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1935, some time before the Spanish Civil War, Farben stored more than
20 million kilograms of pyrites in addition to the usual stockpiling amount?
DEFENDANT WURSTER: Counsel, I did not say that the Wehrmacht
authorities were interested in these stockpilings in 1937. I only said during
direct examination that I considered it entirely probable that small
stockpiling in Central Germany was done upon the request of the authorities. I
then said that it was a matter of 25,000 tons, which is a ridiculous amount in
relation to a yearly consumption of about one million tons. This is how I
recollect this event which took place 14 years ago. The second stockpiling
action in 1937 was a purely economic matter.
Q. Now, when the Reich
informed you that Ludwigshafen storage was not to exceed more than 10,000 tons
at any one time, did you consider that a purely economic matter?
A.
That was connected with the ideas of these agencies, which in my direct
examination I called the immobilization of my plant. That shows, too, that I
could not possibly have thought of an aggressive war, because they said that
not even stocks could be kept in that area, but that they had to be transferred
to somewhere else. That did not exactly sound like an aggressive
war. |
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| J. Air-Raid Precautions |
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| I. INTRODUCTION |
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The indictment charged that shortly after the Nazis came to power,
Farben began to conduct “war games” as a part of the alleged
synchronization of its activities with military preparations (pars. 17 and 22).
The contemporaneous documents most frequently used the German word
“Planspiel” for exercises or games connected with air-raid
precautions. This word may be literally translated as “plan game,” or
“planned exercise,” or "map game." In the course of the trial,
“Planspiel” came to be translated variously and almost
interchangeably as “war game,” “map exercise,” or
“planned exercise.” The defense urged that “Planspiele”
were merely a part of defense air-raid precautions started even before Hitler
came to power, and that the government imposed increasingly stringent measures
in this field, which Farben followed only reluctantly.
In this
subsection contemporaneous documents (2 below) are followed by an affidavit and
testimony of Prosecution Witness Gorr, a former Farben official (3 below), and
testimony of the Defendant ter Meer (4 below). |
1223 |
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