From Nazi Germany to Global Icon: The Surprising Origin Story of Fanta

In February 1944, Berlin was trying to recover from American bombing raids, while on the city's outskirts workers filled glass bottles in makeshift bottling operations run by Coca-Cola's German company. The bottles held Fanta, a drink invented inside Nazi Germany by an American company's German subsidiary, and in wartime Germany it had very little competition¹.

Quick Summary

Fanta was created in Germany during the Second World War by Coca-Cola's German subsidiary, led by Max Keith, when the ingredients for Coca-Cola could no longer be imported¹,⁵. It was made from byproducts such as whey and apple fiber, took its name from Fantasie, the German word for imagination, and sold 3 million cases in 1943⁵. The wartime drink was discontinued after the war⁶. Orange Fanta was first produced in Naples, Italy, in 1955⁷, and Coca-Cola took the revived brand across Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America⁶. In 2015 Coca-Cola pulled a German anniversary advert that promised a return to "the Good Old Times" without mentioning the Nazi era, and apologized¹⁹,¹⁸.

How did a soda made from the leftovers of cheese and cider making become one of Coca-Cola's best-known brands? The answer runs through a German manager named Max Keith, a naming contest, a bottling plant in Naples and an advert that went badly wrong in 2015.

The Origins of Fanta During World War II

Coca-Cola had been bottled in Germany since 1929, and by 1940 it was the leading soft drink in Nazi Germany¹. The German subsidiary, Coca-Cola GmbH, depended on syrup and flavoring shipped from the United States. When that supply was cut, the German business needed something else to sell.

The business had grown fast under Hitler. According to figures reported by Die Zeit and cited by The Local, the number of crates of Coke sold in Nazi Germany rose from about 100,000 a year to 4.5 million between 1933 and 1939, and 50 factories were built to meet demand². Coca-Cola was an official sponsor of the 1936 Berlin Olympics². Atlas Obscura reports that Robert Woodruff, who led the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, attended those Games, and that the company made banners showing the Coca-Cola logo alongside the swastika¹.

The outbreak of war in 1939 did not stop that trade at first. Atlas Obscura says the Atlanta company kept supplying its German subsidiary with syrup and supplies, and that Keith followed German troops into conquered countries such as Italy, France and Holland to take over the local Coca-Cola businesses¹. American companies faced a harder choice once the United States entered the war. General Motors pulled out of Germany, IBM's operations were seized, and the German government was threatening to take over "enemy-owned" businesses¹.

How Coca-Cola's German Branch Created an Alternative

Germany was under trade restrictions during the war, and the key ingredients for Coca-Cola became impossible to get. Atlas Obscura's history of the drink ties the break to December 1941: after Pearl Harbor, Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta cut off communications with its German operation and stopped exporting the secret 7X flavoring¹. The Dutch soft drink historian Peter Zwaal places the start a little earlier. He writes that Coca-Cola GmbH chose the Fanta name in a staff contest in 1940, and that the Dutch Coca-Cola company registered the Fanta trademark in the Netherlands on March 20, 1941³. Coca-Cola itself treated 2015 as Fanta's 75th anniversary⁴.

The new drink was made in Germany from what Germany had. The Snopes history, which draws on Mark Pendergrast's book For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, describes whey from cheese making and apple fiber from cider presses, with the fruit changing according to what was available⁵. The earliest versions were sweetened with saccharin, and by 1941 the makers were allowed to use 3.5 percent beet sugar⁵.

Snopes concludes that Fanta "was the creation of a German-born Coca-Cola man who was acting without direction from Atlanta," and that he did not invent it at the direction of the Third Reich⁵.

The Role of Max Keith in Fanta's Development

Max Keith was the German-born head of Coca-Cola's business in Germany. Atlas Obscura says he took over Coca-Cola GmbH in 1933; Snopes says he took charge after the American-born manager Ray Powers died following a car accident in 1938¹,⁵. During the war the German government also put Keith in charge of Coca-Cola's properties in occupied countries⁵.

Atlas Obscura describes him as tall and intimidating, "charming but quick-tempered, and utterly devoted to Coca-Cola." Pendergrast told the magazine that Keith "valued his allegiance to the drink and to the company more than his allegiance to his own country"¹. When contact with Atlanta ended, Keith sent word through Coca-Cola's bottler in neutral Switzerland that he would try to keep the businesses alive. Until the end of the war, according to Snopes, executives in Atlanta did not know whether he was working for the company or for the Nazis⁵.

