Fanta, the famous American Coca-Cola Company product, was invented in Nazi Germany during World War II, without the parent company’s knowledge.

Before World War II, the German Nazi SS was in urgent need of a sweet and delicious drink.

Coca-Cola Germany reached an agreement with Hitler and began to build bottling plants in the German-occupied areas. Coca-Cola was very popular in Germany. In 1939, there were 43 bottling plants and more than 600 distributors.

By the 1940s, relations between the United States and Nazi Germany became tense.

In 1941, due to the trade embargo, the German branch was no longer able to obtain Coca-Cola's main syrup formula from the U.S. parent company.

To keep Coca-Cola plants running and workers afloat, Max Case, the new head of Coca-Cola's German operations, created a new drink using the only raw materials available in Germany: whey and fruit residue.

With an attractive name, he personally held a competition in the factory, asking his employees to give full play to their imagination and express their fantasies freely.

A salesperson blurted out "Fanta!" (the same root word as the German "fantasy"), and that became the name of the new drink.

Fanta was very popular after it was launched. It was very popular at the time, especially when food was scarce, and consumers used it as a soup.

In 1943 alone, Fanta sold more than 3 million bottles in Nazi Germany, maintaining the operations of these factories and the livelihood of workers.

Unable to get in touch with the German company, the Coca-Cola Company once suspected that Max was working for the Nazis. Later, they learned that although he had been instigated many times, he had not joined the Nazis.

In addition, he did not turn Fanta into a product under his own name, although it might have made him a fortune.

After the war, Marks returned the company's products and all profits to The Coca-Cola Company, and the international parent company reunited with its German subsidiary but stopped producing Fanta.

Ten years later, Coca-Cola faced a competitive crisis when PepsiCo introduced a different flavored drink in the 1950s, but with the exception of Fanta, which was a special case, Coca-Cola had only purchased one product before.

In order to better compete, Coca-Cola re-used the Fanta name in 1955 to sell this new orange juice drink throughout Europe.