Wall Street and the Rise of Hilter: Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

The Empire of I.G. Farben

We're going to focus on the center of the German War Machine: I.G. Farben. Evil little demons did not make the Holocasut possible, it was the culmination of a corporate conglomerate whose mechanizations we'll now explore.....


Just prior to WWII, German-based I.G. Farben was the biggest chemical manufacturing outfit int eh world. And when something is the "biggest" you know it will have a lot of political clout going along with it. Simply, put I.G. Farben was a cartel, started by Hermann Schmitz who had a little help from our pals on Wall Street. He brought together Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. The long form name of this super merger was Inter-nationale Gesellschaft Farbenindustrie. You can understand why we call it I.G. Farben for short.

When it came time for the Nuremberg Trial, Mr. Schimtz was tried along with the directors of I.]
G. But the American directors were totally forgotten, and faded back into everyday life. This chapter focuses on these American I.G. Farben enablers, to what extent they were involved in building up the German war machine and what knowledge they had of the atrocities that were to ensue. Without I.G. Farben there would have been no Adolf Hitler and no World War II. Pause and think about that for a minute.

German bankers on the Farben Aufsichsrat (the supervisory Board of Directors)¹ in the late 1920s included the Hamburg banker Max Warburg, whose brother Paul Warburg was a founder of the Federal Reserve System in the United States.

Stop and think about that for a minute.  It really does seem like the same bunch crop up over and over again wherever we study totalitarianism, whether it be Soviet Russia, Fabian/Progressive America, or Nazi Germany.

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.

Note: Carl Bosch died in 1940 as he fell out of favor with the Nazi regime and was pushed out of the field throughout the '30s.

So the founder of the Fed was on the American I.G. Farben board, so thus escaped scrutiny. Isn't it amazing that the Warburg brothers escaped prosecution?  It's interesting that even though the rest of them were prosecuted, their sentences were light and many of them got time off for "good behavior". Dr. Sutton goes on to explain the American connections:

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 and 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 then developed into an integral part of the formation and operation of the Nazi state machine, the Wehrmacht and the S.S.

 Just think of I.G. Farben as today's Goldman Sachs funding Hitler's election coffers. In fact, 400,000 were contributed by I.G. to Hitler's "slush fund" in March of 1933. This money was raised years before Hitler came to prominance as the putting toghther of this cartel was an ongoing work in the 1920s.

Between 1927 and 1939, I.G. Farben doubled in size. This expansion WOULD NOT have been possible without American assistance, namely technical and bond issues. For example, National City bank issued a $30 million dollar bond to I.G. Farbin. Dr. Sutton clues us into the scope of the entanglement:

There were over 2,000 cartel agreements between I. G. and foreign firms — including Standard Oil of New Jersey, DuPont, Alcoa, Dow Chemical, and others in the United States, The full story of I,G, Farben and its world-wide ae-tivities before World War II can never be known, as key German records were destroyed in 1945 in anticipation of Allied victory. However, one post-war investigation by the U.S, War Department concluded that:

Without I. G.'s immense productive facilities, its intense research, and vast international affiliations, Germany's prosecution of the war would have been unthinkable and impossible; Farben not only directed its energies toward arming Germany, but concentrated on weakening her intended victims, and this double-barreled attempt to expand the German industrial potential for war and to restrict that of the rest of the world was not conceived and executed "in the normal course of business." The proof is overwhelming that I. G. Farben officials had full prior knowledge of Germany's plan for world conquest and of each specific aggressive act later undertaken ....³

Now the casual observer will rationalize that the American I.G. Farben officials didn't really realize what was going on. We're out to test that hypothesis in this post. One thing to realize is that the economic history of war and conflict is never, ever taught to the public in schools, or anywhere else. If it was honestly taught and the money was traced, the patriotic fervor would be extinguished and there would be a lot of strung-up banksters lining our streets.

The War Department report quoted above also determined that I.G. Farben's mission in Germany prior to the war was to make the Germans as self-sufficient as possible, manufacturing all their war materials from the abundant coal mines. But they had a little problem, the Germans did not have very many oil well, and were not able to manufacture needed fuel for jets and tanks. But never fear, Nazis, Standard Oil is here!!

