Petty Feuds That Shaped the Modern World
Everyone's been caught in the midst
of a petty feud, where two people with trivial differences screw things up for
everyone around them. These mostly occur in middle school and really shitty
divorces, but some petty feuds have shaped the modern world. Just because
they're titans of business and leaders of nations, that doesn't mean grown men
are above letting some name-calling influence their decisions. For instance ...
#1.
A Misheard Sentence Shapes the Shoe Market
Adolf and Rudolf Dassler were German brothers who shared a passion for shoemaking,
and eventually they shared ownership of the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory. Like
most German citizens at the time, they were card-carrying members of the Nazi
Party, but they sort of sucked at it. For instance, during the 1936 Olympics in
Berlin, they outfitted Jesse Owens with the shoes he would wear while proving
that Hitler was wrong about the inferiority of black athletes.
Also unlike Hitler, the brothers'
shoe-selling prowess survived World War II, and today they sell more athletic
shoes and apparel than anyone other than Nike and Reebok. If you're reading
this in a Western society, you've almost definitely worn their shoes or
clothing. You just knew them as Puma or Adidas. While the brothers continued
making shoes, they did it as separate companies.
One night during an Allied bombing
raid, Rudolf was sitting in his bomb shelter with his family when Adolf and his
wife joined them. Maybe it was the bombs being dropped above, or perhaps a
premonition of how hard his name was about to go out of fashion, but Adolf was
pissed about this particular bombing raid, and greeted his brother's family
with a remark about what a bunch of bastards the Allies were. Specifically, he
said, "Here are the bloody bastards again."
The apparently insecure Rudolf thought Adolf was referring to him and his family. Instead of clarifying and bro-hugging it out,
what followed was the sort of inexplicably persistent misunderstanding that
only happens in sitcoms, bad comedies and apparently German families. Thanks to
that one sentence, their relationship grew rockier over the course of the war.
When American soldiers accused Rudolf of being a member of the Waffen SS (the
war-crimesiest sector of the Nazi military), he assumed that his brother had
put them up to it. By the time the war was over, the brothers hated each other
so much that they decided they couldn't work together. And so they divided
their shoe manufacturing business, with Adolf Dassler naming his company
Adidas, after a wisely shortened version of his first and last name (Adolfdas
probably wouldn't have sold quite as well). Rudolf chose to name his after a
jungle cat, and the two companies have been trying to put each other out of
business ever since.
They've run smear campaigns about
each other, and like the worst divorcing parents ever, forced the citizens of
their town to pick sides. Employees from the two companies wouldn't marry each
other. Pubs have loyalties to one shoe company or the other. Herzogenaurach was
eventually given the convoluted nickname "the town of bent necks"
because the citizens wouldn't talk to another person until they checked their shoes to make sure they were
wearing the same brand. And it's still like that to this day.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19926_5-petty-feuds-that-shaped-modern-world_p2.html#ixzz24vzAl6oY
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