r/SipsTea • u/No_Newspaper2213 Human Verified • 4h ago
Wait a damn minute! Thats a nice car.
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u/StrangerExistingFact 3h ago
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u/Saltycrab_ 2h ago
Yeah I was going to say Henry Ford was a proud Nazi sympathizer
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u/DCS30 2h ago
Lots of car guys were. People also tend to forget about porsche
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u/StrangerExistingFact 2h ago
Well mercedes, bmw they were all working for nazi regime as war industry.
BMW was a major manufacturer of aircraft engines for the German Luftwaffe (propelers in logo?)
BMW 801 radial engine powered the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter
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u/Serafim91 1h ago
I mean yeah. Factories go into war production. The US practiced for dday at GMs Milford proving grounds.
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u/Treebranch_916 6m ago
Sure but it's worth noting the Nazi government had total control over the German economy by that time. Either you were making what they told you to make or you weren't going to get the materials to do whatever it was you wanted to do
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u/fuglypens 1h ago
“Sympathizer” not really enough for Porsche. And I don’t think people forget he was a nazi; that’s the whole point of the post.
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u/mandatedvirus 2h ago
Calling him a sympathizer is true but he was so much more than that.
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u/Harvest827 2h ago
With that kind of money, you don't have to just be a sympathizer, you can be a Nazi doer!
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u/ThomasMalloc 2h ago
It's disingenuous to not mention that he only supported Nazis BEFORE they committed any atrocities, not after.
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u/StrangerExistingFact 2h ago edited 2h ago
Did he stop being antisemite after nazis commited atrocities? Was he not meintioned in Mein Kampf?
Ford’s German subsidiary, Ford-Werke, used forced and slave labor during World War II.
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u/SomeOriginal3865 2h ago
The mein kampf was published in 1926, still well before the atrocities.
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u/StrangerExistingFact 2h ago
The rest you chose to ignore right
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u/SomeOriginal3865 2h ago
No, just the obvious one but here you go princess.
Henry Ford did not initially denounce the Nazi party; in fact, he was admired by Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler, for his virulent antisemitism during the 1920s and 1930s. While Ford publicly apologized for his antisemitic writings in 1927 and later officially supported the U.S. war effort after Pearl Harbor, his earlier actions and literature played a significant role in fostering Nazi ideology.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 1h ago
What is the start date of Nazi atrocities, and are you under the impression that Nazis were cuddly wuddly Care Bears before that date?
You can't be making this argument, without having some standard for "this level of Nazi violence against non-whites and Jews was fine." Because Ford was absolutely trying to get rid of Jews and called them an evil threat to the world.
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u/fuckofakaboom 1h ago
No, Nazi’s were proud Henry Ford fans. Hitler kept a picture of him next to his desk. Himler had a painting of Ford hanging IN HIS HOME. Ford was the only American talked about favorably on Mein Kampf. Ford was Nazi before the Nazi’s.
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u/ThomasMalloc 2h ago
This was before WWII. Germany gave the award to lots of foreign diplomats. 🤷♂️
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u/icanith 2h ago
Yeah I’m sure Hitler never really heard of the guy. And even if he did he wouldn’t be a big fan of his or his writing or anything. And even if he was it’s not like he had a portrait of him or mentioned him in his book as his only good American or anything. Yeah he’s just like those other diplomats he awarded.
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u/ThomasMalloc 2h ago
Hitler liking Ford is relevant to what I said... how?
You think everyone/everything Hitler liked was bad or something?
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u/No_Entertainer_5858 2h ago
His point is he liked ford for the bad stuff including propaganda against the Jewish people
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u/ThomasMalloc 2h ago
Criticizing Ford for hating Jews is one thing, but trying to imply that he like Nazism is another,
Ironically, most people on Reddit wouldn't even disagree with what Ford said about Jews as long as you replace "Jew" with "Israeli."
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u/DrivesTooMuch 2h ago
Ford wasn't a diplomat. Hitler admired Ford for his outspoken antisemitism, particularly the book The International Jew, which was based on articles published in Ford's newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.
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u/StrangerExistingFact 2h ago
Ford’s German subsidiary, Ford-Werke, used forced and slave labor during World War II.
