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The History of I.G. Farben I.G. was a mighty industrial empire in the 1930s. It dominated the chemical business world, fortifying links with household names such as ICI, Du Pont and Dow Chemicals. From its laboratories and factories came the strategic raw materials Germany could not supply, the synthetics of oils, rubbers, fibres, and nitrates. I.G. also produced vaccines, drugs, rocket fuels, and poison gases. Few universities could match the profusion of Nobel Prizes earned by its scientists: Paul Ehrlich for Salvarsan, Fritz Haber for the fixation of Nitrogen, Carl Bosch for synthesizing Saltpeter and Gasoline, and Gerhard Domagk for the Sulfur Drugs. "Without I.G.'s immense productive facilities, its far-reaching research, varied technical experience and overall concentration of economic power, Germany would not have been in the position to start its aggressive war in September 1939." Such was the judgment rendered by a team of civilian and military experts assigned by General Eisenhower at the close of World War II to make an exhaustive investigation of I.G.'s contribution to the Nazi war effort. |