The History of the "Business With Disease"

"Compared to the reality of the drug industry, my book reads like a vacation post card" John Le Carre, Author, "The Constant Gardener"

The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of this century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stands for "Association of Common Interests" and was nothing other than a powerful cartel of German chemical and pharmaceutical companies that separated after WW II into BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and others.. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. One year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler's seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, the Second World War.

One hundred percent of all explosives and one hundred percent of all synthetic gasoline came from the factories of IG Farben. Whenever the German Wehrmacht conquered another country, IG Farben followed, systematically taking over the industries of those countries. Through this close collaboration with Hitler's Wehrmacht, IG Farben participated in the plunder of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and all other countries conquered by the Nazis.

The U.S. government investigation of the factors that led to the Second World War in 1946 came to the conclusion that without IG Farben the Second World War would simply not have been possible. We have to come to grips with the fact that it was not a psychopath, Adolph Hitler, or bad genes of the German people that brought about the Second World War. Economic greed by companies like Bayer, BASF and Hoechst was the key factor in bringing about the Holocaust.

No one who saw Steven Spielberg's film "Schindler's List" will forget the scenes in the concentration camp Auschwitz.

The Birth of IG Farben and the Support for Hitler
(from the book "Sword And Swastika" by Telford Taylor)

After the First World War, all the major chemical concerns were merged in 1926 into a single gigantic trust - the I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. - under the leadership of Carl Duisberg and Carl Bosch. Dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals, photographic supplies, explosives, and a myriad of other products poured forth in ever-growing volume and variety.

Soon after the election of July, 1932, in which the Nazis had doubled their vote, Heinrich Buetefisch [chief of the I.G. Farben - Leuna plant] and Heinrich Gattineau [a Farben official who was also an SA officer and personally known to both Rudolf Hess and Ernst Roehm] waited upon the Fuehrer-to-be to learn whether Farben could count on governmental support for its synthetic gasoline program in the event the Nazis should attain power. Hitler readily agreed that Farben should be given the necessary support to warrant expansion of the Leuna plant.

After the seizure of power, Farben lost no time in following up this auspicious introduction. Significantly, Farben's chosen channel was not the Heeresleitung but Hermann Goering's new Air Ministry. In a long letter to Goering's deputy Erhard Milch, Carl Krauch of Farben outlined a "four-year plan" for the expansion of synthetic fuel output. Milch thereupon called in Generalleutnant von Vollard Bockelberg, Chief of the Army Ordnance Office, and it was agreed that the Army and the Air Ministry together would sponsor the Krauch project. A few months later Farben received a formal Reich contract calling for the enlargement of Leuna so that production would reach three hundred thousand tons per year by 1937, with Farben's sales guaranteed for ten years - until June 30, 1944 - on a cost-plus basis.

I.G. Farben and the Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Auschwitz was the largest mass extermination factory in human history, but the concentration camp was only the appendix.

The main project was IG Auschwitz, a 100% subsidiary of IG Farben, the largest industrial complex of the world for manufacturing synthetic gasoline and rubber for the conquest of Europe.

On April 14, 1941, in Ludwigshafen, Otto Armbrust, the IG Farben board member responsible for the Auschwitz project, stated to his IG Farben board colleagues, "our new friendship with the SS is a blessing. We have determined all measures integrating the concentration camps to benefit our company."

The pharmaceutical departments of the IG Farben cartel used the victims of the concentration camps in their own way: thousands of them died during human experiments such as the testing of new and unknown vaccines.

There was no retirement plan for the prisoners of IG Auschwitz. Those who were too weak or too sick to work were selected at the main gate of the IG Auschwitz factory and sent to the gas chambers. Even the chemical gas Zyklon-B used for the annihilation of millions of people was derived from the drawing boards and factories of IG Farben.

Medical Experiments in Auschwitz Conducted by I.G. Farben
(from the book "I.G. Farben - from Anilin to forced labor" by Jörg Hunger and Paul Sander)

Scientific experiments were also done in other concentration camps. A decisive fact is that IG employee and SS major Dr. Helmuth Vetter, stationed in several concentration camps, participated in these experiments by order of Bayer Leverkusen.

At the same time as Dr. Joseph Mengele, he experimented in Auschwitz with medications that were designated "B-1012", "B-1034", "3382" or "Rutenol". The test preparations were not just applied to those prisoners who were ill, but also to healthy ones. These people were first infected on purpose through pills, powdered substances, injections or enemas. Many of the medications caused the victims to vomit or have bloody diarrhoea. In most cases the prisoners died as a result of the experiments.

In the Auschwitz files, correspondence was discovered between the camp commander and Bayer Leverkusen. It dealt with the sale of 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes: "With a view to the planned experiments with a new sleep-inducing drug we would appreciate it if you could place a number of prisoners at our disposal (…)" – "We confirm your response, but consider the price of 200 RM per woman to be too high. We propose to pay no more than 170 RM per woman. If this is acceptable to you, the women will be placed in our possession. We need some 150 women (…)" – "We confirm your approval of the agreement. Please prepare for us 150 women in the best health possible (…)" – "Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep you informed of the developments regarding the experiments (…)" – "The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment (…)"

A former Auschwitz prisoner testified: "There was a large ward of tuberculars on block 20. The Bayer Company sent medications in unmarked and unnamed ampoules. The tuberculars were injected with this. These unfortunate people were never killed in the gas chambers. One only had to wait for them to die, which did not take long (…) 150 Jewish women that had been bought from the camp attendant by Bayer, (…) served for experiments with unknown hormonal preparations."

