Coca-Cola executives operating inside Nazi Germany invented Fanta because wartime trade embargoes completely cut off their access to traditional American cola syrup.

A closer look

Coca-Cola executives operating inside Nazi Germany invented Fanta because wartime trade embargoes completely cut off their access to traditional American cola syrup. Desperate to keep their highly lucrative factories running and their profit margins aggressively expanding during a literal global catastrophe, the German branch simply combined whatever random industrial food scraps they could scavenge, including apple pomace and leftover whey. They successfully built a massive, wildly popular beverage brand out of the absolute literal garbage generated by a brutal fascist war machine. So whenever you enthusiastically chug a brightly colored orange soda at the movie theater, you are technically enjoying the delicious downstream economic byproduct of the Third Reich