. ©MAZAL LIBRARY

NMT07-T0536


. NUERNBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL
Volume VII · Page 536
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Table of Contents - Volume 7
2. THE MEETING OF DEFENDANTS BUETEFISCH AND
GATTINEAU WITH HITLER IN NOVEMBER 1932 AND
THE SUBSEQUENT EXPANSION OF FARBEN'S
SYNTHETIC GASOLINE PRODUCTION 
 
  PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF
DOCUMENT NI-14304
PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 1977
 
EXTRACTS FROM THE FARBEN PUBLICATION "TWENTY-FIVE
YEARS AT THE LEUNA WORKS" CONCERNING THE MEETING
OF THE DEFENDANTS BUETEFISCH AND GATTINEAU WITH
HITLER IN 1932, AND OTHER MATTERS¹ 
 
* * * * * * * * * * 
 
THIRD PART, 1926-1932, PREPARES THE WAY FOR THE NEW
TECHNIQUES IN SPITE OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS  
 
* * * * * * * * * * 
 
Mysterious haste — historic compulsion. The men who created Leuna gasoline between 1926 and 1932 acted as if someone were standing behind them driving them on to the greatest speed. Actually this was not the case by any means. All the agencies which might have had a say in the matter rather had the effect of brakes. Neither the Aufsichtsrat which had to approve the funds, nor the "System government" (Systemregierung) 2 which levied a special mineral oil adjustment tax on each kilogram of gasoline produced, would have had any objections to a somewhat slower speed. But Geheimrat Bosch and Director Krauch seemed as if possessed by an inner restlessness. They shortened all time limits as much as at all possible; they speeded up the construction of the plants in such a way as to cause people who only knew the commercial point of view to shake their heads.

We know now that this haste was necessary from a historical point of view. The historians of more peaceful times will one day imagine what world history would have been if the gasoline plant in Leuna, still unfinished, had been caught by the world economic crisis and the project had been dropped. The men who urged haste at the time could themselves not have anticipated, however, that in this way they would one day in the not too far distant future make one of his most important decisions easier for the recreator of the German people, the Fuehrer Adolf
__________
¹ Testimony of the defendant Buetefisch concerning the statements made in this publication is reproduced immediately hereinafter.
² The Weimar Republic.  




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