For example, the process for iso-octane, essential for aviation fuels, was obtained from the United States,

... in fact entirely [from] the Americans and has become known to us in detail in its separate stages through our agreements with them [Standard Oil of New Jersey] and is being used very extensively by us.⁴

The process for manufacturing tetra-ethyl lead? essential for aviation gasoline, was obtained by I. G. Farben from the United States, and in 1939 I.G. was sold $20 million of high-grade aviation gasoline by Standard Oil of New Jersey. Even before Germany manufactured tetra-ethyl lead by the American process it was able to "borrow" 500 tons from the Ethyl Corporation. This loan of vital tetra-ethyl lead was not repaid and I.G. forfeited the $1 million security.

But wait, you can't blow up Europe without some major Kablooey provided by Dow Chemical:

Further, I.G. purchased large stocks of magnesium from Dow Chemical for incendiary bombs and stockpiled explosives, stabilizers, phosphorus, and cyanides from the outside world.

Long story short, the reparations designed to cripple Germany from ever pulling another WW1 destroyed their economy, which Wall Street precipitously bought up in the 1920s real cheap. Out of this "chaos" the order of I.G. Farben was established, a monster that was hungry for some power and control. This chart really does say a lot:

It is no exaggeration to say that without the services of German chemistry performed under the Four Year Plan the prosecution of modern war would have been unthinkable.⁶

--Dr von Schnizler, 1943, I.G. Farben employee 

I.G. Farben was able to get this big with the help of American business. They did not do their own research, but whenever possible got the tech transferred directly via their cartel agreements with Standard, Dow, and other big companies. Reminds me of how Loral transferred missile tech to China in the 90s. The Republicans didn't complain about that, probably because their dirty little hands were doing the same things.

The most famous product that I.G. produced was the Zyklon B gas used in the chambers. It was sold from the Bayer sales office through Degesch, the licence holder. Enough was sold to kill 200 million humans. That amounted to 75% of Degesch's business. 

 The Kilgore Committee report of 1942 makes it clear that the I.G. Farben directors had precise knowledge of the Nazi concentration camps and the use of I.G. chemicals. This prior knowledge becomes significant when we later consider the role of the American directors in I.G.'s American subsidiary. The 1945 interrogation of I.G. Farben director von Schnitzler reads:

Q. What did you do when they told you that I.G. chemicals was [sic] being used to kill, to murder people held in concentration camps?
A. I was horrified.
Q. Did you do anything about it?
A. I kept it for me [to myself] because it was too terrible .... I asked Muller-Cunradi is it known to you and Ambros and other directors in Auschwitz that the gases and chemicals are being used to murder people.
Q. What did he say?
A. Yes: it is known to all I.G. directors in Auschwitz.⁷

Yet the gas was continued to be manufactured due to cases of extreme cowardace. But wait that's not all, I.G. Farben was a key Nazi spy network as well. Max Ilger, whose uncle Hermann Schmitz, we've already identified as the grand-high poopa of I.G., directed the Nazi I.G. Farben espionage unit. Both nephew and uncle were on teh board of American I.G. along with Henry Ford, Paul Warburg, and Charles E. Mitchell, director of the New York Federal Reserve.  Chummy, isn't it? But wait, here's another name you might recognize:

One of the more prominent of these Farben intelligence workers in N.W. 7 was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who joined Farben in the early 1930s after completion of an 18-month period of service in the black-uniformed S.S.⁸

Oh yes, Mr. Bilderberg himself joined the ranks of Farben intelligence after storm-troopering his behind around in his snappy SS outfit. The media plays this down by acting like it never happened and anyone bringing it up is a crackpot. Classic psychopathic reaction to inconvenient truths for them.

