Awe, poor multi million dollar corporation had to support the Nazi war killing a shit ton of people or they would lose monies…
What do you think would happen if everyone didn’t support them? You think it’s okay to genocide if someone threatens you with a spanking?
No, I don’t think it’s okay. Yes, I know that if nobody supported them, the Nazis would have never risen to power in the first place.
But “corporation bad” doesn’t mean it’s always a matter of “I did this horrible thing to save a bit of money.” Sometimes there are lives on the line.
Please do not equate concentration camps with a spanking either. You don’t need to belittle the actual suffering they caused to make the valid point that cooperating with them is evil.
I’d risk, with a good degree of comfort, that the negotiations would have been more along the lines of “serve your country and be paid for it or don’t serve your country and go to a concentration camp and die a miserable death”, the last part as subtext.
You do not negotiate with any sort of dictatorial regime. The regime holds all the cards, including the cards the other players think they have in hand.
BMW and, by extension, any company, be it small or large, cooperating with any regime is understandable. It’s that or risk a terrible, more or less public, demise. That is why dictatorial regimes go to great lenghts to ensure companies and business owners favor by putting large quantities of money and/or resources in their hands.
Self preservation is easy to turn into greed.