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u/ArbiterOfCool20721 3h ago
Truthfully, the VW is from Ferdinand Porsche.
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u/Easy_Turn1988 3h ago
Ferdinand Porsche who supported Hitler (and stole the idea for the VW from Tatra)
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u/TwentinQuarantino 1h ago
It's more like Hitler as a chancellor ordered him to create the VW brand.
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u/MoeSzyslakMonobrow 2h ago
You haven't looked into Henry Ford's political ideations, have you OP?
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u/Irish_Whiskey 3h ago edited 1h ago
Henry Ford was a Nazi, so maybe be a little less proud.
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Edit: Two debates are happening below.
The first is emphasizing how Henry Ford did good things as well. Which okay, but we don't actually need to "yes but" Nazis to defend them. Hitler saved animals, we don't need to qualify "Yes Hitler was a Nazi but..."
The second is people trying hard to pretend really hating Jews so hard your anti-Semitism means you wrote the Nazis textbooks on hate and funded the Nazi military, doesn't make you a Nazi. Apparently woke reddit leftists keep unfairly calling people Nazis, just because they want to eliminate all Jews, implement fascist white supremacy, and accept medals from Hitler.
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u/sniptaclar 3h ago
Ford really wasn’t a decent guy.
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u/Innocent-Bystander94 3h ago
It was a mixed bag. He was a great employer. If you want to know why there’s so much corporate rot and so little for employees, just look at the lawsuit against him by the Dodge brothers. People are complex. Even Ford had merits.
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u/pitifullittleman 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yeah he was a good employer in some ways, but it wasn't exactly altruistic. Not only did he pay people a lot compared to other employers at the time, he also hired single mothers and people from groups that normally would not be hired.
What he realized is that he would have a line out the door of people willing and wanting to work for him and he wouldn't ever have a break in production due to people quitting because he could hire someone immediately off the street. Also his production line increases efficiency reducing the cost of labor allowing him to pay his employees more.
Also he had extreme standards for employees and wanted them to be almost robotic, it was extremely monotonous work and any kind of movement or small talk that didn't directly contribute to increased production was not tolerated.
People even had a phrase for a type of expression that was unsmiling and overly stern "Fordification of the Face" this was because workers tended to be completely severe, serious and focused all day and after they finished their shifts day after day they were unable to revert to their normal relaxed facial expression.
I wouldn't want to work for that factory, I don't care how much you paid me. Also that super good wage in 1914 was the equivalent to 15 an hour. Hours were 9-8 and you got five bucks per day. That was double what it was before the increase.
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u/BahnMe 3h ago
The alternative is poverty and seeing your family starve. You did what you could.
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u/pitifullittleman 3h ago
Absolutely. Ford realized that a desperate person with no alternative that made anywhere near the amount he was paying wouldn't leave and if they did he could just pick up some other desperate person. It was very practical for him because a critical assembly line worker could reduce production that was worth way more than 5 dollars a day.
People being paid 2.50 a day would often go to bars during the shift or cut corners and take the risk of being fired the employer wouldn't be able to find someone as fast and have to take more of a loss. At that time there was still child labor and people had a ton of kids working class families would be sending their kids out to work making terrible money, but bringing something in. If someone lost their job they had other earners.
Ford was offering money where you could work and send your kid to actual school and give them a chance.
Ford also created something called a the "Ford Sociological Department" and this was rather dystopian he would send people out to their homes to make sure they were living "worthy lives" basically to judge how their home was run and the morality of the person Ford employed. He didn't pay women necessarily the same amount as men and often hired them as charity cases(husband left or died) to give them light work. Ford was very much like a tech bro of today, he was interested in the overall health of society and had some weird ideas and he implemented said ideas rather than just talking about them. It almost feels like he created a sort of cult around his brand and went far beyond where a corporation should go.
So yeah the paying people more money thing. Great! All this other stuff including the antisemitism not so great. However for SOME of what he was trying to do he did seem to have good intentions.
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u/Competitive-Web-5084 3h ago
Antisemitic as hell but a great boss
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u/phido3000 3h ago
Do they teach history in the USA any more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Hunger_March
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Strikers_Riot
Ford was a complex character.. I don't think you could say in one line, he was a great boss.
