I.G. Farben – Monsters Yet The Norm!

Blog 23-5, March 23, 2023, Written By Jerry Elman

I have researched the role of German companies and industrial leaders in facilitating the Holocaust. My biggest learning is that this was not unique and has been a norm throughout history and continues today. Money and power always have and always will become the focus, even when evil things are happening. This is my cynical learning and makes the challenge of “never again” an even higher mountain for us all!

I hope you take the time to read this entire article. It is important and relevant to our lives today and our children, grandchildren, and beyond.

This is my second blog covering the military-industrial complex that enabled the Third Reich to orchestrate the Holocaust.

Blog 23-3 covered the role of J.A. Topfs, who designed and built the industrial incinerators used in the Nazi death camp crematoriums.

I.G. Farben, also called “Hell’s Cartel,” was the single pivotal company without whom Hitler could not have implemented his industrialized mass-killing factories during the Holocaust.

I.G. Farben was formed in 1925 as a conglomerate of eight leading German chemical manufacturers, including Bayer, Hoechst, BASF, Agfa, and others. By 1938, the company had 218,090 employees.

I.G. Farben Headquarters Building 1931

I.G. Farben became the world’s largest chemical company. They produced and fed the German war machine the critical raw materials and chemicals to be self-sufficient in fighting World War II. Without I.G. Farben, Hitler could not have started and sustained World War II and implemented the “Final Solution.”

I.G. Farben’s products included synthetic dyes, nitrile rubber, polyurethane, prontosil, chloroquine, and synthetic fuel using coal liquefaction. This synthetic fuel, along with the production of synthetic rubber, powered the Wehrmacht, the Nazi war machine.

I.G. Farben invented the nerve agent Sarin during World War I. The most horrible of their many contributions to World War II and the Holocaust was the poison gas Zyklon B which facilitated the killing of millions in the Nazi gas chambers.

Prior to World War II, I.G. Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry.

Several I.G. Farben scientists made important discoveries and were awarded Nobel Prizes.

Notably, I.G. Farben scientists discovered the first sulfa antibiotic, which fundamentally reformed medical research and opened a new era in medicine.

Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937.

Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931 “in recognition of their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high-pressure methods.”

Gerhard Domagk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939 “for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil.”

Kurt Alder was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1950 for his “discovery and development of the diene synthesis.”

Prior to 1933, I.G. Farben employed many Jewish scientists, and one-third of its board members were Jewish. Far-right newspapers of the 1920s and early 1930s accused it of being an “international capitalist Jewish company.”

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the company began a process of Aryanization. By 1938 all Jewish employees had been dismissed, and the Jews on the board were forced to resign. The company leadership saw the opportunity to make massive profits and seek political power as Hitler developed plans for eventual war.

Hitler wanted Germany to become self-sufficient in all industrial and war supplies. Hitler believed Germany’s dependence on other countries and the British blockage caused Germany’s defeat in World War I. Hitler saw I.G. Farben as the company that could make self-sufficiency a quick reality.

I.G. Farben became the largest German government contractor as Hitler’s plans evolved into the late 1930s. Senior Farben executives also assumed key positions in the German government. They developed the industrial effort to use slave labor in German factories to expand quickly to support the war effort and make record profits.

As Hitler built concentration camps, first in Germany and then in Poland, the company relied on slave labor from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz. They built their own factory and concentration camp at Auschwitz, named Auschwitz III. By 1943, one-half of I.G. Farben’s workforce of 330,000 was Jewish slave labor. All slave labor was worked to death, with long hours, little food, poor sanitation, and prevalent diseases. The average life span for a slave worker was nine months. Upon death, they were replaced with new slave workers.

I.G. Farben Plant at Auschwitz III Concentration Camp

I.G. Farben was deeply involved in medical experiments on inmates at Auschwitz and the Mauthausen concentration camps through its Bayer subsidiary. Much of Joseph Mengele’s work was staffed by people from Bayer.

As it became clear Germany was losing the war, and the Allies were approaching, the company destroyed most of its records. In September 1944, Fritz ter Meer, a member of IG Farben’s supervisory board and future chair of Bayer’s board of directors (after the war), and Ernst Struss, secretary of the company’s managing board, are said to have made plans to destroy company files in Frankfurt in the event of an American invasion. As the Russian Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945 to liberate it, I.G. Farben reportedly destroyed the company’s records inside the camp. By spring 1945, the company had burned and shredded 15 tons of paperwork.

The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945. US authorities put its directors on trial. The I.G. Farben trial saw 23 directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted.

By 1951, however, all 13 were released from prison early after the U.S. military instituted good time credits in its war crime program and the cold war with the Soviet Union began.

What remained of I.G. Farben in the West was split in 1951 into its six constituent companies, then again into three: BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst. These companies continued to operate as an informal conglomerate and played a major role in the West German rebuilding effort.

Following several later mergers, the main successor companies became Agfa, BASF, Bayer, and Sanofi, all well-known companies across the world today, including the US.

While many people, especially Jews, remain angry and unforgiving, even today, of the industries that supported Hilter, sadly, this was not a unique situation. Throughout history, industrial and corporate leaders have almost always chosen the path of profits and power over doing what is right. Money and power destroy moral compasses! It was no different under Hilter’s rule. It is no different in today’s world. Industrial and corporate leaders always have and always will focus on profits over evil, with some exceptions.

Even American companies did and still do the same. Most American industrial giants and their leaders supported Hitler as he rose to power. Most did business with him up to the start of World War II. And many found ways to do business with the Third Reich even while America was at war with Germany using third parties and intermediaries.

