“W-we took a little break…”

https://group.mercedes-benz.com/unternehmen/tradition/geschichte/1933-1945.html

Can you tell any German company that doesn’t explicitly mention their history in that period?

Note: These are highlighted quotes only.

VW:

The first group of such slave labourers were Polish women deployed at the company’s main plant.

https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en/volkswagen-chronicle-17351/1937-to-1945-founding-of-the-company-and-integration-into-the-war-economy-17354

BMW:

BMW bears a major share of the responsibility for these crimes as well as a burden of guilt from its involvement in them.

https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/company/history/BMW-during-the-era-of-national-socialism.html

Bayer:

I.G. Farben starts building the company’s own Buna-Monowitz concentration camp in 1942

https://www.bayer.com/en/history/1925-1945

ThyssenKrupp:

In all, the Krupp Group employs at least 100,000 foreign and forced laborers. The conditions under which the forced laborers live and work are often inhumane and contradict law and morality

https://www.thyssenkrupp.com/en/company/history

(Note: You need to press “>” a couple of times)

Siemens:

During the entire period from 1940 to 1945, at least 80,000 forced laborers worked at Siemens.

https://www.siemens.com/global/en/company/about/history/company.html

---

Those are the first five companies I was thinking of by the way and not selecively chosen.

---

In comparison:

Toyota:

https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/

No entry between 1938 and 1947.

Nintendo:

1933 The company was established as an unlimited partnership, Yamauchi Nintendo & Co.

1947 Mr. Yamauchi began a distribution company, Marufuku Co. Ltd.

https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Hardware/Nintendo-History/Nintendo-History-625945.html

Toshiba:

As the war intensified, the company grew rapidly by filling state orders for radios, vacuum tubes and other military supplies, and also producing generators. However, production capacity was crippled by bombing raids targeting factories

That’s it. No mention of their role in WW2.

https://www.global.toshiba/ww/outline/corporate/history/chronology.html#y1940

Honda:

History starts at 1946, no mention of how the money came from to found the company.

https://www.honda.com/history

Mitsubishi:

Despite the spirit of internationalism and social justice he engendered, at the outbreak of hostilities following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Koyata Iwasaki stated at a speech given to the assembled top executives of each Mitsubishi Group company: “Now our nation has come to a decision. And although my personal ideas regarding diplomacy depart from those of the nation, we are all now called upon to follow the order of our Emperor, to be united and to endeavor with all our strength for the nation.” A small voice of reason in a time of turmoil and growing call to arms, Koyata urged the nation to look beyond the current state of affairs, and envision a time when internationalism and peace would prevail. [ Several sentences of further praise omitted ]

Some German companies above also championed their founders/leaders as opponents of war. None of them solely focus on how they were a lighthouse of peace in times of uncertainty though. This reads like satire.

https://www.mitsubishi.com/en/profile/history/outline/

---

I haven’t chosen the Japanese companies selectively either. They were the first one’s to come into my mind as well. But none of them even offer remotely even a fraction of the “honesty” of seemingly any major German company. And that’s even with the German companies doing the bare minimum!