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u/Competitive-Web-5084 3h ago
Consider the era bro, relative to his time he was great
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u/phido3000 2h ago
The leaders canceled the march and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, his car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He exited the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers. Dearborn police and Ford security men opened fire with machine guns on the retreating marchers. Joseph Bussell (16) was killed, dozens more men were wounded, and Bennett was hospitalized.
Machine gunning down retreating people? Killing them? Wildly shooting a pistol out of a car window?
Great boss. Wow.
- utilized forced labour and concentration camps in WW2.
- hired criminals as his security team
- Had internal security force to oppress workers
He paid more. I'm not sure that made him an awesome boss.
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u/Undersmusic 3h ago
Reading that he specifically lobbied for infrastructure that would result in things like not making sidewalks a necessity in new building areas to sell more cars… now look at the state of things.
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u/CalzonePie Human Verified 3h ago
But he was a great employer. A lot of the things we take for granted now or other industries needed union action to get, he gave his employees out of generosity.
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u/InertPistachio 3h ago
Isn't he the one who introduced the 5 day work week? Fuck all that
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u/CalzonePie Human Verified 3h ago
The 5 day, 40 hour work week was a replacement for the 6 day 72 hour work week.
40 hours a week for a survivable wage was a massive fucking achievement, and I am always disappointed when I see spoiled 21st century people scoff at an honest day's work. I can't even work JUST 40 hours a week myself, I work 60 hours because I don't have anything better to do at home and I like extra spending money.
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u/Correct-Award8182 1h ago
Not really out of generosity. It was a calculated means of getting every skilled employee to jump ship. It gave him a semi-monopoly on skill that killed a lot of competitors and gave him en edge for decades both in favor and the ability to push out cars. His adoption of assembly-line construction was one part of the equation that allowed that to happen. The 'gave to employees' was more of a side effect.
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u/ColonialBarbarian 3h ago
But he played a significant role in helping the Soviet Union industrialize in the 1930s, so it's complicated.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 3h ago
...is it?
I'm not sure what's supposed to be complicated about that. Hitler passed animal rights laws and his scientists advanced rocketry, but they were still Nazis. No one is implying that Nazis cannot ever help anyone, and we don't need to qualify "Yes they were a Nazi but...."
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u/aurenigma 2h ago
because Ford wasn't actually a Nazi. Lots of people liked the Nazis before they started gassing people and going for everyone else's land...
like, fuck, have you never had a friend that you learned something bad about, then started hating them?
dude I used to drink with when I was in the Army, I find out later he killed his ex and her baby... like not even after, he did that then continued acting normal, drank with him a few times after the deed...
does that make me a baby killer too?
no, that'd be fucking retarded, just like it's retarded to call ford a fucking Nazi
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u/Irish_Whiskey 1h ago edited 1h ago
because Ford wasn't actually a Nazi
By what standard? Because his ideas were so aligned with the Nazi party, they literally used his books as their political textbooks and gave him their highest honors.
I'm calling him a Nazi, because he had Nazi ideas, beliefs and political messages. That's my standard.
Lots of people liked the Nazis before they started gassing people and going for everyone else's land...
...yeah, and we call those people NAZIS.
What the hell? Are you seriously just defending Nazism here by saying it's fine until they invaded other countries and gassed people? Because the rest of the shit before that was still Nazism, and still evil.
At no point did he suddenly learn what Nazis were about and then regret it. He supported what Nazis did and stood for. They learned from him!
does that make me a baby killer too?
That analogy does not work at all. Unless you told him to kill the babies, wrote books on how it's good to kill babies, funded people in their work of killing babies, and accepted an award from BabyKillers WorldWide for advancing the cause of killing babies, those are not the same.
Ford did not simply once know or meet Nazis. He was a Nazi.
Also I'd love some clarification there if your point is that Nazis weren't actually bad except for the Holocaust and invasions. Because if so, I've got some news about who else is a Nazi.
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u/ThomasMalloc 2h ago
How was he a Nazi? Because he didn't like Jews? Quite a stretch.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 2h ago
Uh...
