-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Treason's Peace
Howard Watson Armbruster�1947
A Crossroads Press Book
Beechurst Press
New York
438 pps. -- First/Only Edition -- Out-of Print
--[21]]--
CHAPTER XX I
Another Farben Peace
SENATOR KILGORE in October, 1945, publicly expressed his concern at reports
that high officials were planning a revival of I.G. Farben's export trade
instead of dismantling its facilities.
In December, after his committee bad assembled and made public voluminous
records extracted from the I.G. Fa'rben files in Germany which proved its war
guilt beyond question, the Senator called as a witness Col. Bernard
Bernstein, formerly Treasury Counsel, who, as Director of the Division of
Investigation of Cartels and External Assets in the O. M. G., had recently
returned to the United States, having been sent back, according to report,
because he was too insistent in his efforts to uncover the part Farben played
in the war and in searching for the accomplices through whom its assets were
still hidden.
Colonel Bernstein, in a lengthy statement prepared from original documents
with meticulous care, brought out the startling fact that 87 percent of
Farben's industrial war machine was ready to operate, and instead of being
destroyed as required by the Yalta and Potsdam Agreements, was actually being
put back into operation. His testimony showed conclusively that the German
war machine could not have functioned without Farben, and that Dr. Carl
Krauch, pre-war Nazi Chief of Germanys entire chemical industry, and chairman
of Farben's board of directors, along with the other Farben leaders, bad long
known of the Nazi plan of aggression. The witness expressed the hope that the
criminal role played by Farben's officials would result in their indictment
and .conviction as war criminals. Vain Hope.
Shortly after this, Col. Bernstein resigned from the Government service. His
successor in the O. M. G. set-up in Germany, Russell A. Nixon, a former
member of the Harvard faculty, let loose a blast in Berlin, saying that
Farben's high officials who had been arrested were being released, their
plants were not being destroyed, and the uncovering of their hidden assets
abroad was being hindered by State Department officials.
So Mr. Nixon was also returned to the United States and he, too, gave his
testimony before the Kilgore Committee.
Mr. Nixon was now out of the Government service and was free of official
restraints. He minced no words in stating that O. M. G. officials directly
engaged in carrying out Order No. 2 of July 5. 1945, were deliberately
violating it, and that the I.G. Farben war potential was being actually
rebuilt and reintegrated instead of being destroyed. Among high points of Mr.
Nixon's testimony were detailed charges that: no I.G. Farben plants bad been
destroyed, those widely heralded as having been blown up were in, reality
government-owned plants. No law to destroy cartels in Germany bad been
promulgated and no policy existed in this respect. Farben officials and
employes who had been arrested had then been released from custody-in some
cases were actually assisting in the activities of the 0. M. G. The
instructions for a complete mobilization of Farben's external assets had not
been earned out.
Farben's stock had gone up and up on the Munich and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges
(from 68 to 142-1/2) because the German people on the spot knew what was
going on.
The State Department and the British Foreign Office had acted together in
preventing the seizure of Farben's foreign assets.
Possibly the most significant item in Mr. Nixon's story was his statement
that Farben's re-growth followed closely the expectations which had been
expressed by the notorious Max Ilgner, in a letter discovered by the 0. M.
G., which Ilgner wrote in 1944 to several of his associates and in which this
Farben foreign-espionage head confidently advised his pals to stick together
because he, Ilgner, could assure them that the American authorities would
eventually came to their rescue and permit I.G. Farben to resume business as
usual.
Mr. Nixon not only minced no words in denouncing the official malpractice by
which every order to destroy Farben was being aborted, but named some of
those individuals in the O. M. G. set-up in Germany whom he believed to be
responsible for this ghastly repetition of the sabotage of Allied control of
this same German dye trust in the years following World War I.
Among those Mr. Nixon indicated had taken the attitude that the Morgenthau
plan was hysterical or impracticable were Ambassador Robert D. Murphy,
representing the State Department; General William H. Draper, Director of the
Economics Division; Col. E. G. Pillsbury, control officer; Major Petroff,
former attorney for General Motors; Laird Bell, Chicago attorney who had been
outspoken in his disagreement with Potsdam and J. C. S. 1067; and Col. Joe
Starnes, former member of the noxious Dies Committee of the House of
Representatives who, when defeated for reelection, was rewarded with a
commission in the Army and as a member of the O. M. G. urged that the
de-Nazification order should be ignored and German industry should be started.
Mr. Nixon went into some detail regarding the peculiar actions of Col. Carl
B. Peters, former president of Synthetic Nitrogen Products, director of
Chemnyco, and an official of the Advance Solvents Corporation, all Farben
subsidiaries, who was quietly removed from Germany for engaging in numerous
relations with high I.G. Farben officials.
Col. Peters, Swiss-born American citizen and a Major in ordnance during World
War I, was active in the chemical industry and took a leading part in
Farben's false front set-ups in the United States. Then in 1939 he was
indicted in two of the synthetic nitrogen ammonia cases which were kept
secret from the public and later were mysteriously nolle prossed. And on
September 5, 1941 he was defendant in the civil complaint and consent decree
involving the same conspiracy with Farben to restrain synthetic nitrogen
production. Colonel Peters reentered the Army and was sent to Germany
originally by Mr. Crowley's Foreign Economic Administration, coming to grief
as Mr. Nixon stated, when United States Counter-Intelligence decided that his
relations with Farben personages were improper and indicated that he looked
forward to renewed inter connections between Farben and American interests.
Readers may ponder at this typical example of the familiar pattern, of the
way a man who served Farben purposes during the pre-war period in its
American fronts and was thus personally involved in court actions for
conspiracy against this country, should then have been commissioned in the
Army and sent by Mr. Crowley to help carry out the destruction-or control-of
I.G. Farben's war machine in Germany.
