



The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of this century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stands for “Association of Common Interests” and was nothing more than a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. One year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler’s seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, the Second World War.

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Zyklon-B, an extermination gas produced by Hoechst, was used to kill millions of innocent people, before their corpses were burnt



One hundred percent of all explosives and of all synthetic gasoline came from the factories of IG Farben. Whenever the German Wehrmacht conquered another country, IG Farben followed, systematically taking over the industries of those countries. Through this close collaboration with Hitler’s Wehrmacht, IG Farben participated in the plunder of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and all other countries conquered by the Nazis.

The U.S. government’s investigation of all the factors leading to the Second World War in 1946 came to the conclusion that without IG Farben the Second World War would simply not have been possible. We have to come to grips with the fact that it was not the psychopath, Adolph Hitler, or bad genes of the German people that brought about the Second World War. Economic greed by companies like Bayer, BASF and Hoechst was the key factor in bringing about the Holocaust.

No one who saw Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” will forget the scenes in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

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The Birth of IG Farben and the Support for Hitler

(from the book “Sword And Swastika” by Telford Taylor)

After the First World War, all the major chemical concerns were merged into a single gigantic trust in 1926 – the I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. – under the leadership of Carl Duisberg and Carl Bosch. Dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals, photographic supplies, explosives, and a myriad of other products poured forth in ever-growing volume and variety.

Soon after the election of July, 1932, in which the Nazis had doubled their vote, Heinrich Buetefisch [chief of the I.G. Farben - Leuna plant] and Heinrich Gattineau [a Farben official who was also an SA officer and personally known to both Rudolf Hess and Ernst Roehm]. waited upon the Fuehrer-to-be to learn whether Farben could count on governmental support for its synthetic gasoline program in the event the Nazis should attain power. Hitler readily agreed that Farben should be given the necessary support to warrant expansion of the Leuna plant.

After the seizure of power, Farben lost no time following up this auspicious introduction. Significantly, Farben’s chosen channel was not the ‘Heeresleitung’ but Hermann Goering’s new Air Ministry. In a long letter to Goering’s deputy Erhard Milch, Carl Krauch of Farben outlined a “four-year plan” for the expansion of synthetic fuel output. Thereupon, Milch called in Generalleutnant von Vollard Bockelberg, Chief of the Army Ordnance Office, and it was agreed that the Army and the Air Ministry would together sponsor the Krauch project. A few months later Farben received a formal Reich contract calling for the enlargement of Leuna so that production would reach three hundred thousand tons per year by 1937, with Farben’s sales guaranteed for ten years – until June 30, 1944 – on a cost-plus basis.



1941: I.G. Farben’s “friendship” with the SS helps to increase the speed of construction of Auschwitz-Buna against the resistance “of some little bureaucrats”. A letter from Dr. Otto Ambros to the Director of I.G. Farben Frankfurt, Fritz ter Meer

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I.G. Farben and the Auschwitz Concentration Camp

On March 1, 1941 , the Reichsführer of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, inspected the construction site



Auschwitz was the largest mass extermination factory in human history, but the concentration camp was only an appendix.

The main project was IG Auschwitz, a 100% subsidiary of IG Farben, the largest industrial complex of the world for manufacturing synthetic gasoline and rubber for the conquest of Europe .

On April 14, 1941 , in Ludwigshafen , Otto Armbrust, the IG Farben board member responsible for the Auschwitz project, stated to his IG Farben board colleagues, ”our new friendship with the SS is a blessing. We have determined all measures integrating the concentration camps to benefit our company.”

The pharmaceutical departments of the IG Farben cartel used the victims of the concentration camps in their own way: thousands of them died during human experiments such as the testing of new and unknown vaccines.

There was no retirement plan for the prisoners of IG Auschwitz. Those who were too weak or too sick to work were selected at the main gate of the IG Auschwitz factory and sent to the gas chambers. Even the chemical gas Zyklon-B used for the annihilation of millions of people was derived from the drawing boards and factories of IG Farben.



The map of Auschwitz (above) speaks for itself. The size of the IG Auschwitz plant (red area) was larger than all Auschwitz concentration camps (blue area) taken together.

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Medical Experiments in Auschwitz Conducted by I.G. Farben

(from the book “I.G. Farben – from Anilin to forced labor” by Jörg Hunger and Paul Sander)

Scientific experiments were also done in other concentration camps. A decisive fact is that IG employee SS major Dr. med. Helmuth Vetter, stationed in several concentration camps, participated in these experiments by order of Bayer Leverkusen.

At the same time as Dr. Joseph Mengele, experimented in Auschwitz with medications that were designated “B-1012″, B-1034″, “3382″ or “Rutenol”. The test preparations were not only applied to those prisoners who were ill, but also to healthy ones. These people were first infected on purpose through pills, powdered substances, injections or enemas. Many of the medications caused the victims to vomit or have bloody diarrhoea. In most cases the prisoners died as a result of the experiments.

In the Auschwitz files correspondence was discovered between the camp commander and Bayer Leverkusen. It dealt with the sale of 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes: “With a view to the planned experiments with a new sleep-inducing drug we would appreciate it if you could place a number of prisoners at our disposal (…)” – “We confirm your response, but consider the price of 200 RM per woman to be too high. We propose to pay no more than 170 RM per woman. If this is acceptable to you, the women will be placed in our possession. We need some 150 women (…)” – “We confirm your approval of the agreement. Please prepare for us 150 women in the best health possible (…)” – “Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep you informed of the developments regarding the experiments (…)” – “The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment (…)”

A former Auschwitz prisoner testified: “There was a large ward of tuberculars on block 20. The Bayer Company sent medications in unmarked and unnamed ampoules. The tuberculars were injected with this. These unfortunate people were never killed in the gas chambers. One only had to wait for them to die, which did not take long (…) 150 Jewish women that had been bought from the camp attendant by Bayer, (…) served for experiments with unknown hormonal preparations.”

Parallel to the tests by Behringwerke and Bayer Leverkusen the chemical-pharmaceutical and serologic-bacteriological department at Hoechst started experimenting on Auschwitz prisoners with their new typhus fever preparation “3582”. The first series of tests had results that were far from satisfactory. Of the 50 test persons 15 died; the typhus fever drug led to vomiting and exhaustion. Part of the Auschwitz concentration camp was quarantined, which led to an extension of the tests to the concentration camp in Buchenwald . In the journal of the “Department for typhus fever and viral research of the concentration camp Buchenwald” we find on January 10th, 1943: “As suggested by the IG Farbenindustrie A.G. the following were tested as typhus fever medications: a) preparation 3582 of the chem. pharm. and sero-bact. Department Hoechst – Prof. Lautenschläger and Dr. Weber – (therapeutic test A), b) methylene blue, formerly tested on mice by Prof. Kiekuth, Elberfeld (therapeutic test M).”

The first and also the second series of therapeutic tests, held in Buchenwald between March 31st and April 11th 1943 , were negative due to insufficient contamination of the tested prisoners. Neither did the experiments in Auschwitz show evident successes.

The scientific value of all these experiments, whether ordered by the IG Farben or not, was in fact zero. The test persons were in bad physical condition, caused by forced labor, insufficient and wrong nutrition and diseases in the concentration camp. In addition to this there were generally bad sanitary circumstances in the laboratories. “The test results in the concentration camps, as the IG laboratory specialists should have known, could not be compared to results made under normal circumstances”.

The SS physician Dr. Hoven testified to this during the Nuremberg Trial: “It should be generally known, and especially in German scientific circles, that the SS did not have notable scientists at its disposal. It is clear that the experiments in the concentration camps with IG preparations only took place in the interests of the IG, which strived with all means to determine the effectiveness of these preparations. They let the SS deal with the – shall I say – dirty work in the concentration camps. It was not the IG’s intention to make any of this public, but rather to put up a smoke screen around the experiments so that (…) they could keep any profits to themselves. Not the SS but the IG took the initiative for the concentration camp experiments.”



A letter from 1944 in which I.G. Farben orders an “harsh punishment” for a slave laborer in Auschwitz-Monowitz.

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The Nuremberg War Tribunal

The Nuremberg War Criminal Tribunal convicted 24 IG Farben board members and executives on the basis of mass murder, slavery and other crimes against humanity. Amazingly however, by 1951 all of them had already been released, continuing to consult German corporations. The Nuremberg Tribunal dissolved the IG Farben into Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF.

Today each of the three daughters of the IG Farben is 20 times bigger than IG Farben was at its height in 1944, the last year of the Second World War.

More importantly, for almost three decades after the Second World War, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst (now Aventis) each filled its highest position, chairman of the board, with former members of the Nazi, NSDAP:

Carl Wurster, chairman of the board of BASF until 1974 was, during the war, on the board of the company manufacturing Zyklon-B gas

Carl Winnacker, chairman of the board of Hoechst until the late 70′s, was a member of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) and was a member of the board of IG Farben

Curt Hansen, chairman of the board of Bayer until the late 70′s, was co-organizer of the conquest of Europe in the department of “acquisition of raw materials.” Under this leadership the IG Farben daughters, BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst, continued to support politicians representing their interests.

During the 50′s and 60′s they invested in the political career of a young representative from a suburb of the BASF town of Ludwigshafen , his name: Helmut Kohl.

From 1957 to 1967 the young Helmut Kohl was a paid lobbyist of the “Verband Chemischer Industrie,” the central lobby organization of the German pharmaceutical and chemical cartel. Thus, the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry advanced one of its own as a political representative, leaving the German people with only the choice of final approval.

Nuremberg War Tribunal 1946/47: 24 managers of Hoechst, Bayer and BASF were indicted for mass murder, slavery and other crimes against humanity.



The result is well known: Helmut Kohl was chancellor of Germany for 16 years and the German pharmaceutical and chemical industry became the world’s leading exporter of chemical products, with subsidiaries in over 150 countries, more than IG Farben ever had. Several billion people will now die prematurely, if the pharmaceutical industry gets its way. Germany is the only country in the entire world in which a former paid lobbyist for the chemical and pharmaceutical cartel was head of the government. To sum up, the support of German politics for the global expansion plans of the German pharmaceutical and chemical companies has a 100-year-old tradition.

