Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    CHAPTER TWO: The Empire of I.G. Farben

    CHAPTER TWO
    The Empire of I.G. Farben
    Farben was Hitler and Hitler was Farben. (Senator Homer T. Bone to Senate Committee on Military Affairs, June 4, 1943.)
    On the eve of World War II the German chemical complex of I.G. Farben was the largest chemical manufacturing enterprise in the world, with extraordinary political and economic power and influence within the Hitlerian Nazi state. I. G. has been aptly described as "a state within a state."
    The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies — Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. These companies were merged to become Inter-nationale Gesellschaft Farbenindustrie A.G. — or I.G. Farben for short. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg for war crimes committed by the I. G. cartel. Other I. G. Farben directors were placed on trial but the American affiliates of I. G. Farben and the American directors of I. G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the archives.
    It is these U.S. connections in Wall Street that concern us. Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I. G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.
    German bankers on the Farben Aufsichsrat (the supervisory Board of Directors) 1 in the late 1920s included the Hamburg banker Max War-burg, whose brother Paul Warburg was a founder of the Federal Reserve System in the United States. Not coincidentally, Paul Warburg was also on the board of American I. G., Farben's wholly owned U.S. subsidiary.
    In addition to Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz, the guiding hand in the creation of the Farben empire, the early Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt
    Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler.2 All except Max Warburg were charged as "war criminals" after World War II.
    In 1928 the American holdings of I. G. Farben (i.e., the Bayer Company, General Aniline Works, Agfa Ansco, and Winthrop Chemical Company) were organized into a Swiss holding company, i. G. Chemic (Inter-nationale Gesellschaft fur Chemisehe Unternehmungen A. G.), controlled by I. G. Farben in Germany. In the following year these American firms merged to become American I. G. Chemical Corporation, later renamed General Aniline & Film. Hermann Schmitz, the organizer of I. G. Farben in 1925, became a prominent early Nazi and supporter of Hitler, as well as chairman of the Swiss I. G. Chemic and president of American I. G. The Farben complex both in Germany and the United States http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_02.htm (1 of 15) [8/4/2001 9:44:10 PM]
    CHAPTER TWO: The Empire of I.G. Farben
    then developed into an integral part of the formation and operation of the Nazi state machine, the Wehrmacht and the S.S.
    I. G. Farben is of peculiar interest in the formation of the Nazi state because Farben directors materially helped. Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933. We have photographic evidence (see page 60) that I.G. Farben contributed 400,000 RM to Hitler's political "slush fund." It was this secret fund which financed the Nazi seizure of control in March 1933.
    Many years earlier Farben had obtained Wall Street funds for the 1925 cartelization and expansion in Germany and $30 million for American I. G. in 1929, and had Wall Street directors on the Farben board. It has to be noted that these funds were raised and directors appointed years before Hitler was promoted as the German dictator.
    The Economic Power of I. G. Farben
    Qualified observers have argued that Germany could not have gone to war in 1939 without I. G. Farben. Between 1927 and