Disclaimer For short: Nazism can fuck itself, Russia is love From the cradle to the grave, we have two terms. There's good, and there's evil. There are things that you could and should do throughout your life, that are right, i.e. good. And there are things you shouldn't do in any case. A.k.a. evil. But it's curious that between good and evil, there is no demilitarized zone. There are no half-tones. Either you're with us, or against us. Either you're with LIght, or with Darkness. Either you're good or bad. Either to Heaven or to Hell. And all the human
culture at its core is based on this opposition of good and evil. God and Devil, Yin and Yang, criminal and victim, tiny toddler told his Dad: “I am puzzled so!" And so on. Only Buddhists are sitting out there, like... We don't give a fuck! And this opposition is everywhere. Wherever you go, you'll find good and bad. You'll always find someone to empathize and someone to judge. But the most interesting things begin when you grow up. After a while, you begin to notice details and to differ shades and hues. My favorite example is "Tom and Jerry".
No one as a child had any questions about who was good and who was bad. No one! We all rooted for Jerry. Because the evil cat was just about to catch him. But somehow or other, the good always won, and Jerry always got away with it. And now, when you're adult, you just see Tom and Jerry, and you're like... "Fuck, Jerry's a douchebag!" And you begin to feel with Tom because the cat gets his ass kicked at every step for no reason. Either he gets a firecracker under his ass while he's sleeping, or he gets
an anvil dropped on his tail, or he gets kicked out on the street. And you're like, "My kitty cat, come here, I'll pity you! Unlike this fucking mouse!" If you didn't watch "Tom and Jerry" as a child, I hilghy recommend you to watch some episodes after this documentary. You'll like it. Or there's a task for you. All of you love more interesting tasks. Look at this man. If I don't tell you anything else, he's just a man, there's nothing special about him. The only thing you could easily confirm that he's surely male. 'Cause the photo
is old and black and white. At that time, the humanty still didn't guess that he could be it or they. But! Here I'm telling you that this man is called Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun. And you're like, "Well, okay!' There's nothing about it, but something in his name smells like a stinker. Just a teeny bit, right? Freiherr von Braun, sprechen Sie Deutsch, you fuck? And here I'm telling you that Wernher von Braun was a member of NSDAP, a.k.a. Hitler's party, in case you've forgotten. Also, Wernher von Braun flaunted his SS-Sturmbannführer rank. Sturmbannführer is one
of the ranks of military leadership. On the hierarchy level, something of a major or a lieutenant colonel. Also, I'll tell you that Wernher von Braun was one of the main rocket engineers in Nazi Germany. He designed a fricking bunch of rockets for Nazis and answered for everything with propulsion. The most famous design by von Braun is the V-2 rocket. The first in the world, long-range ballistic rocket. All mentally sane people need an explanation. Speaking normally, a ballistic rocket means an uncontrollable rocket. I mean, it's like a sling. You take your aim and send it into
the sky by guess. Where it falls down, it falls down. Of course, you did calculate the flight trajectory, licked your finger, measured the wind, that's okay. But after the rocket is launched, you couldn't do anything with it. Where it's directed, there it flies to. That was the problem of the long-range ballistic rockets because the farther the distance, The more it's unclear where it falls down in particular. Roughly, you send the rocket to Belgium, and it falls somewhere in France. German Nazis would like it both ways, but you have to land it on Belgium somehow! And
for a long while, no one in the world could invent a precise but uncontrollable long-range rocket. But von Braun did it. He was the first in the world, I insist! He called his creation the V-2. The result was a bit messy, yes, because it was born at the end of the war, and Germany had neither resources nor time to refine it and to make it accountable. But the V-2 rockets were in the service for over a year. Germany launched those rockets from its territory, and they reached both Belgium and Paris and London. They took thousands
of innocent people with them. The most famous tragedy with the V-2 involvement is the explosion of the Cine Rex in Antwerp. December 16th, 1944. Antwerp is the second-most populous city in Belgium, like our St.- Pete's. And when the rocket struck the cinema, it contained more than a thousand people because at that moment, it was showing "The Plainsman". Technically, it was a usual western movie, nothing interesting. Except that show ended with 567 deaths. And the cinema was destroyed. There were thousands of such strikes. Somewhere, rockets didn't reach the target, in other places, they hit something near
it. Somewhere, people died, and somewhere, rockets just hit a lonely oak in the field. But the fact is, there were thousands of rockets. There were thousands of victims, too. All those rockets were created thanks to Wernher von Braun. Here are collective photos from maneuvers with Werhmacht generals. Wehrmacht are German troops, in case you've forgotten. Here's another funny photo where Wernher von Braun is holding a V-2 dummy, like a bit shy. Well, who built such a lethal thing? I made it, yeah. I have a question for you. Is Wernher von Braun bad or not? The just
answer for that question would be, "Are you fucking crazy to ask such a thng!? Did your dye eat through your head, hello!? First, how many people did that man kill? Second, no one calls a good guy fucking SS-Sturmbannführer! Well, knock it off!" And I totally agree with you. There is no dispute. Wernher von Braun is a real scum. But give me a few minutes. I don't need more. Here I'm showing you another photo that depicts a person who sent Neil Armstrong to the Moon. The founding father of the whole US space program. Who dreamt as
a child for space flights to be possible. All his life long, his dream was to go out there. This man's name is Wernher von Braun. That is no namesake at all. The author of the V-2 and the man who sent Neil Armstrong to the Moon is one and the same person. In both cases, the newshook is just a bomb. After Germany's defeat, von Braun was held captive, spent a year out there, and then the authorities moved him secretly to the USA. He and the team of his fellow scientists were moved to the military base near
El Paso and loaded with work. Hush-hush. No one told the general public that they brought a group of Nazi scientists to the US so that they worked for the US. Because you don't have to know all that. Officially, von Braun's presence on the US territory was admitted 10 years after he was brought into the country. Only at the moment when von Braun applied to the citizenship. There was a bunch official papers in archive databases, and explaining away was very stupid. Von Braun worked for the US till the end of his life. And his main child
was this thing. The Saturn V launch vehicle. A fucking giant engine that propelled the Apollo 11 to the Moon orbit and let Neil Armstrong to land on the Moon. That was because Wernher von Braun dreamt of space since he was a child. And the dream of his lifetime was to get on the Moon. That's why he studied to be an engineer, that's why he designed rockets throughout his life. And when he was almost 60, he was able to fulfill his dream, although for another person. And he did the Moon landing possible. I have a question
again. Is he good or bad, huh? Wernher von Braun. Sprechen Sie Deutsch, you fuck? And if you already have an answer, here's another question. What if I didn't show you von Braun's Nazi stuff? What then? What if I showed you the man and said, "Look, Wernher von Braun, the father of the American space program. Since he was a little boy, he dreamt to go to space and to look down at our planet. And also, he dreamt to take a step on the Moon once. All his life, this man looked up to the sky, watched the
Earth satellite, other planets and stars, and he dreamt to go out there. All his life, all this man did was sitting in his labs, drawing, inventing and testing his designs. This man devoted his whole life to his dream. And he fulfilled it. But because he was born not at the right time, those technologies were too primitive, and because of that he couldn't fly in person. At the moment when all space things were ready, Wernher von Braun was in his late fifties, and he couldn't have endured a space flight. But the dream came first. There was
no difference who would fly to space. Wernher wanted to make the flight to the Moon possible. That was okay only to stand in the Mission Control, not making that small step for a man and giant leap for mankind. That was okay for him to stay on Earth and cry for joy. That was okay for another man to fullfill his dream. The fullfillment only mattered. And then, eight years after the first landing on the Moon, Wernher von Braun lost his battle with pancreatic cancer and passed away." Of course, I could have stretched that story, added some
heart-piercing facts about family, about hard choices, about passionate work, added some beautiful music, and you'd like, "Oh, you're my buddy, you're so nice, come here, I hug you! Well, fuck those French and Belgians, they'll give birth to new ones! Mon amour, you bitch, mon amour!" I repeat the question, is he good or bad? Again, there are two photos. One with Wehrmacht generals. Another one - with John Kennedy! Another common goody-goody. One photo - a Devil's servant! Another one - the servant of the most holy US president. One and the same person! Everything I told you
is true. Wernher von Braun made both the V-2 that killed thousands of people and the engine for the Apollo 11 that brought Neil Armstrong to the Moon. You could try and answer something like, "Well, when he worked for Nazis, he was bad because he certainly knew why they needed rockets. And when he came to the space program, he turned good. The space program doesn't kill people, right? It doesn't. Logic? Logic. I have another question then. At what point do you cross the line between good and evil? Where's the watershed? When von Braun moved to the
US? Let's suppose. The problem is, von Braun worked at the military base in Germany, and he worked at the military base in the US. Only flags are different. And his first project for the US wasn't something space-themed. It was the quite understandable Redstone, the ballistic rocket. But as opposed to the V-2 that flew a few hundreds km long, Redstone flew 5,500 km long; it was intercontinental ballistic rocket, and that was the reason they brought von Braun to the US. That was the weapon no one had till that point because it could fly from one continent
to another. By the way! Guess what country intercontinental US missiles were meant for in the 1960s! Okay, good, you can say while Braun was working for the military, he was a bad person, yeah. Because he made things that were meant for destruction of people and military objects. But as he was busy with space, he became good! Yes, I agree. But the problem is that the Saturn V, that space engine, was the evolution of the V-2 engines and technologies. If there wasn't a rocket Nazis bombed their neighbors with, Neil Armstrong had nothing to fly in. But
then, there was no doubt that Neil would reach France at least. That joke needs some time to land. And if I add that the whole space program and all space flights were the peak of the struggle between the US and the Soviets during the Cold War, and that the space program was needed only to throw rockets from space at each other more comfortable, you can be totally confused. Because space isn't a peaceful story. Yes, it's beautiful and for the world peace, but first of all, those are military projects, just with beautiful promotion. And so, what
do I mean? There is one and the same man on these photos. A demon on the first, a hero of the planet on the second. Your attitude toward him depends only on the context And the story you see or the story you are showed. Or the story you want to see. The details don't matter. You must first choose the color you paint this man with, and then, you could prove the whole world you know the truth, the most truthful one... And that truth can both tell us he was a demon kller, and that he was
a holy scientist. 'Cause it's the same person. Okay, let's suppose! But what's with the cars, you smartass? Explain to me, why I opened my chips here? In order to think? I did all that thinking without you on my work, you dude! Let's have it without it! Give me your jokes, your cursed memes! Do you know what differs a BMW-user from the tail pipe? The size of the hole! And yes, I agree, that has nothing to do with cars. It's hard to imagine that some car could be a total degenerate. Although, look at the Prius and
think carefully. I'm shit. I'm fucking miserable. I'm a useless fucking bitch but I'm beautiful in it. That strange move was necessary only to stretch our thinker a little. Whether you like it or not, we'll need it today. There will be many questions. I assume that we wouldn't find all the answers today. But surely, you will have something to consider after this video. And of course, for you to get a real buzz, today, we won't have any further spoilers. We have everything we need. Get some wine, get comfortable, and let's together steep in one of the
most confusing Rolling R Stories. Asafiev. Rolling R Stories Divine Integration Hello, Stas. It's Dan. Do you still drive your X5? We've studied the interests of the YouTube audience, there are other standards. If you want to have their respect, you should have Benz-G. Make some order. Well, hello. You know how much Benz-G costs. Where can I get such money? I believe in you. Think of something. Sell your baby, after all. Sell your car well The car report. BMW X5. Used. Not crashed. 2 million rubles. Stas, my tracks don't fit into these narrow streets. Give a ride!
Who would have doubts? Okay, get in, of course. Listen, I'm selling my car, don't you want it? The fact that we're here together doesn't mean I'm ready to buy it. I haven't seen you for a long time. How's your Subaru? Now we know how you watch YouTube. I sold it long ago, and I'm happy for it. Yes, right, that rings a bell. Perhaps, you could buy my car? I'm selling it, it's intact, and the price is adequate. Would you take it? Hey bro, everything was cool. Why did you do that? The whole neighborhood is talking
about your X5. Don't bother, everyone in this town has fresh cars. I feel you, you want to sell it faster. Sell it on Avito. There's a bunch of cool guys there. They'd buy your baby right now. That's a good idea! Create an ad. Transport. Services. Personal belongings. Transport. Cars. Motorcycles. Trucks. Water transport. Parts Cars. Used. New Info and picture. Publish the ad Hello, Stas, I'm from Avito. I'll take your X5 today near the police garage. Go there. Thanks, bro. The car sold successfully Hello, Stas, it's Dan. You did it well. Remember from now on: Avito
will always help you sell the car well. The link is down below. Rolling R Stories Chapter I. Commotion Three main German car brands - Mercedes, Audi, BMW. When we talk about the German threesome, you could think of something else, yes. But in the context of German cars, it always is Audi, BMW and Mercedes. The funny thing is, the whole world knows three well-known car threes. The German car three is Audi, BMW, Mercedes. The American car three is Ford, GM and Chrysler. And British car three is Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. The German and
American car threes make vehicles, the British one breaks them. Another funny thing, the words "the car three" doesn't make Japanese car makers bubble to surface. Although, it's logical because in order to bubble, you should drown, and Japanese cars have some problems with that. It would be cool if Toyota produced boats! Those would be the most floating boats in the world because they're made of some shit! But! Return to the German car three. A question! Which brand, Audi, BMW or Mercedes, is the most emotional? The right answer is BMW, of course! Audi is an office clerk
wearing glasses and a grey suit. Mercedes is something puffed up and with some light supremacy. And BMW is fucking BMW. You can joke about the BMW club all you like, about those rear-driven people who like their engines longer with six cylinders a row to bump until redline! You should only change your oil in time. You can spit on them all you want, like they drive crabwise on parking lots, don't switch their blinkers on and are some douchebags in kindergarten. But we all see how those bastards feel high about their vehicles! Rare car clubs love their
cars and their brand so much. And not many people can actually ignore BMW. You can easy ignore Audi because those cars are literally cold. And no one needs them. You can be stand-offish with Mercedes except some few models, But with BMW, you can't. You will either love or hate, respect or outrage, but you couldn't keep cool with BMW, ever in your life. And if you would search something about the history of BMW in the modern world, you will find some standard info, like, they made such a car in this year, they made such a car
in that year - and soon, you'd also find some articles and some videos literally screaming about BMW made by Nazis. Or Nazi allies. Actually, it was as if Hitler himself was wrenching there, and those vehicles were made to kill small children in the mornings. Such is the tone of those articles. Yeah. And in the modern world, BMW is ruled by the descendants of those Nazis, by their immediate fucking heirs. And they don't bother about it for a second, just getting richer and richer. Perhaps, Ildar was the loudest on the Russian YouTube to tell that story
in his video about BMW. There is also a huge bunch of videos with lesser viewings. There are giant discussion threads on the Drive and the Zen, and you can't even count their mentions in media. Forbes, Kommersant, Interfax, like anything. And the tone and the meaning of those passages is the following. Here is BMW! A huge fucking company! Making great cars - yes! Earning a bunch of money - yes! Winning their competition with other brands - yes! But this magnificence is ruled by ugly rich guys, Nazi descendants! Ooh, fucking judging! Right. Yeah. My previous phrase saved
you about a couple days of your life you'd spend if you want to study all of that, because there will be no other thoughts out there. By the way, there is no such a shitstorm about Mercedes that made cars for Hitler personally, I remind you. And about Audi that was developed thanks to Hitler. There is nothing about Volkswagen, too! Although, I remind you, Volkswagen is something made by Hitler for Hitler. Also, it's a factory that was making weapons for Wehrmacht By the labor of prisoners of war. No one gives a shit! They say, water under
the bridge! Look how cute Golf Harlekin is! And BMW, specifically, gets a ton of dicks. Although, what else could a BMW-lover get? Yeah! As soon as the conversation about the brand history begins, a huge bunch of experts emerges nearby, armed with their tinfoil caps, and they begin howling about the Nazism. The most interesting thing is, I know what is at the ass of it all. On September 2007, an event happened in Germany that blew up all the media all over the planet. All the German press, European press, British one, American one, even our news outlets,
convulsively, began to write and to retell a documentary that was broadcast on the German channel "Das Erste". "Das Erste" is like our First channel. One of the main and the most popular TV-channels in the country. And of course, if a documentary is broadcast on the First channel, it's certainly not some paper of a journalism student, it's a serious work that deserves any attention. There was something to pay attention to. The film is called "The Silence of the Quandts", and it had a bombshell effect because, very meticulously, it told the history of the Quandt family, The
richest family in Germany. When the film was published, the fortune of the family was estimated as 20-30 million euro. And their main asset that brings them the most money is a casual, inconspicuous company called BMW. The family owns more than a half of company stocks, and technically, they rule the company for real and draw giant dividends from this business. It seems like nothing. Those guys own a company, make money - yes, they make BMWs, they can't help it! You can object, like, making BMWs is a crime against humanity, and I even agree with something here.
