“But this was a drop”: For Belgians, Italians, and Slovaks, see BASF UA, C13, “Direcktionssitzung in Ludwigshafen am Rhein am 28 Juni 1940.”
“‘Contact with the prisoners’”: Ibid.
“Nevertheless, their presence”: See Plumpe, Die IG Farbenindustrie.
“The events of September”: For more on Weiss’s relationship with IG Farben before 1939, see Jeffreys, Aspirin.
“Even so, the pace”: For Weiss’s offer to the IG, see DOJ Central Files, case 60-21-56 (Sterling Products Ltd), RG 60, U.S. National Archives), documents 6063, 6065, 6066, 6113, 1373, and 1853. Also see Bayer Leverkusen Archives, 9.A.7, 1955, Mann to Weiss, Nov. 30, 1939. For Alfredo Moll’s activities in Buenos Aires, see Elimination of German Resources for War. For details of deal, which the two sides signed in Florence on Feb. 6, 1940, see DOJ 1172, 2663, 3101, and 3104. For footnote on South America, see Elimination of German Resources, appendix A, and list in NMT, vol. 8, p. 1379.
“What followed”: See New York Times, April 10 and 11, 1941, and New York Herald Tribune, May 29, 1941.
“Given the degree of scrutiny”: DOJ, box 1370, “Sterling Products Inc File Assignments” (A), June 27, 1941. For Weiss and Sterling accepting Department of Justice conditions, see DOJ, box 1329, and Thomas G. Corcoran Papers, U.S. Library of Congress, box 525, Weiss to Edward Foley, general counsel, U.S. Treasury, Aug. 15, 1941. For Weiss cable to Leverkusen, see Bayer Archives, Leverkusen, 9. A.7, Weiss to Mann.
“Meanwhile, Standard Oil”: For Howard in Paris and telegrams, see Howard, Buna Rubber.
“The meeting was finally”: For Joseph Kennedy’s help, see New York Times, April 1, 1942. For Bütefisch’s getting permission from Nazi authorities and the quotation, see Borkin, The Crime.
“Howard turned up”: Borkin, The Crime; Ambruster, Treason’s Peace; and Howard, Buna Rubber.
“On October 16, 1939”: Cable quoted in Borkin, The Crime.
“Of more immediate”: DOJ, case 682 and case 2091, U.S. v Standard Oil Co (N.J.). For Senate hearings, see Hearings before the Committee on Patents, U.S. Senate, 77th Congress, 2nd session (1942), part I. See also Ambruster, Treason’s Peace, and Howard, Buna Rubber.
“If anyone”: For production levels at Schkopau and Hüls, see Hayes, Industry and Ideology. See also Morris, “The Development of Acetylene Chemistry and Synthetic Rubber.” For raw materials shortage, see BIOS FR 534, Organisation of the German Chemical Industry and Its Development for War Purposes.
“In November…” See NI-11781 Letter from Reich Ministry of Economics to IG Farben. 8/11/40
“Thus it was”: For Ambros’s meeting with Krauch and ter Meer, see NMT, vol. 8, pp. 349–51, NI 11784.
11. Buna at Auschwitz
“As far as”: This section, including quotations, is drawn from two conversations with Denis Avey, in September 2004 and January 2005. His account was corroborated by several other former British POWs, particularly John Green, Jack Melville, and Ronald Redman, who all gave me valuable insights into conditions at the IG Auschwitz Buna-Werke.
“At the age of thirty-nine”: Background detail on Ambros’s upbringing, career, and motivation is drawn from his statements and testimony at the trial, e.g., see NMT, vol. 7, pp. 268, 425, 1040, 1260, and vol. 8, pp. 164, 292, 731, 1064; DuBois, The Devil’s Chemists; ter Meer, Die IG Farben Industrie; Plumpe, Die IG Farbenindustrie; Wagner, IG Auschwitz. Ambros’s own brief apologia is also worth glancing at (“Gedanken zu meiner Verurteilung durch das Nürnberger Gericht am 19/30 Juli 1948,” BASF UA, W10) although it is essentially a reprise of his arguments at the trial and difficult to take seriously.
“Although Ambros would later”: For spending on Rattwitz, see Morris, The Development of Acetylene Chemistry and Synthetic Rubber.
“The IG had never been”: For problems of Rattwitz, Morris, The Development of Acetylene Chemistry and Synthetic Rubber. For potential of Silesia, see Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present.
“Ambros got out his maps”: NI 11110, Ambros report on trip to Silesia, Dec. 15–18, 1940.
“When and how Ambros”: For possible interest of Mineralölbau, see Steinbacher, Auschwitz: A History. On suitability of Auschwitz, see NI 11110, Ambros report.