While Senator Kilgore was making a direct attack upon the Farben conspiracy,
one other robust member of the Senate, the Hon. Joseph O'Mahoney, Wyoming
Democrat, had been approaching some aspects of the Farben mess by indirection
with an insistent demand that the Government of the United States take a
forthright position on the total abolishment of all international
cartels�particularly those by which Farben had disarmed this nation and its
other victims.
In May, 1945, Senator O'Mahoney held public hearings before Senate Committees
which were considering cartel legislation, and his first two witnesses,
Attorney General Francis Biddle and Assistant Attorney General Wendell Berge,
distinguished themselves by expressing conclusions that executives of the
corporations who signed and carried out the illegal tie-ups with Farben were
innocent of any attempt to injure the national security and did not present
any moral problem in so doing.
This gratuitous effort to apply a coat of official whitewash to men whose
acts had contributed to obstructing the national defense, was more remarkable
in view of Mr. Biddle's admission that some of those same individuals were
parties to carry-over agreements through which the illegal agreements were
already being resumed. And Mr. Berge's friends and admirers were chagrined
when he ignored official records to the contrary, and expressed the absurd
opinion that the United States Government had "no knowledge of Standard Oil's
partnership agreements with Farben during the thirteen-year pre-war period.
Out of my own high admiration for Wendell Berge let it be said that whoever
induced him to put such statements into a public record was not a real friend
of this kindly gentleman.
Leaders of the oil industry also appeared, including Orville Harden,
vice-president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, and other executives of that
company�each to express, quaintly, their bitter opposition to cartels. They
each appeared at first to hate these infamous arrangements. Then the words
nevertheless, however, and but would creep in, in a way which indicated that
just possibly the speakers were afraid that perhaps we could not afford to be
too harsh in future about such tie-ups with foreign companies. The oil
magnates put on a good show.
On the last day of these hearings Senator O'Mahoney called on me, as an
authority on cartels and I.G. Farben, and thus made it possible to put into a
Senate record a few of the pertinent facts (which now may be found in this
book) about the vicious political influence by which I.G. Farben during the
pre-war era had so profoundly molded opinion and policy inside Germany and
also in other countries, including the United States.
I utilized this opportunity to refute the earlier allegations of Messrs.
Biddle and Berge that none of their so-called innocent American industrial
cartelists knew that the national security was involved in their partnerships
with Farben, and that the United States Government was not informed about
these illegal agreements until after Germany began the war. The documentary
proofs which I cited to disprove the Biddle-Berge allegations were received
in painful silence, especially those which clearly indicated that the
political influence of I.G. Farben might have been responsible for the
innocuous results of flabby Anti-Trust Law enforcement against those whose
tie-ups with Farben did weaken our national security.
It was merely a coincidence, but surely a pleasant one, that Mr. Biddle
resigned from his position as Attorney General the day after my testimony
recorded some of the weird results of his tenure of that office. However,
rumor had it that he had been slated to go ever since former Assistant
Attorney General Norman Littell forced into the record some of the proofs
relating to Mr. Biddle's relations with Thomas Corcoran.
How and why Francis Biddle under these circumstances later wound up as the
United States member of the Nuremberg Court by appointment of President
Truman remains a mystery on which the readers of this record may well ponder.
As the aftermath of having thus placed on a record of the Senate for the
first time evidence that the political influence of I.G. Farben had been
reaching inside the Government of the United States, the printing of the
record of these hearings was held up for months, while parts of my testimony
were suppressed.
However, it developed that the Wyoming Senator was unwilling that political
influence of I.G. Farben should prevent his colleagues in the Senate, and the
public, from reading testimony on that same political influence of I.G.
Farben which had been recorded before his Committee. Thus, in the final
printing of these hearings, there appeared a reproduction of my 1931 Chart or
Flow Sheet (described in Chapter VIII) showing I.G. Farben's control in that
early pre-war era, of our munitions industries, its influence on our press
and our government. Thanks to the courage of Joe O'Mahoney, this proof that
it was then known what Farben had planned for ten years later, became a
public record fourteen years after it had been sent to members of the
Congress.
On December 12, 1945, after Colonel Bernstein's public testimony, Senator
Kilgore, in an off-the-record conversation with me, expressed his indignation
at incidents which I related as illustrations of Farben's influence in
security immunity for some of its Amercan stooges. I was then advised that I
would be called back to Washington as a witness before the Kilgore Committee.
Instead, a letter from the Senator advised me that the public hearings were
discontinued and would I kindly send him a written statement to be printed
with the Committee's other testimony?
On December 21, 1945, a few days after our private conversation on Farben's
political influence, Senator Kilgore issued a ringing public statement
dealing with this same subject of influence. And in restrained but
unmistakably critical language the Senator discussed the conduct of affairs
in occupied Germany with this query:
For what private and selfish ends are our national security and the security
of our allies placed in jeopardy?
He became more specific as he continued:
The attitude of these military government officials is an outgrowth of their
connections with industrial and financial enterprises whcih[sic] had close
pre-war ties with the Nazis.
His statement also named some of the same O. M. G. officials mentioned in the
Nixon testimony, but unfortunately Senator Kilgore did not bring out clearly
the basic issue of Farben's continued political influence inside government
at Washington, where obviously the real resonsibility[sic] lay for putting
into the O. M. G. men who would deliberately sabotage the orders issued by
General Eisenhower to smash I.G. Farben. These men did not appoint themselves
to office.
As one way to remedy the silence on this issue I included in the statement
which the Senator had requested for his Committee's hearings some of the
ample proofs available that the most dangerous aspect of the German war
potential was the political influence of Farben inside the Government of the
United States. Incidents, a few of the many in this book, were recited.
