The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 5.8 How The Wealthy Owners of Krispy Kreme Are Exploring Their Dark Past

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic morning. Welcome to the Extra Morning News Show. My name is of course Philip DeFranco and today we're gonna be talking about Krispy Kreme's Nazi ties. And yes, you did hear me correctly, the donut makers Nazi ties, but we're gonna back up a little bit because it's not that simple. And in fact, today's topic is more about how the company that owns Krispy Kreme recently uncovered its owners ties to the Nazi Party. Which I will say is not completely unique. In fact, many of today's well-known companies have profited based off of their ties to the Nazi Party. But of course, since then, German companies and of course the German government have continually tried to make amends for the past all the way up to today.

Starting point is 00:00:31 But with all of that said, let's start with the people who own Krispy Kreme, the Reimann family. They are one of the wealthiest families in Germany and own JAB Holdings. And JAB actually has a wide range of investments under its corporate umbrella. This including Panera, Pete's Coffee, Einstein Brothers Bagels, Keurig and Coty. And JAB was started before the Nazis were around, focusing on chemical manufacturing and continued doing business after Nazi Germany. By 1978, the Reimanns had believed they found out

Starting point is 00:00:54 all about their family and company connections to the Nazi party. Albert Reimann Sr. and Jr., the father and son duo who helped build up the company in the 30s and 40s were also pretty quiet about the family's past. But then, fast forward to the early 2000s and the Reimann family stumbled across company documents that suggested that Reimann Sr. and Jr.

Starting point is 00:01:09 might have actually been larger supporters of Nazi Germany than previously known. And since both Sr. and Jr. had died decades ago, the Reimanns decided to commission a historian to look into their family's past back in 2014. And in March of this year, an economic historian at the University of Munich named Paul Erker released an interim report to the family.

Starting point is 00:01:24 And according to a spokesperson for JAB, the report showed that the Reimanns actually had a much closer relationship with the Nazis than the family had previously realized. The family confirming their grandfather, Albert Reimann Sr., was a devoted follower of Hitler, who used and possibly abused slave labor in the family's chemical factories during World War II. Reportedly, the Reimanns' JAB holdings used Russian civilian prisoners and French prisoners of war as forced or slave labor in their factories. And at the height of World War II,

Starting point is 00:01:51 reportedly one third of JAB's workforce were these workers. Also, a quick side note before we continue, there is a slight legal difference between slave and forced labor in Germany, but the Reimanns also used both. The family also reportedly used these workers in their private villas, and if any workers disobeyed orders, they were beaten.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Also reportedly, women who worked at their factories were forced to stand naked at attention in front of their barracks, and if they refused, they were sexually abused. Also in addition to forced and slave labor, some Reimanns were reportedly supporters of the Nazi party before the Nazi party gained control over Germany. Reimann Sr. apparently donated to Hitler's SS

Starting point is 00:02:21 as early as 1931, and a note here, Hitler wasn't even Chancellor until 1933. In a 1937 letter from Reimann Jr. to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, sort of sums the situation up. In that letter he describes their business as a quote, "...purely Aryan family business that is over 100 years old. The owners are unconditional followers of the race theory." And since this is just the interim report, the family intends to publish all of the historian's findings in a book when he's finished researching. And Peter Harf, the chair of JAB, telling NBC News, It's clear Albert Ryman Sr. and Albert Ryman Jr. were guilty and should have been held accountable and prosecuted. The family feels responsible for what happened.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Also, one of the big things here is that after this, the family has quickly announced that they will be donating around $11 million towards charity. Although, as of recording this video, they have not announced the specific charity. But one of the big things with this story is that the Reimann family really isn't an exception. Right, in Germany, they're the rule. Conditions at Volkswagen were no worse than at other German companies. Siemens used tens of thousands of concentration camp inmates

Starting point is 00:03:18 at its electric and communications plants. Daimler-Benz and BMW built military trucks, tanks, and airplane engines using slave laborers. Right, Volkswagen was set up by the Nazi trade union organization and made civilian and military vehicles. Volkswagen also reportedly used more than 15,000 slave laborers from concentration camps near its factories. Also, the auto company Daimler used thousands of slave laborers up until the end of World War II. And today, Siemens admits on its website that it used more than 80,000 forced laborers. But those companies never really rushed

Starting point is 00:03:47 to expose their use of labor or admit any sort of responsibility. But in the late 1990s, what we saw is that the German government and German companies were facing class action lawsuits in the United States over their past. And under pressure from the US government and consumers, the German government and companies

Starting point is 00:03:59 worked on a deal to compensate those victims. Other German laws after the war provided compensation to victims of the Holocaust, but until then, there really wasn't anything that addressed forced labor victims. And German laws after the war provided compensation to victims of the Holocaust, but until then there really wasn't anything that addressed forced labor victims. And so in the late 1990s, the German government created the Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future Foundation to acknowledge

Starting point is 00:04:12 and compensate those victims. In total, the fund came to $5.8 billion and the German government and German companies split those donations. But, interestingly enough, the German companies that contributed to this fund didn't just include those that had profited from slave labor, like Daimler and VW

Starting point is 00:04:25 Thousands of companies that had nothing to do with the war also joined in now It's not exactly clear how the funding was divided among all of these companies since those numbers haven't been released to the public yet But 4,700 companies ended up contributing to the fund in Germany today negotiators agreed on how to compensate Nazi laborers Former slaves and concentration camps will will receive up to $7,500 each forced laborers and factories will be paid up to $2,500. And ultimately, that fund paid out to around 1.7 million people in Europe, the United States, and Israel. And following that, the German and U.S. government agreed that those companies couldn't be sued for those crimes anymore. With all of this, there are also a couple of questions wrapped up in the Reimann's family history, other German

Starting point is 00:05:02 businesses, and how they tried to take responsibility for their actions. Should they and how do you punish companies for actions that were taken so long ago? Obviously, if those companies are still around, you have people that are benefiting from the horrors of the past, but those people who are benefiting from the crime, who are a part of the crime, they're gone, right?

Starting point is 00:05:17 Is it someone's responsibility to hold onto that guilt? I mean, when you look to the Reimann family, you can kind of see one of two situations. You can see that they're interested, maybe they feel responsible, they want to try and be a part of the good. Right? They're being proactive about it. Or you could look at it in another light. Do you maybe see them as just trying to stay ahead of the story, to use this as good PR? Even with difficult questions and debate out there, many experts

Starting point is 00:05:38 have said that Germany has actually done a very good job at atoning for its past. This is part of a much broader national effort underway in Germany to wrestle with the legacy of the Holocaust. It includes the construction of memorials and museums at a record pace, the revamping of the nation's curriculum so that all German school kids get a fuller understanding of the Nazi era. Yeah, that's where we're going to end it today. Of course, I'd love to know your thoughts. Of course, thanks so much for watching today's Extra Morning News video. If you liked it, be sure to support the video by hitting that like button.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 5.8 How The Wealthy Owners of Krispy Kreme Are Exploring Their Dark Past

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