Chapter 10: Shell’s Business Partner I.G. Farben

In the run-up to World War II, Royal Dutch Shell was a business partner of I.G. Farben both internationally and in Germany. I.G. Farben, short for Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG, became one of the most important industrial pillars of the Nazi war economy. Formed in 1925 from a number of major chemical companies that had already been working closely together since World War I,²²⁹ IG Farben became, at its height, the largest chemical company in the world and the fourth largest industrial concern overall, after General Motors, U.S. Steel and Standard Oil (New Jersey). It was involved in numerous war crimes during World War II, was seized by the Allies in 1945, and liquidated in 1952.

Extracts from Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team²³⁰ First extract - confirming that Royal Dutch Shell’s German subsidiary, Rhenania-Ossag, founded a synthetic fuel plant in which IG Farben was a partner. In 1937, IG Farben, Rhenania-Ossag, and Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft founded the Hydrierwerke Pölitz AG synthetic fuel plant. By 1943, the plant produced 15% of Nazi Germany’s synthetic fuels, 577,000. Second extract - confirming that I.G. Farben was itself a major financial supporter of the Nazi party. At a meeting of leading German industrialists with Hjalmar Schacht, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, held on 20 February 1933, IG Farben contributed 400,000 reichsmarks to the Nazi Party…

Information from pages, as indicated, from TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNALS VOLUME VII. 1,616 pages²³¹ b) Extract from Count Three of a war crimes indictment against I.G. Farben concerning enslavement in the same TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS document: From Page 189 of 1,616 pages The evidence under this count relates primarily to the use and abuse of prisoners of war, the enslavement and deportation to slave labor and mistreatment of many thousands of civilians in the countries occupied by Germany, the conducting of atrocious medical experiments upon enslaved persons without their consent, and the extermination of slave workers who had been used up and were no longer of value as laborers. c) From pages 1079/80/81 of 1,616 pages - a translated extract from the Weekly Reports of the Military, Economy and Armaments Office of the German High Command concerning Farben and Mobilization Plans. EXTRACT FROM PAGE 1080 RUNNING ON TO PAGE 1081 (OF 1,616 PAGES) ⁵ September 1938 Conference at the Reich Ministry of Economics concerning the control of the production of mineral oil in case of mobilization. Together with the Reich Ministry of Economics, which has already drawn up an organization for the distribution of mineral oil, an organization for control of mineral oil production has been set up with the cooperation of the industry. The Control Office (in case of mobilization the Reich Office) will have subordinated to it three large groups of producers, namely: 1. Production of benzene and corresponding products. For this, a compulsory syndicate under the direction of the Benzol-Verband (Direktor Hansen) is planned. 2. The production of mineral oil on the basis of lignite and coal (excluding benzene). Under direction of Dr. Buetefisch, I.G. Farbenindustrie. 3. The production of mineral oil on the basis of petroleum, under the direction of Generaldirektor Brochhaus, Deurag. Assisting him are Direktor Dr. Boeder, Rhenania-Ossag, and Dr. Brunck, Deutsche Gasolin.

Rhenania-Ossag was a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary and Shell was also a partner in Deutsche Gasolin.²³² Information sourced from pages 1202 to 1206 inclusive of a 1,616-page record includes testimony from I.G. Farben defendant August von Knieriem during cross-examination. That testimony confirms that Royal Dutch Shell, led by Sir Henri Deterding, was involved with I.G. Farben and Standard Oil in purchasing from the U.S. government and transporting to Germany approximately $20 million worth of oil for the German government. I.G. Farben did not disclose to the U.S. government that the oil was for the German Reich. August von Knieriem evaded questions about whether the purchase was made as a patriotic gesture to the German government, but did admit that the transaction, which involved Shell, was “irregular.” Information along the same lines is confirmed on pages 1310 and 1311. This purchase arrangement was also confirmed in an article published in The New York Times on 19 October 1945:²³³ “Standard Oil and the Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell group also aided I. G. Farben in 1934 and 1935 to purchase large quantities of mineral-oil products, the report said. These products, including airplane benzine and lubricants, were bought for a market price of $20,000,000 and stored as reserve stocks.” The above material provides evidence that, as of September 1938, senior employees of companies partly or wholly owned by Royal Dutch Shell were involved in German High Command military contingency planning for potential mobilisation of the Nazi war machine. I.G. Farben’s leadership later became notorious for its exploitation of slave labour and its close association with Auschwitz and the wider extermination system.²³⁴

