Regards, Ivan
Posted on 10/08/2002 4:38:53 AM PDT by MadIvan
German media giant Bertelsmann has admitted it lied about its Nazi past and that it made big profits during Adolf Hitler's reign in Germany using Jewish slave labour.
A commission set up by the firm found Bertelsmann rode the rise of the Nazi party to restructure itself from a religious and school book publisher to supply millions of anti-Semitic texts.
"Bertelsmann published a variety of papers and books that clearly had anti-Jewish bias," Independent Historical Commission (IHC) Chairman Saul Friedlaender, an Israeli historian, told a news conference.
The IHC found Bertelsmann had targeted the youth market with its "Exciting Stories" series and the "The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth" annual which pushed its sales up 20 fold.
The IHC said the company's "legend" that it was a victim of the Nazis was a lie.
Faking it
The Nazis shut down the company in 1944, but probably because of war shortages rather and not because of subversive texts, it said.
"In 1945, the legend that C. Bertelsmann was closed down because of resistance to the Nazis smoothed the way for the occupation authorities promptly granting the firm a new licence to publish," the report said.
The Commission found that Bertelsmann made "indirect" use of Jewish slave labour in Latvia, and Lithuania but not at its German headquarters.
The then head of the company, Heinrich Mohn, also made donations to the SS, Hitler's special forces and concentration camp guards.
"True, he never joined the Nazi party, but his membership in the SS patrons' group signalled his readiness for a political arrangement," the report said.
The company had close ties to the Nazi regime, particularly the Propaganda Ministry, and printed 19 million books during World War II, making it the largest publisher for the German army.
The company immediately issued a statement apologising for its wartime activities and false corporate history.
"The values of Bertelsmann then are irreconcilable with the company today. The company is now a global player in the media industry," Tim Arnold, the corporate secretary of Bertelsmann told the BBC's Today programme.
Sorry
Bertelsmann chairman Gunther Thielen said the company accepted the commission's findings.
"I would like to express our sincere regret for the inaccuracies the Commission has uncovered in our previous corporate history of the World War Two era as well as for the wartime activities that have been brought to light," he said in a statement.
Mr Thielen said all the material used for the 800-page report would be made publicly available.
Bertelsmann used its "revised" history when it took over the biggest US book publisher Random house in 1998.
The commission of four historians was set up in the fallout of the takeover after media reports on Bertelsmann¿s Nazi past.
About 6,000 German companies are contributing to a 5.1bn euro ($5bn) settlement with hundreds of thousands of Nazis slave labourers.
Other companies, such as Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank have also set up commissions into history during the Third Reich.
Regards, Ivan
Is there a prohibition of companies with Nazi pasts from taking over American companies? Would the purchase have been approved if their past had been known? Is there recourse to have them divest of Random House now that this has come out?
No. But the shareholders might have had a problem if they'd known.
Is there recourse to have them divest of Random House now that this has come out?
Not so far as I am aware.
Best Regards, Ivan
If so, their own website doesn't say they do.
Regards, Ivan
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Perhaps sending cancellation note to Fast Company, Inc. if you read them.
Bertelsmann's Nazi past explains racist hatred spit by Stern in the last 10 years.
Once Nazi, always Nazi.
Regards, Ivan
Remember HITLER DIARIES HOAX by STERN?
It all makes sense now.
Regards, Ivan
"The German weekly magazine Stern of 16 November 1995, placed the following caption under a picture taken from his videotape:
"Seconds before the murder: Armed Serbs contain a group of Muslims near Konjevic Polje. A Serb cameraman shot the scene until the first rounds were fired." But Petrovic says he spent plenty of time at the scene, before as well as after he filmed. And – he did not notice any crime.
Und so weite. Please contribute blattant examples of Stern racism that can be filed under "Nazi revisionism".
That is what "Bosnia genocide" is all about.
The hoax small fry Nazi revisionists could only dream of Bertellsmann could and they did.
The point is something else. Bertelsmann was able to hide Nazi past and thus WAS NOT denazified. They are Nazis in disguise, and their line of business is media, not machine tooling.
They shape public opinion, not sheet metal.
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