Copyright 1952 THE BEACON PRESS 1 COULD NOT HAVE FACED THE EXPERIENCES RE- COUNTED IN THIS BOOK WITHOUT THE NEVER-FAILING SUPPORT AND INSPIRATION OF MY WIFE. J. E. D. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 52-7872 Printed in U.S.A. Cont ents . . PREFACE. PART ONE TOTALITARIIANND USTR-Y T HREATT O WORLDP EACE? Easter Hats and Wild Horses . Anything Intact Was Beautiful . . Before Armies March . "If We Lose the Next War - " PART TWO THEI NVESTIGATION Furth Airport . . . . Digging -January 1947 . The Address That Wasn't There . American Addresses PART THREE A NORMALB USINESS? . "They Will Not Dare Go on With This" . "Simply a Big Business Concern" PART FOUR CONQUESBTY INDUSTRRIAOBLB ERY . How Can You Call It Murder? A Sojourner of Four Countries . . . Without Armies Marching PART FIVE MASTERASN D SLAVES . A Nobel Prizewinner "The Fellows Have Let the Rats Loose" . . Gasoline and Rubber Mix Some Purely Personal Notes . The Plain Chemist . . "I'd Be Sure This Is True If I Were You" . Everybody Knows, Nobody Knows Silver Thickets. . . . Monowitz . . . . A Loud Voice CONTENTS PART SIX THEM ASTERMS ARCH . International Co-operation . Like a Stroke of Lightning Preface . The Short Thrust PART SEVEN THEM ASTERCS ONQUER To UNDERSTAND THE FULL SIGNIFICANCE of this story, bear in . mind that today the main characters - defendants in the most far- An "Invasion in Peacetime" reaching criminal trial in history - are all alive and free to work "The EuropeanStates Should Get Together" against the way of life you and I cherish. "For in the Woods There Are the Robbers" The Final Battle in Sight . . Today a great struggle is being waged for the political allegiance of men. The United States of America has been steadily -losing PART EIGHT in that struggle since the end of World War 11. In seven years DAYO F WAR the free world has lost to Communism half of Europe and large September 1, 1939 . areas of Asia. This amounts to the loss of over eight hundred million people who once regarded themselves as our friends and PART NINE RESPONSIBILITOYF THE MASTERS allies. Generals in Gray Suits . The foreign policy of the United States demonstrates that most of our leaders understand little of what has happened in Europe PART TEN and Asia during the last generation. We have challenged disillu- DA. YO F .J UDGMENT sioned hearts with only a hodgepodge of defensive tactics. It is How Sorry We Are . my belief that we lost the support of most of these people because An Extraordinary Standard . . we appealed to them almost entirely through our own fears, with The "Bulwark" Foreign Policy little regard for their real hopes, dreams, and needs. To replace Communist bread, often we have spread our own table reluctantly APPENDIX and too late. Often we have countered the vicious Communist Organization Chart of I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. 364 evangelism only by negative argument. Most important, we have . . List of I.G. Farben Defendants 365 poured salt on the ugly wounds which certain hated industrialists ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . 368 have cut into four continents. INDEX . . 370 myF ostro rteyn b yetetaerrs tthhaen aovuerr algeea dEeursr oypeeta unn adnedrs tAansdia nit .h aIs buenlideevres taolosdo that the average American, should he read this book, will have a The illustrations are grouped together following page 78. better understanding than his government of how Europeans and Asians feel about the facts. To those who sickened in the 1930's at the news that American scrap iron was being sold to Japan; to those who later observed with disgust the failure of the League of Nations to put teeth into its economic "sanctions" against Italy when she invaded Abyssinia; to those who recently cried shame on the shipment of British war-potential goods through Hong Kong to the Chinese Red Army; to those who are flatly opposed to doing strategic business with any totalitarian institution, whether X PREFACE 1 - by direct sales or outright political subsidy to all those, this book is recommended. The full story of all the industrial groups that have deliberately bred war, or have deliberately shut their eyes to the breeding of THE DEVIL'S CHEMISTS war, could not be contained in ten books. I have limited my story to the single group of men whose vast influence epitomizes all the - others a group that is still many years ahead of all others in the techniques of waging, in "peacetime," a future war. Unbelievable as it seems, the defendants in that trial are back in power in Germany today. Their Oriental collaborators are back in power in Asia. We have been so afraid of Communism that we have been willing to resort to almost any expedient in our hysterical effort to stem the tide. Fearful reaction has lost us all those who looked to democracy for an inspired and positive pro- gram. The wisdom of helping such men form a vital bulwark of defense against Communism will be seriously questioned, I am sure, by almost every reader. To rely upon the generals-in-gray- suits who shared the responsibility for World War 11, to ally our- selves with groups which have been allied with Russia more than once before, suggests the probability that if World War I11 breaks out, they will be fighting for Soviet Russia, not for the West. And in treating such groups as friends, we are losing true friends all over the world. The crucial