Herbert Werner Quandt (22 June 1910 – 2 June 1982) was a German industrialist credited with having saved BMW when it was at the point of bankruptcy[1] and made a huge profit in doing so. Quandt also oversaw the use at his family’s factories during World War II of tens of thousands of slave labourers, many of which perished.
The independent 1,200-page study that was released in 2011 concluded: “The Quandts were linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis.” As of 2008, the family has not paid any compensation to surviving victims and no proof of apology can be found nor cited.
Bulldog “Jim” Gannon - named after Jim Crowe and inherited his money from his family’s “agriculture” business and are the largest private “land owners” in the State of South Carolina
I know the links aren’t necessarily solid, and we are just talking, but to my mind, the Quandt family being associated with the Nazis is now too far removed to be of concern.
For me, the question is what are they currently like, and what are their plans (if any) for Liverpool?
I might be a moral minnow for saying this, but it seems to me that there needs to be a statute of limitations for what your family, or nation, did back in the day. Otherwise it all becomes a quagmire.
We need to fast forward and look at what they are doing now, what they are like, and what their plans are for the club. That’s the sort of thing I’d be interested in, no matter who the prospective new owner is.
Said it before, likely in this thread…no billionaire has made their money cleanly - it’s impossible. There will always be something that is questionable.
That’s not me giving a thumbs up to BMW or the family that owns it where links to the Nazis exist. Just making the observation that they all have a dirty past.
I wouldn’t read too much into the Quandt thing. I suspect that people are reading each others wild speculation and jumping to conclusions. As far as I can see, the only interest is that Stefan Quandt likes to go to the odd match. I mean, I like drinking beer but I’m not going to run out and buy a brewery.
Any old German money will in some way be connected to Nazis. It’s a reality of having been in Germany at the time. Germany has done a lot to right the wrongs of that period and their approach to that is a model the US continues to ignore at the cost of real truth and reconciliation. This past shouldnt automatically be hung around the neck of German company from that time. I mean no one claims that Alonso is working for Nazi aligned company for working for leverkusen (owned by Bayer, the company that owned the IP for Xyclon B).
The question has to be what have they done since? Germany has done better than most in taking those positive steps, so it is a bit unnerving to see the addendum to stories about this group saying they’ve essentially done fuck all.
That is interesting. Aldi split into two separate companies when the founder died, with one brother taking half of europe (Nord) and the other taking the rest (Sud) with a an agreement to not compete in each other’s territory. That’s why you have the blue aldi and the red aldi and why it may be different if you go to one in a different country.
Aldi (Nord) established itself in the US through buying a small California brand called Trader Joe brand and expanding that nationwide. They are now regarded as one of the best employers in the country in retail, and this is the same brand of Aldi as you have in the Netherlands. Big caveats is that what passes for a good employer in the US would probably be a shit employer in Western Europe, and much of the supposed corporate ethos was inherited from the original CA brand and so that might not reflect standalone Aldi stores
The Quandt family belong to a group of industrials where the involvement with the Nazis goes beyond the ‘usual’ and the attempts to redeem themselves go below.
So, if I understand well, the club is caught between a group of Middle East investors with blood money on their hands, and a German group which had tight bonds with the Nazis at the time, and have never since formulated any excuse?
Talk about being caught between a hammer and an anvil…
