Quotes About IG Farben

The big scandal around IG Farben this week is the unlucky subsidiary Spottbilligfilm AG, whose entire management are about to be purged for sending to OKW weapons procurement a design proposal for a new airborne ray which could turn whole populations, inside a ten-kilometer radius, stone blind. An IG review board caught the scheme in time. Poor Spottbilligfilm. It had slipped their collective mind what such a weapon would do to the dye market after the next war.

Norsk Hydro wanted to know the purpose of such a large order, but with experiments using heavy water now labeled SH-200, a high-level military secret, the IG Farben representative offered only silence. Not long after, the Norwegians did find out, from Jacques Allier, what that purpose was: the potential development of an atomic bomb.

Corporate managers from Krupp, IG Farben, Daimler Benz, and similar companies enforced regulations under which laborers who "sabotaged production" or left their posts without permission were punished by beatings, hangings, or deportation to death camps.

Pessimism all along the line. Absolutely. Mistrust in the fate of literature, mistrust in the fate of freedom, mistrust in the fate of European humanity, but three times mistrust in all reconciliation: between classes, between nations, between individuals. And unlimited trust only in IG Farben and the peaceful perfecting of the air force. But what now? What next?