But while this world has Peugeot and Citroën, you can leave BMW alone. By the way, do you know the difference between owners of Peugeot and BMW? The size of the hole! The problem with the giant fortune of the Quandts and their owning of BMW is that they had made their fortune during the World War Two exploiting slave labor of concentration camp prisoners. And "The Silence of the Quandts" documentary tells about it in detail. With archive items, with witness statements, with commentaries of historians, and so on. The film tells us about the family history, highlights some
vivid facts of their past, and also, it considers the point of responsibility of crimes committed by Nazis. There are two main characters in the film. The first one is Günther Quandt. This man. At the moment of the World War Two, he was the head of the family and one of the most successful industrialists in the country. He owned a huge amount of enterprises that predominantly worked for the military. Günther supplied the army with clothes, ammos, food, caps, firearms and all that shit. Perhaps, the most famous Günther's brand at that point was Mauser. Guns, rifles, all
that crap. And if we look at his empire as a whole, wherever segment of military economy you look at, Günther Quandt's factories were everywhere. But the film decided to focus on one company that was the largest in Günther Quandt's empire at that point and was making the most amount of money for him. The production of that company was in each rocket, in each tank, in each car, in each submarine, in each aircraft. In all the moving hardaware of German armies, There was a component exclusively supplied by Günther Quandt. That component were batteries. And the company
that produced them is called VARTA. I mean, during the war, it was called AFA. Like, Accumulatoren Fabrik A.G. But after the war, they had to change the sign somehow to avoid reminding of their connection with Nazis. That's why they were called VARTA. But the point never changes, that's the same company. And we're gonna call it VARTA, so that would be more clear. And so, the VARTA factory, or rather their crime against humanity, is the theme rather of a half of the film. The authors show how Günther Quandt served Hitler personally, How he took part in
the development of new weapons and didn't think about the amount of people that were dying on his toxic factories. Because the VARTA factory had its own concentration camp with war prisoners. They were forced to work with lead and other toxic stuff without protection needed. And also, that was without normal food, with violence, beatings, cold and so on. Classic concentration camp at its finest, I mean. The second hero of the movie is the man named Carl-Adolf Soerensen, the former prisoner of that very VARTA camp who managed to survive this hell. Of course, it's a great irony
that in the movie about war crimes of the Nazis, the death camp prisoner is called Adolf. Well, fuck! The camp prisoner on the chemical war factory during the World War Two isn't a case for jokes. Of course, I'm scum and bastard, but not so much. I'm not Adolf, anyway. No joke, it's clear how painful it was to Soerensen to talk about his experience when he'd been imprisoned in the death camp. Beside those things he had survived in the camp that he talked about, he also told such a story: a while ago, he had some demand
to ask for some sort of compensation for his treatment. After the imprisonment, Soerensen surely had some serious health issues. And as he wasn't able to pay for his treatment, he addressed Günther Quandt's heirs. The Quandt family who inherited all the companies of their Grandpa. Of course, as he made his humble plea, he was - right, told to fuck off, yeah. And the movie was telling about that situation and asked one question: should the descendants take responsibility for the crimes of their grandfather? Or not? Especially considering the fact that they inherited a giant empire built on
bones. And they ruled that as they liked and pretended everything to be okay. And they lived in clover! The other characters that appeared in the movie were actually normal people who helped to tell that story. Some historians, several journalists, the curator of the museum they turned that former camp to, And just a few witnesses of that era. There is one more member of the Quandts and one of the former BMW executives, but they had only a few lines and they didn't have a huge impact on the story. Considering that family to be the richest family
in Germany and the fact that they never talked with the press and no one knew anything about them, that movie just exploded the media field. It was broadcasted only twice. But that was enough to stir the whole Germany. As I've told you, all the media wrote about that movie and wondered if the Quandt family would be able to conceal that story again. And to pretend as if nothing happened. Or did they actually have to admit their past, to repent in public, To pay compensation to those who suffered and to make this world a bit fairer
place? And the commotion was really so hard that that for the first time in a hundred years of their life in big business, the Quandt family had to come out of shadows and to communicate with people, like... "Well, we... we regret, of course. Give us some ashes to sprinkle upon our heads. And also, tell us which camera we have to apologize to?" But that was nothing. We'll come back to the public reprobation and sprinkling with ashes yet. The more so that there was much ash after camps. But for now, let's handle some thing. Questions about
the world fairness, good and evil and all of that - yes, they're good. But while I was studying that movie and all the articles, I had two questions spinning in my head. First, what's with BMW? Well, let's be honest. The first frame in the movie, like, BMW is the greatest concern, a lot of money, owned by the Quandts! Oooh, this is so unfair! And then, they talk about VARTA the whole time! BMW is shown only as the symbol of the family success. There's a corporation, a lot of money, blah blah blah. And all the crimes
seemed to have been committed by VARTA. Those are different companies. And the authors of the movie were trying to pull one thing on another, but they were actually failing. But of course, I agree that pulling BMW is a sheer pleasure, yes. And as such, we have at least to find out how BMW appeared specifically to be in the hands of the family because that question isn't answered in the movie. Why isn't it answered? Is there nothing interesting? Or actually, there is, and it's a bit uncomfortable? Or do they not show it on purpose? Perhaps, they
didn't have enough timing on TV, and they had to cut those things out. The length of the movie is one hour! Such a documentary! But to be fair and square, let's be honest, very few of us have watched some German movie for more than seven minutes. The second question: Why did this film appear? Why there was no "Silence of the Boschs"? "The Silence of the Mercedes Owners"? "The Silence of Hugo Boss" or "The Silence of Bayer", for example? Why there is no "Silence of the L'Oreals"? Well, they were the French company but they worked with
Nazis actively. And they used slave labor with great pleasure. You should look more careful at your jar with creme. Perhaps, it tastes like white supremacy. But if we take all the German industry during the World War II, regardless of the economy segment, there were slaves everywhere. They were in the military industry, in the chemical one, in agriculture - anywhere! But the documentary was filmed only about the Quandts. Why? Because Günther Quandt is the second-most horrible person after Hitler? Or is there another reason? Anyway, I suddenly became very curious of what was done by Günther Quandt
that after over sixty years, his story was put out of the dusty cupboard and told for an hour on the first channel of the country in prime time. And they didn't just film some interviews with historians or some knowing person, they did a documentary. With beautiful pictures, with archives, they found living witnesses. People really troubled themselves. But why? Of course, the movie itself doesn't have those answers. And so I had to investigate more interesting sources. In 2011, after all that commotion in the press, there was a full-fledged historical research published, about the Nazi past of
the Quandts. It was written by Joachim Scholtyseck, a German historian. He spent several years in restricted archives and gathered the complete biography of all the members of the family, beginning with the year 1701. Of course, a much smaller amount of people read that work than watched the movie. And that's understandable. It's unlikely that someone would read a boring historical record for fun, about the pedigree of some industrialists. But my tastes are very singular, and once I wanted to find out why "The Silence of the Quandts" existed and what Günther Quandt had done in his past,
I couldn't pass such a research. There is something interesting for you there. Divine Integration Well, cut. Guys, rearrange. What do we do now? Now, we're doing the divine integration. Rest for a while, we'll get ready. Okay then. Is someone there? What are you doing? - And what are you doing here? - I asked first. I'm doing the divine integration for a documentary. Now, it's your turn. I'm working here, actually. What's the integration? About the Skillfactory online school. Oh, I studied there! I'm a developer. I had the most universal course, "Fullstack on Python". I can do
a whole project myself now. I decided to make a service for selection of the best houses in outer Moscow. Wait, a developer? I wanted to talk about this exactly. Okay. What did you have during your course? What do you think? They brought us up to date, explained about fullstack developers and their business. We learnt the basic theory and began to make a bunch of projects for portfolio and practice. Also, we had hackathons with Yandex and some real projects with Interfax, Ozon and Rostelecom. Fancy that? Right. We had very cool mentors, they always explained everything. We
made a shitload of projects, ten of them. I was a novice but with a fat portfolio, and a retraining degree. You mean, you graduated, and now you work for yourself? Well, almost. After the Skillfactory course, they put me into a good company with a big team. They helped me search and find work, they showed my strong sides. And so, there was that. We have a lot of different projects in our company. Our workload is bigger. I even mentioned my promotion. And now, I'm on vacation, abstracted from everyone for a couple of weeks, I'm doing my
own project to feed the soul now. You didn't notice me, did you? If we noticed you, we wouldn't be talking right now. Oh, wait. I mean, we've already did the divine integration? It appears so. Ah, you're a blogger. Perhaps, you have a discount promocode. Don't forget to tell about it. Yes, right, their discounts are just huge now. Here it is. My promocode "Asafiev". To 60% discount. And the English course for IT as a gift. You're a dog! I didn't have English. Okay, I'm gonna go and tell my stories now. You can work as you like.
Just put your candles out for they're cracking loud. Okay, no problem. Rolling R Stories Chapter I. A Born Manager Let's begin with our central figure, Günther Quandt. He was born in 1881 in the family of the businessman Emil Quandt who had his own cloth factory in Pritzwalk. This is a shithole between Berlin and Hamburg, and now 12,000 people are living there. In the XIX century, there were about 5,000 people. A small chief town of a disctrict. His father's factory was also not so great. Just a few weaver looms and several employees. But since our previous
video about Germany, we remember that the late 1800s were devoted to the economic growth plus wars to unite the country, and a bunch of perspectives. Emil Quandt took advantage of all that successfully. In the course of a few years, he developed the largest factory of Pritzwalk. Originally, there were 11 cloth factories in that town, it lived by them. But in the 1870s, there was only Quandt's factory left. All the others either crumbled or lost it to the competitor, or began to do something else. For example, webcam! They farm for the skirt! The main difference of
the factory from all the others was Its work for one employer only - for the state. In 1871, there was the Imperial Navy founded, and all the naval uniforms were made at the Quandt's factory. Since the beginning, Emil wanted to work only with the state, and he tried to obtain only government contracts all the way. His policy was very simple. Why d'you have to seek for clients, when you can find one and work in peace? Logic? Logic. They had to develop the fleet and to make clothes for sailors, and considering that Germany began to build
its war machine at that time, they needed a lot of uniforms. Lots of. And at that point, Emil gave birth Günther Quandt. Well, his wife gave that birth, yeah, but Emil also participated in that process. Perhaps, even a couple of times. And once Günther was the firstborn and the eldest son, it was obvious that he had to rule all that collective farm in a while. And so, since his childhood, they prepared him to be a manager. And the kid didn't resist much. He studied English and French for they were languages of trade empires. He studied
arithmetic, accountancy, everything that could be of use for him theoretically, in general. That was the rare case when the wishes of the parents and of the child got in line completely. What is the more often case? Your parents wnat for you to be some confident lawyer and respected person. And you love caterpillars to bits. And here we go! Your dad yells you'd become a lawyer at any cost. You yell that caterpillars are your world! Dad yells further that he would push those caterpillars into your ass, and you pretend as if you didn't try that already.
There was nothing like that with Günther at all. I'm not sure about caterpillars, but there was no conflict about his profession. His father said, "You're gonna be a manager." And Günther said, "Uh-huh. I'm gonna be the best manager in the world." The kid was a go-getter since early age. Since he was a teenager, everyone just realized that he would become a man with an iron business grip. And so that happened. When he was about 20, he became a full-fledged manager of one of his father's factories. Several years later, he began to run the whole thing.
He bought new equipment, purged the staff, increased efficiency and did 400 more boring things managers do. It's not important what exactly he did with his factories, another thing matters here. As soon as Günther began to run the factories, it was clear at once that, compared to his father, Günther Quandt was cut from a very different cloth. In his diary, Günther wrote about his father - I quote - that he was thinking like a peasant or a worker of older generation. Like, no looms on credit, no debts with suppliers. Only what you have earned, For that
money, we'd buy everything and make slow progress. Günther thought really different. He knew that if he wanted big results, he had to play big and stop at nothing if he had to. For example, your competitor has a main client. One person who orders lots of produce on a regular basis. That means you could meet and greet this client, groom him, offer a discount and take them with you. And then, after a while, you'd buy the bankrupt competitor for peanuts. Because he would be left without orders. And as soon as that posibility appeared, Günther was already
standing and chatting with that client. The funniest thing was that after the competitor had went bankrupt, The client got predatory prices instead of a discount, and he had to pay for it, because that was it, they couldn't return the competitor. There was also the sweet Günther sitting. They had to pay for poor judgement. Or there was a single owner of a large factory, without a wife. He was living peacefully, without bothering anyone, and Günther was like, "Why is he living so peacefully? Let's marry him on my sister! And so, good appetite, harmony and love for
them, and a piece of influence on his factory goes to us. Because family ties are what? Right, they're tight. And so, at a cost of a whole sister, we have a certain ally who would support us in trouble if anything happens. Here you are, your pre-nup." Günther thought this through. And so on, with all the stops. All Günther's activity was directed only to getting more and more facilities under his influence. And he didn't give a great shit about his methods. The imperial expansion mattered only. If his father managed to build only several factories till he
died, then, for 10 years of such games, Günther, being once a common exec, became one of the most influential people in the German cloth industry. And it was not only Günther who did it. Monopolies appeared out of the blue, really everywhere. Some important guys who did one and the same business gathered and tried to unite into one corporation. All the steel workers gathered and united into one big steel working shit. As all the construction workers, all the miners, and blah blah blah. It was simple, right? If you create a monopoly, you can raise your prices
as you want and earn big profits just because you don't have any rivals. Your clients have nowhere to go. Now, monopolies are illegal. We have some special competition legislation. But then no one saw monopolies as evil. And every Tom, Dick and Harry united. Of course, textile workers considered their own monopoly at some point. Guess who could defeat all his rivals in behind-the-scenes struggle? And who became the chief leader of all the cloth factories in the country? Our clever Günther, yes! Exact manipulations for the capture of the field don't matter to us. We could dump a
big load. The most important thing was, they were absolutely legal. The law didn't prohibit them at the time. And if you didn't have enough intellect or bravery to create your own monopoly - sorry, it's business: kill or be killed. And so, around the World War I, Quandt was already the king of the world. His family was already rich, they had huge personal manors, and practically the whole cloth industry of the country. More than 2,000 people worked at his factories, and for the year 1910, 2,000 people were just wow so much. Especially, considering that weaver looms
didn't demand so many people to work on. Some three women could watch the whole shop floor without any problem. For such factories, 2,000 employees were some fricking lot. You could surely giggle about 1910, and women weren't exactly humans at that time, that's why Quandt had even less working people. But we won't touch that matter. I highly don't recommend you to touch a woman born in 1910. Don't you scare the graveyard keeper! And so! The 1910s were rising. Quandt was ruling almost the whole cloth industry in the country, but - knock, knock, who's there? The World
War I! Günther already was the main state contractor to sew everything for everyone. And here he got an order to saw military uniforms almost for every citizen of the country. Of course, Günther started doing that with pleasure. But here we have to stop for a second and to make things clear. In such a short retelling, it would seem like a cakewalk from rags to riches, like, that dude attached himself to the state budget and began to make money. But it isn't so. Since he was fifteen, since the day one as Günther came to his father's
factory, and almost till the last day of his life, he worked from dawn to dusk, and in the evening, he schemed whose hands he could shake, whom he could give money or some promises, and whom he could smile at to usurp even more businesses and influence. According to all the members of his family, Günther was always at work. If he went on a trip, it was for work. If they celebrated something, he had to invite some important guys and to negotiate with them outside of the office. His wife and children never saw him home because
he always was somewhere. At work, as a rule. Well, in short, Günther was a classic zealot and work addict with a huge desire to expand his empire. As all the other great industrialists and entrepreneurs of his time. Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, the Toyoda family, Walt Disney, Percy Chrysler, Günther Quandt - All of them were like that, working all day long in order to build their own empire. Because they had a chance back in the days. But what's also important, all the commitments for all the orders were held as needed, with needed quality and in time.
Always, without exceptions. Don't you dare not to fill a state order for military gear in times of war. They would quickly bring a bayonet to your honey bun. If Günther hadn't fulfilled his obligations before the state, they would have thrown him out very quickly, or even locked up in jail. That's why Quandt's factories were an example of effectiveness and Were equipped up to the state of the art. The best people with the best equipment worked there. And the end product was actually airtight. My point is that Günther held his rightful place. If anyone could handle
with all the textile industry in the country in times of war, it was Günther. Throughout the World War I, Günther's factories worked 24/7. All the military uniforms for all the German army went through his facilities making great amount of money. But Günther didn't sit on his money - he invested all of it back into his factories, increasing his capacity. But in the middle of the war, it became clear that regardless of anyone's victory or defeat, regardless of all the possible ends of that massacre - They wouldn't be able to earn such amount of money in
textile anymore. Sooner or later, they wouldn't be needing such amount of uniforms, and he had to search for a good replacement. Also, from our previous documentary about Germany, we remember that, after the defeat, the country was doomed for hyperinflation and the complete depreciation of money. That's why, sitting like that on a pile of money resembled a suicide. Because your capital could turn into several truckloads of useless paper overnight. Günther understood that. Here's a situation! First, your industry will crumble soon. Second, you can't sit on your money because you can lose all your capital. What should
we do? Investing into other promising companies. Yes, crisis isn't just pain, suffering and poverty, but also huge opportunities if you know what to do. And Günther had all he needed: He was expert in business, he knew all the main companies in the country very well, and he'd been watching the money market. He had a lot of contacts in all the places he needed, he had information. And the most important, he wasn't afraid of risks. That's why, when his country lost the war, his time had come. As soon as they announced that Germany lost the war,
the money market flew to hell. But, despite the chaos, there was a very short stretch where stocks plummeted to the floor but currencies still had their value. And Günther fit in that window perfectly. Now, it'll be a bit boring because I'm gonna explain the point of Günther's financial shenanigans, but don't fret! First, bulletpoints, I know them, I'll explain everything with them. And second, here's a joke before the boring part. What's the difference between a catholic priest and a child? The catholic priest has a lesser hole. Okay, stocks! Although, I feel that after the joke about
the boy, you'd want some fresh air to breathe. And the boy would also want to breathe. Yes, yes, I know, those are bad jokes, yes. But you're not bored anymore! You're rather embarrassed with such jokes. But not bored, that is. We certainly need some fresh air in this video about Nazis and death camps. Here, everything is simple. As soon as stock prices collapsed, Günther chose several companies that he thought to be the most promising, and using figureheads and sham companies posing as banks and some shady people, he began to buy shares under the table. The
most interesting companies for Günther were: a huge potassium mining enterprise, because the potash industry was one of the main lines of industry in Germany back then. The second company was the manufacturer of synthetical wool - because looms were going nowhere, and if you could steamroll some suppliers, you should do it. And third, the most important company was the batter factory that was called just so - Accumulatoren Fabrik A.G. In short, AFA. It was the future VARTA. As the result of his fraud, through figureheads, Günther managed to own all three. Question: why do you need to
mess with some figureheads if you could go and buy the company bluntly? You come to the owners of the business like a cis-hetero white dude... With the Germans, that phrase is twice as funny. You take out a pack of money - or rather, with the huge companies, you take out some dump truck loads of money. You pay for the company, shake hands to everyone, everyone is happy. Could you do it like that? You could. But no one needs it really. I'll explain. When you have a huge enterprise that has some amount of shares and all
that crap, You have some list of people and companies that own those shares. And any share is the direct equivalent of the company ownership. I mean, if the company has only 100 stocks, then one stock is the 1% share of all the company. If you have 30 of those 1% stocks, then you own the 30% share of all the company. But here's the question: how do you manage the company that has, for example, 100 shareholders, and each of them owns only 1% of stocks? It seems to be that all of them are even. They have
the identical voting power. But every shareholder shall have their opinion, their vision of the company's future, their own perceptions, values, agenda, blah blah blah. If you listen to every fucking person for what they think, You couldn't decide anything. You would be only watching an eternal shitstorm. That's why, the basic majority decides everything. The board of directors or the board of shareholders gathers, and they just bring some things up to vote. And if the majority of shareholders is up for it, the decision is made. If the majority is against it, it isn't made. That's all, it's
simple. For example, there is a bunch of shareholders, and the person who presides says, like, "Okay people, today, we are discussing the following corporate question: is this MILF okay or not?" And if the majority of shareholders is for it, The board of shareholders says, yes, that MILF is certainly okay. If the majority is against it, that MILF fell short of the board's expectations. Huh? Such analogies! Only this car channel will explain management through porn for you. And you are a couple of million people with pleased faces, saying "Yeah! Great!" And it's very important that the
majority in the board counts not with people but with amount of shares. For example, if there are two dudes with 30% share holding, i.e. the two of them own 60% of all the company, and the remaining 40% are owned by another 1,000 shareholders, everyone doesn't give a fuck about the opinions of that thousand. Because everything they need to control the company, Is that those two fat dudes would agree among themselves. And that's all. The majority is guaranteed. And the rest of the peanuts could be swept under the rug because fuck them. That's what's behind it
all. If you, being a man with a lot of money, come to some company and say, "I want to buy it all! And you, and you, and you, too!" - either they would send you to hell because they wouldn't want to give you their business, or they put up such a huge price that it wouldn't be profitable. No one would sell you anything just like that, for a fair price. Because they want it for itself. If the business is working, no one would sell it for no reason. For a triple price - please, be my
guest! And for a fair price, it's still ours, go fuck yourself. But if you start to buy small holdings, through figureheads, through shady companies, bit by bit - they might not notice it. And everyone could overlook the fact that actually, all those little holdings are being bought by the same person. And when the money market plummets to hell, small shareholders always begin to fuss around and always try to sell something. And Günther is right on cue! Or rather, not Günther but some John Blow, IE Akopyan, IE Jose Smith, LLC "Rainbow and Daisies", and so on.