“On questioning the local authorities”: NMT, vol. 8, pp. 337f., report of conference between representatives of IG Farben and Schlesien-Benzin, Jan. 18, 1941.
“Ambros also took”: NI 11110, Ambros report; NI 111783, memo concerning prospective site for the Buna plants in Silesia, Dec. 10, 1940.
“The camp at Auschwitz”: For background to Hitler decree, see Burleigh, The Third Reich.
“Much to his satisfaction”: There is a vast body of work on Himmler, Heydrich, and the Einsatzgruppen. For this section I have found the following useful: Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution; Read, The Devil’s Disciples; Aly and Heim, Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction; and, specifically for the conference of Sept. 21, 1939, Gilbert, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy.
“The old cavalry”: See Steinbacher, Auschwitz; Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution; and, for Auschwitz’s medieval antecedents and their influence on Himmler, Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz. See also Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz.
“The first people”: Steinbacher, Auschwitz; and Dwork and Van Pelt, Auschwitz.
“It is not known”: Himmler’s early interest is evident from the minutes of a conference held on January 8, 1941. Chaired by Heydrich and attended by representatives of the SS, army, and the Reich Commission for the Consolidation of the German Nation, it discussed, among other things, deporting Auschwitz’s Poles and Jews to make way for a new “project in Upper Silesia.” See Federal Archive (Koblenz) R49, Anhang I, file 34, 8. See also Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz.
“‘Auschwitz and villages’”: NI 11782, memo of Kurt Eisfeldt, “Buna project,” Feb. 13, 1941, NMT, vol. 8, p. 353.
“At the end of January 1941”: See subsequent report of conversation for Froese quotation; NMT, vol. 8, p. 345, memorandum concerning investigation of prospective site for Buna plant in Silesia, Feb. 10, 1941.
“The tip was enough”: NMT, vol. 8, p. 350, N 11113, notes of conference with Krauch and Ambros. For quotations, see Kurt Eisfeldt, “Buna project,” NI 11782.
“Krauch took the hint”: For Krauch quotation, see NI 11983, Krauch to Ambros, Feb. 25, 1941. For Göring quotation see NI 1240, Göring to Himmler, Feb. 18, 1941. See also NI 11086, Wirth to Ambros, March 4, 1941.
“Although the Reichsführer”: For Himmler order to Glücks and appointment of Wolff, see NI 11086, Wirth to Ambros, March 4, 1941. For meeting with IG officials, see Federal Archive (Koblenz) NS 19, file 400. For instructions to Höss, see NI 034/2, affidavit by R. Höss, May 20, 1946; and Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz.
“As Höss absorbed”: For decision to make fuel as well as buna, see Wagner, IG Auschwitz.
“With heads spinning”: For decision on financing, see Borkin, The Crime; Economic Study of IG Farbenindustrie AG Section V; and BIOS FR 534, Organisation of the German Chemical Industry and Its Development for War Purposes.
“With the full backing”: See NI 11115, minutes of the first Auschwitz construction conference, March 24, 1941. For quotation, see NI 15148, report on conference of Farben representatives with Auschwitz concentration camp officials, March 27, 1941.
“‘Selected from among’”: NI 15148.
“In the meanwhile”: For agreement to buy SS sand and gravel, see NI 11115, minutes of the first Auschwitz construction conference, March 24, 1941. For purchase of majority stake in Fürstengrube, see NI 12011, contract between IG and Fürstliche Plessischen GmbH, Feb. 8, 1941. For IG emphasis on speed, see NI 11117, minutes of founding meeting of IG Farben-Auschwitz, April 7, 1941.
“The SS and the Reich authorities”: For deportation of Auschwitz Jews, see Steinbacher, Auschwitz; and Smolen, The History of KL Auschwitz.
Smolen, The History of KL Auschwi
tz.
“On Monday, April 7”: NI 11117, minutes of founding meeting of IG Farben-Auschwitz, April 7, 1941.
“With the Auschwitz project”: Ibid.
“Five days later”: NI 11118, Ambros to ter Meer and Struss, April 12, 1941.
“Still, Ambros and his team”: Copies of the blueprints surfaced in Moscow’s Osobyi archive in the early 1990s. E.g., see Collection 502/5 file 13, blueprint AZ 9926 (Oct. 3, 1944). For other construction bottlenecks, also see NI 11130, fourteenth construction conference on IG Auschwitz.
“The more obvious”: NI 11130.
“An even more serious”: Ibid. For fences, see NI 11127, twelfth construction conference. For expansion of Auschwitz (Birkenau), NI 11132, sixteenth construction conference.