From knowing this, we understand the support from Bonn for the unethical plans of the Codex Commission. (Remark made by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation)

The U.S. lead prosecutor in the Nuremberg War Criminal Tribunal against the IG Farben anticipated this development when he said, “These IG Farben criminals, not the lunatic Nazi fanatics, are the main war criminals. If the guilt of these criminals is not brought to light and if they are not punished, they will represent a much greater threat to the future peace of the world than Hitler if he were still alive.”

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The Disgraced Managers of IG Farben

Fritz ter Meer (1884-1967)

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1926-1945, member of the working committee and the technical committee, director of section II

1943 plenipotentiary for Italy of the Reich Minister for armaments and war production, military economist chief industrialist responsible for Auschwitz .

1948 found guilty of “plundering” and “enslavement” and condemned to seven years detention. Released 1952.

1955 board member of Bayer

1956-1964 chairman of the board of Bayer chairman of the board of Th. Goldschmidt AG, deputy chairman of the board of Commerzbank, Bank-Association AG, board member of the Waggonfabrik Uerdingen, the Duesseldorfer waggonfabrik AG, the bank association West Germany AG and the United Industrial enterprises AG (VIAG)

Otto Ambros (1901-1990):

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1938-1945, member of the chemical committee and chairman of commission K (agents), special advisors of Krauchs F+E department for the four-year plan, director of the special committee C (chemical agents), the main committee for powders and explosives in the office for arms, military industrial leader

Responsible for choice of location, planning, building and running of IG Auschwitz as operations manager. Managing director of the Buna-Works and synthetic fuel production

1945 knight’s cross and Distinguished Service Cross

1948 found guilty of “enslavement” condemned to eight years detention.

Released 1952.

Starting in 1954 chairman, deputy chairmen and member of the boards of: Chemie Grünenthal, Pintsch Bamag AG, Knoll AG, Feldmühle Papier- und Zellstoffwerke, Telefunken GmbH, Grünzweig & Hartmann, Internationale Galalithgesellschaft, Berliner Handelsgesellschaft, Süddeutsche Kalkstickstoffwerke, Vereinigte Industrieunternehmungen (VIAG) with its subsidiaries Scholven-Chemie and Phenol-Chemie as an advisor to F. K. Flick und of the US Industrialist J.P. Grace is entangled in the early eighties in the “Flick scandal”

Hermann Schmitz (1881-1960)

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1926-1935, chairman of the board 1935-1945 and “head of finances” to the IG

Head of military economics, member of the Nazi party (NSDAP)

1941 Distinguished Service Cross 1st. Class

1948 found guilty of “plundering” condemned to four years in prison. Released 1950.

1952 board member of the German bank Berlin West

1956 honorary chairman of the board of Rheinish steel plants.

Fritz Gajewski (1888-1962)

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1931-1945, head of section III (point of contact to Dynamite Nobel)

At Nuremberg , found “not guiltily” for all charges

1949 managing director, 1952 chairman of the board of Dynamite Nobel AG

1953 Distinguished Service Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany

1957 retirement, honorary chairman of the board of Dynamite Nobel AG, chairman of the board of Genschow & Co. and the Chemie-Verwaltungs AG, board member of Huels AG and the Gelsenkirchener mines

Heinrich Buetefisch (1894-1969)

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1934-1945, deputy director of section I, director of gasoline synthesis for IG Auschwitz

1932 (together with Gattineau) had the conversation with Hitler, that defined the petrol pact, 1936 co-worker of Krauch on the four year plan as a production representative for oil in the Arms Ministry

SS Obersturmbannführer, military industrial leader, awarded the “friend of the Reich leader SS” cross.

1948 found guilty of “enslavement” condemned to six years detention.

Released 1951.

1952 supervisory board member of Ruhr-Chemie and Kohle-Öl-Chemie among others.

1964 Distinguished Service Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany. The award was taken back after 16 days due to violent protests

Friedrich Jaehne (1879-1965)

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1934-1945, chief engineer of the IG, deputy director of the BG central Rhine/Maingau

1943 head of military economics, Distinguished Service Cross 1st. Class 1948 found guilty of “plundering” condemned to 18 months detention

1955 supervisory board member of the “new” Farbwerke Hoechst. In the same year elevated to supervisory board chairman elect – Karl Winnacker said “in the meantime the liquidation conclusion law had been issued and freed us from all discriminating regulations. So we could add Friedrich Jaehne, chief engineer of the old IG, to the supervisory board. He presided over this committee until 1963. In 1945 none of us would have thought that the two of us would be able to co-operate at the head of our company “.

Supervisory board chairman of the Alfreds Messer GmbH (later Messer Griesheim), supervisory board member with Linde

1959 Dr. Ing. E.h. of TH Munich, 1962 Bavarian service medal, honorary senator of TH Munich, Distinguished Service Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany

Carl Krauch (1887-1968)

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1926-1940, chairman of the board 1940-1945, director of the coordination center W, director of the Reich office for economics, plenipotentiary for special questions on chemical production, military industrial leader.

1943 Knight’s Cross for Distinguished War services.

1948 found guilty of “enslavement” and condemned to six years in prison. Released 1950.

1955 board member of Huels GmbH.

In 1956 in the Frankfurt Auschwitz court case is quoted as saying: “they were usually anti-social elements, so called political prisoners” (describing the prisoners of Auschwitz-Monowitz)

Carl Wurster (1900-1974)

Member of the IG FARBEN executive committee 1938-1945, director of BG upper Rhine, board member of DEGESCH

Head of military economics and member of the military economic advisory council of the Reich chamber of economics

1945 Knight’s Cross for Distinguished War Services

At Nuremberg , found “not guiltily” of all charges

1952 chairman of the board of the “new” BASF, chairman of the board for Duisburger Kupferhuette and Robert Bosch AG, board member of Augusts Viktoria, the Buna-Werke Huels GmbH, Süddeutschen Bank, Deutschen Bank, Vereinigten Glanzstoff, BBC, Allianz, Degussa, 1965 retirement as chairman of the board of BASF

1952 honorary professor of the University of Heidelberg , Dr. rer. RK h.c. the University of Tübingen , 1953 Dr. Ing. E.h. of the TH Munich, 1955 Distinguished Service Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bayer service medal, 1960 Dr. rer. pole h.c. the University of Mannheim, honorary senator of the Universities of Mainz, Karlsruhe and Tübingen, honorary citizen of the University of Stuttgart, honoury citizen of the city of Ludwigshafen, 1967 Schiller prize of the city of Mannheim, president of the federation of the chemical industry, vice-president of the Max-Planck company, the company of German chemists.

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From “Arbeit macht frei” to “Codex Alimentarius”

The entrance of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp



Just fifteen years after they were convicted in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, Bayer, BASF and Hoechst were again the architects of the next major human rights offences. In 1962, they established the Codex Alimentarius Commission. (Remark made by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation)

This dark period of German history is inextricably bound to one man, Fritz ter Meer:

He was a member of the Managing Board of IG Farben from its inception to its dissolution. As the Wartime Manager, he was responsible for IG Auschwitz.

In the Nuremberg Tribunal, ter Meer stated: “Forced labor did not inflict any remarkable injury, pain, or suffering on the detainees, particularly since the alternative for these workers would have been death.”

In 1948, ter Meer was sentenced by the Nuremberg Tribunal to seven years in prison for plundering and slavery.

In 1952, his sentence was commuted, due to the influence of powerful friends.

From 1956-1964, he was reinstated as a member of the Managing Board of Bayer AG.

In 1962, ter Meer was one of the architects of the “Codex Alimentarius – Commission” and one of the main designers of the schemes that would profit from human suffering. (Remark made by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation)

The deceptive title “Codex Alimentarius” is no accident. It was devised by the same companies and indeed the same individuals, who gave the Auschwitz concentration camp inmates the deceptive slogan “Arbeit mach frei” (“Work makes you free”). (Remark made by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation)

As long as the Nazi infection continues to work its influence and threaten the lives of untold millions, no German has the right to proclaim that the Nazi era is finished.

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Literature

The Crime And Punishment of I.G. Farben

by Joseph Borkin From 1938 to 1946, Joseph Borkin was the chief of the Patent and Cartel section of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in Washington, and was responsible for the wartime investigation and prosecution of the cartels dominated by I. G. Farben. During the war, he published Germany ‘s Master Plan which led the Associated Press to say: “Joseph Borkin probably knows more about I. G. than anyone outside of it”. Since 1946, Mr Borkin has practised Law in Washington and he has written numerous books and articles. He is chairman of the Federal Bar Association’s Committee on Standards and Judicial Behaviour, a lecturer at the Catholic University Law School , and Director of the Drew Pearson Foundation. Read the book online…

Thy Will Be Done

by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett The Conquest of The Amazon:

Nelson Rockefeller And Evangelism In The Age of Oil In this triumph of investigative journalism, Colby and Dennett show how Nelson Rockefeller and the largest American missionary organization worked with the U.S. and foreign governments to secure resources and “pacify” indigenous peoples in the name of democracy, corporate profit and religion, resulting in massacres and genocide. “This is a rich and fascinating book on a significant and heartbreaking subject, the work of American religion, business, politics, and wars in the eradication and mass murder of the native peoples of the Amazon rain forest. Based on eighteen years of research in numerous archives, nearly two hundred interviews, and a bibliography twenty pages long, it is probably the definitive study for the region it covers. I know of no other book like it. Clean and moving in its attention to human details, of perpetrators, unwitting collaborators, and victims, it is a powerful argument and story that anyone concerned with might, right, and the innocent should read.” — John Womack, Jr., Professor of History, Harvard University Read the book online…

