Hell's Cartel

by Diarmuid Jeffreys

  When the chief judge had finished speaking, Judge Hebert, the former Louisiana dean, announced that he dissented from the majority verdict of Shake and Morris on numerous points. Supported by the alternate judge, Clarence Merrell, he had tried to persuade the other two to give him time to file his dissenting opinion so that it might be published alongside the verdicts. To his considerable dismay, they had denied him this opportunity, but he now made plain his intention to file it later.

  For much of the day the prosecution had been sitting in stunned silence, appalled and shocked by the narrow spread of the guilty verdicts and the modest sentences. “Light enough to please a chicken thief,” muttered DuBois bitterly. Telford Taylor, whose extraordinary opening speech should have set the scene for a prosecutorial triumph, was speechless. Had he been able to persuade the authorities in Washington to let him have some experienced federal judges, many of the defendants might now have been starting life sentences or on their way to the gallows. Instead, once their time in custody had been taken into account, it was likely that some of the convicted would be released in a few months. So he sat with his colleagues and watched as men they knew to be guilty walked free and others, involved in one of history’s greatest acts of mass murder, were led away to begin sentences so modest they might have been given to a driver who had irresponsibly hit a pedestrian. It was a bitter blow.

  Outside the court, Taylor was restrained. Yes, he was disappointed, he told reporters, but many important issues had been raised during the trial and that could only be good for the future of Germany. He was also mindful, no doubt, that judges in the Krupp trial were due to reach their verdicts the following day and that it would be impolitic to criticize the judiciary at such a time. He needn’t have worried. Using language that was in marked contrast to that of his peers at the IG trial in the courtroom down the hall, Justice Edward Daly castigated the principal defendant, Alfred Krupp, for his grotesque exploitation and mistreatment of slave labor. To gasps from the arms manufacturer’s supporters, Daly sentenced him to twelve years in prison and then ordered that his vast personal wealth be forfeited.

  This was little balm to the IG prosecutors. DuBois had left the court in a fury, declaring, “I’ll write a book about this if it’s the last thing I do.” But first he had to endure the journey home. A few days later, he and Duke Minskoff joined the IG trial judges aboard the General Patrick, a former army transport ship, for the eight-day passage back to the United States. The atmosphere was frosty and the conversation over dinner constrained. But one night Judge Hebert came to DuBois’s cabin. Slowly, and with great effort, he managed to let slip a few words of comfort: “When I first read the indictment, it was difficult to believe that all of this had happened. By the time we reached the end, I felt that practically every sentence of the indictment had been proved many times over.”

  Some years later DuBois would write his book and recall his painful journey home:

  I still feel the same stifling anger today that I felt many times during and since that trip. I was reliably informed that, even before the trial started, one of the judges had expressed the view that he didn’t believe it was ever intended that industrialists be brought to account for preparing and waging an aggressive war.… Why had Judges Shake and Morris reacted as they did? I concluded that the reason must have been fear—their own great fear of the trend of events in 1948. The issue of Communism, pertinent to the defendants’ motives in 1933 and 1934, pertinent to our out-of-court lives in 1948, was falsely read into the defendants’ minds as of September 1939. Nowhere was there any evidence that Farben feared Russia enough to stop producing strategic goods for that country.… Yet the two judges accepted the fiction that Farben was the simple prototype of “Western capitalism.”

  But Judge Paul Hebert was from different stock. Five months after the verdicts, he sent his dissenting opinion to the official trial proceedings. It was a coruscating attack on the prejudices and failings of his fellow judges, who had misread the evidence in almost every respect.

  The record of IG Farbenindustrie, during the period under examination in this lengthy trial, has been shown to be an ugly record which went far beyond the activities of normal business. From a maze of statistical and detailed information in the record emerges a picture of gigantic proportions depicting feverish activity by Farben to rearm Germany in disregard of economic considerations and in a warlike atmosphere of emergency and crisis.… There is nothing in the record to suggest that Farben ever withheld any energy or initiative to help Hitler in his plans to build a Germany that would be strong enough militarily to master the world.