According to testimony in the Nuremberg war crimes trials, I.G. Farben was the sole producer of poison gas in World War 1.²³⁵ The company played a major role in fuelling the Nazi war machine. “Germany could not have waged war without Farben’s help.”²³⁶ “The German war machine was not merely dependent upon Farben for obtaining the critical raw materials essential to modern warfare. It could not have functioned without the products manufactured for it by Farben.”²³⁷ I.G. Farben engaged in horrific activities. Extract from the “Report on the Investigation of I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G.” prepared by a U.S. Military Government division: “This investigation has disclosed that an I.G. Farben official at Wuppertal-Elberfeld developed the deadliest poison gas in the world. This gas, unknown to the military authorities of the Allied Nations, could have penetrated any gas mask in existence. I.G. originally carried out its poison gas experiments on monkeys; later on human beings. For the latter purpose, inmates of concentration camps were selected, and I.G. Farben officials, concerned only with creating weapons capable of assuring German world conquest, were unmoved by this use of human guinea pigs.”²³⁸ To achieve Nazi government objectives, I.G. Farben used slave labour on an extensive scale.

Extract from the OFFICIAL RECORD/TRANSCRIPTS United States Military Tribunals Nurnberg of the IG Farben Trial at Nuremberg:²³⁹ 27 August 1947, Court 1, Case 6. Extract from page 6 A. Farben and the Slave Labor Program. The slave labor program of the Third Reich was the revolting offspring of the aggressive wars which it planned and waged. It was designed to keep the German war machine rolling at the frightful expense of the freedom and lives of millions of persons. The tyranny and brutality of Nazi conquest was felt by them not only in their own homelands of France, Belgium, Holland, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, and elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands suffered the additional misery of being torn loose from homes and families and shipped to Germany into slavery and more than often to a miserable and premature death. Extract from page 166 of the same document The defendants, through the instrumentality of Farben and otherwise, not only knowingly participated in the employment of foreign slave labor, but were aggressive in its procurement. Extracts from page 167 of the same document Farben’s motto was “production at any cost”. Farben representatives were sent to all occupied countries to procure workers. Extract from Yale Law School document: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 3.²⁴⁰ Nuremberg prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd declared: It may illuminate the specific items of evidence which will be offered later if we first describe in rather general terms the elements of the Nazi foreign labor policy. It was a policy of mass deportation and mass enslavement, as I said a minute ago, and it was also carried out by force, by fraud, by terror, by arson, by means unrestrained by the laws of war and laws of humanity, or the considerations of mercy. This labor policy was a policy as well of underfeeding and overworking foreign laborers, of subjecting them to every form of degradation, brutality, and inhumanity. It was a policy which compelled foreign workers and prisoners of war to manufacture armaments and to engage in other operations of war directed against their own countries. It was a policy, as we propose to establish, which constituted a flagrant violation of the laws of war and of the laws of humanity. Extracts from Time Magazine article published 24 December 1945 under the headline “Cartels: Gulliver, Bound but Sturdy”:²⁴¹ “Without I.G… Germany could not have waged the war at all.” “As armorer for the Nazis, I.G. made all of Germany’s synthetic rubber and lubricating oil; 95% of its poison gases (Farben tested them on concentration camp inmates); 90% of the nickel; 88% of the magnesium, most of the gasoline and explosives for the buzz-bombs and V-2s.” Extract from a newspaper article published in The Times on 6 May 1947 under the headline: “War Record of I.G. Farben”²⁴² Extract: The indictment precisely describes Farben’s major contribution to German rearmament as the synthetic production of nitrates, oil, and rubber, without which Germany, having no natural resources, was incapable of preparing or waging aggressive war. Farben was the core of military mobilization not only by virtue of its own production but because all other German chemical companies and many other war industries were almost totally dependent upon its products. German tanks, artillery, and armoured vehicles rolled on Farben electron metal wheels, were shod with Farben buna rubber, and propelled by Farben synthetic petrol. Nazi bombers were armoured with Farben aluminum and magnesium alloys, carried death loads of Farben incendiary bombs and explosives, and were fuelled by Farben high-octane aviation petrol. I.G. Farben shared patent rights to synthetic oil and other products with many companies, including Shell and Standard Oil, both of whom had other business connections with Farben. Shell was a major partner with Farben in jointly owned companies, including Deutsche Gasolin A.G., which operated a refinery and gasoline service station network in Germany.

