BASF IG Farben
IG Farben was a German chemical industry conglomerate, notorious for its role in the Holocaust. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (Syndicate [literally, "community of interests"] of dye-making corporations). The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major chemical companies that had been working together closely since World War I. During its heyday, IG Farben was the largest chemical company in the world and the fourth largest overall industrial concern, after General Motors, U.S. Steel, and Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Following the Nazi takeover of Germany, IG Farben became involved in numerous war crimes during World War II. Most notoriously, the firm's pro-Nazi leadership openly and knowingly collaborated with the Nazi government to produce the large quantities of Zyklon B necessary to gas to death millions of Jews and other "undesirables" at various extermination camps during the Holocaust. The firm ceased operating following the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, when the company was seized by the Allies; its assets were entirely liquidated in 1952, and 13 executives were imprisoned for terms ranging from 1 to 8 years at the Nuremberg Trials (specifically, the IG Farben Trial) for their roles in the atrocities.
Engulfed by lawsuits and universal condemnation after the war's end, the company continued to exist as a shell with the sole stated goal of continuing to do business so it may pay many millions of marks in reparations to the victims of its many crimes. It has been criticized over the years for paying almost no claims.
Predecessors of IG Farben
At the beginning of the 20th century, the German chemical industry dominated the world market for synthetic dyes. The three major firms BASF, Bayer and Hoechst produced several hundred different dyes, along with the five smaller firms Agfa, Cassella, Chemische Fabrik Kalle, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler-ter Meer concentrated on high-quality specialty dyes. In 1913, these eight firms produced almost 90 percent of the world supply of dyestuffs and sold about 80 percent of their production abroad.[2] The three major firms had also integrated upstream into the production of essential raw materials, and they began to expand into other areas of chemistry such as pharmaceuticals, photographic film, agricultural chemicals and electrochemicals. Contrary to other industries, the founders and their families had little influence on the top-level decision-making of the leading German chemical firms, which was in the hands of professional salaried managers. Because of this unique situation, the economic historian Alfred Chandler called the German dye companies "the world's first truly managerial industrial enterprises".[3]
...
During the planning of the occupation of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland, IG Farben cooperated closely with Nazi officials and directed which chemical plants should be secured and delivered to IG Farben.
In 1941, an investigation exposed a "marriage" cartel between John D. Rockefeller's United States-based Standard Oil Co. and I.G. Farben.[12][13][14][15] It also brought new evidence concerning complex price and marketing agreements between DuPont,[citation needed] a major investor in and producer of leaded gasoline, United States Industrial Alcohol Company and its subsidiary, Cuba Distilling Co. The investigation was eventually dropped, like dozens of others in many different kinds of industries, due to the need to enlist industry support in the war effort.[citation needed] However, the top directors of many oil companies agreed to resign, and oil industry stocks in molasses companies were sold off as part of a compromise worked out.[16][17][18]
IG Farben held the patent for the pesticide Zyklon B (used in Holocaust gas chambers), and owned 42.2 percent (in shares) ofDegesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung) which manufactured it. IG Farben also had managers in Degesch's Managing Committee. Of the 24 directors of IG Farben indicted in the so-called IG Farben Trial (1947–1948) before a U.S. military tribunal at the subsequent Nuremberg Trials, 13 were sentenced to prison terms between one and eight years. Some of those indicted in the trial were subsequently made leaders of the post-war companies that split off from IG Farben, including those who were sentenced at Nuremberg.
Bayer:
World War I and II
As part of the reparations after World War I, Bayer assets, including the rights to its name and trademarks, were confiscated in the United States, Canada, and several other countries. In the United States and Canada, Bayer's assets and trademarks were acquired by Sterling Drug, a predecessor of Sterling Winthrop.
Bayer became part of IG Farben, a German chemical company conglomerate, in 1925. In the 1930s, IG Farben scientists Gerhard Domagk, Fritz Mietzsch, and Joseph Klarer, discovered Prontosil, the first commercially available antibacterial drug. The discovery and development of this first sulfonamide drug opened a new era in medicine.[5] Domagk received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work in 1939.[6]
During World War II, IG Farben used slave labor in factories attached to large slave labor camps, notably I.G. Auschwitz,[7] and the sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.[8] IG Farben engaged in human experimentation on Auschwitz prisoners, often with fatal results. [9] After World War II, the Allies broke up IG Farben and Bayer reappeared as an individual business. IG Farben board member Fritz ter Meer, sentenced to seven years in prison during the IG Farben Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, was elected Bayer's supervisory board head in 1956.[10]