Brilliant appliance brands that never worked with the nazis...?

[mummykanga]

Appliances - is it a stark choice between ones that work really well and last or ones owned by companies who worked using slave labour under the nazis?
According to wikipedia even AEG, Miele etc... anyone have a Montpelier dishwasher...? Anyone rate the F&P dishwashers (esp interested in the new more standard ones...?) Kenwood...?

This is bonkers. We’re at three generations post WWII, perhaps being more forward thinking might serve you better.

as an aside couldn’t be happier with my FP dishwasher. Would never be without it

I think you could consider Bosch. https://www.bosch.com/stories/resistance-to-hitler-bosch-circle/

Are you seriously avoiding any company that had links to the Nazis? That’s ridiculous and unsurprisingly challenging.
I am curious how well you’ve managed to achieve this though, so you do you bank with? What car do you drive? Who provides your heating/Oil?

If you take medication or need medical care, it’s unavoidable.

korea has a history of torturing and eating dogs apparently so samsung would have to be ruled out too.

and what bank do you keep your money in because they invest in arms and allsorts of bad shit so when you pay by card for your new appliance you may want to consider that….

all in all you cannot avoid bad companies from the past.

It might be worth remembering that most of these companies did not actively choose to collaborate with the Nazis. They were given no choice in the matter.

Hilarious 😂

You might not want to use the lift or escator in your local hospital / shopping centre.

Don’t ever read the Domesday book or any of the many Roman census records.

Governments have been trying to gather data on people and property since communities existed - a few examples are listed here:

www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census/howourcensusworks/aboutcensuses/censushistory/censustakingintheancientworld

@mummykanga asked how to avoid companies who worked with the Nazis. If you are choosing to broaden that to encompass other abhorrent groups we could be here for some time.

Well that’s the thing, they are majority owned by a non profit that does research.

They still worked with the Nazis though, using forced labour and had large military contracts (something they forget to mention in the link a PP posted). But senior execs were against the regime, and they did help Jewish employees.

I’d judge them more on what they do now. If a hypothetical company was anti Nazi but uses slave labour now, isn’t it worse to buy from them than a company that worked with the Nazis but is now very ethical? I doubt you’ll find a company with no skeletons in the ethics closet.

Gosh I didn’t know about the Bosch company being anti Nazi

Absolutely ridiculous.

The Nazi regime ended over 80 years ago. There is hardly anyone left alive who actively participated in the exploitation of slave labour in 1930s and 1940s.

Taking this batshittery to it's logical conclusion, you should also be shunning anyone who owns a BMW, any company that runs MAN commercial vehicles, take the stairs at every opportunity lest you inadvertently set foot in a Siemens elevator, avoid Hugo Boss products, and even boycott Vauxhall vehicles.

If you take medication or need medical care, it’s unavoidable

OP better also hope they never require an emergency blood transfusion.

What next? Refusing to eat Souvlaki because of the Melian Dialogue of 416BC?

I wonder if the people being so dismissive and saying it's ridiculous had relations who were murdered in the Holocaust. I somehow doubt it.

Perhaps they would think differently if they had.

Of course using products made by certain companies is unavoidable in many circumstances, but if it's possible to avoid buying a dishwasher or vacuum cleaner from a company that may have used your murdered relation's labour then wouldn't you want to do that?

Yes, fair enough. I should have said the Nazis were early adopters of the machine-processing of data.

The use of punch cards moved data-processing forwards a generation.

Since then we've had several generations of tech. We're now in an era where extreme levels of data-collection have become cheap, easy and worthwhile; because so much of our life is conducted digitally in the first place, and because machines now have the capacity to process data on a scale the punch card users could never have dreamt of.

I don’t think anyone is being dismissive.

People are seeing the humour and batshittery that the OP seems to think appliance threads can include a moral tribunal covering the entirety of European industrial history.

Might want to rethink using Microsoft and all social media.

Rest assured nobody who had any decision making power in WW2 has any decision making power in businesses in 2026 because they are almost all dead.

Get a grip and stop living in the past.

I hope you don’t drive a VW either…

Why? Germany is one of the few countries in history to do a proper self inventory of their role, decide not to do it again, make legal, educational and cultural changes so it doesn’t, and move forward. I’m assuming the people working for VW are also those Germans. Truth and reconciliation are important and Germany has done a pretty good job.

I’d avoid firms in bed with Trump. They’re trying for a new reich.

I doubt you’ll find a company with no skeletons in the ethics closet.

Indeed. Nor a country…

My family history contains murders and thieves. And given the number of very young girls working in service who had babies out of wedlock, I’m pretty sure rapists too.

It’s a reasonable bet some of them were racists, bigots, sectarian, domestic abusers and homophobic.

My grandparents, parents, my siblings and our children are all decent people, who are kind, honest, hardworking and wouldnt hurt a fly.

Should my family in 2026 be judged by our ancestors? And how far back do we go?

British Made Washing Machines and dehumidifiers.

The British Empire committed atrocities around the globe, so that might not help.

As one of those people, I say you are being presumptuous.

My father is a Holocaust survivor, and he did business with Germans in the 70s and 80s. He has or has owned Miele, VW and Bosch items. Let him make his own decisions about how he wants to go forward.

No country, no big company, is completely innocent of atrocities or inappropriate behaviours, especially when judged by 21st century standards.

What the Nazis did is not what the Germans of today do. Do not create a false equivalence that spreads prejudice and hatred.