 |
Q. What year was that in?
A. Well, in that statement which I
made here, I cannot fix quite accurately the year. It must have been about 1936
to 1937. The government, at that time through the Reichswirtschaftsministerium
[Reich Ministry of Economics], approached Mr. Krauch. Mr. Krauch was going to
Ludwigshafen to tell it to us. Then Krauch, Schmitz, myself, and Mr. Fischer*
went over to London. The explanation made by the government officials was, as
far as I remember, that the government wanted to get Germany independent as far
as possible from the oil supplies from abroad, and in fact we were to build up
a lot of hydrogenation plants. But these hydrogenation plants took a long time
to build, and to bridge over this time, they wanted to have a stock of
supplies. Then we approached Standard Oil in London about this question. The
amount was about 20 million dollars, but afterwards I think only an amount like
14 or 15 million dollars was expended in the execution of the option concerned.
When we approached Standard Oil, they said: “Well, in principle we will
agree, but after our general understanding with the Royal Dutch Shell group, we
would have to communicate with Sir Henry Deterding.” Then the Royal Dutch
joined the discussion, and they said that the Anglo-Persian [Anglo-Iranian Oil
Co.] which was owned 50 percent by the British Government, should be made a
party. Then, in the evening, joint conversations were held between IG and
Standard Oil and Royal Dutch and Anglo-Persian. We talked about procuring
foreign currencies. My business in this matter was to draw up the contract, and
this contract on the face being merely just the selling of oil against cash,
was a difficult thing, for the reason that we wanted some specific brands of
oil, high-grade brands, and the Standard Oil people said that they could not
give us that because their apparatus was not sufficient to produce all this
stuff so quickly. They would have to put up new apparatus, but afterwards, when
the oil had been delivered, this apparatus would be superfluous, so that the
amount of money which had to be paid was not only the market price for that
oil, but also an additional amount for a very quick amortization. This was not
quite easy to figure out. Now, in which way the transportation was handled,
that was the usual way, I believe. We did it in this way: IG handled the
business and paid cash, and got the cash back from the government without any
profits or losses.
Q. Did IG have that much cash on hand to handle
it? |
__________
* Ernst Rudolf Fischer was
a director of I. G. Farben until 1939. From then until the end of the war he
was the head of the Economic Group Liquid Fuel, with the rank of
Ministerialdirigent
1203 |
. 
