[business as usual] coke in the war years

In order to keep it relatively brief, this article will not discuss:

1 Standard Oil of New Jersey's 1942 shipment of enemy fuel through neutral Switzerland and vice versa;

2 Chase Bank in Paris, after Pearl Harbor, still trading with Germany with the knowledge of Manhattan;

3 Dearborn, Michigan approving Ford trucks being built for occupation troops in France;

4 Colonel Sosthenes Behn, head of ITT, flying to Madrid then to Berne to improve both communications systems and the robot bombs that were used on London;

5 ITT building Focke-Wulfs and allowed to continue trading with the Axis and Japan until 1945;

6 Ball bearings shipped to customers in Latin America with the permission of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board;

7 Standard Oil of New Jersey having $120 million invested in Germany; General Motors $35 million; ITT $30 million; and Ford $17.5 million and not ceasing trading on the outbreak of war;

8 James D. Mooney of General Motors and William Rhodes Davis of the Davis Oil Company and their actions vis a vis Germany.

Nor will it concern itself with:

9 The Bank for International Settlements - the central bank creation from 1930, including Morgan dominated FRB of New York, and inspired by Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, Nazi Minister of Economics and president of the Reichsbank, plus Emil Puhl;

10 ...or the May, 1944 meeting of Thomas Harrington McKittrick, American president of the BIS in Basle, Switzerland, with his German, Japanese, Italian, British, and American executive staff to discuss $378 million in gold that had been sent by the Nazis after Pearl Harbor for use after the war;

11 ...or that it was written into the Bank's charter and ratified by the respective governments, that the BIS owners should be immune from seizure, closure, or censure, during war [such owners including First National Bank of New York - Harold S. Vanderbilt and Wendell Willkie), the Bank of England, the Reichsbank, the Bank of Italy and the Bank of France;

12 ...or that the BIS's ostensible purpose was to provide the Allies with German war reparations but instead became Hitler's source for his military buildup, paid into by Kurt von Schroder and Emil Puhl and utilized by Britain even after the outbreak of war.

Instead, this article looks at the remarkable story of Coca Cola in Germany during the war years.

While the 1943 Coca-Cola slogan "Universal Symbol of the American way of Life" was well documented, less well known was Coca-Cola GmbH [Inc.].

Communist Reichstag member Clara Zetkin rejected the Dawes Plan in 1923: "The United States represents sharp-eyed and reckless capitalists without any of the old traditions that still sometimes constrain capitalism in Europe, so that they would be the last to trip over the thin thread of moral qualms."

Given that attitude and the Crash of '29, it was remarkable that Ray Rivington Powers, expatriate American, set up shop in Essen in the Ruhrgebiet in 1929 and in the ten year period 1929 to 1939, increased annual sales of Coke from zero to four million cases.

Hubert Strauf, advertising exec, coined the slogan "Mach doch mal Pause" [Come on, take a break] and in 1933, Max Keith took over German operations.

Hermann Goering in 1936 introduced a Four-Year Plan which restricted imports to a bare minimum in order to make Germany self-sufficient and war ready. Coke could not convince the authorities that it was a German business but string pulling and an apaprent bribe for Goering gained it the import license for 7X and Merchandise #5, though all other ingfredients were produced locally.

Whenever the cover of a magazine sported a picture of the Fuehrer, Coke was often on the back cover. When visitors went to the Sportpalast to listen to Goebbels, a billboard asked them to drink "Coca-Cola eiskalt."

Coca-Cola was one of the three official beverage sponsors with a Getraenkedienst [beverage service] at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin

Coca-Cola GmbH became one of the biggest sponsors of sports events, most notably the annual Deutschlandrundfahrt (National Bicycle Championships) and the Soccer Cup.

In 1937, Keith took Coca-Cola into the Reichsausstellung Schaffendes Volk, or Reich "Working People" Exhibitfor companies most loyal to the new order. Coca-Cola GmbH set up a mini bottling plant and miniature train at the center, adjacent to the Propaganda Office.

The October 1938 issue of the army-magazine Die Wehrmacht printed to celebrate the annexation of the Sudetenland had an ad "Ja, Coca-Cola hat Weltruf" [Yes, Coca-Cola enjoys international reputation].

Karl Flach, the boss of rival Afri-Cola, intent on driving out the foreigner, began in 1936 circulating flyers depicting Coca-Cola bottle caps from the U.S. with Hebrew inscriptions. Somehow Coke overcame even that one.

The March 1938 concessionaire convention banner had: "Coca-Cola is the world-famous trademark for the unique product of the Coca-Cola GmbH." Directly below were draped three swastikas.

The Ministry of Economics in 1939 passed out rules demanding that bottles conform to a metric standard and this cut out Coke bottles. With the help of Reinhard Spitzy, former Foreign Office official, they began bottling in the Sudetenland instead.

Max Keith was appointed to the Office of Enemy Property to supervise all soft drink plants, both in Germany and captured teritory. As German troops overran Europe, Keith and Oppenhof followed, taking over Coca-Cola businesses in Italy, France, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Norway.

When the war cut off the supply of 7X and Merchandise #5, Keith invented Fanta to see them through the war.

Hitler said, in September 1941: "Frugality is the enemy of progress. Therein we we are similar to the Americans, that we are fastidious." Coke's similar method of expansion to the Nazi machine was noted by Hitler, though not specifically endorsed.

With Germany clearly not averse to the product, in 1944 the company still produced two million cases.

Unlike RCA's Transradio intelligence sharing with the Nazi Germany's Axis partners, Standard Oil's dealings with I.G. Farben [Judge Charles Clark pronounced on that on September 22, 1947] and the June 26, 1940 party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to celebrate the Nazi victory in France, attended by Herr Dietrich, brother of Hermann Schmitz of General Aniline and Film; James D. Mooney of General Motors; Edsel Ford of the Ford Motor Company; William Weiss of Sterling Products and Torkild Rieber of the Texas Company;

...unlike these it can be argued that there was nothing specifically treasonable in Coca Cola's German subsidiary cutting itself off from its parent company and aggressively promoting itself as German whilst the parent company promoted itself as American.

[thanks to "The Coca Cola Company under the Nazis" by Eleanor Jones and Florian Ritzmann]