Atlanta refuses to name a street after Ferdinand Porsche because of ties to the Third Reich

[seadoo2006]

Being part German, I have several family members who served in the Nazi regime. From what I've been told (and maybe history books will back me up, or maybe not) by the end of the war, most Germans realized that the whole thing was a sham and didn't want anything more to do with it. The idea of killing Jews outright was well beyond what most were willing to accept.

So, yeah, in the 1930s they loved him, and by the mid-1940s they hated him. (sh)It happens.



That's a matter of historical record --

1) Hitler gave millions of unemployed Germans jobs, both in the military, and in building the Autobahns.
2) Hitler fomented racial hatred towards Jews and other foreigners, who were already disliked amongst Germans, and propoganda was used to convince the average idiot German that it was the Jews that caused them to lose the first world war.

and that's pretty much it.

At two separate events in recent days, Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher has proposed to “put a damn fence on the border going to Mexico and start shooting.”

Funny the parallels you can draw between present day US and 1930s Germany ... it's also funny that the party calling Obama a "Nazi" falls more in line with the xenophobic mantra Mein Kampf espoused..

[warren_s]

Funny the parallels you can draw between present day US and 1930s Germany ... it's also funny that the party calling Obama a "Nazi" falls more in line with the xenophobic mantra Mein Kampf espoused..

Yup.

Will also be very interesting to see how certain southern states and their racist citizens handle the great American tradition of naming roads, landmarks, aircraft carriers, etc. after past Presidents.

[TM87]

Ferdinand Porsche would go well with Lee and Davis avenues in ATL.:

[.LSinLV.]

Now Henry Ford may not have been a card carrying Nazi but he was an antisemitic activist and did things that may even be described as anti-American. Ferdinand Porsche was a member of the Nazi party but so was a huge chunk of the German population that would have been non-political had the Nazis not forcibly politicized every aspect of life in Germany, including business. Porsche was held after the war for alleged war crimes but never charged. If he really was a big bad Nazi, both the German and the American authorities knew where he was. There's no denying or excusing Porsche's involvement during the 3rd Reich but it is massively ironic to overlook the fact that the street is already named for a family/company with an anti-semitic history while being unable to look beyond the label "Nazi".

being Jewish...I hear all about this from older family. and you know what, Ford is/was the greater evil of the two.

porsche was an engineer in a nazi country, not necessarily a nazi, but his company did make reparations to jews for slave labor used in WWII....Ford on the otherhand was a true anti-semite....far worse than the man who designed and built the weapons. as far as I can tell, and have looked into it, porsche went along with it as his life depended on it, not for personal reasons. ford was the opposite.

[BetterByDesign]

Georgia inclusion, not real inclusion.

The last thing I am looking for when landing in Atlanta is some flagship Porsche dealership near the airport.

[r_fostoria]

Funny the parallels you can draw between present day US and 1930s Germany ... it's also funny that the party calling Obama a "Nazi" falls more in line with the xenophobic mantra Mein Kampf espoused..

1) That is totally off topic.
2) No party calls Obama a "Nazi," xenophobic bigots do.

[Rukh]

being Jewish...I hear all about this from older family. and you know what, Ford is/was the greater evil of the two.

porsche was an engineer in a nazi country, not necessarily a nazi, but his company did make reparations to jews for slave labor used in WWII....Ford on the otherhand was a true anti-semite....far worse than the man who designed and built the weapons. as far as I can tell, and have looked into it, porsche went along with it as his life depended on it, not for personal reasons. ford was the opposite.

Good point.

[WhistlerYOW]

Wait, how big is the ash tray in a Porsche?

[rynodyno312]

Wait, how big is the ash tray in a Porsche?

wow.

[DasBaldGuy]

Because Nazis, yo! Needs more zombie content.

[.LSinLV.]

The last thing I am looking for when landing in Atlanta is some flagship Porsche dealership near the airport.

FYI - Porsche Cars North America has their NA operations/Headquarters in Atlanta.

[justanotherusername]

I'm glad! Who the hell wants to have to punch a name that long into a damn GPS?!

Just name it Peachtree like every other ****ing street in Atlanta and be done with it!

[BetterByDesign]

FYI - Porsche Cars North America has their NA operations/Headquarters in Atlanta.

Right, but I dont see Coca Cola or CNN setting up at the airport. If anything, those two companies should vs. Porsche when I think of Atlanta.

[.LSinLV.]

Right, but I dont see Coca Cola or CNN setting up at the airport. If anything, those two companies should vs. Porsche when I think of Atlanta.

back when PCNA was based in Reno, NV. I went up there for training, and they would PDI the cars coming off the cargo planes right on the back taxiways....to make sure.

[stascom]

Do you guys think that this version of the Pzkfw VI had more "soul" than its Henschel counterpart?

Lower it

[dubjager]

Funny the parallels you can draw between present day US and 1930s Germany

Exactly what I was thinking as I was reading this...

