 |
Q. And what actually happened?
A. Nothing happened. Only one
chemist reached ruined Kharkov. It was completely dismantled. There was hardly
anything left of the buna plant.
Q. Now, Mr. Ambros, the prosecution
has offered a whole sheaf of documents which show what the intention was. Now,
I want to ask you what your opinion was, what you know about it, and what
Farben really intended in this eventuality?
A. I need not go into the
contracts. Your question is what did Farben think, or what did I think?
Q. What did you, yourself, think? A. I thought that it was sensible
that, if it should really happen that Russian factories were reached, these
factories should be operated.
Q. Very well. Did you think that these
factories might later on possibly be made useful for Farben?
A. No. But
the idea came to me early that Russian rubber was a different quality. Russian
rubber was suitable, for instance, for making boots, but it was not suitable
for making tires. Further, the suggestion was brought up as to whether a
Russian rubber factory could be modified and adapted to the production of good
buna, by Farben using its experience in the Russian plants and making styrene
and introducing styrene polymerization — in short, by adapting Russian
buna production to good quality buna. This, of course, brought up problems
which, formulated from the legal side, had the following object: There was
concern lest, in this way, experience and knowledge should be turned by us, the
Farben experts, into channels which later on might not be equitable for us, and
we were thinking of the German Labor Front where Mr. Ley* might in this way
become the owner of buna factories. One must not forget that at the time Farben
had invested over a billion, privately, in buna and that it was the duty of the
Vorstand to consider safeguards to protect such capital in the, to put it
mildly, disorderly conditions of the Third Reich. To formulate this idea was
the purpose of many contracts, all of which remained academic or theoretical.
No contract was signed. The famous letter of the Reich Ministry of Economics,
which was to be written to protect our interests, was never written, and that
is really why the Russian buna company was never founded at all. That is
all. |
| |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
__________
* Leader of the German
Labor Front (DAF), Dr. Robert Ley was indicted in the case before the
International Military Tribunal. He committed suicide before the trial
began.
293 |
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