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.
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.
I do.
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/condit...
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.
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.
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?
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...).
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.