question to ask after reading this book is: What will happen if these men and the forces they represent align themselves with Communist aggression rather than with the freedom-loving peoples of the world? In condensing 150 large volumes of testimony within one aver- age-size book, a great deal of material has necessarily been eliminated. Nevertheless, I believe that every significant aspect of this historic criminal trial has been brought to the attention of the reader. If material has been taken out of context, it has been done in such a way as not to distort its basic meaning. As a guide to the reader, we have included in the appendix an organization chart of the industrial concern known as I. G. Farben and a list of the twenty-four defendants in the trial, together with the positions they held. J. E. D. PART ONE - TOTALITARIAN INDUSTRY THREAT WORLD PEACE? 1. Easter Hats and Wild Horses THISI S THE STORY of twenty-four geniuses who changed the face of the earth. The most brilliant men in Europe, they headed the industry known to the newspaper reader as "I. G. Farben." I. G. Farben first subdued nature in ten thousand ways, then shipped the marvelous products of that victory across the seven seas. Its business has touched the life of every man and woman in the world. Often an unrecognized guest, it has visited every Ameri- can home, with dyes, plastics, fabrics. If Farben did not make your bathroom fixtures, your shaving mug, or even your razor, your wife surely owes much of her prettification - from Easter - hat to synthetic stockings to I. G. Farben. Long before the age of plastics and nylons, I. G. Farben- industrie was known to many Americans as simply the world's best druggist. Every reputable pharmacy, every physician's bag, every good family medicine cabinet, stocks some of Farben's 6000 medicines. The firm invented a drug that is still the best cure for epilepsy. They made atabrine, the quinine-substitute for treating malaria. And from the aspirin tablet alone, I. G. Farben made a vast fortune. But the founders were not concerned merely with balance sheets. They drew their inspiration from the gurgling of water, the perfume of damp earth, and every vegetable and mineral in the earth. Could health, personal beauty - yes, even universal brotherhood - be created by two dozen men of dynamic chemical genius? They be- lieved it could. By 1925, they had nursed food from arid lands, made fats and fuels from coal and water, and were dreaming of making copper out of clay. A few years later, their talents crowned a combine that over- shadowed even the giant United States corporations. From the sun 3 4 THE DEVIL'S CHEMISTS EASTER HATS AND WILD HORSES 3 - a competitor in nurturing such things as cotton -they had That was Dr. Otto Ambros - a member of I. G. Farben's learned many economies of mass production. Now the sun shone Vorstand, or board of directors - speaking. To his mentor, Dr. with subservient benevolence on a fabulous industrial empire, from Friedrich ter Meer, all the natural substances like rubber were "wild the Rhineland to the Hudson Valley to the muddy Yangtze River. horses that must be broken to the reins." But mankind was no wild I. G. Farben's holding companies and plants then blanketed Eu- horse to him, if Dr. ter Meer's witnesses were telling the truth. Dur- rope, its house banks and research firms and patent firms clustered ing the first World War, Dr. ter Meer had owned a dyestuffs plant around every important commercial center in both hemispheres. near the French border, and French prisoners of war who still This success did not curb their seemingly strange vision. The recalled working there called him "Director Bon." Ambros ap- Farben "president" transferred millions of dollars into other hands parently was a good man, too; younger than Ter Meer, he enjoyed on faith alone. On faith he transferred the legal ownership of a similar respect from many French workers during the second $100,000,000 U. S. combine to a friend in Switzerland. World War. For two years after the war ended, he worked for This combine was the old American I. G. Chemical Corpora- the French government; several times they refused to give him up. tion. From 230 Park Avenue, New York City, its main office "The first stages of the collapse promised everything but that I governed five subsidiaries, all producing marvels of modem chem- would be arrested," Ambros told the court with a smile. It was istry. They were the Ozalid Corporation of Johnson City, the the same smile that had greeted the vanguard of American soldiers General Dyestuffs Company, the old Hudson River Color Works, that rolled into Gendorf, Bavaria, in 1945. the Agfa-Ansco factory which manufactured cameras and films, They noticed him immediately. Even when he stopped smiling, and a research plant in Pennsylvania. his lips munched pleasantly under a prematurely gray moustache. Dyes were the basis of American I. G. Chemical's entire busi- The other townsfolk protested innocence in various degrees of ness, just as dyes were the financial and scientific wellspring of all cunning and sophistication, while Ambros seemed to lend his the Farben companies. Yet in a brief memo Farben's president Bavarian folksiness without obligation. He sniffed the air deeply. let the American I. G. go. This poetic magnanimity - unless it He was like a rabbit who had come out of the near-by hills, stand- concealed