Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 150 - This Genocide is Brought to You by Fanta

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

The non exhaustive story of how the corporate world supported the Nazis as they committed the worst crimes in human history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://timeline.com/fanta-coca-cola-nazi-845ee7e513af https://www.businessinsider.com/how-coca-cola-invented-fanta-in-nazi-germany-2019-11 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-nazi-germany Edwin Black. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation https://historycollection.com/10-famous-companies-collaborated-nazi-germany/6/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me again, this is what, two times in a row it's a new record Nick it's like when we were stationed at Fort Hood and every time you'd leave it's been this many days and somebody's been killed in a traffic accident it's been this many days

since Nick has been stolen by the army wasn't it the whole hundred days and we get a Donza? And we never got it. We absolutely never got it. It was... And I feel bad, but we used to get pissed off. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, people are dying.

It's terrible. But also, like, it's almost universally someone getting trashed and then flooring their fucking Mustang with 25% interest into a light pole somewhere in Killeen. It happened a lot in kentucky actually we had horrible uh amounts of car accidents in kentucky i was at uh knox not campbell and knox is in a dry uh county right so like you can't buy alcohol you can buy alcohol on post so like you could just get drunk and stay on post but who the

fuck wants to do that i mean i was underage when i was there so i had no choice but to like sneak booze from other people but other people would have to drive like straight out to fucking louisville which is 45 minutes to an hour away to like get drunk and then they try to drive back um and die in horrible car accidents which which is why dry counties, areas of dry counties have incredibly high drunk driving accident rates because people just like... It doesn't stop people from drinking.

People are going to be people. They just go further to drink. I mean, we used to have that in Fort Hood because Austin's right there and there's nothing to do unless you want to stay in clean, which, why? You can go out to starlight station or

star fight or star wife whatever it is they call it now it's had a few different names every time somebody gets shot in the parking lot they have to change the name in order to dodge the blacklist um speaking of

none of those things uh starlight station i don't know neither one of us are drug dealers so probably not um i do i do remember at one point when someone like broke in and like set one of the rooms on

fire and it was almost certainly someone trying to get insurance money that like owned it which is just incredible um because there was a he's caught on his own security camera it's like it's it's these it's the shit that you'd see in like a fucking b-rate mafia film but just some idiot in killeen texas not my cousin but my buddy got his shoes stolen in the parking lot he was he was wearing it wearing it. It's very unbranded. I had... Was it Starlight? There's another bar right next to it, but someone tried

to run me over in the parking lot once. Isn't there a Babe's next to it? There was a strip club, which I went to once because I hate strip clubs. I got peer pressure. I'm awful at peer pressure. There was another bar... I'm terrible at it. Why do you think I did so much drugs?

There's the strip club and there's another bar directly next to it. That was the one I went to. Someone tried to run me over in the parking lot. I would say it was like an accident. They gunned it towards me and then swerved towards me as I jumped out of the way.

Were they also pointing at you? I don't think so I was pretty fucking drunk too I probably deserved it to be completely honest maybe we're not bad with peer pressure maybe they go you know what you don't have to go and you're like you know what you got me like Joe you don't have to do this

fuck you I'm doing it speaking of stuff that has nothing to do this. Fuck you. I'm doing it. Speaking of stuff that has nothing to do with anything we just talked about. How the fuck did we do this? Nazis. They exist. Now, Nick, you might remember from a very

long time ago. Actually, you fucking wouldn't remember because you weren't here again. I had a good friend of mine and former medic and was in hooligans with me come on and talk about

all of the weird people who were Nazis that ended up like the Korean guy who fought in three armies and and Larry Thorne, the SS Finnish volunteer who would become

a Green Beret and die in Vietnam. A straight-up Nazi that is still celebrated as a hero by the Special Forces community. A community that has certainly no problems with extremism within the ranks um but yeah uh

now when that episode came out a lot of people asked if we're ever going to talk about the companies who took part in uh nazi government or the holocaust right um now there's there's a lot of them. There's a reason why I almost didn't do this, because it could be a series or a fucking podcast of its own. So many companies that we know today were heavily involved in the Holocaust, or if not the Holocaust, the Nazi war machine. And they largely get a pass almost actually i say largely entirely they entirely get a pass uh it's chrysler well back when my room was named it's chrysler it's a it's a what a chevy right so i finally get a new vehicle is that what you you're saying? Who owns... Is Dodge owned by Chrysler?

So it's... It's owned by Daimler Chrysler. So guess where the Daimler comes in? That was back... Not anymore. Not anymore. Yes. Just to be safe. And I don't even...

I don't even know because I don't talk about the Daimler manufacturing plants or anything, but you should. The truck is a death trap and you keep getting pulled over in it. People keep

running into you. So you had to leave the Pacific Northwest to stop getting pulled over for being brown? In your area, yes. Weird how that works. Yeah. Not that the Pacific Northwest was settled by people so racist they didn't even want slaves there.

Now, there's a lot of uh nazi companies we're not going to talk about uh but they get an honorable mention like simon's uh and a few others simon sticks out to me um because they built the um the ovens that were used in death camps to dispose to destroy human remains right oh fast forward a couple decades and they attempted to copyright the name Zyklon for gas ovens

Zyklon of course being the name of the poison that was used to murder millions of Jews which were then disposed of in Simon's ovens. So, yeah, that is, you know, it's, like I said, honorable mention. We're not going to talk about Simon's a whole lot simply because there's so many other companies.

And I can't get through them all, honestly. There might be a part two to this at some point. And we will not be talking about Henry Ford because we've already done that in a bonus episode in regards to him being an anti-Semite and a Nazi. So I'm not going to try to rehash that. If you want to hear more about Henry Ford,

go check out our bonus episode on the HBO series, The Plot Against America. Still haven't watched that yet. It's fine. It could be so much better much better I mean it's based on a book and they stayed within the confines of the book so it is what it is now

like I said we've already talked about a lot of these this is not an exhaustive list so you know just bear with me if I left something out like a giant conglomerate like, I don't know, Benz or Mercedes or any of these other fucking people, Volkswagen is another one, who are almost certainly part of this.

