Famous brands with a dark past
Good morning! This is Building Blocks, a weekly roundup of content to prickle your mind.
Today’s stories in a nutshell:
Title story: Famous companies with close links to the Nazis
Weekend reads:
🎥 The Hero’s Journey
💻 Cybersecurity
💡 Hunter S. Thompson on finding meaning in life
🧩 Weekend games
Recently I was surprised to learn about many big brands with histories deeply intertwined with the Nazis.
Hugo Boss was a member of the Nazi Party and during the war his company mass-produced (and in some cases designed) Nazi uniforms including those of the Hitler Youth and the iconic black Shutzstaffel (SS) uniforms. To do so, Hugo Boss relied on forced labour from occupied countries, including women.
American technology giant IBM allegedly supplied the Nazis with punch card and other data technologies that helped them identify Jews and other “undesirable” ethnic groups in Germany and other countries they invaded. IBM’s technologies were also critical to coordinate the transportation of people to concentration camps.
Soon after coming to power, Hitler ordered the development of a “People’s Car” for everyday Germans (aka Volkswagen). Hitler assigned the tasks to the prominent auto designer Ferdinand Porsche, and through this project, the iconic Volkswagen “Beetle” shape was designed. Porsche and Volkswagen’s factories built military vehicles for the Nazis during the war, relying on thousands of enslaved people sourced from concentration camps.
The list of Nazi linked brands is long. The Quandt family, major early-stage (and current) shareholders of BMW, were close Nazi collaborators. It’s believed that Coco Chanel, famous for the little black dress and Chanel No5 perfume, worked as a secret Nazi spy. L'Oréal’s founder Eugène Schueller is also said to have been a fascist sympathiser.
Considering today’s cancel culture world, it’s surprising that these stories have attracted relatively little attention.
🎥 The Hero’s Journey
Have you ever noticed that many movies follow a similar structure? A character journeys to a new, unknown land, encounters difficulties, triumphs, and returns home, transformed.
The “Hero’s Journey” is a common storyline first conceptualized by literature professor Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and has served as the backbone for countless movies and books. In the 90s, Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood film producer and writer, refined Campbell’s idea into twelve stages:
Here’s a look at how the twelve steps of the Hero’s Journey crafted the storyline for a few major blockbusters. Click on the image to see the full infographic, including all 12 stages.
💻 Cybersecurity
Do you leave your front door open at night? Or do you leave multiple copies of your keys lying around? I assume the answer to these questions is an obvious, “no”.
Our lives and the digital world have become inseparable. It’s fair to say that we already live in the metaverse version 1.0. But do you apply the safety precautions of your physical life to your digital one?
This intriguing (and scary) interview with NYT columnist Nicole Perlroth sheds light on the dark world of cybercrime. Nicole is also the author of, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race, winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year for 2021. It’s a wide-ranging discussion that covers topics and questions like:
What are zero-day attacks?
What are watering hole attacks?
Cyberwarfare between countries
Russia’s use of cyberattacks in Ukraine
How exposed critical infrastructure is to cyberattacks
How can you make yourself less vulnerable to attacks?
The fears of being a parent in the age of the metaverse
Most of us are blissfully ignorant about the digital war going on. My sense is that it’s only a matter of time until there is a catastrophic cyberattack that will jolt the entire world into taking notice. Similar to the way the world needed Covid-19 to take the risk of pandemics seriously.
Hopefully, I’m wrong.
If you prefer the audio podcast version, you can listen to the interview here.
💡Hunter S. Thompson on finding meaning in life
In 1958, author Hunter S. Thompson wrote a letter to a friend wherein he tried to answer one of life’s most profound questions: How do you find purpose in life? What impresses me most about the letter is that Thompson was only 22 years old when he wrote it.
Here’s a snippet:
April 22, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York CityDear Hume,
You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal— to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.
I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine.
Click here for the rest.
🧩 Weekend games
If you’re keen to test your vocabulary, give today’s Wordle a try. If you prefer maps to words, then try today’s Globle instead.