[ErikGTI]

Do you guys think that this version of the Pzkfw VI had more "soul" than its Henschel counterpart?

If by soul you mean that the "chin" on the turret deflected shells in the drivers compartment roof, then yes it had more soul than the Henschel.

[patrickvr6]

Right, but I dont see Coca Cola or CNN setting up at the airport. If anything, those two companies should vs. Porsche when I think of Atlanta.

It isn't at the airport, just near it, close enough that incoming flights will be able to see it on approach. CNN and Coke are in the city but they also don't have tracks at their headquarters.

[mikes96GTI]

If you were a large business owner, property owner, famous or wealthy, you were either a member of the Nazi Party, or you were an enemy of the Nazi Party. Just like the Hitler youths. They had no choice in the matter.

[Saintor]

Well that's legitimate reason.

[MrRline]

How long before people let things die. Slavery, Nazi's. War's over most of the people from that era are dead or fast approaching it. Time for people to shove it and move on. I hate seeing this crap...

Also for reference to someone's earlier post about removing the confederate flag. it still flys at the border of Georgia at the north and the south before entering Florida.

[ina04gli1.8t]

Imagine how much better this country would be today had Germany won the war.

[Iroczgirl]

I agree history is history and personally see no issue. That being said...this is America...and political correctness is rampant.

Yup. I guess we will just name it Some Street.

[TM87]

How long before people let things die. Slavery, Nazi's. War's over most of the people from that era are dead or fast approaching it. Time for people to shove it and move on. I hate seeing this crap...

Also for reference to someone's earlier post about removing the confederate flag. it still flys at the border of Georgia at the north and the south before entering Florida.

What do they say about history and repeating it???

We should never forget slavery, Nazis, KKK, Bush ....

[Fritz27]

How long before people let things die. Slavery, Nazi's. War's over most of the people from that era are dead or fast approaching it. Time for people to shove it and move on. I hate seeing this crap...

Also for reference to someone's earlier post about removing the confederate flag. it still flys at the border of Georgia at the north and the south before entering Florida.

Because the Nazis were literally evil incarnate. That's why we shouldn't just let it go. Just because Germans are nice people now and they make cool cars doesn't mean we should pretend their ****ed up past doesn't exist.

[taifighter]

"A racetrack for enthusiasts to test their Cayennes"

Hmmmm...

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[J-Tim]

Because the Nazis were literally evil incarnate. That's why we shouldn't just let it go. Just because Germans are nice people now and they make cool cars doesn't mean we should pretend their ****ed up past doesn't exist.

On the other hand, every developed nation have had ties with Germany while National Socialist party was in power. Surely, there is at least one street somewhere named after someone who worked for Ford or GM.

[Juiced6]

What do they say about history and repeating it???

We should never forget slavery, Nazis, KKK, Bush ....

sadly most have already forgotten

[J-Tim]

sadly most have already forgotten

Bush's ideas and plans are still being implemented all over the World, so it's not all that bad.

[Juiced6]

Bush's ideas and plans are still being implemented all over the World, so it's not all that bad.

Bush had an idea?

[kingrukus]

Why are they naming a street after Porsche? Aren't there many past Americans worthy of a street name instead of Porsche?

[J-Tim]

Bush had an idea?

I was referring to Bush Snr.

[Lithium Lotus]

General Motors owned Opel during WWII which made vehicles for the Germans.

General Motors produced vast quantities of armaments, vehicles, and aircraft for the Allied war effort during World War II. Its multinational interests were split up by the combating powers during the war such that the American, Canadian and British parts of the corporation served the Allied war effort and Adam Opel AG served the Axis war effort. By the spring of 1939, the German Government had assumed day-to-day control of American owned factories in Germany, but decided against nationalizing them completely (seizing the assets and capital). Soon after the war broke out, the nationalization came.[11]

GM's William S. Knudsen served as head of U.S. wartime production for President Franklin Roosevelt, who called Detroit the Arsenal of Democracy. The General Motors UK division, Vauxhall Motors, manufactured the Churchill tank series for the Allies. The Vauxhall Churchill tanks were instrumental in the UK campaigns in North Africa. Bedford Vehicles and GM of Canada, CMP manufactured logistics vehicles for the UK military, all important in the UK's land campaigns. In addition, GM was the top manufacturer of U.S. Army 1½ ton 4x4 vehicles.[12]

By mainstream accounts, General Motors' German subsidiary (Adam Opel AG) was outside the control of the American parent corporation during World War II. Some conspiracy theorists posit that this was a hoax, with the American GM as a secret war profiteer on both sides, but Alfred Sloan's memoir, for example,[13] presents a description of lost control that is much more Occam-compliant than the fringe alternatives. However, even without any such conspiracy, GM found criticism for its tax avoidance around the Opel topic. During the war, GM declared it had abandoned its German subsidiary, and took a complete tax write-off worth "approximately $22.7 million", yet after the war, GM collected some $33 million in "war reparations" because the Allies had bombed its German facilities.

