IG Farben

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</div>Sullivan & Cromwell partner <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rogers_Lamont&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Rogers Lamont (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Rogers Lamont</a> was the first American to die in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II" title="World War II" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">World War II</a>. Lamont had worked in the firm's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin" title="Berlin" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Berlin</a> office in the early 1930s and had seen the horrors of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany" title="Nazi Germany" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Nazi Germany</a> firsthand. Lamont resigned from the firm in 1939 and joined the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army" title="British Army" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">British Army</a>. Lamont was killed at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk" title="Dunkirk" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dunkirk</a> on May 27, 1940. On the other hand, Sullivan & Cromwell did business with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.G._Farben" title="I.G. Farben" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I.G. Farben</a> (the chemical manufacturer of ‘<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon-B" title="Zyklon-B" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Zyklon-B</a>’ poison gas used in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_death_camps" title="Nazi death camps" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Nazi death camps</a>) and its associated Nazi-era corporations. Their chief contact at the firm was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawyer" title="Lawyer" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">attorney</a> named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles" title="John Foster Dulles" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">John Foster Dulles</a>, who later became<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State" title="Secretary of State" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Secretary of State</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Administration" title="Eisenhower Administration" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Eisenhower Administration</a>. “Sullivan and Cromwell thrived on its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartels" title="Cartels" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">cartels</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion" title="Collusion" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">collusion</a> with the new Nazi regime,” say the firm’s chroniclers. In 1933 and 1934, when the Nazis' brutal course was obvious, Dulles led off cables to his German clients with the salutation, “Heil Hitler”. In 1935, he scribbled a screed for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Monthly" title="Atlantic Monthly" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Atlantic Monthly</a> magazine dismissing Nazi state terrorism as “changes we recognize to be inevitable.”<div></div><div>nuremberg</div><div>
</div><div><a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/justiceontrial/nuremberg_print.html">http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/justiceontrial/nuremberg_print.html</a></div><div>...</div><div>Belle and William Zeck met as lawyers in Nuremberg and were later married. Both the Zecks worked on the prosecution of I.G. Farben executives. The trials of German industrialists, which included the confiscation of their wealth and property, was seen by some conservative politicians as a left-wing, even communist conspiracy.Belle Zeck, who is Jewish, remembers several U.S. congressmen, including a young Wisconsin senator named Joseph McCarthy, who openly defended the German industrialists, and attacked the American tribunal.At one point Belle Zeck was denounced as a communist on the floor of the U.S. House by Congressman George Dondero from Michigan.Historian Peter Maguire, author of Law and War: An American Story, says criticism of Nuremberg in the United States was led by isolationist politicians, many of whom had opposed America joining the war against."They were basically saying that there were a handful of leftwing new-deal lawyers—even German Jewish nationals—which they would call recently immigrated American citizens running amok in the name of the United States in Nuremberg sowing seeds of dissension amongst our new allies, who would bolster the western front from the Red Army," says Maguire.But Maguire notes that it wasn't just American isolationists who opposed Nuremberg. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas described the trials as legally unprincipled, while George Kennan dismissed efforts to re-educate Germans and said the entire tribunal should be terminated.Amidst the criticism and red baiting, the subsequent American trials at Nuremberg concluded in 1949 with some 142 convictions. Twenty four Germans were sentenced to death and many others got prison terms. But they would not stay behind bars long. To appease West German leaders, American diplomats in command of the U.S. occupation zone formed a review board to consider clemencies.The man who appointed the review board, John McCloy, stressed that the board was not reconsidering judgments but would examine fairness in sentences imposed by the tribunal. Many prosecutors suspected that politics were involved, though John McCloy always denied that he was acting on any political directives from Washington, according to prosecutors and historians."Between 1949 and 1958," says William Caming, "all of the prisoners had sentences reduced and were then released. Including, surprisingly enough, four