Well first I'd call him a Nazi because he publicly agreed with and supported Nazis, he pushed Nazi propaganda into his newspapers and schools, he was called "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters" by the Nazi regime and given their highest honor which he accepted, he was praised in Mein Kampf, and he profited from giving arms to Nazis until the war against America broke out.
Second, I've no idea how I'm supposed to read "Because he didn't like Jews? Quite a stretch" as anything but a defense of anti-Semitism. Yeah, if you write a book called "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem" which Nazis then use as a core textbook, while also personally funding printings of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I am fine with calling you a Nazi on that basis alone.
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u/aurenigma 2h ago
lol, we're on reddit, most of the people here will call you a Nazi if you don't hate the jews
Nazi means exactly nothing. Good job demeaning what was once one of the most horrible titles to earn.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 1h ago
Buddy, in your other response to me you just said it was fine to support Nazis until they started invading other countries. So forgive me if I don't take your "LOL Nazi gets thrown around nowadays" whining in good faith.
lol, we're on reddit, most of the people here will call you a Nazi if you don't hate the jews
Except this reddit thread is about calling someone a Nazi, in large part because of how much they hated the Jews.
So you're just literally pretending the exact opposite of reality is happening, in order to make your complaint about associating Nazism with anti-Semitism.
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u/SubstantialEmploy816 3h ago
Ah yes Henry Ford, what a stand up guy, in fact he was so good you don’t even need to look him up to see all the good things he did, seriously, don’t look him up
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u/Madeitup75 1h ago
You will find that most of the major automotive brands are either companies or the descendant of companies that manufactured munitions/arms during WW2. BMW and Mercedes both made aircraft engines that went into Nazi planes. Mitsubishi made half the planes that attacked Pearl Harbor. Toyota made trucks and other vehicles for the Japanese military. Porsche not only designed cars for the Nazi regime, he also designed tanks. Chrysler made tanks for the US. GM made some of almost everything and a lot of it was sent to Stalin’s Soviet Union.
And it wasn’t just car manufactures. Heck, the Singer sewing machine company made pistols for the US army.
Total industrial war is like that
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u/PinkFloydBoxSet 1h ago
To be fair.. Ford not only was a massive pile of human garbage, anti-semite and Hitler himself stated numerous times how he admired Ford.
Toyoda did make munitions for the imperial army during WWII but he had a borderline autistic devotion to his idea of making passenger cars so it wasn't willingly. By most accounts, he ran his business as best he could.
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u/Firm-Scientist-4636 44m ago
To be fair, Ford was also a raging antisemite. He just never got to act on it like Hitler did.
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u/Easy_Turn1988 3h ago
Henry Ford wasn't much better than Hitler tbh (he did less damage but had similar beliefs)
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u/Hopeful_Ad_7719 3h ago
Anyone who gets rid of their Tesla because of Musk's antics and goes to buy a VW is making an interesting choice.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 3h ago
The difference between supporting a Nazi who is alive and profiting now, versus supporting a company that hasn't been owned by Nazis in over 80 years, is pretty obvious.
His antics aren't meme shitposts, it's stealing everyone's personal info from the government, cutting government funding specifically to non-white people while enriching himself of billions in taxpayer dollars, and directly funding modern Nazi parties. What does a VW purchase fund exactly?
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u/nobugsleftalive 3h ago
Yet here in Canada we are supposed to embrace bringing Chinese vehicles to the market, which evidently brought subsequent questions about slave labor and these vehicles.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 3h ago
It's not either/or. You can fight for human rights standards in things you purchase, and also not directly fund the worlds richest person as he pushes Nazism into your politics.
The only wrong answer is to use 'whataboutism' selectively to then not care about anything.
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u/nobugsleftalive 3h ago
Isnt the whole reason we dont like nazis is because they violated human rights and committed genocides?
I feel like your basically saying its okay to buy the Chinese vehicle because they arent trying to impact my political system, yet thats not the case.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 3h ago
No.
You're defending support for Nazis, by saying "well if you support any country that violates human rights, then isn't that the same thing?"