Sword and Swastika

by Telford Taylor As chief of counsel for the prosecution of war criminals at Nuremberg , Brigadier General Telford Taylor had a major part in unraveling the tangled knot of guilt for the launching of the war, and for the concomitant atrocities of the Nazi era. In his book, Mr. Taylor takes advantage of his profound knowledge of the Third Reich and of the roles of the German officer class, the industry and the Nazis. Read the book online…

Rockefeller Medicine Men -

Medicine & Capitalism in America

by E. Richard Brown When Rockefeller Medicine Men was first published in 1979, it proved to be a controversial work. In reviewing histories of medicine from 1962 to 1982, Ronald L. Numbers called it “the most controversial medical history of the past decade”. Part of the controversy generated by the book comes from its social-historical approach to medicine. The growing body of social histories of health-care challenges the “great physician” perspective that for so long has dominated the history of medicine. In his book, E. Richard Brown describes the political economy of health care, integrating material from a variety of disciplines – economics, sociology, political science, epidemiology, history and social policy. Read the book online…

Auschwitz Chronicle 1939 – 1945

by Danuta Czech Auschwitz represents the apex of evil; as such, if we can never understand why it existed, we can at least know how. Most documents concerning Auschwitz and its annexes, Birkenau and Monowitz, were destroyed by the Nazis as the Allies advanced at the close of the war, yet much survived to be collected into the archives of the Official Auschwitz Museum, including: more than 3,500 eyewitness accounts by former prisoners; original camp documents that detail transport and admissions lists; written orders from the commandant; orders for laboratory experiments; hundreds of original secret messages – pleas for food and help in escape attempts – smuggled out by prisoners; financial records; building and maintenance files; and information brought out at post war trials. Auschwitz Chronicle, a collection of these documents, is a monumental reference that records – day by day, month by month – the events and developments of the concentration camp for its planning in the winter of 1939-40 to its liberation in January 1945: the construction, operation, and eventual destruction of gas chambers and crematoriums; the transports and selections; the infamous medical “experiments”; the visits and inspections by SS leaders, physicians, and the Red Cross; the secret resistance activities; and the all-too-infrequent revolts and escapes. Danuta Czech is the former head of the research department of the Official Auschwitz Museum where, in 1955, she began the work that culminates in the Auschwitz Chronicle. Born in Poland in 1922, she was an active member of resistance in the Tarnow region during World War II.

Auschwitz : 1270 to the Present

by Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt No symbol of the Holocaust is more profound than Auschwitz . Yet the sheer, crushing number of murders – over 1,200,000 of them – the overwhelming scale of the crime, and the vast, abandoned site of ruined chimneys and rusting barbed wire isolate Auschwitz from us. How could an ordinary town become a site of such terror? Why was this particular town chosen? Who conceived, created, and constructed the camp? This unprecedented history reveals how an unremarkable Polish village was transformed into a killing field. Using architectural designs and planning documents recently discovered in Poland and Russia and over 200 illustrations, the definitive “Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present” traces the successive stages of how Auschwitz became the focus of a Germanized Poland and the epicenter of the Final Solution.

Auschwitz: 60 Year Anniversary– the Role of IG Farben-Bayer

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Soviet liberation of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. Elderly Holocaust survivors, former soldiers and world leaders have gathered in Poland to mark the 60th anniversary: “I would like to say to all the people on the Earth: This should never be repeated, ever,” said Maj. Anatoly Shapiro, 92, who led the first Soviet troops to enter Auschwitz.

Lest we forget an important corporate participant in the Holocaust – two excerpts shed light on the role of IG Farben, ie. Bayer.

IG Farben was the most powerful German corporate cartel in the first half of the 20th century and the single largest profiteer from the Second World War. IG (Interessengemeinschaft) stands for “Association of Common Interests”: IG Farben included BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

As documents show, IG Farben was intimately involved with the human experimental atrocities committed by Mengele at Auschwitz.

A German watchdog organization, the GBG Network, maintains copious documents and tracks Bayer Pharmaceutical activities.

Below is an excerpt from a BBC documentary about an Auschwitz survivor who for years tried to get compensation from the pharmaceutical giant that carried out medical experiments on her. Now living in Dundee, Scotland, she tells her story in a BBC documentary.

Another excerpt is from the website of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation. Dr. Matthias Rath heads a research development institute in nutritional and Cellular Medicine conducting basic research and clinical studies to scientifically document the health benefits of micronutrients in fighting a multitude of diseases. Dr. Rath was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1955.

In the Auschwitz files, correspondence between the camp commander and Bayer Leverkusen was discovered. It dealt with the sale of 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes:

“With a view to the planned experiments with a new sleep-inducing drug we would appreciate it if you could place a number of prisoners at our disposal (…)” – “We confirm your response, but consider the price of 200 RM per woman to be too high. We propose to pay no more than 170 RM per woman. If this is acceptable to you, the women will be placed in our possession. We need some 150 women (…)” – “We confirm your approval of the agreement. Please prepare for us 150 women in the best health possible (…)” – “Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep you informed of the developments regarding the experiments (…)” – “The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment (…)”

See: http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm

Medical Experiments in Auschwitz Conducted by I.G. Farben (from the book “I.G. Farben – from Anilin to forced labor” by Jörg Hunger and Paul Sander)

Unethical human experiments are a major threat to vulnerable populations everywhere – including in the US where, for example, the EPA is seeking to conduct pesticide exposure experiments on children. The IG Farben culture continues to drive the chemical-pharmaceutical industry. “Profit urber alles” – that means ANYTHING goes – profit above all else.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

About Bayer´s Nazi-past

IG Farben was the only German company in the Third Reich that ran its own concentration camp. At least 30.000 slave workers died in this camp; a lot more were deported to the gas chambers. It was no coincidence that IG Farben built their giant new plant in Auschwitz, since the workforce they used (altogether about 300.000 people) was practically for free. The Zyklon B gas, which killed millions of Jews, Gypsies and other people was produced by IG Farben´s subsidiary company Degesch.

In Germany a growing number of people do not understand that IG Farben´s successors Bayer, BASF and Hoechst still refuse to apologize for their misdeeds. It is hard to accept that after the war the companies were allowed to keep IG Farben´s entire property, whereas the surviving slave workers received nothing. Until today Bayer, BASF and Hoechst did not pay any wages to their former workers.

In 1995 the coalition “Never again!” was created by the German Auschwitz Committee, Critical Shareholders and several organizations of former slave workers. In a joint appeal the coalition demands that there has to be an appropriate compensation by the companies for slave-workers and their descendants. Also the maintenance of the memorial at Auschwitz, which reminds the public of IG Farben´s victims, should be paid by the corporations. “Never again!” states that without verification of the past we always have to be present so that these crimes might never happen again. More than 1,500 individuals and about 100 German groups have signed this platform. The activities were organized by the Coalition against Bayer-dangers, a group that has monitored Bayer for 25 years.

Life as a human guinea pig

For years an Auschwitz survivor has tried to win compensation from the pharmaceutical giant that carried out medical experiments on her. Now living in Dundee, she tells her story in a BBC documentary.

Zoe Polanska Palmer never imagined she would survive Dr Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz.

Nor did her German doctors. Like thousands of other children, she was destined to be gassed once her usefulness to Nazi science had ceased.

During her two years at the camp, 13-year-old Zoe was forced to take tablets and pills as part of a series of pharmacological experiments, believed to be part of early birth control tests.

But Zoe refused to die. Saved by a Russian doctor who evacuated her to Dachau, she recovered and eventually settled in Scotland.

Now in her early 70s, she has been fighting for compensation and an apology from the German drug manufacturer, Bayer.

“I still find it difficult to take aspirin,” she says. “I remember one of the SS doctors holding my jaw open and forcing pills down my throat. I’m still very wary of men wearing white coats.”

Eyewitness testimonies held in the Auschwitz camp archive claim the doctor who force-fed her pills worked for the pharmaceutical company Bayer when it was part of the IG Farben conglomerate.

His name was Dr Victor Capesius. It’s a name that Zoe can never forget.

He helped Dr Mengele to conduct genetic experiments, usually on children, and also selected thousands of prisoners at the huge death camp, choosing those who might be useful and sending the rest to an immediate death with a flick of his finger.

Dr Capesius was tried in Frankfurt for war crimes in 1963 and served time in prison.

Another longtime Bayer employee, Helmut Vetter, also worked as a SS doctor at Auschwitz. He was involved in the testing of experimental vaccines and medicines on inmates and after the war he was executed for administering fatal injections.

Denial of culpability

“The concentration camps were used as a huge laboratory for human experimentation,” says Wolfgang Eckhart, the Professor of Historical Medicine at Heidelberg University.

“We have to look upon the camps as outposts of pharmacological research. The Nazis wanted to sterilise the population of the east, especially Russian people, but enable them to continue to be useful as workers.”

The pain has yet to heal

Bayer says the company which exists today has nothing to do with its wartime counterpart. A spokesperson told the BBC: “Between 1925 and 1952, no company named Bayer existed, neither as a subsidiary of IG Farben nor as any other legal entity.

“Bayer has worked in good faith with the German government to establish a fund to help those who have suffered. The company’s contribution to this fund amounted to more than £40m.”

Damaged beyond repair

Although it is nearly 60 years since the end of World War II, for survivors like Zoe the consequences of the war are as alive today as they were in January 1945 when the Russian Army liberated Auschwitz.

After the war, Zoe married and settled in Scotland. There she underwent several painful operations to repair the damage done to her body. But she has never been able to have children. Now suffering from cancer, she is a remarkably cheerful woman whose home in a quiet suburb is punctuated with laughter from her jokes and tears from her memories.

When I first travelled to meet her in July 2002, she was angry that she had been ignored for so long by the authorities managing the compensation fund set up by German industry and the German government.

She had campaigned for 28 years but received nothing.

“They want us all to die so they won’t have to pay out so much money,” Zoe says.

Within weeks of the authorities being contacted by the BBC, Zoe received a cheque for a little over £2,000 from the German compensation fund.

