"Farben war Hitler, und Hitler war Farben":
Zur Verbindung zwischen der I.G. Farbenindustie Aktiengesellschaft und Adolf
Hitler
Das Olympia-Programmheft, das gleichzeitig Propaganda war, wurde von I.G. Farben gesponsert (siehe
Abbildung oben). I.G. Farben betrieb in großem Stil Werbung für Hitler und die
Nazi-Partei – und erhielt dafür in den ersten Jahren professionelle Unterstützung
von einem der bedeutendsten modernen PR-Experten, Ivy Lee.
Chapter II
The Empire of I.G. Farben
Farben was Hitler and Hitler was Farben. (Senator
Homer T. Bone to Senate Committee on Military Affairs, June 4, 1943.)
On the eve of World
War II the German chemical complex of I.G. Farben was the largest chemical
manufacturing enterprise in the world, with extraordinary political and
economic power and influence within the Hitlerian Nazi state. I. G. has been
aptly described as "a state within a state."
The Farben cartel
dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street
financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six
already giant German chemical companies — Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa,
Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. These companies were merged
to become Inter-nationale Gesellschaft Farbenindustrie A.G. — or I.G. Farben
for short. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg
for war crimes committed by the I. G. cartel. Other I. G. Farben directors were
placed on trial but the American affiliates of I. G. Farben and the American
directors of I. G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the
archives.
It is these U.S.
connections in Wall Street that concern us. Without the capital supplied by
Wall Street, there would have been no I. G. Farben in the first place and
almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.
German bankers on the
Farben Aufsichsrat (the supervisory Board of Directors)1 in the late 1920s included
the Hamburg banker Max Warburg, whose brother Paul Warburg was a founder of the
Federal Reserve System in the United States. Not coincidentally, Paul Warburg
was also on the board of American I. G., Farben's wholly owned U.S. subsidiary.
In addition to Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz, the guiding hand in the
creation of the Farben empire, the early Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch,
Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler. All except Max
Warburg were charged as "war criminals" after World War II. […]
Hermann Schmitz, the organizer of I. G. Farben in 1925, became a prominent
early Nazi and supporter of Hitler, as well as chairman of the Swiss I. G.
Chemic and president of American I. G. The Farben complex both in Germany and
the United States then developed into an integral part of the formation and
operation of the Nazi state machine, the Wehrmacht and the S.S.
I. G. Farben is of
peculiar interest in the formation of the Nazi state because Farben directors
materially helped Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933. We have photographic
evidence (see page 60) that I.G. Farben contributed 400,000 RM to Hitler's
political "slush fund." It was this secret fund which financed the
Nazi seizure of control in March 1933. […]
Qualified observers
have argued that Germany could not have gone to war in 1939 without I. G.
Farben. […] There were over 2,000 cartel agreements between I. G. and foreign
firms — including Standard Oil of New Jersey, DuPont, Alcoa, Dow Chemical, and
others in the United States […]
In 1939, out of 43
major products manufactured by I.G., 28 were of "primary concern" to
the German armed forces. Farben's ultimate control of the German war economy,
acquired during the 1920s and 1930s with Wall Street assistance, can best be
assessed by examining the percentage of German war material output produced by
Farben plants in 1945. Farben at that time produced 100 percent of German
synthetic rubber, 95 percent of German poison gas (including all the Zyklon B
gas used in the concentration camps), 90 percent of German plastics, 88 percent
of German magnesium, 84 percent of German explosives, 70 percent of German
gunpowder, 46 percent of German high octane (aviation) gasoline, and 33 percent
of German synthetic gasoline. […]
There were numerous
Farben arrangements with American firms, including cartel marketing
arrangements, patent agreements, and technical exchanges as exemplified in the
Standard Oil-Ethyl technology transfers mentioned above. These arrangements
were used by I.G. to advance Nazi policy abroad, to collect strategic
information, and to consolidate a world-wide chemical cartel. […]
The Berlin N.W. 7
office of I.G. Farben was the key Nazi overseas espionage center. The unit
operated under Farben director Max Ilgner, nephew of I.G. Farben president
Hermann Schmitz. Max Ilgner and Hermann Schmitz were on the board of American
I.G., with fellow directors Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company, Paul Warburg of
Bank of Manhattan, and Charles E. Mitchell of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York.
At the outbreak o£ war
in 1939 VOWI employees were ordered into the Wehrmacht but in fact continued to
perform the same work as when nominally under I.G. Farben. One of the more
prominent of these Farben intelligence workers in N.W. 7 was Prince Bernhard of
the Netherlands, who joined Farben in the early 1930s after completion of an
18-month period of service in the black-uniformed S.S. […]
Chemnyco's vice
president in New York was Rudolph Ilgner, an American citizen and brother of
American I. G. Farben director Max Ilgner. In brief, Farben operated VOWI, the
Nazi foreign intelligence operation, before World War II and the VOWI operation
was associated with prominent members of the Wall Street Establishment through
American I.G. and Chemnyco.