What's that? Your Prius? That's Toyota. Toyota was Japanese. I heard your Prius was in that list, too. They have other baggage. was in that list too? They have other baggage. Now,

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries actually has a lot of baggage behind it. I don't know about Toyota. Probably. Nothing's good. They're all giant international conglomerates. They're bathed in fucking human blood. So if I leave any large company out, it's not because I didn't know about it. Maybe I didn't. Honestly, it's just a cover

up for me. But I might get to it at a later time all right so we're gonna talk a lot about fanta but before we get to fanta we have to talk about coke who owns and invented fanta um that's coca-cola uh so small side note here uh this has nothing to do with anything else but i felt like it required to be pointed out coke was invented by a guy named Dr. John Pemberton, a Confederate Civil War veteran. Back when it actually had drugs in it. Just throwing that out there.

Since then, the company obviously exploded, got huge, and they moved into Germany about 10 years before Hitler's rise to power. They opened up their first bottling factory in 1929. The German operation

of Coke was a subsidiary of American Coke. That is, it's technically a different country, but under a different company in a different country. Under the control of a different company somewhere else. They were like Coke Germany, but they still were Coke. A different company in a different country. Under the control of a different company somewhere else. How'd he die?

So they were like Coke Germany, but they still were Coke. Now, the reason why I point out that things are a subsidiary is because people try to use that as cover. Like, well, we weren't in control of them. Like, but you were. It's kind of like the Da daimler chrysler situation um actually that's probably not accurate uh comparison but like how ford or chevy or whoever owns 18 other car brands you know um like i don't it would be like if one of the ford companies just had a slave

labor camp and then ford itself like, well, we don't technically control them. You fucking know. You know what they're doing. Now, it's important to point out that these two, that American and German Coke companies

were in very close communications with one another because that's generally how business like that work. The German branch of Coke was taken over by a guy named Max Keit because the previous guy died. And Keit was known for being a die... I don't fucking know. German reasons.

Choked on a sausage. Inhaled a bratwurst straight to his esophagus. Keit was known for not necessarily being anything other than a Coke guy. He was a company man, which is why he was picked. He didn't put the, this is Coke's side of the history. Anyway,

he was hired because he put the, um, uh, Coke's goals over his own and even Germany's. Um, like he was not a nationalist yet. I argue with this a bit. I would argue that Max Keit is a hell of a fucking nationalist,

but we'll get there. And as a German dude in Germany in 1930, all that's going to be tested and he's going to fail all of them with flying colors. Under Keit's rule, he exported coke into every facet of german society now that society soon became a nazi one um that meant kite ended up cozying up to the worst people in human history in order to make more and more money this includes sponsoring the berlin olympics in 1936 which are now obviously known as the nazi olympics because all the nazis and you know it was held in germany um now this is not just the fault of kite uh coke itself was heavily involved the ceo of coke uh robert woodruff attended the

games and even had banners made that had the Coke logo side by side with a swastika. I found some of these and they're fucking insane. There's another one where to commemorate the games, there was a

metal swastika, probably cheap tin or whatever, stamped out in swastika shapes that have Coca-Cola in cursive across them that would be given out. Ew. It's fucking grim, man. I don't like soda. I'm not a huge fan either.

I used to drink a fuckload of Dr. Pepper when I was younger. That was my pop of choice. I thought that was when you were back in Texas. Actually, by the time I moved to Texas, I no longer liked was my that was my pop of choice i thought that was when you were back in texas um i was actually by the time i moved to texas i no longer liked pop in general so like i moved to the home world of dr pepper and didn't give a shit we're not doing the pop soda argument not today not again we've done this for so we've been doing this for years um everybody i know I know the pop side of the argument is significantly

less popular. I get it. I don't care. So many people are going to make fun of the way I say that. Now, Mark Pendergrast points out in the book for God, Country, and Coca-Cola a hell of a name there. Quote,

some, like Henry Ford, were in fact Nazi sympathizers, while other like walter teagle of standard oil avoided taking sides but saw nothing wrong with doing business with the nazis in order to make money like his friend and hunting companion teagle woodruff practiced the same thing so the ceo of coke saw the the oil guy you know Oil, a company that is not famously problematic in American history, and was like, we should follow their example and make money off the Nazis. Good guys. Yeah.

Good guy, that Standard Oil, which means this is a very, very nice way of people being perfectly fine at doing business with the worst people on earth, as long as it made them rich. people being perfectly fine with doing business with the worst people on earth as long as it made them rich. A good example of this is when Hermann Goering announced that the Nazis would stop importing and exporting so much in an effort to become self-sustaining. Woodruff reached out to him personally for an exemption while telling Keit to ramp up local production in Germany to make up for the lack of importing, which he did. The only thing they could not make on site was Coke syrup, which had to be imported. Which

for a long time, there was like a handshake agreement between Coke and Goering that like, hey, well, we can still import, right? And Goering's like, yeah, you're good. Kite held a convention for Coke Germany's 1,500 salesmen and bottlers generally their entire employment body journalist ralph mcgill uh was there and describes quote a giant picture of

hitler covered the entire back wall a picture that inspired frequent stiff-armed salutes and shouts of heil hitler an audio clip i'm sure will not be taking out of context to anybody listening to this. This is at a Coke convention? This is at an employee convention for Coca-Cola Germany. Yeah. Okay. Kite speaking from beneath a huge Coca-Cola banner bearing three enormous swastikas called for a massive Sig Heil to the Fuhrer's honor. Like, yeah. No, it's honor. Like, yeah. No, it's good. It's fine.

Do you think the polar bear of Coke was a Nazi? He's white, right? Yeah. Oh, no. I like polar bears. I regret saying that. The polar bear is innocent. He's just following orders. Shit! God damn it, the polar bear is innocent He's just following orders Shit

God damn it the polar bear is a Nazi In April of 1939 Hitler turned 50 years old And Koch Germany turned 10 At that celebration Kite exhorted a crowd of another Round of Sighiles to quote Commemorate our deepest admiration and gratitude

To our Fuhrer who has led our nation into the a brilliant higher sphere of existence does this sound like a company guy or a Nazi sounds like something yeah that is

that isn't the only evidence that kite might be a little bit more of a Nazi than a company man. When a rumor spread that Harold Hirsch, who was the only Jewish man in the American company's board of directors, obviously not the German one at this point, was actually the CEO, which he was not, German sales plummeted because they're Nazis. German sales plummeted, you know, because they're Nazis.

