- 2 months ago
History is full of shocking revelations. Some famous personalities, despite their achievements, were later linked with Nazi sympathies or associations that surprised the world.
In this countdown, we explore the Top 10 most surprising figures connected to Nazi ideology — a darker side of history that shows how even respected names can have troubling pasts.
📜 This video is for educational and historical purposes only, highlighting controversial facts and lessons from history.
👉 Do you think their legacy should be judged differently after these revelations? Share your thoughts below!
🔔 Subscribe to WatchMojo.World for more historical and educational countdowns.
In this countdown, we explore the Top 10 most surprising figures connected to Nazi ideology — a darker side of history that shows how even respected names can have troubling pasts.
📜 This video is for educational and historical purposes only, highlighting controversial facts and lessons from history.
👉 Do you think their legacy should be judged differently after these revelations? Share your thoughts below!
🔔 Subscribe to WatchMojo.World for more historical and educational countdowns.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You are not and have never been a member of the Nazi Party of the United States, have you?
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 rich, respected and successful people who were actually Nazi sympathizers.
00:12His arm went up like that, you know, vague sort of salute.
00:17Number 10, Edward VIII.
00:19Wallace Simpson has been presented as the villain of the piece.
00:23What that did was it stopped everyone from really examining Edward and looking at the man he was and his motives.
00:30Following his abdication of the throne, Edward VIII became Duke of Windsor.
00:35In 1937, he and his wife, Wallace Simpson, famously visited Nazi Germany, personally met Adolf Hitler, and was even photographed giving a Nazi salute.
00:44Actions that were quickly and ferociously exploited by German propaganda.
00:48This is not about abdicating the throne. This is a man who will stop at nothing to usurp the throne.
00:55Edward wanted to come back as a Nazi-installed leader.
00:58Edward was also known to hold pro-German views, and captured documents also revealed Nazi hopes to reinstall Edward as king if Britain were to be defeated.
01:07In fact, it was so bad that British intelligence considered him a security risk to the country, and he was sent away to the Bahamas.
01:13Though never explicitly proven to be a collaborator, Edward's actions showed, at best, exceedingly poor judgment regarding the Nazi regime.
01:22Even his weaknesses and his character didn't really prepare me for the sheer audacity of the way he behaved.
01:309. Torquald Reber
01:32After emigrating from Norway to the United States, Torquald Reber rose through the corporate ranks and became chairman of the prosperous oil company Texaco in 1935.
01:42He also held many pro-fascist affiliations, and is widely regarded as a Nazi sympathizer.
01:47Reber covertly supplied oil to dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, directly violating U.S. neutrality laws.
01:56He also arranged oil shipments to Nazi Germany, and toured industrial sites with Hermann Göring, with German intelligence describing him as a sincere admirer of Hitler.
02:07And in 1940, Reber hosted a German agent in New York, and attended pro-German business events, which, once revealed by the press, led to widespread public outrage.
02:17Under incredible pressure, Texaco's board forced Reber to resign in 1940.
02:238. Philip Johnson
02:24And yet, even his obituary in the New York Times ignored Philip Johnson's most indelible sin.
02:31Until now, few have been willing to throw stones.
02:35Maybe you don't know his name, but you probably know his works.
02:38A highly respected architect, Philip Johnson served as head of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, and designed buildings like 550 Madison and the Glass House in Connecticut.
02:48And this dude was a huge Nazi sympathizer.
02:52He admired Hitler, personally attended Nazi rallies in Germany, and wrote for fascist anti-Semitic publications like Social Justice.
03:00We can't sugarcoat it. I think he was, quite simply, a devoted fascist for eight years.
03:09He openly praised Hitler and his political manifesto, Mein Kampf. He called the German invasion of Poland a, quote, stirring spectacle.
03:17Heck, he even tried to start a fascist political movement in the U.S.
03:20However, by the early 1940s, Johnson distanced himself from those beliefs and actions, and later called them, quote,
03:27the stupidest thing I ever did.
03:30And he appreciated that Hitler was reshaping the world, and would need architects to help design it.
03:407. Ezra Pound
03:42His poems were pared down and precise, sometimes only a line or two long.
03:48Famous poet Ezra Pound was a huge fascist sympathizer, an admirer of Hitler, and a prominent vocal supporter of Benito Mussolini's tyrannical regime in Italy.
03:58And while he didn't formally align himself with Nazism, his views and actions overlap with many far-right ideologies of the time, including his raging anti-Semitism.
04:07In his 30s, Pound's politics grew increasingly extreme. He believed fascism was the answer to what he saw as failing Western democracy.
04:17Pound believed that fascism was a path to economic and cultural reform, and he made hundreds of propaganda broadcasts for fascist Italy,
04:25in which he attacked the West, praised the concept of eugenics, and pleaded with the Allies to surrender.
04:30In fact, he was later arrested by American forces, and indicted for treason due to these wartime broadcasts, resulting in a long stint in a psychiatric institution.
04:41Society had cast him out, the poetry world had cast him out, and he was this slightly prophet-like figure raging in the wilderness.
04:526. Charles Lindbergh
04:54Tonight's speaker is a famed aviator and American hero, Charles Lindbergh.
05:00Lindbergh is a Nazi sympathizer, an avid opponent of U.S. involvement in the overseas conflict.
05:06Famed aviator Charles Lindbergh was widely seen as a Nazi sympathizer in the late 30s and early 40s, which significantly tarnished his accomplishments.
05:15After visiting Germany multiple times, Lindbergh praised its military strength and accepted the service cross of the German eagle from Hermann Göring.
05:24Sparking public outcry.
05:26The call is to abandon America's friend and ally.
05:30And I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England, regardless of how much assistance we send.
