While at home recuperation from some minor surgery, I have been mostly reading, but I tuned into the TV a bit. I remember one commerical that I saw, and after it passed, my wife and I both looked at each other with wide eyes, since I had said, "Just do the math. 66 years? Are they kidding?"
We had just seen a Mercedes-Benz commerical, in which the German company touted its long history, noting its strong record of safety--including testing "for 66 years"--while a scene with a crash dummy in a car passed by. "Sixty-six years" of testing quickly brought me back to, well, 66 years ago, 1939. So testing must have been going on from that time forward? And what sort of "testing" might have been going on in Nazi Germany during the War, and isn't it known that forced laborers were employed in various industries, besides? Why would a car manufacturer want to draw attention to its activities in the Third Reich during World War II in the first place.
Of course, this all might be my mistake. Perhaps testing began in 1933, stopped during the War, then resumed. The company could still say 66 years (total) testing. But any writer of marketing copy worth his paycheck should have realized there would be viewers like me who simply "did the math" and went back 66 years to 1939 and pictured German crash testing, perhaps not too much unlike other testing done during War in which prisoners were plunged into icy waters and exposed to chemicals to test various reactions, including mortality rates.
Or then again, maybe not. Maybe the testing began in 1939, but the company confidently expects most viewers, if they even bother to do the math, won't think anything odd about 1939 at all, having forgotten or never learned much history to begin with. There are too many people, when asked when World War II was fought and who did the fighting, really don't know. They will simply be impressed by 66 years of caring for the safety of the consumer. I wasn't.
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