Further evidence: Extract from Daily Telegraph article “Slave labourers given flowers and £3,000 each”:²⁴³ The ceremony was held at Goethe University, Frankfurt, in a sprawling building that was the wartime headquarters of the German chemical firm I.G. Farben, supplier of Zyklon-B gas to the Nazi death camps. Extract from page 345 of “The Prize”:²⁴⁴ Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi mass murder factories; upwards of two million people, mostly Jews, were put to death there with gas manufactured by an I.G. Farben subsidiary. The stench of the crematoriums at Auschwitz and Birkenau suffused the air at Monowitz. To Levi, it was “world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished.” Extract from Time Magazine article 12 May 1947:²⁴⁵ Most damning charge was that Farben experimented on slave labor and concentration camp inmates with “deadly gases, vaccines and related products.” To supply slave labor for its synthetic rubber plant at Oswiecim, Farben allegedly constructed a concentration camp and worked the men, women and children so hard that an estimated 100 a day died from exhaustion. The U.S. would have no trouble proving that the Nazis could not have made war without Farben. I.G. Farben directors were later convicted of war crimes²⁴⁶ in the Nuremberg trials, including enslavement and the murder of civilians, prisoners of war, and concentration camp inmates. Farben manufactured explosives and other vital war materials, including the oil and gasoline which fuelled Nazi tanks and planes used in the blitzkrieg. Extract from page 46 of “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography”:²⁴⁷ Farish was the principal manager of a worldwide cartel between Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey and the I.G. Farben concern. The merged enterprise had opened the Auschwitz slave labor camp on June 14, 1940, to produce artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. The Hitler government supplied political opponents and Jews as the slaves, who were worked to near death and then murdered. Extracts from an article published by The Times on 20 October 1965:²⁴⁸ EXTRACTS The willfully planned and demoniacally organized extermination of five million human lives in the infamous wartime concentration camp in Auschwitz was so monstrous an undertaking that the ordinary human mind is quite incapable of grasping its enormity. Secondly, there is the perfectly well-established point that the able-bodied were sent to Auschwitz to be financially exploited as slave-labour for large German industrial concerns (they are named in the trial report and in the play, so let us not be squeamish about naming them here), concerns like I.G. Farben… Shell was a major partner along with Standard Oil and I.G. Farben in a number of ventures, including a synthetic oil company in Germany as evidenced by this photograph and related information. Full-page photograph between pages 108 & 109 of DOING BUSINESS WITH THE NAZIS By Neil Forbes: First published in 2000 in Great Britain by Frank Cass publishers. ISBN 0-7146-8168-7 Photo shows a series of what appears to be storage tanks on a train standing at a refinery plant, with a worker standing on top of the nearest one, filling it with fuel. Photo Caption states: Wagons being filled with Leuna-Benzin, the synthetic oil produced by IG Farbenindustrie in partnership with Standard Oil and Shell. (Photo: AKG London) Related extract starting on page 153 Standard Oil entered into a contract with IG (the exclusive purchasing agent in Germany for a number of vital products including oil and rubber) to sell the rising outputs of the Leuna plant.²⁴⁹ Shell reached a similar agreement in 1935. As a reinsurance against future competition from synthetic fuel, both these majors took a 25 per cent share holding in IG’s Deutsche Gasolin AG.

