At the end came disgrace. The history of the I.G. Farbenindustrie lasted only twenty years. It had been founded on December 9, 1925, with the recording of the merger contract between the German chemical companies Bayer, BASF, Agfa, Griesheim-Elektron, Weiler-ter Meer, and Hoechst. On the basis of the Allies’ Control Commission Law No. 9 of November 30, 1945, the I.G. Farbenindustrie was seized and its dissolution planned. The decision taken by the victorious Allied powers stemmed not just from the company’s entanglement in the crimes of the Nazi regime, but was a result of its active participation in these. “IG Farben” stood and stands for autarky, armament, exploitation, and – Auschwitz.
In the U.S. occupation zone, where the IG Farben plant at Hoechst was located, the American military commander-in-chief had already taken over the management and control of IG Farben and its capital on July 5, 1945. Finally, at the end of July 1948, twenty-three former managers of IG Farben were tried before an American military tribunal in Nuremberg. All of them were found innocent on charges number one, four, and five (planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression; membership in the SS; and conspiracy). Ten managers also were acquitted of the two other charges. However, thirteen managers were sentenced to prison terms ranging from eighteen months to eight years (minus their time spent in custody), on charges number two (plunder and spoliation) and three (enslavement and murder of civilians, prisoners of war, and concentration camp inmates). The executives Otto Ambros and Walter Dürrfeld, who were directly involved in the construction of the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz, were both sentenced to the longest terms. Carl Ludwig Lautenschläger, the managing director of the IG Farben plant at Hoechst, was one of the ten declared innocent on all counts. His deputy, Friedrich Jähne, was sentenced to eighteen months for plunder and spoliation.1
Although the prosecutors in Nuremberg found the verdict of the American judges too mild, the defenders and the accused felt it was too harsh and considered the condemned men “victims” of “victors’ justice,” since the managers of IG Farben had only done their “patriotic duty.” In March 1953, on the occasion of the first Extraordinary General Assembly of the newly founded Farbwerke Hoechst AG, the chairman of the board, Karl Winnacker, who had already been selected to manage the Hoechst works by the former management of the I.G. Farbenindustrie, expounded on this point, when he mentioned the Allies’ decision to dissolve IG Farben: “Almost unnoticed by the majority of the people, who were preoccupied with the fight for their existence, this meant the destruction of the most important undertaking that German science and technology as well as German enterprise had ever developed.” He continued: “In a trial fought with great bitterness, the responsible leaders of the I.G. Farbenindustrie AG, and thus our entire company, were able to rebut all the charges of war crimes, robbery and plunder levied against them.”2 Not a word was said about the conviction of thirteen leading managers by the Nuremberg judges, who, it should be emphasized, consistently followed the motto “in dubio pro reo” throughout the trial. Thus, Lautenschläger and his board colleagues had been cleared of participating in human experiments in concentration camps, since the tribunal pronounced that “where from credible evidence two reasonable inferences may be drawn, one of guilt and the other of innocence, the latter must prevail.”3
Because of its entanglement in and involvement with the crimes of the National Socialist regime, the history of IG Farben during the Third Reich has been examined in numerous books and articles, but its role has been assessed in very different ways. Thus, a number of authors are convinced that IG Farben was much guiltier than the ruling of the Nuremberg Tribunal indicated. The most prominent of these is Joseph Borkin, who happened also to be one of the Nuremberg prosecutors. Accordingly, his book reads in parts like a public prosecutor’s final address to the jury.4 However, a number of other authors have come to a much more positive
IG Farben and its managers obviously did not determine the fundamental political and economic conditions of Nazi Germany, but acted within them. Moreover, IG Farben was neither influential in aiding Hitler’s takeover nor among his “stirrup holders.” The “primacy of politics” was Nazi Germany’s hallmark, that is, political premises determined the course of the economy.7 However, as shown by Hayes, the managers of IG Farben were only too ready to adapt to the new conditions and to take advantage of them. The English historian Tim Mason, who decisively contributed to launching the concept of the primacy of politics in Nazi Germany, therefore reached the following conclusion about the relationship between the Nazi state and the German economy: “The fact that numerous industrialists not only passively co-operated in the ‘Aryanization’ of the economy, in the confiscation of firms in occupied territory, in the enslavement of many million people from Eastern Europe and in the employment of concentration camp prisoners, but indeed often took the initiative in these actions, constitutes a damning judgement on the economic system whose essential organizing principle (competition) gave rise to such conduct. But it cannot be maintained that even these actions had an important formative influence
In a totalitarian regime such as the National Socialist one, a company of any military importance had to choose between adapting or running the risk of being taken over by competitors or by the state. Given the internal logic and functioning of a company, this could hardly be the aim of its managers, and the latter option was not just an empty threat, as prewar confiscations in the German steel industry had proved.9 One therefore has to question how the executives of a company could act, when the function and logic of a firm were thus challenged. As pointed out by the economist Edith Penrose, firms have a very specific function in a free economy. According to her definition, a firm is “a collection of resources bound together in an administrative framework,” and the function of an industrial firm – hence also of IG Farben – is to acquire and organize these human and other resources “in order profitably to supply goods and services to the market.”10 Or to quote the historian Raymond Stokes: “Firms exist to make money.”11