a desperate gamble of some kind - was more typical of ing alertly on its hind legs, watching with devilish friendliness these an artist-scientist than of a financial wizard. One might not have taller beings straggling warily around the town. been surprised at a show of generosity from, say, the Farben The G.I.'s liked him, but the commanding officer wanted to director who founded the photo-chemistry whose cameras were know why he was wearing a fancy suit among the jerkined. What sold around the world under the Agfa-Ansco trademark. He had were his rank and serial number? helped to develop color photography, too. At the trial, he testified: His name, the man said, was Ambros, and he had no rank or "I did not like to see beauty just in a dark room somewhere. serial number. He was a "plain chemist." Although he was a I wanted to see my child, or some fish or game I had caught, in German, he had many French friends; in fact, he had lived at color - to see it in all its beauty. And we succeeded." Ludwigshafen, only forty kilometers from the French border, which So, even at their trial, these men did not think as robber barons made him very nearly a Frenchman. are supposed to think. Exclaimed another of the directors on the The commanding officer was suspicious. A few days later an witness stand: advance detail of General Patton's army arrived in Gendorf. The Chemistry is a dynamic science. Thank goodness, every people is two C.O.'s, after putting their heads together, ordered the "plain inventive. The effects of everyday life are noticed in everything we see chemist" held for questioning. If he was almost a Frenchman, - fibers, everything that is dyed, plastic articles, and parts of automo- what was he doing here, way over on the other side of Germany? biles and radios. It was the climax of my life when Dr. ter Meer sent Ambros answered that he'd had "no reason to flee" and every me to the forests of Ceylon and the Malay States, to study how nature produces rubber. These studies were so enlightening that Dr. ter Meer reason to be in Gendorf. As a director of I. G. Farbenindustrie, entrusted me with the on-the-spot management of synthetic rubber he had been in charge of a synthetics factory here. development. We were dealing with the unknown. . . . They inspected the factory, peeking into vats of soaps and 6 THE DEVIL'S CHEMISTS EASTER HATS AND WILD HORSES 7 detergents. Lining the walls of Ambros' office were spectrum cards tion camp. Surely this good-natured, earthy chemist had nothing exhibiting the many-colored lacquers also made there. to do with that! One of Farben's top employees, assistant to both Every day troops arrived who had not washed for a month. Dr. ter Meer and Dr. Ambros, was testifying: Some of their vehicles were faded and dirty. Not only was this In my compartment there was a man, a working man, and he told fellow a welcome quartermaster, but working for him were the best of all character witnesses - refugees from the concentration twhiatth inlo uAdu svcohiwcei tzt oc otnhcee nottrhaetiro nm ceanm apn dpe owpilvee -sp eino ptlhe e cwoemrep abrutmrneendt camps across the Polish border. He had brought them here, and in a crematorium (he said not the word "crematorium") and in large while they didn't talk much, they worked hard for him and said numbers. And then the whole air in Auschwitz was filled with the nothing to refute his claim that he had picked them all and trained smell of death. I was very deeply impressed and I sprang up and said he should not say such lies. them so that, when they returned home, they would have skilled professions. The prosecutor pressed the witness for more details: Ambros stayed in Gendorf for a few more months. Higher com- Q. And the smell of burning flesh was known at the buna plant - manders rolled into town and had him picked up to answer more you understood him to say that? All right, go ahead, what did you significant questions. The factory was underground. He pointed do when you heard that? out that most of the underground factories in Germany had been A. I sprang up and said, "They are lies," and he said, "No, they bombed; surely the Allied air forces would have bombed this one are not lies; there are 10,000 men or more at Auschwitz and all of if it had had any strategic value! He referred to his activity here them know it." Q. You say, then, that in the beginning of 1942 you heard of as dedicated to "once more preparing for the coming peacetime Auschwitz concentration camp, about the burnings and cruelties ping industry." on there, and you learned that from an open discussion on the train He passed soap out to the soldiers personally -it was good ride? to have somebody dropping gifts in their hands for a change. The A. Yes, he said it to all present. There were 10 or 15 in the compartment, and they all heard it. brass felt the same way when he issued cleaning agents and paints Q. Were you convinced when the workman said, "No, they are for the vehicles. They were not scientists, but any scientist worth not lies. his salt could talk about technical things simply and with a smile. A. No, I was not convinced. . . . This fellow Ambros could tell you how to make a hundred won- Q. In the summer of 1943 you visited Auschwitz again. Did it occur to you that you should investigate it then? ders from one chemical element: ethylene oxide. A. I asked in Auschwitz a responsible