My medicine was too strong for Senator Kilgore�the heat was on for what he
had already put into the record. My statement was returned with advice that
it could not be published because: "It is not the policy of the Sub-Committee
to make charges against individuals . . . (which was a rather peculiar
allegation in view of the charges against members of the O. M. G., and many
others made in the Kilgore Committee Hearings). Tactfully, the Senator's
letter added:
"I am not questioning your veracity."
Friends of the Senator then complained to me that I was causing him
embarrassment. Be that as it may, his probe of I.G. Farben had already caused
such dismay and resentment that no appeasement policy would suffice and the
Kilgore Committee's investigations were marked for the same end as those of
the Bone Committee.
Following Mr. Nixon's testimony in February, it was announced that witnesses
from the State Department would appear before the Kilgore Committee to refute
the Nixon charges. But no such witnesses appeared. Instead, the Audit and
Contingent Expenses of the Senate reached out to strangle Senator Kilgore's
brave effort to defeat the Farben revival plot, by cutting the appropriation
for his Sub-Committee to a fraction of the sum required.
This is not to imply that this action, by the Senators involved, was not
motivated by a desire for economy or was influenced by the I.G. Farben lobby.
While the tug-of-war was going on in the United States Senate between the
save-Farben and smash-Farben teams, important contributions were made by
those two valiant battlers, Representatives Voorhis of California and Coffee
of Washington. Among the several forceful speeches by Mr. Voorhis touching on
the I.G. Farben tie-ups in the United States was that delivered on May 21,
1945, in support of his House Concurrent Resolution 55, which demanded that
the Government prevent the economic financial or technical resources of
Germany from rebuilding the future war potential of the enemy in any other
nation, and to prevent any citizens or corporations of the United States
taking any action "through cartel agreements or otherwise" which would
contribute to the rebuilding of that future war potential.
Again on July 20, 1945, Mr. Voorhis complained bitterly that:
Some of the very people who hold top positions in the American Control
Commission in Germany are men who either in the past or at this very moment
are officials of American companies who had . . . connections with some of
the very Ger-man companies which the Senate (Kilgore) Committee has warned
about . . .
Mr. Voorhis also put his finger on the issue by saying that:
To select men with connections of this sort and to pass over the thousands of
other American businessmen whose companies never had any such connections is,
to put the matter very mildly indeed, a mistake which may have the most
serious consequences for the future peace of the world.
Representative Coffee also has a long and notable record of well-documented
and forthright attacks upon the cartel�as an institution and I.G. Farben
tie-ups in particular. On October 4, 1945, while Colonel Bemstein's battle
against the sabotage of the directives to destroy Farben was at its height in
Germany, Mr. Coffee delivered in the House a blasting attack upon I.G. Farben
political influence in which he paid me the honor of referring to my own
efforts, citing among other things my expose of the way the Geneva Economic
Conference in 1927 was influenced by Farben's Dr. Lammers.* Mr. Coffee then
put into the record his own views on the way Farben influenced both
international and our own domestic affairs, including the following:
We have all, I think, felt the impact of such influence here at Washington,
at times like these, when investigation and legislation which may affect any
cartel activities is under discussion, or pending. Then it is, that some
visitor-in plain language some lobbyist-attempts his persuasions with quaint
sophistries, or more subtle argument. Now what essential difference can
anyone point out between the lobbyist-or fixerexerting pressure here at
Washington or in Europe in our reconstruction set-up, in 1945, for cartel
survival; and Farben's Dr. Lammers at Geneva in 1927 successfully persuading
that international assembly not to act against the cartel.
In the light of events since then, which are known to all of us, it may be
admitted that should the Geneva Economic Conference in 1927 have protested at
the evils of the cartel, and had it even raised the lid a fraction of an inch
to peer within the Pandora's Box of I.G. Farben. then those beastly, tragic
human ins, which later were loosed from that casket of evil and death, might
not have brought us, now, to a war and a victory so dearly won with the blood
of American youth. In 1927 I.G. Farben's leaders bad to prevent action by the
League, so Farben's distinguished Dr. Lammers was on the spot to do so.
Who shall dare to say that some other Dr. Lammers, disguised in sheep's
clothing as a learned technical adviser, or in the raiment of an apostle of
democracy and peace, has not been around Washington to advise anyone so
credulous as to listen to him; or is not among those who at this very time
are in Europe to help decide on the spot what to do about saving German
industries, or what punishment, if any, shall be meted out to guilty German
industrialists.
* In monograph, The Cartel, published in the Encyclopedia Americana, 1945.
The eloquent Representative summed up his conclusions with:
. . . the one great national and international issue which the cartel
presents to us at this time, and which we must face before it is too late, is
that of the cartel's political influence, as we see it now revealed in
preparation for this war, and as it must be met if its impact upon the next
peace is to be im-munized. We have won the war in Europe and in Asia, but are
we doing those things which must be done if we are to win the peace, while
the friends and allies of I.G. also plan and connive in secret to reconstruct
their private cartel super- state? Remember, too, that much of the propaganda
which clandestinely attempts to foment discord among the Allies in this war
and in this peace has its origin and its motivation among the adherents of
another era of world cartelization.
These references to the influence which might effect what punishment, if any,
shall be meted out to guilty German industrialists are a reminder that up to
the time this is written there appears no record of the indictment or the
punishment of any officer or employe of I.G. Farben, in Europe, save for the
gentle protective custody in which some of them have been held, until they
were released by influences exerted upon subordinate officials in the O. M. G.