In strictly commercial terms this decision made sense. By 1939 I.G. Farben’s synthetic factories produced no less than one-half of the petroleum consumed in the Third Reich. Related letter to The New York Times: Letters: The Synthetic-Gas Story: ²⁵⁰ Sept 1973,²⁵¹ EXTRACT From 1933 to 1938 I worked as economist for the Deutsche Gasolin A.G. in Berlin. We sold the Leuna gasoline the Aug. ⁹ letter “Gasoline from Coal” referred to through a network of service stations that covered Germany. Whatever amount we could not dispose of was taken over by Shell and Standard Oil, who owned 24.5 per cent each of the shares of the company; I. G. Farben owned the rest. Leuna gasoline was the product of a hydrogenation process. During World War II the I.G. Farben Leuna works covered three square miles of land with 250 buildings, including decoy buildings outside the main plant, and employed 35,000 workers, including 10,000 prisoners and slave laborers. The broader point is clear. Royal Dutch Shell was partnered for years with I.G. Farben, an indispensable industrial component of the Nazi war machine. Evidence indicates that forced labour was used at companies partly or wholly owned by Shell before and during World War II. 1936 photo of Shell House in Berlin²⁵²

Notes

229. Link to Wikipedia article “IG Farben” Source 1 ↩

230. Extract from Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team: I.G. Farbenindustrie AG German Industry and the Holocaust ↩

231. Information sourced from pages as indicated of TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNALS VOLUME VII “THE I.G. FARBEN CASE” OCTOBER 1946APRIL 1949: PUBLISHED BY UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1953: Some 1,616 pages, so can take several minutes to download. ↩

232. Link to Google Books search results webpage Deutsche Gasolin A.G., Hamburg by W.H. Thomas and J.G. Withers, publication by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee, 1945. Shows Royal Dutch - Shell co. was a partner in Deutsche Gasolin A.G. alongside Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey and I.G. Farbenindustrie. ↩

233. Link to a shellnews.net webpage containing an article published in The New York Times on 19 October 1945 under the headline: “U.S. FIRMS FUELED GERMANY FOR WAR” ↩

234. Link to Wikipedia article “IG Farben” containing Source 1 ↩

235. Link to Military Tribunals document from Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. See the next page after the page marked “38” ↩

236. Link to Military Tribunals document from Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. See page marked “27” ↩

237. Link to pro t-over-life.org webpage containing pdf: REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION OF I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE A.G. prepared by a US Military Government division in Germany, November 1945. See page marked 6. Takes a few minutes to download. ↩

238. Link to pro t-over-life.org webpage containing pdf: REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION OF I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE A.G. prepared by a US Military Government division in Germany, November 1945. See page marked 7. Takes a few minutes to download document. ↩

239. Link to pro t-over-life.org webpage containing official transcript/record of the IG Farben Trial at Nuremberg: August/Sept 1947, Court 1, Case 6.: 391 pages. Takes a few minutes to download. ↩

240. Link to Yale Law School website containing document: Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 3. Tuesday, 11 December 1945. From page 404 ↩

241. Link to Time Magazine webpage published 24 December 1945 under the headline “Cartels: Gulliver, Bound but Sturdy” ↩

242. Link to a shellnews.net webpage containing a newspaper article published in The Times on 6 May 1947 under the headline: “War Record of I.G. Farben” ↩

243. Link to Daily Telegraph article “Slave labourers given owers and £3,000 each” published 23 June 2001 ↩

244. Extract from page 345 of “The Prize”: By Daniel Yergin, published 1991 by Free Press. ↩

245. Extract from a Time Magazine article published Monday, 12 May, 1947, under the headline: “GOVERNMENT: Criminals All?” ↩

246. Link to Wikipedia article “IG Farben Trial” Source 1 ↩

247. Extract from page 46 of “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography”: By Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, published October 2004 by ProgressivePress.com: ISBN:0-943235-05-7 ↩

248. Extracts from an article published by The Times on 20 October 1965 under the headline: “Inspired Poetic View of a Ghastly Crime” ↩

249. Link to Wikipedia article “Leuna” Source 1 ↩

250. Link to royaldutchshellplc.com article also published 26 October 2010: “Shell’s dilemma in denying death threats against its Corrib employees” ↩

251. Link to shellnews.net webpage containing Letters to The New York Times published 8 September 1973 including the letter: “The Synthetic-Gas Story” ↩

252. Link to royaldutchshellplc.com webpage containing a photograph of the Shell building in Berlin taken in 1936. ↩