“I want to make sure people remember what happened to people like me when I was a child at Auschwitz,” she says. “I was just one of thousands of children treated in this way. But I was one of the very few lucky ones who managed to survive.” (By Mark Handscomb, BBC Radio 4 reporter for It’s My Story )

BAYER “Aryanized” Jewish Cemetery

Documents show that in 1942 IG Farben´s branch office in Uerdingen, Germany got hold of the town’s Jewish cemetery.

The forced sale price was way below the actual market value: 100,000 square meter property for 3,000 Reichsmark. After the war the property was passed on to IG Farben´s successor BAYER AG.

The Nazis dissolved the Jewish Community of Uerdingen in 1942. Today all traces of the Jewish cemetery in Uerdingen have been completely obliterated. The city archive indicates that the cemetery was located approximately where the main gate to the BAYER factory currently stands.

The COALITION AGAINST BAYER-DANGERS demands that the company publicly apologize for the defilement of the Uerdingen cemetery and affix a memorial plaque to the main gate of the company´s Uerdingen works.

Hans Frankenthal, former slave worker in IG Farben´s plant in Auschwitz and board member of the Jewish Community: “I was terrified when I learned from this offence against Jewish belief. According to our faith, taking possession of the cemetery without exhuming the bodies is tantamount to defiling the graves.”

BAYER today is living off the fruits of Nazi legalism. On paper everything was legally correct: Julius Israel Kohn from the “Association of Jews in the German Reich” and Bernhard Hoffmann, the representative of IG Farben, signed the sales agreement in a notary´s office, and the copy of this seemingly standard real estate transaction has a stamp from the Krefeld tax office.

At the same time the former culprits are publicly honored in Uerdingen. Fritz ter Meer served on the IG Farben board of directors from 1926 to 1945 and was the head officer directing the operations of the IG Farben factory at Auschwitz. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal sentenced him to seven years in prison.

He was released after serving only four years. Not long after, in 1956, Ter Meer was elevated to the chairman of the supervisory board at BAYER, a position he held for seven years. His grave in Krefeld has a meter-high wreath on it – donated by BAYER in recognition of his services.

Coalition against BAYER-dangers (Germany)

www.CBGnetwork.org

Fax: (+49) 211-333 940

Tel: (+49) 211-333 911

please send an e-mail for receiving the English newsletter Keycode BAYER free of charge.

German/Italian/French/Spanish newsletters also available.

See: http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm

Medical Experiments in Auschwitz Conducted by I.G. Farben (from the book “I.G. Farben – from Anilin to forced labor” by Jörg Hunger and Paul Sander)

Scientific experiments were also done in other concentration camps. A decisive fact is that IG employee SS major Dr. med. Helmuth Vetter, stationed in several concentration camps, participated in these experiments by order of Bayer Leverkusen.

At the same time as Dr. Joseph Mengele, he experimented in Auschwitz with medications that were designated “B-1012″, B-1034″, “3382″ or “Rutenol”. The test preparations were not just applied to those prisoners who were ill, but also to healthy ones. These people were first infected on purpose through pills, powdered substances, injections or enemas. Many of the medications caused the victims to vomit or have bloody diarrhea. In most cases the prisoners died as a result of the experiments.

In the Auschwitz files correspondence was discovered between the camp commander and Bayer Leverkusen. It dealt with the sale of 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes: “With a view to the planned experiments with a new sleep-inducing drug we would appreciate it if you could place a number of prisoners at our disposal (…)” – “We confirm your response, but consider the price of 200 RM per woman to be too high. We propose to pay no more than 170 RM per woman. If this is acceptable to you, the women will be placed in our possession. We need some 150 women (…)” – “We confirm your approval of the agreement. Please prepare for us 150 women in the best health possible (…)” – “Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep you informed of the developments regarding the experiments (…)” – “The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment (…)”

A former Auschwitz prisoner testified: “There was a large ward of tuberculars on block 20. The Bayer Company sent medications in unmarked and unnamed ampoules. The tuberculars were injected with this. These unfortunate people were never killed in the gas chambers. One only had to wait for them to die, which did not take long (…) 150 Jewish women that had been bought from the camp attendant by Bayer, (…) served for experiments with unknown hormonal preparations.”

Parallel to the tests by Behringwerke and Bayer Leverkusen the chemical-pharmaceutical and serologic-bacteriological department at Hoechst started experimenting on Auschwitz prisoners with their new typhus fever preparation “3582″. The first series of tests had results that were far from satisfactory. Of the 50 test persons 15 died; the typhus fever drug led to vomiting and exhaustion. Part of the concentration camp Auschwitz was quarantined, which led to an extension of the tests to the concentration camp in Buchenwald. In the journal of the “department for typhus fever and viral research of the concentration camp Buchenwald” we find on January 10th, 1943: “As suggested by the IG Farbenindustrie A.G. the following were tested as typhus fever medications: a) preparation 3582 of the chem. pharm. and sero-bact. Department Hoechst – Prof. Lautenschläger and Dr. Weber – (therapeutic test A), b) methylene blue, formerly tested on mice by Prof. Kiekuth, Elberfeld (therapeutic test M).”

The first and also the second series of therapeutic tests, held in Buchenwald between March 31st and April 11th 1943, had negative results due to insufficient contamination of the tested prisoners. Neither did the experiments in Auschwitz have evident successes.

The scientific value of all these experiments, whether ordered by the IG Farben or not, was in fact zero. The test persons were in bad physical condition, caused by forced labor, insufficient and wrong nutrition and diseases in the concentration camp. Add to this the generally bad sanitary circumstances in the laboratories. “The test results in the concentration camps, as the IG laboratory specialists should know, could not be compared to results made under normal circumstances”.

The SS physician Dr. Hoven testified to this during the Nuremberg Trial: “It should be generally known, and especially in German scientific circles, that the SS did not have notable scientists at its disposal. It is clear that the experiments in the concentration camps with IG preparations only took place in the interests of the IG, which strived by all means to determine the effectiveness of these preparations. They let the SS deal with the – shall I say – dirty work in the concentration camps. It was not the IG’s intention to bring any of this out in the open, but rather to put up a smoke screen around the experiments so that (…) they could keep any profits to themselves. Not the SS but the IG took the initiative for the concentration camp experiments.”

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY: An Exposé of The Nazi-American Money-Plot 1933-1949

by Charles Higham

1983

Preface

A Bank for All Reasons

The Chase Nazi Account

The Secrets of Standard Oil

The Mexican Connection

The Telephone Plot

The Car Connection

The Fraternity Runs for Cover

Preface

It would be comforting to believe that the financial Establishment of the United States and the leaders of American industry were united in a common purpose following the Day of Infamy, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Certainly, the American public was assured that Big Business along with all of the officials of government ceased from the moment the war began to have any dealings whatsoever with the enemy. That assurance sustained the morale of millions of Americans who bore arms in World War II and their kinfolk who stayed at home and suffered the anguish of separation.

But the heartbreaking truth is that a number of financial and industrial figures of World War II and several members of the government served the cause of money before the cause of patriotism. While aiding the United States’ war effort, they also aided Nazi Germany’s.

I first came across this fact in 1978 when I was declassifying documents in the course of writing a biography that dealt with motion picture star Errol Flynn’s Nazi associations. In the National Archives Diplomatic Records Room I found numerous cross-references to prominent figures who, I had always assumed, were entirely committed to the American cause, yet who had been marked down for suspected subversive activities.

I had heard over the years about a general agreement of certain major figures of American, British, and German commerce to continue their relations and associations after Pearl Harbor. I had also heard that certain figures of the warring governments had arranged to assist in this. But I had never seen any documentary evidence of it. Now, pieces of information began to surface. I started to locate documents and have them declassified under the Freedom of Information Act—a painfully slow and exhausting process that lasted two and a half years. What I found out was very disturbing.

I had been born to a patriotic British family. My father had raised the first battalions of volunteers against Germany in World War I, and had built the Star and Garter Hospital at Richmond, Surrey, for ex-servicemen. He had been knighted by King George V for his services to the Crown and had been a member of Parliament and a Cabinet member. I feel a strong sense of loyalty to Britain, as well as to my adopted country, the United States of America. Moreover, I am part Jewish. Auschwitz is a word stamped on my heart forever.

It thus came as a severe shock to learn that several of the greatest American corporate leaders were in league with Nazi corporations before and after Pearl Harbor, including I.G. Farben, the colossal Nazi industrial trust that created Auschwitz. Those leaders interlocked through an association I have dubbed The Fraternity. Each of these business leaders was entangled with the others through interlocking directorates or financial sources. All were represented internationally by the National City Bank or by the Chase National Bank and by the Nazi attorneys Gerhardt Westrick and Dr. Heinrich Albert. All had connections to that crucial Nazi economist, Emil Puhl, of Hitler’s Reichsbank and the Bank for International Settlements.

The tycoons were linked by an ideology: the ideology of Business as Usual. Bound by identical reactionary ideas, the members sought a common future in fascist domination, regardless of which world leader might further that ambition.

Several members not only sought a continuing alliance of interests for the duration of World War II but supported the idea of a negotiated peace with Germany that would bar any reorganization of Europe along liberal lines. It would leave as its residue a police state that would place The Fraternity in postwar possession of financial, industrial, and political autonomy. When it was clear that Germany was losing the war the businessmen became notably more “loyal.” Then, when war was over, the survivors pushed into Germany, protected their assets, restored Nazi friends to high office, helped provoke the Cold War, and insured the permanent future of The Fraternity.

From the outset I realized that in researching the subject I would have to carve through an ice cream mountain of public relations. I searched in vain through books about the corporations and their histories to find any reference to questionable activities in World War II. It was clear that the authors of those volumes, granted the cooperation of the businesses concerned, predictably backed off from disclosing anything that would be revealing. To this day the bulk of Americans do not suspect The Fraternity. The government smothered everything, during and even (inexcusably) after the war. What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey managers shipped the enemy’s fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars’ worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan? Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid tot Berne during the war to help improve Hitler’s communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the Focke-Wulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial ball bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Göring’s cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?