“As the delays steadily worsened”: See above but especially NI 11127, twelfth construction conference and decision that Dürrfeld write to Krauch to inform him of difficulties.
“‘Men ran and fell’”: Vrba and Bestic, I Cannot Forgive.
“In the face of”: Quotations from NI 14543, Auschwitz weekly report no. 11, Aug. 19, 1941.
“The IG men were”: Quotation from NI 14566, Auschwitz weekly report no. 30, Dec. 15, 1941.
“This tolerance”: For hunting, see, e.g., Auschwitz weekly reports nos. 82 and 83, Dec. 4, 1942. On IG attendance at SS Christmas party, see NI 15253, Auschwitz weekly reports nos. 31 and 32, Jan. 4, 1942.
NI 034, affidavit by R. Höss, May 20, 1946.
“On Sunday, June 22”: Beevor, Stalingrad; and Grant, Illustrated History of 20th Century Conflict.
“To Himmler”: For Russian POWs at Birkenau, see Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz; and Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor.
Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor.
“This was a considerable”: For Göring decree, see Read, The Devil’s Disciples.
“If Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen”: Gilbert, The Holocaust.
“There are many reasons”: This outline of Himmler and the summer of 1941 is drawn from Breitman, The Architect of Genocide; Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide; Gilbert, The Holocaust; Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews; and Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz.
“‘Supplementing the task’”: IMT, vol. 9, pp. 517–20.
“A few days later”: Details from Gilbert, The Holocaust, and Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews.
Details of Wannsee Conference, including all quotations, from IMT, NG 2586 F(6), “Protocol of the Wannsee Conference.”
“Three days later”: Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews. For Himmler instruction to Glücks, see U.S. National Archives, RG 242 T-580/R 69.
“‘The war will not end’”: Watts, Voices of History, 1942–43, p. 121.
“Even as ordinary Germans”: Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews.
12. IG Auschwitz and the Final Solution
“For a few weeks”: For temporary improvement, see NI 15256, Auschwitz weekly report no. 42, Feb. 9, 1942, and NI 11132, sixteenth Auschwitz construction conference, March 6, 1942. For worsening situation, see NI 11137, nineteenth Auschwitz construction conference. For SS use of prisoners to build Birkenau, see NI 11130. For numbers at Buna-Werke in 1942, see Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives (ABSMA), D-Au111-3a, chart of prisoner numbers at Buna subcamp to December 31, 1944.
“In casting around”: NMT, vol. 7, pp. 10f. For the IG’s calculation about strength of prisoner workers vis-à-vis Germans, see NI 11115, minutes of the first Auschwitz construction conference, March 24, 1941. For bringing prisoners close to site, see NI 15412, Auschwitz weekly report nos. 56 (June 15, 1942), and NI 14524, Auschwitz weekly report no. 57, NMT, vol. 8. p. 436.
“Thus, in late June 1942”: NI 14524 and NMT, vol. 7, p. 197.
“Of course, the idea”: For range of camps and subcamps, see Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor. For issues pertaining to construction, see NI 14524, Auschwitz weekly report no. 57.
“Fortunately, an opportunity”: See Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz. I am indebted to former POW John Green, who remembers hearing Buna-Werke staff discussing the Reichsführer’s impending visit.
“Himmler’s arrival”: Read, The Devil’s Disciples.
“Auschwitz was therefore now”: For Himmler’s plans for the armaments industry, see Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor. For instructions to Eichmann, see The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, vol. 4. p. 1474.
Speer, Inside the Third Reich.
“Experiments in mass murder”: For early mass murder experiments, see IMT, vol. 10, p. 398, testimony by Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss. For the IG’s connection to Degesch and Zyklon B, see NI 9098, NI 9150, NI 12073, NI 12075, NI 6363, and NI 9540. For first uses of Zyklon B as murder weapon in August and September 1941 and subsequent transfer to camp crematorium, see Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz.
“By then the Final Solution”: Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz; and Steinbacher, Auschwitz.
“Thus the ghastly”: Ibid.
Read, The Devil’s Disciples.
“His arrival at the main”: Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz; Vrba and Bestic, I Cannot Forgive; and Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz.
“‘He passed close’”: Vrba and Bestic, I Cannot Forgive.
“The Reichsführer’s entourage”: Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz; and Dwork and van Pelt, Auschwitz.
“Himmler and his aides”: Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz.
“If Himmler was the slightest”: NI 14551, Auschwitz weekly report 60–61, July 13–26, 1942. For movements after plant tour, see Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz.
“The next day”: Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz.
“Monowitz, or Auschwitz III”: See NMT, vol. 7, pp. 10–81 for overview. See also Steinbacher, Auschwitz; Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor; Plumpe, Die IG Farbenindustrie; DuBois, The Devil’s Chemists; and the eyewitness accounts of Primo Levi in Levi, If This Is a Man; and Levi and De Benedetti, Auschwitz Report. For the IG’s assumption of responsibility for food, see NI 11139.