So Kite personally demanded to Woodruff that Koch fire him to appease the Nazis and not hurt his bottom line, which thankfully Koch did not do. But remember, he demanded that a Jewish man in a different country be fired

to make the Nazis feel better. Then the war started. Yeah, he's certainly something. Then the war started and Koch didn't really seem to care. Kite also began to work directly

with the Nazi government as a full direct member and part of the Office of Enemy Property. Certainly not an anonymous government agency to work for. Hi, I work for the Ministry of Loot and Pillage. Brought to you by Coke. Brought to you by Coke. The polar bear can smell if you're Jewish.

Now, there's a reason for this. And that's because at the time the nazis were nationalizing a lot of large companies uh and repurposing their needs for the war effort and kite wasn't an idiot and feel and knew if he worked for the nazis he could probably save coke germany from that and he would be able to continue making money which is exactly what happened but this man worked for the office of enemy property in nazi germany meanwhile coke uh us kept exporting supplies to the german branch like that agreement about the syrup that we talked about so they could keep bottling coke coke was the number one soft drink in the country and was loved by both Hermann Goering and Adolf Hitler. This was before the U.S. was at war with Germany,

but of course that would eventually change when Japan fucked it all up for everybody in the soda game and bombed Pearl Harbor. Now, as America entered the war, companies had to stop doing business with the Nazis immediately, something we will find out nobody ever does. Though, to Koch's credit, they did stop exporting everything to Germany, meaning they could no longer make Coke. Now, I say to their credit, but it would become physically impossible at this point in order to do so.

Oh, so they still tried. Well, I mean, even they were smart enough to realize, like, you know, we can't send a boat or a plane or whatever to Nazi Germany full of Coke supplies. It'll get shot down or torpedoed or whatever. We can't do that anymore. Now, at this point, Coke had some surplus built up because, remember, they had a feeling something was eventually going to happen that would cut the supply line. So they were able to make it based on their surplus for a while, which at this point was bottled by slaves from nearby concentration camps. Now, Kite knew that he was eventually going to run out and he would have to make something else. Alas, his factory get taken and he lose all of his sweet government issued slaves

uh and this is becoming harder and harder because you know war rationing is a thing right so like he doesn't have full reign of supplies so he worked with a chemist to create a drink from rationing's leftovers according to atlas it was, quote, fruit shavings, apple fibers, and pulp, beet sugar, and whey. The liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained during cheese production. Now, I knew of whey

as that thing that we all drink in cheap protein supplements that make you shit your brains out. This would become Fanta. Oh, I was about to say, this doesn't sound like Coke. Yeah, Fanta is made out of apple refuse and whey. I didn't like the whole beet thing because

beets taste awful. I like beets. I don't know anything about beet sugar. I'm Eastern European. Leave me alone. Now, I think the beet sugar was just'm Eastern European. Leave me alone. Now, I think the beet sugar was just like, I don't know, a beet made sweetener because

sugar is being rationed at this point. They have to use the sweetener from beets. Do they beat it out of the beets? Boo. Now, there's a thing they became the most popular drink in Nazi Germany because they're the only game in town

because you know coke is gone and then there was also it was like one of the only ways like a normal like household could get a hold of a sweetener because sugar is being rationed so like housewives would buy it as a use of sweetening

like baked goods because it had beet sugar in it. So you just have like Fanta cake and shit. Now this move to Fanta saved the German branch of Coke but Kite definitely worked with and benefited from the Nazis and all the horrible shit that entails. Now

I do need to be clear. He was never an official member of the Nazi party. Not that any of that really matters all that much. In the book, How Soda Took Over the World, it is opined that Kite probably assumed in his own personal letters like he was writing to his family

and stuff, that Germany would eventually win the war and because of his position position he would be made head of coke international and run so he was soda cool yeah the labanstrom but for soda um obviously that didn't happen um so after throwing up hitler sleuths and running bottling plants with prison and slave labor probably meant that like he is the poison pill right like nobody's gonna tell nobody's to hire him afterwards. He's going to have a hard time

putting in job applications at the local schnitzel factory after the war is over. Of course he found a job. Who are we fucking kidding? You want to know what his job was? Can I guess? Shoot. Fucking beet farmer.

That would be much less awful because at least then he'd have to toil on the land or whatever. Coke hailed him as a company hero and he became the head of all European operations. He was never held accountable for anything. Company hero?

Yeah, that's right, baby! Now, thing. Company Hero? Yeah, that's right, baby! Ugh. Now, this part is only included because I hate it. Now, if you look up what Fanta invented by the Nazis,

you'll probably come to Snopes. Are you familiar with the website Snopes? No. It's a shit website these days. It used Snopes? No. It's a shit website these days. It used to be much better. It's kind of poisoned itself while attempting to fact check politics and while

clearly favoring certain people. But if you look this up on Snopes it'll say false. It was not invented by the Nazis. Now, the rationale for this false rating is that since Kite was not a member of the actual Nazi party, that means Fanta was not invented by Nazis. This is ignoring the fact that while not a member of the party, he did work for the government in a direct capacity.

And this is what they close out their argument with. Quote, this man was not a Nazi, nor did he invent the drink at the direction of the Third Reich. Rather, an effort to preserve Coca-Cola company assets and protect its people by way of keeping local plants operating, he

formulated a new soft drink when it became impossible to produce the company's flagship product. Nick, do you see what's wrong with that defense of Max Kite? Oh, man. I guess, honestly, I was kind of hoping that they'd throw in there, don't you want a Fanta? Now, the reason why this defense is pretty weak is that it frames,

well, one, it completely shears away the fact that his Fanta was bottled by slave labor from concentration camps. And two, he can't possibly be at fault despite being a Nazi government employee because he was simply trying to protect company assets. Yeah, he was not a Nazi, but he did work directly with the Nazi government using Nazi-supplied slaves, material, and industry in order to defend his assets and employees, none of whom happened to be Jewish. This is not like a Schindler's List scenario where, like, no, my bottlers are all hidden Jewish refugees.

Absolutely not. Also, the Hitler birthday bashes were just for funsies and should probably ignore the time he demanded Coke fire a Jewish man in a totally different country to appease Nazis. This is the fence they're throwing up. And I got to say, it's fucking weak. Sounds like a Nazi. I don't know why I brought this up,

other than I remember really liking Snopes as a kid and watching it go to hell has really bummed me out. I've never heard of it. I don't know. Maybe it's because I spent too much time. I had intro to computers class where you just learn how to type. I'm like, yes, this is the internet.