And after you got the majority being such a successful partizan, you come to the board, put your balls on the table, and you say that you're in charge now. "Here's my 51% holding, and now, all of you will listen to me. You're running for coffee, you're sucking my dick, you're scratching behind my ear." And when such thing happens to your company, your only hope is for you to be running for coffee. Well, I would choose running for coffee. I need to rinse my fat with something. Such shady scheme not only gives your more chances to
gather the control stock, you would manage to do it cheap. You don't need to buy the whole company, you don't need to trade in public space. The stock price wouldn't rise up high after the headline, like, "The Great Industrialist Wants to Buy All of This Shit." Using the panic on the market, with a great discount, You buy a bunch of small stock blocks at a cheap rate, and now you have all the company at your service. And if you have 51% of all the shares or even more, squeezing the remaining shareholders out of the company
and making them sell their shares to you is just paperwork. And all of that is absolutely legal! Did small shareholders sell out themselves? Yes. No one held a gun near their heads. And if those shareholders overlooked in general that they were losing the control over the company - well, that's their problem, joke's on them. And Günther Quandt was a master of such games. Using those methods, when the money market was in panic, he purchased the largest potash-mining company in the country, the wool manufacturer, the battery manufacturer, and a couple of hundreds of small companies. There's
no sense in talking about them, they are of no interest. I must say, of course, Günther wasn't the only one such a person. There was Peter Klöckner who usupred in such a way the half of the metal-processing industry in Germany. Also, there was Hugo Stinnes who took almost everything else in the metallurgy, and when his empire was at the peak, he owned shares of more than 4,000 companies altogether. Also, there was Friedrich Flick who owned the best part of the mining industry. And so on, they were many. Günther was hardly the only one and hardly
the most successful one. At least, he didn't make anything unique back then. Nevertheless, after the war, thanks to such methods, Günther owned a whole empire already, and he was fine in general. But did he have to spend his energy? Yes. And so, he decided to center his main focus on the battery factory, AFA. In the beginning of the XX century, there was a huge development of electricity, the whole world needed batteries and all of that. For the whole transport, for trains, for aviation, for production, for substation - for everything. And that market was really, very
promising. Günther visited different countries, signed contracts, developed manufactures, increased his capacities. And beside the fact that Günther supplied all German substations with batteries, as well as all German railroads, he also supplied his production to Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Hungary, Brazil, Japan, Shanghai, South Africa, Cairo - the whole world. By the 1930s, AFA was producing 80% of all the batteries made in Germany. Plus, you should know that the principle to invest in businesses didn't go anywhere. When the economy of the country began a recovery and stocks of all the companies flew up, there was one industrial segment
that kept lying on the floor. The military one. Germany was prohibited to make weapon. Plus, it was allowed to keep only a very small army. That's why all the military plants were standing covered with dust and cost as much as a pack of cigarettes. But Günther knew that those facilities would come to life, sooner or later. There was no way that a large state would exist forever without an army. And he began to buy those facilities. The income of all Quandt's companies was just crazy - as the German economy was rising in the 1920s and
1930s. That's why he could allow himself, with such ease, to buy some factories and let them stand still till better days. All the weapon-making machines, all the facilities producing ammo, bullets, bombs, anything - everything Quandt could reach, he bought. And as we could easily guess, the wager had hit. Because in 1933, Hitler came to power. And that meant that the new war was near at hand. Divine Integration This is the story about me and Dan filming this documentary. Let's travel a month back. On March 14th, we came to the shooting stage, and we had it
all. Props - yes. Special diet without mushrooms for the camera man - check. A crate with Red Bull - check, quark snacks - check. Well, apparently, everything will go smooth this time. Ahem! What's wrong? Fuuuck... Guys. I'm pleased with a crate of Red Bull, of course, but what should I edit with? Yeah, it was stupid to hope for everything to go smooth. Won't you write to the people in BIGgeek? I think they will get everything you need quickly. Well, if we're writing to BIGgeek, it's time to fulfill our common dream. The powerful, magnificent and expensive
as hell Mac Studio. Well, honestly, I thought you couldn't get it anyhwere nowadays. But it seems only the BIGgeek would handle this. Why, it's great to have such a shop. They didn't even try to flog things we didn't need. They listened politely, filled in the blanks and ordered. Marvelous! I wish everyone was like that. We're here, get the fuck out. Hello. Tea, coffee, candies, lemonade. Listen, it's so nice here, but honestly, we're in the hurry, we have a video to edit. Where's our Mac? Okey-dokey. Your Mac is already here. Here it is. Look, you'll need
to turn this on and hook this up, and I'll send you the detailed instruction now, okay? Oh, you're so great, guys. Yes, it was actually the case. When Dan came to the office with the Mac, all the work stopped hard. Actually, all of us got hard, really. We were just looking at that box and admiring it. But then, we remembered our deadlines and began to work our asses off. Andrei edited days and nights. Honestly, I tried to convince him to go home and to sleep, but could you get away from a new Mac? But once,
he got away from it. He just thought that he needed a LEGO galaxy explorer in our office. A good thing that managers in the BIGgeek remember their clients. They don't ask any questions, just send exactly the thing we need, even if it's a rare LEGO set. Strange thing I wasn't there. I would like to build it, too. If you want to, we could order another set. Thanks to BIGgeek, we edited and released our video. Our viewers are watching it right now. Well, go on. Okay, I'm ordering now. You just say whatever you usually say. Order
gadgets, home appliances, accessories and other weird stuff like Dyson hair-dryer on BIGgeek.ru. The link to the website is down below. Also, use my promocode Asafiev, it gives you a pleasant discount. And yes, come to our show-room, everything will go smooth with us. Rolling R Stories Chapter Two. Quandt and Regime And so! What do we have in the moment? We're somewhere around the 1930s, the World War II hasn't begun yet, And Hitler just came to power. But we already can conclude that at least one postulate in "The Silence of the Quandts" movie is a bit inaccurate.
If we compress all that movie till several phrases, the point will be the following. First. Günther Quandt earned all of his fortune thanks to his cooperating with the Nazi regime. Second. All the money was gained at the expense of the slave labor in the concentration camps at the manufacture. And as an example, we see the battery factory. Third. Günther Quandt was never punished for any of his crimes. And fourth, the Quandt family is still sitting on bags with money that were earned with blood and bones, And they refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Add
to those points a pinch of tears from war prisoners' stories, another pinch of righteous outrage of historians, mix it up with the sauce of historical inustice - and the meal is ready. But in our case, let's look at those things more sensible. The assumption that Günther earned all his capital thanks to Nazis is an exagerration, at the very least. I don't say it's a lie because he earned well thanks to Nazis back in the days, it's a fact. But before the Nazi regime, Günther already was one of the leading industrialists in the country, with thousands
employees and hundreds companies under his rule. And it makes sense that if you spend 30-40 years of your life By methodically increasing your capital, your influence, by increasing the amount of your companies, and doing all of that successfully - then you'd rather keep doing all of that regardless of the weather, the political regime in the country and some other shit. Just because it's the point of your work. Just so you know, I don't protect Günther. I don't give a fuck about Günther or about the whole German industry, let them fuck among themselves. I just see
a mismatch. Mismatches freak me out. And I want to find logic. Apparently, some industrialist with such a mentality that had been working with the state throughout his career and also owning a huge list of facilities in various industry fields Wouldn't stop his work overnight just because some shady folks came to power. Just imagine: you're a capitalist industrialist, you're about 50, and since you were 15, throughout your whole life, you've been attending manufactures, developing them, increasing, and also, throughout your life, you were really squirming in order to get better terms, to strangle your competition, to strip
some gaping executives of their enterprises, and so on. Such a person you are. You've been doing that for 35 years. But some fucker with moustache comes to power, and you're like... "Well, no, this is too much! It simply won't do! Take away my factories, take away all the moustached guys, go to hell!" Can you imagine this? All of his life, Günther served only the interests of his own business and his industrial empire, regardless of wars, economy crises, weather outside and all of that. At least, he thought that if you wouldn't use your opportunities, someone else
would take advantage of them. And then they would strangle you and kick you out of your companies. Günther, of all people, realized perfectly how it worked because he acted about the same. And he swam with the same sharks of German business who would be happy to devour all Quandt's enterprises. Actually, if we look at it flatly and without emotions, all the development period of Günther's business in times of Nazis didn't really differ from any other period in his career. We worked with Nazis the same way as he worked with Democrats in the 1920s, as with
war dogs during the World War I, as with the same war dogs before the World War II. Nothing ever changed. Günther absolutely didn't care what regime was in power at the moment because he worked with the government and its needs. Do you need trenchcoats for the Imperial Navy in the 1890s? Here you go! Do you need military uniforms for World War I soldiers? We're happy to start working! Do you need batteries for transport modernisation, energetics of the whole country? We'll do it! Do you need potassium for chemical industry to earn money for the economy? Okay,
I don't mind, I have a couple of potassium deposits, I could dig around. And of course, when the country changed Its regime which had its specific needs, Günther said, "All right, happy to oblige. We have to fuck up half the planet? Great, here's my invoice, I'm ready to start tomorrow." Even if there were some rising to German power of some fucking strap-on party that would want to put the whole world on strap-ons, Günther would 100% emerge in the ranks of the main manufacturers of the vengeful weapon for the party. If there is a demand, you
have to fulfill it. Obviously, as soon as the Nazi regime began to kick the foreign business out of the country, Günther Quandt and other German industrialists began to take advantage of it and to usurp new enterprises. Naturally, when the Nazi Germany told the world to fuck itself with its limitations for the war industry, Günther was happy to present his dusty factories, his military weapon manufactures. As he continued to increase his capital and earn money, of course. It makes perfect sense, I have no questions. But in "The Silence of the Quandts", in order to show Günther;
s strong connection with Nazis, they tell you a bit different story. The movie tells us that the wife of Goebbels, the main Hitler's ideologist and propaganda man, the woman called Magda Goebbels, was really the former wife of Günther Quandt. It's already a peach of a claim. And one of Goebbels' sons that was called Harald was really Günther Quandt's son. And that kid was a star of Nazi propaganda. And Günther Quandt's son! That's a fucking interesting fact! The problem is that both things are true. But not quite. Here's how the movie shows it: There is the
Quandt family, and there is Goebbels. One man, without any family, just like that. And they were such great friends who were hanging out together, that when Magda, Quandt's wife, wished to leave Günther for Goebbels, the industrialist had nothing to say against it. He was like, "Yes, take the child and go, here's a house for you, you could star in all the German propaganda. Onward and upward!" And he gave his own manor to Magda and Goebbels so they could marry like normal people, and Hitler was constantly coming to this manor to visit, And half the Nazi
party was hanging out there, too, and they were living in an embrace and making out. So strong was Günther's love for Nazis, that his wife, his kid, his home - nothing was too much for his brothers! And all of these facts - who went where, who was whose kin - they're all true. Everything was really like that. But these facts are falsely shown. Give me 10 minutes, and you'll know how the audience was fucked over. Let's begin with how Günther Quandt could even marry. We already know a bit about what this person was made of.
He was just a human function who a) made everything by the book. And b) he could crawl into any ass without vaseline if he needed to. And let's think for a minute if such a man, the owner of one of the largest private capitals in the country, could see some girl, and be smitten with love to her, and realize he wanted to be with her till the end of his days, if only he had a chance to look at her and to kiss her hand. Of course, you could have watched your share of soap operas
where some billioner falls in love with some milkmaid, but let's be honest. If you're Günther Quandt, even more - 40-year-old Günther Quandt owning hundreds of companies, you won't marry just like that. He could buy a lot of sex and women without any marital duties. As he could buy himself a lot of men. And he could buy any women for those men. He could buy anything! That's why there was some other logic in it. Take Magda Quandt. This woman. Before Quandt, Magda's surname was Friedländer. This name doesn't ring a bell to us, but that meant something
for Günther. He went somewhere for business and saw a young and pretty woman. Well, pretty for them, of course. Because I saw a lot of historical photos with wives of different industrialists and political leaders, and I have several questions about types of German men. Why the fucking hell are you're fucking those...? Okay, I'll leave those questions to myself. To be fair, after our girls, you'd have some questions to the whole planet. Even not some questions or rather great condolences to their male sorrow. Because our girls are the most beautiful on the planet. And so, he
met Magda on a train. And as she was sitting in the first class, that meant that she could be interesting somehow. He came up to her, greeted, and she said she was a foster-daugher of the cool local businessman with a large trading company in Berlin. And we remember that if there was an option to put through something somewhere somehow, one should use that opportunity. And here, he could put it through twice. Honestly, I'm overdoing a little. Because in his diaries, Günther wrote that he just fell in love, She was so pretty and blah blah blah.
But I'll bet you anything, it was just a usual fleeting crush supported by a profitable marriage alliance with the daughter of the large merchant. Here's why I think like that. First, they married very quickly: since they first met till their wedding, they waited less than 2 years. And only because Magda was 17 when they met. She had to finish her education, plus Günther wanted for her to enter Catholicism before the wedding, and that was a whole procedure - and blah blah blah, a bunch of stuff. Naturally, he had nothing against 17 years in any way.
Well, he had, but a bit different. A horrible joke, I know, but I like it. At your serivce! In short, in order to marry, Günther had a series of conventionalities to fulfill, and they spent 2 years for all that crap. And Günther made a proposition for marriage half a year after they first met. Once again! He's 40, she's 17. He was one of the most successful industrialists in the country, and she was a 17-year-old girl. She could play the piano! Right. And all of that, "she was just playing not the piano but the strings of
his soul with her velvet fingers" - let's leave it to fans of "Twilight" and "50 Shades of Grey". We'll leave no brains for them but there's no harm in that. Second, according to the diaries of Magda Quandt, a.k.a the future Magda Goebbels, her marriage became insufferable for her very quickly. If we look at her diaries, we'll see about the following picture: The first year, everyone was like, "Weeee, yeah, our life is really gorgeous!" Her husband was one of the most successful industrialists in the country, she was living in a huge manor and bringing up a
little baby. In the modern world, she could create in Insta account, take the sign "mother of the little angel", and post pictures with flowers, with top cars, and all of that shit. But the times were different back then. There was no hype about that yet. And two years later, she realized that she was sitting in her expensive manor, raising her child, and that was all. Günther was never at home, he was at work. They didn't visit any events in the high society because it was inappropriate to go alone, and Günther fucking hated to hang out
without any reason. And Magda was 20 or 21 years old. You're a young, pretty woman! Well, Germans think you're pretty. You really want all those limelight, dances, public eye, because you won't be younger tomorrow. And, like, you have everything for that! You have money and possibilities - but you have to stay at home and mind the house. And make financial reports for your husband how much money you spent for and for what. Actually, it's a funny fact: Günther always gave Magda some amount of money for household, And he always demanded financial reports by all standards.