  About Auschwitz, he wrote:

  Utilization of slave labor in Farben was approved as a matter of corporate policy. To permit the corporate instrumentality to be used as a cloak to insulate the principal corporate officers who authorized this course of action is, in my opinion, without any sound precedent under the most elementary concepts of criminal law. Just as ter Meer was the superior of Ambros, the Vorstand was the superior of both, and there is no reason to conclude that the knowledge possessed by Ambros and ter Meer was not fully reported to and discussed in the Vorstand. There is indeed strong positive evidence that this was done.… The conditions at Auschwitz were so horrible that it is utterly incredible to conclude that they were unknown to the defendants, the principal corporate directors, who were responsible for Farben’s connection to the project.… The extreme cold, the inadequacy of the food, the rigorous nature of the work, the cruel treatment of the workers by their supervisors combine to present a picture of horror which, I am convinced, has not been at all overdrawn by the prosecution and which is fully sustained by the evidence.… The defendants, members of the Vorstand, cannot, in my opinion, avoid sharing a large part of the guilt for numberless crimes against humanity.

  Regrettably, Hebert’s opinions were of only historical interest. The handful of convicted IG directors had already begun their brief stay in the relative comfort of Landsberg prison, while the acquitted had been set free to pick up the pieces. Indeed, it seemed only one question now remained outstanding. What did the future hold for the IG itself?

  EPILOGUE

  Although General Eisenhower had recommended IG Farben’s dissolution in late 1945, the cartel’s final breakup was temporarily postponed because the Allies disagreed about exactly how it should be carried out and occupation officials were more immediately concerned with getting the battered German economy back on its feet. The exigencies of the new cold war delayed things still further, and the concern’s factories were left to struggle on, under close Allied supervision, until 1949. But in June of that year, when a civilian Western High Commission replaced the four-nation military administration, former shareholders were able to persuade the new authorities that the assets and stock of the old IG Farben should be transferred to three large successor companies. Thus in 1951, after a further transitional period for legal agreements to be drawn up, Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF were reborn, along with six smaller firms, including Agfa, Kalle, Cassella, and Hüls. By the mid-1950s, when German chemical production had once again reached the level of 1936, the six smaller companies had been reabsorbed by the three largest. By the mid-1970s the big three were back among the thirty largest corporations in the world, having played a decisive role in the “economic miracle” that defined the Federal Republic of Germany in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Each one of them was more profitable than the concern had ever been. It was as though the IG Farben years had been a mere blip in their history.

  Today that success story continues. Bayer, whose global headquarters are still at Leverkusen, is now one of the world’s top-ten pharmaceutical and chemical companies and still its largest producer of aspirin, the product that played such a pivotal role in Carl Duisberg’s accretion of commercial power in the years before the Interessen Gemeinschaft and World War I. In 1999 Bayer was even able to win back the rights to its trade name in America.

  The BASF Group is now the
world’s largest chemical company, the truly multinational giant that Carl Bosch hoped the IG would eventually become. After a long foray into pharmaceuticals and other consumer products, it sold its drugs division for almost $7 billion to Abbott Laboratories in Illinois in 2000. BASF has since reverted to its core businesses, in which petrochemicals, gas, plastics, and agrochemicals still feature importantly. With 160 subsidiaries and eighty-seven thousand employees, its annual turnover today is in excess of 36 billion euros. Ironically, the synthetic fuel process that Bosch was so desperately keen to develop in the early 1930s is now coming back into fashion. Natural oil prices are rising as world reserves decline, and many industry experts predict that the industrialized world will soon be forced to turn again to the technology that the Nazis paid IG Farben to develop.

  Hoechst is the only one of the big three not to have kept its name. In 1999 it merged with Rhône-Poulenc, the French chemical business whose factories IG Farben plundered during World War II. The resulting company was known as Aventis, but it became Sanofi-Aventis after a further merger in 2004. The combined firm, with headquarters in Paris, is now the third-largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Like the other two former IG companies, it is extremely profitable, with more than 27 billion euros of revenue in 2005.

