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pertained to incidents occurring in territory not under the
belligerent occupation of Germany. This ruling will be further noticed under
that part of the judgment devoted to count two of the indictment.
(d) During the trial the defendants were granted rights of
access to the captured Farben papers in the Office of the Chief Counsel for War
Crimes.
(e) The Tribunal refused to pass upon a number of
motions raising questions of law and attacking the sufficiency of the evidence,
since it felt that it would be in better position to determine such matters
after it had had the benefit of the final arguments and briefs of counsel and a
timely opportunity to review the large volume of evidence. These issues will be
determined by this judgment.
Farben as an Instrumentality
Counts one, two, three, and five of the indictment each allege that
“All of the defendants, acting through the instrumentality of Farben and
otherwise with divers other persons,” committed the acts charged therein.
It is also stated in counts one, two, and three that said defendants “were
members of organizations or groups, including Farben, which were connected with
the commission of said crimes.”
The designation, Farben, as used
in the indictment, has reference to Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie
Aktiengesellschaft, which is usually abbreviated to I. G. Farbenindustrie A.
G., and which may be freely translated as meaning “Community of Interests
of the Dyestuffs Industries, a Stock Corporation.” The corporation is
generally referred to as IG in the German transcript of the proceedings and as
Farben in the English.
Farben came into being during 1925, when the
firm of Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik of Ludwigshafen changed its name to the
present designation and merged with five of the other leading German chemical
concerns. From 1904, however, some of these firms had been working under
community of interest agreements, and in 1916 they had formed an association
council to exercise a measure of joint control over production, marketing, and
research and for the pooling of profits. By 1926 the merger had been effected
with a capital structure of 1.1 billion reichsmarks, which exceeded by three
times the aggregate capitalization of all the other chemical concerns of any
consequence in Germany.
Under the leadership of Dr. Carl Duisberg, the
first Chairman of the Aufsichtsrat, and of Dr. Carl Bosch, who succeeded to
that position in 1935, Farben steadily expanded its production and its economic
power. In 1926 the firm had a staff of 93,742 persons and an annual turnover of
1,209 million reichsmarks. By 1942 the staff had increased to 187,700 persons
and the turnover to 2,904 million reichsmarks. At the peak of its activities
the yearly turnover of the firm exceeded three billion reichsmarks.
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