Farben intelligence has a dummy front known as Chemnyco, Inc. According to the War Dept report:

Utilizing normal business contacts Chemnyco was able to transmit to Germany tremendous amounts of material ranging from photographs and blueprints to detailed descriptions of whole industrial plants.⁹

Studying this stuff is a lot like moving to a small town and getting to know everyone and who their kin to. Max Ilgner, the man in charge of Farben's intelligence network had a brother named Rudolph who happened to be an American citizen and vice president of Chemnyco. From this base, Nazi psych and econ warfare was spearheaded. Using the cartel connected fomented in the intrawar period, Farben was able to affect America economically. Dr. Sutton gives us an example:

 — the outstanding example being the voluntary Standard Oil of New Jersey restriction on development of synthetic rubber in the United States at the behest of I. G. Farben. As the War Department report puts it:

The story in short is that because of Standard Oil's determination to maintain an absolute monopoly of synthetic rubber developments in the United States, it fully accomplished I.G.'s purpose of preventing United States production by dissuading American rubber companies from undertaking independent research in developing synthetic rubber processes.¹⁰

But, but we have a free market in the United States!! Uh, unless the market has been bought up by the likes of the Rockefellers, who know no country as they are "citizens of the world". In 1945, Dr. Oskar Loeher testified  to Congress:

Q. Is it true that while the delay in divulging the buna [synthetic rubber] processes to American rubber companies was taking place, Chemnyco and Jasco were in the meantime keeping I.G. well informed in regard to synthetic rubber development in the U.S.?

A. Yes.
Q. So that at all times I.G. was fully aware of the state of the development of the American synthetic rubber industry?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you present at the Hague meeting when Mr. Howard [of Standard Oil] went there in 1939?
A. No.
Q. Who was present?
A. Mr. Ringer, who was accompanied by Dr. Brown of Ludwigshafen. Did they tell you about the negotiations?
A. Yes, as far as they were on the buna part of it.

Q. Is it true that Mr. Howard told I.G. at this meeting that the developments in the U.S. had reached such a stage that it would no longer be possible for him to keep the information in regard to the buna processes from the American companies?

A. Mr. Ringer reported it.

Q. Was it at that meeting that for the first time Mr. Howard told I.G. the American rubber companies might have to be informed of the processes and he assured I.G. that Standard Oil would control the synthetic rubber industry in the U.S.? Is that right?

A. That is right. That is the knowledge I got through Mr. Ringer.

Q. So that in all these arrangements since the beginning of the development of the synthetic rubber industry the suppression of the synthetic rubber industry in the U.S. was part of a preconceived plan between I.G. on the one hand and Mr. Howard of Standard Oil on the other?

A. That is a conclusion that must be drawn from the previous facts.¹¹

I.G. Farben was Germany's clearinghouse to the outside world. Through its enormous size and international business agreements, Germany was able to strategically acquire all it needed to get ready for WW2.  Through Farben's intelligence network run by the Ilger brothers, it was able to put its people in place in the financial world as well. The plans for a European takeover were being laid soon after Hitler took office. Remember the money that was used to promote him came from Farben, which had a lot of American capitial in it. You can't say that all the directors were clueless about what was going on. Throughout the 1930s Farben conducted war games and wartime technical procedure practice. This is all in the Congressional record in the footnotes.

Consequently, throughout the 1930s I. G. Farben did more than just comply with orders from the Nazi regime. Farben was an initiator and operator for the Nazi plans for world conquest. Farben acted as a research and intelligence organization for the German Army and voluntarily initiated Wehrmacht projects. In fact the Army only rarely had to approach Farben; it is estimated that about 40 to 50 percent of Farben projects for the Army were initiated by Farben itself. In brief, in the words of Dr, von Schnitzler:

Thus, in acting as it had done, I.G. contracted a great responsibility and constituted a substantial aid in the chemical domain and decisive help to Hitler's foreign policy, which led to war and to the ruin of Germany. Thus, I must conclude that I.G. is largely responsible for Hitler's policy,

So what would Americans think of all this, especially when such prominant citizens like the Warburgs, Henry Ford and such were on the board of Farben? Answer: no one really knew because you don't advertise stuff like this. Enter the PR, namely one Ivy Lee. You may have heard of Ivy as the man who helped turn John D. Rockefeller's image around. You'll recall from the beginning of this post that Standard Oil of New Jersey handed over all the tech Germany needed to derive fuel from their coal deposits. So there you go, they've all got the same PR man.

