On Hitler

I decided to have Max Ilgner interrogated again. Ilgner had hung his coat in Berlin ever since Farben was Farben. He had rated enough pull with the Nazis to save from death the only survivor of the Roehm plot on Hitler s life in 1933, and he d hired this man in his office. 

Even where the National Socialists plans regarding the future of the Jews in their sphere of influence up to mid-1941 are concerned, there certainly are similarities in the views held by the Revisionist and the so-called functionalist school of historians. In light of the actual policies of the National Socialists, M. Broszat pointed out in 1977 that, aside from verbal threats on Hitler s part, there is no evidence in political events until mid-1941 for any National Socialist plans for extermination. Rather, documents as well as the actual results of Hitler s policies proved that until October and November 1941 all measures were aimed at removing the Jews from the German sphere of influence by means of resettlement.96 In this respect, the contemporaneous documents which mention evacuation, deportation, resettlement etc. of the Jews are in no way examples of a code language they simply say exactly what they mean. This view was recently supported by Jerusalem historian Yehuda Bauer.97... 

Emil Fischer in 1901, respectively. On Hitler s coming to power, Bergmann emigrated to the USA, and was thereafter active at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, investigating the specificity of proteases including basic studies on the reversal of proteolysis protease-catalyzed peptide synthesis). 

Tn their years together Hahn and Meitner did significant research on beta- and gamma-ray spectra. They discovered the new element protoactinium-91 and, at Meitner s suggestion, took up, and made great progress with, work on neutron bombardment of nuclei that Enrico Fermi had commenced in Rome. In 1938, this research was suspended when Adolph Hitler annexed Austria and Meitner had to flee Germany. 

The process of nuclear fission was discovered more than half a century ago in 1938 by Lise Meitner (1878-1968) and Otto Hahn (1879-1968) in Germany. With the outbreak of World War II a year later, interest focused on the enormous amount of energy released in the process. At Los Alamos, in the mountains of New Mexico, a group of scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) worked feverishly to produce the fission, or atomic, bomb. Many of the members of this group were exiles from Nazi Germany. They were spurred on by the fear that Hitler would obtain the bomb first Their work led to the explosion of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert at 5 30 a.m. on July 16,1945. Less than a month later (August 6,1945), the world learned of this new weapon when another bomb was exploded... 

Haber was slow to grasp the implications of the Nazis rise to power. As Germans boycotted Jewish businesses and Hitler s brownshirts removed Jewish students from university libraries and laboratories, the Nazis passed a law on April 7, 1933, to cleanse the civil service and universities of Jews. By this time, Haber s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was financed by the government and its employees were treated as civil functionaries subject to the new law. Haber himself was exempt because of war work and seniority. Eager for a chemical warfare center, Nazi authorities singled out Haber s institute and ordered him to fire its Jews. At the same time, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society told Haber to somehow keep his important senior scientists. He had until May 2 to act. 

At dawn on March 12, 1938, German troops crossed the border into Austria. For ethnic reasons, Hitler s plan for governing Austria was not much different from his administration in Germany. Austria was to work for the German industrial mobilization, but her industries were not to be subjugated. 

Of course not Through the years from 1933 until 1945, all of Farben s pharmaceutical activities had expanded, but you couldn t call it an expansion that brought on the Eastern front and then typhus. The pharmaceutical division, he said, had taken no part in the rearmament of Germany. In 1933 he had thought "the peace program proclaimed by Hitler allowed free economic development in all fields."... 

But Farben was unable to meet the competition of the natural-rubber producers. They were millions in the red on this one dream. In 1931, by a very close margin, Ter Meer persuaded his colleagues to go along for another year in one last effort to keep buna in experimental production. By the time he met Hitler, Ter Meer stood alone in his faith that soon buna could be mass-produced at a profit. 

Soon Farben was producing double this 1000 tons 2000 tons being the most Farben s one plant could put out, Krauch then renewed the request to have a second buna plant constructed, which would produce still another 2000 tons every month. He wanted to finance the second plant by a loan from the Reichsbank. Such a loan needed the approval of his old friend Hjalmar Schacht. Reluctantly Schacht had stayed on in the Hitler government as Finance Minister. He turned the loan down. 

Austria was occupied and became part of Germany I believe, just two or three months ago. I don t like to talk about the way Austria had been occupied, but it was — and I believe all the Allied powers agreed to this political change. When the developments in Czechoslovakia started, we could see that Hitler planned to get the German part of Czechoslovakia back. As later on the facts show he got it back not in a nice way. I mean he started with an absolutely Nazi method, but it was done in a way which followed, whether rightly or wrongly, with the approval of England, France and God knows all the other nations. 

Ministry of Economics, which didn t see the need of taking over French dyestuffs, also rejected this phase of Farben s "New Order for France." "No pressure of any kind," said Hitler, "will be exerted on the dyestuffs companies." Farben went to other branches of the government with a plan that would make the French owners pliable —to halt dyestuffs production by decree, to withhold raw materials from the French factories, "to hamper imports and exports between occupied and unoccupied France." The government also turned down this plan. 

The French pleaded for time. Ambassador Hemmen said he thought everyone should be reasonable and that Farben should grant the French until the next day to think things over. "Since it is obvious that the matter will be settled satisfactorily, the Ambassador will assume you can carry on tomorrow without me." Perhaps the Ambassador had been thinking over what might happen if Hitler discovered his connivance. 

Dr. Bosch that "Hitler was determined to go to war," Krauch admitted he realized that "defeat was inevitable" if the planning and production of all munitions were not better co-ordinated. "I went with Loeb s wrong figures to Goering and I said We will lose the war on this basis. "... 

The tension that lay over Europe was nearly intolerable. How much more tense must he and the others have been, as they studied Farben reports that riots "breaking out" in Danzig were clearly contrived by Hitler to bring on either war or a complete Polish surrender These events resounded mysteriously in Paris, London, and Washington. How much more critical could a "crisis" be In early August of 1939, Von Knieriem advised the Minister of Economics of Farben s plans ... 

That is what the Baron von Schnitzler heard Hitler say on February 20, 1933. Goering then asked for financial support. Hjalmar Schacht said "On this table we must raise a fund of 3,000,000 marks."... 

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