I knew what that was. I just used way too many times. It was before Wikipedia, I think. Before I knew what Wikipedia was. Gotcha. And I would troll that and other weird shit. Um, something awful,

which is a website that's melted my brain. Um, in school now. Oh yeah. It wasn't blocked. This is before they had like obvious porn websites blocked and that was it. You could go to other porn websites. Like,

uh, one of the famous ones is like whitehouse.com instead of dot gov like dot com was a porn site and dot gov is you know the web the white house website and the the school's filter didn't pick it up oh wow yeah so yeah we were all looking at porn in class i just didn't have internet when we had computer lab uh we have like shitty diet like municipal dial-up we didn't even get taught how to type where there's like hey make a slide powerpoints pretty much to be fair that ended up really helping your military career later i made a single one since now i i have to point out that this i say that I started with Fanta because it's one that probably didn't kill anybody.

But to be fair, it probably did. Some of the slaves probably died. I don't know. But I will say, it didn't directly murder anybody, right? It didn't lead to anybody's death. Any deaths involved in the Fanta situation were secondary. So, you've heard of IBM computers, right?

Perfect. IBM computers, or IT, IBM is one of the oldest IT companies on Earth. Getting back to the 19th century when IT just pretty much involved feeding a carrier pigeon

or something, maybe putting a helmet on a carrier pigeon. Now, IBM, like Coke, is an American company that had been in business for a very long time, meaning there were very few Western nations that they were not already in by the time the Second World War started. This wasn't like, hey, we didn't do business in Germany until the Nazis showed up.

I'm going to go do business with these guys. But back in the 1930s and 40s, a lot of IBM's business was simply keeping track of various databases. All of this is done via a punch card system. This is mostly inventory and logistics. I didn't think IBM was around back then, to be honest.

It was kind of shocking. The IT was the thing before computers were a thing. honest it was kind of shocking like the it was the thing before like computers were a thing um and it was all punch card systems which sounds terrible to do like imagine keeping track of all of the inventory like on your property sheet that you signed for in the middle through fucking punch cards these punch cards would be used and by all accounts they're very good at their jobs for terrible reasons we'll talk about shortly. They would be used to keep track of anything you needed them to and came with an in-depth and detailed filing system that allowed people to file them away quickly and efficiently and then, again, retrieve them for data entry purposes. To understand where we're going with this one, you have to jump back in time a bit. The Nazi government contacted the German branch of IBM, which is called the Diomag, but owned by IBM.

So rather than me butchering that weird German word, I'm just going to call them IBM. Or IBM Germany. Yeah, making things a lot easier for myself. Now, the reason for this was the German government this being the new Nazi government wanted their punch card system reader system thing it's infrastructure of

cards and card readers and trainers and people that could do all these things because I mean this is a rather high skilled system in the fucking 30s they wanted them to be put in place in Germany because they wanted to conduct a census. You know, like that thing they mail to your door and you probably ignore all the time.

All the time. At the same time, around 1933, it was already front page news that the Nazis were committing all kinds of anti-Semitic pogroms, like forcing Jews out of certain professions and sending tens of thousands of people

running for their lives across Europe. People are already being thrown in concentration camps. All of this is very public knowledge. It was in newspapers. It was no secret that the Nazis were already very fucking bad people. That didn't even remotely slow down IBM's presence. A guy named Thomas J. Watson Sr.

Of course, it's a senior. It's always a senior, right? The more fancy and add-ons that your name has, the bigger bastard that you are. Are you a junior? I'm not. No. Definitely not. Are you accusing me of being

a bastard? You must be a junior. This is just a curiosity. No, I don't think I have any juniors or seniors in my family. I was supposed to be named after my grandpa and my dad. Would that have made you junior, senior? I don't know. I guess the third.

That's cooler, I guess. If I was to be anything, I'd rather have a number after me. I'm the first. Any surname. Yes, the first, actually. Now, Thomas J. Watson Sr. agreed that we should do business with these guys and agreed to sell the Nazis the material and expertise they needed to conduct their census it did not take long for the german branch of ibm to become the most profitable

branch in the company outside of the united states a few years later nazi violence against the jews had only increased in fact it seemed more targeted systematic, and better organized. Because maybe, just maybe, the census that the government bought equipment for wasn't a census at all. It was a means to track the Jewish population of Germany so they could be much easier, much

more easier targeted to violence and murder and later sent to camps. Hold on, IBM is doing all this? Yup. Wow. Yeah, I mean, like on the punch card system, they would keep track of where you lived, what your ethnicity was,

what your religion was, what your race was, whatever. And it was almost solely used to target the other population, so like Romani, Jews, things like that and then since they now know they have a quick reference guide of where you live how many people in your home what they are like it's like laser targeting people oh wow um now if you're watson you should be horrified

by this uh because i mean the idea of conducting a census was not new. But, like, this certainly is. You know, maybe you demand your German branch cease work immediately, which would have meant the German state would have taken it over and probably continued doing it. However, IBM's hands are now clean. But more importantly,

as a person, you're not taking part in a fucking genocide. Like, if I was, like, that would be like surrender, like being forced by the government to surrender as a person. You're not taking part in a fucking genocide. That would be like being forced by the government to surrender your business. You no longer control it. You have nothing to do with it. They're going to do horrible things with that business.

Your other option is, no, the government can't have it. I'll do those horrible things myself. They can't tell me. If anybody's going to do a genocide, it's going to be me. Now, instead, Watson did none of that. He was invited to go to Germany to receive

a medal for all of the good that the IBM punch cards have done for the Nazis. So, he gladly went and received a medal personally from Hitler. At first, he he was like this is bullshit this needs to stop and they're like hey uh we're gonna give you a medal he's like holy fuck really that's awesome i love medals best day ever yeah um even if he was still lying to themselves maybe like because i mean there was a lot of denial when it came to the expanse of the pogroms against Jewish people.