Today American companies ignore and even accelerate climate change for profits. Pharmaceutical companies price gouge those in need of medications and even flood the market with opioids and other medications that kill people, all for profit.

Railroads make record profits and force their employees to work in unsafe conditions. Railroads choose profits over preventing derailments of hazardous materials, knowing people will get sick and even die.

Much of today’s inflation is caused by deliberate greed through made-up shortages and supply chain issues. Monetary policy is not the primary cause of inflation. Greed is! These are just a few examples of today’s realities of corporate greed.

Again, I want to emphasize this is nothing new. This is how it’s always been throughout history. We have to look at this from that perspective, especially if we are ever serious about stopping it.

Standard Oil remained partnered with I.G. Farber before, during, and after the war through intermediaries. Standard oil was one of the few that could produce tetraethyl lead gas which was key to providing fuel for large numbers of military vehicles and equipment needed by the German Army to wage war. Not only did Standard Oil sell tetraethyl lead gas to the Nazi regime, but they also taught the Germans how to manufacture it themselves knowing when the war started, they would no longer be able to export it to Germany. Some say this effort by Standard Oil was the most important of any support provided to Hitler.

In 1933, International Business Machines began providing Germany punchcard machines that were precursors to modern computers and databases. Documents show that as late as 1941, IBM was working with the Reich to liquidate Jews from Holland. IBM employees were training SS personnel how to use their machines to record the movement, sorting, and mass execution of large numbers of undesirables, at times right in the headquarters of death camps.

In 1935, GM built a factory in Berlin for the purpose of building “Blitz” trucks for the German “Wehrmacht.” Ford began building similar trucks around the same time, but GM was the number one producer of vehicles vital for the quick conquests of Poland, France, and much of the Soviet Union. Albert Speer, the German minister of armaments and war production, claimed that the rubber GM supplied was the key to the ability of the Germans to wage war the way they did. Inevitably when America declared war on Germany, the Reich seized GM’s German production facilities. GM continued assistance through third parties.

Hitler read Henry Ford‘s biography along with the book “The International Jew,” also written by Ford. Hitler also kept a portrait of Henry Ford in his office. In 1938, Hitler gave Henry Ford the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. This was the highest honor Nazi Germany could give any foreigner, representing Adolf Hitler’s personal admiration and indebtedness to Henry Ford. Hitler did not seize Ford’s factory in Cologne, Germany when war was declared with the US. Hitler made sure the Ford factory was provided with Russian slave labor.

Before America declared war on Germany, Alcoa Aluminum Company sent much of its raw aluminum to Germany. This allowed Alcoa’s German plant to make sixty percent more aluminum products than America. When the US’s involvement in the war began, there was a massive aluminum production shortage in America for the war effort. Alcoa essentially sold the Germans much of the material needed to build their war machines at the expense of American war production.

General Electric worked with J. A. Topf to help design and build the industrial incinerators used in the death camp crematoriums. The U.S. Government caught and fined GE for working with the Nazis, but the American company continued doing business with the Nazis and profited from the war. The fine was insignificant compared to the profits from violating the law.

F.W. Woolworth was an early supporter of Hilter. What was significant about Woolworth’s interaction with Hitler was a horrible thing that Woolworth did that ultimately lent legitimacy to the Nazi’s hatred of Jews. Woolworth fired all of its Jewish employees in the US. This won them the designation “Adefa Zeichen,” an award reserved for companies that were “pure Aryan.”

Dow Chemical provided major support to Hitler. This included raw materials and American technological innovations in refining oil.

The Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan, and Citibank‘s form of colluding with the Reich was particularly heinous. They agreed to seize the bank assets of wealthy Jews captured by the Nazis and then turn those assets over to the Nazis.

MGM Studios assisted the Nazis with developing and filming their propaganda films. After the invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, MGM arranged to continue to release their Hollywood films in German theaters working through a third party.

So what does all this mean?

We cannot be naive about what motivates and controls people’s behaviors and moral compasses. Good people become evil under the right conditions! I have lived my life assuming those who get caught up in evil for money and power are outliers, not the norm. I now know otherwise!

I have learned that we can never forget as individuals and as societies! Both are critical! History shows everything is forgotten two or three generations later. When those who lived through horror and evil pass away, we begin forgetting as a society, as a world. And then history does start repeating itself again. The same history of hate returns. The same history of greed and power returns.

I read and posted on Facebook how anti-semitism is now at the same level it was in 1970. In America and the world, we are trending back to the same hateful beliefs of the past. Of the 1930s. Of the days of the Russian Settlement of the Pale! Of the days of the Spanish Inquisition. Of the days of the Romans. Of the days of Jews being slaves in Eqypt as Passover approaches in a few weeks! The same beliefs that have caused war and genocide then. The same behaviors have repeated themselves for over 2,000 years. What does the future bring? Can we control the outcome?

Silence and passiveness is the real threat. The haters are not the real threat. Their power comes from the silence of everyone else. Silence and passiveness are always the reason why history repeats itself.

The haters and those focused on greed are out there again! They are active! They are growing in numbers. And once again, they see those who oppose them using passive words and tactics to stop them. We tell them, “We Remember!” “Never Forget!” And then we think we have now scared the crap out of them! What they see is the reality of our silence and our weakness! They even see our fear of them which gives them even greater power!

Elie Weisel learned the answer in the most brutal and harshest of ways. And he shared the answer many years ago. He told us why history keeps repeating itself better than anyone I know!

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”

― Elie Wiesel