Sunday, April 7, 2024

How I.G. Farben was crucial to funding and building the Holocaust: Hell's Cartel by Diarmuid Jeffrey

 "On February 27 [1932] the IG [Farben] deposited RM 400,000 in the Nazi Party's accounts, far and away the largest donation made by any firm." p. 170, Hell's Cartel by Diarmuid Jeffreys

 "...the Nazis were able to blanket the nation with propaganda and mount huge rallies, thanks to the massive largesse bestowed on them by IG Farben and others."...."IG Farben now set out to solidify its relations with the new regime. A few weeks later the cartel increased its financial donations, responding with alacrity to requests for money from local and national Nazi Party officials. By the end of 1933, the IG [Farben] had handed over RM 4.5 million in contributions to one fund or another....[IG Farben] wanted more than anything to save the IG's synthetic fuel program." pp. 171-2, Hell's Cartel by Diarmuid Jeffreys (2010).

my video review 

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805091434/hellscartel 

"Had the IG [Farben]'s managers found the courage to oppose doing business with the Nazis in the late 1930s, or had they been even marginally less compliant, Hitler would have struggled to get his war machine moving." p. 218, Hell's Cartel by Diarmuid Jeffreys

"The result was a groundbreaking agreement known as the Benz-invertrag (gasoline contract [synthetic fuel]) which was signed in Berlin on December 14, 1933. In exchange for the IG [Farbens] promise to raise production at Leuna to 350,000 tons per year by 1935, the Reich agreed to buy all of the factory's output that could not be sold on the open market. It also guaranteed a ten-year price that corresponded to the costs of production (including taxes), with a return of 5 percent interest on the IG's investment....From now on the IG [Farben]'s fate and fortunes would be inextricably tied to those of the Third Reich. The future was not yet visible but the cartel had in essence committed to providing Hitler with the means to launch the most devastating conflict in human history....It was also a pivotal moment in a sequence of events that would lead inexorably to the blitzkrieg, to Stalingrad, and to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. ...U.S. Army's General Telford Taylor would accuse IG Farben's bosses of making World War II possible, of being "the magicians who made the nightmare of Mein Kampf come true."" pp. 193-4, "Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine" by Diarmuid Jeffreys, 2008.


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