What, where, how much spent, why spent so much, and blah blah blah. Try to make your wife to write down her expences in an Excel table, and near every payment, she'd have to write a reason why she thinks this charge necessary. Then, once a week, she'd have to bring you that report to sign, and also, to defend a plan of future expences. Have you imagined it? Not very comfortable, right? Reading a financial report that was pushed down your ass. And Magda lived like that. And I think, such ways existed not because of Günther's greed but
it was just mechanically. Well, a couple of hundreds of German marks, about a million rubles in modern money, were just a small change for Günther. But if he gave his money for something, there had to be financial reports about expenses and financial feasibility. Here, Contractor Wife, you have 2,000 marks for your services in minding the house! And in a week, we'll sign the deed of transfer. That sounds like fuck, but Günther really had such ways at home, and he didn't see any problem in that. On top of that, he didn't spent enough time with his
wife and child to realize that something was wrong. When you're a human function, you think like this. Did he do the deed? He did. Did he sire the heir? Yes. Everyone was fed, with clean asses, with hired housemaids, with purchased cars, with built houses... That was all! Everything was alright with his family! He could keep it focused on his work with clear conscience! So, it was the golden cage for Magda Quandt. She survived in there for eight years. Well, at least, it was clear where she had been for those 8 years... Of course, that love
faded very quickly. At least, from Magda's side. What was love in Günther's opinion - I don't know, really. I think, it was a correct financial report. Whatever the case, when Magda was about 27 years old, it was it, she couldn't bear this anymore. All change here! She wanted love, she wanted to dance, she wanted to live at last. Of course, she had some lovers she had periodically some fun with, but that was not it. She wanted some real love, like in books, not just simple hook-ups with somebody. But at some point, Günther found out about
all her lovers. And everything went sideways. I remind you, it's Germany in the late 1920s - early 1930s. And women's rights were reckoned with when men were in the mood. And at those times, if you filed for divorce because your wife was cheating, and you had evidence, and your marriage was effected by church canons, then, you could burn your wife at the ritual stake, and no one would say anything to you. In the best-case scenario, you could kick her out on the street. No fifty-fifty - here's the door, good luck, darling! And Günther had every
right to do it, as moral ones as legal ones. Just because it was common back there. But he didn't do it. Moreover, he let their son, Harald, stay with her, gave her an apartment, promised to pay a good amount of money every month, bought an expensive open-top, and everything. Perhaps, he thought while she was raising his son - and he was too small for Günther to take him to his work - he had to organize some normal daily round. Günther himself couldn't raise his kid Because he was mostly out. And robbing the child of two
parents at once was very cruel. The kid wasn't to blame! And theoretically, it was the future heir who needed to be taken care of. And so, bored Magda got her freedom. Günther gave her something about 4,000 marks a month. In modern terms, those are about 25,000 dollars or 1,8 million rubles. And she could really relax about her household. Because her housemaids and servants were paid by her former husband, too. I mean, we have a free and still young woman with solved money problems. But simply sitting on her hands was sad, and that's why Magda was
looking for something to do. And at some point, she stumbled upon active political agitations of Hitler's party. She decided to go to some meeting. There was Goebbels there, performing as vivid as he could. She fell in love with him momentarily 'cause there he was, the stuff of her dreams! She went working in Goebbels' office as a secretary, he noticed her, and then - well, it was just paperwork. One, two, here and there, and they were together. Goebbels was the exact opposite of Günther. He was vivid, constantly performing in public, there was press all around him,
limelight, crowds of zealots! And that was exactly the life Magda had been dreaming of. 'Cause she would always stay near Goebbels. And that meant the constant public attention, constant trips here and there, and the very feeling she was living the most vivid life. The fact that all of that would end with the suicide of her whole family in Hitler's bunker was unknown to Magda at the moment. We will go there yet. But now, some facts and diary quotations that show the real situation. Fact number one. Goebbels really hated Günther Quandt. I remind you, the movie
shows them as the best friends, but that's not true. First, hating Quandt was very logical for Goebbels 'cause he was a fan of Hitler's ideology, and it was based upon the capitalists being demons that exploited the working class. I remind you, NSDAP, Hitler's party, was the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In short, the main idea of the party was the common workers being saints, And capitalists being rotting worms destroying all our sacred society. Such attitude is confirmed by a note in Goebbels' diary after he first met Quandt. I quote, "A tactless barker, typical capitalist. an
average man in the worst sense." Günther thought of Goebbels about the same thinking of him as of a chatterbox who didn't earn one deutschemark in his life, and the only thing he could do was making chin music. And he was also making it with Günther's ex! And Günther had all the reasons to think so, 'cause fact number two - those Nazis had no money. All those events happened in 1930-1931. Nazis didn't rise to power yet, and they didn't have state resources. And the big busines wasn't so eager in supporting them with money. 'Cause the party
propaganda was based on capitalists being scum. You won't give money to people who want to wipe you from the face of the Earth, right? You won't! And no one put out for Nazis. Except Magda. There was no money at all, the party existed on sheer enthusiasm. Yes, they had very large public attention, but they had no cash. That's why the top brass, close to Goebbels, was often hanging out at Quandt's villa. Because they had no other place to hang out. Here's the fact number three! The very Severin manor house that is showed in "The Silence
of the Quandts", where Magda had her wedding, where Goebbels was hanging out, where Hitler came regularly - that house belonged to Magda Quandt under the terms of divorce. Or rather, it wasn't fully owned by her, but she could use it at any time as she wished. It was the same logic as with monthly payments of 4,000 marks. She was taking care of her son - and that was the main term of Günther's payments - and beside their need to live somewhere, they needed to be on holiday somewhere. And so that Quandt's former wife could take
her son and left the busy town, he saved her right to use one of his manor houses. It was his wish because Quandt had a whole bunch of manors. And after their divorce, Severin was just a dusty house that no one visited. And while it still existed, Magda and her son could also go there. Günther decided that during the divorce, and he couldn't even suppose that, 2 years later, Magda would become a woman of the Gauleiter of the political party. Of course, he couldn't! Imagine, someone would tell you that your ex would hook up with
the young Zhirinovsky! You're breaking up, and she's like, "You can skeddadle with your business, I'm hanging out with Vlad!" You'd make a fucking "cuckoo" sign. And then, Zhirinovsky became the President! Shocked twice! And that was Günther's reality. Of course, he couldn't expect such twists of destiny as he divorced. Plus, fact number four. Goebbels didn't marry Magda until the moment they took the power in the country. The diary quotation: "We got everything straight between us, we gave a solemn promise to become husband and wife if we took the power in our country." Why exactly that moment?
The answer is simple. The very moment Magda would marry a new man, she would immediately lose all Günther's payments. That was another term of their divorce. It was logical in the spirit of that time. If there was a new husband, he had to provide! That's all! All of that orgy in Quandt's manor continued till that very moment when Hitler came to power. Then those guys had money and options to hang out somewhere else. After Hitler had become the head of the state and the couple celebrated their wedding grandly, the Quandt's manor house was abandoned. It
simply wasn't needed. What about Günther's son that Goebbels constantly had by his side? It's even simpler. You must know that Goebbels was the main agitator and ideologist of the regime. His job was telling people fairy-tales about the great future of the German nation if Hitler came to power. Also, he created Hitler's personality cult. One way or another, Goebbels thought only of propaganda. And here you have, on regular basis, a fair-haired boy with Arian appearances underfoot that you got along with your woman. Of course, you would dress him up with swastikas and show him to the
whole country as an example of the perfect family. Here's my beloved, here's our boy, and we're happy! He's not actually mine, but we won't tell you about it, those details are surely unnecessary! On top of that, the kid was just having fun! Well, before all of that, you were sitting at home, doing your homework, And then you're suddenly going everywhere, there's some commotion, the whole country sees you and calls you the perfect kid! A swell childhood! And so, from one hand, everything that is shown in "The Silence of Quandts" About relationships of Goebbels and Günther
is true. But from the other hand, everything was not like that! Günther and Goebbels couldn't stand each other but no one wanted to fight in the open. One of them depended on money and real estate of one of those dirty capitalists he was arguing against constantly, and admitting those things in public was like shooting himself in the knee. And the second couldn't even fucking suspect such a turn of events to be happening, ever! But while those guys were really able to become the future power, and all Günther's companies worked for the state, he could endure
it in interests of his business. Or else, you would kick out those poor souls out of your manor, and then, they would kick you out of all the state orders, And your empire that you had been building for almost 40 years would be devoured by your competitors that would be a bit more complaint about the new power. That's why we should sit, smile and shut up. From the very both sides. But all of that is great and good, but we supposedly intended to speak about BMW, right? But still, one and a half hour passed, and
there was not a word about BMW. The creators of "The Silence of the Quandts" weren't bothered by those logic errors, but we're just narrating a bit more meticulously. Then again, you got used to us saying, "German vehicles!" - and then speaking about the Roman Empire for an hour. Empire. My British accent, you know. But of course, we will get to BMW, too, don't you worry. But before that, we still need something else. It's high time to speak about unpleasant things. In order to understand the logic in charges of crimes against humanity, we need to get
a sense of those war crimes, first. And what's with the German industry, anyway? Chapter IV. Numbers Okay, let's get refreshed a bit and remember what we have at the moment. First. The claim that Günther Quandt earned all of his fortune during the World War II isn't precise at the very least. Because long before the war, he already had a huge fortune. And we still haven't reached the results of the World War II. Second, bloomy relationships between Quandt and the Nazis is a far-fetched argument. Of course, Quandt had some relationship with the high ranks, obviously, he
had, 'cause it's difficult not to have any relationships with the chiefs of the state you work for. Moreover, his ex was hanging out there often with his kid. But calling those relations friendly is a serious overstatement. And now, let's deal with the World War II, with war crimes, and with the role of the German industry in all of that. For starters, just a few words about what the war-time is, from the point of view of large manufactures. Large manufactures that are visible in terms of the whole country and economy never develop just like that. You
would always be in close contact with the government just because you're a large tax payer, you have many workers. You have to support right attitude of the workers to the government, you have to pay taxes, full-scale. And if you're a good boy and would be helping us, we also will be grateful. We'll slip some secret Byzantian info to you, or give a good order to produce - actually, we'll be helping you as we could. And that's normal. It's always been simple human relationships. But now, your country happens to be at war with its neighbors, Or
with the alliance of its neighbors. Why it happened, who's to blame, what to do, where to run - we don't care. It doesn't matter. Here's the fact: there's a war in some country, that's all. What does this situation say to us? The war is saying that globally, the situation is the following for the country: you kill or be killed. That's simple. Either you win and your country remains to live, or you lose, and where the path of destiny would get you - shit knows. You don't get to decide. You will have to do what the
winner tells you to do. Germany already went down that ugly path after the World War I, and they didn't like it. The mighty German Empire, the leader of the planet in economy growth, the place with the highest quality of life in Europe, after several years, it turned into a country where the local population couldn't buy food. After 4 years of war and 2 years of negotiations, from the high top - directly to hell. It's always like this. If you lose the war, you're in shit. And someone would aim into your ass. Here we have the
World War II. The event when Germany was practically at war with whole Europe, the Soviet Union and the USA. In the case, when Germany was at war with the whole planet at once, whoever you were and whatever you did during the World War II, you'd either be serving in the army, or be working for that army. There would be no other option. Because the stakes were as high as one could imagine. And your actions during the war would be either court-martialled if you'd lose, or no one would ever judge you at all. The winner is
always right. That's why the Germans needed to win at any cost. Literally, at any cost. If we need to round everyone up at the front, we will. If we need to redirect all manufactures for war, we will. If we need to put all war prisoners to work, we will. And so on, at full speed. With that in mind, we approach to things that are the most pushed by "The Silence of the Quandts". First, Günther Quandt earned his fortune because of the war. Second, this fortune was earned thanks to the camps on the grounds of his
factories. As for example, they show us the Stöcken concentration camp that was situated at the AFA factory, a.k.a. the future VARTA. Also, they show us two people who survived that camp. And those survivors tell us some sob-stories about the hell taking place inside that concentration camp, and what they went through. And the authors of the movie support them with numbers. And I have questions about numbers. So, let's deal with those camps, first. For starters, I want to say that concentration camps during the World War II were one of the most terrifying horrors of war And
a crime against humanity. I think, there's nothing much to explain here. But now, I'll be saying some unpleasant stuff. Well, you know, the theme itself is rotten. During the next 15 minutes, you could think of me as of a senseless scum. And if that's so, then take my deepest congratulations. 'Cause if you'd hate me after the next 15 minutes, that means you're a good person. You have a heart. And your loved ones are lucky to have you. But if you'd agree with my logic deep inside, welcome to the club. Death camps weren't invented by Germans.
The first concentrations camps were invented by Americans during the Civil War in the late 1800s. Then, the idea was adopted by the British, and they used it actively during their African wars at the cusp between XIX and XX centuries. The main idea was the very same as in Germany: you round up people in a camp, and you torture them as you like, in order to achieve some goals. Well, that's a historical note. The world "concentration camp" is associated strictly with Nazi Germany because the Germans really succeeded in that shit. There was never such a scale
of events as in the Third Reich. And I hope it will never happen again. But I promised a couple of interesting numbers. Here they are. In all the time the Third Reich existed, 1933-1945, they built about 40,000 concentration camps and detention facilities. Mostly, those were small camps for several dozens or even hundreds of people. But there were more interesting places. Buchenwald. Working 1937-1945. Altogether, for all the time, 250,000 people were brought there, and 56,000 of them were killed. Buchenwald was the place of psychological and medical experiments of people. They suffered hunger and cold and were
tormented by any means possible. Using a simple math, we could count that 20% of prisoners died within the camp walls. Belzec. The death camp on the territory of occupied Poland. The place where people were simply brought to die. The prisoners built gas chambers with their own hands, and the same prisoners were killed in the very same gas chambers. The precise amount of people brought to that camp is unknown. But the number of killed in that camp alone is something between 450,000 and 600,000 people. A half a million people, it's twice as big as my hometown.
Or the whole of Tver. Or the whole of Ryazan. Or Kaliningrad. The whole city, till the last man. Now, I add another number. The camp existed for 15 months, since the spring 1942 till the summer 1943. Each months, the amount of people choked in gas chambers And thrown down the ditches nearby consisted 30,000-40,000 people. Each month. 30,000-40,000. And on the gas chambers in that camp, there were signs that said "Washrooms". That's cute, huh? Bergen-Belsen. Initially, a small camp near the town of Bergen. But it was extended as the need required. You know, there are some
facilities that can't handle the large customer flow. And Bergen-Belsen was exactly like that. The trademark of the camp was the fact they didn't have the time to bury corpses. They just threw them in a hole. Because of that, all camp inhabitants were regularly mowed down by typhus epidemics. The approximate number of the dead was about 70,000 people. Bogdanovka. The camp for Soviet people and soldiers on the territory of occupied Ukraine. The Germans occupied it, but the Romanians ran things there. And that proves the fact that it wasn't about nationalities but about propaganda and the wish
to pander to the regime. No one tried to exploit people there, they were just being killed. Approximately, 160,000 people were killed there. And it seems, after the previous death camps, 160,000 people are not so terrifying. But its hallmark is that the camp existed for less than 3 months. It was created mid October; they decided to kill everyone in December. About 100,000 people were killed within 2 monts, and then, as a final chord, 54,000 people were killed within a week. 9,000 a day. Monday - 9,000 Soviet people. Tuesday - 9,000 Soviet people. Wednesday - 9,000... Well,
you get the point. Darnitsa. The same camp in Ukraine that accepted 300,000 people. And 68,000 from them were shot down, burnt alive or starved to death. By the way, do you have some heavy feeling inside already? I do understand, those numbers and facts aren't very pleasant. Alas, we've only just begun. Dachau. One of the most famous concentration camps in Germany where prisoners were held who worked to produce ammo, chemical weapons, and for chemical industry in general. Inside the country, it was deemed as one of those showpiece camps, a role model for all. 190,000 people were
brought to that camp. And the same 20% were killed, about 41,500 people. But do you know why that camp was deemed as a showpiece? That was the birthplace of the motivation system that if some prisoner would display especial brutality to his comrades or invent some new and sophisticated torture method, then he was welcomed in the SS ranks. You could turn from a prisoner to the SS-man, If you could prove your loyalty to the regime by blood of others. Do you imagine that massacre from people who were trying to survive? A showpiece massacre, I must notice.