But even if the logic of entrepreneurial action and what historians Lutz Budraß and Manfred Grieger call the “morality of efficiency” is taken into consideration, one cannot ignore valid ethical norms.12 However, as historians Dietmar Petzina and Werner Plumpe wrote, when important parts of the “common sense morality,” which also operated during the National Socialist period, were called into question by a “politically determined and sanctioned legal morality” or even partially invalidated, then companies were caught up in “ethical dilemmas” that as “social systems embedded in specific environmental conditions,” they could hardly hope to solve. The common strategy was therefore often to retain an individual “common
A number of resistance fighters against National Socialism emerged in the military – an arena where obedience has always been an important, career-enhancing principle. Yet, amazingly little resistance arose within the economic realm, where “virtues such as freedom, initiative, and entrepreneurial daring were always held in high esteem,” as historians Lothar Gall und Manfred Pohl put it.16 This does not mean that there was no resistance among entrepreneurs and managers. Prominent examples include Oskar Schindler and Berthold Beitz, who both tried to save Jews, or Eduard Schulte, who broke the silence and exposed the Final Solution.17 But these men were exceptions. To paraphrase Tim Mason’s crucial question: Was it competition – as a central feature of the economic system – that made managers think only in business terms and repress any moral qualms?18
Between 1925 and 1945 IG Farben was one of the biggest firms in Europe, if not in the world, in terms of both employees and turnover. It had an influential role in Hitler’s autarky and armament program, a role that paid off substantially. Indeed, between 1933 and 1945, IG Farben’s net profit increased fivefold. In 1943 IG Farben owned no fewer than 334
During IG Farben’s early years, the “founders’ compromise” between the three “big sisters” meant that all the boards of the individual firms were consolidated into the IG Farben board. Moreover, the “founder firms” were able to retain a vast degree of autonomy in the name of the rather curious managerial concept of “decentralized centralization.” Within IG Farben, as Peter Hayes wrote, “it was known rather more aptly, with a nod to another composite of pyramided dynastic unions, proud local magnates, and heterogeneous dominions as the ‘Habsburg model.’”20 In my study, reflecting this “Habsburg model,” the main focus will not be on the IG Farben headquarters, and IG Farben will not be discussed as a whole. Instead, I will be examining a “province”: the IG Farben plant at Hoechst. Looking beyond the structures of the whole company described and analyzed by Hayes and Plumpe, I will attempt to penetrate inside IG Farben and to submit one of the plants of this mammoth corporation to a more precise analysis.
Thus, this study is not strictly speaking a business history, but only the history of a plant. The joint stock company “Farbwerke, vormals Meister Lucius und Brüning,” which had been independent until the end of 1925, was no longer an independent company during the period under consideration. Instead, it was part of a large chemical corporation, the I.G. Farbenindustrie AG. The reader can thus expect a history of the IG Farben plant at Hoechst, which in turn consisted of various components, like the Dye or Acetic Acid Departments (which might also be called factories), as well as laboratories. The reader should be aware that the concepts of “plant” and “factory” are often used synonymously, but “factory” is also used for certain departments within the plant. Furthermore, the concepts of “plant,” “factory,” “company,” and “firm” are sometimes used synonymously, as, for example, in the Betriebsordnung in the Third Reich, which can be translated as “company regulations” or “plant regulations.”
Siegfried Kracauer divided the “structure of the historical universe” into two main groups, the micro- and macro-histories, with fuzzy boundaries between the two. According to Kracauer, readers do not learn enough about the past when a historian focuses on “the macro-units,” or “big clusters of events.” These cannot capture the entire “wealth” of history, which only presents itself in a “micro-dimension”: “Therefore, attentive historians who aspire to a rich history favor a mutual permeation of macro- and micro-history.”22 It is the aim of this study to combine the macro-history of IG Farben during the Third Reich with the micro-history of the Hoechst plant. This attempt thus differs from most extant business studies focusing on the Third Reich in general and on IG Farben in particular, almost all of which have limited their investigations to the macro-level. The exceptions are Bernd Wagner’s study on the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz and, to some extent, Raymond Stokes’s chapter on BASF while it was part of IG Farben, which is embedded in a general history of BASF.23
Thus, the aim of this study is to provide a plant history of the IG Farben plant at Hoechst on the basis of the available literature on IG Farben and the documents in the archives, while referring back to the whole corporation during the Third Reich. The main questions I attempt to answer are these: How far was Hoechst linked to the Nazi regime, its representatives and organizations, and to what extent was it entangled or even actively involved in their crimes? To paraphrase Tim Mason: How barbarically did
To understand the role of the IG Farben plant at Hoechst during the Third Reich, it is crucial to examine the position of the plant within IG Farben. A first step consists in showing Hoechst’s path into and under the I.G. Farbenindustrie during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. The main question centers around the role played by Hoechst in the merger and its position within IG Farben during the founding period in and after 1925. My aim is to show how Hoechst was integrated in IG Farben and the effects of the first reforms and rationalization measures undertaken during the 1920s, especially as a result of the Great Depression. Hoechst emerged much weaker from these events, as is particularly obvious from a review conducted by the plant manager in 1933/34, which revealed the problems that the plant had to contend with at the beginning of the Nazi regime.
