• NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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    14 hours ago

    Germany voluntarily remilitarises and suppresses speech just in time for the AfD to take over next time.

  • Etterra@discuss.online
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    17 hours ago

    No it’s fine, America is the fascists this time. Please help us Germany, it’s all gone tits-up.

  • B-TR3E@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Actually, they never stopped manufacturing for the German army. Except for a couple of years after WWII.

    • letsgo@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      It’s funny when you go to Germany and hear them pronouncing it wolksvagen.

      • t_berium@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Well… no. It’s pronounced ‘Folksvagen’. In German ‘v’ can be pronounced like an ‘f’ or like in ‘ventilator’.

        Hab noch nen schönen Tag!

  • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Wait, I thought Porsche was the parent company and VW was an offshoot created from one of Hitler’s requests(?) to make a car affordable for the people.

    • letsgo@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      They’ll have barcodes on the sides so that they can scan-de-navy-in.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    18 hours ago

    Its a grim world when the reaction to Germany rearming and scaling up their military is ‘hold on, let then cook’

    If there’s a 3rd world war Europeans cannot be trusted with military.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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      18 hours ago

      It is a grim world where people only recognize these patterns when they happen to the country or group with the same name. Genocide can only happen to Jews, Nazis can only be Germans,…

  • blitzen@lemmy.ca
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    23 hours ago

    It’s a funny joke, I’ll grant you that. But to be serious, Volkswagen, the company, did not exist until after World War II. Mercedes, BMW, on the other hand…

      • blitzen@lemmy.ca
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        22 hours ago

        A cursory reading of Wikipedia doesn’t really do the history of Volkswagen quite right. As a component of the government in the 1930s and early 1940s, they made some prototype vehicles that would eventually be the beetle, and yes, a few vehicles for the military. But it wasn’t until post war reconstruction where Major Hirsh and the British military took over and started the company we know today.

        I’ll grant you that lowercase v volks wagen and the Nazis overlapped, and that is cause for some discussion and some joking. But it’s also true that uppercase V Volkswagen isn’t quite as guilty as Mercedes-Benz et. al. in the build for the Nazis department.

        • Thunderbird4@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          I would generally consider myself a VW apologist, but what you’re saying is simply not correct. They didn’t just make “a few vehicles for the military,” they produced over 50,000 kubelwagens, over 15,000 schwimmwagens, and hundreds of officers’ vehicles. They were the primary manufacturer of light military vehicles for Germany during the war. To this day the schwimmwagen holds the highest mass production figures of any amphibious vehicle.

          Here’s an info plate out of a 1943 kubelwagen, with (uppercase V) “Volkswagenwerk G.m.b.H.” across the top, just as they did all through the Ivan Hirst and Heinz Nordhoff eras.

          They even had nearly the same logo going back to before the war. This is an example of the “cog emblem” as seen on the hood of a 1943 Volkswagen.

          • blitzen@lemmy.ca
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            14 hours ago

            Coming with receipts! I’m appreciative of that. I genuinely had no idea the number of Kubelwagens produced. I’ll certainly concede that production of vehicles during the war was significant. I’m trying to paint grey what this post paints in black and white, and perhaps it isn’t quite as grey as I make it out to be.

            I’m certainly wrong in my assessment here, and thank you for the correction.

            I do think it’s still worth pointing out that the very nature of its birth under the third reich, the fall of the third reich, and its rebirth under British military control, Volkswagen exists somehow different than the established automakers in Germany. I think it’s worth pointing out that while Volkswagen wears the nazi label more publicly than Merc or BMW, it’s likely the heads of those automakers were more actively complicit in the war than anyone at VW in the late 40s.

            • Thunderbird4@lemmy.world
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              14 hours ago

              Sure, it also irks me when people start with the “nazi car” and “designed by Hitler” nonsense. The origins of the company aren’t something to be celebrated, but they’re not something to be denied either. And like you say, no German car company is totally clean, including use of slave labor by VW, Mercedes, and BMW.

              Still, I see the post-war, civilian production of VWs as an example of the success of the reconstruction of West Germany rather than a continuation of any nazi ideology.

          • blitzen@lemmy.ca
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            19 hours ago

            I’m not sure I understand your point. I don’t think there’s anything in my comment that requires clarification.