  Not surprisingly, all three of these successor businesses have been keen to disassociate themselves publicly from IG Farben, not least because of the possibility that former slave workers and concentration camp survivors might sue them for compensation. This possibility quickly became a reality in the early 1950s. In 1949, all that remained of the once mighty concern, in strict legal terms, was a tiny rump: the IG Farben in Liquidation company. Its minimal staff had been reduced to managing the firm’s pension funds and trying to recover assets confiscated by Warsaw Pact countries. But in 1951 Norbert Wollheim, a former slave laborer at the Buna-Werke, sued this entity for damages. When the case came to court before three German judges in Frankfurt, Wollheim described how he and his family had been arrested with thousands of others in Berlin and shipped to Auschwitz, where his wife and three-year-old son were selected for murder at Birkenau. He recounted his subsequent life at Monowitz and the Buna-Werke, his struggle to survive the beatings and starvation, and the constant threat of the gas chambers. With supporting testimony from a dozen former inmates, including two British POWs, he asked for a minimum settlement of ten thousand deutschmarks. The IG in Liquidation put up a fierce fight and recycled the defense used at Nuremberg. Whatever had happened to Wollheim was the fault of other parties—the SS, the Nazis, corrupt inmates, and building contractors. The IG, in contrast, had done its best to improve the lot of inmates. Indeed, the lawyers argued, by giving them work it had saved many from the gas chambers.

  The judges disagreed. After hearing Wollheim’s testimony and studying the sixteen-thousand-word transcript of the earlier trial, they reached a conclusion that was worthy of the evidence.

  The fundamental principles of equality, justice, and humanity must have been known to all civilized persons, and the IG corporation cannot evade its responsibility any more than can an individual.… They must have known of the selections for it was their human duty to know the condition of their employees. Their alleged total lack of knowledge merely confirms their lack of interest in the lives of the Jewish prisoners for whom they had a duty of care, at least during the time the inmates were in their power. There was a duty to do whatever they could to protect the life, body, and health of the plaintiff—which they failed to carry out. For that failure, which was at least negligent, the company is liable.

  Wollheim’s victory opened the remnant of the IG up to a barrage of similar claims, which were eventually handled by Benjamin B. Ferencz, one of Telford Taylor’s deputies at Nuremberg and the lead attorney in the successful Einsatzgruppen trial. As a result of his efforts and many months of hard bargaining, the corporation (now led by August von Knieriem) was eventually obliged to hand over a small payment to 5,855 Jewish survivors of the Buna-Werke and Monowitz. The largest individual compensation award came to a mere $1,250. Ferencz continued working to obtain reparation for victims of the Holocaust until his retirement in the early 1990s. Later class-action suits against Swiss banks (accused of hoarding monies confiscated by the Nazis from the Jews) and German industry led to the creation of two endowment funds to settle the claims once and for all. Taken together the maximum amount a concentration camp laborer might today hope to receive from these funds is around $8,500. At the time of writing there are thousands of claims still extant. Inevitably, therefore, some critics still point to the over $100 billion annual turnover of the three successor companies of IG Farben and wonder why they don’t contribute more money to the funds.

  Their answer—consistent from the 1950s to the present—is that they were new companies formed after the collapse of IG Farben and therefore have no specific legal or moral responsibility for what happened during the IG era. They also point out that they have made generous contributions, without admitting responsibility, to the second of the aforementioned funds, the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future, which was endowed by German industry with approximately $2.5 billion in 2001. Indeed, BASF took a lead role in setting up the fund. But whether such action can ever satisfy those who want a full acknowledgment of wartime crimes is another matter. To this day no German company that used slave labor during World War II has ever formally apologized to survivors for having done so.