For the government did sanction dubious transactions—both before and after Pearl Harbor. A presidential edict, issued six days after December 7, 1941, actually set up the legislation whereby licensing arrangements for trading with the enemy could officially be granted. Often during the years after Pearl Harbor the government permitted such trading. For example, ITT was allowed to continue its relations with the Axis and Japan until 1945, even though that conglomerate was regarded as an official instrument of United States Intelligence. No attempt was made to prevent Ford from retaining its interests for the Germans in Occupied France, nor were the Chase Bank or the Morgan Bank expressly forbidden to keep open their branches in Occupied Paris. It is indicated that the Reichsbank and Nazi Ministry of Economics made promises to certain U.S. corporate leaders that their properties would not be injured after the Führer was victorious. Thus, the bosses of the multinationals as we know them today had a six-spot on every side of the dice cube. Whichever side won the war, the powers that really ran nations would not be adversely affected.

And it is important to consider the size of American investments in Nazi Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor. These amounted to an estimated total of $475 million. Standard Oil of New Jersey had $120 million invested there; General Motors had $35 million; ITT had $30 million; and Ford had $17.5 million. Though it would have been more patriotic to have allowed Nazi Germany to confiscate these companies for the duration—to nationalize them or to absorb them into Hermann Göring’s industrial empire—it was clearly more practical to insure them protection from seizure by allowing them to remain in special holding companies, the money accumulating until war’s end. It is interesting that whereas there is no evidence of any serious attempt by Roosevelt to impeach the guilty in the United States, there is evidence that Hitler strove to punish certain German Fraternity associates on the grounds of treason to the Nazi state. Indeed, in the case of ITT, perhaps the most flagrant of the corporations in its outright dealings with the enemy, Hitler and his postmaster general, the venerable Wilhelm Ohnesorge, strove to impound the German end of the business. But even they were powerless in such a situation: the Gestapo leader of counterintelligence, Walter Schellenberg, was a prominent director and shareholder of ITT by arrangement with New York—and even Hitler dared not cross the Gestapo.

As for Roosevelt, the Sphinx still keeps his secrets. That supreme politician held all of the forces of collusion and betrayal in balance, publicly praising those executives whom he knew to be questionable. Before Pearl Harbor, he allowed such egregious executives as James D. Mooney of General Motors and William Rhodes Davis of the Davis Oil Company to enjoy pleasant tête-à-têtes with Hitler and Göring, while maintaining a careful record of what they were doing. During the war, J. Edgar Hoover, Adolf A. Berle, Henry Morgenthau, and Harold Ickes kept the President fully advised of all internal and external transgressions. With great skill, he never let the executives concerned know that he was on to them. By using the corporate leaders for his own war purposes as dollar-a-year men, keeping an eye on them and allowing them to indulge, under license or not, in their international tradings, he at once made winning the war a certainty and kept the public from knowing what it should not know.

Because of the secrecy with which the matter has been blanketed, researching it presented me with a nightmare that preceded the greater nightmare of discovery. I embarked upon a voyage that resembled nothing so much as a descent into poisoned waters in a diving bell.

Why did even the loyal figures of the American government allow these transactions to continue after Pearl Harbor? A logical deduction would be that not to have done so would have involved public disclosure: the procedure of legally disconnecting these alliances under the antitrust laws would have resulted in a public scandal that would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread strikes, and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services. Moreover, as some corporate executives were never tired of reminding the government, their trial and imprisonment would have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the American war effort. Therefore, the government was powerless to intervene. After 1945, the Cold War, which the executives had done so much to provoke, made it even more necessary that the truth of The Fraternity agreements should not be revealed.

I began with the conveniently multinational Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland. The activities of this anomalous institution in wartime are contained in Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau’s official diaries at the Roosevelt Memorial Library at Hyde Park, New York. Other details are contained in reports by the estimable Lauchlin Currie, of Roosevelt’s White House Economics Staff, whom I interviewed at length by telephone at his home in Bogotá, Colombia, to which city he had been banished, his citizenship stripped from him in 1956 for exposing American-Nazi connections. Another source lay in reports by the late Orvis Schmidt of Treasury Foreign Funds Control. German records were a useful source: Emil Puhl, vice-president and real power of the Reichsbank, a most crucial figure in The Fraternity’s dealings, had sent reports to his nominal superior, Dr. Walther Funk, from Switzerland to Berlin late in the war.

I turned to the matter of the Rockefeller-controlled Chase National Bank, which had conducted its business for the Nazi High Command in Paris until the war’s end. Evidently realizing that future historians might want to examine the highly secret Chase Bank files, Morgenthau had left subtle cross-references at Hyde Park that could lead future investigators to Treasury itself. I asked Ralph V. Korp of Treasury for access to the sealed Chase boxes, which had been under lock and key since 1945. Under the Freedom of Information Act, Mr. Korp obtained permission from his superiors to unseal the boxes and to declassify the large number of documents contained therein.

From the Chase Bank it was a natural progression to Standard Oil of New Jersey, the chief jewel in the crown of the Rockefeller empire. Records of Standard’s dealings with the Axis were contained in the Records Rooms of the Diplomatic Branch of the National Archives were specially declassified. There, too, I found records of Sterling Products, General Aniline and Film, and William Rhodes Davis, whose FBI files were also most revealing. Documents on ITT and RCA were declassified. After waiting out the better part of the year, I was able to obtain them from the National Archives. Classified SKF Industries files are held in the Suitland, Maryland, annex of the Archives. General Motors matters are covered in the James D. Mooney public access collection of Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. The unpublished post–Pear Harbor diaries of Harold Ickes were invaluable; they are to be found in the manuscript room of the Library of Congress.

The most elusive files were those on Ford in Occupied France. I could find no reference to them in the Treasury documentary listings. I knew that a Treasury team had investigated the company. I wondered if any member of the team could be alive.

Something jolted my memory. I remembered that a book entitled The Devil’s Chemists had appeared after World War II, written by Josiah DuBois, an attorney who had been part of the Treasury team at Nuremberg. The book was a harrowing account of the trial of the executives of I.G. Farben, the Nazi industrial trust, that showed Farben’s links to Wall Street.

I reread the book’s pages, looking for a clue. In it DuBois mentioned that he came from Camden, New Jersey. I decided to call information in the Camden area because I had a theory that, embittered by his experience in Germany and Washington, DeBois might have returned to live there after the war. It was only a hunch, but it paid off. In fact, it turned out that DuBois had gone back to his family law firm in Camden. I wrote to him, asking if he had records of the Ford matter. I figured that these might have been so important that he would have been given personal custody of them; that Secretary Morgenthau might not even have risked leaving them at Treasury.

DuBois replied that he believed he still had the documents, including the letters of Edsel Ford to his managers in Nazi-occupied France after Pearl Harbor, authorizing improvements in automobile and truck supplies to the Germans. After several weeks, DuBois wrote to say that he had searched his attic to no avail. The documents were missing. However, he would keep looking.

He was admitted to a hospital where he underwent major surgery. Although enfeebled, he returned to the attic and began searching again. Compelled by a desire to disclose the truth, he pursued his task whenever he could find the strength. At last, when he was about to give up hope, he uncovered the documents.

However, he explained that the main files was so incendiary that he would not send it by mail or even by messenger—I was at liberty to examine it in his office. I was faced with a new dilemma. Since I was expecting delivery of an important set of documents, I couldn’t risk an absence from my house for a prolonged journey to the East. I said I would call him back.

I knew that Rutgers University was close to DuBois’s offices. I called the Law department and asked for a student researcher. Within an hour I received a call from a young man who needed work. I contacted DuBois’s secretary and arranged for the student to copy the documents of the premises. He did so; I sent an air courier to his home to pick them up. As I read the documents, the last details of the puzzle fell into place.

I have tried to write this book as dispassionately as possible, without attempting a moral commentary, and without, of course, intending implication of present corporations and their executive boards. It will be claimed that the people in this book, since they are dead, cannot answer and therefore should not be criticized. To that I would reply: Millions died in World War II. They, too, cannot answer.

A Bank for All Reasons

p1

On a bright May morning in 1944, while young Americans were dying on the Italian beachheads, Thomas Harrington McKittrick, American president of the Nazi-controlled Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, arrived at his office to preside over a fourth annual meeting in time of war. This polished American gentleman sat down with his German, Japanese, Italian, British, and American executive staff to discuss such important matters as the $378 million in gold that had been sent to the Bank by the Nazi government after Pearl Harbor for use by its leaders after the war. Gold that had been looted from the national banks of Austria, Holland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia, or melted down from the Reichsbank holdings of the teeth fillings, spectacle frames, cigarette cases and lighters, and wedding rings of the murdered Jews.

The Bank for International Settlements was a joint creation in 1930 of the world’s central banks, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Its existence was inspired by Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, Nazi Minister of Economics and president of the Reichsbank, part of whose early upbringing was in Brooklyn, and who had powerful Wall Street connections. He was seconded by the all-important banker Emil Puhl, who continued under the regime of Schacht’s successor, Dr. Walther Funk.