As one of the few columnists who wield an objective pen and cite names and
facts on the I. G. Farben problem, Tom Stokes followed up Jerry Voorhis'
expose in the House with a series on the same subject, of the official folly
of putting men in the O. M G. in Germany to eradicate Farben who were
officers of American Companies tied in with I.G. Farben and in some instances
under indictment for such offenses.
One of those identified by Stokes in his column of May 26, 1945, was Col.
Frederick Pope, who had been with the Office of War Mobilization before being
selected as Chairman of the F. E. A. Committee on Chemicals which prepared
that section of Mr. Crowley's Program for German and Industrial Disarmament
(already mentioned).
Without questioning Mr. Pope's high standing as an industrial engineer, or
the good faith of his recommendations relating to the peacetime control
rather than the destruction of Farben's production of war chemicals, Mr.
Stokes pointed out that Mr. Pope was a director or official of more than one
of I.G. Farben's American affiliates.
These have included Mr. Pope's directorship of the American Cyanamid Company
(fined $10,000 in April, 1946, for conspiring with I. G. Farben) and of the
Southern Alkali Co. (defendant in action filed in 1944 for conspiracy with
Farben in the alkali industry) and prior to 1939 Mr. Pope was also closely
associated with the Farben subsidiary Synthetic Nitrogen Products Co., along
with Col. Carl Peters, which company's record has also been presented.
The press in general, as has been mentioned in earlier chapters, continued
its customary reluctance to publish all of the real truth which came out of
Germany.
As the struggle inside of the O. M. G. proceeded, between those like
Bernstein and Nixon who wanted to be harsh, as ordered, with Farben, and
those opposed, there were increasing protests from news correspondents
stationed in our occupied zone in Germany that either direct censorship or
indirect pressure was making it difficult to send back home the real facts on
what was going on behind the scenes. Correspondents of even the conservative
New York Times joining in these protests justify a belief that they were well
grounded. It remains fortunate that Messrs. Bernstein and Nixon, when they
returned to the United States, resisted such efforts to silence them as we
may be quite sure were made.
This may be the appropriate place to cite that dramatic incident which took
place in the courtroom in Now York on June 6, 1945, when, as told in Chapter
XVIII, Farben's chief Counsel, Dr. August von Knieriem, flown from Frankfurt,
in custody in a military plane, was produced as a surprise witness by Philip
Arnram, Assistant Attorney General, and testified regarding the celebrated
fake agreement made by Standard Oil of New Jersey with Farben at The Hague in
September, 1939, after Germany had invaded Poland.
Dr. Von Knieriem produced from the Farben files a signed Copy of the
so-called Hague agreement which he identified as his own original, and on its
margin in his own handwriting there were numerous notations made at the time
to explain the various clauses in the agreement. One of these conclusions
recorded by Farben's chief legal adviser in 1939, when the Farben leaders'
vision of world conquest held no possibility of the tragic revelations in
1945, was a short pungent phrase in German which, translated, shouted out the
fraud and the confident expectation of a future renewal of the mesalliance
between Farben and Standard. The words were "Post-War Camouflage."
We may well ask how much of the contemptible double talk and worse relating
to Farben which has been uncovered comes within lawyer von Knieriem's
definition of camouflage to deceive the Government and the people of the
United States.
James S. Martin, previously mentioned in Chapter XV succeeded Mr. Nixon as
control officer for I.G. Farben in the American Military Government for
Germany. After he had appealed for the establishment of another tribunal to
try the guilty industrialists, Mr. Martin was permitted to organize a unit to
be devoted specifically to the de-cartelization of Farben and its affiliates.
However, the efforts of this group to eliminate Germany's industrial war
potential appeared to be restricted to surveillance and control of the
so-called peacetime economy, which, since Potsdam, the higher ups had. found
so conveniently elastic and expandable.
Meanwhile, as the trial of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg proceeded, many
Americans sought in vain for some sign that punishment would be inflicted
upon the Farben leaders who were in the custody of the American authorities.
The criminal acts of these men had again been established by countless
original documents uncovered in their own files, as not only responsible for
Hitler and Hitler's armed might and the weakening of Germany's victim
countries, but also as directly involved in some of the most beastly deeds of
the Nazi regime.
These included such acts of criminal depravity as direct participation in the
Nazi slave labor practices which had their origin "in the blackest periods of
the slave trade," by which Farben war plants had been manned with forced
labor of hapless captives; in manufacturing and knowingly supplying the
deadly poison gases used to murder millions of helpless humans in the death
chambers at Auschwitz (Oswiecim); and, after these mass murders, in the
conversion into fertilizer of the ashes remaining from the cremation of the
corpses.
It so happens that ample evidence of all these unbelievable practices was
produced at the trial and recorded in the final judgment of the Nuremberg
Tribunal.
With relation to this evidence of depravity, it may be mentioned that Georg
von Schnitzler, called by some the No. 2 Farben criminal, admitted to our O.
M. G. officials long before the Nuremberg trials began that he, and other
Farben directors, had known that poison gases manufactured in a Farben plant
were being used to murder human beings in the Nazi concentration camps, and
did nothing about it-save to continue the supply.
However, at Nuremberg all this evidence was not related to the guilt of
Farben's leaders-they were not on trial. The senile Krupp was the only one
indicted who was publicly identified as an industrialist (with side-door ties
to Farben). He was not even tried.
And, as the trial dragged on, the slimy Schacht, close associate of Farben,
and involved in Farben's pre-Hitler preparations for war, but usually
referred to as a mere financier, boasted complacently that he would not be
convicted.