NI 11139.
“The first six hundred”: See ABSMA, D-Au111-3a, chart of prisoner numbers. For typhus epidemic, see Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor. On transfer from Buchenwald, see NI 10854, instructions from Office DII of Oct. 12, 1942. On transports from Theresienstadt and subsequent selections of prisoners and for quotation, see ABSMA, D-Au1-3a, 32, 65 Arbeitseinsatz, DII to Auschwitz concentration camp, Jan. 26, 1943; Schwarz to DII, Feb. 20, 1943.
“Meanwhile the savage conditions”: For death rate by Dec. 1942 and Maurer’s visit, see NI 15256, Auschwitz weekly reports 90–91, Feb. 8–21, 1943. For unexpected numbers of women and children and sickness of prisoners by March 1943, see Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor.
“This extraordinary turnover”: For potential impact of Standard developments in 1942 on IG Farben, see Morris, The Development of Acetylene Chemistry and Synthetic Rubber, and Hayes, Industry and Ideology.
“This pressure”: For state of work by the end of 1942, see NI 11139, twenty-first Auschwitz construction conference.
“For many of the plant’s”: NI 14553, Auschwitz weekly reports nos. 62–63, July 27, 1942; NI 14489 and NI 14514, Auschwitz weekly reports nos. 70–71, Sept. 20, 1943; and NI 14549, Auschwitz weekly reports nos. 126–27, Oct. 31, 1943. I am indebted to the family of Gil Heuytens, a Dutch “voluntary” worker, for letting me know of the wretched conditions at the Buna-Werke between 1942 and 1943.
Monowitz postcards quoted in Gilbert, The Holocaust, p. 506.
“The stories of those”: For background of deportation of Norwegian Jews, see Gilbert, The Holocaust, and Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews.
“‘After three weeks’”: Quoted in DuBois, The Devil’s Chemists.
“‘The buildings’”: See Wollheim’s testimony, NMT, vol. 8, p. 590.
“‘The prisoners were’”: NI 4830, affidavit by Rudolf Vitek.
“For inmates who”: See NI 7967, affidavit by Ervin Schulhof; Piper, Auschwitz Prisone
r Labor; and, the most vivid account, Levi, If This Is a Man. For camp brothel, see Levi, If This Is a Man, and NI 15254, Auschwitz weekly reports nos. 73–74, Oct. 8, 1942. For sleeping accommodations, see NI 11696 affidavit by Charles Coward.
“But food”: See NI 4830, affidavit by Rudolf Vitek. For camp routine (and for footnote), see Levi, If This Is a Man, and Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity.
“The hospital, or Krankenbau”: See NI 4830, affidavit by Rudolf Vitek; NI 12373, testimony of Robert Waitz; Levi and De Benedetti, Auschwitz Report.
“It is true”: Levi and De Benedetti, Auschwitz Report. Quotation from NI 12373, testimony of Robert Waitz.
“This brief period”: For purchase of stake in Fürstengrube mine, see NI 12011, contract between IG and Fürstliche Plessischen GmbH, Feb. 8, 1941. For acquisition of Janina, see Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor. For quotation and other details of Janina, see Setkiewicz, “Wybrane problemy z historii IG Werk Auschwitz” [Selected problems in the history of IG Werke Auschwitz], Zeszyty Oswiecimkie 22 (ABSMA, 1998). See also NI 10525, guard unit to management, Aug. 11, 1943.
“Ten days later”: Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor.
“The terrible living”: For mortality rates, see NI 7966, affidavit by E. Orlik, and NI 11652, affidavit by Dr. W. Loebner.
“‘After arriving’”: For recollection of Jan Lawnicki, see ABSMA, Statements Collection, vol. 60, p. 100.
“Having labored”: See Piper, Auschwitz Prisoner Labor, and NI 11043, labor camp Janina to SS. For typical punishments, see NI 11038, IG Auschwitz to SS Oberstürmführer Schoettl, Sept. 11, 1944.
“Nevertheless, so long as”: For Dürrfeld participation in selection, see NI 12069, affidavit by G. Herzog, Oct. 21, 1947, NMT, vol. 8, pp. 489–90, 510–15. For death toll, see NI 7967, affidavit by E. Schulhof, and NI 12070, affidavit by S. Budziaszek.
“The first thing to note”: For IG Farben’s Reich Germans at Auschwitz, see Steinbacher, Auschwitz.
“‘I hadn’t been’”: Conversation with Müller in London in June 2004.
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