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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, am welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Chuck. I have a question for you. Yes,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: don't you want to Fanta? Was that a slogan?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Mm hm oh don't you wanna?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that now. It was very catchy, don't
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: you fana? Don't you wanna?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Was that it? Don't you want to Fanta? I remember?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, I love Fanta?
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I mean wait, wait, wait, you never answered my question.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, of course I do if I love it.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I think I've mentioned plenty of times that I did
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: not grow up drinking much soda because as a family,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: we didn't have the kind of money to just load
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: up the house with SODA's, so SODA's were only reserved
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: for my mom to drink tab.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, she's a tab drinker.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Huh yeah, we had money for that. But I didn't
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: drink much soda growing up. So I don't drink a
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: soda now, thankfully, because that stuff is so bad for you,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: generally speaking. But I will hammer down six cokes a year,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: and maybe four or five fan of.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Oranges all at once once a year.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: I love them. I love that fan of orange. I
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: just you know, you can't drink that stuff a lot.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Have you had any of the other fantas, the grape, etc.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I think I like dabbled in the grape and kneehigh
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: grape and stuff when I was a kid, But it's
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: really that. And I like sunkissed, preferred sunkist as a
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: kid here and there. Yeah, yeah, but Fanta orange is
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: one of my rare, rare guilty pleasures.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I got you. I was more of a fago man
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: as a kid.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Do I never drink those? And I also never have
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: drink any of the clear or yellows like I've never
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: tasted mountain dew. Didn't drink mellow yellow or sprite or
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: seven up or anything like that.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: You missed out you've never tasted mountain dew or mellow yellow.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I just want to make sure I have that correct.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I don't think so wow, I can't remember ever doing it.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't even know what it tastes like.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It looks lemon limey.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: But no, no, it's not. It's its own thing, for sure.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know that you should ever break the streak
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: now that you've reached this along without trying it. But yeah,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: it's not lemon lime. It's its own thing.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: But what we're talking about is whether or not Fanta
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: is a Nazi drink, and we're going to go into
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the history of that, and we're going to start out
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: talking a little bit about Coca Cola, the parent company,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: as every most people know by now, it was invented
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: by doctor John Stith Pemberton in eighteen eighty six. He
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: was a morphine addicted Civil War veteran looking for a
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: better way to feel better than morphine and put together
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: some cocoa leaves and cola nuts, which had you know,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: were stimulants because of cocaine and caffeine, and said, hey,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: this is like a new kind of medicine. And after
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: he died it went on to be a very very
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: popular drink.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: It sure did. One of the things that Coca Cola
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: did over time was they expanded around the world. They
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: became an ambassador of American democracy. One of the places
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: they expanded to is Germany, pre war Germany or maybe
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: inter war Germany. I'm not sure when they showed up,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: but regardless, by the time World War II was starting
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: to ramp up, say the thirties the late thirties, Coca
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Cola was heavily entrenched in Germany, and its subsidiary was
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Coca Cola GmbH, which stands for gelschafft mitt besch kroner Hoftung,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: which translates to company with limited liability. And there was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: a guy named Max Kite who ran the show there,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and boy, oh boy, was he dedicated to Coca Cola
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and furthering the cause of Coca Cola in Germany.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, for sure. There's a guy named Mark Pendergrast who
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: wrote a book called for God Country and Coca Cola
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: No Colon. Yeah you go, Mark, Yeah, that's incredible. And
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: he said that you know, this guy loved coke so
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: much he really just wanted to weave it into every
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: aspect of German life, including the Nazi Party, even though
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: supposedly he never was officially joined the Nazi Party. And
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: you think, like, well, Coke probably wasn't super stoked about this.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: They didn't care.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Robert Woodruff was running Coke at the time, and he
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: was like, Hey, this is all good. We're going to
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: co sponsor the nineteen thirty six Perlin Olympics. We're going
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: to hang up some banners there with our logo right
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  Speaker 2: next to the swastika, and it's all good everybody.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Can you imagine I looked high and low for
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: a photograph of that, and I could not find it.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I'm sure Coca Cola has dedicated a significant amount of
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: his operational fund to destroying any evidence of that banner. Ever.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I haven't been to the World of Coke Museum, but
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: I bet right here in Atlanta, I bet it's not
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I'll bet they don't have it up too. There was
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: also the tenth anniversary of Coca Cola GmbH. They decided
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to commemorate their deepest admiration for the fure for Hitler's
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday with a mass Nazi salute. I guess of
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: employees who worked there at the time, Yeah, exactly. So,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Coca Cola was very much entrenched in Nazi Germany even
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: before the war, especially before the war.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: I should say, well, yeah, because once the war started,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: they're like, oh, well, I guess we can't do business
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: with Germany anymore. And Germany was seizing enemy owned businesses
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: at will. I think General Motors actually got out of Germany,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: but they did seize IBM, and Coca Cola said, sorry, kite,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: we got to stop sending you our seven X flavoring
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: and he said, but that is the secret, and they went,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I know, and I'm really sorry. But even though we're friends,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: our countries aren't friends right now. And that was a
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: huge hit on Coca Cola LLC GNB H Germany.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: He could make coke.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: So he was like, I got to come up with
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: a new plan.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And also at the same time, he's walking this
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: fine line between not having access to the product that
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: his company makes and trying to keep the German government
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: from officially seizing and taking over his company. And to
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: do that he needs he needs a hit. He needs
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the most delicious, most nutritious thing you could possibly put
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: together that's going to sweep Germany right off the bat.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And I feel like we should talk about this product
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: that Max Kite introduced after a break. Oh okay, Chuck.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: So Max kite'es like, what am I going to do?
