Part One: That Time Volkswagen Operated a Slave Plantation in Brazil
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What historical context led to Volkswagen's involvement in slavery in Brazil?
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. A topic I am well suited to address because I am one of the worst people in all of history. Or at least I feel that way because I am calamitously hungover. I am the villain in my own life and very angry at myself. Here to express rage at me, my guest and friend, Maggie Mae Fess. Fess.
Fess.
You see how I'm doing today, Maggie? Oh, my God. I'm in rage. You see where my head is? It's a fire. I'm fucked up.
Oh, my God. It's almost like I'm not hungover either.
I need more fucking electrolytes. Sure. Thursday night's a normal party night.
Absolutely.
When you have a normal human schedule like us.
I was going to say for our kind. Yes, it is.
Yeah, for our kind. Normal, healthy people in the entertainment industry. Maggie. You and I go way back. We were colleagues at the old place, cracked.com. And you have grown and spread your wings from there, like all of our wonderful colleagues. And you have a YouTube channel now. And you just came out with a new project that I'm very excited to check out. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you're doing and plug your pluggables before we get into this episode?
Absolutely. Well, you know, I think it's apt. We're going to be talking about supposedly someone terrible.
Something terrible.
Good. Oh, I'm so prepared. Much like, yeah, the show is called Amy's Dead and Dreamhouse. It's on Nebula. It's also about terrible things, terrible things that happen to you in adulthood, you and all of us. So I'm very excited. I'm so excited to learn today, Robert.
Well, we are going to be talking about something terrible that I did not know about. Really? This is this is one that kind of took me by surprise. The topic of this episode, because we are going to be chatting a little bit about a car company you might know of called Volkswagen. Do you know much about Volkswagen? Volkswagen, new Beetle driving you wild. Sure. Yeah, absolutely.
How did Volkswagen's early connections to the Nazi regime influence its operations?
That's one thing they're known for.
Barbie had one at one point.
Barbie had a Volkswagen. And some tenuous connection to Nazism? Is that? It's not tenuous. I'll tell you that much right now, Maggie. We'll be talking a little bit about that. I knew that like Volkswagen was connected to the Nazis, like a lot of car companies, right? Like there's no good car company. There's no like car company that's just got like a spotless, clean record. No war crimes. No one evil was ever involved.
No.
You know, like fucking obviously everyone's aware of the fun journey that Elon Musk and Tesla have been on lately. But like Ford Motor Company was founded by a notorious anti-Semite, right?
Yes. People are aware of that.
In Michigan. Yes. Ford wound up being a valuable part of the United States is like war effort. Right. They made a lot of cars that were used by the military. But Ford himself, Henry, would have been much happier if the U.S. had sided with Nazi Germany. Right.
Like, absolutely. He's raring to go in my memory of.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Raring to go with his Nazi newspaper about anti-Semitism.
Yeah.
And it gets deeper than that. Obviously, Toyota and Mitsubishi got their start building war machines for the Empire of Japan. And that's not clean work, you know, because I love my Toyota.
Oh, yeah. No. OK. OK.
Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Toyota and Mitsubishi made a lot of. A lot of cars, a lot of vehicles for Imperial Japan, which did not get up to anything good with them. And obviously every major German automaker that existed in the 30s contributed to the Third Reich, right? Not just in terms of making cars for the Wehrmacht, but like utilizing slave labor, all that good stuff. So that's not super surprising, right? Just the fact that a lot of car companies have evil backstories or were involved with shady regimes. We're going to be talking about something that did surprise me, which is that Volkswagen operated a slave plantation in Brazil in the latter half of the 20th century.
What?
I didn't know much about that.
Oh, your words are catching up to my hungover brain.
Yes, we're talking about Volkswagen's Brazilian slave plantation today.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What historical context led to Volkswagen's involvement in slavery in Brazil?
0:06–2:13
2
How did Volkswagen's early connections to the Nazi regime influence its operations?
2:13–5:14
3
What was the role of slave labor in Volkswagen's production during WWII?
5:14–10:48
4
How did Volkswagen transition to operating a slave plantation in Brazil?
10:48–15:58
5
What methods did Volkswagen use to recruit laborers for their plantation?
15:58–22:43
6
How did the Brazilian military dictatorship impact Volkswagen's practices?
22:43–29:09
7
What are the long-term effects of Volkswagen's actions on Brazilian society?
29:09–35:17
8
How has Volkswagen's history of slavery been addressed in modern times?
35:17–1:07:25