In August 1938, a senior executive for General Motors, James D. Mooney, received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle for his distinguished service to the Reich. "Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer told a congressional investigator that Germany could not have attempted its September 1939 Blitzkrieg of Poland without the performance-boosting additive technology provided by Alfred P. Sloan and General Motors".[57][58][59][60] During war Opel's Brandenburg facilities produced bombers JU-88, trucks, land mines and torpedo detonators for Nazi Germany.[61]

Charles Levinson, formerly deputy director of the European office of the CIO, clearly stated in his book, "Vodka-Cola":[62]

"Alfred P. Sloan, James D. Mooney, John T. Smith and Graeme K. Howard remained on the Opel board . . . in flagrant violation of existing legislation, information, contacts, transfers and trade continued [throughout the war] to flow between the firm's Detroit headquarters and its subsidiaries both in Allied countries and in territories controlled by the Axis powers. The financial records of Opel Rüsselsheim revealed that between 1942 and 1945 production and sales strategy were planned in close coordination with General Motors factories throughout the world.... In 1943, while its American manufacturers were equipping the United States Air Force, the German group were developing, manufacturing and assembling motors for the Messerschmitt 262, the first jet fighter in the world. This innovation gave the Nazis a basic technological advantage. With speeds up to 540 miles per hour, this aircraft could fly 100 miles per hour faster than its American rival, the piston-powered Mustang P51."

David Farber, author of Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (2002), stated that:[63]

"GM destroyed Sloan's files to protect itself from lawsuits regarding antitrust issues, the neglect of automobile safety and its investments in Nazi Germany."

Sloan's memoir presents a different picture of Opel's wartime existence.[64] According to Sloan, Opel was nationalized (along with most other industrial activity owned or co-owned by foreign interests) by the German state soon after the outbreak of war.[11] Sloan presents Opel at the end of the war as a black box to GM's American management—an organization that the Americans had had no contact with for 5 years. According to Sloan, GM in Detroit debated whether to even try to run Opel in the postwar era, or to leave to the interim West German government the question of who would pick up the pieces.[64]

Given the extreme difficulty of civilian communications between Germany and Allied nations during the war, Sloan's lost-contact version of the wartime era seems credible—more so than the CIO's version. However, GM's actions during the era before the war, between 1936 and 1939 when Germany was rearming in open-secret violation of the Versailles treaty, are much more difficult to defend. The idea that corporate interests weren't prioritized above national or ethical ones during that era seems basically defenseless. Not surprisingly, Sloan's memoir doesn't mention this topic at all, either because Sloan himself avoided it or because GM's lawyers succeeded in getting it redacted.

Defending the German investment strategy as "highly profitable", Alfred P. Sloan told shareholders in 1939 GM's continued industrial production for the Nazi government was merely sound business practice. In a letter to a concerned shareholder, Sloan said that the manner in which the Nazi government ran Germany "should not be considered the business of the management of General Motors...We must conduct ourselves as a German organization. . . We have no right to shut down the plant."[65]

After 20 years of researching General Motors, Bradford Snell stated, "General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland ... Switzerland was just a repository of looted funds. Opel was an integral part of the German war effort. The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM."

[MrRline]

What do they say about history and repeating it???

We should never forget slavery, Nazis, KKK, Bush ....

If history is doomed to repeat itself then all this does it keep the previous history fresh in your mind for the same thing to happen again. There's nothing to learn from it...

Because the Nazis were literally evil incarnate. That's why we shouldn't just let it go. Just because Germans are nice people now and they make cool cars doesn't mean we should pretend their ****ed up past doesn't exist.

Literally evil incarnate eh? Differing opinions on this issue i'm sure. Looking past our opinions on the subject for a moment I guess we could take a quick look at Muslims. Towers go down, Americans are dead, and Muslim group says we did it. By your logic we should hate every Muslim that we meet because of the actions of an individual or group of people purely based on geographic preferences??

Also while were on the subject go ahead and throw out your tv, your stereo, your smart phone and just about every other electronic device you owned because while were at it the Chinese pushed us back in North Korea, Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and lets give up Pizza because the Italians were in line too! People that dwell on the past are hippocrits this is proof of it.

[J-Tim]

Literally evil incarnate eh? Differing opinions on this issue i'm sure. Looking past our opinions on the subject for a moment I guess we could take a quick look at Muslims. Towers go down, Americans are dead, and Muslim group says we did it. By your logic we should hate every Muslim that we meet because of the actions of an individual or group of people purely based on geographic preferences??

Also while were on the subject go ahead and throw out your tv, your stereo, your smart phone and just about every other electronic device you owned because while were at it the Chinese pushed us back in North Korea, Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and lets give up Pizza because the Italians were in line too! People that dwell on the past are hippocrits this is proof of it.

Spot on.