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I need to come up with something fast to keep
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: my company afloat. I think I'll just create an entirely
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: new drink that no one's ever even thought of making before. Yeah,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And because there's so many wartime rations going on, I'm
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: gonna have to get really creative here, but I'm gonna
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: do it.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, not only did he was he not
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: getting that sweet sweet seven X coke syrup. He didn't
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: have sugar, or at least much. They were rationing sugar
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: at the time, so he said all right. He ended
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: up saying the recipe was made from the leftovers of
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: the leftovers. The first fanta, which, by the way, is
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: the German word for fantasy or imagination. And supposedly he said, hey,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: marketing team, use your fantasy to think of a good name,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: and they said, how about fanta? And he went, that's great.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: How about love?
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: I think he was gotta nip who officially thought of
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: the name. But he got apple pulp from leftover apple
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: cider making, beet sugar and whey, and by all accounts,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: it was not orange at all, and it tasted like
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: sweet garbage.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: It's yeah. It took me a couple of reads to
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: be like, well, wait a minute, how does that taste
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: like fanta? And then I realized it just sudden horror.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: It didn't taste anything like fanta, And apparently it didn't
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: taste very well at all. Historians no one knows what
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it tasted like. Or at least no one's been able
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: to find somebody who actually drank this stuff. But they're like,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: just look at the ingredients. There's no way it tasted good.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: And they think that it was probably mostly sold to
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: be used as like a flavor agent for soups and
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: stews and stuff like that. That people weren't just knocking
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: back bottles of this stuff, because they would have vomited
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: until they died. I guess instead they were just using
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: it in other ways. But that's not to say it
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't a huge hit. It was a big seller. And
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: not only that, it instilled like a kind of national
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: pride among Germans, like, look at how resourceful we are
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: in the face of you know, wartime scarcity. But have
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: you tried this stuff?
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was their own. They're like, we have fanta
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: and beer, and like we're going to claim those and
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: love those and drink those until we fall over.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: So he did.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Even though, like I said, he officially supposedly never joined
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: the Nazi Party, he did work very closely with the
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Nazi Party because he needed their help. He needed their
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: help making sure that production continued, and you know, the
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: cooperation with the Nazis was a key part of that,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: but that was able to keep the doors open, at
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: least officially. Coca Cola in April of nineteen fifty five,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: post war, said why don't we rejigger Fanta and make
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: it taste good? And we've got the we have it copyrighted,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: and it's already sort of got a little bit of
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: a cred at least in Europe. So let's just keep
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: the name and hopefully no one will remember the Nazi ties.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but also so this name, just the name, right,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: they could have come up with anything else, but just
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the name has Nazi ties. Like you said, it was
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: created in and for Nazi Germany, and it was also
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: made from apple pulp and beet sugar, and way, why
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: would you use that. I would think you would want
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: to do the exact opposite and bury that name, like
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: it was a banner with the coke logo in the swastika.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: But instead they just went with it, and they introduced
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: it in Italy first. Is this the version we know now,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: this orange soda version? And Italy was like, yeah, it's
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: pretty good, let's go with that, and they started to
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: export it finally made it into the United States in
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, which was I think three years after
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: they reintroduced it in Italy.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think with the deal was is it wasn't
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: widely known outside of Germany, so it's not like the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: word Fanta had some negative connotation all over the world,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: and the Germans loved it, so it actually had a
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: positive connotation and at least one market. So yeah, I
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: get it. I mean, maybe it would have been a
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: good pr move to change it because it's the Nazi thing,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: but I don't think it was like some otherwise tainted name.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I see, I see what you mean. And they were like,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I'm sure people just forget about it. Anyway, within a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: year or two, anybody who even knows about it, it'll
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: never come out.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, until you know, people started calling it a Nazi
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: drink and you know, on the Internet, and the idea
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: kind of spread and it was, you know, it was
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Fanta and not Fanta. But yeah, people largely didn't think
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: much about it, and I still don't think much about it.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's not like if you buy a Fanta
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: or something today, you're supporting Nazis.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Right to the upkeep of Hitler's tomb or something like that.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: A small donation, but the author Pendergrast, was like, it's
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: this is pretty It is still pretty significant that people
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: like this drink enough that even knowing it's its roots
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: or where it came from, it was like, it's just
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: it's an orange soda. I like it for what it is.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And it's not just orange. As we said, they have
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: a whole line of flavors, including grape, and I think
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: it's much more popular in South America right now, but yeah,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: still pretty pretty big in America in the United States. Man,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: we keep getting taken to task for that, for calling
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the US America. Yeah, sorry, everybody, that's what That's what
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: they tell us. That's what they teach us here.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Uh. As far as Kite goes, he stuck around and
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: the Coca Cola company said, you know what, even though
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: your drinkles was garbage, you did the yeoman's work way
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: back then and kept that brand alive. And so he
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: was made eventually the head of Coca Cola Europe and uh,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: you know, it seems like had a pretty good career
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: as a soda guy.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Oh. One other thing about that too, is as the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Nazis rolled in the country after country, Kite was right
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: behind the tanks going. Your division of Coca Cola is
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: now part of Coca Cola Deutsch Lant. Your division of
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Coca Cola is now part of Coca Cola Deutsch Lant.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And so when he was made the head of Coca
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Cola Europe, he had consolidated through conquering other businesses. He
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: had consolidated all into one company because of the Nazis
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: conquering these countries. Isn't that nuts? Yeah?
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, who better to lead the Coca Cola Europe
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: you know, I guess he was already taking place.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He kept pounding his fist in his hand whenever
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: he talked at like board meetings and investors' meetings. That's right, Okay,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Well that's it for fanta? Do you want a Fanta?
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That's only a question you can answer yourself.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And while you think about that, we're done with this.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: So short stuff is out.
• 13:58
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