic original wartime flavor . . . An associated television ad referenced the history of the drink and said the Coca-Cola company wanted to bring back "the feeling of the Good Old Times".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta

I cannot help but think of IBM punch cards. Especially when untechy people say they have nothing to hide from the surveillance economy.

OK so try this exercise - associate IG Farben (and to some extent Bayer) with new name - Zyklon B (gas used in gas chambers).

I understand that in complex business sometimes controversies arise, but by they went straight evil during WWII (ie using Auschwitz prisoners killing many)

I think it's a pretty odd thing to know. It's a fun fact or a difficult quiz question rather than something that everyone knows.

Monsanto is in the news now. IG Faber has split into many independent companies and doesn't exist anymore.

I'm in my 50s in the UK and never heard of them. I realise this may not reflect well upon me.

Maybe it just depends on what documentaries you’ve watched... Thinking back, I don’t think I ever learned about it in school but later just watching WWII documentaries about it. I guess it’s probably not actually common knowledge.

(IG Farben manufactured the Zyklon B that was used in the gas chambers).

I'm German and had the same immediate reaction as you, but as the other comments show, it's hard to tell how widespread that is.

Which brand? Bayer or IG Farben?

I'd guess the association of "IG Farben" with the gas chambers is very strong, but that brand ceased to exist in the 1950s. The name "Bayer" (from my perspective) never has been associated with it that strongly.

IG Farben. Yeah, I don’t have the same reaction to Bayer.

The main building of Goethe University in Frankfurt?

Indeed they repurposed the building at some point and the university began moving parts of its campus there. I was at that time student at Goethe Uni and was kinda stunned when I first saw it. It is a very impressive building.

Interested can see some pictures here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben_Building

I hope you did not vote for this Afd Nazi and his bird poop madness. I am frankly shocked that a German politician - elected into the Bundestag, not some crackpot from the NSU - could state something like this: https://apnews.com/35a927e3ae954fa386a9e2406ae4439a

It typically gets covered in school when talking about the Holocaust [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben_Trial

I'm not sure if that's typically covered in school, at least I have never heard of it or anyone in german school mentioning it.

"Typically" when people are referring to their own education and maybe to the of people living close to them ...

> I am German and "IG Farben" means nothing to me.

How did you manage to get through German school without picking up a reference or two to IG Farben?

I'm not German and there were multiple accounts of their contribution to the Holocaust. Google 'Zyklon-B' for more info.

I'm from germany too and never heard of IG Farben. Of course we know about Auschwitz but the term "IG Farben" has never been mentioned.

How long did you go to school and when? German here and ofcourse I heard of IG Farben. They are the prime example when it comes to companies complicit with the Nazi regime.

Went through that era about 7 or 8 years ago and there wasn't any big mention of it. It might have been in the foot notes but the classes usually focused on a broader overview of the war rather than individual happenings (we did watch Schindler's List though). Of course the crimes at the various KZ' and such are also thoroughly covered.

Why does any of this have to come from school? I would have expected that a general exposure to culture would have covered all of this? Maybe I'm misled by the fact that in USA there are cable channels that seem to be 50% devoted to Nazi misdeeds...

This is generally covered in school because Nazi history is a rather depressing topic for Germans. Doesn't really stop the documentary channels but those don't have high exposure (Football and News have high exposure. European Football that is.)

It sounds to me a lot like the topic of slavery in the USA. It's a historical fact, and everyone learns about it in school, but it's not a popular topic in the culture. I'd wager few people in the USA are familiar with the names of the companies that were complicit in it, though undoubtedly some still exist.

I dont think talking about the nazi regime is a depressing topic anymore in Germany and it hasnt been for a long time. It paved the way for people to define themselves as not just as the descendants of the German empire but people unwilling to be quite about their forefathers misdeeds. It empowered a lot of people to disregard the excuse for horrible deeds as people "just doing their job". It empowered the point of view, that the government can be wrong and should be opposed if so.

