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This situation was entirely different in the United States, because
there was no lack of foreign exchange, which made it possible to purchase good
and cheap natural rubber according to requirements; consequently, the
application of the complicated German buna process, based on carbide as raw
material, had, from the beginning, little prospect of success. Nevertheless,
measures were taken in this matter in the United States which, however, were
without practical results. Consequently, after about 1937, Farben developed a
specific process for the United States based on crude oil as raw material. In
the latter part of 1938, my client offered this process (which, in the
meantime, had become reasonably perfected for manufacturing purposes) to the
Standard Oil Company and, in complete agreement with it, worked out a plan to
materialize this process in a major plant. In addition, it was demonstrated to
the technical engineers of Standard Oil at the experimental plant in Oppau.
Calculations made jointly with Standard Oil showed an American cost price which
approached that of natural rubber. One of Farben's top experts informed the
American tire industry in 1939 of all details concerning the production of
tires protected with buna. Then war broke out and wiped out the development
which came so close to being realized. These are the facts which I shall prove.
During the presentation of proof by the defense it will be shown that
the entire peace production potential of Farben was not created with a war of
aggression in mind, but was based on considerations of a peacetime economy.
The standby plants which had been built for war emergencies were of
infinitesimally small proportions in comparison with the rest of Farben's
plants and were, without exception, erected upon government orders. Not Farben,
but the Reich, owned and financed them.
Your Honors, all economic and technical
achievements of any industry serve the progress of all nations and improve the
people's standard of living in every country. The fact that such achievements
at the same time strengthen the war potential is an unavoidable consequence of
modern war, which is fought with a totalitarian concentration of all technical
resources. An example may illustrate this point:
When nylon was perfected after ten years
of work by the well-known American firm of Du Pont, the underlying motive was
surely a peaceful one; in that case to provide women with better and more
durable silk stockings. Well, nylon was used during the war as parachute silk
by American and English fliers. Nobody will, on that account, accuse Du Pont of
having prepared a war of aggression. |
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