Sensing Adolf Hitler’s lust for war and conquest, Schacht, even before Hitler rose to power in the Reichstag, pushed for an institution that would retain channels of communication and collusion between the world’s financial leaders even in the event of an international conflict. It was written into the Bank’s charter, concurred in by the respective governments, that the BIS should be immune from seizure, closure, or censure, whether or not its owners were at war. These owners included the Morgan-affiliated First National Bank of New York (among whose directors were Harold S. Vanderbilt and Wendell Willkie), the Bank of England, the Reichsbank, the Bank of Italy, the Bank of France, and other central banks. Established under the Morgan banker Owen D. Young’s so-called Young Plan, the BIS’s ostensible purpose was to provide the Allies with reparations to be paid by Germany for World War I. The Bank soon turned out to be the instrument of an opposite function. It was to be a money funnel for American and British funds to flow into Hitler’s coffers and to help Hitler build up his war machine.

p7

By 1939, the BIS had invested millions in Germany while Kurt von Schroder and Emil Puhl deposited large sums in looted gold in the Bank. The BIS was an instrument of Hitler, but its continuing existence was approved by Great Britain even after that country went to war with Germany …

***

The Chase Nazi Account

p20

The Rockefellers’ Chase National Bank (later the Chase Manhattan) was the richest and most powerful financial institution in the United States at the time of Pearl Harbor. The Rockefellers owned Standard Oil of New Jersey, the German accounts of which were siphoned through their own bank, the Chase, as well as through the independent National City Bank of New York, which also handled Standard, Sterling Products, General Aniline and Film, SKF, and ITT, whose chief, Sosthenes Behn, was a director of the N.C.B. Two executives of Standard Oil’s German subsidiary were Karl Lindemann and Emil Helfferich, prominent figures in Himmler’s Circle of Friends of the Gestapo-its chief financiers-and close friends and colleagues of the BIS’s Baron von Schroder.

p21

the lawyer Creekmore Fath wrote in the introduction to a book entitled Patents for Hitler by Gunther Reimann

“Since the middle thirties, whenever a German business group wanted to make an agreement with any business concern beyond the borders of Germany, it was required first to submit a full text of the proposed agreement to the Reichsbank. The Reichsbank rejected or rewrote until the agreement met its approval. The Reichsbank approved no agreement which did not fit into the plans of the Nazi State and carry that state another step toward its goal of world domination. In other words, any American firm which reached an agreement or dealt with a German firm . . . was dealing … with Hitler himself.

As war approached, the links between the Rockefellers and the Nazi government became more and more firm. In 1936 the J. Henry Schroder Bank of New York had entered into a partnership with the Rockefellers. Schroder, Rockefeller and Company, Investment Bankers, was formed as part of an overall company that Time magazine disclosed as being “the economic booster of the Rome-Berlin Axis. ” The partners in Schroder, Rockefeller and Company included Avery Rockefeller, nephew of John D., Baron Bruno von Schroder in London, and Kurt von Schroder of the BIS and the Gestapo in Cologne. Avery Rockefeller owned 42 percent of Schroder, Rockefeller, and Baron Bruno and his Nazi cousin 47 percent. Their lawyers were John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles of Sullivan and Cromwell. Allen Dulles (later of the Office of Strategic Services) was on the board of Schroder. Further connections linked the Paris branch of Chase to Schroder as well as the pro-Nazi Worms Bank and Standard Oil of New Jersey in France. Standard Oil’s Paris representatives were directors of the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, which had intricate connections to the Nazis and to Chase.

Six months before the war broke out in Europe, Joseph J. Larkin brought off his most audacious scheme in the Nazi interest, acting in collusion with the Schroder Bank. Aldrich and the Schroders secured no less than $25 million American for the use of Germany’s expanding war economy and accompanied it with a detailed record (supplied direct to the Chase Bank in Berlin for forwarding to the Nazi government) of the assets and background of ten thousand Nazi sympathizers in the United States. The negotiations were engineered with the help of Dr. Walther Funk and Emil Puhl.

In essence, the Nazi government through the Chase National Bank offered Nazis in America the opportunity to buy marks with dollars at a discount. The arrangement was open only to those who wished to return to Germany and would use the marks in the interest of the Nazis. Before any transaction could be made, such persons had to convince the Nazi embassy in Washington that they were bona fide supporters of German policy. They were told in pamphlets sent out by the Chase National Bank in Manhattan that Germany could offer glorious opportunities to them and that marks would provide a hedge against inflation and would have much increased value after victory b in the expected war.

As a result, there was a rush on marks. On February 15, 1939, there was a summit meeting at the Chase in New York of representatives of both Chase and Schroder banks on what was known as the Ruckwanderer (Reimmigrant) scheme. Alfred W. Barth was the personal representative of Winthrop Aldrich and Joseph J. Larkin, while E. H. Meili of J. Henry Schroder represented that side of the association. At the meeting the members discussed a proposal that the Reichsbank should send a special representative to the Nazi consulate in New York, which served as the headquarters of the Gestapo and had its accounts at the Chase. The American group decided that they should not take such a risk because their importing such a person ` might reveal to the American public that they were supporting Nazis. The minutes show that it was decided to “let well enough alone and to conduct future business on behalf of Berlin through

“the employment of numerous agents and sub-agents who operate through the country. These agents and sub-agents in cooperation with their respective principals, ourselves, can go a long way towards educating Germans in exile and those sympathetic to the Nazi cause through extensive newspaper advertising campaigns, radio broadcasts, as well as through literature, etc. .

It is unanimously felt that it would be to the greatest advantage of everyone concerned if . . . Berlin would instruct the various consulates in the United States that all inquiries about . . . transactions should be referred to ourselves, whose name should be supplied not only to the various consular offices in the U.S. but also to those who inquire at the consulates in respect to the procedure.”

The bankers agreed that special attention should be focused ;~ shopkeepers, factory workers, and others with little money but great potential for Germany. They should be able-bodied young men and women of pure Aryan stock. Above all, the present meeting must never come to the attention of the American government. The minutes of the meeting state:

“The ensuing publicity and the agitation that has been furthered in certain quarters of this country [against similar schemes] might possibly compel our Department of State to enforce a clearing system between Germany and America, under which monies due to American citizens such as inheritances, etc., would have to be cleared. The results are too obvious: firstly, no benefits are likely to accrue to Germany; secondly, the final outcome might prove disadvantageous from Germany’s standpoint.”

Thus, the Chase directors and the barons von Schroder were afraid that if Morgenthau discovered the true facts, the U.S. government might take measures detrimental to the German government. It was an act of total collaboration with the Nazis.

In May 1940 a prominent diamond merchant in New York City, ~ Leonard Smit, began smuggling commercial and industrial diamonds I to Nazi Germany through Panama. Smit’s company was theoretically Dutch, which placed it under the provenance of the Nazis, but its stock was in fact owned by the International Trading Company, which was located in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. President Roosevelt had issued a freezing order precluding the shipment of monies to Europe, especially if these might seem to be to the advantage of the Axis. A few days after the Smit account was frozen, Chase officials unblocked the funds at Smit’s request. The funds flowed out to Panama, allowing diamonds to be sent through the Canal Zone to Berlin.

On June 17, 1940, when France was collapsing, Morgenthau via Roosevelt again blocked the French account to prevent money going to the enemy. Within hours of the blocking, somebody at Chase authorized the South American branches of the Banque Francaise et Italienne pour l’Amerique du Sud to transfer more than $1 million from New York to special accounts in the Argentine and Uruguay. The Banque was 50 percent owned by the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (a Chase and Standard affiliate), and 50 percent owned by the Mussolini-controlled Banca Commerciale Italiana. In South America, these banks were working partly for the Axis. Larkin continued to permit free withdrawals from the special accounts even though he knew perfectly well that such accounts were cloaks for Banque Francaise et Italienne funds.

On June 23, 1941, J. Edgar Hoover wrote to Morgenthau: “During the monitoring of foreign funds at the Chase Bank, FBI discovered various payments to oil companies in the United States. There are indications that the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey has been . receiving money from German oil sales by order of the Reichsbank.”

p26

The Chase also handled transactions for the Nazi Banco Aleman Transatlantico, which was, according to a Uruguayan Embassy report dated August 18, 1943, “No mere financial institution. It was in actuality treasurer or comptroller of the Nazi Party in South America. It received local party contributions, supervised and occasionally directed party expenditures, received party funds from Germany under various guises and juggled the deposits . . . all under the guidance of the German Legations.” It was in fact a branch of the Deutsche Uberseeische Bank of Berlin.

Most Nazi businesses in South America handled their affairs through the Banco Aleman. Thus, the German legations throughout Latin America possessed channels for distribution and receipt of Nazi funds. The Paris Chase received large amounts of money from Nazi sources through the medium of the Bank.

Most important of all, the Chase, with the full knowledge of Larkin, handled the accounts of Otto Abetz, German ambassador to Paris, and the embassy itself.

It is interesting to consider what, among other things, Abetz and the German Embassy dealt with during the war. They poured millions of francs into various French companies that were collaborating with the Nazis. On August 13, 1942, 5.5 million francs were passed through in one day to help finance the military government and the Gestapo High Command. This money helped to pay for radio propaganda and a campaign of terror against the French people, including beatings, torture, and brutal murder. Abetz paid 250,000 francs a month to fascist editors and publishers in order to run their vicious anti-Semitic newspapers. He financed the terrorist army known as the Mouvement Synarchique Revolutionnaire, which flushed out anti-Nazi cells in Paris and saw to it they were liquidated. In addition, Abetz used embassy funds to trade in Jewish art treasures, including tapestries, paintings, and ornaments, for the benefit of Goring, who wanted to get his hands on every French artifact possible.

The Chase board in New York could not claim that it was unfamiliar with these activities on the ground that communication with Occupied France was impossible. The purpose of retaining diplomatic relations with Vichy was that the U.S. government could determine what was going on in Occupied France. A constant flow of letters, telegrams, and phone calls between Paris and the Vichy branch of Chase in Chateauneuf-sur-Cher kept Albert Bertrand informed, and in return he kept New York informed; Washington was advised by Larkin. Despite some criticism by Nazi comptroller Hans-Joachim Caesar, Vichy had under French law the power to close the Paris branch at any minute if New York so instructed. No such instructions were ever received. .

***

The Secrets of Standard Oil

p32

In 1941, Standard Oil of New Jersey was the largest petroleum corporation in the world. Its bank was Chase, its owners the Rockefellers. Its chairman, Walter C. Teagle, and its president, William S. Farish, matched Joseph J. Larkin’s extensive connections with the Nazi government.

