I. G. Farbenindustrie Manufacture of Intermediates for Dyestuffs at Griesheim, Hoechst, Ludwigshafen, Mainkur, Part 2
London: HMSO, c. 1946? First? Edition. First? Printing. Wraps. 161, Part 2 only of a 2-part set, wraps, figures, tables, fold-out charts, index, covers somewhat worn, soiled, and discolored. Complete title: I. G. Farbenindustrie Manufacture of Intermediates for Dyestuffs at Griesheim, Hoechst, Ludwigshafen, Mainkur and Offenback, Part II. Additional authors are: A. W. Burger, A. Gothard, P. C. Holmes, E. J. Hoyle, D. P. Hudson, E. Mather, C. R. Mavin, D. Secker, H. Smith, E. Stead. and D. C. Wilson. This is a product of the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee. This is a report of BIOS Trip Number: 1156. B.I.O.S. Final Report No. 986. Item No. 22. This publication cannot be held to give any protection against action for infringement [of patents]. By 1947 the aftermath of World War II had reached a stage where it had been decided, at least in England and the USA, to find out what lessons could be learnt from the War. For example, how effective had been the bombing of Germany in bringing about a rapid end of the War? To answer this question an official Government Committee had been established under the chairmanship of Colonel Derek Ezra, later Lord Ezra. Even before the end of the War, an even weightier question was posed, namely what scientific and technical progress had been achieved in Germany since 1933, when Hitler became the Fuhrer, and to find out what had not been published and had remained secret. It has been called ‘Reparation by Technology Transfer’. In practice, small teams of British and American experts were sent to Germany to suspect places, mostly industrial factories, but also to individuals, who had worked in fields equivalent to their own knowledge. A large organization soon grew up, in Britain the ‘British Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee’, BIOS, and in the USA the ‘Combined Objectives Sub-committee’, CIOS. These two were Subcommittees of SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces under the command of General Eisenhower. They had therefore all essential priorities for their work. Colonel Ezra was appointed in charge of BIOS and on his staff were Geoffrey Brigstocke and the brothers Rupert and Walter Blum. By 1947, the number of reports made by the returning expert teams had grown into the thousands, both BIOS and CIOS, and it became an urgent necessity to start a new series of ‘Overall Reports’ to review and summarize them in order to evaluate the lessons which had been learnt from Germany. A total of 35 Overall Reports were written and published officially by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, covering many fields. They were favorably received and often reviewed in the scientific and technical literature.
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (German for ''Dye industry syndicate corporation''), commonly known as IG Farben, was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer—it was seized by the Allies after World War II and divided back into its constituent companies.
In its heyday, IG Farben was the largest company in Europe and the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world. IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937, and three company scientists became Nobel laureates: Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931 "for their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods", and Gerhard Domagk in 1939 "for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil".
The company had ties in the 1920s to the liberal German People's Party and was accused by the Nazis of being an "international capitalist Jewish company". A decade later, it was a Nazi Party donor and, after the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, a major government contractor, providing significant material for the German war effort. Throughout that decade it purged itself of its Jewish employees; the remainder left in 1938. Described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich", IG Farben relied in the 1940s on slave labor from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz. One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.
The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945 and the US authorities put its directors on trial. Held from 1947 to 1948 as one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, the IG Farben trial saw 23 IG Farben directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted. By 1951 all had been released by the American high commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy. What remained of IG Farben in the West was split in 1951 into its six constituent companies, then again into three: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst. These companies continued to operate as an informal cartel and played a major role in the West German Wirtschaftswunder. Following several later mergers the main successor companies are Agfa, BASF, Bayer and Sanofi. In 2004 the University of Frankfurt, housed in the former IG Farben head office, set up a permanent exhibition on campus, the Norbert Wollheim memorial, for the slave laborers and those killed by Zyklon B. Condition: good.
Keywords: British. Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee, B.I.O.S., Dyestuffs, I. G. Farben, Gresheim, Hoechst, Resorcinol, Maink, Phenyl Methyl Pyrazolone, Phenyl Hydrazine, Methyltaurin, 5-chlor-O-Toluidine, Benzidine
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