Growth and slave labour IG Farben has been described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the
Third Reich". When World War II began, it was the fourth largest corporation in the world and the largest in Europe. In February 1941, Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler signed an order supporting the construction of an IG Farben
Buna-N (synthetic rubber) plant—known as Monowitz Buna Werke (or Buna)—near the
Monowitz concentration camp, part of the
Auschwitz concentration camp complex in
German-occupied Poland. (Monowitz came to be known as Auschwitz III; Auschwitz I was the administrative centre and Auschwitz II-Birkenau the extermination camp.) The IG Farben plant's workforce consisted of slave labour from Auschwitz, leased to the company by the SS for a low daily rate. One of IG Farben's subsidiaries supplied the poison gas,
Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers. Company executives said after the war that they had not known what was happening inside the camps. According to the historian
Peter Hayes, "the killings were an open secret within Farben, and people worked at not reflecting upon what they knew." In 1978, Joseph Borkin, who investigated the company as a United States Justice Department lawyer, quoted an American report: "Without I.G.'s immense productive facilities, its far-reaching research, varied technical expertise and overall concentration of economic power, Germany would not have been in a position to start its aggressive war in September 1939." The company placed its resources, technical capabilities and overseas contacts at the German government's disposal. The minutes of a meeting of the Commercial Committee on 10 September 1937 noted: This message was repeated by
Wilhelm Rudolf Mann, who chaired a meeting of the Bayer division board of directors on 16 February 1938, and who in an earlier meeting had referred to the "miracle of the birth of the German nation": "The chairman points out our incontestable being in line with the National Socialist attitude in the association of the entire 'Bayer' pharmaceutica and insecticides; beyond that, he requests the heads of the offices abroad to regard it as their self-evident duty to collaborate in a fine and understanding manner with the functionaries of the Party, with the
DAF (German Workers' Front), et cetera. Orders to that effect again are to be given to the leading German gentlemen so that there may be no misunderstanding in their execution." By 1943, IG Farben was manufacturing products worth three billion
marks in 334 facilities in occupied Europe; almost half its workforce of 330,000 men and women consisted of slave labour or conscripts, including 30,000 Auschwitz prisoners. Altogether its annual net profit was around (equivalent to billion euros). In 1945, according to
Raymond G. Stokes, it manufactured all the synthetic rubber and methanol in Germany, 90 percent of its plastic and "organic intermediates", 84 percent of its explosives, 75 percent of its
nitrogen and
solvents, around 50 percent of its pharmaceuticals, and around 33 percent of its
synthetic fuel.
Medical experiments Staff of the
Bayer group at IG Farben conducted medical experiments on concentration-camp inmates at Auschwitz and at the
Mauthausen concentration camp. A Bayer employee wrote to
Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant: "The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price."
Zyklon B Between 1942 and 1945, a
cyanide-based pesticide, Zyklon B, was used to kill over one million people, mostly Jews, in
gas chambers in Europe, including in the
Auschwitz II and
Majdanek extermination camps in German-occupied Poland. The poison gas was supplied by an IG Farben subsidiary,
Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung MbH, or German Company for Pest Control). Degesch originally supplied the gas to Auschwitz to fumigate clothing that was infested with lice, which carried
typhus. Fumigation took place within a closed room, but it was a slow process, so Degesch recommended building small gas chambers, which heated the gas to over 30 °C and killed the lice within one hour. The idea was that the inmates would be shaved and showered while their clothes were being fumigated. The gas was first used on human beings in Auschwitz (650 Soviet POWs and 200 others) in September 1941. Peter Hayes compiled the following table showing the increase in Zyklon B ordered by Auschwitz (figures with an asterisk are incomplete). One ton of Zyklon B was enough to kill around 312,500 people. Several IG Farben executives said after the war that they did not know about the gassings, despite the increase in sales of Zyklon B to Auschwitz. IG Farben owned 42.5 percent of Degesch shares, and three members of Degesch's 11-person executive board,
Wilhelm Rudolf Mann,
Heinrich Hörlein and
Carl Wurster, were directors of IG Farben. Mann, who had been an
SA-
Sturmführer, but not
Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where the industrial gas chambers were located. Other IG Farben staff appear to have known. Ernst Struss, secretary of the IG Farben's managing board, testified after the war that the company's chief engineer at Auschwitz had told him about the gassings. The general manager of Degesch is said to have learned about the gassings from
Kurt Gerstein of the SS. According to the post-war testimony of
Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant, he was asked by , technical manager of the IG Farben Auschwitz plant, whether it was true that Jews were being cremated at Auschwitz. Höss replied that he could not discuss it and thereafter assumed that Dürrfeld knew. Dürrfeld, a friend of Höss, denied knowing about it. Hayes writes that the inmates of Auschwitz III, which supplied the slave labour for IG Farben, were well aware of the gas chambers, in part because of the stench from the Auschwitz II crematoria, and in part because IG Farben supervisors in the camp spoke about the gassings, including using the threat of them to make the inmates work harder.
