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program. For six crucial years, he directed Farben's
Political-Economic Policy Department [WIPO], which was officially charged with
maintaining liaison with the Reich and Party agencies and played an important
role in Farben's preparations for aggressive war. After 1938, as manager of one
of Farben's largest explosive plants in occupied territory, he participated in
the procurement and abuse of slave labor and in spoliation activities. The
defendant von der Heyde, apart from his membership in the SS, an organization
declared criminal by the International Military Tribunal, was implicated in the
same general activities as Gattineau. The defendant Kugler was one of Farben's
most expert agents in the planning and consummation of spoliation in numerous
occupied countries, and thus played a major role in the waging of aggressive
war and in the unlawful plundering of occupied territories. The participation
of these four defendants in the activities described in the indictment is so
direct as to require no further elaboration.
I have emphasized the
responsibility of the defendants as officials of I.G. Farben because the
greater part of the crimes charged in the indictment was committed by the
defendants in the exercise of their functions as Farben officials. But the
defendants are not charged only as Farben officials, and they are responsible
for their actions in whatever capacity such actions were taken by them. Most of
the defendants held highly responsible governmental or quasi-governmental
positions. The outstanding example, but by no means the only one, is the
defendant Krauch. At least as early as 1936, Krauch was a highly important
Reich official and, after 1938, when he became one of Goering's chief deputies,
he assumed principal responsibility as a governmental official for marshaling
the chemical industry in preparation for invasions and aggressive wars.
Krauch's responsibility for his actions as a governmental official is
independent of, and not derivative from, his responsibility as a member of the
Vorstand and, later, the Aufsichtsrat, of I.G. Farben.
Indeed, the
defendants’ dual status as managers of an enormously powerful private
enterprise and as officials of the Third Reich, underlines a question which
inevitably shapes itself in the mind when viewing this case as a whole. Where
did the loyalties of these men lie, and what ideal, if any, did they
acknowledge?
Some light is shed on this question by an interesting
series of meetings which took place in 1944 and 1945, in the course of which
the defendants endeavored to formulate plans "in case the war was lost" in
order "to escape a seizure of available assets of IG" and "to keep foreign
selling companies running during the |
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