 |
| |
PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF
DOCUMENT NI-9636
PROSECUTION EXHIBIT
725 |
| |
EXTRACTS FROM A MEMORANDUM BY DEFENDANT HAEFLIGER,
19 OCTOBER
1939, CONCERNING NICKEL SUPPLIES |
| |
| Dir.
H/Ed |
Berlin, 19 October 1939 |
| [Handwritten:] Discussed in Berlin on 19 October
1939 |
| [Handwritten:] for Finland trip |
| |
| MEMORANDUM |
| |
Subject: Nickel (Finland)
1. Policy of the Nickel
Trust
The International Nickel Company (Inco) controls
approximately 85 percent of the world's production. Its far-seeing policy aims
at preventing the development of serious competition by a stable and low price
for metallic nickel. It is based on the idea that it will never be possible to
unite the world's nickel resources under one management, that the aim can,
however, also be attained by a technological superiority in overcoming the
difficulties involved in converting nickel ore into nickel. The Inco,
therefore, in principle, supplies only finished products but not ore, and keeps
the price of the former so low that enterprises which confine themselves to
nickel ore mining, and the production of the crude ore, can constitute no
threat to it in normal conditions.
This policy demands that the trust
must at all times be in a position to meet fluctuations in demand, no matter
how violent, in order to maintain a low price as the general standard. But it
demands furthermore that the trust should think along truly international lines
and should not permit itself to be guided by political principles in supplying
the markets. It is obvious that it must try to prevent this basic attitude from
reaching the public. Its attitude was typical when, for instance, this spring,
questions were asked in Ottawa, as well as in the British Houses of Parliament,
with the purpose of at least limiting export to Germany. Even at that critical
time the trust succeeded (behind the scenes) in foiling and frustrating such
intentions by giving misleading information. Deliveries to Germany were
continued strictly in accordance with the obligations undertaken.
2.
Collaboration between the trust and IG
When, in 1933, the nickel
production process using nickel carbonyl, developed by IG, made its appearance,
the trust found itself in a predicament. By means of the IG process, metallic
nickel can be economically produced from sulfidic niccolite ore, and that in
the novel form of an extremely pure and fine powder which promises new
technical uses. This new process was bound |
1177 |
. 
