That’s 20k new hires with families and home addresses that can be doxxed. I am NOT saying violence is the answer, but these 20k people should absolutely live in worry for their families’ safety because of their participation in this gestapo.

Anonymous, where are you?

Edit: here is a shot from an ICE raid in California, with a very clear shot of an “agent.”

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Coming with receipts! I’m appreciative of that. I genuinely had no idea the number of Kubelwagens produced. I’ll certainly concede that production of vehicles during the war was significant. I’m trying to paint grey what this post paints in black and white, and perhaps it isn’t quite as grey as I make it out to be.

I’m certainly wrong in my assessment here, and thank you for the correction.

I do think it’s still worth pointing out that the very nature of its birth under the third reich, the fall of the third reich, and its rebirth under British military control, Volkswagen exists somehow different than the established automakers in Germany. I think it’s worth pointing out that while Volkswagen wears the nazi label more publicly than Merc or BMW, it’s likely the heads of those automakers were more actively complicit in the war than anyone at VW in the late 40s.

I’m not sure I understand your point. I don’t think there’s anything in my comment that requires clarification.

A cursory reading of Wikipedia doesn’t really do the history of Volkswagen quite right. As a component of the government in the 1930s and early 1940s, they made some prototype vehicles that would eventually be the beetle, and yes, a few vehicles for the military. But it wasn’t until post war reconstruction where Major Hirsh and the British military took over and started the company we know today.

I’ll grant you that lowercase v volks wagen and the Nazis overlapped, and that is cause for some discussion and some joking. But it’s also true that uppercase V Volkswagen isn’t quite as guilty as Mercedes-Benz et. al. in the build for the Nazis department.

It’s a funny joke, I’ll grant you that. But to be serious, Volkswagen, the company, did not exist until after World War II. Mercedes, BMW, on the other hand…

Probably. But if I’m being generous, we’re really only talking about younger X and older millennials.