In the main part of the study, I attempt to describe and analyze the interaction of the NSDAP, the plant management, and personnel. I therefore present the plant regulations that were enforced during the Third Reich, since they redefined the relations between plant management and personnel and made them both accountable to the new regime. From 1934 onwards plant directors enjoyed a particularly central role as “factory (or company) leaders” (Führer des Betriebes). I thus explore the principal values that governed their behavior and their work and the relationship they cultivated with National Socialism as well as with the Nazi regime. Special emphasis is placed on the nazification of the plant during the so-called peaceful years and the capitulation of the plant management to the NSDAP and its organizations during the war. In the process I will also describe and analyze the role and importance of the leading representatives of the NSDAP in the factory, as well as the adaptation and exclusion processes among employees – characteristically renamed “the followers.” Moreover I will examine the persecution of employees who were Jews or defined as such by the Nazi regime, as well as the treatment of so-called foreign workers (Fremdarbeiter). In this context the increasingly totalitarian course of the Nazi regime often makes it difficult for a historian to distinguish between coercion and consent, that is, agreement with the prevailing system.24 Nonetheless, the readiness to adapt to the Nazi system displayed
After this section, which mainly focuses on individuals and their social relationships, I examine research and development as well as production in the plant during the “peacetime years” and during World War II. On the basis of the already mentioned review of 1933/34, I attempt to elucidate the aims and actions of the plant management and how these contributed to making the company lucrative and strong again. These aims and actions include a wide range of activities, from construction operations to research goals. Moreover, I assess to what extent Hoechst’s weakened position actually turned out to be an advantage by providing a spur to innovation. The research carried out in the “Process Engineering Department” and the close cooperation between industry and academia in the field of plastics were exemplary in this respect. I analyze the evolution of the most important areas of production in Hoechst during the entire Nazi period, while trying to assess the importance of Hoechst’s role for the war effort. A special part of this chapter reviews the history of the Pharmaceutical Department, where R&D united both humaneness and monstrosity. As Hoechst worked on drugs to diminish individual suffering, it also took part in ghastly experiments and trials conducted on concentration camp inmates, even though the person responsible for this area in Hoechst played an active role in the Catholic resistance movement against the Nazi regime.
The final section covers how the Nazi past was dealt with in the first postwar years. Under the American administration, many “politically implicated” individuals were removed from their leading positions or fired in the course of denazification. Finally, the Nuremberg trial against the IG Farben management, during which both Hoechst’s plant director and his deputy had to justify themselves, represented an acme in the confrontation of the plant with its Nazi past. In the reestablished Hoechst, such political measures ceased at the beginning of the 1950s. From that point on, Karl Winnacker, the new managing director, endeavored to subvert the outcome of the trials: his solidarity was clearly with the so-called victims of denazification, not with victims of the Nazi regime.
In recent years the secondary sources for a company or plant history of Hoechst during the Third Reich have increased significantly. A number of scholarly studies of companies involved in various fields during that period have described and analyzed the dealings of these companies, paying particular attention to their motives and the options open to them.25 Moreover,
At the beginning of this project, the array of available primary sources that could illuminate the interpenetration of the macro- and micro-historical levels was not very satisfactory. Whereas the archives of the IG Farben trial in Nuremberg provided a good basis for describing events on the IG Farben level, as Hayes and Plumpe did, they offered little material for a detailed study at the plant level. Even the rather well-organized IG Farben files, which were subsequently allocated to the archives of the successor companies BASF, Hoechst, and Bayer, were not an adequate basis for an authentic plant history. However, in the course of my work, the source base improved significantly, a factor that also contributed to the length of time required for the project. Files from the management office of the former Hoechst AG on denazification in the factory as well as on foreign workers were transferred to the archives. Rich files from the Human Resources Department were found in Hoechst’s basement. Among them were the employment books (Diensteintrittsbücher), which provide considerable information on the proportion of foreign workers, as well as details on their treatment.28 The personnel files (Personalakten) of the so-called Department VI, which dealt with Hoechst’s executives, were also discovered there. The perusal of these sources considerably broadened the available knowledge on the factory and its executives. Moreover, in these files I also found allusions to individuals whom I could then trace back to sources in other locations. The fact that the archives of the Human Resources Department are available in microfilm format made them usable, since it was impossible to work through all of the tens of thousands of individual employee files. Parallel references in the files from Department VI and in the denazification and compensation records in public archives made it possible to search for particular names in these microfilms. Other important files in the Hoechst archives were the personnel files, called “service files,” on a number of important employees, as well as the large dossier on Carl Ludwig Lautenschläger, the plant director between 1938 and 1945 – a dossier that also contained several volumes of his memoirs. Files on the old IG Farben were also available at Hoechst and proved useful, especially those of the Technical Committee (Technischer Ausschuss or TEA) as well as the documents of the Nuremberg trial.