Majdanek. Initially, a small camp near the town of Bergen. It's known by its high rates of effectiveness. Out of 150,000 prisoners, those gas chambers killed every second person. 78,000 people, to be precise. If you were brought to Majdanek, you chances were precisely 50:50. Also, it was known by its experiments for the effectiveness of chemical weapons. The Germans studied the speed some or other substance could kill a human with, and how they could do it effective. Such a business target was out there. To change up the speed of processing of one lead. Those experiments were the
following: the prisoners were removed out of the barracks, supposedly to wash. They were brought to he bathing complex, to cabins signed "Washroom". The person was locked up in a real washroom. A hitch opened above, a soldier in a gas mask was sitting there, and he poured down the chemical. The timer clicked, the experiment began. Maly Trostenets, Blagovshchina and Shashkovka. Those places were created on the territory of occupied Belarus, especially for captive Soviet soldiers. Mass shootings near grave ditches, The crematory that worked 24/7, and the approximate number of killed was about 200,000 people. Their hallmark were
gas chamber cars. That was some special truck with thickened cargo box. The car's exhaust pipe was put into that box. They put people in there and drove it to the crematory. They would choke inside on the way, very convenient. I get it, you could get tired of such a monotonous citation. 100,000 people were killed there, another 100,000 killed here, yet another 100,000 people died here, and here, too, 100,000 people were killed. I get it. Hang on. Let's cheer up. Salaspils camp. 18 km away from Riga. Several separate camps were in there. In one separate place,
war prisoners were held in the open air who lived in holes in the ground, ate tree bark, and in some critical moments, cannibalism was involved. And there was another camp nearby, where children were held, younger than 6 years old. They were held captive to get their blood to use it for wounded German soldiers. Naturally, those children lost their blood completely, and their bodies were thrown away. Only 5,000 corpses were found. Sobibor. 250,000 people killed in gas chambers within a year and a half. Theresienstadt. 140,000 prisoners, and 15,000 children among them. At least 33,000 of them
were killed. The same 20-25% of the total amount. And two last camps. Treblinka and Auschwitz. Or Oświęcim. Two camps on the territory of Poland. Treblinka. 24 hectares of land enclosed with a 3 m high wall and a 3 m deep ditch. There were several gas chambers in that camp, And lines of people were waiting before them 24/7. And since 22 July 1942 till October 1943, 800,000 people suffocated in those chambers. 800,000 people in 14 months. It's 2,500 people for every fucking day, without any breaks for holidays and weekends. Auschwitz. A.k.a. Oświęcim. Two numbers here. The
least possible number of prisoners - the least possible! - 1,300,000 people. The second number. The least possible number of killed. 1,100,000 people. Almost everyone was killed. Either in a gas chamber, or from a bullet during a mass execution, or because of hunger, beatings or labor conditions. If some prisoner saw the Auschwitz sign, that was, most likely, the last thing they saw in their life. That's horrible. I can be whatever eloquent as I want but I don't fucking know how to express all the horror of the week while I was methodically, page after page, studying those
camps and what happened there. I saw all of that in newsreels and on photos. Honestly, it's a good thing we can't show you those on YouTube. I can tell you only this after that: Thank God we've won. And lest we forget all the Soviet soldiers, all the Allied soldiers and all the victims who made it so that would never happen again. And to all those people who once told or thought, like, "Well, we'd better have lost!"... You have no fucking idea what you're talking about. And now, after that colorful journey, let's get back to the
Stöcken camp that is so graphically pictured in "The Silence of the Quandts". The info from the movie: On the Stöcken camp territory, there were 1,500 prisoners held, and because of hard labor conditions, working with chemicals, hunger and diseases, 80 people a month died among them. And new workers from other camps were brought to replace them. That's all. There is no other info in the movie. But here we have the data of the Hannover-Stöcken museum, and we have the official info that the camp existed since July 1943 till April 1945. Almost 2 years. During that time,
15,000 people were brought to that camp, and 1,016 of them died. That were 6% of the total amount. Although according Joachim Scholtyseck's research, the number of victims by the death register amounted to 403 people. Throughout the whole time the camp existed. But screw it. We won't know the truth. Let's take the biggest number I found, that is 1,016 victims, I.e. 6% of the total amount of prisoners. But there is some broad in the movie, the curator of the Stöcken museum, and at some point, she's like, "Oh, you know, back in their AFA a.k.a. VARTA, they
had their own little Auschwitz." And I looked at it, and I thought, "How dare you fucking compare it with Auschwitz, you bitch!?" I don't want to depreciate that thousand of human lives lost in the Stöcken camp, but don't you think that the camp where, among 15,000 prisoners, a thousand died, and the camp where, among 1,300,000 prisoners, 1,100,000 fucking died, are fucking different!? Forgive me but if I had a choice either to go to Auschwitz with guaranteed painful death in 85% cases Or to go to Stöcken where the probability of my death would be 6%, I
would obviously choose Stöcken! Of course, ideally, it would be best not to go to any camp, and they'd better not exist on the planet, yes! But the comparison of Auschwitz and Stöcken - well, go fuck yourselves! That was the moment when I was seriously pissed off at that fuckery. Okay, you're twisting the facts about Günther Quandt's capital, about his methods of earning - fuck it! But twisting and turning as if Stöcken was some hell on Earth and comparing it with Auschwitz, also fucking using two victims of the camp in the movie - that's really low,
disgusting and horrible! But will it work for an average guy? Yes. But I was enraged because of that manipulation! Obviously, if the creators of the movie had the task just to tell about the horrors of the camps, they would have never gotten to Stöcken! Comparing to anything else, the death camps where people were dying in gas chambers, where mass executions were organized for fun, where medical experiments on people were going, where people carved people just to look how they worked, where blood was being pumped out of children, where people ate each other just in order
to survive... Comparing to that total hell on Earth, Stöcken looks not so fucking horrible. Yes, it's horrible nonetheless! But you would always choose the lesser evil. The movie obviously manipulates the audience! Well, it tries to, at the very least. I saw some poke holes when the movie claimed to be about BMW but told about VARTA, Or when they tried to present Günther and Goebbels as friends, or when they tried to convince me that Günther earned his capital thanks to the World War II. When I saw all of that, I still doubted that was made intentionally.
I supposed that could be just because of the timing, that the authors had only one hour of runtime, or they were just too fucking lazy to tell the details. But after such a downright bullshit with concentration camps and those attempts to throw a pity party, I didn't really doubt that the movie was an ordered fudge. Yes, it's made fine enough for you not to destroy it with the first pages in the Wikipedia, but the movie just turns and twists everything it could and couldn't against Günther Quandt. And at that moment, I realized that I wouldn't
calm down till I found the answer to the question of why that movie appeared. Who ordered that whole thing? Why did they need that? That's why, let's get a breath for a moment and move on. Thankfully, we can breathe some fresh air without any problem. Well, now? Come on. Breathe in. Breathe out. You okay? May I go on? Great. Slave labor! When some great war is afoot, using the labor of war prisoners is a widespread routine. Everyone does it, always. The logic is simple, look here. When the liberation war is on, when some territory or
some country is being freed from a horrible regime or some conquered territory is being liberated, those liberators don't have to do anything with it. They've come, the population is jubilating, everyone is greeting them, everyone's happy. And for the army, the happy population means initially that no one would shoot them in the back. No one would try any diversions, partisans wouldn't appear, no one would explode supply lines, and so on. Everyone are happy, they've been waiting for you, and no one would complot anything against you. But when you're a conqueror, and no one is happy to
see you, That's a whole different story. As soon as you look away for a moment, they would attack you immediately. That's why every human being is dangerous for you. The only thing you could do for security is to capture everyone. To put them behind the fence, to set guards, and to watch them closely. Or to set some number of soldiers across the town so that they could watch who goes where, who does what, all of that. But when you have too many prisoners from the conquered lands, it begins to create problems. Because you need to
feed those people, to do something with them, to control them, to send some soldiers and military vehicles for them - and you have your war going! You need all of that at the front, not to control the people in the South Shit Village. But you can't send your hostile prisoners to the front. They would surrender to the enemy at once, and they would fight against you later. Also, they'd tell the enemy a bunch of intel. And so, in order to make some use of captured people, you round them up and send them to work at
your factories. They would work out their food at any rate, and you could make use of them. It was always like that, and it will be. In all great wars, from the Roman Empire to the modern world. The same thing will be in the future. The conquered territory either greets you happily and becomes the full-fledged part of your empire, or you capture those people and turn into slaves - For manufactures, stone-pits, coal mines, and blah blah blah. And at Günther Quandt's manufactures, war prisoners worked during that war, that's a fact. How is it displayed in
the movie? Like, oooh, that horrible man did those terrible crimes and went unpunished! They describe it so you could think as if only Günther did something like that. But in the context of logic, blaming anyone for using slave labor in Nazi Germany is very, very stupid. Here's why. Here's a little citation so that you got the context. Hugo Boss. No one wanted that company that was standing at the edge of bankruptsy in the 1930s. But it won the state order for design and making of all the uniforms for the Nazi party members. During the war,
almost the whole staff consisted of captive women from the whole Europe. Captive women had to go somewhere, right? Yes. They worked at Hugo Boss! By the way, they were being constantly raped. Those security guards had to brighten up their boring days, so they had their fun. Does the Hugo Boss family keep quiet about it? Yes, they do. Is there a movie "The Silence of Boss"? I would like to watch it, but there's no chance yet. IG Farben and Bayer. Chemical and pharmaceutical German giants. It was not enough to use war prisoners, they felt free to
experiment on them. Remeber, I told you about chemical weapon trials in death camps? When they poured chemicals on people and watched how quickly they died. The most effective chemical weapon was called Zyklon B. It was invented and produced by Farben and Bayer. Could you guess the main ordering customer? Auschwitz, right? I.e., Bayer and Farben had war prisoners producing chemicals so that those chemicals could kill other war prisoners. And corporations earned money off it, imagine those horrors, yes! Chemicals aren't free, they cost money. Is there "The Silence of Bayer"? Now, wait for it... There is "The
Silence of Bayer"! Mercedes-Benz. 74,000 war prisoners worked at those factories. Those factories produced military vehicles and cars for the top executives of the country. 74,000 war prisoners is really some fucking number! But we have 15,000 people in Stöcken camp! Fuck that Mercedes-Benz, come with us, let's go look there. Zero fucks given! Siemens, AEG, Bosch, the giant Krupp corporation, Messerschmitt... You can take any German company and see war prisoners in its history. Any of it! Even fucking BMW that already worked at that time and produced military hardware! Even that company had 50,000 war prisoners at work!
But during the war, BMW didn't belong to Günther Quandt yet, so hush! We won't talk about BMW in any case. Let's better look at Stöcken, there's VARTA, there are batteries, that fucking Günther! Fucking horrible! By 1944, one third of all workers in Germany were prisoners of war. Every third workman in the country was a slave. And if you, an author of a documentary, hold the using of slave labor at manufacture as an argument for a meda attack, then the authors of "The Silence of the Quandts" had to make a movie about all the industry in
Germany, and about all the scientific society, 'cause all the design bureaus and laboratories also had war prisoners working there. In agriculture - harvest in the fields, mowing grass down was done by war prisoners. War prisoners built their roads. War prisoners also healed their people. Once again! One third of all working power of the country were captive citizen of other countries. Whoever you were, whatever you did, if you had any company or organization in Nazi Germany, you had war prisoners working for you. Without options and terms. Slaves were everywhere. Did the companies earn off them? Yes,
of course! Everyone earned! Even that fucking Bayer earned by doing chemicals to kill war prisoners by the hands of the very same war prisoners! But do we have "The Silence of Bayer", "The Silence of Mercedes", "The Silence of the Flicks", "The Silence of the Krupps", "The Silence of Porsche", "The Silence" of anyone else!? No! Only "The Silence of the Quandts". At that moment, I was sitting, head on my hands, And thinking, "Fucking Günther! What did you do that everyone decided to spit on you? They could attack anyone!" Comparing to those horrors in the Third Reich
during the World War II, Günther seemed to be fucking harmless. Yes, people at Quandt's worked with batteries without necessary protection. But do you think people on the next iron and steel plant were happy to work with melted metals? Comparing to others, his death-rates weren't so very high. The rate of war prisoners, too. I don't know, he could have hit someone with a stick, for the sake of decency! Comparing to Bayer, it's inappropriate to call Günther a criminal! Again! I don't give a fucking shit about Günther, Goebbels, Hitler and anyone else in this video! I'm just
searching for logic! And if we compare the numbers, Günther looks like the most harmless person contrasted with everything that was happening. But it was Quandt who was attacked. After such a long period of time. Someone took the trouble and found all the archives, found all the people, twisted all the facts to show Günther as a real demon who built his empire on human bones, as if his descendants didn't care about it reaping laurels in BMW. But if we assume that logic, do you know what has been built on bones? The whole fucking German economy! Do
we have to take the country, rip it out of the earth and throw it away to space? Anyway, even those war crimes "The Silence of the Quandts" presses on so much didn't give me the answer why that movie exists, and why it's made about Quandts and in that spirit. But that mismatch with BMW gave me hope. Why is it that the movie doesn't speak about slaves at the BMW factories? It doesn't speak about BMW during the war, at all. Although, the first sequence of the movie is like, "The BMW corporation belongs to the Quandts, they
have billions of millions, who do they think they are!?" And as the authors of the movie don't speak about how that corporation got to Quandt's hands, And as we know that every phrase in that movie reeks of manipulations a bit, it's obvious that it have something interesting for us. It's high time to found out how it had become so that BMW came into the hands of the Quandts. Chapter V. How Do You Come Under Control BMW, a.k.a. Bayerische Motoren Werke appeared in 1913. 1913 was the year of the World War I, and initially, the factory
was created to produce aircraft engines for the German army. But after Germany was defeated, all the country was prohibited to produce any military hardware. And after the war, BMW began to produce farming machinery, Train brakes, spoons, pots, all that crap. And if we look at some BMW models, we could notice that they still produce pots nowadays. By the way, the fun fact. BMW is the acronym of Bayerische Motoren Werke, it translates as the Bayern Engine Plant. So, in English, BMW is BEP. I grant you with this observation. You could tell all the BMW people that
they have BEP. At the moment when the German economy came to senses after the war, BMW bought a car making plant and a motorcycle producing plant, and it began to produce its own cars and two-wheel vehicles. They launched one model, another model. They made some quantity of this crap, some quantity of that crap. But it doesn't really matter. Their real growth and expanse began exactly since 1933, at the moment when Hitler came to power. One of the first Hitler's decision was to make his army from scratch. Limitations didn't matter, he didn't give a shit on
anyone's thoughts - he wanted an army. And the most important division in the future Nazi army had to be the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe was the German airforce. Fighter, bombers, all that shit. And Audi RS6. Because Audi RS6 is a fucking rocket! All the strategy of the future war was built upon the serious advantage of Germany in the air. They flew fast, attack suddenly, and they destroyed all defenses really quickly. It was the Luftwaffe that first attacked the Soviet Union and other countries. And it happened, just accidentally, that BMW was chosen to be the main producer
of the military hardware and the main supplier of the Luftwaffe. And so, the development of the company was the national task. No expenses were spared. For the money of the country, they build many plants, factories, laboratories, testing ranges and so on. All the production sites were scattered across the country. But two main production centers were near Berlin and Munich. Berlin and Munich lie in different parts of the country. One is here, another is there. Remember that fact, we'll need it later. So, during the World War II, BMW was... Tick off your fingers! The biggest supplier
of engines for the Luftwaffe; the biggest supplier of rocket engines; manufacturer of planes for the Luftwaffe, manufacturer of trucks for the military, manufacturer of rocket ammunition, manufacturer of jet and jet engines, and a giant research and development center that was dealing with new types of hardware, weaponry, everything. Thanks to the war and war times, the group of small factories that produced pots, break trains, motorcycles and all of that turned to be a giant monster manufacturing military hardware for the Wehrmacht and for the Luftwaffe. The most part of which was built for the state money. And
honestly, I really like the fact that BMW was the main supplier of the Luftwaffe. I mean, in Russian, Luft means gap, and it's only logical. And Waffe... well, I think you'll handle it yourselves. But! The war was coming to an end. As we know, the conquest of Germany happened from two sides. The Allies from the west - armies of Britain, France and the USA. And our Soviet troops came from the east. All of us know that our army entered Berlin. But technically, we invaded deep into the country and occupied the eastern part of Germany. And
the Allied forces controlled all the west of it. Here was the end of war, negotiations and all of that! And concurrently, a bunch of soldiers was sitting across all Germany. It made sense that no one intended to go away. It's really hard to imagine that we could, like, "Okay, guys, you know, we helped you, we defeated everyone! Now, we're going to gather our army and go away. We don't need anything, we're giving you this country to plunder. Auf Wiedersehn, mein Lieben!" As well as the Allied forces also didn't want to leave the western part of
the country 'cause all the occupied territories had plants, manufactures, professional personnel, scientists, mineral assets and a lot of other useful things for any country. And no one wanted to give anything for free. Here we had two armies standing and looking at each other. Usually, such staring doesn't do any good, and in order to avoid massacre, they decided to divide the country in two. All the eastern part where the Soviet troops were standing now belonged to the Soviet Union, and its name was now GDR - the German Democratic Republic, or Eastern Germany. And the western part
where the Allied forces ran the show was called FRG. The Federative Republic of Germany, a.k.a. Western Germany. The special fun fact was that Berlin is situated right in the middle of the Eastern Germany. But it was also divided in two. One part of Berlin went for Western Germany, another part went to Eastern Germany. Although, I remind you, Berlin is right in the middle of Eastern Germany and had to belong to us. But it's the capital. Let's divide this city somehow, too... That was the reason of making the world famous Berlin Wall in that city. In
order to fence on part of influence from another. They needed to divide the capital because there was a lot of interesting stuff there. No one wanted to give it to the Soviet Union just like that. Whatever you say, Berlin is the capital. There are offices of all manufactures there, banks, government facilities, manufactures, all of that shit. A huge lot of money and resources. And with that angle, we're going to return to BMW and Quandts. Remember, 10 minutes ago, I asked you to remember that the main production centers of BMW were in Munich and Berlin, in
different parts of the country. And BMW was on the fault line. Berlin was in Eastern Germany under the USSR, And Munich was in Western Germany under the control of the Allies. Plus, the main production assets were situated near Berlin, in the Brandenburg industrial area. That was the huge industrial area near Berlin with fucking colossal amount of plants. That industrial hub had not only BMW manufactures, but those almost of every large company. And all those plants were exploded by the Soviet Union. Sounds strange. Yes, but logic is simple. As the Cold War began right after the
World War II, and our army was really beaten after it, the Soviets feared that Western Germany and the Allies would attack Eastern Germany. The Allies would take away all those plants and would be making military hardware. Why do we need to present the enemy with production assets? Right, we don't. And so, boom - the problem was solved. No need to attack. So, you're BMW. A couple of years ago, you were the king of the German industry. And now almost all your production sites are either exploded or taken away by the Allies. You should know that