Ivy's firm was called Ivy Lee and T.J. Ross of New York. Besides the Rockefeller account, they also did work for the USSR, producing a propaganda book of the same name. They just left out the pesky facts about the Gulag Archipelago, it just totally ruins the romance of a worker's paradise. Mr. Lee signed on to the Farben case in 1929. He represented Farben in the 1934 House Un-American Activities Committee, from which most of this chapter is based. Ivy Lee stated the relationship between the German and American Farbens was such:

"The American I.G. is a holding company with directors such people as Edsel Ford, Walter Teagle, one of the officers of the City Bank .... " Lee explained that he was paid $25,000 per year under a contract made with Max Ilgner of I.G. Farben. His job was to counter criticism leveled at I.G. Farben within the United States. The advice given by Ivy Lee to Farben on this problem was acceptable enough:

In the first place, I have told them that they could never in the world get the American people reconciled to their treatment of the Jews: that that was just foreign to the American mentality and could never be justified in the American public opinion, and there was no use trying.

In the second place, anything that savored of Nazi propaganda in this country was a mistake and ought not to be under. taken. Our people regard it as meddling with American affairs, and it was bad business.¹⁶

 If you read the original chapter, you'll find Dr. Sutton following the payments made to Ivy directly from the grand high Hermann Schmitz and others. The following of the money is important because this was money was being earned by American Ivy Lee for the purpose of spreading Nazi propaganda in the United States. This did not escape the notice of the Committee, who questioned Lee intently about what kind of literature he was getting from Germany. He, of course, chicken-danced all around the issue. He doesn't know anything, yes there sure is a lot of stuff written in German, but he doesn't know anything about it, blah, blah. Plausible deniability--the Elite's constant escape route.

So after WW1, German high-rollers get their business back in the USA despite tariffs, seizure of German patents, etc to keep them out. Now we're going to show you how it was done.

The General Dyestuff Corporation was founded in 1925 as an exclusive agent for the products made by Gasselli Dystuff (who changed their name to General Aniline Works in '29), a German outfit. In the same year 1929, the stock of General Aniline was transferred to American I.G. Chemical Corporation. In 1939, American I.G. and General Aniline were merged into General Aniline and Film Corp. This is the company that I.G. used to control the American end of its financial empire. Dr. Sutton gives you the minutia of the details, which I think is important to give you a concrete feeling that this information is for real:

The stock authorization of American I.G. was 3,000,000 common A shares and 3,000,000 common B shares. In return for stock interests in General Aniline Works and Agfa-Ansco Corporation, I.G. Farben in Germany received all the B shares and 400,000 A shares. Thirty million dollars of convertible bonds were sold to the American public and guaranteed as to principal and interest by the German I.G. Farben, which received an option to purchase an additional 1,000,000 A shares.

 Now let's take an exclusive look at the American I.G board of directors and where they tie in. Dr. Sutton compiled the following table. Let's talk about it!

Table 2-2: The Directors of American I.G. at 1930:
American I,G. Director	Citizenship	Other Major Associations
Carl BOSCH	German	FORD MOTOR CO. A-G
Edsel B. FORD	U.S.	FORD MOTOR CO. DETROIT
Max ILGNER	German	Directed I.G. FARBEN N.W.7  (INTELLIGENCE) office. Guilty at Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
F. Ter MEER	German	Guilty at Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
H.A. METZ	U.S.	Director of I.G. Farben Germany and BANK OF MANHATTAN (U.S.)
C.E. MITCHELL	U.S.	Director of FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF N.Y. and NATIONAL CITY BANK
Herman SCHMITZ	German	On boards of I.G. Farben (President) (Germany) Deutsche Bank (Germany) and BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS. Guilty at Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Walter TEAGLE	U.S.	Director FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK and STANDARD OIL OF NEW JERSEY
W.H. yon RATH	Naturalized	Director of GERMAN GENERAL U.S. ELECTRIC (A.E.G.)
Paul M. WARBURG	U.S.	First member of the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK and BANK OF MANHATTAN
W.E. WEISS	U.S.	Sterling Products
Source: Moody's Manual of Investments; 1930, p. 2149.
Note: Walter DUISBERG (U.S.), W. GRIEF (U.S.), and Adolf KUTTROFF (U.S.) were also Directors of American I.G. Farben at this period.