'To some it may have seemed strange indeed that there were no Farben figures
in the Nuremberg dock, especially in view of earlier insistence of United
States Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson that some of them should be. The
indictment, where it dealt with certain vital aspects of aggressive war-for
which Hermann Schmitz and his associates obviously were responsible-included
the following:
The Nazi conspirators, and in particular the industrialists among them,
embarked upon a huge rearmament program and set out to produce and develop
huge quantities of materials of war, and to create a powerful military
potential .....
Dr. Schmitz, indicted in the United States in 1941, remained untried for
those offenses; and at Nuremberg he was not even indicted with other and
lesser criminals.
In view of the record thus summarized it is not surprising that on May 1,
1946, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthan, Jr., broadcast a
denunciation of the State Department policies on elimination of Germany's war
potential, with careful analysis which included this positive statement:
We have failed to de-industrialize Germany.
The speaker then reflected the views of many others by saying:
It is still not clear to me whether Mr. Byrnes intends to scrap the Allied
program of Quebec, Yalta and Potsdam . . . .If it is Mr. Byrnes' intention to
scrap the Potsdam pact and allow Germany to remain industrially powerful,
then I prophesy that we are simply repeating the fatal mistakes of
Versailles, and laying the foundation for World War III.
Mr. Morgenthau's query to Secretary Byrnes was a voice crying in the
wilderness of synthetic public clamor which demanded the survival of German
industry-of Farben. This appeal was disguised in a confusion or' many voices,
of hysterical pleas for a starving Germany and fears of a Russian menace.
In July 1946, Russia's Molotov had made an obvious public bid for the favor
of an unrepentant Germany. Then late in August Lieutenant General Lucius D.
Clay, Deputy Military Governor, of the American Zone in Germany, contributed
what may appear as the first of a series of answers to Mr. Morgenthau's
query. As reported, General Clays statement included inaccurate and rather
naive allegations that Germany no longer had any physical war potential of
her own and could only be a threat if some other power with the industrial
wherewithal used her as a mercenary.
A week later, on September 6, 1946, Secretary of State Byrnes made his
counter-bid for the friendship of the prostrate nation in a broadcast at
Stuttgart, in which he threw overboard all pretence of implementation of the
plan to eliminate Farben's war potentialwhich the Potsdam conference had
decreed.
In double talk decrying the oversight that no allowance had been made in
fixing levels of industry for reparations and a selfsupported Germany, Mr.
Byrnes assured his listeners of a balanced industrial economy to be
controlled by trained inspectors, and an export-import program out of which
reparations (and industrial profits) might come.
Described in the press as America's bidding against Russia for German favor,
columnist Edgar Ansel Mowrer aptly called it Byrnes'plan "to fight fire with
fire," while expressing the vain hope that "we come through unharmed."
And Upton Close complacently termed it "a cardinal principle Of democracy,"
and "a reminder to the Reich that we recognize the right of every nation to
govern itself."
The Secretary of State then returned to the Paris Peace Conference and his
bi-partisan foreign policy which, whatever else it may or may not be, does
have the unqualified approval of that good friend of Standard Oil's late Mr.
Farish, Democratic Senator Tom Connally, and the learned legal adviser of
Farben's Mr. Halbach, Republican statesman John Foster Dulles.
President Truman, nudged rather violently on foreign relations by the man he
had displaced as Vice-President, then publicly indicated his full support of
the policies of the Secretary of State.
With another swift turn of the wheel, one more completed de_ sign in the
pattern of things to come was unfolded when, on September 30,1946, the
Nuremberg Tribunal handed down its verdict convicting the Nazi riffraff and
military gangsters, but acquitting both Franz von Papen and Hjalmar Horace
Greeley Schacht. Subsequently mysterious press reports intimated that Francis
Biddle, as American judge, had voted to convict Schacht. However, Mr. Biddle
declined to say how he voted. The judgment states "The Tribunal finds Schacht
not guilty . . ." Of the four judges, American, British, French and Russian,
only the last dissented.
The dissent of Russia's judge J. I. Nikitchenko appears as an understatement
when he declared that:
Schacht's leading part in the preparation and execution of a common criminal
plan is proved.
In the light of damning facts, showing the involvement of Schacht, which were
recited in the verdict itself, he was obviously guilty on Counts 1 and 2 of
the indictment, of:
. . . participation in a common plan or conspiracy to com-mit crimes against
peace . . . in the planning, initiation or waging of a war of agression.
But after reciting the evidence of Schacht's guilt the judges who wrote the
weasel-worded acquittal then accepted the Schacht alibi that he "didn't know"
that the rearmament for which he and his Farben associates were responsible
was intended for aggressive war. The naive judges who concocted this decision
attempted to justify the Schacht innocence on his plea that "when he
discovered the Nazis were rearming for aggressive purposes he attempted to
slow down the speed of rearmaments."
So this close associate of Dr. Hermann Schmitz and other directors of Farben
and Vereinigte Stablwerke, who sat with him on the board of the Reichsbank,
went free on that moth-eaten alibi of Farben's allies: "I didn't know,"
despite a showing of guilt which included substantially each of the various
offenses that can be proved against Dr. Schmitz and the rest of the Farben
broodif and when these gentry are tried.
So out of, Nuremberg has now emerged the judicial dictum and high precedent
behind which immunity for the leaders of Farben may be made secure.
Disheartened, Robert Jackson (who five years earlier, as Attorney General,
had complained of the "Pattern" of nonmilitary invasion which interfered with
'law enforcement itself"), wa's quoted as agreeing fully with the Russian
dissent. "I'd rather see any man but Schacht get off," said the American
prosecutor, and "the further prosecutions of industrialists . . . which have
been planned, will have to be studied from the text of the opinion."
What be might have said was that it now had become an almost futile task
either to indict or to try the Farben criminals. Unless an outraged public
opinion-when the truth is revealed-will smash down the pattern of immunity
which has protected war criminals of two world wars.