France, Britain and the USA weren't staying on the occupied territories for no reason. Everything that survived the bombings was twisted off, sawed-off and sent abroad. The smart term is the expropriation of the effects of the defeated, and the simple term is "snatched". And so, even if BMW had something useful left, that wasn't helping 'cause everything useful was being severed and gone in an unknown direction. Plus, all your scientists also were taken away from your labs 'cause they were needed elsewhere. And in the end, your industrial empire Reduced to several local plants, an office building with
paperwork and a couple of empty labs. That's it! And everything you could make before as a company are weapons and military hardware. And now you can't manufacture neither of this, You have nowhere and no one to do it. What would you do? That's right. Fuck knows what to do. And BMW did nothing. Literally. The rest of the executives couldn't agree between each other, they were just arguing from dawn till dusk. Parallel with that, Günther Quandt was in prison. The movie tells us that he went unpunished, and so he was in prison without any punishment. Obviously,
after Germany was defeated, Absolutely all people who were somehow connected with the Nazi regime were captured and sent to camps and prisons. While all the rest were thinking what to do with them. Günther was sitting in some camp and writing memoirs about what fierce opponent of the regime he was, how much he hated Hitler, and blah blah blah. Of course, everything he wrote should be decimalized 'cause a prisoner would write anything in order to be pardoned. And all of that nonsense should be turned a deaf ear to. What's important, is one quote out of his
diary. "As for facilities and companies I spent my best years on, they lost significant assets and production capacities which cannot go unnoticed. I admit that those losses are nothing compared to the common disaster that affected the German nation. However, I am hurt. Each lost factory, each machine-tool were invested with my thoughts, plans and hopes..." And that's true. When the country was halved, Günther lost at least the half of his empire. Or rather, even more. He lost his accounts in Berlin banks, all his factories near Berlin and in all Eastern Germany. Even those old cloth factories
started by his father where navy uniforms were sewn long time ago, even they were left in Eastern Germany. Of course, some part of the capital was saved. But it's impossible to say how much Günther saved or how much he lost because it was physically impossible to do. Your country is divided into four parts, four occupation zones - Soviet, American, French and British. And no one shares anything, no one give any information for free. Everyone entered the hamster mode to take away as much as possible from their piece of land. And everything else was of no
interest to anyone. That's why it's impossible to find precise data about how much Günther Quandt lost or saved, it doesn't matter. There are no such papers. But he definitely lost a half or even more, just based upon him having so many offices, manufactures and bank accounts in Berlin. Well, you wouldn't count on losing the capital of your country, under any circumstances. Yes, they could come, they could conquer. But at some point, they'd give it back because the country had to exist somehow. And the fact that Berlin and all the eastern part of Germany would be
a separate and hostile country - no one could have ever imagined that. That's why Günther never removed his assets anywhere from the capital during the war. As well as he didn't remove his money from the country. Basically, after the war, all he had remained was VARTA - that manufacture that produced batteries - or rather, a half of that company because the main office and one factory were in Berlin. Also, he had his potash mines, Wintershall, but also only a half of them because that deposit was right in the middle between Western and Eastern Germany. Also,
Quandt had a significant stock of Daimler shares. The one and the other and the third, Quandt had them before the World War II. He bought them after the World War I. And so, in this moment, the movie speaks the shit, too, like, after the World War II, he supposedly had assets... No. By the way, the authors could easily show in the movie Daimler manufactures with war prisoners. Quandt did have some significant share of its stocks, and war prisoners working at Daimler were 74,000. But why the heck would they show that? You start showing some numbers,
people begin to think - and we don't need this shit in the movie. Why, they decided to start thinking! Look at the grandpa walking around the bush and dont show off, my dear viewer! Anyway, Quandt was in prison, awaiting his verdict. And the movie says that Quandt wasn't really punished, but that's a lie. Because Quandt was found guilty And was locked up for one and a half year. But he served them while the investigation was in process. And beside his imprisonment, he got a few limitations, like, he couldn't run business or be in any boards,
but his lawyers restored it some time later. It may seem and one and a half year is some bullshit, and I agree with you. But how was it organized? There was some huge legal process about judgment over all the Nazis, great and small. It went down in history as the Nuremberg trials. It was held not over the high ranks of the party and all the war generals, but all people who could have been connected with Nazis. If we go to the Google, It would seem they judged only war generals and the highest ranks of the
party, but that's not true. They judged everyone they could lay their hands upon. Even ordinary citizens. Of course, it didn't look like some court-martial. There were simpler procedures with common people. But somehow or other, everyone passed through denazification. By the way, after all those trials, all the big shots and almost all generals were executed. Or rather, they executed all of those who didn't kill themselves. We all heard that Hitler shot himself in his bunker at the end of the war, right? Yes, we did. But he was not alone in it. Some higher-ups of the party
also followed him, as well as Goebbels, Magda and six of their children. Do you remember our gruesome-twosome? While the regime still existed, Magda bore six more children. "And if I gave birth to you..." First, Magda and Goebbels gave amps with poison to their children, and then, they poisoned themselves. All that because the parents decided that their chidlren shouldn't live in the world without their glorious leader. That's no joke. The quote out of Magda's dying letter. "Our beautiful idea is dead. And with it, all the most beautiful, amazing, noble and good that I have known in
life. The world after our Führer and national-socialism isn't worth living in it anymore And that is why I kept my children with me. They would suffer in life that will be after us, and the good God will understand why I save them from all of this with my own hands." I'm even scared to imagine what was in the heads of those people to do something like this. But we get back to the after-war trials. Although I feel I need to entertain you with a joke after such sad information. Do you know the difference between Hitler
before and after suicide? The size of the hole. A second of waiting... We've lived through this joke. Let's move on. Beside the court-martial over all the generals and party leaders, there were separate trials over industrialists. The Nuremberg trials were 12 different trials, and 9 of them were held over different groups of industrialists. 'Cause dividing money of industrialists was much more interesting than hanging war criminals, yeah! Of course, Günther was on the wrong side of the bar. He was not alone in there. If just one person worked for you, and you were caught in the act,
then - welcome to trials and jail. The jury studied carefully the contribution of every industrialist to the war, who did some brutal stuff, who was Hitler's vocal supporter, and blah blah blah. And of course, if they could get down to a person somehow, the jury would gladly did it. But Günther's laywers managed to prove the following things: First, Günther joined the party only because Goebbels threatened to take his child away. Do you remember that Goebbels and Magda had Günther's son at their disposal, and they used him in propaganda? Nod if you do. Great. And they
threatened to take away that boy from Günther if he didn't join the party. And his lawyers proved that. With their letters, quotes from Goebbels' diaries, all of that. Plus, there was a ton of witness statements that Günther and Goebbels hated each other. Second, Günther didn't earn his fortune off prisoners of war. That was the easiest thing to prove - here you have papers about owning the companies before the World War II, you can study them, it's all in there. Third. Günther had support of many Jews Whom helped leave the country when the shit hit the
fan. At the time when Nazis declared hunt for Jews, all people who worked as Günther's engineers, managers and so on, all of them got train tickets from him, as well as bonuses so that they could have some money for a start. All of that happened before the war, 1933-1939. And the lawyers found several people who said in court that Günther really helped them. Anyway, after all the trials, the jury decided that one and a half year Günther had spent in jail during the process could have been his punishment, and he could go wherever he pleased.
It may seem that the jury was a bit indulgent for industrialists But it wasn't. For example, Alfried Krupp, the owner of the Krupp company that mined coal, made steel, made tanks. That man went to jail for 12 years with deprivation of all the property, and his whole company had to be liquidated. That's because Krupp was Hitler's vocal supporter. And the very same chemicals for breakfast for war prisoners were made at his plants. Friedrich Flick, the richest man in Germany with such a list of companies, was locked up for 7 years, and stripped of a half
of his companies. Also because that dude was happy with Nazis, sent them money, adored Hitler, and so on. The simple thought. If there was evdence that you supported the regime and the jury found the reason to lock you up, they were happy to lock you up and take away your company. You could think, of course, that Günther could have bought himself out, but I hardly believe that because with that option, Flick, Krupp and another dozen of industrialists would have done that. They had more money and influence than Günther. Although Quandt was an affluent industrialist, he
was not the uppermost. And then, however strange it was, we have some boring and unchanging stuff. I could tell you about the next 50 years with all the detials and all the insights, but that's really the case when you take your bulletpoints and quickly explain everything. Give me 10 minutes, and you will get everything. Also, I can survive 10 minutes only with bulletpoints. When Günther Quandt was out from jail, in 1946, he was 65 years old. So much for a young start-upper. Of course, he realized that. And his main task was what people call "putting
affairs in order". He needed to make his property over to his heirs in a way so that they wouldn't fight among themselves. Thankfully, there were little challengers. Günther had two sons. We know one of them - Harald Quandt, that boy from Goebbels' social ad. At the beginning of the war, he was already grown-up, 20 years old. And he fought throughout the whole war. Not least because that was a thing for propaganda. Like, he's the worthy son of his fatherland, he fights, attaboy! By the way, the fact that Harald was at the front was the reason
he wasn't killed among other Magda's children in Hitler's bunker. And Magda's dying letter I quoted was addressed to Harald, the only Magda's son who made it out alive. Harald came through the war, took part in many real fights, and he met the end of the war in capture. But he got out of there quickly. Not because Quandt got him off with money, but because there was no evidence of his participation in war crimes. He didn't execute anyone in camps, he didn't pour chemicals on anyone, he just fought at the front with weapons in his hands.
Back then, it didn't deemed as a war crime. Günther's second son was Herbert Quandt. Since birth, it was a very weak and sick child with serious problems with eyesight. That's why he wasn't enlisted. And problems with his eyes were real, he wore those glasses throughout his whole life, and when he was 50, he was almost blind. But despite his poor health, he was really keen-witted. And Günther couched him saying that at some point, he would take the helm of all big companies of the Quandts. Since he was 14, his father put him to basic positions
in companies, like some help for production lines, for his accountants, for financial people, for buyers - just everywhere so that the kid knew his father's companies back to front. And by the World War II, Herbert Quandt was Günther's right hand and ruled entire factories. And it was obivous that Günther needed to share his companies between those two guys. But one of them was an experienced manager, and the other one just came back from war. So the second one needed education, like, "Here are companies, they need to be ruled", all of that. And then, all business
had to be shared so that military man got very stable and simple companies. Like, don't touch them, and everything's gonna be great! And the manager could get all the difficult companies so that he had to use his brains. Günther did exactly like that. I must say, the relationship between two brothers was really great. Both of them knew that one was smart, another was reliable. And in any case, both of them had to do something With that giant coproration after the death of their father. That's why there was no sense in fighting among themselves, it was
better to work together. Günther Quandt died 30 December 1954, nine years after the end of the war. After the jail, he hardly carried on business, and his son Herbert ruled everywhere. What was the business family doing at that time? The very same thing as always. They were just developing their facilities and kept watching how the wind blew so that they could buy something new in the right time. And at some point, they smelled something from BMW. Here's what we have. It was around 1960. Günther Quandt had been hanging out with God for 6 years, and
his sons ran his business. And BMW was at the edge of an abyss in 1960. After the war, there was no profitable year for them, just losses. They produced some fucking shit, fit for nothing. By that time, they already started manufacturing some cars, but the problem was, those were "some" cars exactly: awry, ugly, bad quality, ineffective assembly line, blah blah blah. Well, typical BMW! When the state poured down money on them, they managed to work properly, and when they supported themselves, everything went sideways. The problem was, the company was ruled by a huge amount of
people. Historically, the BMW shares belonged to a really huge amount of people in Bayern, And they never could agree among themselves. And they never wanted to let someone from the street to remake everything as he wanted. Like, BMW is our pride of Bayern, we're sitting here in shit and don't want to listen to anyone! Just imagine: a crowd of guys, yelling at each other, promising to fuck each other up; they can't make any proper decision, and that lasts 15 years! Not eight, even! Imagine, huh? That was the BMW shareholders' council. The company was on the
edge: it had fucking huge debts; no one knew how they could solve that situation; and everything the company produced was shit. Certified and for money! Little amounts, failed deadlines, everything failed and was more expensive. Typical BMW. Acquisition was the only way. So that somebody came, bought everything up, invested a shit ton of cash, like, put them out of his pocket, and was like, "Let's remake everything! And hope that it would work someday." That was the smell Herbert Quandt caught. He had some small stock of BMW shares, he had been watching the company and all of
their fights inside, but he was a very small shareholder and didn't make any decisions. But he saw an opportunity to try and make a deal with shareholders, to buy the control stock, to invest a bunch of his money into some ugly thing, and to go to the management hell voluntarily to remake a huge company. And Herbert wasn't the only one who smelled it. Near the BMW course, there was Daimler circling who had some good money, and Chrysler, too, who had some very good money. And of course, you can be as rich as you want, but
you still can't compete with big corporations. That's why Herbert did the following: He came to one shareholders' meeting and was like, "Look here, guys, Here's our situation. We're fucked. The company must be sold in any case. Our losses consist 15 million marks a year, the company has giant debts, and without cash, soon we'll be dead. In a year, we won't be able to pay our workers and suppliers, and we will implode. And at that moment, someone will come and buy us for a whole fucking dollar. And we'll be fooling around. We have to do something.
The sooner, the better. Our options: either we're bought by Daimler - or Chrysler, it doesn't matter - and then, BMW will become another brand in their lines, and won't do anything great. Or I, Herbert Quandt, can personally risk my capital and invest my money into the company; and in such case, BMW will remain independent. I believe in it, and I want to make BMW the greatest car maker in the world. But you do know, if I invest a bazillion of my money, then I will take 51% shares for myself, and I will rule this company
as I see fit. Either you will trust me, And then, maybe, we will earn some money one day - many, many years later, definitely not soon; or you will be merged; and it will go as it goes. He spent about a year pushing this idea through the board. But Herbert still made it. With his personal financial assurance and his personal 40 million marks, he managed to take 51% of the company. I must say, from the financial point of view, he was a lunatic. Here's what Herbert wrote in his diary, I quote, "That meant for me
that in 1960, I can make the hardest decision in my life that respected my family and me directly 'cause we had to take all the risks upon ourselves. I stood at the parting in some way Because I had either to suffer terrible loss by resigning my share and losing BMW, or to take all responsibilities and risks." And here's the next quote at once, "By that decision, I definitely drew my happiness near." Buying BMW was definitely the riskiest decision in the Quandts history. 'Cause at that point, involving with BMW meant risking the whole family legacy. Everything
their grandfather built, their father built, Herbert Quandt built by running the company for 15 years - all of that could have been drawn to hell by BMW. The simple and dry financial logic forbids to do that in any circumstances. But Herbert loved BMW very much, honestly - I don't know why. Back then, BMW produced models 503 and 507, and several motorcycles. But fuck, those were just cars and just motorcycles. The cars of their competitors were much better. I didn't find any straight answer in the books. In all his diaries, Herbert wrote, "Well, I just love
it! I've always dreamt of making BMW the greatest brand, and I still do. I've always loved their cars, and I will. I risked my fortune, and I didn't regret it!" Without getting into unnecessary specifics, here are some numbers for you. 1945-1960, the company suffered losses and creaked at the seams. In 1958, their losses were about 12 million marks, in 1959 - 15 million marks. In 1960, Herbert and his brother clamed the company, And 3 years later, only 3 years, in 1963, the company showed profit. And in the late 1960s, in 1968-1969, the company produced 145,000
cars a year. For comparison, before Quandt, in 1960, the volume of sales was literally just a couple thousands a year. Within less than 10 years, brothers managed to make the production volume 50 times as much. The whole after-war Germany, the country fully lying in ruins, didn't have any other company that was developing by such pace as BMW. The only companies that were developing faster were foreign brands. When the US or Great Britain invested a shit-ton of money and helped in any way possible. And BMW was local, homebred, because it existed on its own money and
those investments Herbert made once upon a time. And compared to those capitals that flowed to the country after the war, several dozens of Quandt's millions were just hilarious. But Herbert Quandt practically lived in the company. He changed people, changed the assembly line, organized storages and contractors, put financial balance in order - and all of that by himself. Or rather, with his assistants because by that time, Herbert was practically blind. He came for launches of new models and felt them with his hands because he couldn't see them. He could ride them only as passenger. But it
didn't really stop him. If he had a task to make BMW the greatest - he'd do it. He was brought up that way. That man shouldered BMW and dragged it out of the void to be a leader of the world industry. Yes, thanks to his father, he had money to buy the company. But Herbert bought a money-loser with debts that produced some too expensive shit. Taking a half-dead industrial corpse and turning it to a successful company, equal to the world car giants, and also providing competition to the American companies that had always been feeling well,
it's worth a lot. There are very few examples of it in the car history. And Herbert was actually talented as a manager. And his father, Günther Quandt, managed to raise the brilliant executive. I could heap endless praises on Herbert Quandt who would turn BMW from fool to cool within the next 12 years. I can tell on and on about that man having launched the 1500 model, one of the significant European cars. I can tell you how the world, thanks to Herbert Quandt, saw the fifth BMW series, and the third one, and later on - the
seventh BMW series. I can tell you a long story about the historical revolution those cars made in the car world, and also, I can tell you how the company that made all theмworld fall in love with it bloomed under the rule of that man. And what magnificent cars BMW made in the 1980s and 1990s. But you know what? That doesn't give an answer why "The Silence of Quandts" exists. There is no answer there. I scrutinized under microscope the life of Herbert Quandt And the BMW concern under his rule, There is nothing that could be done
my Mercedes, Volkswagen, or any other large car company. All of them made cars. All together. Even Opel, bless their heart. Everything is just the same. Mercedes made legendary cars, Audi made them, Volkswagen made them, BMW made them. Everything is fucking the same. The only things that separate BMW are two things. The company had to be pulled out of a huge financial abyss. The second is that fucking "The Silence of the Quandts". Only BMW has that shit. No other German car company had the fucking honor to be covered in mud for all the world to see.