of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen death squads. It was a political measure. No members of the prosecution staff and none of the judges at Nuremberg were even consulted."Among the first released were the German industrialists, including Alfred Krupp and Karl Krauch, the I.G. Farben executive. Many of the former prisoners, like Krupp, would re-establish their wealth and positions in German society. Years later, a handful of the convicted war criminals would be tried again in a series of war crimes trials in Germany that continue to this day. The German government and German industry also paid out billions of dollars in compensation to victims of Nazi crimes. And beginning in the 1960s, a post-war generation of German writers, intellectuals and politicians confronted many of the demons of Nazism.According to historian Peter Maguire, others released early included 20 of the 24 Einsatzgruppen officers convicted by Benjamin Ferencz—including nine of those originally sentenced to death. The last two left Landsberg prison in 1958. Recently declassified U.S. documents and CIA files obtained by Maguire suggest that at least two former Einsatzgruppen officers later may have worked as spies for western intelligence agencies, including the CIA....</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>How a company whose Nobel-winning scientists discovered vital medicines became a Nazi collaboratorHell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine By Diarmuid Jeffreys<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-08-13/ig-farben-and-hitler-a-fateful-chemistry">http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-08-13/ig-farben-and-hitler-a-fateful-chemistry</a>In February 1941, a top manager of German chemical group IG Farben thought he had found the perfect location for a new synthetic-rubber factory. The site was out of range of Allied bombers, easily reached by rail, and had plenty of water and coal. Most important, there was a ready supply of cheap labor. The site was near a town in occupied Poland called Oswiecim, better known to history as Auschwitz.IG Farben went on to build a plant at Auschwitz so massive that it consumed more electricity per day than Berlin. It was in effect a privately run death camp, where inmate workers' life expectancy was only a few months. That was hardly the only activity that put IG Farben at the center of the Nazi nightmare. An IG Farben subsidiary produced Zyklon B, the pesticide repurposed by the SS for the gas chambers. And the conglomerate was the main supplier of chemical products essential to the Nazi war machine.Probably never in history has a major corporation been twisted to such evil ends. Yet what is most disturbing is that, for most of its past, the conglomerate and its predecessor companies embodied many of the qualities we admire in business today. Its managers were inventive and diligent, and its scientists discovered vital medicines, with quite a few earning Nobel prizes.In Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine, Diarmuid Jeffreys expertly chronicles how this once-proud company descended into the abyss. It's a complex tale spanning a century and featuring a huge cast. Jeffreys, whose previous book, Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug, chronicled the history of the painkiller, here does a superb job of managing the material and drawing concise sketches of key figures. At almost 500 pages, this is a brisk read.IG Farben traced its origins to the efforts of men such as Carl Bosch of BASF Group, who led the effort to mass-produce synthetic ammonia. The work was crucial to solving a worldwide shortage of fertilizer and preventing mass starvation. He and other scientist-managers made Germany the dominant producer of drugs and chemicals in the years before World War I. Bosch was a man of conscience but also deeply patriotic. During World War I he became a national hero after leading a crash effort to develop synthetic nitric acid, essential to producing explosives. Most notoriously, BASF chemist Fritz Haber, who had developed the processes used to make ammonia, came up with the idea of using chlorine gas as a weapon.That was only the first of the moral compromises that foreshadowed greater horrors. As the war drained manpower from the chemical factories, Bayer (BAY) Chief Executive Friedrich Carl Duisberg lobbied for a novel solution: importing forced labor from occupied Belgium. Germany sent the workers home after vehement international protest, but the precedent was set.IG Farben came into being in 1925. Bosch convinced Bayer, BASF, Hoechst, and many smaller companies to form a cartel powerful enough to withstand turbulent times. Although Bosch, who became chairman, criticized Adolf Hitler publicly as late as 1939, he was unable or unwilling to prevent more opportunistic members of IG Farben management from joining the Nazi Party, providing financial backing to the regime, and taking an active role in secret war preparations.IG managers later insisted they knew nothing of Nazi crimes or said they had been coerced. But the Nazi military worked closely with the company: Had IG Farben "been even marginally less compliant, Hitler would have struggled to get his war machine moving," Jeffreys writes. About 35% of a German foot soldier's gear was made of IG Farben materials. Even the keys to Enigma coding machines, the Nazi communications devices famously hacked by the Allies, were made of IG's plastic.In its final chapters, Hell's Cartel becomes a courtroom drama as Jeffreys chronicles U.S. Army prosecutor Telford Taylor's efforts to convict IG Farben managers of war crimes. Shamefully, right-wing members of the U.S. Congress tried to impede Taylor's work, perhaps attempting to protect constituents in the chemical industry who had cooperated with IG Farben before the war. It's not a pretty history. But it is gripping, full of warnings about the potential of corporations to mutate into criminal enterprises.</div>