Chapter 8: A First Attempt At Labor Cost Reductions

Carl Duisberg

In September 1916 - one month after consolidating I.G. - Carl Duisburg came up with yet another vision. He proposed that the war ministry "open up the Belgian labor basin." Apparently, sending all of German's best and brightest to the front lines had caused a labor shortage. Less than two months later, the German army began the forced deportation of Belgian workers to German factories. (29) IG indeed gave the Belgians "work rather than phrases" - and rather than wages and freedom, too.

The Belgian enslavement

The Belgian clergy and journalists filled the world's newspapers with the horrors of the enslavement. The US government sent their German counterparts a note about the forced labor, complaining of a "contravention of all precedents." The deported Belgians, now 40,000 strong, refused to work. Faced with worldwide condemnation, the German power structure abandoned their "free-labor" idea (30) at least until they could figure out a way to avoid worldwide condemnation.

Duisberg and fellow war-gas pioneer Fritz Haber both put on fake beards and hid in Switzerland after the war. (31) As it turns out, Duisberg's name never appeared on any list of war criminals - post-war anti-communist sentiments were strong enough to overshadow a serious look at capitalist war-crime sponsorship.

On February 3rd, 1920, less than six months after receiving his Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Fritz Haber was charged with war crimes. The actual trials, taking place the next year, were a joke. No major criminals were tried, and Haber's name was dropped from the list before testimony began. During the WW2 Nuremberg war-crimes trials, defendant Albert Speer lamented that the failure of the war crimes trials in WW1 only encouraged the criminals to try again. (32)

Gold Medal honoring Carl Duisberg

Notes

(29) "The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben," p. 29

(30) ibid, pp. 29-30

(31) "A Higher Form of Killing," p. 32. See also "The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben," p.36

(32) "The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben," pp. 45-46

Chapter 9: A One-time Installment Fee

Chairman of the I.G. Farben Board, Carl Duisberg - September 29, 1933

"If Germany is again to be great, all classes of our people must come to the realization that leaders are necessary who can act without concern for the caprices of the masses." -Carl Duisberg, 1925, speech to the central organization of German industry - the Reichsverband (33)

And try again they did. To be fair, it was mainly steel companies (34), middle class German patriots and the American pro-Nazi Prescott Bush bank - the "Brown Brothers Harriman" bank - (35) who kept the Nazi's equipped with snazzy uniforms and torches.until the depression hit in 1929. Fearing a communist election victory, more and more of Germany's industrialists began to support Hitler. By 1931, IG Farben was doing so too, although not publicly. (36)

Duisberg (center) with the presidim of the industrial Reichsverband, standing in front of IG headquarters, 1929.

Right-wing historians have tried to downplay I.G.'s "several secret contributions to the Nazi war chest" in 1931 and 1932, (37) and up-play I.G.'s resistance (until 1932) to Hitler's anti-Semitism. (38) Yet this was the depression - a time when everyone was starving and desperate for any job. No specific amount was mentioned, but I.G. was by far the largest corporation in Europe, and any donation was no doubt vital to electoral victory.

Robert Ley

Adolf Hitler & Robert Ley

I.G. also "dismissed" their most anti-Semitic chemist - Dr. Robert Ley - way back in 1927. However, I.G. paid him a monthly stipend so he "wouldn't defect to a competitor." (39) With that money he founded a Nazi paper in the Rhineland, became an example of Jewish persecution and a martyr, and became a top Nazi. He would later attempt to convince Hitler to use nerve gas at the end of the war. (40) Dr. Ley committed suicide in his cell at Nuremberg before the trial began.

In early 1933, right before the Nazi's last election, four IG representatives showed up at a meeting of German Industrialists and Nazi economic advisors. According to the November 23, 1945 transcripts from Nuremberg war-crimes trial, Hitler and Goering were hitting up the industrialists for election money. Hitler was to have said;

"Now we stand before the last election. Regardless of the outcome there will be no retreat, even if the coming election does not bring about a decision."

