From: kristyp@coos.dartmouth.edu (Kristy Patterson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Coke and Fanta in World War II
Date: 8 Jun 1994 19:03:42 GMT

In article <1994Jun8.070555.3934@lugb.latrobe.edu.au> matap@lure.latrobe.edu.au (Andrej Panjkov) writes:
>Two Questions:
>
>1)  Was the Coca Cola Company trading with Nazi Germany during World
>War 2?
>2)  Was Fanta "invented" in Nazi Germany to fill the gap left when Coke
>Co. 
>    stopped trading with Germany in World War 2?

This is an excerpt from a paper I wrote on the Coca-Cola company last term:
footnotes available on request:

"...Coca-Cola's desire was to sell Coke to whoever would drink it, wherever
they were, regardless of race, ideology, or system of government; its only
objective was to spread of Coca-Cola. This lack of discrimination allowed
the product to be more widely disseminated that it would have been had Coke
refused to transact business in totalitarian states. A major market for
Coca-Cola was Nazi Germany, which had 43 bottling plants and over 600 local
distributors by 1939.  The product was a favorite of Hitler and the Nazi
military, and it was bottled in the Third Reich up to and during World War
II; in fact, Nazi aggression actually helped to spread Coke around Europe,
as bottlers were established in newly conquered areas such as Austria and
the Sudetenland.

The eventual cessation of Coca-Cola production in Nazi
Germany was not a decision of The Coca-Cola Company but of the Berlin
government. Max Keith, the leading Coca-Cola bottler in Germany, actually
joined the Nazi bureaucracy in order to lobby from within against prohibitions
on the import of Coke syrup; he wished to have his Coca-Cola bottling business
declared a local industry, so that the government would not restrict the
import of the ingredients.  Though high officials enjoyed Coke, there were
some problems with marketing it in the Third Reich. The official Nazi position
was that the fizzy American beverage was "a menace to European civilization."
...After it was publicized that Coca-Cola was kosher, consumption dropped
off drastically.

Still, Keith was able to keep his business alive. Even after the Nazis
prohibited the import of essential Coke ingredients (de-cocainized coca
leaves and Coke's secret ingredient), Keith stayed in business by inventing
and selling Fanta, a fruit drink which continues to be a Coca-Cola product
today. Thanks largely to Keith's efforts, Coca-Cola was able to re-establish
production Germany virtually immediately after World War II..."

And a big HELLO! to the Terrys and everyone who I knew when I read this group
before; I unsubscribed for awhile when my office got moved (I've been
relocated to hell; my new office-mate has told me the Hogg Sisters UL, saying
it was a friend of her father's, and sells Amway, no less.

-Kristy