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large supply of nickel-copper-ore for stockpiling” were reported
[NI-9549, Pros. Ex.
720].
The defendant Haefliger was especially active in obtaining
import of nickel by exploiting Farben’s international cartel arrangements.
Farben had a contract with the Mond Nickel Company Limited of England [NI
10389, Pros. Ex. 723] for delivery to Farben of a quantity of nickel each
year. The minutes of a conference at Ludwigshafen, attended by defendant
Haefliger, concerning the stock of nickel, on 5 April 1939 [NI 7564, Pros. Ex. 724]
comments that the reports to the English company as to the consumption of
nickel in Germany “should no longer be made in the hitherto detailed
form” as “Berlin is very much against such reports”; the minutes
refer to “tendency in Berlin to import into Germany * * * nickel raw
materials from another source, the import of which is not linked lip with such
suspicious conditions from a military economic point of view.” In a
memorandum by defendant Haefliger, dated 19 October 1939 [NI-9636, Pros. Ex. 725]
is set out a contract with the International Nickel Company of Canada, which
the memorandum states controlled approximately 85 percent of the world’s
production of nickel, whereby “IG succeeded in persuading the trust to
store a very considerable supply of nickel concentrate * * * in Germany at its
own expense, for the benefit of IG”; in that memorandum Haefliger
commented that up to the last days before the outbreak of the war, the
International Nickel Company had taken no “steps to eliminate the risk, to
the tune of several million marks, involved in storing such quantities.”
In 1935, Farben undertook the construction of a bomb-proof gasoline
depot for the storage of gasoline [NI-7566, Pros. Ex. 747], and in 1936,
at the request of the German Government, Farben, taking advantage of its close
relationship with Standard Oil Company, arranged to buy twenty million dollars
worth of gasoline, the funds for which were furnished by the government in
order to build up its stock of gasoline [NI -4690, Pros. Ex. 731]. In July 1938, tetraethyl
lead also was obtained from America [NI-4922, Pros. Ex. 739]. In regard to that
transaction, Witness Henze of Farben said [NI 4831, Pros. Ex.733] :
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“ * * * At the request of
the Air Ministry and on direct order of Goering, I. G. Farben procured in 1938,
500 tons of tetraethyl lead from the Ethyl Export Corporation, of the United
States. The Air Ministry needed this lead because it is indispensable to the
manufacture of high octane aviation gasoline and because they wanted to store
up the lead in Germany to tide the Air Ministry over until such time as the
plant in Germany could manufacture sufficient quantities. We were producing
sufficient quantities of tetraethyl-lead for ordinary purposes but the storage
of the 500 tons of tetraethyl-lead was undertaken because in case of war
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1272 |
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