Goering then added; "the sacrifices asked for surely would be so much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March 5th will surely be the last one for the next 10 years, probably even for the next 100 years." The Nazi's asked for 3 million marks. They got it, and IG contributed more than ten percent - the largest single contribution. (41)

Hitler & Farben CEO Schmitz, Oct. 1933

Schmitz, Krauch & Goering

For a larger pictoral history of IG Farben, check this link out: http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/open_letters/omgus/omgus01.htm

Notes

(33) Sasuly, "IG Farben," p. 65

(34) ibid, p. 60

(35) www.tetrahedron.org/articles/new_world_order/bush_nazis.html

(36) Sasuly, "IG Farben," p. 66

(37) ibid

(38) Turner, Henry Ashby, "German Big Business & the Rise of Hitler," 1985, Oxford University Press, pp. 96, 248-251. See also Borkin, "The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben," pp. 68-72, and Chernow, Ron, "The Warburgs," 1993, Vintage, pp. 365

(39) "The Warburgs," p. 275-276

(40) "A Higher Form of Killing," p, 62-63

(41) Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 2, FOURTH DAY, Friday, 23 November 1945, Morning Session - www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/11-23-45.htm - See also "The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben" p. 71

Chapter 10: Nazis Experiment With Their Own Drug War

Heinrich Himmler and other Nazi dignitaries in Dachau with Anton Mussert, the leader of the Dutch Nazi movement.

"Germany needs the strength of every single man for the development of its national and economic freedom. Therefore, no German has the right to impair his strength through alcohol abuse. Such action is detrimental not only to himself, but to his family, and above all, to his people." - Heinrich Himmler, 1938. (42)

"Rauschgiftbekaempfung" meant literally "the combatting of drugs." It was a policy coordinated by the Reich Health Service within the Ministry of the Interior. It was part of the same bureaucratic labyrinth that included the departments of hereditary science and racial hygiene, and much of its policy-making was conducted by Nazi physicians. An unholy alliance of Nazi eugenics and American prohibition, Rauschgiftbekaempfung unsuccessfully attempted to undo centuries of traditional social behavior. (43)

As in America, industrial hemp was being grown in Germany for the war effort. Similar to New York Mayor LaGuardia's 1944 investigation into the effects of cannabis, the Nazi's allowed cannabis research to continue through the 1930's. (44) When the war began, Germany's research ended.

Addicts of morphine and cocaine were locked up starting in 1941 by the "Reich Bureau for the Struggle against Addictive Drugs," a project under the direction of Reich Health Fuhrer Dr. Leonardo Conti. (45) Dr. Conti also conducted medical experiments on those he locked up. He was responsible for the killing of a large number of Germans of "unsound mind." (46)

Dr. Leonardo Conti

Dr. Conti also involved himself with malaria experiments at Dachau. The experiment involved 1,200 prisoners, most of them Catholic priests, and cost the lives of 300 to 400 persons. Of them no more than 30 died of the disease itself; the majority died from over doses of the medicines that were being tried out on them. (47) Dr. Conti committed suicide at Nuremberg in October 1945 after arrest to avoid a trial. (48)

Major General Kurt Blome

Assisting Dr. Conti was Major General Kurt Blome. (49) Dr. Blome later worked at Camp Detrick with Rockefeller's pal George Merck. (50)

Merck & Co.'s George Merck

Notes

(42) amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9706/msg00061.html - www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html

(43) www.wbenjamin.org/rausch.html

(44) http://www.wbenjamin.org/pharmaco.html#cannabis - www.cognitiveliberty.org/2jcl/2JCL21.htm - www.wbenjamin.org/protocol1.html #IV Walter Benjamin, "Hashish in Marseilles," in Selected Writings, Vol. II: 1927-1934, op. cit., pp. 673-679. An earlier draft of "Hashish in Marseilles" entitled "Protocol IV: Walter Benjamin: 29 September 1928. Saturday. Marseilles."

(45) Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany, F.R. Nicosia and J. Huener, 2002, Berghahn Books, p. 45

(46) Snyder, 1976 - www.webster.edu/~woolflm/nazidocsandothers.html

(47) motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x15/xr1597.html

(48) www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/warcrimmed.htm

(49) www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/02/NMT02-T0186.htm

(50) "Emerging Viruses," p. 332 See also "Death in the Air - Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare," Dr. Leonard G. Horowits, 2001, p. 9 - www.rockfound.org