How My Husband Used Nazis To Stop My Soda Habit

Don’t you want a… want a… Nazi?

I never used to drink soda.

As a child (being that I was a ballerina), it was forbidden. Soda was referred to me as “empty calories and pointless sugar”. They didn’t care that I smoked at the age of 12, but soda was a huge problem… but I digress.

As an adult, I tasted soda for the first time when I was 22 and injured out of my twirling prison of pink tulle, and honestly, I was underwhelmed. It was okay but it wasn’t something that I sought out frequently or even cared about.

Last year, however, I got sick. Very sick. I was bedbound for most of the year and during that time, I got into the habit of drinking Sprite. My stomach was constantly bothering me and I absolutely despise all things ginger (Gingerale included) but Sprite seemed to help. After I started feeling better… I kept drinking it. It became a habit. And it was a hard habit to stop.

Since I mainly drink it at night (making it even less healthy), I never drink caffeinated soda. While caffeine doesn’t keep me awake as it would for most normal people — the coffee that I drink during the day has more than I’m supposed to have. I have tachycardia (my heart beats too fast) so too much caffeine is dangerous for me.

I drink a coffee called Death Wish and add espresso to it. That’s how much I care about the “danger”.

My brother also has a soda habit. He drinks diet soda for the caffeine because he likes neither coffee nor tea. So that’s how he gets his caffeine fix. But he also drinks soda that is not caffeinated. Still diet, still not healthy, but who am I to judge? I can’t drink diet soda even if I wanted to because artificial sweeteners give me migraines. He won’t drink regular soda because now that he’s been drinking diet for so long, he doesn’t like the taste.

One day, his girlfriend went grocery shopping and grabbed the wrong box of Fanta Orange Soda. She bought regular instead of diet. So my brother gave it to me. And I switched my Sprite for the Orange soda. Until my husband told me the origin story of Fanta.

My husband is a history buff. Especially when it comes to World War II. It fascinates him. America instituted a trade embargo on Germany. This meant that they could no longer get the ingredients to make the brand through the German subsidiary company which saw the rise of Fanta. But it hadn’t always been that way.

Coca-Cola sponsored the Olympics in Berlin in 1936 and their banner hung directly alongside a swastika. The tenth anniversary party of Germany’s Coca-Cola subsidiary was used to order the mass Sieg-heil — an event that corresponded with Hitler’s 50th birthday.

Hitler‘s aggressive strikes and takeovers across Europe were practically sponsored by Coca-Cola. Not only were the Nazi invaders continually sent supplies to make the beverage, but those supplies followed the troops to the countries they were overtaking — letting the German subsidiary grow and take hold of the Coca-Cola subsidiaries in Italy, France, and Holland.

But then… Pearl Harbor was bombed. And America finally refused products to the enemy. With no further access to the ingredients to make the beverage, a new soft drink needed to be made. Without the syrup that contained Coca-Cola’s famed secret formula, and no availability of the coca leaf and kola nut which were what made Coca-Cola so addictive (coca leaves are also used to make cocaine), the subsidiary turned to fruit flavors.

To say the ingredients were less than desirable would be to say that they were basically exactly what Nazis deserved. The new drink was made with leftover war rations and largely comprised of fruit shavings, apple fibers and pulp, beet sugar, and whey, the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained during cheese production.

Yum.

The head of the company told his team of chemists to be creative with the name of the new drink. So, they called it Fanta, a shorthand version of the German word for fantasy.

It rose quickly and not just because other drinks were incredibly difficult to find but it seemed to have many uses. Sugar was rationed so the soda was used as a sweetener for soups and other cooking and baking needs.

Despite all of this, the head of the German subsidiary company, a man by the name of Max Keith, was determined to be an American hero for keeping the company alive in Europe during the war.

At a time when it was stated that anyone who did business with the Nazis was aligned with them, somehow, it was declared that Keith only aimed to serve Coca-Cola. It was to the company that he held allegiance, not the Nazis. The company’s Vice President hailed him as a great man and gave Keith total control of all Coca-Cola operations across Europe once trade resumed.

Production of Fanta stopped by the end of 1945 but ten years later, it was reintroduced with a new recipe. Only the Orange flavor was available and it was distributed first in Italy, not making its way to America until 1958. They kept the name because they decided it was convenient to do so, and no one would notice or care about the Nazi heritage.

My husband noticed and I cared.

And now, even thinking about it turns my stomach. Soda from the very wrong side of history originally made for Nazis out of leftover curdled milk and beet sugar?

The funny thing is, my brother continues to drink it. I’m an atheist. My brother, however, like our father, is Jewish. Our mother is some kind of agnostic lapsed Catholic that I don’t even speak to but by Jewish law — neither of us is Jewish as the root of Judaism is matriarchal.

Despite our father, we would have to officially convert to be considered Jewish by Jewish law. My brother just decided that he was because he speaks Hebrew, had a Bar Mitzvah, and doesn’t eat on Yom Kippur.

Yet he drinks soda rooted in Nazi Germany.

As for me, I’m giving up my soda habit. Not only because I won’t drink anything made by a company that sponsored the rise of the Seig-heil and caffeinated most of the Nazi invasion of Europe… but that’s a big part of it.

A small part is the “empty calories and pointless sugar”.

But I have always shopped with my morals. I don’t eat Chick-fil-A because I won’t let my money support Anti-LGBTQIA+ assholes. I don’t shop at Hobby Lobby because women should have adequate health care. I don’t eat at Jimmy John’s because I won’t line the pockets of a trophy hunter — even after he sold the company.

And I won’t drink Nazi soda.