 |
all with our conscience, we directed the judgment of the authorities
in such a way that permission was granted, and in most cases, as I said, that
was possible. This, of course, corresponded to the policy of Farben; keeping
our contracts was not only our tradition, but it would have been unwise to
proceed in any other way. I should like to point out expressly that in general
our most important foreign partner was Standard Oil, which was at that time in
a similar position. I assume that I will be asked about this question later.
I should merely like to sum up and say that for both big enterprises
the conflict existed between loyalty to contracts, and the necessity to observe
the instructions and the regulations of their government — their
respective governments. |
| |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| |
DR. SILCHER (associate counsel for defendant von Knieriem): Mr. von
Knieriem, the question which you were last discussing, the question of the
technical advantage of collaboration for the two partners in the contract [the
JASCO Agreement] leads me to the internal work of Farben regarding the exchange
of experience with Standard Oil which the prosecution has offered as Document
NI-10551, Prosecution Exhibit 994¹ in book
43, English page 87, German page 80. This exhibit here states that in the
exchange of experience between Farben and Standard Oil, it was predominantly
Farben which received. What about this?
DEFENDANT VON KNIERIEM: The
reason for this report was a lecture by the vice-president of Standard Oil,
Haslam, in New York at the end of 1943. (von Knieriem 17, von Knieriem Def. Ex. 16.)²
This lecture was published in the Petroleum Times of 23 December 1943. Haslam
explains in considerable detail that the technical warfare of the United States
would not have been possible at this level if Standard Oil had not received the
valuable experience of Farben. Standard Oil had obviously been attacked in
America because of its collaboration with Farben. That was quite obviously the
reason for this speech. This speech extremely and strongly emphasized the value
of what Standard Oil received from Farben. Now, in the spring of 1944 one day,
Buetefisch told me that this speech of Haslam's had become known in Germany and
that we had to expect official German agencies to learn of it. Both of us felt
that this was a dangerous situation and that we had to consider the
possibilities that we might be attacked for treason. This was the reason why a
memorandum on the subject was worked out with Farben. It was to be used in the
event that there was such an attack on Farben for treason. In this
report |
__________
¹ Reproduced in full
above in subsection L 2.
² Ibid. (Reproduced in part.)
1318 |
. 