Pop quiz! How many central banks did you see listed in the table? I saw them listed four times. Remember that the Fed of NY is like their central command, but the mothership is the BIS.

Directors of American I.G. were not only prominent in Wall Street and American industry but more significantly were drawn from a few highly influential institutions:

The remaining four members of the American I.G. board were prominent American citizens and members of the Wall Street financial elite: C.E. Mitchell, chairman of National City Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Edsel B. Ford, president of Ford Motor Company; W.C. Teagle, another director of Standard Oil of New Jersey; and, Paul Warburg, first member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and chairman of the Bank of Manhattan Company.

You may remember Teagle as one of the three heading up the National Recovery Administration.

Between 1929 and 1939 there were changes in the make-up of the board of American I.G. The number of directors varied from time to time, although a majority always had I.G. backgrounds or connections, and the board never had less than four American directors. In 1939 — presumably looking ahead to World War II — an effort was made to give the board a more American complexion, but despite the resignation of Hermann Schmitz, Carl Bosch, and Walter Duisberg, and the appointment of seven new directors, seven members still belonged to the I.G. group. This I.G. predominance increased during 1940 and 1941 as American directors, including Edsel Ford, realized the political unhealthiness of I.G. and resigned.

So did they had foreknowledge of the coming war. One would imagine that you might here something if your German parent company is manufacturing like nuts for a huge war, stockpiling resources, and using political clout to shut down American war production.

Several basic observations can be made from this evidence. First, the board of American I.G. had three directors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most influential of the various Federal Reserve Banks. American I.G. also had interlocks with Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford Motor Company, Bank of Manhattan (later to become the Chase Manhattan), and A.E.G. (German General Electric). Second, three members of the board of this American I.G. were found guilty at Nuremburg War Crimes Trials. These were the German, not the American, members. Among these Germans was Max Ilgner, director of the I.G. Farben N.W. 7 office in Berlin, i.e., the Nazi pre-war intelligence office. If the directors of a corporation are collectively responsible for the activities of the corporation, then the American directors should also have been placed on trial at Nuremburg, along with the German directors — that is, if the purpose of the trials was to determine war guilt. Of course, if the purpose of the trials had been to divert attention away from the U.S. involvement in Hitler's rise to power, they succeeded very well in such an objective.

As always Dr. Sutton does a thorough job documenting his claims:

Footnotes:

¹German firms have a two-tier board of directors. The Aufsichsrat concerns itself with overall supervision, including financial policy, while the Vorstand is concerned with day-to-day management.

²Taken from Der Farben-Konzern 1928, (Hoppenstedt, Berlin: I928), pp. 4-5.

³Elimination of German Resources, p. 943.

⁴Ibid, p. 945.

⁵New York Times, October 21, 1945, Section 1, pp. 1, 12.

⁶Ibid, p. 947.

⁷Elimination of German Resources.

⁸Bernhard is today better known for his role as chairman of the secretive, so-called Bilderberger meetings. See U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain other Propaganda Activities. 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, Hearings No. 73-DC-4. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1934), Volume VIII, p. 7525.

⁹Ibid p. 949.

¹⁰Ibid p. 952.

¹¹Ibid p. 1293.

¹²Ibid p. 954.

¹³Ibid p. 954.

¹⁴Ibid, pp. 954-5.

¹⁵U.S. Congress. House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, op. cit.

¹⁶Ibid, p. 178. 

¹⁷Ibid, p. 183. 

¹⁸Ibid, p. 188.

Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler is available at Reformed Theology.