Because America's turning Jews back on boats, sending them back to Europe and their death. Because one, anti-Semitism was very popular in the United States as well, and so were the Nazis. But a lot of people didn't think it was that bad. They must be blowing things out of proportion or whatever. So like maybe just maybe Watson was one of those guys, but then he had the ability to go to Germany and talk to the Nazi statisticians who are using his punch card system. And one of them told him quote and using statistics,

the government now has a roadmap to switch from knowledge to deeds. Those statistics came from fucking IBM. Yeah. Now, if that wasn't enough, he was invited to like an after party of sorts by a Nazi party official who openly explained him, yeah, a Jewish family used to own this house, but I stole it from him. Thanks to you.

Yeah. Yeah. Using your punch card system, A Jewish family used to own this house, but I stole it from them. Thanks to you. Yeah. Yeah. Using your punch card system. I looted this whole motherfucker. Thank you, Mr. Watson. And he's like, hmm, I still don't quite understand what's going on here. Have you seen my medal? Have you seen?

Check this out. Oh, yeah. We give those to every idiot that we use. Then in 1938, the Night of Broken Glass occurred, known as Kristallnacht. Once again, broadcasting Nazi crimes to a worldwide audience that was almost universally aghast at these horrible crimes. To Watson, this finally meant that he had to make a stand.

You want to guess how he made a stand? no I don't have any guess he wrote a firmly worded letter to Hitler now I have the text of the whole letter and I will say he does not say the word Jewish or Jew or anything a single time now I'll quote or Jew, or anything a single time.

Now, I'll quote, I find the change in public sentiment and loss of goodwill to your country, and unless something can be done to bring about more friendly understanding on the part of our people, I feel it's going to be difficult to accomplish mutually satisfactory results with connection

to our trade relations. I respectfully appeal to you to give consideration Oh, consideration. Yes. To applying the golden rule with dealing with these minorities. End quote. P.S. Thanks for the medal.

Is there a cleaning kit that it might come with? I believe it was the same medal that Henry Ford got too. Oh, so anybody just gets a mirror. And I think Ford got his from Himmler. Or maybe it was Goring. I don't remember. But yeah,

so remember, the Jewish people are being slaughtered and forced into concentration camps. The Jewish laws have already been passed at this point. Race laws, or I believe the Nuremberg laws is what they're called, are already pushed into effect. Tens of thousands of people are running for their lives.

I just want you to consider the golden rule. Treat others how you want to be treated. As long as you consider it before stealing their shit, we're fine. It's a very weird choice of words. Did he get a response? No, and here's why. It was returned unopened

by the post office because he got the address wrong. And he's like, well, I did what I could. Yeah, that's it. The only thing he ever did was eventually mail his medal back. And even then, that was probably to make him look good to the US government

as they took sides with the British in 1940. He probably sent it to the same address because he knew it would get sent back. It's like that scene from Always Sunny where they find all of the Nazi memorabilia. Weird. I wonder how he got all that. Yeah. Then in 1939, it happened again um now the ibm punch card system played a central role in 1939 census that identified what were known in germany as quote racial jews

and gathered information on the bloodlines of everybody living with a newly expanded third reich now remember at 1939, this includes more than just Germany. Soon, all vestiges of not being under Nazi leadership were gone. All Jews were fired from that company and noted Nazi shithead. Rudolph Hess was, was made the head of German IBM.

Uh, yeah. Now this is again, Watson has like another option where he can be like okay now i need to do something here instead of running off into the night or you know what i consider more justified killing himself out of guilt uh for handing the keys of genocide to adolf goddamn hitler watson fought tooth and nail to retain control over the German branch throughout the war.

This is bullshit. That is my company! Germany had not actually seized the business, and neither did Watson renounce it. He refused to give up ownership and refused to allow it to be bought out. I can do it better. I can do a better job.

You call that a genocide? I could do it better. I could do a better job. You call that a genocide? I'll do a genocide. More worryingly, IBM officials did not stop reviewing financial reports from the German branch that passed through the Geneva office through a third party

because remember Geneva and Switzerland are neutral. Right. So IBM Geneva office could hypothetically well not hypothetically because they did actually do it review the financial files of ibm germany which could then being a neutral party report them to the united states branch and tell them yo they're making a fuckload of money also the geneva office could legally do business with them because remember they're subsidiaries so ibm was doing business with nazi germany throughout the war and fueling the holocaust

and now if you're wondering like really how much worse could these punch card systems make you know one of the world's most industrial killing machines. I have statistics. Now, but before we get to the raw numbers of it, I need to tell you how exactly this would happen. What German authorities and IBM would do is when Germany would take over a country, say any of the low countries, you know, France, Poland, whatever, they would attempt to retrofit

whatever systems they had in place into the Haller's punch card system, which is what the system was called that they used in Germany, at which point they'd carry out a census, guessing what kind of census that was looking for Jews and their entire families and their addresses and where they could be found. And then using that information,

they would more efficiently send the victims off to death camps. Nations that already had a punch card system in place, because remember, IBM is all over Western Europe, it means that Germany could just slide right into that system and co-opt it to be an efficient genocide machine. Now, to argue this point further, the book IBM and the Holocaust, a book I'm sure ibm is very

pleased with uh contrast two countries that fell victim to this holland and france the nazis ordered the census in both countries soon after they were occupied in holland they had what was called a quote well-entrenched hall earth infrastructure meaning they have very well functioning IBM systems out of an estimated 140,000 Dutch Jews more than

107,000 were deported and of those 102,000 were murdered this is a death ratio of 73%

in France which had a punch card infrastructure that was considered in complete disarray

and required much work to get in working order. Of the estimated 300,000 to 350,000 Jews in German-occupied and Vichy zones, 85,000 were deported, of whom 3,000 survived. The death ratio for France was around 25%. So you can see that at the start contrasts

what a well-functioning IBM system does for the genocide. It's not looking good on you. IBM. It gets worse. Oh, it does. Um, and I haven't even gotten to what,

in my opinion is the worst company of the group. Now, if do you like, if you were thinking, ah, the punch cards must have only been used to track these people down. You're wrong. The punch cards did not stop at census.

These systems were also used within the death camps and concentration camps themselves. In the camps, they'd be used to record where the person was from, whatever reason that the Germans were given for tossing them into the camp, of which, obviously, there were many. There were political prisoners.

You could be thrown there for being gay or trans. For instance, prisoner code 8 was Jewish person. Prisoner code 11 was Romani. These are all reflected on the punch codes. Punch cards, rather. They would then track which camp you'd be sent to using the punch cards.