Parallel to the tests by Behringwerke and Bayer Leverkusen, the chemical-pharmaceutical and serologic-bacteriological department at Hoechst started experimenting on Auschwitz prisoners with their new typhus fever preparation “3582”. The first series of tests had results that were far from satisfactory. Of the 50 test persons 15 died; the typhus fever drug led to vomiting and exhaustion. Part of the concentration camp Auschwitz was quarantined, which led to an extension of the tests to the concentration camp in Buchenwald. In the journal of the "department for typhus fever and viral research of the concentration camp Buchenwald" we find on January 10th, 1943: "As suggested by the IG Farbenindustrie A.G. the following were tested as typhus fever medications: a) preparation 3582 <Akridin> of the chem. pharm. and sero-bact. Department Hoechst – Prof. Lautenschläger and Dr. Weber – (therapeutic test A), b) methylene blue, formerly tested on mice by Prof. Kiekuth, Elberfeld (therapeutic test M)."

The first and also the second series of therapeutic tests, held in Buchenwald between March 31st and April 11th 1943, had negative results due to insufficient contamination of the tested prisoners. Neither did the experiments in Auschwitz have evident successes.

The scientific value of all these experiments, whether ordered by the IG Farben or not, was in fact zero. The test persons were in bad physical condition, caused by forced labor, insufficient and wrong nutrition and diseases in the concentration camp. Add to this the generally bad sanitary circumstances in the laboratories. "The test results in the concentration camps, as the IG laboratory specialists should know, could not be compared to results made under normal circumstances".

The SS physician Dr. Hoven testified to this during the Nuremberg Trial: "It should be generally known, and especially in German scientific circles, that the SS did not have notable scientists at its disposal. It is clear that the experiments in the concentration camps with IG preparations only took place in the interests of the IG, which strived by all means to determine the effectiveness of these preparations. They let the SS deal with the – shall I say – dirty work in the concentration camps. It was not the IG’s intention to bring any of this out in the open, but rather to put up a smoke screen around the experiments so that (…) they could keep any profits to themselves. Not the SS but the IG took the initiative for the concentration camp experiments."

The Nuremberg War Tribunal

The Nuremberg War Criminal Tribunal convicted 24 IG Farben board members and executives on the basis of mass murder, slavery and other crimes against humanity. Amazingly, however, by 1951 all of them had already been released, continuing to consult with German corporations. The Nuremberg Tribunal dissolved the IG Farben into Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF.

Today, each of the three daughters of the IG Farben is 20 times as big as the IG Farben mother was at its height in 1944, the last year of the Second World War.

More importantly, for almost three decades after the Second World War, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst (now Aventis) each filled its highest position, chairman of the board, with former members of the Nazi, NSDAP:

* Carl Wurster, chairman of the board of BASF until 1974 was, during the war, on the board of the company manufacturing Zyklon-B gas
* Carl Winnacker, chairman of the board of Hoechst until the late 70's, was a member of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) and was a member of the board of IG Farben
* Curt Hansen, chairman of the board of Bayer until the late 70's, was co-organizer of the conquest of Europe in the department of "acquisition of raw materials." Under this leadership the IG Farben daughters, BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst, continued to support politicians representing their interests.

During the 50's and 60's they invested in the political career of a young representative from a suburb of the BASF town of Ludwigshafen, his name: Helmut Kohl.

From 1957 to 1967 the young Helmut Kohl was a paid lobbyist of the "Verband Chemischer Industrie," the central lobby organization of the German pharmaceutical and chemical cartel. Thus, the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry built up one of its own as a political representative, leaving the German people with only the choice of final approval.

The result is well known: Helmut Kohl was chancellor of Germany for 16 years and the German pharmaceutical and chemical industry became the world’s leading exporter of chemical products, with subsidiaries in over 150 countries, more than IG Farben ever had. Several billion people will now die prematurely, if the pharmaceutical industry gets its way. Germany is the only country in the entire world in which a former paid lobbyist for the chemical and pharmaceutical cartel was head of the government. In summary, the support of German politics for the global expansion plans of the German pharmaceutical and chemical companies has a 100-year-old tradition.

It is with this background that we understand the support of Bonn for the unethical plans of the Codex Commission. (Remark made by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation)

The U.S. lead prosecutor in the Nuremberg War Criminal Tribunal against the IG Farben anticipated this development when he said, "these IG Farben criminals, not the lunatic Nazi fanatics, are the main war criminals. If the guilt of these criminals is not brought to daylight and if they are not punished, they will represent a much greater threat to the future peace of the world than Hitler if he were still alive."

From "Arbeit macht frei" to "Codex Alimentarius"

Just fifteen years after they were convicted in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, Bayer, BASF and Hoechst were again the architects of the next major human rights offences. In 1962, they established the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

This dark period of German history is inextricably bound to one man, Fritz ter Meer:

He was a member of the Managing Board of IG Farben from its inception to its dissolution. As the Wartime Manager, he was responsible for IG Auschwitz.

In the Nuremberg Tribunal, ter Meer stated: "Forced labor did not inflict any remarkable injury, pain, or suffering on the detainees, particularly since the alternative for these workers would have been death."

In 1948, ter Meer was sentenced by the Nuremberg Tribunal to seven years in prison for plundering and slavery. In 1952, his sentence was commuted, due to the influence of powerful friends. From 1956-1964, he was reinstated as a member of the Managing Board of Bayer AG. In 1962, ter Meer was one of the architects of the "Codex Alimentarius" - Commission and one of the main designers of the schemes that would profit from human suffering.

The deceptive title "Codex Alimentarius" is no accident. It was devised by the same firms and indeed the same individuals, who gave the Auschwitz concentration camp inmates the deceptive slogan "Arbeit mach frei" ("Work makes you free").

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