With his acquittal, many of Schacht's close friends outside Germany,
industrialists, financiers and politicians, breathed in relief from the fear
that bad been haunting them; fear that the vengeful tongue of a Schacht, if
convicted, would have spilled the beans; a fear now abated because stupid men
on a high bench bad been persuaded to say that Schacht's guilt bad not been
"established beyond a reasonable doubt."
A verdict so bad that it outraged many of the German people themselves may
give rise to the query whether the Nuremberg trial was arranged to provide a
judicial warning of the hangman's noose to gangsters who may plan aggressive
war in future; or to provide judicial safe havens for respectable criminals
who created the gangsters thus condemned�a crowning example of the unwritten
law of the Farben jungle.
Following quickly on the heels of the Schacht fiasco was the announcement of
an official economic mission to study the possibility of advancing United
States Government funds to German industry to implement its controlled
peace-time economy by a revival of the German import-export trade. This
mission was headed by George Allen, as director of the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation, and Howard C. Peterson, Jr., as assistant Secretary of War.
Time will reveal whether any Farben plants or Farben affiliates now in
dire need of financial aid will be judged as deserving it by Mr. Allen,
friend of Victor Emanuel, and director of Farben's General Aniline; or by Mr.
Peterson, former member of the Cravath
law firm which represented Farben, and official successor of that other
ex-Cravath firm lawyer, John J. McCloy.
Then came a significant resignation at Nuremberg. Abraham Pomerantz,
distinguished American attorney and Prosecutor of the industrial war
criminals '(who, had asked me to serve as his advisor on I.G. Farben) quit
the job in protest at the calibre of the judges designated to try these cases.
Other reports, not confirmed, indicated that Dr. Herman Abs, one of the most
powerful of Farben's directors, had been immunized in the British Zone, where
he was acting as adviser to the English officials; and that Fritz Thyssen,
safe in his pleasant quarters on the Island of Capri, was also immune from
prosecution.
Meanwhile Schacht announced that he had a plan to solve "Germany's economic
problems." Thyssen had already produced his plan for a German corporate state
in his true-confessions book. And surely the Gebeimrat Hermann Schmitz, with
the help of nephew Max Ilgner and of Georg von Schnitzler, could supply a
plan-if not convicted.
Schacht-Thyssen-Schmitz�what a team that would be to rebuild German's peace
time economy, and direct it jointly with a select group of Anglo-American
industrialists, financed with American taxpayer's funds!
The foregoing constitutes a small part of the record, and of the proofs
available that the conspiracy to save the Farben war criminals from
punishment, to revive the Farben structure, and to renew the Farben
carry-over tie-ups, here and elsewhere, is proceeding on schedule.
Just as Max Ilgner told his criminal associates in 1944 that it would be,
this plot is proceeding in the pattern of another false peacetime tragedy
which, in reality, is another intermission for rebuilding of a superstate and
another era of secret preparation for World War III.
That the same influence which reaches into high places to make a treason's
peace is also active in promoting friction among the victorious Allies of
World War II may be in some respects the most dangerous manifestation of
that cancer in the vital organs of government.
That Great Britain under Attlee, as 'under Churchill, has favored a soft
peace for Farben and has changed little from its prewar dependence upon
cartel trade restrictions, and that Moscow has severely criticized the
Anglo-American policy of hard talk and soft action regarding Farben has been
apparent in many news items coming from London, from Berlin and from Moscow.
This book is not the place for appraisal of the post-war relations between
the United States and Great Britain on one side and Russia on the other, nor
to comment on the manners and tactics of Moscow or the pin prickings and
vacillations of Washington.
It is, however, within the purposes of this book to point out that ample
proofs have been recorded here of many aspects of the pattern of I.G. Farben
which show a purpose always to divide and conquer, and that this pattern very
definitely traces its slimy threads into the sabotage of the eradication of
I.G. Farben's war potential by the same influences inside the Government at
Washington which have been pressing our foreign policies and our stand in the
United Nations away from a possible rapprochement with Russia.
The arguments heard that the recrudescence of Germany's armed might by a
revival of Farben's industrial war potential may be desirable to provide a
buffer, or a threat, to Russian expansion (call it imperialism, or demand for
security as you will) 'appear as cockeyed and as vicious as would be a demand
for the reorganization of Max Ilgnees spy ring in South America in order to
help us protect the Panama Canal.
Readers of this book may perceive emerging now the shadow of the
Frankenstein's monster rebuilt-by folly, or by treasonno less alive in now
socialistic Britain than in capitalistic United States. This creature may
introduce that culmination of final world conquest for which Farben's leaders
have already planned and made possible two World Wars.
Of what avail a victory at arms, with its ghastly sacrifice of sweat, and
blood, and tears; of youth destroyed, or warped, or wrecked-if out of it
shall come another peace of Farben's pattern, a peace disguised this time as
a union of nations to rule by force, by the atomic bomb, if you will, with
men of Farben's choice to make up that super-state?
If that shall be the sacrifice and the victory and the profit, then this
ghastly price will have been paid merely to yield our own destinies, and
those of all the world, to the tender mercies of a supreme corporate state
guided by men of Farben's choice; a union of nations, as a
super-world-government, which, call it by what name you will, in reality will
be the consummation of the world conquest planned by faceless Farben figures
to be consummated by Farben's faithless dupes.
pps. 395-413
CONCLUSION
Democracy at its worst � and at its best
THIS, THEN, IS THE PATTERN of Farben, as it has appeared and re-appeared
before and during two world wars�and as that same pattern has already
re-appeared in the peace.