The name came from Keith's instruction to his staff to use their imagination, Fantasie in German. A veteran salesman, Joe Knipp, answered "Fanta"⁵,¹. Zwaal gives the salesman's full name as Josef Knipp, credits the recipe to Dr. Wolfgang Schetelig in the company laboratory, and says the logo was drawn by Walter Schöttler, a painter in the advertising department³.

Keith's record is complicated. Atlas Obscura reports that he tied Coca-Cola to Nazi rule in Germany before the war, and that at the company's 10th anniversary party he ordered a mass Nazi salute for Hitler's 50th birthday¹. Pendergrast told Atlas Obscura: "There's no question he was a Nazi collaborator. [But] he was not a member of the Nazi party. His allegiance was to Coca-Cola, not to Hitler"¹. An investigator commissioned by Coca-Cola after the war reported that Keith had never been a Nazi, although he had been pressured repeatedly to join⁵.

Donovan saw ambition in the wartime work as well. "Maybe in the back of [Keith's] mind, he had this vision that if Germany wins, then [he would] become the head of Coca-Cola International," he told Atlas Obscura¹.

The Original Fanta: Far From Today's Orange Soda

Wartime Fanta was built from food industry byproducts, and its recipe changed with the supply.

Unexpected Ingredients in Wartime Fanta

"[Fanta] was made from the leftovers of the leftovers," Pendergrast told Atlas Obscura. "I don't imagine it tasted very good"¹. Atlas Obscura lists fruit shavings, apple fibers and pulp, beet sugar and whey¹. Zwaal adds that German Fanta used apple pulp, citrus pulp from Italy and whey, and was sweetened half with sugar and half with saccharin³.

Accounts of its appearance differ. The Snopes history calls it a light-colored drink that resembled ginger ale⁵. Zwaal writes that the German version contained caramel coloring, which made it look much like Coca-Cola, and Atlas Obscura describes it as likely a cloudy, brownish liquid³,¹.

The Dutch Coca-Cola company, cut off from the same ingredients, sold Fanta under the German brand with a different recipe. Its syrup maker, Jaap Blom, based the Dutch version on elderberry juice, and nearly 14.2 million bottles were sold in the Netherlands before the company had to stop all activity in October 1944³.

Zwaal's account of the Dutch operation shows how a wartime soft drink business worked. In 1941 the Amsterdam company foresaw that two of the seven essential Coca-Cola ingredients, the extract of kola nuts and coca leaves known as merchandise no. 5 and the secret flavoring mix 7X, would soon run out, so it rationed its stocks and kept making a shrinking amount of Coca-Cola until May 1943³. Fanta came in special 25 cl bottles that cost about 9.5 cents each to make, with a deposit of 10 cents. Regular distributors paid 5 cents a bottle and cafés and restaurants paid 9 cents. From 1942 new bottles were almost impossible to get, and competitors sometimes bought up empty Fanta bottles from cafés³.

The Dutch recipe was at first sweetened only with artificial sweeteners, probably a mix of saccharin and dulcin. About 15 months after its launch, drinks made only with artificial sweeteners were banned, so from September 15, 1942, Dutch Fanta was made with 4 percent sugar plus sweetener. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, where the company sold directly, 8.4 million bottles were sold; about 30 licensed bottlers sold nearly 5.8 million more in the rest of the country³.

How Fanta Kept Coca-Cola Germany Afloat

Fanta sold well enough to keep the German plants running and Coca-Cola staff employed. In 1943, 3 million cases were sold, and some of them went into soups and stews as a sweetener, because sugar was rationed⁵. "It was Fanta or nothing," the soda historian Tristan Donovan told Atlas Obscura. "It had pretty much market dominance during war time"¹.

Rationing helped. Atlas Obscura reports that the drink's popularity earned it an exemption from sugar rationing after 1941, although Keith had to use beet sugar, and that it was probably used in other cooking and baking as well¹. Production went on under difficult conditions. In February 1944, Coca-Cola's makeshift bottling operations on the outskirts of Berlin were staffed by a mix of workers that Atlas Obscura describes as including former convicts and Chinese laborers¹.

Fanta's origins have produced several myths. Snopes collected versions claiming the Third Reich invented it, that Coca-Cola formulated it for the Nazis to avoid supplying the enemy with the drink the Allies were drinking, and that Fanta and Coca-Cola were the same drink under different labels⁵. The Local reported a legend that Hitler wanted his troops to drink oranges from Italy, and called the truth "more mundane"². Even the name has a competing story: The Local cited the Austrian newspaper Die Presse as saying it came from Fantastisch and was chosen with Coca-Cola's headquarters, an account that differs from the staff-contest story told by Snopes and Zwaal²,⁵,³.