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From the 1920s on Teagle showed a marked admiration for Germany’s enterprise in overcoming the destructive terms of the Versailles Treaty. His lumbering stride, booming tones, and clouds of cigar smoke became widely and affectionately known in the circle that helped support the rising Nazi party. He early established a friendship with the dour and stubby Hermann Schmitz of I.G. Farben, entertaining him frequently for lunch at the Cloud Room in the Chrysler Building, Teagle’s favorite Manhattan haunt of the late 1920s and the 1930s. Teagle also was friendly with the pro-Nazi Sir Henri Deterding of Royal Dutch-Shell, who agreed with his views about capitalist domination of Europe and the ultimate need to destroy Russia.

p33

Because of his commercial and personal association with Herman Schmitz, and his awareness that he must protect Standard’s interest in Nazi Germany, Teagle made many visits to Berlin and the Standard tanks and tank cars in Germany throughout the 1930s. He became director of American I.G. Chemical Corp., the giant chemicals firm that was a subsidiary of I.G. Farben. He invested heavily in American I.G. and American I.G. invested heavily in Standard. He sat on the I.G. board with Fraternity brothers Edsel Ford and William E. Weiss, chairman of Sterling Products.

Following the rise of Hitler to power, Teagle and Hermann Schmitz jointly gave a special assignment to Ivy Lee, the notorious New York publicity man, who had for some years worked for the Rockefellers. They engaged Lee for the specific purpose of economic espionage. He was to supply I.G. Farben, and through it the Nazi government, with intelligence on the American reaction to such matters as the German armament program, Germany’s treatment of the Church, and the organization of the Gestapo. He was also to keep the American public bamboozled by papering over the more evil aspects of Hitler’s regime. For this, Lee was paid first $3,000 then $4,000 annually, the money paid to him through the Bank for International Settlements in the name of I.G. Chemie. The contract was for obvious reasons kept oral and the money was transferred in cash. No entries were made in the books of the employing companies or in those of Ivy Lee himself. After a short period Lee’s salary was increased to $25,000 per year and he began distributing inflammatory Nazi propaganda in the United States on behalf of I.G. Farben, including virulent attacks on the Jews and the Versailles Treaty.

In February 1938 the Securities and Exchange Commission held a meeting to investigate Nazi ownership of American I.G. through a Swiss subsidiary. The commissioners grilled Teagle on the ownership of the Swiss company. He pretended that he did not know the owners were I.G. Farben and the Nazi government. The commissioners tried to make him admit that at least American I.G. was “controlled by ‘European’ interests.” Teagle replied dodgily, “Well, I think that would be a safe assumption.” Asked who voted for him as a proxy at Swiss meetings, again he asserted that he didn’t know. He also neglected to mention that Schmitz and the Nazi government owned thousands of shares in American I.G.

Teagle was sufficiently embarrassed by the hearing to resign from the American I.G. board, but he retained his connections with the company. He remained in partnership with Farben in the matter of tetraethyl lead, an additive used in aviation gasoline. Goring’s air force couldn’t fly without it. Only Standard, Du Pont, and General Motors had the rights to it. Teagle helped to organize a sale of the precious substance to Schmitz, who in 1938 traveled to London and “borrowed” 500 tons from Ethyl, the British Standard subsidiary. Next year, Schmitz and his partners returned to London and obtained $15 million worth. The result was that Hitler’s air force was rendered capable of bombing London, the city that had provided the supplies. Also, by supplying Japan with tetraethyl, Teagle helped make it possible for the Japanese to wage World War II.

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On September 22,1947, Judge Charles Clark delivered the final word on the subject. He said, ”Standard Oil can be considered an enemy national in view of its relationships with I.G. Farben-after the United States and Germany had become active enemies.” The appeal was denied.

***

The Mexican Connection

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Even the supposed enemies of The Fraternity were connected to it by almost invisible threads. One of Jersey Standard’s most powerful rivals in the field of petroleum supplies to Germany, William Rhodes Davis’s Davis Oil Company, was connected to Goring and Himmler. Davis was linked to Hermann Schmitz and I.G. Farben through the Americans Werner and Karl von Clemm, New York diamond merchants (who were first cousins to Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop by marriage), and through the National City Bank.

The von Clemms were fanatical devotees of Germany, even though both had become American residents in 1932. They used a device typical in Nazi circles: a device copied, ironically, from the Rothschilds. One brother stayed in Berlin, the other remained in New York. They were connected to the Schroder banks through interlocking directorships, and on the board of a company that helped finance General Motors in Germany along with I.G. Farben.

In 1931 they financed the Gestapo with funds supplementing those supplied by Schroder’s Stein Bank. Yet another Fraternity link was their involvement with the First National Bank of Boston, an associate of the Bank for International Settlements. They conceived the idea of unblocking First National’s blocked German marks to build a vast oil refinery for Goring’s air force and for Farben and Eurotank near Hamburg, with Karl von Clemm in charge. This oil refinery would bypass the terms of the Versailles Convention and supply Goring’s so-called Black Luftwaffe, which was secretly being prepared for world conquest.

In order to secure the oil for the refinery, the von Clemm brothers had to find an American who would aid and abet them. The choice was easy. From 1926 to 1932, Werner von Clemm had financially sustained a largely unsuccessful oil prospector and confidence trickster named William Rhodes Davis.

Davis was on the face of it unprepossessing. He was short, not much over five feet, with a solid-gold left front molar and a badly bowed left leg that contained a silver plate put there after he was injured in a train wreck in 1918. His head was too large for his body, and his face sported a broken nose. Yet despite his lack of good looks he had the one indispensable quality needed for success. He had the gift of gab. He was capable of talking anyone into the ground. He spoke in superlatives. He never took no for an answer, and he would shaft anyone when the chips were down.

Davis was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1889. Poorly educated, he left school at sixteen and jumped a freight car. A kindly porter gave him a job as candy butcher, selling chocolate and ice cream from a tray. Railroad crazy, he graduated to brakeman, fireman, and engineer in the Southwestern states until the collision put him out of commission. Emerging from the hospital with a gimpy leg, he used his plight to his own advantage by working as a comedian on the Keith vaudeville circuit, making audiences laugh as he wiggled his distorted member in a dance. When his popularity ran out, he shipped off on tramp steamers as stoker, fireman, and engineer.

Back in the United States, he dabbled in the oil business but consistently went broke. He was under frequent investigation for a variety of swindles. People were fascinated, even hypnotized, by him; but disillusionment would always set in, followed by the inevitable lawsuit. He sold dry wells, manipulated stocks, and set up and collapsed small companies, carrying the shareholders with him.

In 1926 he was penniless. The von Clemm twins stepped into the picture in 1933. Their support of him saved him from ruin and imprisonment. As a result of this he became deeply committed to Nazism. He was fascinated by the opulence of a Germany heavily financed by American bank loans, the handsome, healthy men in black uniforms, the pretty blond women. It all seemed a far cry from the bread lines and pinched faces of America in the Depression.

After the deal with the German government over Eurotank, Davis saw the way to make his fortune at last. He owned a few wells through the von Clemms’ good graces. With German money he could certainly start pumping.

He traveled to Berlin in 1933. He had to have the personal approval of Hitler before he could go ahead. He arrived at the Adlon Hotel, where Karl von Clemm arranged a reception for him to meet Hermann Schmitz of Farben, Kurt von Schroder, and other German members of The Fraternity. He was welcome at once when he gave the group the Nazi salute as he entered the room.

Next morning, two Gestapo officers delegated by Himmler arrived at the door of his suite. They carried with them a letter from the Fuhrer. The former brakeman and candy butcher was overwhelmed. He could not believe he had received so signal an honor. The letter asked him to meet with Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht at the Reichsbank. When he arrived, Schacht seemed cold and uninterested and brushed the whole matter aside. Schacht already had deals going with Walter Teagle and Sir Henri Deterding of Shell. What did he want with this small fry?

Furious, Davis returned to the Adlon empty-handed. He wrote to Hitler, insisting upon better treatment. Hitler replied immediately in person, asking him to return to the Reichsbank the following morning for another meeting.

Davis arrived in the boardroom at 11 A.M. As FBI records show, Schacht smiled faintly in a corner, obviously in no mood to talk. But a door flew open and thirty directors of the bank appeared, to greet Davis with warm handshakes. Hitler strode in. Everyone jumped to attention and gave the Nazi salute. Hitler said, “Gentlemen, I have reviewed Mr. Davis’s proposition and it sounds feasible. I want the bank to finance it.” Then he walked out.

It was clear to Davis that the directors of I.G. Farben, along with Kurt von Schroder, had exercised influence over the Fuhrer.

Davis traveled to England, where he resumed an earlier business relationship with Lord Inverforth’s oil company. He obtained major concessions in Ireland and Mexico. He traded Mexican oil for German machinery when it proved impossible to export marks. Eurotank was built. By 1935, Davis was shipping thousands of barrels of oil a week from his wells in Texas and eastern Mexico.

Davis knew Senator Joseph F. Guffey of Pennsylvania, whose friend Pittsburgh oilman Walter A. Jones had major contacts in Washington. Through Guffey and Jones, Davis met with John L. Lewis, the labor leader of the CIO. Davis worked hard on Lewis, convincing him that national socialism was preferable to democracy and that the German worker far exceeded in health, good humor and muscular prowess the American equivalent. In 1936, Davis tried to influence Roosevelt by pouring money into the election campaign. From then on he was always able to telephone the Oval Office.

In 1937 he saw a major opportunity in Mexico. He was convinced President Lazaro Cardenas would nationalize the oil fields. He foresaw a way to corner all the oil in Mexico. In February 1938 he started bribing high-ranking officials in the Mexican government. He made a close friend of Nazi Vice-Consul Gerard Meier in Cuernavaca, who was allegedly encouraging Cardenas to invade and repossess California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Davis obtained the Mexican government’s cooperation. He was promised all the oil in Mexico when Cardenas expropriated it on March 18, 1938. Cardenas kept his promise. On April 18, John L. Lewis telephoned Cardenas’s right-hand man Alejandro Carrillo. Lewis told Carrillo that Davis would be making a deal with Germany and Italy immediately and that these two countries were the only two with which it would be safe for Mexico to deal.