And after all that long crap about Nazis, about slave labor, about death camps, about Quandt business before the World War II, or before the World War I - after all that giant piece of shit, you could think we hit dead end. And that's really the case, there's no point in digging any deeper. But now I'm at least convinced that there's is good reason. If the authors of "The Silence of the Quandts" had the task to tell about horrors of the Nazism, or about horrors of camps, or about slave labor at industrial assets - they could
pick much more colorful examples than the Quandts and BMW. 100%! I bet your bottom dollar! But it was they who had it. And so, someone had the task to kill the Quandts in the media field, Regardless of what had really happened. If you watch this movie carefully, you see all of those poke holes, logic errors, attempts to bring you to tears, and you know that you're being fucked over. And you watch it with your ass, then we have all the things we have in all the web: "BMW is made by Nazis! That is that!" But
as soon as you hit the wall and don't know where to dig further, the first thing you need to do is stop. You have to stop digging further because it's pointless. What does have a point, is taking a step back and to look at the whole situation with all the new data. In our case, going back means asking one question to ourselves. Okay, let's suppose we can't understand why BMW was attacked. But let's see if there were any other precedents when someone wanted to demonize a German company for its Nazi past. Or the Quandts and
BMW were the first to attack in this case, too? I have an answer for this question. The Quandts and BMW are not the first here. Chapter VI. For the Sake of All That Is Holy In 1995, there was a trial against the Swiss banks, famous across the whole world. The World Jewish Congress - yes, there is such an organization - together with US lawyers and politicians filed a class action lawsuit against the Swiss banks. Like, they were still holding money of those Jews who suffered from the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the genocide of Jews by
Nazis in the World War II. That legal argument was really, really serious. Back then, every medium in the world wrote about it. Here's the point, in short. There is the World Jewish Congress. It's a gang that protects the rights of the Jews all over the world. Where are the headquarters of that organization? In New York, that's right. Why not in Israel? Well, it happened historically, it's just a pure coincidence. And so, the Congress gathered and decided that Switzerland was a bit ethically challenged during the World War II, and it should be punished. They wrote a
class action lawsuit, they found some group of victims, they gathered a group of lawyers who where ready to do it, They signed on American politicians, and all that crowd filed the suit to the American court in Brooklin. That's in New York, too. The charges were about the following: So, we had some number of Jews with their accounts in Swiss banks during the World War II. But during the Holocaust, those Jews were killed in the camps. Did their accounts remain? They did. And the families of the deceased supposedly couldn't access those accounts because they didn't have
death certificates on their hands. As you could guess, no one executed those papers in the camps. And the Swiss bank isn't a shack you could kick open the door and demand to access someone's account. Even if you're family. Well, to be fair, you couldn't do it in any bank, you couldn't come and make a bargain for you to get the account of your husband, wife, parents, anyone. If you have papers on your hands that someone died, or someone's the heir, then welcome. But you're a shit without a sheet. It's a perfectly normal position for any
bank. Especially for a Swiss one - they're known to the whole world because they fiercely protect their clients from any shit. But some guys came to the court and were like, "We know they're having billions of billions on their accounts, and you're not giving them up! Give them the fuck up!" And no one asked the question why no one remembered it for 50 years, but now they suddenly did; but that's okay. It's not important. What's important - banks could have easily told them to go to hell. Like, there's procedure. There's an agreement with the client
signed by them while creating their account, we carry out our obligation for that agreement and procedure. Go to hell, here's the door! But as the World Jewish Congress is an influential thing in the US, they signed some politicians, and those politicians began to pressure Switzerland, like, "If you won't corroborate, we'll close the US market for your production, put some sanctions, throw mud at you in all the media, shit like that." It fucking reminds me something but I can't remember what. "You're to blame for all the sins just because we decided that without a trial, and
if you won't fall on your knees before us, we'll put some sanctions." Something is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember where I've seen it. Some way or another, the scandal moved to the cabinet level. Even Bill Clinton participated. And the Swiss realized they didn't want to go down that shit. And they were, like, "Okay! Fine! Let us investigate. Send your financial people, we'll count it all together, we'll find all accounts and give money to the families." Also, funny fact: of all the evidence that the Swiss banks cover their accounts, the prosecution
had only one security guard who once worked in some bank, and he saw someone putting some documents into some shredder. "They definitely have hundreds and hundreds millions hidden! Yes, I saw it! I didn't see the exact paper but that obviously connected with the Jewish accounts!" Those proofs are reliable as a drunken wife of a sailor at the company party. And so, the American financial committee came, saw all the papers, and they stated that all the accounts of the Holocaust victims plus the accounts of the Nazis who stole the money from the Jews, all of that
together amounted to 95 million Swiss francs. About 37 million dollars at that time. Total bullshit and small change for the events of that scale. But those guys weren't satisfied, they were like, "You can add some deposit percentage to that sum. Those money were kept in that bank, right? Right. And after 50 years, this sum must have increased tenfold." And the total amount of payments had to be 379 million dollars." At that point, any normal financial expert begins to laugh because it's too much. In order for account to increase tenfold within 50 years, your banking rate
has to be 18% p.a. Have you seen such rates anywher? To deposit money for 50 years with 18% p.a. Well, I haven't. Any normal finanical expert, too, but whatever. The banks were ready to pay out such a sum as long as that solved the conflict, the exact percentage didn't matter. But as the committee concluded 379 million dollars had to be paid, The prosecutor was like, "Oh great! We proved everything! And so, give us please 1,5 billion dollars!" It's no joke. The prosecutor, i.e. the Jewish Congress and US lawyers, they sent their own committee, they found
379 million dollars, but they asked for 1,5 billion. But why? But because they're Nazis, can't you understand that!? In the end, they agreed for 1,250,000,000 dollars that banks had to pay but not for the Jewish victims but to the Israeli fund of banks that would handle it by itself, don't you worry! And they didn't win the trial. They agreed in the pre-trial order. Just by pressure and smear campaigns against Switzerland. And don't transfer the money to the victims but to our account, please. I must say, there's really a great holy war about Switzerland helping the
Nazis to launder money. And it's true, the country passed a lot of cash through. But if we take this specific case, the guys here filed the lawsuit, sent their own committee, they found only 380 million that were counted very sloppy, and in the end, they got 1,2 billions! No trial, no record. Sounds absurd but it's a fucking fact. Do I need to tell you how they spent those money? I think it's clear without explanations. But we'll get back to it, don't worry. At this point, we're interested in the lawyers who handled all of this. The
most famous guys from that group of lawyers were these two: Ed Fagan and Burt Neuborne. First, by the example of Burt Neuborne, let's find out why the lawyers need such cases. Of course, if you participate in such a big case and win it, you get great publicity, that makes sense. And also, you receive great payment. Afther the case with Swiss banks was closed, Burt invoiced his service for 4,100,000 dollars, just for his work. He counted that within 7 years they spent preparing the case, he spent 8,000 working hours. And for that 8,000 working hours, he
needed to get over 4 million dollars. If we just take and use calculator, You could guess that 8,000 working hourse are 1,000 working days by 8 hours a day. I.e. within 7 years, the man worked for 1,000 working days and got 4 million dollars, like 4,100,000. In 1998, those were 7,5 million dollars in modern money. 7,500 dollars for one working day. In modern money. I'm not mistaken, not 750 dollars but 7,500 a day. About half a million rubles a day. Over a span of 7 years. For half a million a day, I would also have
worried for the fates of poor victims of Swiss banks! Honestly, I would have cried my eyes out, I swear! And of course, I would've had the most righteous face ever. Well, we're fighting for the righteous course! But Fagan is more interesting. He realized the thing was fitting. You gather any complainants for any demand, sue any company for any fucking reason, call public attention, bring down a storm of shit and outraged people on the company, and they will pay - if only you fuck off. And the dude began to collect class action lawsuits at an industrial
scale. In 2002, he gathered a class action lawsuit from slavery victims and sued Lehman Brothers. It's a giant bank in the US that was ruined in 2008, you must have heard about it. Also, he sued tobacco companies and railroad companies, like, they enriched themselves off their slaves in XVII and XVIII centuries. And like, they should compensate their descendants. I'm not kidding, they really sued because some companies had used some fucking slaves 200 years ago. In 2004, he sued some mining companies because they supposedly had paid too little to some Black people in the early 1900s,
and like, they had to pay their heirs. In 2005, he sued the Thai government, like, there was that tsunami that destroyed half the country, and the government didn't warn anyone about and had to pay up. That sounds crazy, but just you wait. My favorite case in 2006 against the makers of the film "Borat" Because they offended Romanians in the movie. Yes, you've heard correctly. A class action lawsuit to the Borat movie for offending Romanians. I'm not joking, I wouldn't have invented that shit on my own. Like, you could find some Romanians, call them offended and
sue the fucking Borat! But Ed Fagan was much more quick-witted than me, because not every man would dare beat the shit out of that king in the castle. Anyway, that dude tried to sue throught his life. Somewhere, they sent him to hell, somewhere he managed to win, but that doesn't matter. Could you guess what ruined his career? The fact that victims he represented in court didn't get any payments and they sued him in their turn. That man just robbed companies of their money, and if he paid someone, it was very little and not always. He
simply embezzled the rest of the money, supposedly as payments for his services. The scheme is reliable like a Swiss watch! And in Fagan's case, this phrase is twice as funny because his career began with Swiss banks. Big grain jokes! Ah, don't bother. But we got away from the point. Of course, I could tell you for hours about the lawyers suing Borat, but we have to return to the German industry. The Swiss banks case was the pivot point for the giant shit tsunami crashig down on large Geman companies. It may sound a bit illogical 'cause Switzerland
and Germany are different countries. But those Swiss banks were sued because Nazis had run somewhere nearby with their Holocaust, and if we came at Nazis, so let us deal with them! And that meant all the German companies got into hot water. Well, beside some dorks like Ed Fagan, there were serious guys who got their thing. And here we went! As a rule, all big cases were lobbied by the Jewish Congres and the USA. It was just the same as with Swiss banks. They sued Mercedes, Vokswagen, Allianz, Deutsche Bank - everyone! There was always one task.
They had to smear the company, make a scandal, and make the pay to the funds that "helped the victims of the war". And of course, those funds were either in the USA or in Israel, and that's one and the same thing. The sums in every lawsuit amounted to billions of dollars, and basically, people tried to pump ready cash out of the country. Like, we'll figure out what to do with them later, don't you worry. The scale of trials was so great that the German government had to involve and to protect themselves. There were councils of
politicians and industrialists gathered to figure out what to do, and they think of the following: "Yes, Germany will plead guilty. Yes, long time ago, we did some shit and we're ready to answer for it. But we'll make our own huge fund inside our country, all big companies will invest in it, and we'll pay our victims directly, ourselves, to guarantee the money not to be stolen along the way." In 2000, they created the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future", some slush fund of the German industry, and, all in all, big companies put 10 billions of German marks
in it. It's about 5 million euro. All the big companies put their money there that were tainted that once upon a time, almost 60 years ago, they had worked with Nazis. That means, all the big companies put their money there. Also, all the companies began to order historical researches of their past by professional historians so that the company had clear documents about where, how and what they were doing in Nazi times. It sounds a bit strange. Why does the company need a historical research To show the public what they were doing in the Third Reich
period? All those researches were a protection mechanism. So that you were like, "Here, we did some shit, like that. But for this shit, we paid such kind of money. That's all! Leave us alone. Let us work in peace." Or else, if the company didn't have such documents, they could have been charged for Nazism for all eternity. You could invent every kind of bullshit in your sick head, go to the court, and the company had to explain all that shit away. Or to pay up. In order not to pay for the same thing for ever and
ever, the company needed some historical papers that could show what they had done and what they hadn't. So they could protect themselves in court. You could think that it's not fair to attack the funds created with a fair purpose, to help the victims, but if all the funds did exactly that, I wouldn't have any questions for them. Even despite the fact that was all happening 55 years after the end of the war. But there are two fascinating things. There is a book, "The Holocaust Industry", and also, a documentary, "Paying for Justice". The title speaks for
itself. There is no Russian translation for the movie, it's hard to find it online, but it shows the stories of the Jews that can't receive any money from any fund. In the 2010s, there was about 80,000 people in Israel Who were victims of the Holocaust and lived below the poverty line. Just because they coudln't gather necessary papers that they suffered from the Holocaust - fat fucking chance they'd get the money. I mean, those funds act exactly the same as the Swiss banks once did, but those were banks, evil and ugly, and these are funds! For
the sake of all that is holy! But we won't give you any money, we need it for ourselves! And the movie explains it in details - that sometimes, it's just impossible to get your payment you're supposedly owned by the law. The situation is so absurd that there is a flow of immigration from Israel back to Germany because there are human living conditions in Germany for the Holocaust victims. The healthcare is free, the housing is provided by the state, You receive your pension. And in Israel, you must prove first that you deserve the payment. And even
if you do that, you won't get any housing or healthcare, just a little sum of money. But that's okay 'cause we got our money! Indeed. The evil is punished. Right? And we shall keep your payments for now, it's way more secure. And the book "The Holocaust Industry" tells about the same story that all that nonsense with victims is just some political commotion and fight for money. And of course, no one thinks about people there. All of them, with righteous faces, just extort money, earn cash for their lawyers or political points for politicians, extort their influence,
and that is all. This book is translated in Russian, you can read if you want. Let's get back to the companies. The moment I found out that all the German companies began to order historical researches, I was like, "Wait! The history of the Quandts is also a historical research." We told you from the start that the history of the Quandts was written by Joachim Scholtyseck. After that scandal with the movie, he spent 3 years in the archives and wrote a giant work. Do you remember that? And I was like, "Wait, who paid for this?" That
was very easy to find. Both the historian himself and the family were saying that the commissioners of the research were the Quandts. They said, "Yes, we've ordered the research. But we're gonna be smart. We won't meddle with the work, we won't push the historian, let him write what he wants. Here are our family archives, your salary - go on." Truth be told, Scholtyseck didn't get the Quandts off the hook. He was like, "Yes, here's Günther, he worked there, he worked here, he did this, he didn't do that." When some previously unknown facts came out, he
showed them. Regardless of how good or bad they were. But obviously, that research was the same protection mechanism as by the rest of German companies. The problem was, all those examples with shit-talking about German companies don't fit together with "The Silence of the Quandts". Because it was definitely something different. First, a tub of shit was already poured down on the family, you couldn't undo it. Even if you prove that Günther Quandt was the holiest of the holy. Just because very few people will read some boring historical research. Compared to the bunch of people who would
watch the movie with beer and chips. Second, and that's the main thing, there was no trial. No one tried to sue the Quandts for compensations. If other German companies protected themselves from repeated lawsuits for compensations, then the Quandts, or BMW on its own, or even fucking VARTA never got sued. That attack included only public flogging of the heirs, and that was all. The funny irony: the whole movie revolves around Carl Soerensen The man who survived the VARTA camp, and he was like, "I wanted to receive compensation, but they sent me packing, it's injustice!" And after
the movie was out, the Quandts officially tried to connect with Carl, to set a meeting, to pay for his treatment, to do something! But he didn't reached out. He said he wasn't feeling well, and he didn't need all those compensation already. Like at all! Although, he kept on about them in hte movie. You could suppose that grandpa had everything paid already, just by some other people, but he couldn't get busted! That's why - "Oh, I'm feeling so bad! Leave me alone!" I believe that holy grandpa, yeah! And so, all that commotion with the movie is
some other play. If the question involved compensations or some payments to the victims, they would have demanded them, at least. Or they would have sued. Or I don't know, made the family organized some fund for their money, like, "For the sake of all good, against all the bad". But none of that happened. Where are we now, again? In the dead-end, right! But we're still here for a reason! All that thread with court trials over the German businesses gave me a new idea. Rather, a new question. Why do they score their own goals? The movie was
broadcast on the main German channel. It wasn't shown in the US or in Israel. It was shown in Germany. Their own people showed it to their own people. But why? When lawsuits for German companies were in rapid-fire delivery, the government began to protect them. Everyone was like, "Oh, oh, oh, what's happening!? Hey! Shoo, hands off our business, let us solve everything, make it cheaper, make it faster!" And that's a totally right position when the government protects its big companies, protects its working places, the economy of the country. It's just super right! If someone comes and
badmouthes your business, you have to fuck them up, to kick them in their ass, and to dirtymouth them back! And then, you go to your companies and pat then on the back so they would grow and advance. That's a right position, and the government did that in the early 2000s. And here we have a federal channel, the first channel in the country, films a documentary about the Nazi past of their own industrialists. And that is fucking strange. Can you imagine the First Channel to throw shit at Gasprom from head to toe? Or Sberbank, or Yandex.
Or all the federal channels to throw shit at the Russian businesses and their owners all day long? Can you imagine something like this? I can't. Not because of the censorship and "They're just hiding all the truth!" No one just fucking needs it. There's no logic in it, no benefit. You're just offending people all of a sudden, raising up enemies, and that's all. You won't have any profit. But still, the appearance of the movie makes sense. It always does, it has to be, nothing happens just like that. And if I don't see it, that's my problem.
And also, a small victory of those who did all that. That's why, in order to answer the question about attacks on their own, let's look at the movie one more time. Not at the movie itself! But at its specific 20 seconds. At its credits. Chapter VII. Behind the Scenes The length of the credits is 20 seconds. Usually, no one watches them. Who cares about who participated? We don't know those people at all. But if we proceed on the assumption that the movie is a manipulation, then someone created it. On top of that, there's an old
TV phrase, "Who has edits, holds the truth". For example, so you could get it, let's say such a phrase, "I've held a comprehensive study! And I'm totally convinced that Basil is a real attaboy." Sort of a clear sentence. But that's how it looked on shooting. I've held a comprehensive study! And I'm totally convinced that Basil is a rotten jackal, but Peter is a real attaboy! And as such, for the public, Basil's rotten part would depend only on how the film editor thinks about Basil. If the editor thinks that Basil is attaboy, he presses a copule
of buttons, and he's attaboy. And if the editor agrees that Basil is a real rotten jackal, then of course, he'll show the truth about Basil to the whole world. Anyway, if you edit some filmed material, you can twist your senses as you like, Depending on the aims you pursue. And just because I've spent many years in the editor room, I have a Pavlov's dog's reflex for ugly joins, bad cuts, cropped phrases and all of that. I can't watch movies in theaters because I'm always sitting and thinking, "How did you film that? What is your light?