Keith could have sold the drink under his own name. According to the report Coca-Cola commissioned, he kept the company's German plants running through the war instead⁵.

Post-War Evolution of Fanta

The war ended with Keith still in charge of Coca-Cola's German business. Atlas Obscura repeats a story that American troops found him in a half-bombed plant still bottling Fanta in 1945, and reports that Fanta production ceased before the end of that year¹.

What Happened to Fanta When the War Ended

When the war was over, Keith welcomed the Coca-Cola Company back into its German operations and handed over the profits from the war years along with the new drink⁵. Atlanta treated him as the man who had kept the German business alive. Harrison Jones, the company's vice president of sales, called him a "great man," and Keith was given command of Coca-Cola Europe¹. Once the parent company was reunited with its German branch, the wartime drink was discontinued⁶. In the Netherlands, the company wanted the substitute forgotten as quickly as possible, and the Fanta brand did not return there until 1960, as a very different drink³.

The Introduction of Orange Fanta in 1955

The orange Fanta sold today began in Italy. Coca-Cola Italia says Fanta was launched on the Italian market in 1955 and produced at a plant in Naples, and that this was when the drink first contained orange juice⁷. A Coca-Cola spokeswoman told The Local that a bottling plant in Naples started producing Fanta orange in 1955 using locally sourced citrus fruit². A few months after the launch came the first "ring bottle," with horizontal ridges in the glass⁷. The Coca-Cola Company says the industrial designer Raymond Loewy submitted 25 or 30 designs for the bottle and logo, and that the ringed bottle with a Loewy "twin-peak" logo on the shoulder was chosen⁸.

Coca-Cola's own 2017 account of the brand's history also starts in Naples. It says the Naples bottler was the first to produce and sell Fanta Orange using local citrus ingredients, and that the drink soon spread to other markets including South Africa and the United States⁸. In Italy, Coca-Cola Italia says, the use of real orange juice set Fanta apart from other orange sodas, and advertising from the 1970s onward called it "l'aranciata d'arancia," the orangeade made from oranges⁷.

Competition explains the timing. Pepsi had started selling different flavors in the 1950s, and Coca-Cola had sold only one product apart from the wartime Fanta. The company revived the Fanta name in 1955, marketed the orange recipe across Europe, and later took it to Africa, Asia and Latin America⁶. According to Pendergrast, the name was reused largely because it was convenient, since Coca-Cola already held it. "I don't think anyone [at Coca-Cola] cared that [Fanta] had roots inside of Nazi Germany," he told Atlas Obscura. "I think they thought no one would pay attention"¹.

Fanta's Global Expansion

Outside the United States, Fanta grew into one of Coca-Cola's biggest brands. By 2001 it sold 1.4 billion cases worldwide, came in 70 flavors, and was Coca-Cola's second-biggest brand overseas⁹.

Regional Flavor Variations Around the World

Many Fanta flavors are made only for certain countries. In a 2019 article, Coca-Cola Italia said Fanta was sold in more than 190 countries in more than 70 flavors, gave the example of a Romanian version flavored with elderberries and an Italian Fanta Lemon made with real lemon pulp, and said orange remained the best seller worldwide⁷.

Some local versions have long histories. Coca-Cola says Costa Rica had an exclusive Fanta flavor, Kolita, that was popular across Central America in the 1980s and 1990s and returned to El Salvador in 2016, and that in Panama the brand is called Kist⁸. In Japan, where Fanta has been sold since 1958, Fanta Lemon +C joined the core range after a pilot in the winter of 2016. Coca-Cola said the drink contained about 1,600 mg of vitamin C, the equivalent of 80 lemons, and Yoshikazu Shimaoka of Coca-Cola Japan described it as having plenty of "kire kire," a Japanese term for the sharp, tangy refreshment of lemon¹⁰.

In Colombia, Coca-Cola relaunched Fanta in 2017 with a new recipe with fruit juice, a new visual identity and advertising made with young people. Rodolfo Echeverría, the company's global vice president of creative and connections, said: "We concluded that we have to pay more attention to young people because they are experts in several areas: fun, technology, sharing good times with friends"¹¹.