This story has been cut in length and cut again, in order to bring it within
the covers of this book. For lack of space many facts which should be told
have been omitted here. But those which are presented are sufficient to show
that the people of this nation must clean their own house of Farben before
hoping to instruct other peoples of the world how -to eradicate for all time
this obstacle to an enduring peace.
The accusation of muckraking which will be made has its own reply in the fact
that those who claim to be accused by this story may not again plead
ignorance of the facts presented here, facts which bear so vital a relation
to the peace which is to come.
There will be those who will allege that Pan-Germanism and the Teuton lust
for world conquest were conceived and thrived many centuries before the era
of modern warfare and the German dye cartels. I reply that since the age of
modern war began all' of the so-called military groups of Germany, including
the Prussians and the Junkers, would have been helpless without the munitions
supplied by Farben; nor have those groups ever had any important influence
inside the United States save that created through Farbeifs pattern of
conspiracy-as revealed in this story.
It is not necessary to conclude that some of those named here were knaves and
some were fools, nor does the author so assert. And, just so, it must not be
assumed that any individual, merely because his name appears in this story,
is accused by the author of guilty acts or of guilty purposes.
We may disregard all issues of intent, and on the sole issue of intelligence
the reader is entitled to say whether leadership by men who thus did Farben's
bidding must be rejected now, so that the pattern of Farben may be uprooted.
Otherwise we will again be led astray by Farbens guile�even before the grass
grows green or the tears are dry upon the graves of those who have died and
are dying now for the blind stupidity of those who would reject the lessons
of World War I, and again of World War II.
Grant that it be not treason, grant that it be not greed, it remains that
unforgivable folly because of which men and women of America-who hate war
because they love liberty-have thrust the bodies of sons and brothers, of
husbands and fathers, twice in one generation before the war machine
conceived by German science, in the hands of Farben outlaws, while
Democracy's leaders sat shamelessly silent and now cry out 'We did not know."
I say that these leaders did know. I say that the facts assembled in this
story should prove to all that those things which the German dye trust
planned to do, and then did with the assistance of key men in its framework
in the United States, had long been revealed as in an open book to those in
high places who cared to listen or to examine the record. I say that those
facts have been known from the days of the dying Wilson Administration by
lead-ers of high and low degree of all, three branches of our Federal
Government and by leaders in industry, in finance, and in public opinion.
Somehow, the public has been kept in ignorance. A purpose of this book is to
rectify that wrong. I say that the immunity which these men of Farben's
pattern have enjoyed-and which still endures�shall not prevail unless these
facts remain concealed. These facts must be made known now, this pattern must
be recognized NOW, if final disaster is to be averted.
To those who may protest that I overdraw my canvas I say that the youth of
this generation have had this war to fight because they and many of their
elders were not permitted to learn in time the facts told here. Is this to
happen again while they-those who have come back�move on from youth and their
sons in turn shall have another war to fight because the spawn of I.G. Farben
again shall make a mockery of those two keystones of human liberty, free
speech and free press?
I say that those two phrases are futile, senseless words so long as they are
subject not to statute, but to secret fiat or corrupt subservience. I say
here that much of the responsibility for the tragic era of two senseless,
wicked wars is upon those who for any reason have refrained from revealing
such facts and their meaning to the people of this nation. Perhaps -that era
came to a close when fortune and enduring faith at the end of a -long and
dreary path has finally resulted in this publication of the story of that
pattern which survives in war and endures in peace.
This is the story of democracy at its worst. The fact of its telling here
without restraint of censor, and despite opposition from high places-is
democracy at its best.
FINIS
pps. 414-416
APPENDIX
Those names listed below have been identified from official sources as
companies located in the United States which, at some time during the period
between the two world wars, had financial relations, patent agreements or
other alliances involving direct or indirect ties with I.G. Farben.
Many of those named here are not mentioned elsewhere in the book. The list
has been compiled solely to illustrate the width and depth of I.G. Farben's
penetration in American industry.. Identification here, as was stated at the
end of Chapter IV does not imply impropriety or illegality in relations with
I.G. Farben by the company thus named.
In those companies marked with asterisk (*) Farben is reported to have had a
controlling financial interest, or relations approximating, control. In those
marked with (**) Farben is reported to have had a limited or minority
financial interest.
Abbott Laboratories
Acetol Products Co.
* Advance Solvents & Chemical Corp.
* Agfa Ansco Corp.
* Agfa Photo Products Co.
* Agfa Raw Film Co.
* Alba Pharmaceutical Co.
Allied Chemical & Dye Corp.
Aluminum Company of America
American Active Carbon Co.
American Bemberg Corporation
American Cyanamid Co.
American Enka Corporation
American Glanstoff Corporation
*American I.G. Chemical Corporation
*American Magnesium Corporation
American Potash & Chemical Corporation
American Solvent Recovery Corporation
American Window Glass Company
American Zirconium Company
Anaconda Sales Company
Anglo Chilean Nitrate Corporation (N. Y.)
*Ansco Photo Products, Inc.
o Antidolor Company
Atlantic Refining Co.
Ayerst, McKenna & Harrison (U. S.) Ltd.
Baker & Co.
The Barrett Co.
Barnsdall Corporation
Bayer Company, Inc.
Bayer-Semesan Co.
Bell and Howell Co.
Bernuthe Lambecke Co.
Berst-Forster-Dixfield Co.
* Board of Trade for German American Commerce, Inc.
Bohn Aluminum & Brass Co.
Borden Company
Bradley & Baker
Bristol Myers Co.
Calco Chemical Company
California Alkali Export Association, Inc.
Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Corporation
Carnation Co.
Carter Oil Co.
Casein Company of America
L. D. Caulk Company
*Central Dyestuff & Chemical Co.
