I’d risk, with a good degree of comfort, that the negotiations would have been more along the lines of “serve your country and be paid for it or don’t serve your country and go to a concentration camp and die a miserable death”, the last part as subtext.
You do not negotiate with any sort of dictatorial regime. The regime holds all the cards, including the cards the other players think they have in hand.
BMW and, by extension, any company, be it small or large, cooperating with any regime is understandable. It’s that or risk a terrible, more or less public, demise. That is why dictatorial regimes go to great lenghts to ensure companies and business owners favor by putting large quantities of money and/or resources in their hands.
There wouldn’t have been a dictator if THEY didn’t make him one. They should have resisted. Their selfishness in preserving their greedy company at the cost of millions of lives does not make them innocent.
I’d risk, with a good degree of comfort, that the negotiations would have been more along the lines of “serve your country and be paid for it or don’t serve your country and go to a concentration camp and die a miserable death”, the last part as subtext.
You do not negotiate with any sort of dictatorial regime. The regime holds all the cards, including the cards the other players think they have in hand.
BMW and, by extension, any company, be it small or large, cooperating with any regime is understandable. It’s that or risk a terrible, more or less public, demise. That is why dictatorial regimes go to great lenghts to ensure companies and business owners favor by putting large quantities of money and/or resources in their hands.
Self preservation is easy to turn into greed.
There wouldn’t have been a dictator if THEY didn’t make him one. They should have resisted. Their selfishness in preserving their greedy company at the cost of millions of lives does not make them innocent.