The spread of the brand is also visible in Africa. In 2010, Slate reported that Fanta was the second-highest selling soda in most of Africa, behind only Coca-Cola⁶.

Fanta's Return to the United States

The United States was a different story. Atlas Obscura says the orange drink reached the U.S. in 1958, but Slate reports that it did not become widely available there until the 1960s, because executives feared it would weaken the company's flagship cola¹,⁶.

Slate's explainer, written with help from Pendergrast, adds that Fanta "limped along with little marketing support and relatively poor sales" in the United States⁶. In the mid-1980s Coca-Cola stopped selling it nationwide, keeping it in regions with large immigrant populations⁶.

In 2001 Coca-Cola tested a revival in Texas, Arizona and Southern California, aimed largely at Hispanic consumers who knew the brand from abroad. U.S. sales rose from 24.4 million cases in 2000 to 42.2 million in 2001, according to Beverage Digest figures reported at the time⁹. Fanta went national again, and by 2010 Slate reported it was in eighth place among sodas in the United States⁶.

The company saw the brand's popularity abroad as the reason to try again. "One of the advantages we have is this great, global asset," Cal Collier, director of flavored carbonated soft drink brands for Coca-Cola's North American division, said in 2002. The relaunch took place with virtually no advertising, and its toughest competition was expected to come from cheap store brands and national rivals such as Sunkist, Welch's and Crush⁹.

Later U.S. marketing leaned on seasonal packaging. For Halloween in 2017, Fanta cans carried illustrations by the artist Noma Bar of Universal Studios monsters, including the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera and the Bride of Frankenstein. "We love continuing this Fanta tradition of spooky Halloween fun through Bar's dynamic visual storytelling," said Valencia Mitchell, a brand director at Coca-Cola North America¹².

Fanta Today: A Cultural Icon

Fanta is still a Coca-Cola brand, sold with different recipes and flavors in different markets, and it continues to change.

Recipes, Bottles and New Names

In the United Kingdom, Coca-Cola cut the sugar in Fanta to 4.6g per 100ml in 2017, below the 5g level that would trigger the country's new soft drinks levy. The relaunch came with a new logo and a spiral-shaped bottle that Coca-Cola described as the industry's first asymmetric bottle. Campaign reported that Fanta was then the third biggest carbonated soft drink brand in the UK, after Coke and Pepsi¹³.

Campaign put Fanta's UK supermarket sales at £140.5 million the year before, up 3.2 percent according to Nielsen¹³. "This year looks set to be the biggest in Fanta's history, with a fresh new look inside and out," said Aedamar Howlett, marketing director at Coca-Cola Great Britain¹³.

The spiral bottle took years. Coca-Cola says the design process began in 2012 with the agency Drink Works, inspired by twisting an orange to release its juice, and that the asymmetric shape contradicted the brief because carbonated drink bottles are normally symmetrical so they do not deform. The project was shelved after inconclusive consumer tests, then revived in 2015 for a small market test in Sicily, where it outsold the old bottle. By 2017 it was sold in Italy, Poland, Malta, Serbia, Finland, Romania and Great Britain¹⁴. "There is more pressure in a carbonated beverage bottle than a car tire," the company noted, which is why a deformation can make sections weaken or pop out¹⁴.

In April 2023, Fanta introduced its first consistent global brand identity and dropped the orange from its logo, where fruit had appeared since 1970. Rapha Abreu, Coca-Cola's global vice president of design, told Fast Company: "We know orange is the most iconic flavor, but we have a range of flavors," and added, "And we want to make sure that we are true to that"¹⁵. The identity was developed with the agency Jones Knowles Ritchie. Coca-Cola also said that about half of Fanta's formulations around the world, including the U.S. one, no longer contained juice¹⁵.

In February 2023, Coca-Cola retired the UK drink Lilt after about 50 years and renamed it Fanta Pineapple & Grapefruit. The company told the BBC the change was made so Lilt would "fit in" with the Fanta family¹⁶.

Lilt had been launched in 1975 and was known for its "totally tropical taste" advertising. "Our main priority with this announcement is to reassure Lilt's loyal fan base that absolutely nothing has changed when it comes to the iconic taste of the drink they know and love," said Fanta brand manager Charlotte Walsham. Cleopatra Veloutsou, a professor of brand management at the University of Glasgow, told the BBC that Coca-Cola probably felt the two brands had a "high degree of similarity" and kept Fanta as the "stronger brand"¹⁶.