Camp code 001 was Auschwitz. Camp code 002 was Buchenwald. And then, of course, you know what comes next. They would even track how they killed you. Status code 5 was execution by order. Normally, like a single person executed for whatever reason.

And then code 6 was gas chamber. They would keep track of all of this and file it away for reasons I am not entirely sure of. That's one thing I understand. Nazis were really good at that. They're very German. Yeah, they're very good at keeping bureaucratic records.

And that's one of the things that's always infuriated me when it comes to Holocaust denial, genocide denial in general, is that the best records are always kept by the people who did it. And then people would say that they're planted or whatever and like what's incredible is germany destroyed i don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of records uh attempting to cover up a lot of this stuff and still look at everything that we have you know they kept meticulous notes kind of like you know we talked about the camille rouge when they kept uh pictures of every single person that went through Tol Slang. Yeah.

Now, if you're wondering just how integral these punch card readers and systems were to the Holocaust, I point you to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, who considers them so important to the Holocaust that they house several of them as part of their exhibit. Now, I should point out not that I'm a journalist or anything, but to be completely fair, IBM denies everything I just said. All of it. Really? However, it should be noted that

IBM and the Holocaust author Edwin Black has been hailed for his research, which involved working with over 100 different assistants over various different countries for several years. Furthermore, if none of this was true, or at least provable to the extent that Black did, IBM could very easily sue him for libel and win because there's an entire book of evidence if he was lying.

But they've never done so or even threatened to do it. Generally, I'm not one to point out that being brought to court over charges means uh it's like a means test for innocence however i am willing to believe uh i'm willing to believe that when the evidence uh of that of someone doing something terrible and accusing you of having a hand and you know murdering millions of people and you know you didn't you'd bring them to to court. But they haven't. So, IBM knows what it did. Now, I said that we weren't at the worst part. Yeah, IBM sounded pretty bad.

This one's the worst part. Have you ever had an aspirin before? Oh, yeah, plenty. I'm looking at them right now. All right. I mean, it's definitely one of those drugs. I got the old Exchange select version, you know? Yeah.

It's definitely one of those drugs that we as soldiers and veterans abuse along with like ibuprofen because we don't know. Oh, yeah. Self-medicate. Recommended dosage means. Just rotting at our stomachs. Yeah. This says take only four. I'm going to go ahead and take eight.

rotting on her stomach. Yeah. This says take only four. I'm going to go ahead and take eight. Now, we're not going to be talking explicitly about aspirin, except for a little bit at the end here. But we are going to be talking about the people who invented it, Bayer. Now, during World War II, Bayer was part of a giant conglomerate known as IG Farben.

IG Farben, unlike other things we talked about, was not just doing business with the Nazis, but instead were hardcore Nazis themselves. So this one is like undeniable. In the 1920s, the Nazis had accused the company of being one of many international Jewish companies that were bad for Germany and the world.

Though this would probably had more to do with the fact that Farben was donating huge amounts of money to a political rival of the Nazis, the German People's Party, who were also right-wing and nationalist, but not nearly as insane as the Nazis. But by the 30s, that would change.

Even before the Nazis were in power, Farben switched and began donating tons of money to the Nazis themselves, after which they purged every Jewish employee from their payroll before they were even required to by law, which did become a law in Germany. But this is before that.

They did it out of good faith to the Nazis. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. We got you, buddy. They were also, once the Nazis came to power, the earliest benefactors of Jewish slave labor. Because they were the most powerful companies in the world, and probably

the most powerful in Nazi Germany, they could pretty much tap any powerful person for favors. So they did. In 1941, they got Heinrich Himmler to personally send an order to allow them to open up a rubber plant right next to the Morowitz concentration camp.

Then they could force tens of thousands of people to open up a rubber plant right next to the Morowitz concentration camp. Then they could force tens of thousands of people from the camp to work in the factories as slaves upon threats of death. This is not the only factory set up this way, but by the end of the war, around half of the company's entire workforce,

around 300,000 people were slaves. That's an incredible amount of slavery, even if like the fucking Confederate self. Now, for those unaware of the sprawling concentration camps of Nazi Germany, I'll give you a quick rundown. First of all, I'd like to say congrats for not knowing this. And second of all, I apologize for teaching you. Morowitz was part of the greater Auschwitz camp complex. Monowitz would eventually be called Auschwitz three.

Auschwitz one was the administration center and Auschwitz two was commonly knows Auschwitz Birkenau or the death camp. Also, uh, an employee that worked for IG Farben bear, a guy named Fritz Termeer, actually helped plan and construct this camp in the first place. Yeah, it's literally IG Farben

all the way down. Unfortunately, Farben would be involved in much, much more than just slave labor. And I think this is the first time I've ever said that before. Actually, they did way worse than the slave labor stuff because they did.

Now, Baer is a part of IG Farben, and they all kind of work and do their own things, and they all have their own purpose within the conglomerate. Now, Bear was like a subsidiary. They also had independent control, and they still exist in most of our lives today. I would say most people listening probably have some aspirin-type substance in their house or something made by Bear, because it's been proven to be good for your heart and things like that. So that was the part where I get to talk about all the horrible crimes that we're all kind of complicit in by giving them money. Also, content warning here.

We're talking about medical experiments and death camps. Yeah. Nick, you don't get a content warning. Like some Mangala stuff? Yup. Oh, okay. Bayer was, most of all, a pharmaceutical company.

Surprise, surprise, right? They obviously invented aspirin, but they also used to sell heroin. So that's kind of fun. You can't get that over the counter these days. I've tried. No, you cannot. That has nothing to do with any of this, but I felt like it was kind of funny. But one of the more important things that they did do was pharmaceutical research and development.

This led to them employing a guy named Fritz Haber, probably one of the most pathetic men to have ever lived in the history of mankind. Not the coolest name. No. I'm a name guy. Have you ever heard? This is where I get to quote Joe Rogan for probably the first time ever this podcast. Have you ever heard of the tragedy of Fritz Habernick? No. Alright. This is

a pretty well-known story, but I do have to talk about it. Haber oversaw the use and development of chemical weapons in warfare in World War I as the head of the chemical department of the Prussian Ministry of War. He was pretty much the reason

that Germany used chemical weapons. Gotcha. Even for the time, this is considered incredibly dishonorable and disgusting. So everybody kind of hated this guy. But most importantly, if they didn't hate him personally, they hated his work.

