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of Justice. Regarding the first provision, I said that it was
impossible to create a criminal law where the concept of the essential
importance has any significance. I said that a person cannot be condemned to
death if he is mistaken about the idea of essential importance. Now, the second
provision regarding economic treason. I said that it was still more terrible to
inflict the severest punishment on someone because he allegedly gave inventions
to other countries to the detriment of the German national economy.
I
remarked that as to whether something is a detriment or a blessing to the
German national economy is sometimes not apparent, not even afterwards. But one
certainly cannot know that beforehand. I included a little example in my
memorandum, and it seems to me that this was a good example, and I want to give
it to you.
In this memorandum I said that the Badische Anilin- und
Soda-fabrik, after the First World War, had had the best nitrogen process in
the world, the Haber-Bosch process. This process has been mentioned repeatedly
by the prosecution. The whole world was coming to Ludwigshafen in those days,
and they wanted to get a license for this process. We considered our policy for
a long time and we decided that we would not give the license. We believed that
at that time it would be more advantageous for us to keep the process for
ourselves and to export products. In general, one earned more in that way than
through royalties.
What we did was wrong. What happened was the
following: Such technical matters cannot, in the long run, be kept secret. The
world learns of them through scientific papers, through patent publications;
the processes are imitated and similar processes are developed. And that
happened in this case. The Claude process was developed in France; the Casale
process was developed in Italy, and another process in America, and the world
produced nitrogen without us — and probably just as well.
In our
opinion these processes were violations of the patent, but such patent trials
cannot be carried on all over the world.
It was wrong for us not to
give our experience to other countries — in other words, to do what this
memorandum considers correct.
Only in two cases did we make an
exception at that time. We gave the process to Norway, to our old friends,
Norsk-Hydro. They have also been mentioned in this trial. And in addition,
under the pressure of the occupation force, we gave it to France —
Q. Just a minute: Under the pressure of the occupation force? Is that
what you said?
A. Under the pressure of the occupation force, we gave
it to |
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