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...?

Of course individuals should make their own personal choices as to what feels right for them. I didn't mean to imply that every holocaust survivor or descendant should boycott certain organisations, only that it was understandable if they did.

My grandfather's brother died as a POW on the Burma railway. Thereafter for the rest of his life my grandfather loathed the Japanese and would never buy any Japanese product or have anything to do with anything Japanese. That was part of his way of dealing with the atrocities that the Japanese had inflicted on his brother.

Anton Philips made great efforts to protect his jewish staff claiming them required to keep up the quality of production - in a similar way to Oscar Schindler.

Siemens as it exists today is a post war amalgamation of Siemens & Halske, a German company and Siemens Brothers Ltd. a British company founded in the late 1800s by Sir Charles Siemens who were very much on our side during WW2 and a major contractor to the Brits and Americans.

However business is complex, BASF, Bayer, AGFA, Sanofi and GAF, all major chemical and pharmaceutical companies are the successors to the Nazi administered IG Farben chemical company, who were the distributors of Zyklon B.

The manufacturers of Zyklon, Degesch, still exist as Detia Degesch, a major player in pest control - Zyklon itself, which was a very useful insecticide was produced under the same name until the late 70s, then as Uragan D2 (same product, different name) by another manufacturer until 2024 when it was banned due to being rather too dangerous.
The brand name persisted in the US into at least the 50's under the licencee American Cyanamid Corporation.

Of course you have to put yourself in the shoes of some of the businessmen in the midst of the situation - take J.A.Topf & Sons of Erfurt in Germany, at the time a leading manufacturer of crematorium furnaces. If the SS rocked up and said we would like you to build furnaces for our camps, it would have taken brave directors to say sod off - cowards, collaborators, or just business people caught up in world events.

As an engineer and the owner of a small manufacturing company, I'd like to say I'd have the courage to stand up, but I'm not sure.

You are OK with most MRI scanners, the main manufacturers are Philips & Siemens.

Anton Philips was an Oscar Schindler like gent who saved many of his Jewish staff members from the camps and is regarded a hero in that respect.

Siemens, at the time of ww2 was two separate entities, Siemens & Halske of Germany, and Siemens Brothers of Ponders End in Middlesex, the founders were relatives, but our end was founded by naturalised Brit Sir Charles Siemens in the 1800's, and its that company that made X Ray equipment - After ww2 via various mergers the two companies came to be Siemens as it is now.

And of course the MRI scanner was invented in Hayes Middlesex by the EMI company (the record people) in the 70's.

Yup.

Hisense for laundry are brilliant!

Communist Chinese though, Chairman Mao, 2 million deaths in the Cultural Revolution - you can't win, every country has a bloody past, including our good selves.

This reeks of a fake post. Bet the OP never comes back

I doubt they will. OP has essentially been told absolutely nothing in life is guaranteed to not have a Nazi influence and is probably sulking.

There is nothing they can come back with other than an understanding of want but inability to have and business practices.

Schindler makes those- wasn’t he a good guy in WW2?

Normal people work at these companirs now, people supporting fsmilies, not Nazis. Get a grip and stop virtual signalling

That was then, this is now. Bonkers

SMEG wasn’t founded until 1948… if that helps

Schindler’s lift

EBAC is a British manufacturer of washing machines and dehumidifiers. They have a seven year parts and labour warranty. I purchased a washing machine two years ago, no problems so far.

NEVER ask:
i) a woman her age,
ii) a man his salary, or
iii) a German company what it was doing between 1933 and 1945.

Whatever they were up to, I'm still driving my VWs, using Miele appliances and taking short breaks in the Rhienland.

Different company, Schindler the lift and escalator manufacturer are Swiss, and not connected to Oscar Schindler

His Company DEF went out of business years ago, they made enamelled cooking pots, cups, jugs etc.

However, the biggest European lift and escalator maker Thyssen-Krupp are part of the Krupp company, one of Germanys oldest and biggest engineering firms, its hard to think of something they didn't make in ww2 - ships, tanks, guns, and used a lot of forced labour to do so

But again, you have to view these things through the prism of the times and the politics of the era.

I don't know, but I can't feel an urgency to avoid companies who historically supported bad regimes when they are so many companies supporting very questionable ones at the moment, and doing untold damage.
Also, think of the Empire and you'll have to avoid British goods as well.

It was a little joke.

I’ll get my coat 🫣🤣

People boycott companies for all sorts of reasons. I know plenty of people that don't buy products from German companies that used the slave labour of their families and have not apologised and have instead gone on, off the back of this slave labour, to make more money. I wouldn't extend this to all German companies (e.g. I would happily support small companies and more recent ones) but when buying products like this its easier to just avoid German ones entirely than do a deep dive into the history of each company.

For what it's worth, OP, we've had LG dishwashers before and liked them.

Indeed, the Social Credit system has been active for many years already and has expanded its scope.

The main delay on Minority Report at the moment is not the lack of data its the lack of coherence and integration of that data. Most of it is dark to its own owners.

@mummykanga Well, Choice Australia (our Which?) did a comparison of dishwashers in February. Fischer and Parker came in on a par as Miele, Bosch etc.