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[con…] tracts aggregated in the thousands. Its actual cartel
agreements numbered over two thousand and involved industrial concerns
throughout the world, including agreements with major industrial concerns in
the United States, Great Britain, France, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and Poland.
Ordinarily, cartels are associations or combinations of business firms entered
into for the purpose of regulating markets and prices in order to maintain
prices or to protect plant investments from obsolescence. After the Nazi
government came into power, Farben used the international cartel as an economic
weapon in the preparation for aggressive war through trade penetration,
political propaganda, collection of strategic information about foreign
industries, and in weakening other countries by crippling production and
stifling scientific research. From 1933 on, Farben not only obtained critical
materials and important scientific information for the German military machine
through its cartel connections, but deprived other countries thereof. From 1935
on, all cartel agreements, and extensions and modifications thereof, were
cleared by Farben with the Wehrwirtschaftsstab (Military Economics Staff) of
the Wehrmacht.
52. The pressure exerted by Farben to restrict
industrial development outside Germany was a deliberate and direct phase of
military planning for aggressive war. Financial and commercial arrangements
between Farben and non-German firms were treated by Farben in the light of, and
as part of, the German program for war. The result was a tragic retardation of
the development of strategic industries in countries which the Nazi government
planned to invade and attack.
53. Farben's prewar activities were
carefully designed to weaken the United States as an arsenal of democracy.
Through its cartel arrangements, Farben retarded the production within the
United States of certain strategic products, including synthetic rubber,
magnesium, synthetic nitrogen, tetrazene, atabrine, and sulpha drugs.
54. In the case of magnesium, a cartel arrangement between Farben,
Aluminum Company of America, and Dow Chemical Company, greatly restricted
production within the United States and prohibited exports from the United
States to Europe, except to Germany and, in negligible amounts, to Great
Britain. Thus, Great Britain and the rest of Europe became completely dependent
upon Germany for magnesium. As a result, Great Britain was in a desperate
situation with respect to magnesium at the outbreak of war. Meanwhile Farben
expanded its own magnesium production for war as rapidly as possible.
55. When the British Purchasing Mission tried to buy tetrazene
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