Why did America’s most famous labor leader support the arming of the Nazi war machine? Because Lewis had major territorial ambitions himself. He dreamed of a Pan-American federation of labor of which he would be the unchallenged leader. Through Davis, and through Cardenas, he would be able to consolidate the unions north and south of the border. In this he had the total collusion of Vincente Lombardo Toledano, head of the Mexican labor force.

By June 1938, Davis’s first tanker was steaming to Germany with thousands of tons of Mexican oil. But by 1939 he was already running into trouble. On May 31 his chief geologist, Nazi Otto Probst, was found murdered in his hotel room in Mexico City. Probst had been strangled by a clothesline that was tied to the head of his bed.

The German Embassy intervened and prevented an autopsy. FBI investigators determined Probst had been poisoned. It turned out he had bribed government officials and stimulated action against communists. It was almost certainly a communist killing.

Communist cells infiltrated Davis’s growing oil empire. He used strikebreakers to vanquish the opposition and shipped millions of barrels of oil until after World War II broke out in Europe.

Meanwhile, the von Clemm brothers profited enormously from his success. Goring gave them the German franchise in hops, putting them in virtual control of the beer business.

Along with Davis, they became multimillionaires.

***

The Telephone Plot

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During the early days of 1942, Karl Lindemann, the Rockefeller-Standard Oil representative in Berlin, held a series of urgent meetings with two directors of the American International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation: Walter Schellenberg, head of the Gestapo’s counterintelligence service (SD), and Baron Kurt von Schroder of the BIS and the Stein Bank. The result of these meetings was that Gerhardt Westrick, the crippled boss of ITT in Nazi Germany, got aboard an ITT Focke-Wulf bomber and flew to Madrid for a meeting in March with Sosthenes Behn, American ITT chief.

In the sumptuous Royal Suite of Madrid’s Ritz Hotel, the tall, sharp-faced Behn and the heavily limping Westrick sat down for lunch to discuss how best they could improve ITT’s links with the Gestapo, and its improvement of the whole Nazi system of telephones, teleprinters, aircraft intercoms, submarine and ship phones, electric buoys, alarm systems, radio and radar parts, and fuses for artillery shells, as well as the Focke-Wulf bombers that were taking thousands of American lives.

Sosthenes Behn, whose first name was Greek for “life strength,” was born in St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, on January 30, 1882. His father was Danish and his mother French-Italian. He and his brother Hernand, later his partner, were schooled in Corsica and Paris.

In 1906, Behn and his brother took over a sugar business in Puerto Rico and snapped up a small and primitive local telephone company by closing in on a mortgage. Realizing the potential of the newfangled telephone, Behn began to buy up more companies in the Caribbean. He became a U.S. citizen in 1913. In World War I, Behn served in the Signal Corps as chief of staff for General George Russell. He learned a great deal about military communications systems, and his services to France earned him the Legion d’Honneur. Back in the United States, Behn became associated with AT&T, of which Winthrop Aldrich was later a director. In 1920, Behn’s work in the field of cables enabled him to set up the ITT with $6 million paid in capital. Gradually, he spun out a web of communications that ran worldwide. He soon became the telephone king of the world, making deals with AT&T and J. P. Morgan that resulted in his running the entire telephone system of Spain by 1923. His Spanish chairman was the Duke of Alba, later a major supporter of Franco and Hitler. In 1930 Behn obtained the Rumanian telephone industry, to which he later added the Hungarian, German, and Swedish corporations. By 1931 his empire was worth over $64 million despite the Wall Street crash. He became a director of-inevitably-the National City Bank, which financed him along with the Morgans.

Behn was aided by fascist governments, into which he rapidly interlocked his system by assuring politicians promising places on his boards. He ran his empire from 67 Broad Street, New York.

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When Hitler invaded Poland, Behn and Schroder conferred with t: German alien property custodian, H-J Caesar. The result was that the ITT Polish companies were protected from seizure for the duration.

Another protector of Behn’s in Germany was ITT’s colorful corporation chairman, Gerhardt Westrick. Westrick was a skilled company lawyer, the German counterpart and associate of John Foster Dulles. Westrick’s partner until 1938, the equally brilliant Dr. Heinrich Albert, was head of Ford in Germany until 1945. Both were crucially important to The Fraternity.

At the beginning of 1940, Behn decided to have Westrick go to the United States to link up the corporate strands that would remain secure throughout World War II. German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop was equally concerned that Westrick undertake the mission. Westrick represented in Germany not only Ford but General Motors, Standard Oil, the Texas Company, Sterling Products, and the Davis | Oil Company.

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On June 26, 1940, his Fraternity associates gave a party for Westrick at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to celebrate the Nazi victory in France. This was, of course, only appropriate. Fraternity guests at this scorpions’ feast included Dietrich, brother of Hermann Schmitz of General Aniline and Film; James D. Mooney of General Motors; Edsel Ford of the Ford Motor Company; William Weiss of Sterling Products; and Torkild Rieber of the Texas Company. These leaders of The Fraternity agreed to help in the free-trade agreements that would follow a negotiated peace with Germany.

Westrick leased a large house in Scarsdale, New York, from one of Rieber’s Texas Company lawyers. He was seen entering and leaving the house in the company of prominent figures of the Nazi government and American industry. The New York Daily News sent reporter George Dickson to investigate the meaning of a big white placard with a large G on it in a window of a front second-floor bedroom. The press generally was suggesting this formed some kind of code for use by Nazi agents. Dickson wrote in his column: ”Phantom-like men in white have been responding by day and night to mysterious signaling from a secluded Westchester mansion-now disclosed as the secret quarters of Dr. Gerhardt A. Westrick-invariably they carry carefully wrapped packages . . . they salute with all the precision of Storm Troopers, deliver the packages, salute again- and silently depart . . . super-sleuthing finally solved the mystery just before last midnight.” Then Dickson delivered his death blow to the story: The G sign was an invitation to the Good Humor man to deliver his famous ice cream on a stick!

J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI determined that Westrick had illegally obtained his driver’s license by lying that he had no infirmities. The purpose was achieved: Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, and other patriotic columnists blew up Westrick’s Nazi connections out of all proportion, and Westrick was asked by German Charge d’Affaires Hans Thomsen to return to Germany at once.

But before he was ordered home, Westrick had been extremely busy. He had gone to see Edsel and Henry Ford at Dearborn on July 11 at the Fords’ urgent invitation, conferring with the Grand Old Man and his son on the matter of restricting shipment of important Rolls-Royce motors to a beleaguered Britain that urgently needed them. He also visited with Will Clayton, Jesse Jones’s associate in the Department of Commerce, who went with Westrick to see Cordell Hull to plead for the protection of German-American trade agreements on behalf of his friends in the Texas cotton industry.

Clayton was the chairman of the U.S. Commercial Company, and he helped protect Fraternity interests during World War II. Others of Westrick’s circle included, interestingly enough, William Donovan, who became head of the OSS (precursor of the CIA) on its formation in 1942. Westrick also made significant contacts with good and true friends at Eastman Kodak and Underwood before returning home via Japan and Russia.

After Pearl Harbor, at meetings with Kurt von Schroder and Behn in Switzerland, Westrick nervously admitted he had run into a problem. Wilhelm Ohnesorge, the elderly minister in charge of post offices, who was one of the first fifty Nazi party members, was strongly opposed to ITT’s German companies continuing to function under New York management in time of war. Behn told Westrick to use Schroder and the protection of the Gestapo against Ohnesorge. In return, Behn guaranteed that ITT would substantially increase its payments to the Gestapo through the Circle of Friends.

A special board of trustees was set up by the German government to cooperate with Behn and his thirty thousand staff in Occupied Europe. Ohnesorge savagely fought these arrangements and tried to obtain the support of Himmler. However, Schroder had Himmler’s ear, and so, of course, did his close friend and associate Walter Schellenberg. Ohnesorge appealed directly to Hitler and condemned Westrick as an American sympathizer. However, Hitler realized the importance of ITT to the German economy and proved supportive of Behn.

The final arrangement was that the Nazi government would not acquire the shares of ITT but would confine itself to the administration of the shares. Westrick would be chairman of the managing directors.

Thus, an American corporation literally entered into partnership with the Nazi government in time of war.

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Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had asked Nelson Rockefeller to prepare a study of the communications systems of South America. On May 4, 1942, the President had sent a memorandum to Henry Wallace in his role as chairman of the Board of Economic Warfare, ordering him to insure disconnection of all enemy nationals in the radio, telephone, and telegraph fields. He had urged Wallace to eliminate all Axis control and influence in telecommunications in Latin America, acquire hemisphere interests of all Axis companies, insure loyalty in employees, and disrupt direct lines to the enemy. He had asked for a corporation to be set up to handle the financial aspects of the program with the assistance and advice of an advisory committee.

Wallace approached Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones to make the necessary arrangements. Jones set up the U.S. Commercial Company to take charge of the matter. It was a characteristic choice. The company’s second-in-command was none other than Robert A. Gantt, vice-president of ITT itself. Gantt continued to receive salary from ITT while holding his position with the U.S. Commercial Company. The rest of the board was largely composed of directors of ITT or RCA (also a wartime partner in Nazi-American communications companies).

The Hemisphere Communications Committee sat with a mixed Treasury, State, Army, Navy, and U.S. Commercial Company board throughout World War II, doing little more than discussing possible actions against Axis-connected companies.

A pressing issue from Pearl Harbor on was the matter of ITT amalgamating the telephone companies of Mexico. One of these, Mexican Telephone and Telegraph, was owned by Behn outright. The other was owned by the Ericsson Company, of which Behn had a 35 percent share in Sweden. The Ericsson Company was partly owned by Nazi collaborator Axel Wenner-Gren and by Jacob Wallenberg, Swedish millionaire head of the ball bearings firm, which played both sides of the war.

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In South America, Sosthenes Behn was in partnership (as well as rivalry) with an even more powerful organism: the giant Radio Corporation of America, which owned the NBC radio network. RCA was in partnership before and after Pearl Harbor with British Cable and Wireless; with Telefunken, the Nazi company; with Italcable, who