Oh, the editor fucked up! Oh, dubbing is resynced!" - and so on. My option to watch the movie with average eyes is blocked just because my whole life is... this. And if you watch "The Silence of the Quandts" with my eyes, it's just fucking hysterical! Because there's a lot of ugly cuts, cropped phrases and logical holes! It's visible the most with phrases of the former BMW leader, he just begins to say something, and in the middle of the phra... That's why - let's look at the key figures in the credits. Directed by Eric Friedler. Written
by the same Eric Friedler plus Barbara Siebert. Project director - Thomas Schreiber. Consultant - Rüdiger Jungbluth. Let's begin with the consultant. Rüdiger Jungbluth is one of those historians who are right in frame. He wears funny glasses in the movie. Despite him being the historian consultant, his lines are pretty strange. First, they're all cut. Second, they're very vaguely stated, like, "They say nothing about it, they do nothing, they're getting uncomfortable, that's the matter of responsibility", and so on. He seems to be speaking throughout the movie, but we don't get any one finished thought of him. Or
rather, he definitely stated his thoughts okay. They were just shown ass about face. Five years before "The Silence of the Quandts", in 2002, Rudiger Jungbluth published his book, "Die Quandts". "The Quandts" in English. He anatomized all the history of the family, and based on the phrase in the movie that their investigation began in the early 2000s, the authors likely based themselves upon the info Rüdiger found. It makes sense: if the authors used his work as a basis, then he got his position as a consultant in the credits. I note that other historian who are also
in the frame, aren't in credits. The book "The Quandts" isn't really sharp-tongued, it just shows facts about the family. There are all the facts about their work with the Nazi regime, but there aren't any charges for them to take responsibility or punishment. And that doesn't add up to what they're saying in "The Silence of the Quandts". Not this moment and move on. The film director, Eric Friedler, is quite an interesting person. He's well and narrowly known among the German documentarians, and he's been working at the German TV since 1995. He filmed quite a lot of
documentaries, a bit Ren-TV style. Just before the Quandts, he filmed a movie about Kremlin; before that, there was a movie about Muslims; also, he filmed about the USA soldiers in Afghan and about starving children in some hicktowns. Something like that. The style of all his works is, like, "Oooh, global conspiracy!" But all of them didn't catch much attention. "The Quandts" is the most discussed Eric's work. Honestly, when I looked at the credits, I was a bit afraid, something like... "Fuck, what would I do if I'll find a Jewish trace there?" Well, there is a thing
that all the cases against the German industry were lobbied by the Jewish Congress, Just for money, and if I find that trace, I will look like something from Ren-TV myself. Like, oooh, global conspiracy, show all that's hidden, the Jews are to blame!.. The funniest thing is, before the German TV, Eric was volunteering in the USA in the Jewish newspaper, "Aufbau". That newspaper existed till 2004, and it was created by exiled Jews. Among all things, they were scolding Germany like hell. I'm not joking, it's written on the German Wikipedia, on Eric's page, in the first fucking
line of his biography. And I was sitting, like, "Well... It's okay, more or less! When I find some trase of the Freemasons, we will write some iron script! With such proofs, oh!" But let's get back to adequacy. The fact that Eric had worked in a Jewish paper isn't an argument for anything. It's highly possible that man was chosen as the director just because he knew his ways around the Jewish-German conflict. And he could have fulfilled the task the best, as his patrons wanted. As Jewish reptiloids wanted! Okay, that's enough. Let's get back to humans. The
script. Written by the same Eric and Barbara Siebert. If we Google Barbara Siebert, we'll find out that she's a costume designer for Bruce Willis in "Die Hard". And you're like, "What!? What the fuck is the "Die Hard" costume designer doing here!?" The former journalist from the Jewish rag And the "Die Hard" costume designer wrote the script about German Nazi industrialists! Fuck, I didn't even take anything! But if you look more carefully, you'd know she's a namesake. Yes, she's Barbara Siebert, too, but she's another person. Thank God she's a fucking namesake! I already thought, like, "Welcome
to Ren-TV to the end of your days!" Our Barbara Siebert has been working as a reporter on German television since 1995, with Eric. We found her Twitter and LinkedIn. And if we believe everything out there, then first, she worked on TV, then she was a member of some movement of environmental activists, and now, she's an officer for EU-Funding at the Evangelical-Lutheran Church! She's handling budgets allocated to churches. In short, she's answering for holy cash. This information is useless to us because there is no normal info about that person at all. We don't know her motivation
to have participated in this project. There is very little info about her reporter activity, and nothing about the movie. And it's pretty strange because they could write a few words about the writer of such a famous documentary. But well, God knows. I think God definitely knows everything about Barbara. Project director - Thomas Schreiber. The famous German journalist and, since 2007, the ARD programming director. The ARD is the first German TV-channel. Or rather, not just the first channel but a huge group of media companies in Germany. Several TV-channels, a bunch of radio stations, newspapers and so
on. And the channel "Das Erste" that broadcasted "The Silence of the Quandts" belongs to the ARD group. And programming director is responsible to choose what will get on air and what will not. And I was like, "Stop! The man got his position in 2007. And "The Silence of the Quandts" was born in 2007. And exact dates? When exactly he got into office, and when exactly the movie was shown?" Thomas got into office in May. And the movie was shown in September. You got it on air, Thomas. And then, you got some awards from the German
TV for that movie. Fun fact: all the journalist awards in Germany are given by the ARD. By the group of TV-channels. You get it on air yourself, you get awarded by your comrades, everyone is happy. Very convienent. But why, Thomas? Why did you get that on air? For whose benefit? It's a very logical composition. Let's say, you get the task, you find historians with some fitting material, you find the director who knows around the matter and could twist everything as you like. Then, you get all of that on air - because you have the post,
or they promised you that post if you fulfill the task. And it's working. But for what? Why should several journalists and historians attack the concern? And they obviously had some patronage. Just like that, no one will let you broadcast anything on the federal channel even if you have the post of programming director. The movie was surely agreed upon from the inside. Yet again, BMW is a large tax payer, and the Quandts are a rich and powerful family. It's dangerous to attack them. The benefit from the movie must be more than a PR-strike against the company.
At that moment, I had goosebumps. I realized I'm somewhere near. As if we had everything we needed except for some small piece of the puzzle. Throw in one fact, some situation, or change one piece of data, and everything would fit, I could feel it! Before that moment, I never saw such an exact use of one phrase that we have all heard since our childhood. I'll start saying it, and you will get it all. If you want to hide anything good, put it into plain sight. Who else is in the frame? Which of those people isn't
cut? Who's allowed to state their thoughts precisely? Who's not cropped out of context? Who's blaming the Quandts saying they've earned their fortune off slaves? Once again, I rewatched that fucking movie that was already burning my eyes, and I found the person who blamed the Quandts directly and said the following words: "The Quandt family, their riches, their social influence, the origin of everything they have today... They'd like to confuse everyone, to forget everything. In short, the Quandt family made their fortune off the forced labor of camp prisoners during the World War II. This is the foundation
of their fortune and of their current well-being, and of the social impact of their corporations, like BMW." This phrase, as we already know, is false by definition. It's said by this man. The Professor Herbert Schui that is credited as an economist. But that's also a lie. Because Herbert Schui is a politician from the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Yes, he has economic education. But first, he's a fucking politician. Chapter VIII. The Wrong Move There are two main parties in Germany that are constantly struggling for power. The first is the Social Democratic Party of Germany and
second is the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. So that you wouldn't be confused, I will use acronyms further. Social democrats are the SPD, and the Christian Democratic Union is the CDU. Also, we'll be constantly showing you those logos in German with the same letters, SPD and CDU. So you could remember easier, The SPD is the left-wing party, let's call them the Democrats. They fight for everything holy and righteous, world peace, things like that. In the modern party structure, they have a different wing of LGBTQ+. Those guys, too, yes. And the CDU is their exact opposite,
the right-wing conservatives, they're like, "Oooh, fuck, go to hell, don't touch and don't change anything! We're for traditions and normal society configuration. It is as it is, don't touch anything." Let's call those guys the Conservatives. Of course, it's more complicated in real life. There are more parties, and the power in Germany is not so simply organized. but we don't need to study it. We need to remember that there are assumed Democrats and assumed Conservatives who are constantly fighting for power among themselves. This model is enough for us to understand the point. Herbert Quandt who pulled
the company out of the abyss and turned it into a huge conglomerate, he voted for the Conservatives his whole lifle. Almost all big industrialists vote for the Conservatives because they know the ways of this world perfectly. You have to lead some group with 50 people just for half a year, and you will see this life completely differently. You will have clear beliefs that not all the people are the same, not all of them are allowed to decide, you can't align big systems for any minority - 'cause you could do good for a small group, and
all the others will suffer. That's the point of conservatism. There is some world configuration, it works - hands off it. And so, Herbert Quandt was for the Conservatives and was a good friend of this man. Joseph Strauss. And that guy was the head of the Conservatives in Germany. They were both friends in common life, and they looked one way about business issues. And when Joseph had the opportunity to fight tor the post of the Bayern prime minister, and then, for the post of the German chancellor, Herbert Quandt was happy to fund his friend's campaign. Of
course, he didn't become the chancellor. But he was the Bayern prime minister. And that was convenient if your company were BMW in Bayern, and your friend were the Bayern prime minister. Beside the fact that Herbert Quandt and the Bayern prime minister were pals, Quandt was constantly feeding the CDU with really pretty donations. If someone in our country sees that a big business pays to the party directly for it to protect the business, the yelling would soar to heaven. Corruption! Crooked power! And so on. But in Germany, it's a normal thing. The same lobbying as in
the USA, Great Britain and other countries. They find their pride in that, like, "We pay the party, they do as we ask, so who's great here? We're great! We agreed, secured our alliance with money, and everything will benefit our business now!" And shareholders are like... The Christian Democratic Union, a.k.a. our Conservatives, came to power in 1982 and ruled the country till 1998. The Quandts actively supported them all the way. They transferred money to party accounts, took part in campaigns, And supported them not only with their money but with money of their companies. BMW transferred cash
to the CDU all the Quandt funds gave it to them, and thanks to the support of the family, among all others, the Conservatives came to power in 1982. But in 1982, beside the fact that the CDU came to power, there was another important event happened. Herbert Quandt died. It was not suddenly. By that time, he was 71. And of course, he took care of giving his companies to his children beforehand. He had six children, but not all of them wanted that business. and the main assets went to Stefan Quandt and Susanne Quandt, a.k.a. Susanne Klatten
after she assumed her husband's name. They still control all the businesses of the Quandt family. As they learnt everything from their father, they kept running their companies as they've been taught. They paid donations, helped agitate workers on factories, stuff like that. That kept going for 16 years, 1982-1998, while the CDU was in power. But in 1998, the Democrates came to power, and those Democrates, the SPD, became the most important people. And our Conservatives, the CDU party, became opposition. Of course, the winners began changing the rules of the game for themselves. Inside the SPD, there is
a group of Jewish Social Democrates, and that whole nonsense with payments, accepting responsibilities of their past, and blah blah blah, that's the language of the SPD party. Of course, not the whole party is based upon that, they have many goals, senses, all of that. But guess who invented that idea with the fund where all the German industry put their money? Who ran that fund? Yeah, the SPD party. The Democratic party that governed the country. BMW and all facilities of the Quandts contributed, they just couldn't help it. If you have such a party line, and you're
a big business, you can't help it, you have to play along. But of course, by all means, the Quandts kept supporting their pals from the Conservative party. Despite the Democrats being in power, the Quandts kept feeding the CDU with money, the Conservative party. Throughout the 2000s, every year, BMW, other companies of the family, and Stefan and Susanne Quandt - All of them paid the CDU, and those were millions of euros. And then, it was 2005. New election to the Bundestag, the need to divide the power, and in the end, they were very close. The Conservatives
had the majority of seats in the government, but totally, they were outnumbered because the Democrates joined with some left-wing parties - like the Greens and some others. The joined team of the Democrates was bigger than of the Conservatives 'cause several parties joined in one team. Despite the Conservatives being the biggest party of them all, the Democrates had much more seats in the Bundestag 'cause the left-wing parties joined them. Although the Democrates had the casting vote, the majority in the Bundestag and all of that, their confrontation was really serious. It was obvious for all they had
to handle the Quandts. With their money, the conservative CDU could take the power. It was time to tell them who the boss were. The federal television in Germany is considered independent. Hardy har har! If we look at the financial sources, it's written everywhere that media is sustained by tax payers. and so, who's the power majority, they order the music. It's the government that gives money for the media. If you said something against the party line - no budget. If you speak right by the guide, here's your yearly budget, you can saw it. I highly recommend
to all concerned liberals that tell about free media To study the financial reports of those companies, and then, you can try to talk about freedom of every big medium. Herbert Schui, the same politician in the frame of "The Silence of the Quandts", that man was the member of the Bundestag at the moment, from the Democratic wing. It was in majority. You just try not to broadcast the movie with a Bundestag member as the headliner! They will punch you in the head! You are the fully independent medium with money of tax payers, so broadcast and don't
be puffed up! By the way, calling Herbert Schui economist is the same thing as if you put Dmitry Medvedev into the frame of some documentary and signed him as a lawyer. He's a lawyer nominally, right? Right. And Schui is an economist! And to the sound of orchestra, with fanfares and journalist awards, there was the magnificent movie "The Silence of the Quandts" starring Herbert Schui, although very inconspicuously. That movie exposed the industrialists who had once dared to work with the regime! But all while, that movie was filmed just because the Quandts weren't cooperative enough with the
current regime and were paying money to the opposition. And they paid for it. You just don't understand. That regime, bloody and cruel, is one thing. And our current regime is very different. Only one question remains. What did they achieve with that movie? Well, ultimately, they crapped on them - so what? You take a mic a couple of times, apologize for your behaviour - and that's it! But as we know that money is the key, let's look upon it. And look at the sponsors of the SPD, the left democratic party that stands for all the righteous
and fair. But we look at the sponsors after "The Silence" was on. Lo and behold! What do we see? The second one in the list is BMW! That hasn't paid one euro to the SPD for all its history. It's almost their main sponsor now. Who's the first? Oh, hi, Mercedes! I wonder, why there isn't any "Silence of Mercedes"? Why there isn't any "Silence of Allianz", the third sponsor of the party? Or of Porsche, the fourth sponsor of the party... That question tortured me. What changed after the movie, what was its result, why does it exist?
And here is the result. The answer is always money and influence. You can exclaim, "What hypocrisy!" No. It's politics. It's always been and will be like that. Once again, I'm saying my favorite phrase. This world is hanging on power, spheres of influence, leverages and money. All of that amounts to politics. Watching Rüdiger Jungbluth is a special pleasure. Do you remember the historian who's signed as consultant and wrote "The Quandts" book? He's a real historian. From the look of it, he didn't suspect what he was meddling with and what would be the end. Through his words,
I see him trying to say some sound ideas but he's been cut so that no sound position was left in his speech. From the look of it, after the movie was on, Rüdiger got fucking shocked because he was fucked over. Hiding behind his name, his book, his expertise, the authors distorted and twisted everything, and he was the main expert in that charade - that bulldozes Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten who are the grandchildren of Günther Quandt And run all the industrial empire. That's why poor Rüdiger published another book in 2015. It's translated into Russian. You
can read it with great delight. It's called "The Car Dynasty". Your delight is the fact that you know about the movie, and then, you open the book, and the first line, "The first thing you see when you look at Susanne Klatten are her light eyes". Poor Rüdiger who was sitting in the frame of "The Silence of the Quandts", who was the leading expert there, will lick Günther Quandt's grandchildren from head to toe throughout the whole book. Here's another couple of quotes. I have lots of them. "In private communication, Stefan Quandt is very courteous, Polite, prudent,
and approachable. Thanks to his sharp mind, advanced intuition and hard self-discipline, Stefan Quandt has been running his giant empire for 20 years already." And of course, in this book, Rüdiger Jungbluth tells about the movie that fell on the heads of the heirs for no reason. But he didn't write another word about him being in the frame in the very same movie. And after I had written this script, I re-read this book just for my evil pleasure to look how Rüdiger was just squirming in his own text, trying to go around all the issues with the
movie to lick up the Quandts even more. And I saw the line I never noticed the first two times. "70 years later, the NDR TV-channel..." It's the name of "Das Erste", the first channel, whatever. "...represented the riches of the family as the result of Günther Quandt's activity in the Nazi times. The key statements were given by the former Bundestag member, Herbert Schui. While speaking up his accusation, Schui missed, however, one detail. Günther Quandt was the leading German industrialist in times of the Weimar Republic." It's around the World War I. "And so, there is no doubt
that the entrepreneur had belonged to the German economic elite before the Nazis came to power. The conglomerate we know as BMW today, is the result of several decades of hard work. No all the statements are correct in the movie but this cannot be changed." Pure bliss! Naturally, till I revealed Schui myself, finding out that "The Silence of the Quandts" was sheer political thing about money, I couldn't have noticed this one mention of the main ordering customer, Herbert Schui. Perhaps, everything was played so good that even Rüdiger Jungbluth didn't realize what shit he was involved with.
Whether you want it or not, all the things that are appointed as good and evil at some point of time, are appointed at some profit. As soon as anyone gets some label, this label is followed by the biased attitude. And all of that can be controlled if you're smart enough, and you can gain profit off it that is measured by made decisions, concluded contracts and money. Good old unshakable money. Is Wernher von Braun we began our story with a bad person or a good person? The answer is none. The moment he was useful to the
Nazi regime and built weapons for them, he was good. For the Nazis, of course. For the Allied forces his missiles fell down upon, he was bad 'cause there's little profit in the missile that falls on you. But as soon as there was a chance to gain benefit off Wernher von Braun and make him develop weaponry and space program for the USA, they picked him up, shook him off, washed the dirt off him and made him good. Because he was useful. Is Rüdiger Jungbluth a bad person who was played for a sucker and had to write
a book to explain away his role in the movie? He is none. It just happened that he was caught between two fires without noticing it. Is Günther Quandt good or bad? Again, the answer is none. While he worked for Nazis, he was good despite they hated each other. Because he was useful. Very useful. And when they needed to restore manufactures, restore the German economy, and pull the country out of ruins, he was also appointed as good. But when a half of century later, his grandchildren became gainless because they sponsored the opposition, and it could gain
some power on the quiet, they put everyone into the hit list of the bad in order to get some resources back under that flag. Is Herbert Schui bad, the man who hid behind camp victims and sucked money out of big businesses? Fuck knows, he's also none. He was just very inventive in doing his work. And pretty successful, I must say. Is the Democratic party still at the helm? Yes, they have super majority. Does BMW pay them still? Yes, of course. In that case, we can once more be quiet about those skeletons in everyone's closets. While
you are useful, let them hang. But as soon as you stop being useful, then the proverbial silence will be broken. Written by Stas Asafiev Directed and produced by Daniil Gudkov Executive producer - Elisa Tsatsurina Director of photography - Artyom Yermakov Edited by Andrei Izotov VFX producer - Vladimir Bryuzli Engineer - Arseny Rymar Engineer - Akhsar Tibilov Engineer - Egor Zorin Gaffer - Alexei Likiy Gaffer - Nikita Rykov Gaffer - Georgy Kryevinysh Line producer - Vladislav Zaytsev Advertising manager - Sergei Chernigin Copyrighter - Alya Tumanova Grading - Vadim Yerlin Sound designer - Daniil Semyonov Art director
- Sveta Kochieva Legal advisor - Ivan Baranov Film score - Stas Asafiev