His work brought so much dishonor onto his family that his wife took his handgun and shot herself in the face in the garden when she found out about it. Holy fuck. Despite the suicide of his wife because of his work, Haber was very proud

of what he had done and was a fervent German nationalist. He was promoted to captain within the German military despite not actually being in the military in the first place. After World War I, he continued working on chemical weapons for the very promoted to captain within the German military, despite not actually being in the military in the first place. Okay. After World War I, he continued working on chemical weapons for the various German governments, from Weimar and then the Nazis.

And then in the mid-1920s, he invented a little something known as Zyklon A, a pest control chemical that would later be turned into, drumroll, Zyklon fucking B, the main substance used by the Nazis to exterminate millions in death camps no dude who has one

a canister god damn it I forgot did you ever tell that story on the show I feel like you did I think I have he's kind of not a good guy you don't say the guy who owns an expended Zyklon B canister is not a good guy.

He also has a flamethrower from Stalingrad. How the fuck did he get that? No clue. I get that reenactors are weird. He has a bunch of armored vehicles, so I have no fucking idea. How much money does this guy have?

How do you just have, oh, this is my flamethrower and my small tank brigade. He's real weird about it, too. Like, you could still hear the souls and the flamethrower. And I was like, dude, you're a fucking psycho. That man should be illegally, should be legally prohibited from owning anything that he owns. Exactly. Yeah.

Agreed. Yeah. Do red flag laws cover reenactors? Because it fucking should. It doesn't, because you know what? They'll come up, like a fucking ATF would come up and be like, oh, this shit is fucking badass. Yeah, well, it's because the ATF and them are probably friends.

Now, even after all of this, he continued being one of the nation's best scientists. I bet a fucking soulless one for Germany as the Nazis came to power and then unfortunately like you know how we just talked about how the Nazis would eventually force everybody to fire all of the Jews in their employ

well Fritz Haber was fucking Jewish was he? yes he had a long sense because he was he wasn't anti-semitic however the people that he worked with and for and surrounding his work were hugely anti-semitic so a long time ago yeah and a long time ago he dedicated himself to german nationalism because you see this a lot today regarding Jewish people in Israel and fuck

even Chinese people in China where it's like this old dog whistle racism of like the dual loyalties trope. You can't possibly be a German nationalist and a Jew or you can't possibly be an American and Chinese

because you have loyalty to a different government. It's racist as fuck. And he was not an observant Jew. He didn't consider himself Jewish in any way. But this is what happens when you try to rationalize with Nazis. But yeah, he lost his job working for the working and building for chemical weapons. And honestly, if it wasn't for the Nazis

doing it, having a guy get fired, if he was getting fired for not being a particular race or religion, firing everybody involved in making chemical weapons, objectively a good thing. I wouldn't know.

But unfortunately, it's not, and only he was fired. After this, Haber realized that he would have to run for his life, or the Nazis were going to kill him. And he made it to Switzerland where he promptly keeled over and died from a heart attack. Meanwhile, the pesticide that he made,

Zyklon B, was used to kill pretty much his entire family over the course of the next few years. However, Haber's exile and death would not be the end of Baer's pharmaceutical development and experimentation during the war, which unfortunately brings us right

back to Auschwitz, one of the main camps used for Nazi experimentation. Doctors and scientists employed by Baer worked directly in and with the camps. Because remember, they helped build them. In other cases, Baer would simply buy or rent Jews from the camp to use them for experimentation, many of which took place at the women's camp in Block 20.

A Baer employee wrote to Rudolf Haas, the Auschwitz commandant, quote, the transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women in the same number at the same price. What? Yep. We had a good episode last week. yep we had a good episode last week you know I figured I'd given you three-ish months

off from genocide I just slide one back in thanks for giving me three months off in other cases say bear didn't have the I don't know boots on the ground so to speak to do all of these experiments themselves. The SS had a lot of doctors as well, right? They would pay SS doctors on retainer to conduct experiments for them, effectively making them contractors.

Bear did that? Yep. Do you think they paid Joseph Mengele? That's the only one I really know about. They sure did jesus so this included infecting victims with diseases like diphtheria tuberculosis and typhus and then testing possible

cures on them this ended with the deaths of thousands of people dying in unspeakable ways i'm not gonna get into uh but we do have paper evidence that says that one of the ss doctors that bear paid on retainer was none other than the angel of death, Joseph motherfucking Mengele. Wow.

Yup. Yup. Now, at the end of the war, there's a lot of finger pointing about who knew what within the ranks of IG Farben when it came to what was going on in these camps. As you can imagine, people are rapidly attempting to cover their own asses. What was going on? No way.

I didn't know about this at all, says a guy with like a necklace made out of stolen Jewish gold. He's just burning shit in the trash can next door. I'm burning all these papers because I'm cold. Yeah. Now, many members of the IG Farben board said they had no idea that their gas,

which was being manufactured throughout the war in greater and greater quantities every single month was being used to kill people in gas chambers that they themselves had actually planned and designed under the guise of lice fumigation. However, that was pretty easily disproven upon firsthand accounts of slaves who were forced to work in the IG Farben factories. They all testified that,

uh, like their, their supervisors who were IG Farben employees, not Nazi camp guards would be like, if you don't fucking work, we'll send you to the gas chambers. They knew even like middle fucking management knew what was happening and threatening them with it.

Like how low do you have to be on the IG Farben totem pole to work on a line factory in a death camp? And even those guys knew what was happening. Now, during the Nuremberg trials, there's two side trials that took place. One was known as the Doctors' Trial and the other was the IG Farben

Trial. Yeah, IG Farben was considered such horrible war criminals that they required their own war crimes trial. Yeah, IG Farben was considered such horrible war criminals that they required their own war crimes trial. Now, during the doctor's trial, one of the men who worked for Baer in the camps directly, Helmuth Vedder,

was found guilty and hung. It would have been two, for sure, but as we know, unfortunately, Joseph Mengele escaped to South America, where he died a few decades later. Something I'm sure we'll talk about at a later date. In the IG Farben trial, nobody was sentenced to death. Those sentences were given from a couple of years to around a decade.

Everyone was let out early. Really? One of the men who was let out early was none other than Fritz Tremere, who, remember, helped build Auschwitz. You want to guess how his career arc turned out? CEO?