The U.S. War
Department also accused I.G. Farben and its American associates of spearheading
Nazi psychological and economic warfare programs through dissemination of
propaganda via Farben agents abroad, and of providing foreign exchange for this
Nazi propaganda. Farben's cartel arrangements promoted Nazi economic warfare —
the outstanding example being the voluntary Standard Oil of New Jersey
restriction on development of synthetic rubber in the United States at the
behest of I. G. Farben. […]
Acting on behalf of
the Nazi state, Farben broadened its own horizon to a world scale which
maintained close relations with the Nazi regime and the Wehrmaeht. A liaison
office, the Vermittlungsstelle W, was established to maintain communications
between I.G. Farben and the German Ministry of War [(Wehrwirtschaftsamt)] […]
Unfortunately the
files of the Vermittlungsstelle [(liaison office between I.G. Farben and
Wehrwirtschaftsamt)] were destroyed prior to the end of the war, although it is
known from other sources that from 1934 onwards a complex network of
transactions evolved between I.G. and the Wehrmacht. In 1934 I. G. Farben began
to mobilize for war, and each I.G. plant prepared its war production plans and
submitted the plans to the Ministries of War and Economics. By 1935-6 war games
were being held at I.G. Farben plants and wartime technical procedures
rehearsed. These war games were described by Dr. Struss, head of the
Secretariat of I.G.'s Technical Committee:
It is true that since
1934 or 1935, soon after the establishment of the Vermittlungsstelle W in the
different works, theoretical war plant games had been arranged to examine how
the effect of bombing on certain factories would materialize. It was
particularly taken into consideration what would happen if 100- or 500-kilogram
bombs would fall on a certain factory and what would be the result of it. It is
also right that the word Kriegsspiele was used for it. […]
Consequently,
throughout the 1930s I. G. Farben did more than just comply with orders from
the Nazi regime. Farben was an initiator and operator for the Nazi plans for
world conquest. Farben acted as a research and intelligence organization for
the German Army and voluntarily initiated Wehrmacht projects. In fact the Army
only rarely had to approach Farben; it is estimated that about 40 to 50 percent
of Farben projects for the Army were initiated by Farben itself. In brief, in
the words of Dr. von Schnitzler:
Thus, in acting as it
had done, I.G. contracted a great responsibility and constituted a substantial
aid in the chemical domain and decisive help to Hitler's foreign policy, which
led to war and to the ruin of Germany. Thus, I must conclude that I.G. is
largely responsible for Hitler's policy. […]
This miserable picture
of pre-war military preparation was known abroad and had to be sold — or
disguised — to the American public in order to facilitate Wall Street
fund-raising and technical assistance on behalf of I. G. Farben in the United
States. A prominent New York public relations firm was chosen for the job of
selling the I.G. Farben combine to America. The most notable public relations
firm in the late 1920s and 1930s was Ivy Lee & T.J. Ross of New York. Ivy
Lee had previously undertaken a public relations campaign for the Rockefellers,
to spruce up the Rockefeller name among the American public. The firm had also
produced a syncophantic book entitled USSR, undertaking the same clean-up task
for the Soviet Union — even while Soviet labor camps were in full blast in the
late 20s and early 30s.
From 1929 onwards Ivy
Lee became public relations counsel for I. G. Farben in the United States. In
1934 Ivy Lee presented testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee
on this work for Farben.15 Lee testified that I.G. Farben was affiliated with
the American Farben firm and "The American I.G. is a holding company with
directors such people as Edsel Ford, Walter Teagle, one of the officers of the
City Bank .... " Lee explained that he was paid $25,000 per year under a
contract made with Max Ilgner of I.G. Farben. His job was to counter criticism
levelled at I.G. Farben within the United States. […]
The initial payment of
$4,500 to Ivy Lee under this contract was made by Hermann Schmitz, chairman of
I.G. Farben in Germany. It was deposited in the New York Trust Company under
the name of I. G. Chemic (or the "Swiss I.G.," as Ivy Lee termed it).
However, the second and major payment of $14,450 was made by William von Rath
of the American I.G. and also deposited by Ivy Lee in New York Trust Company,
for the credit of his personal account. (The firm account was at the Chase
Bank.) This point about the origin of the funds is 'important when we consider
the identity of directors of American I.G., because payment by American I.G.
meant that the bulk of the Nazi propaganda funds were not of German origin.
They were American funds earned in the U.S. and under control of American
directors, although used for Nazi propaganda in the United States.
In other words, most
of the Nazi propaganda funds handled by Ivy Lee were not imported from Germany.
[…]
Finally, Ivy Lee
employed Burnham Carter to study American new paper reports on Germany and
prepare suitable pro-Nazi replies. It should be noted that this German
literature was not Farben literature, it was official Hitler literature […]
Several basic observations
can be made from this evidence. First, the board of American I.G. had three
directors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most influential of
the various Federal Reserve Banks. American I.G. also had interlocks with
Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford Motor Company, Bank of Manhattan (later to
become the Chase Manhattan), and A.E.G. (German General Electric). Second,
three members of the board of this American I.G. were found guilty at Nuremburg
War Crimes Trials. These were the German, not the American, members. Among
these Germans was Max Ilgner, director of the I.G. Farben N.W. 7 office in
Berlin, i.e., the Nazi pre-war intelligence office. If the directors of a
corporation are collectively responsible for the activities of the corporation,
then the American directors should also have been placed on trial at Nuremburg,
along with the German directors — that is, if the purpose of the trials was to
determine war guilt. Of course, if the purpose of the trials had been to divert
attention away from the U.S. involvement in Hitler's rise to power, they
succeeded very well in such an objective.
Footnotes […]
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