05:38That is why the America First Committee has been formed.
05:42He also advocated against American intervention, and was known to harbor anti-Semitic views, like giving a speech in which he blamed Jews for pushing America toward war.
05:53He also held strong beliefs in the ideas of racial hierarchy and eugenics, strongly echoing aspects of Nazi ideology.
06:01And even though Lindbergh did turn to the war effort after Pearl Harbor, his reputation was, and remains, stained by his earlier views and controversial positions.
06:10So I don't think that anybody knows who he is, and I think those who do know are predominantly Jewish people or avid historians, and they think, oh, Lindbergh, anti-Semite.
06:22Number 5.
06:23Knut Homsen.
06:24A highly regarded writer, Knut Homsen influenced the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Franz Kafka, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.
06:42Twenty years later, during the Nazi occupation of Norway, Homsen openly supported the puppet regime led by Witkum Kvisling, and conducted meetings with top Nazi officials, including Joseph Goeibels, with whom he had a cordial relationship.
06:55He also briefly met Hitler in person, and shortly after the Nazi leader's death in 1945, Homsen published an obituary for him in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, in which he praised Hitler as, quote, a reforming character of the highest order.
07:20Following the war, Homsen was arrested for treason, and fined 325,000 Norwegian kroner.
07:27Number 4.
07:28Harold Harmsworth.
07:30Reported where?
07:30Daily Mail, Morning Post, Daily Mirror.
07:33It's upper, middle, and working class, all united in admiration.
07:38You've probably never heard the name Harold Harmsworth, but you've certainly heard of his newspaper, the Daily Mail.
07:43Through his famous paper, Harmsworth became a leading figure of tabloid journalism, and helped pioneer the concept.
07:49Unfortunately, he also used it to publish his fascist beliefs.
07:54Harmsworth expressed admiration for Hitler during the early years of Nazi rule, and supported British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.
08:02He also visited and sent letters of admiration to Hitler, and these letters were later used as propaganda to show alleged British support for the Nazi regime.
08:12Harmsworth's views turned him into a pariah, and he eventually fled Britain.
08:16He desperately attempted to repair his image, but died in 1940 before he could do so.
08:25Number 3.
08:27Coco Chanel.
08:28The little black dress, Chanel No. 5, women's wide-legged trousers, and sailor shirts.
08:33Her work was, in many ways, a form of female emancipation.
08:37To this day, Chanel is considered one of the leading names in fashion.
08:40It's just too bad that its namesake has such a problematic reputation.
08:45Coco Chanel had a romantic relationship with German military officer Baron Hans Gunther von Dinklage, who was working Nazi intelligence in Paris.
08:54This relationship gave her certain privileges during the German occupation, including residence at the Ritz Hotel, which was also being used by high-ranking Nazis.
09:03In recent years, Chanel's dirty laundry has been making headlines at home and abroad.
09:09At Paris' Ritz Hotel, her affair with a Nazi intelligence officer was common knowledge.
09:14But it gets worse.
09:16Declassified documents show that Chanel was registered as a Nazi agent, and allegedly participated in an intelligence operation to open secret peace negotiations with Winston Churchill.
09:26Finally, she attempted to use Nazi anti-Semitic laws to wrest control of Parfum Chanel from the Jewish Wertheimer family.
09:35But journalist Hal Vaughn's book reveals that in 1940, Gabrielle Chanel worked as a Nazi spy, recruiting agents for the Third Reich across Europe.
09:45She was No. F7124.
09:48Her codename, Westminster.
09:50Number 2. Werner von Braun
09:53To help show you what is being done to solve these problems, we have called upon one of the foremost exponents of space travel, Dr. Werner von Braun.
10:02Throughout the 50s and 60s, Werner von Braun was one of the leading figures in the U.S. space program.
10:09He helped develop the rocket that got us to the moon, and worked with Walt Disney on a series of films that were meant to generate interest in the space race.
10:16Now, here's a model by design for a four-stage orbital rocket ship.
10:22Compared to the unmanned instrument rocket, it is quite large.
10:25He was also, secretly, a Nazi war criminal.
10:28Von Braun was a member of both the Nazi party and the SS, and he used forced labor to build rockets in Germany.
10:35An estimated 20,000 people died building V-2 rockets, being literally worked to death under horrific conditions.
10:43Following the war, von Braun was brought to America under Operation Paperclip, and his past as a Nazi war criminal was hidden from the public.
10:51Here he is. He's an SS officer. He's working around slave labor.
10:58But his rocket then gets compressed into the Western world or the American world and basically launches us to the moon, and we forget about how the sausage was made.
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11:27Number 1. Henry Ford
11:29When I was a kid, I used to think that maybe I was special, that somehow destiny had tapped me to be a great man.
11:37Not like Henry Ford or Walt Disney or somebody like that, but somebody, you know, semi-important.
11:45Perhaps the most influential industrialist of the 20th century was also a huge Nazi sympathizer.
11:52Ford maintained business dealings with Nazi Germany throughout the 30s and early 40s, but that was the least of it.
11:57Ford personally financed and published a series of anti-Semitic articles in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.
12:04And these articles were later compiled into a book titled The International Jew, which spread false conspiracy theories about Jewish people.
12:12For 91 straight issues, The Dearborn Independent targeted Jews, the world's foremost problem, as he said.
12:22Hitler later praised Ford and Mein Kampf, and even cited him as an inspiration toward Nazi ideology.
12:29And in 1938, Ford proudly accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor that Nazi Germany could give a foreigner.
12:39So, never before in America had we seen anti-Semitism at a mass level.
12:47What do you make of these revelations? Let us know in the comments below.
12:51And this other one that came up just to fend this off. Have you ever read Mein Kampf?
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