man, the chief engineer He knew more about rubber than anything else. A synthetic- Heidebroek. rubber factory had much in common with him: civilized, neat, Q. What did you ask him? more reminiscent of perfected nature than of Man. A rubber plant A. He said it was true. I can give you from Frankfurt the exact had to be absolutely clean; a speck of dust mingling with the liquid date. Q. You reported to the chief engineer what the workman said on rubber could mean a blowout on the highway some day. To plan the train, and the chief engineer said what the workman had said was a rubber factory, you did not begin with materials; you put your true? finger to the wind, because the wind had to blow in the right direc- A. Yes. . . . I think he also told me that the people were gassed tion to take off the carbide dust so that it "would not be thrown in before they were burned. your neighbor's face." Q. Then in the summer of 1943 you knew that people were being burned and gassed? The judges of the court listened as the soldiers had, as if waiting A. Yes. for a twig to crackle. Somehow the fortunes of war had placed Q. Is this your statement, Dr. Struss: "After I spoke to Heidebroek this picture of a spotless industrial installation in a horrible setting, I was convinced that the situation at the Auschwitz concentration beside a river (not the calm Hudson or the turbulent Rhine) that camp was as bad as they had told me, but I was hoping that it was not true"? Is that a fair statement? ran red with a dye no chemist could synthesize. There sprawled A. Yes, that is a fair statement. I had only 1 per cent of hope the buna-rubber plant, and three kilometers away was a concentra- that it was not true. ANYTHING INTACT WAS BEAUTIFUL 9 A few months before this witness, Dr. Struss, told his story, one Madison Square Garden, had said that the "capitalist" and "social- of the judges of the court had summed up his reaction to I. G. ist" systems could get along together. And Molotov announced Farbenindustrie: "This is simply a big business concern the like that Russia would not veto any United Nations provisions for inter- of which there are many throughout the world." The judge had national inspection of arms. not yet heard of Struss's conversation on the train, nor had he As the air cleared for one false moment, the average citizen, heard the many witnesses for the prosecution who had worked at long tossed on a sea of suspicion, looked about for a tiny raft of Farben's buna plant in Poland. But he had been hearing for weeks faith. I was looking, too, I suppose. One day early in that month, about aweb of interests more influential than any ever spun by I was standing at my office window in Camden, New Jersey, when Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, or Fisk - about acts of aggression and the phone rang. Ordinarily, to me the weather is little more than conquest on a scale difficult to comprehend. No, there was only a guide for what to wear; yet let that afternoon come back - one I. G. Farbenindustrie. But if a judge who tried the facts first- as it often does - and I see too clearly the lines of roofs and hand could not believe his ears, what might one expect of other doorways through a fog scowling down to the gutters. I have to intelligent men? think twice to realize that even the later consequences weren't My understanding of Farben has developed in the last ten foreshadowed by two consecutive moments at the window. years, during which seven government missions abroad have car- Although the phone call was the most far-reaching of my life, I ded me through fifty countries. Farben first came forcibly to my don't recall it very well. attention on a mission to Latin America in 1941. I met Farben I answered it, of course. Then I was back at the window sensing in North Africa in 1943, in France in 1944, and in Europe and the ethereal exaggeration of roofs and doorways, walls whole and Asia from 1945 through 1948. During the war a report had crossed larger than they really are. It wasn't quite time for the shops to be my desk in Washington from a town in Poland called Auschwitz. decorated in evergreen and neon, the Walt Whitman Hotel to be The men who wrote the report had spent two years in Auschwitz girdled by colored lights. Still, I saw the coming season in squat before their escape. At three o'clock every morning, they were buildings and dirty streets. For a long time, I had spent most of my herded with hundreds of others to a tremendous plant, several kilo- holidays in a crumbling scene, and I had come to a time when meters square, called "Buna." At noon they sucked up a little anything intact was beautiful. turnip soup. The evening meal - "evening" was eleven o'clock at My secretary came in to announce that the client in the outer - night was a crust of bread. When I read this report in 1944, office was impatient. Whatever the matter was -a will to pre- I speculated as to whether this "Buna" plant in Poland was a pare, a divorce, a deed - I handled it before going into the adjoin- Farben venture. I too found it hard to believe. ing office to face my brother Herb. He looked up from his desk. Behind tortoise-shell glasses he blinked slowly as he always does to hide his incessant curiosity. "Washington just called," I said. "The government wants me to 2. Anything Intact Was Beautiful come back." His face was still tanned from Army life - he'd