The 2015 "Good Old Times" Advert

Fanta's advertising had caused trouble before. In 2005 a British television advert for the low-sugar Fanta Z showed people of all kinds taking a swig and spitting it out, with the voiceover "We all liked the idea of Fanta Light, but… not everyone liked the taste." Almost 300 people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority, which said the existing restriction keeping the ad away from children's programming "was not enough" and moved the advert after the 9pm watershed¹⁷.

The brand's origins came back to bite it in its anniversary year. In 2015, Coca-Cola released a German advert to celebrate Fanta's 75th anniversary, called "Good Old Times"¹⁸,¹⁹. It explained that Fanta was created because Coca-Cola's German bottlers could not get syrup, without saying why: the wartime trade embargoes against Nazi Germany⁴. The narrator said the company wanted to bring back "the feeling of the Good Old Times," which many viewers took as a reference to the Nazi era¹⁹.

The 58-second clip made no mention of the Second World War, but its German voiceover explained that "resources for our beloved Coke were scarce," AOL reported¹⁹.

The advert promoted Fanta Klassik, a drink inspired by the original wartime recipe, sold in bottles that echoed the old design¹⁹. The bottle label lists a whey product at 30 percent, orange juice from concentrate and apple extract²⁰. A Coca-Cola spokeswoman said the video was meant to "evoke positive childhood memories," and added that although Fanta was invented in Germany during the Second World War, "the 75-year-old brand had no association with Hitler or the Nazi Party"¹⁹.

Coca-Cola pulled the advert and apologized¹⁸. A Fanta spokeswoman later told The Local that the company "wanted to remind our consumers of their childhoods," and that the classic ribbed bottle design used in the campaign came from the 1960s².

Conclusion

Fanta began as a substitute. Max Keith's German company made it from whey and fruit leftovers when it could no longer make Coca-Cola, and it kept the plants running through the war⁵. Coca-Cola dropped that drink after the war, then revived the name ten years later for an orange soda made in Naples⁶,⁷.

The history is not a simple success story. The man who created Fanta worked inside the Nazi economy, and when Coca-Cola celebrated the brand's anniversary without explaining that history, it had to pull the advert. For anyone building a brand identity , that is the lesson Fanta offers: an origin story belongs to the brand whether or not the brand tells it, so it is better to tell it accurately.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Fanta originally created?

Fanta was created in Germany during the Second World War by Coca-Cola's German subsidiary, run by Max Keith, when the company could no longer get the ingredients for Coca-Cola. It was made from locally available ingredients such as whey and apple fiber⁵.

Was Fanta invented by the Nazis?

No. It was created by Coca-Cola's German company, acting without direction from Atlanta, and not at the direction of the Nazi government⁵. Its creator, Max Keith, was not a member of the Nazi party, but the historian Mark Pendergrast calls him a Nazi collaborator, because doing business in Nazi Germany required it¹.

What does the name "Fanta" mean?

The name comes from Fantasie, German for imagination. Keith told his staff to use their imagination, and the salesman Joe Knipp answered "Fanta"⁵,¹.

What did the original Fanta taste like?

The recipe changed with the supply. It was made from byproducts such as whey, apple pulp and fiber, and fruit scraps. Mark Pendergrast called it "the leftovers of the leftovers" and said he did not imagine it tasted very good¹.

When was Orange Fanta introduced?

Orange Fanta was introduced in 1955 and first produced at a bottling plant in Naples, Italy, using local oranges⁷,².

How many Fanta flavors exist worldwide?

The number changes over time. Coca-Cola Italia said in 2019 that Fanta came in more than 70 flavors in more than 190 countries, with many flavors made only for certain countries, and that orange was the best seller⁷.

What happened to Fanta after World War II?

Max Keith handed the German business, its wartime profits and the Fanta brand back to Coca-Cola, and the wartime drink was discontinued⁵,⁶. Coca-Cola revived the name in 1955 for a new orange soda first made in Naples⁶,⁷.

How important is Fanta to Coca-Cola's business today?

Fanta is one of Coca-Cola's major brands. In 2001 it sold 1.4 billion cases worldwide and was Coca-Cola's second-biggest brand outside the United States⁹. In 2017 it was the third biggest carbonated soft drink brand in the UK¹³.

Has Fanta faced any controversies in its marketing?

Yes. In 2015 Coca-Cola pulled a German advert for Fanta's 75th anniversary that promised to bring back "the feeling of the Good Old Times" without mentioning that Fanta was created in Nazi Germany, and the company apologized¹⁹,¹⁸.