Central Scientific Company
*Chemical Marketing Co.
*Chemnyco, Inc.
Chilean Nitrate and Iodine Sales Corporation
Chilean Nitrate Sales Corporation (N. Y.)
Chipman Chemical Engineering Co.
Church & Dwight Co., Inc.
Ciba Company, Inc.
Cincinnati Chemical Works
Cities Service Co.
Climax Molybdenum Co.
Columbia Chemical Co.
Commercial Pigments Co.
Consolidated Color & Chemical Co.
Continental Oil Company
Cook-Waite Laboratories
R. B. Davis Company
Davis Emergency Equipment Company
Diamond Alkali Company
Diamond Match Company
Dow Chemical Company
Drug, Inc.
Dry Milk Company
duPont Cellophane Company
** E. 1. duPont de Nemours Co.
Eastman Kodak Company
Ellis Flotation Corporation
Ellis-Foster Company
Ethyl Gasoline Corporation
Federal Match Co.
Ferrocart Corporation of America
o Fezandie & Sperrle
Firestone Rubber Company
Fitchburg Yam Company
Fleischmann Company
Ford Motor Co.
Freyn Engineering Company
Gasoline Products Company
Geigy Company, Inc.
o General Aniline & Film Corp.
o General Aniline Works, Inc.
General Chemical Company
General Drug Co.
*General Dyestuff Corporation
General Electric Company
General Mills, Inc.
General Motors Corporation
General Motors Research Corporation
General Tire and Rubber Co.
Glidden Company
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.
William Gordon Corporation
Grasselli Chemical Company
* Grasselli Dyestuff Corporation
Greene Cananea Copper Company
Gulf Oil Corporation of Penn.
Gulf Refining Company
Hercules Powder Co.
Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc.
Hooker Electrochemical Company
Household Products, Inc.
* Hutz & Joslin (law firm)
**Hydro Carbon Synthesis Corporation
Hydro Engineering and Chemical Company
Hydro Patents Co.
Imperial Chemical Industries (N. Y.) Ltd.
Indiana Condensed Milk Company
Interchemical Company
International Catalytic Oil Processes Company
International Hydro Patents Company
International Match Company
International Nickel Company
Interstate Chemical Company of Rhode Island
o Jasco, Inc.
M. W. Kellogg Company
Kennecott Sales Corporation
Kerr Dental Manufacturing Company
Koppers Company
Koppers Construction Company
Krebs Pigment and Color Corporation
o Kuttroff Pickhardt and Company
Lautaro Nitrate Company, Ltd.
Lever Bros. Life Savers, Inc.
Louis K. Liggett Company
Lion Match Co.
Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company
o Magnesium Development Corporation
o Marion Company
Mathieson Alkali Works (Inc.)
Mead Johnson & Company
Wm. S. Merrell Company
Metal & Thermit Co.
o H. A. Metz Company
o Metz Laboratories
Mid Continent Petroleum Corporation Molybdenum Corporation of America
Monsanto Chemical Company
National Aniline & Chemical Company National City Company
National Distillers Corporation
National Distillers Products Company
National Lead Company
Nestles Milk Products Company
New Jersey Zinc Company
New York Match Company, Inc.
Niagara Alkali Company
North American Rayon Corporation
Ohio, Match Company
Okonite Company
Oldbury Electro-Chemical Company
Owl Drug Co.
*Ozalid Corporation
*Ozaphane Corporation of America
Pacific Alkali Co.
Parke Davis & Company
Penn-Chlor, Inc.
Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company
Pet Milk Company
Phillips Petroleum Company
Pittsburg Plate Glass Company
*Plaskon Company, Inc.
Polymerization Processes Corporation
Proctor and Gamble Company
Pure Oil Company
Remington Arms Company, Inc.
Richfield Oil Company of California
Rohm & Haas Company, Inc.
Sandoz Chemical Works, Inc.
Selden Company
Semet-Solvay Company
Shawinigan Chemicals, Ltd.
Shell Chemical Co.
Shell Development Corporation
Shell Union Oil Company
Sinclair Refining Company
Skelly Oil Company
Socony-Vacuum Oil Company
Solvay Process Company
L. Sonneborn & Sons, Inc.
Southern Alkali Corporation
E. R. Squibb & Sons
Standard Alcohol Company
Standard Brands, Inc.
Standard Catalytic Company
**Standard I. G. Company
**Standard Oil of California
Standard Oil Development Company
**Standard Oil Co. of Indiana
Standard Oil Co. of Louisiana
**Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey)
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey
Standard Oil Co. of New York
Standard Oil Co. of Ohio
Standard Oil Co. of Texas
Stauffer Chemical Company
**Sterling Products, Inc. (Now Sterling Drug, Inc.)
*Synthetic Nitrogen Corp.
Synthetic Patents Co., Inc.
Texaco. Development Corporation
Texas Company
Three-in-One Oil Company
Titan Company, Inc.
Titanium Pigment Company, Inc.
Transamerican Match Company
Uniform Chemical Products, Inc.
Union Oil Company of California
Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation
United Drug Company
United States Alkali Export Association, Inc.
United States & Transatlantic Service Corporation
United States Rubber Company
Universal Match Corporation
Universal Oil Products Company Urbain Corporation
Vacuum Oil Company Vegex, Inc.
Vernon-Benshoff Company
Vernon-Morner Company
Vick Chemical Company
Virginia Chemical Company
Viscose Company
Visking Corporation
Vulcan Match Company
West End chemical Company
Westvaco Chlorine Products Corporation
West Virginia Match Corporation
Winthrop Chemical Corporation
Wisconsin Alumni Rekarch Foundation, Inc.
Wyandotte Chemical Company
pps. 417-421
--[fini]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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