Charles Coward, a British POW who had been held at Auschwitz III, told the
IG Farben trial: Mann, Hörlein and Wurster (directors of both IG Farben and Degesch) were acquitted at the IG Farben trial in 1948 of having supplied Zyklon B for the purpose of mass extermination. The judges ruled that the prosecution had not shown that the defendants or executive board "had any persuasive influence on the management policies of Degesch or any significant knowledge as to the uses to which its production was being put". In 1949, Mann became head of pharmaceutical sales at Bayer. Hörlein became chair of Bayer's supervisory board. Wurster became chair of the IG Farben board, helped to reestablish
BASF as a separate company, and became an honorary professor at the
University of Heidelberg. Dürrfeld was sentenced to eight years, but had his sentence commuted to time served in 1951 by
John McCloy, the US High Commissioner for Germany, under massive political pressure, after which he joined the management or supervisory boards of several chemical companies. and in the spring of 1945, the company burned and shredded 15 tons of paperwork in Frankfurt. The Americans seized the company's property under "General Order No. 2 pursuant to Military Government Law No. 52", 2 July 1945, which allowed the US to disperse "ownership and control of such of the plants and equipment seized under this order as have not been transferred or destroyed". The French followed suit in the areas they controlled. On 30 November 1945,
Allied Control Council Law No. 9, "Seizure of Property owned by I.G. Farbenindustrie and the Control Thereof", formalized the seizure for "knowingly and prominently ... building up and maintaining German war potential". The division of property followed the division of Germany into four zones:
American,
British,
French and
Soviet. In the Western occupation zone, the idea of destroying the company was abandoned as the policy of
denazification evolved, in part because of a need for industry to support reconstruction, and in part because of the company's entanglement with American companies, notably the successors of
Standard Oil. In 1951, the company was split into its original constituent companies. The four largest quickly bought the smaller ones. In January 1955, the
Allied High Commission issued the I.G. Liquidation Conclusion Law,
IG Farben trial In 1947, the American government put IG Farben's directors on trial.
The United States of America vs. Carl Krauch, et al. (1947–1948), also known as the IG Farben trial, was the sixth of 12 trials for
war crimes the US authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany (
Nuremberg) against leading industrialists of
Nazi Germany. There were five counts against the IG Farben directors: , 27 August 1947 Of the 24 defendants
arraigned, one fell ill and his case was discontinued. The
indictment was filed on 3 May 1947; the trial lasted from 27 August 1947 until 30 July 1948. The judges were
Curtis Grover Shake (presiding),
James Morris,
Paul M. Hebert, and Clarence F. Merrell as an alternate judge.
Telford Taylor was the chief counsel for the prosecution. Thirteen defendants were found guilty, with sentences ranging from 18 months to eight years. All were cleared of the first count of waging war. The heaviest sentences went to those involved with Auschwitz, which was IG Farben's
Upper Rhine group. Ambros, Bütefisch, Dürrfeld, Krauch and ter Meer were convicted of "participating in ... enslavement and deportation for slave labor". All defendants who were sentenced to prison received early release. Most were quickly restored to their directorships and other positions in post-war companies, and some were awarded the
Federal Cross of Merit. Those who served prison sentences included: Those
acquitted included: ==Liquidation==