[afriend4lyfe]

"In the later years of his life, Mr Kamprad had faced questions over his past links to the Nazis."

It's crazy how he ran Ikea for over 70 years but a quarter of the article deals with his ties to Nazis. Granted, he admits it was the "greatest mistake" of his life, so I suppose the attention to it may not be unwarranted. But I think it would have been prudent to touch on what caused him to shift his perspective. "Youthful stupidity" doesn't convey much.

Still, I can't help but feel like the information age is ushering in a modern-day version of the Akashic records. A double-edged sword anyone with an internet connection can consult. We laud past failures as learning experiences when it comes to startups, almost as if it's a badge of honor. But it's a very different story when someone violates a social contract, even in retrospect. (Albeit there are plenty of cases where people are embraced because of the drastic changes they made in their life, e.g. gang members that become speakers for at-risk youth.)

I think there's both a wisdom, and ignorance, of crowds/culture. And these crowds are constantly redrawing the line of who deserves redemption. Lately, the line seems to be inching in the wrong direction in my opinion.

With the advent of the internet it's scary to think about how efficiently the arbiters of information control the narrative. "We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us." -Madame Swetchine.

[bborud]

When the war ended he was 19 years old. He was 17 when he was first labeled a "nazi" by the security services. 17 years old is pretty young.

At 17 I was, politically speaking, a dumbass. Like most children that age. Not that I even had any identifiable political view that was in any way expressed, but I didn't know shit about politics.

Today it is even worse since every kid is supposed to have opinions on everything, grows up having a semi-public persona while still being afflicted by the stupidity and naivety of a mind that has been barely usable for a handful of years.

I think "youthful stupidity" covers it plenty much.

[5_minutes]

Objectively, what IBM did, in helping the nazis, and was collaborating with them, for many years into the war - even when the US was getting involved —, was much worse then what this guy was doing.

There’s also Porsche, Volkswagen (basically, Hitler’s own brand) and any other brands that were involved, and basically the catholic church was preaching in many EU countries for their sons to join the German army...

[loceng]

The important part is that these ideologies don't propagate within these organizations - an important part of this however is - within the leadership of each organization - publicly acknowledging and owning the organization's past.

[bjourne]

In which countries were the Catholic Church preaching that? All I've read claims the opposite, that the church was against Nazism: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206 http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/march-10th-2017/the-e... At the time the Catholic Church was the largest organization in the world, so some clergy is bound to have supported the Nazis, but the majority did not.

[5_minutes]

In Belgium it is widely known that families where promised more food stamps if they would sign up their sons. This was done by priests, at the local sunday church mass.

This is also one of the reasons there were so many 'collaborators' in belgium - a very Catholic country at the time - , while in fact the main goal was to get rid of the French dominance.

But if you're interested in the topic, Google what the Vatican did those days.

[IntronExon]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II_after...

I for one am not about to forgive or forget. Mind you, the Church wasn’t the only group helping the rats escape a noose.

[defo_nonconvex]

BASF, Thyssen (without the Krupp at that time...) plenty of blame to go around...

[5_minutes]

Right, so it’s not really relevant anymore, since everyone involved is probably dead by now...

[anon1253]

Hugo Boss, Kodak, Volkswagen, Siemens, Ford, IBM, IG Farben/Bayer

All of these are still around and were much more involved than Ingvar Kamprad was at the time.

[the-dude]

But you got to wear Hugo Boss!

[petepete]

Don't forget Henry Ford.

[coldtea]

>But I think it would have been prudent to touch on what caused him to shift his perspective.

Going with the tide? I doubt if the Nazis had won there would have been any shifts in perspective.

[seanmcdirmid]

Wouldn’t that be true of most people? Being a rebel, even against an overtly oppressive regime, is not a light undertaking.

[coldtea]

It would. That's why genuine cases of people who did resist should be celebrated over mock "turnarounds" after the fact.

(That said, after some time, things should be forgiven anyway. No much reason to punish a 90 year old today for when he did when he was a Nazi as 18-20 years old -- as sometimes happens).

[brndnmtthws]

It is indeed true; the winners always earn the privilege of defining morality and rewriting history to their liking.

[Retric]

I think it's important to realize mistakes 10+ million people make are far from character defining.

All governments do good and bad things and it's important to judge them in that context. What separated the Italian fascists from the German fascists was not necessarily obvious at the time. Further, while history reasonably judges German connections harsher, that's filtered through both bias and information people simply did not have.

[matt4077]

No. I’m sorry, but the Nazis were, objectively, „the baddies“ in every moral system but their own. And Germans of the time knew enough to come to that conclusions.

It’s possibly right that there is not much use in blaming the opportunists of the time, mostly because there were to many to punish them all. But there also were a significant number who risked or lost their lives in opposition, and this “history is written by the winners” cynicism does more to besmirch the latter, than it absolves the former.

(Am german, have asked grandparents the tough questions)

[Retric]

I am not making that argument. It's not about who won, it's a question of who had what information when.

So, yes the Nazi party line had some frightening implications, but at the time you could easily assume some basic human decency would prevent what actually happened.

To use a recent example many people assume Trump is saying things he does not actually mean. A friend said "Wait he actually wants to build a wall, but that's stupid."

So, my argument is people are willing to overlook implications when they agree with other things you are saying. We often look for the worst of our enemies and ignore what our allies are doing.

Further, this has real word implications and we need to be more careful than simply assume we will know if we are placed in a similar situation.