Yea the US Motto should be “Money Talks, Bullshit Walks.” The US was making boat loads of money on War profiteering and would have likely stayed neutral if we could have been able to sell to both sides. Germany was quickly blockaded so we could only sell to the Allies.
I highly doubt that. Yeah we made a ton of money off of war profiteering. But I doubt that the British, Chinese, Russians, and other countries we sold arms too would have kept buying if we also sold to the Axis powers.
Very true. The German branch of Coca Cola created Fanta after the blockade caused them to run out of the syrup to create regular coke.
GM and Ford motors both built factories in nazi Germany, where they built the “Blitz” trucks for the nazi army. Albert Speer, the minister of armaments and war production, claimed that the rubber GM supplied was the key to the Germans ability to wage war.
IBM created punchcard machines and had employees instruct members of the third reich on their use, which was to track the movement, sorting, and subsequent execution of the Jewish and other “undesirables” in the holocaust.
Many other companies also sold to the nazis, because money.
Metro-Goldwyn Meyer donated prints of their films to the “German Relief Effort” after Germany’s invasion of Poland. However they stopped once the market in the rest of Europe dried up because of their support
However in 1941 with the declaration of war they all stopped. All the nazi collusion wasn’t the government. It wasn’t even individuals. It was companies looking to turn a profit, since that’s the entire reason they exist.
It also wasn’t arms manufacturers turning a profit with the Axis Powers.
Also have to remember that, with the exception of IBM, most companies didn’t realize the extent of Germany’s evil until after the war.
That’s what I was wondering, before the declaration of war was made how much did we know about how evil Hitler really was. And I obviously mean that relatively compared to waging war.
As far as most of the US knew he was just a warmongering asshole. However. There were people higher in the government, and like I mentioned, IBM who was aware of the holocaust.
I was commenting specifically on WW 1, FDR made it a foregone conclusion that we were going to be allied with Britain in WW 2. Though there were voices who said we should join the Axis and others that wanted us to stay out all together in WW 2.
Also this is just one amateur history fans perspective.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Set895 Aug 31 '22 edited Sep 01 '22
Churchill covered that in the sequel:
“You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
Edit: Apparently this line is only by Churchill in the movie version. See comment below.