Yes! What? Fritz Tremere was made the head of Bayer AG, a newly formed company based on the bones of Bayer from made the head of Bear AG a newly formed company based on the bones of Bear from IG Farben less than a year after he was released from prison

for war crimes in 1951 now you remember how I brought up aspirin in the very beginning and I said we'd come back to it alright we're doing that now so the original synthesis yeah uh because it turns out like you know you could make the excuse well bear could i suppose make the excuse that you know we were just forced to do all this from the nazis we're clearly not nazis we're not anti-semitic all those people like they made they made Rudolph Hess the board of our company. We had no choice. What were

we going to do besides all that being complete and utter bullshit? This goes on to current day. Aspirin, the drug, the synthesis we know now was done

by a chemist named Arthur Eckengroon. He's a Jewish man who worked for Bayer in 1897. Bayer's official story, and the one they stick to, despite overwhelming evidence of the contrary, is that it was invented by Arthur's subordinate, a German named Felix Hoffman.

Now, this is where things get kind of weird. So, in desperation, Arthur was thrown in a concentration camp and was desperately trying to negotiate his release because he knew what was happening. So he wrote a letter to IG Farben from a concentration camp that was designed by IG Farben

while facing down industrial genocidal murder by IG Farben made gas. And IG Farben made a gas chamber. After, of course, his information was taken by an IBM punch card that he had directed Hoffman to mix the substances together that eventually create aspirin. But Hoffman had no idea what he was doing and was only acting on his orders to do so.

This is generally recognized as the truth. IG Farben rejected his claim then and Bear AG continues to do so as late as 2014 what yeah I guess what I'm saying is the IG Farben trial probably should have

ended in more executions it doesn't sound too bad yeah so to this day Bear AG continues being anti-Semitic as shit. That's fucking insane. Yeah, isn't that great? Aren't you glad that you came back to the show?

I had no idea about some of that stuff. Actually, most of it. You said you knew something. You knew a little bit about some of these uh three yeah i'm i'm glad i can expand your horizons in regards to horrible war criminal conglomerates thank you uh now something that might be uh a little uh easier um light hearted maybe um so we do a little thing. Light-hearted, maybe. So we do a little thing on the show called Questions from the Legion, obviously. Right, right.

Where we attempt to shoehorn them in at the end of episodes like this in order to make us feel less like dying. I thought you talked about Nestle. I know Nestle helps, I think. Nestle continues to do some awful shit. They were recently in the Supreme Court debating that they didn't technically use child slaves uh they were just indentured servants oh okay that's good yeah absolutely monstrous people um fuck you nestle uh so if we do a thing in the show called questions from the legion if you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, donate to the Patreon at the $1 or above level and send us

emails, DMs, Patreon messages. Just don't send us anything in a Fanta bottle. And this week's question from the Legion is if you had to pick one historical figure that we have talked about

which is damn near 150 episodes at this point to be your squad leader who would it be oh Jesus hmm if I pick Patton, Patton will beat me Patton would definitely slap you in the face

oh for sure maybe I'd like it I don't know. Cadorna would get me killed he might get you killed but he might also kill you. That's true. That's a twofer. No. Fuck.

You know what? I want to go with Patton. At least you'd have some flex, but then also you'd have to be a tanker, so joke's on you. Damn it. I would definitely have to pick Leo Major. Really? I really like Leo Major. Really? I really like Leo Major because he's nuts. And he's like the only Canadian we've ever talked about.

You know what? That's actually a really good one. It's bad because I quite legitimately don't remember all the people we've talked about over the years. I do remember that Leo Major lost an eye. That's about all I remember. He definitely lost an eye, yeah. He like rage captured an entire town. I wish I would remember that one.

Which is like an energy I can get behind. But with my luck, if I went with him, I'm down immediately. Oh yeah, with my luck, I would be the friend that got killed right next to him. I'm sure I'm glad you're my squad leader, Mr. Major. Mr. Majors

Flap Immediately getting clapped with a fucking MG32 or whatever See with my luck With Patton Might take a Five fingers to the face who knows I mean when the other option is like

Getting blown up I'd much rather get slapped It's not even close, really. No, it's not. Though he was slapping wounded people. Oh, fuck. I'd have to get wounded first. Oh. Not only would you have to get clapped, you'd then have

to get clapped by Patton. You know what? You know what? Maybe this is... Wasn't awful. I wouldn't want any of these as squad leaders can I pick like a fucking Patrick Swayze Tom Cruise

he was never so Tom Cruise I feel like would be a better choice at least he's a samurai we talked about him he counts did I say Patrick Swayze you said Patrick Swayze and I don't think Patrick Swayze was ever in a war movie. He just roundhouse a lot of people.

I mean... I mean... He was in Red Dawn. Oh, fuck. He was in Red Dawn. Yeah, I'm a fucking idiot. My bad. Yeah. He got everybody killed. So, that's good. So, fuck.

Everybody who rolled the Tom Cruise died. Everybody who rolled the Patrick Swayze died. Yeah, Patrick Swayze was like the lone survivor. Yeah, didn't Charlie Sheen die? Yes, he did. I'm starting to think that we have accidentally pulled a whole bunch of terrible people together. Almost like we run a show called Lions Let's Meet Donkeys. Maybe all these squad leaders

suck. Whoever we pick, we're all going to die. That's true. That's the golden rule. I'll pick Patton, and then I'll pick Patrick... Actually, yeah, Patrick Swayze. I'll pick them too. Patrick Swayze from Red Dog? I feel like we should throw a movie one in there too.

I have to say, if I'm picking one of our movie examples, Patrick Swayze is a much better leader than Josh Peck was from the Red Dawn remake, who holds up a subway. But Nick, thanks again for joining me. Next episode will be not genocide related. Sweet. I'm always down for that.

Those are rules. I'll never. Here's my solemn promise to you. I'll never surprise you with a genocide. Haven't you, though? I don't think so. Okay. If I have.

General Butt Naked was a surprise. That's true. I mean, to be fair, he surprised a lot of people. That's very true. And thank to be fair, he surprised a lot of people. That's very true. And thank you, everybody, for joining us. And until next time, I don't have anything nice and quippy for this one. We just talked about all these horrible companies. Don't buy anything from these companies.

Just don't do that.