  They may well have taken their cue from the IG executives convicted at Nuremberg, who blankly maintained their innocence throughout the trial and continued to do so in the years that followed. Even the prospect of a stint in Landsberg prison did little to undermine their self-assurance. According to one report, Otto Ambros actually smiled slightly as he received his sentence, although his smile might have been one of relief; under other judges in a different court he could have been facing the gallows. Only Carl Krauch seemed somewhat distressed on the last day in court, calling his lawyers over to make sure he had heard the verdict correctly. Perhaps he was wondering what sort of life awaited him after his sentence was served. Once the most important man in German industry, who had received the Knight’s Cross for distinguished service from the Führer himself, Krauch must have doubted whether he would ever reach such heights again.

  He did not have to wait long to find out. He was released at the end of 1950 after serving less than two years of his sentence. By the end of the first week in February 1951, all the IG Farben prisoners had followed him out to freedom. John McCloy, the new U.S. high commissioner, had drastically shortened the sentences of 74 of the 104 men convicted by the various subsequent proceedings at Nuremberg, issuing commutations for ten of those sentenced to death. Although he would later insist that these decisions were based purely on legal grounds and parole board recommendations, it is hard to escape the conclusion that there was a political imperative involved, too. At the time, America’s reputation in Europe was taking a battering because of Communist successes in Korea, while the confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union in Germany was reaching a new intensity. The West German government had appealed for clemency for the industrialists, arguing that this was a moment for all in the democratic free world to stand shoulder to shoulder in unity. The longer that prisoners stayed in Landsberg—men who were widely regarded in Germany as being innocent of any crimes—the harder it would be to generate the goodwill necessary to build the new Federal Republic.

  And so the IG defendants were set free on the grounds of good behavior. None of them appeared much the worse for wear (the regime at Landsberg had hardly been harsh) or in the least bit repentant. As Fritz ter Meer walked out the main gates in the direction of the nearest railway station, he told reporters, “Now they have Korea on their hands, the Americans are a lot more friendly.” He had obviously lost none of his hauteur, and he refused to answer further questions as he strode away. Typically, Georg von Schnitzler left in more style. A large bl
ack Mercedes limousine, driven by a smartly dressed chauffeur, arrived to whisk him away. One newspaper account claimed that the still beautiful Baroness Lilly von Schnitzler was draped languorously across the backseat.*

  The freed men adjusted quickly to life outside, with most of those still of working age eventually finding board positions back in German industry. Carl Krauch joined the board of Hüls, one of the IG successor businesses; Hermann Schmitz joined the board of Berlin West, a major German bank, and served as chairman of the board of Rheini Steel before his retirement. Carl Wurster became chairman of the board of BASF and a director of several other companies; he also received numerous awards, including the Distinguished Service Cross of the new Federal Republic, and was made an honorary senator of five German universities and president of the Federation of the German Chemical Industry. Heinrich Bütefisch, the former honorary SS Obersturmbannführer, became a member of the board of Ruhr-Chemie and other firms; in 1964 he also received the Distinguished Service Cross but it was withdrawn after sixteen days of violent protests across Germany. Friedrich Jaehne, who had been convicted of spoliation and plunder, became chairman of the new Hoechst; he, too, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

  Fritz Gajewski, yet another recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, became chairman of the boards of Dynamit Nobel AG, Genschow & Co., and the Chemie-Verwaltungs AG, as well as a board member of two other firms. Heinrich Hörlein, the Nobel Prize winner, went back to Leverkusen and joined the board of the new Bayer AG, as eventually did Wilhelm Mann. Max Ilgner announced he wanted to devote his life to God, or at least that was what he had told Curtis Shake when he needed Allied permission for his wife and children to move to Sweden in 1948. Shake wrote on his behalf, “He is a man of fine intellect and capacity. I think it is only charitable to view his conviction in the light of conditions that existed in Germany during the Nazi regime.… I firmly believe that his past experience will fit him to do constructive work toward making the world a safer and better place to live.” Ilgner’s dalliance with religion did not last long: he later became a political lobbyist.