It was only later that the picture changed, largely by the US media portraying Hitler as evil, opening the way for a joint intervention.
Also note that some US businesses where still trading with nazi Germany throughout the war.
The US (like UK, West) has always been a country of hypocrisy.
They put Shumei Okawa to trial in Tokyo, for having the audacity to put forward pan-Asianism to liberate it from European clutches. Japan was put on trial for waging 'aggressive war' for monopolizing Asia, even while the Dutch, British, etc. had completely destroyed Asian economies only in the past century.
The Japanese Imperial Army was no benign enterprise, but I'm sure the Europeans didn't win over Asia with flowers and chocolates.
Little wonder, the Indian Justice dissented in the show trials of Tokyo. Now, if only the Indian state had the spine to withdraw these charges, at least for symbolic purposes. The fact that it won't says a lot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhabinod_Pal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine
This is ridiculous - there is no comparison between 'The Dutch' and 'The Japanese' incursions into Asia.
The Dutch were traders, with some geopolitical leverage, money and a few ships.
The Japanese literally invaded and marauded most of E. Asia causing millions of casualties, literally destroying cities, taking sex-slaves on mass, i.e. 'Horrors of Mechanized 20th century' - on par with Nazis. Not some localized trade dispute with a pack of merchant marines firing on innocents, 'monopolizing trade of a few sectors'.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/island-traded-for-manh...
There are too many others sins of the VOC and Royal Dutch colonial authority for me to list still; regardless, no one is a saint.
We hate both colonists equally - well, one colonised us for 350 years, the other for 3,5 years. But both are hated still.
People gung-ho about "progressivism" usually don't really pay the due attention to how that mindset was intertwined and motivated by the same forces behind eugenics, evangelicalism, race science, corporatism, industrialization, mass centralization, authoritarianism, etc.
And of course there were many conflicts between Britain and America in the intervening years, at the time there was no special relationship (more like a special enmity), whereas Germany was a fairly new country and thus did not have this history of enmity in the U.S where people hearing about something Germany did could call on old prejudices.
on edit: should also note that for many countries a long time ago is not 147 years (1783 to 1930)
Pardon the cultural stereotypes but only in the US is 100 years considered a long time. Half the planet has tribal divisions dating back millennia. See, er, this article.
Bit more on topic: certainly, most of the West was more concerned about Communism than they were a Hitler. Not exactly a methodology we've abandoned since... waves generally at Middle East. And who in 1900, 1910, even 1930, would have put money on Germany being the European country to engage in a genocide notorious even by 20th century standards? Not me. Which I guess is the point of the article.
Yet somehow we fought on the British side in 1917.
In general in war time the property of nationals of the country you’re at war with, in your country, remains their property. It can be frozen or confiscated or commandeered, sure, according to local law but confiscation is not the normal expectation. In Germany after WW2 the property of US companies was returned to their control, and vice versa for the assets of German companies in the US.
You use the term profit, but we don’t even know if those subsidiaries even made a profit during the war. They may have come out of the war better off than they started I suppose in theory, but given the devastation of German industry during the war that seems unlikely. Do you have any evidence the value of those subsidiaries in Germany was higher at the end of the war than when it started?
Even if it was, what would you propose be done about it?
> The German subsidiaries of those companies, in Germany run by German citizens, still traded in Germany yes.
That sounds a bit simplistic, of course if the German government ceases their operation and severs ties to the US, there is not much to be done, on the other hand e.g. Ford employed slave labor even _before_ ties to the US company were cut [0].
While Nazi Germany is ultimately responsible for these atrocities; in my opinion: companies still have / should have a moral duty. Some companies are exploring their past, e.g. Coffee companies with their ties to human trafficking. I think we need more of that, even just acknowledging our past, because "with power comes great responsibility" and those large companies, more powerful as some smaller countries should be held accountable and should do everything to prevent abuse and exploitation.
You seem to focus on the economics only, I agree profit might not have been the right term, but if a company actively exploited people it shouldn't matter too much whether they turned a profit.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany#Use_of_forced_lab...
However, it wasn't really reciprocated; the "German-American Bund" managed a few rallies but did not acquire the support of the KKK.
Ref? I just listened to "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", and that's not the impression I got. Hitler certainly had some support from people like Lindberg; but they seem to have been duped by his "We don't want war" rhetoric.
If there is a suggestion that they were at some point pro-Hitler that needs to be supported by something. The alternative is otherwise the default assertion.
However, at that point there had been something close to war going on between the US and German navies for a while.
I certainly think a lot of people thought the Versaille Treaty was unfair, and were in favor of Germany being rebuilt and so on. I have a hard time believing that there were many Americans who thought the German Empire of Europe would be a good idea.
IBM selling tabulators to the Nazis, which arguably kicked off both the information technology revolution and the Holocaust, is one infamous example.