pooling and cross-licensing agreements. In 1938, I carted my industrial white whale tothe Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. There as head of the Patent andCartel Section, under the great Thurman Arnold, I instituted the cartel program in whichthe attack against I.G. Farben continued throughout the course of World War II. In1943, I co-authored
Germany's Master Plan,
a book outlining the details of this program. After the war, when I read the transcript of the trial of the I.G. war criminals at Nuremberg, I knew that someday I would write the present book.
Acknowledgments
M
any persons provided valuable help in the making of this work. I should like toacknowledge my gratitude to Meg Leary and to Anne Greigg, whom I owe more than Ican ever repay; to Terri Alien, Morris Amchan, Karen Daggle, Ellen Finkelstein, Newton Frohlich, Paul Gannt, Irene Gordon, Paul Green, Iris Linson, John Mendelsohn,Alice Mostoff, Anita Navon, John Pehle, Hyman B. Ritchin, John E. Taylor, RobertWolfe, and the late Richard Bauer for their special contributions; to Charles E. Smith,Editor-in-Chief at The Free Press; to Madeleine Sann, who edited the manuscript; andto my wife Pauline, whose faith and encouragement go all the way back to the NyeCommittee, where we both came across I.G. for the first time.
Introduction
"W
ithout I.G.'s immense productive facilities, its far-reaching research, variedtechnical experience and overall concentration of economic power, Germany would nothave been in a position to start its aggressive war in September 1939."
1
Such was the judgment rendered by a team of civilian and military experts assigned by GeneralEisenhower at the close of World War II to make an exhaustive investigation of I.G.'scontribution to the Nazi war effort. Extravagant as this conclusion may have sounded,the record sustains its accuracy.I.G. truly was a mighty industrial colossus. So huge were its assets admitted andconcealed, so superior its technological know-how, and so formidable its array of patents that it dominated the chemical business of the world. I.G. fortified thiscommercial leadership by constructing a maze of cartels whose members included suchindustrial giants as Kuhlmann of France, Imperial Chemical Industries of Great Britain,Montecatini of Italy, Aussiger Verein of Czechoslovakia, Boruta of Poland, Mitsui of Japan, and Standard Oil (New Jersey), Du Pont, and Dow Chemical of the UnitedStates.But I.G. was more than a corporate empire. Through the uncanny talents of itsscientists and engineers, it secured the vital self-sufficiency that enabled Germany tomaneuver in the world of power politics. From its laboratories and factories flowed thestrategic raw materials that Germany's own territory could not supply, the synthetics of oil, rubber, nitrates, and fibers. So, too, I.G. produced vaccines, sera, and drugs such asSalvarsan, aspirin, Atabrine, and Novocain, along with sulfa drugs, as well as poisongases and rocket fuels. Few universities could match the profusion of Nobel Prizesearned by its scientists: Paul Ehrlich for Salvarsan, Fritz Haber for the fixation of nitrogen, Carl Bosch for synthesizing saltpeter and gasoline, and Gerhard Domagk for the sulfa drugs.Gustav Stresemann, chancellor and foreign minister during the Weimar Republic,once said, "Without I.G. and coal, I can have no foreign policy." But it was for the Nazis that I.G. performed the greatest service. With I.G. and coal Adolf Hitler almostconquered the world.Hitler was an apt student of the weaknesses that brought Germany to its knees duringWorld War I. Defeat had drilled into him the doleful fact that Germany's impoverishedland, devoid of the strategic raw materials with which modern wars are fought, hadmade the British blockade a decisive weapon. In planning for World War II he vowed tocorrect nature's imbalance with science and technology.
Leave a Comment