Between the Gestapo and the Stasi, the German executive has to lobby hard for support outside of their state employed peers to be viewed as a force tasked with their job by democratic mandate. As little as that is the case in reality, it still is a great development historically. Just the part alone, that soldiers are meant to be citizens in uniforms has done a lot to root out any possibility of the military having a say in politics.

Just to point it out, I dont think that shift happened with the end of the war or shortly after, quite the contrary. It is sadly clear, that warcriminals were protected by large parts of society. The change happend two decades later, when people were willing to speak up about their parents beeing mass murderer who got away.

I managed to get through school just fine, thank you. Zyklon-B is well known to me.

How does one company name from 70 years ago matter in the big picture anyways? Please don't assume that the rest of the world uses the same history syllabus like your US school might have. Did they at least also teach you who fabricated Agent Orange if they focused on manufacturers so much?

> Did they at least also teach you who fabricated Agent Orange if they focused on manufacturers so much?

In fact, yes they did: Philips Duphar and I learned this in school.

Check out the "volgermeerpolder" if it interests you.

And it was just a question, no need to perceive any insults, I was just wondering if the German school system is still highlighting WWII the way they used to, perhaps not, perhaps it never was done to the extent that it was presented to me in the first place.

As for why it matters: For anybody involved in industry IG Farben and IBM are important because of the ethical implications.

Finally, I never went to a US school (talking about assumptions...).

When I was at school (in Germany) the Nazi topic was ubiquitous at the loss of other historic topics. After hearing the same things again and again year after year I became very uninterested with history lessons. Maybe it was the fault of my school or my teachers but I gathered that this is a common thing in German schools. In hindsight I have to say that I really didn't learn much about German history besides the 1st and especially 2nd world war time.

While I absolutely agree that this topic has to be part of the curriculum it should not be so dominant. Who produced Zyklon-B is in my opinion a detail. There are other things in history that I am more interested in and that are more important. I understand you didn't want to attack anyone and I'm just telling you my opinion, no offense.

p.s. I knew about IG Farben but I don't know where I gained that knowledge.. maybe it was school, maybe my parents or maybe because I studied at Goethe Uni for some time.

> I'm not German and there were multiple accounts of their contribution to the Holocaust. Google 'Zyklon-B' for more info.

Then by that line you may as well put Dow Chemicals and Monsanto in the same bin as they have been producing Agent Orange to bombard Vietnamese civilians with well known effects during the Vietnam war.

Or instead, you could point the fingers to governments who are basically at the origin of such illegitimate actions. Oh, and in War, pretty much everything becomes legal anyway, until you lose and are judged for it. The US will never be judged for the crimes they have committed, just like the Soviets will never be either, because they have never happened to be directly involved on the losing side.

So moral authority is very relative in this world.

> Dow Chemicals and Monsanto in the same bin as they have been producing Agent Orange to bombard Vietnamese civilians with well known effects during the Vietnam war.

I do.

Please, you can't put wartime use of a defoliant in the same category as Zyklon-B and what it was used for.

OK, so a chemical that causes an horrendous list of conditions, many of them being fatal, and used on purpose on civilians during a conflict, is a bad comparison with Zyklon-B? Where do you draw the line then? How much toxicity is enough to draw the parallel?

https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/condit...

>used on purpose on civilians during a conflict

It wasn't used on purpose. 2,4-D, the defoliant used, wasn't the carcinogen and wasn't sprayed on people intentionally. The carcinogen in this case was a dioxin contaminate inadvertently created in the manufacturing process. The US military thought they were spraying a chemical they thought was (mostly) safe.

Was the effect of 2,4-D a horrific disaster? Yes. Was it a mistake to use this tactic? Yes. Has the US provided all the necessary restitution? No. Is it equal to IG Farben knowingly producing Zylkon-B for genocide. No even close to the same.

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