Trivia Tuesday

Today is Nazi trivia day. I bring this up because I think many people neglect the long lasting effects of wars and now things seep into our lives that we don’t even recognize. For example, according to everything I can find, the uniforms of the officers were designed by Hugo Boss. Weird. I also keep reading that Hitler designed the Volkswagen Beetle, which means “car of the people… beetle”. Hitler’s nephew, William, immigrated to the United States in 1939. He went to war against uncle Adolph. Not quite a lasting effects of war thing, but still trivial. Methadone (dolophine) was created in 1937 Nazi Germany. No, dolophine is not a play on “Adolph”, it is a reference to the Latin “dolor”, meaning “pain”. IBM created the punch card system that maintained the Nazi census tracking of all non-Aryan people. And maintained it. And knew exactly what it was for. Heard of Bayer? Aspirin and such? Well, not only did they help to popularize heroin back in the day, but they were part of a pharmaceutical conglomerate that produced the Zyklon-B gas. That’s right, Bayer made the gas that killed millions of people because they had the “wrong” eye colour. Good times. And finally, Siemens. Yes, the twelve year old in me thinks that’s a funny name too, but that’s not the point. They are a conglomerate that makes just about everything. Back in Nazi times, they made everything too. Lots of German military tools. Maintained German rail infrastructure. Kept the communications and power running. Had slave workers doing it for them. Manufactured the gas chambers. And no @*$#ing way… they tried to trademark the name Zyklon to make GAS OVENS. Yeargh. That’s all for now… or I think my mind will implode.