 |
A few years later, when in 1933 the boycott campaign was started
against the exports of German industry, Farben was exposed to especially severe
attacks in the United States, again by the same circles. One year later, in
1934, when Ivy Lee, the publicity advisor of the Standard Oil Company of New
Jersey, who had also advised Farben, was slandered in the American press
campaign by a competitor, the press campaign against the IG — this time
also directed against my person — it started again like a heavy
thunderstorm. After a pause of many years this campaign was renewed even more
intensively when Great Britain entered the war. In 1940, a pamphlet was
published in New York entitled “The Apocalyptical Horsemen of I. G.
Farben.” After the collapse in 1945, the ghost of this pamphlet noticeably
and invisibly influenced the inquiry work of the Bernstein Committee. The
report of this Bernstein Committee, however, was the basis of the indictment.
The Nuernberg trials had a high ethical aim: to give the world a new
and better justice. Whether this aim has been achieved, or what has been
achieved in reality, will be judged later on by history. Today, 3 years after
Armistice Day, the time probably has not yet come to judge the demoniac events
of the past decades; however, these cannot be understood or measured by human
standards alone — as great as these may be.
The conqueror
considers the world from another angle than the conquered does. But with
respect to one thing the advantage is on the side of the conquered: his eyes
have seen more danger and more misery than those of the conqueror; his mind is
keener and more vigilant towards the future. The German people have been living
in a crisis practically uninterrupted for the last 30 years. What is happening
in the world today with regard to many things — we know it only too well
— is almost a repetition of our own experience.
Everybody who
lived in Germany during the past years knows how from the bottom of our hearts
we longed for civilized legal conditions and normal relations with the rest of
the world, to get away from the situation created by this revolutionary
dictatorship. This good will, this front of people of good will, was especially
strong in the internationally-minded industry. In the circle of my associates
in I. G. Farben there were many people of good will. It is true, nothing
perfect in this world, and all men have their weak sides, even more so in a
period of such a confusion of all standards. However, I was and am happy and
proud that I was a member of the Vorstand of an enterprise which even in the
past darkest years of German history and in spite of the grave burden which I.
G. Farben, too, had to bear, always held its escutcheon in clean hands.
We knew what I. G. Farben meant for the German people. Our exports were
a decisive contribution towards feeding and clothing the |
1070 |
. 