been discharged DECEMBER1 946 -a long time ago reckoned by the hours of a few months before. But his tan did not hide the deeper color national futility that have since gone by. of anger. December 1946 - there was a lot of war going on. The Jewish "I thought you were fed up. You just got home a couple of underground in Palestine was attacking Tel Aviv; in Iran the left- months ago." ists fought the government with sticks and stones and leaflets and "Now, don't get excited," I said. "I told them I wouldn't come." broken-down tanks salvaged from larger armies. But the Cold War He settled back in his chair. "Good! What was the proposi- hadn't yet been named. Although threats between nations were tion? Did they want you to draw up the papers to lease Alaska to commonplace, Andrei Vishinsky, speaking a few days before at the Russians?" 10 THE DEVIL'S CHEMISTS ANYTHING INTACT WAS BEAUTIFUL 11 "Germany," I said. "This mission would not be like any of and Easter eggs. During one war year, Farben had employed the others." Then I gave a brief, maybe even vague, report of more people than three of the world's largest corporations put the conversation. What difference did it make? "I told them I'm together: DuPont de Nemours of Wilmington, Delaware, Standard not going anywhere but right here in Camden. But I'm going to Oil Company (New Jersey), and Imperial Chemical Industries of Washington on that tax case anyway, and I can stop in at the London. Holding companies, coke ovens, lignite-coal mines: what War Department and talk it over." woman would care that these were part of the Farben empire? "Here we go! All the government has to do is phone you, and Yet Farben to her meant all of Farben, a thing that had become in you jump. You've left us four times, every time before we get our house like the name of a former spouse. established here. Haven't you had enough?" "It follows us everywhere, Joe, doesn't it?" Yes, I thought, I've had enough. But, leaving my office early, It, she had said, not "Farben." "Farben" was four years of old- I drove slowly. And at the traffic circle outside Camden, I missed fashioned convictions that had led to failure. Even to many people the turn to Westmont, where I lived, and found myself on another who saw some of the facts as we saw them, Farben was only "the highway, driving past other intact buildings, trying to feel that I German question." To us, as to only a few others, it was a world belonged to their sturdy perspective, trying to pretend, a year and question. Though Farben had been the industrial czar of Germany a half since the war ended, that I had danced in the streets on V-E for half a century, its empire included more than 880 firms through- and V-J Days. out Europe, Africa, North and South America, east and west Asia. It was dark when I drove up to my house. My wife was in the I had good reason to know that Farben was the Machiavellian plan- doorway, and before I stepped in, I said: "The War Department ner for all institutions in the world that had allied themselves with wants me to go to Nurnberg. The Farben industrialists may be military aggression. put on trial. They want me to head up the prosecution. I'm not Quietly we finished our second cup of coffee. Then I went down going, of course." to the basement. Near the furnace were the four packing boxes and 'I'll get supper," she said. .- one trunkful of papers I had gathered during my service with the Both the kids were in bed, and we ate supper alone. Over Treasury Department and on three Presidential missions. I shouted coffee, she asked some questions. How many Farben men were up to her: "What happened to all that stuff I had on Farben?" being held by the Military Government? About ten, I guessed. "What are you doing?" And what were they going to be tried for? Well, no indictment "I'd be able to find things if you didn't move stuff all around had been issued yet. down here. It won't be funny if those boxes catch fire." "They've been loosely accused of deliberately helping to bring "I'll come down now and help you move them." on the war, you know," I added. "But I'm sick of it, and I told "Never mind, never mind." Herb so." "I thought you didn't want to take the job." "If you really don't want to go, that's fine." "I don't! You and Herb! I was just curious." She watched me intently. "Farben again," she said. Her coffee She came down for a minute to remind me that I had planned cup clattered nervously in the saucer. to seal up those boxes and lock the trunk. I myself had put all the "Yes, it seems to follow us everywhere." stuff near the furnace. Now, she pointed out, I wanted to move To explain why a huge organization far removed from our sup- it away. per table had a special meaning to my wife, too, would take "Stop being psychological," I said. "What's so important about volumes. Farben had a most artless full name, "Interessen that?" Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft," which means She was right, of course. Whether or not I wanted those records "Community of Interests of the Dyestuffs Industry, Incorporated." to burn, I wanted to forget. And how would one seal up a view- In more pleasant days, when my wife first heard the name, she point that had been slowly burning away anyhow? The last page - had commented that it sounded like a cross between a service club that would be the previous May. Seven months before, Edwin