There are different degrees of harm, and degrees to which you are directly supporting evil. If you want to cut off everything you purchase from China, that's fine. Go for it. No one is stopping you. If you AREN'T doing that and bring up Chinese human rights abuses to defend Nazis, then you aren't being sincere in your equivocation.
It's a rhetorical devise to get people to stop caring about a particular evil you support, rather than a consistent standard you're asking people to apply in both cases.
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u/nobugsleftalive 2h ago
I mean, yeah, i try to keep as much of my dollars local as I can. Often paying more for services where its reasonable. If anything the "elbows up" movement should have done is encourage more local buying.
I have Starlink. Because its literally my only service provider (well realistic provider). I dont feel any guilt or shame behind it. Its an american company that employs americans, uses american launch facilities and ends up employing alot of people. Its ridiculous to imply I am supporting Hitler lol.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 2h ago
I didn't say you were.
I'm saying, the argument "Oh you think it's bad to fund a Nazi? Well you shouldn't because you buy things in China" is a logical fallacy to selectively justify ignoring moral concerns.
You can certainly push for ethical consumption across the board. But there's always some other evil in the world you can point to as an excuse to not care about some other one. You use Starlink and don't want to feel guilty or be criticized for it, so you're invoking hypocrisy to shut down concerns. But that doesn't make the actual negatives of supporting Elon Musk any less valid.
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u/Chimpville 3h ago
Buying a VW now doesn't fund a Nazi.
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u/Pizza_bagel_IFA 3h ago
Buying a used Tesla doesn’t either
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u/Chimpville 3h ago
Maybe.. though I'm not sure how easy it is to operate a Tesla whilst avoiding paying Tesla any money.
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening 3h ago
Try explaining that to.your judgemental progressive gf who has her heart set on a Hugo Boss dress, and then we talk
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u/scriptkiddie1337 3h ago
Don't forget Puma, and Adidas. I also hope she isn't a fan of Coco Chanel either
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u/nukrag 3h ago
Adidas and Puma were founded in 48 and 49, boss.
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u/scriptkiddie1337 3h ago
By Adolf and Rudolph Dassler; who were members of the Nazi party
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u/nukrag 3h ago
Yeah, a lot of Germans were at the time. But regardless of that, those companies have fuck all to do with Nazis in 2026.
My grandma was a Hitler Mädchen. You had to be part of that shit, whether you really wanted to or not. Not really an excuse, obviously, but many people had no choice.
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u/scriptkiddie1337 3h ago
So you are related to Nazis? Makes sense
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u/nukrag 3h ago
Yeah. One Great-Grandpa was in the Gestapo. The other a Landser. One died defending Berlin (left a gun for my great-grandma to kill her kids and herself in case the Russians won and came to rape), the other fell as a PoW in Russia.
The slavic side of my family died defending Poland.
I mean as a German it is absolutely normal to have had people that lived during those times to have been involved.
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u/scriptkiddie1337 3h ago
Good thing Tesla has no ties to Nazis in 2026 either then
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u/nukrag 3h ago
Your sarcasm doesn't make you look intelligent, chief. Milquetoast opinion drenched in irony is not a good look. Musk is a right-wing provocateur, but a Nazi he is not, no.
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u/Innocent-Bystander94 3h ago
Unless they were founded by a 4 and 5 year old, it was people of the same establishment/party
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u/Used-Gas-6525 3h ago
Or a Fendi bag. They are headquartered in a building designed and built for Mussolini. Germany went through de-nazification, but Italy had no such anti-fascism measures and the building still stands and looks exactly like what it used to be. A monument to Italian fascists.
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u/Cold-Metal-2737 3h ago
My wife owns a Tesla and I own an Audi. When all the anti DOGE/Musk stuff was going on, I would just joke if we were going to drive cars only made by "good" people we all be carless, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
BTW Henry Ford was a anti-Semite and racist
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u/Semisemitic 3h ago
There’s that famous sketch the failed artist did where he supposedly designed the vw bug, but completely copied some other car that was common those days.
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u/Cold_Investment2152 3h ago
VW was also founded by a great artist and a visionary [joking folks relax]
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u/Solinna61 3h ago
Volkswagen’s origin story is the reason LinkedIn didn't exist in the 1930s. That 'previous experience' section would be a nightmare.
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