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UpperHesse t1_iuqt5c6 wrote

Reply to comment by MerelyMortalModeling in How Nazi Billionaires Thrived in Postwar Germany by HowMyDictates

>None of this is new, non of it was secret and in fact much

First off, I want to say that in many cases its like, European research from the 1980s and 1990s gets rediscovered in the USA now.

But second, I would say forced labor/slave labor was a non-issue in research and german public for a long time. It was very convenient that a large majority of slave workers came from Eastern Europe and were "silenced" due to the cold war.

The trials against the likes of Krupp only scratched the tip of the iceberg. At least from 1943 onward, slave labor was in use everywhere.

One logical problem was that denazification targeted the persons, but not the companies. Many businessmen had not to face special trials, but undergo the denazification process if they were party members. Later on, they could use their assets to defy the verdicts and get more favorable ones.

It would be good if already back then a damages funds would have been created where companies had to pay in. This was only done much later, in the year 2000, by the way of negotiation between the German state and major companies.

Unlike the Holocaust or the suppression of the opposition, slave labor was also a non-issue in public debate. On a local level, I feel in Germany even the narrative of the "benevolent employer" became very widespread, that some people had a heart of gold towards their foreigners, instead of all others who had slave workers.

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MerelyMortalModeling t1_iuray90 wrote

I guess my issue is in part this is being presented like it's new info by a European author in a European publication and it has an Amerikkkan slant.

That's especially erroneous to me because America and the Soviet Union were the primary drivers behind attempts to bring the industrialist to justice and several countries actively sought to undermind us. Specficly France (the Jacobist is HQed in Paris) and the Netherlands (im thinking the author is based there) had many ties with the Nazis.

That's not to say that the French werent willing to go after Nazis, they just didnt cooperate with the prosecution of industrialists. Menthon and Ribe specifically were both very effective here but contrast them against Vabres who single-handedly shot down entire categories of prosecution and specifically seemed to shield european and German civilians.

All that said I hope the author is just trying to get people jazzed up over his new book and the book itself will yield high-quality and possibly new info.

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