Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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Is IKEA a Bormann Company?

 

COMMENT: In FTR #707, we exam­ined the ascent of fas­cist ele­ments in Europe, Swe­den in par­tic­u­lar. Offi­cial­ly neu­tral dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, Swe­den was home to a pow­er­ful fas­cist move­ment, dri­ven in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by ele­ments of that coun­try’s pow­er elite.

Enam­ored of Nation­al Social­ism, many Swedish movers and shak­ers sought to imple­ment fas­cism in their own coun­try. Many were busi­ness part­ners of key Nazi indus­tri­al­ists and financiers.

Among those drawn to Swedish fas­cism was a youth­ful Ing­var Kam­prad, the founder  of  fur­ni­ture giant IKEA. Kam­prad has been rel­a­tive­ly can­did about his youth­ful alliance with Nazism, but a recent book sug­gests that his Nazi activ­i­ties and alliances may be far more sig­nif­i­cant than pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed.

It now devel­ops that Kam­prad con­tin­ued his fas­cist activ­i­ties well after the war, net­work­ing with promi­nent Swedish fas­cist Per Eng­dahl, among oth­ers. Eng­dahl was instru­men­tal in shep­herd­ing the fas­cist inter­na­tion­al into the post­war peri­od.

Kam­prad con­tin­ues to praise Eng­dahl, as well as defend­ing his past asso­ci­a­tion with the Swedish fas­cist king­pin.

Although much more infor­ma­tion would need to be devel­oped to see Kam­prad’s lucra­tive and famous IKEA firm as an ele­ment of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, it does seem rea­son­able to ask if per­haps the com­pa­ny’s suc­cess and its founder’s polit­i­cal asso­ciates may be con­nect­ed.

In that con­text, it is worth not­ing that Swe­den was home to more Bor­mann front com­pa­nies (233) than any of the oth­er neu­tral nations in which the bril­liant Reich­sleit­er set up the enti­ties which were to serve as repos­i­to­ries for the stolen wealth of the Third Reich, as well as the eco­nom­ic rebirth of the “new” Ger­many.

As not­ed by a lis­ten­er in the COMMENTS on this arti­cle, IDEA was found­ed in 1943 when Kam­prad was only 17.

One won­ders if the fir­m’s con­nec­tions in the for­mer East Ger­many may have stemmed from Under­ground Reich ele­ments oper­at­ing in the GDR. Those con­nec­tions appar­ent­ly pro­vid­ed IKEA with forced labor, an even­tu­al­i­ty that Kam­prad opined would “be in soci­ety’s inter­est.”

That was, of course, dur­ing the war and after the Nazis had begun their pro­gram of going under­ground in prepa­ra­tion for their post­war per­pet­u­a­tion and resur­gence.

George Soros also got his start in busi­ness while still in his teens, aid­ing the Nazis with their Aryaniza­tion of Hun­gar­i­an prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust.

“Ing­var Kam­prad, IKEA Founder, Has Nazi Links Explored In New Book” by Louise Hord­strom; Huff­in­g­ton Post; 8/27/2011.

EXCERPT: A new book claims IKEA founder Ing­var Kam­prad’s youth ties with Nazi groups extend­ed beyond what he has pre­vi­ous­ly admit­ted, say­ing Swe­den’s intel­li­gence agency even set up a spe­cial file on him.

Respect­ed Swedish author and jour­nal­ist Elis­a­beth Asbrink says Kam­prad joined the Swedish Nazi par­ty in 1943 when he was 17, prompt­ing the secu­ri­ty police to set up a file on him the same year.

Asbrink also claims in her book, “And in Wiener­wald the Trees Remain,” that the founder of Swedish fur­ni­ture chain was in con­tact with Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers until at least 1950 – two years longer than he had pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged. . . .

. . . The book also men­tions a wed­ding invi­ta­tion Kam­prad sent to a renown Fas­cist, Per Eng­dahl, in 1950, in which he under­scored how proud he was that the two belonged to the same cir­cle. . . .

Discussion

4 comments for “Is IKEA a Bormann Company?”

  1. [...] of its sim­i­lar­i­ties with the world depict­ed in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In a recent blog post, anti-fas­cist researcher Dave Emory brought some more meat around the bone of that trail of [...]

    Posted by Addendum to Brave New World preschools in Sweden: More links between IKEA and fascism | lys-dor.com | August 30, 2011, 7:27 am
  2. Its crazy how overt this net­work is, and secu­ri­ty ser­vices seem impo­tent.

    More info on Siemens here — http://germanywatch.blogspot.com/2011/08/siemens-data-mining-or-espionage.html

    Posted by GermanyWatch | August 31, 2011, 8:49 am
  3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/8742172/Ikea-used-political-prisoners-in-GDR-as-slave-labour.html

    Ikea ‘used polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in GDR as slave labour’

    Swedish retail giant Ikea used polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in East Ger­many as “slave labour” to make fur­ni­ture, secret police files unearthed by a Ger­man broad­cast­er appear to show.

    By Matthew Day2:31PM BST 05 Sep 2011

    Ikea devel­oped strong links with the com­mu­nist state in the 1970s, open­ing a num­ber of man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties, one of which, accord­ing to Stasi records dis­cov­ered by Ger­man tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny WDR, used polit­i­cal pris­on­ers to con­struct sofas.

    The fac­to­ry in Wald­heim stood next to a prison, and inmates were used as unpaid labour, it is claimed. Gaols in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic housed sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, with some esti­mates indi­cat­ing they made up at least 20 per cent of the entire prison pop­u­la­tion.
    Quot­ed in a Stasi file, Ing­var Kam­prad, Ikea’s founder, said while he had no offi­cial knowl­edge of the use of prison labour, if it did indeed exist “in the opin­ion of Ikea it would be in society’s inter­ests”.

    Hans Otto Klare, who had been sent to Wald­heim prison for try­ing to escape to West Ger­many, described con­di­tions in the fac­to­ry as harsh.
    “Our labour team lived on the upper floor of the fac­to­ry with the win­dows cov­ered,” he told WDR about his time mak­ing hinges and oth­er com­po­nents for Ikea fur­ni­ture. “The machines were on the low­er floor, and you had lit­tle rest. On the fac­to­ry floor you had no prop­er seat­ing, no ear pro­tec­tion: no gloves. Con­di­tions were even more prim­i­tive there then in the rest of the GDR. It was slave labour.”

    Anoth­er for­mer pris­on­er said he recog­nised some of the parts he has made when he went shop­ping in Ikea after the fall of com­mu­nism.

    In the doc­u­men­tary Sabine Nold, an Ikea spokesman, made no com­ment on the rev­e­la­tions oth­er than to point out busi­ness prac­tices had changed over the past 25 years. An Ikea state­ment issued lat­er said the com­pa­ny had no knowl­edge of the use of prison labour, but was sor­ry if it had occurred.

    Kam­prad found­ed Ikea in 1943, aged 17. In 1994 it was dis­closed that he had briefly joined Sweden’s pro-fas­cist New Swedish Move­ment in 1942.

    Posted by R. Wilson | September 6, 2011, 7:17 am
  4. There is a lit­tle spy scan­dal going on involv­ing Ikea in France. The link was on the Drudge Report. It does not seem to be as bad as using slave labor in East Ger­many in the 70s though.

    http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/france-quizzes-ikea-execs-over-spying‑1.1608850#.Uor2uMQgfph

    Posted by GK | November 18, 2013, 9:34 pm

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