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GERMAN INDUSTRY & THE HOLOCAUST.   Term Paper ID:28343 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Discusses role & support industries gave to Nazi war machine; final solution; slave labor; Auschwitz; accountability.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Discusses role & support industries gave to Nazi war machine; final solution; slave labor; Auschwitz; accountability. Paper Introduction: GERMAN INDUSTRY AND THE HOLOCAUST This research paper discusses the role of German industry, its involvement, culpability and accountability, in and for the Holocaust, the systematic extermination or mass genocide of about six of the eleven million Jews in Europe by the government of National Socialist (Nazi) Germany between 1940 and 1945. With very few exceptions, German industry gave its wholehearted support to the Nazi war machine and knowingly and actively participated in the implementation of the Final Solution (Endlosung) of the 'Jewish Question.' It did so for a number of reasons related to the furtherance of corporate interests; and it acted with at best a crippling moral indifference to the suffering and fate of the Jews. Those industries most directly involved were the major manufacturers Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Gustav's son Alfried, who had married Bertha, thesole heir to the Krupp's interests, became an honorary SS officer, andrelied on Hitler's support to gain sole control of the firm in 1943. Thousands ofJews were killed by Einsatzgruppen, SS Special Action Squads, in Poland in1939-194 , but many more were herded into Polish ghettos. Farben set up its own Monovitz plant at Auschwitz in thesummer of 1942 complete with bunks, conditions were no better than before(Borkin 126). Both Kruppand I.G. were granted full political and legal rights, butthey only achieved that status later (after 1859) in Germany. . the desired final solution of the Jewish Question" (Manchester 465).Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by shooting in the Baltic Statesand in western Russia in 1941. According to Borkin, the decision to build a synthetic oil and asynthetic rubber plant at Auschwitz, "the largest [such plants] in theworld]," was made in November 1941 by the I.G. However,he served only 3 months and his holdings were restored to him. At the Wannsee Conference of January 2 ,1942, Heydrich indicated that Jews would be employed but only as a stopgapmeasure until they were killed by overwork or otherwise. I.G. Most beneficiaries received less than $5 . Farben board became in 1937 the 'chemical czar' under Goering'sFour Year Plan which emphasized German raw materials self-sufficiency.According to Borkin, "in the four years since Bosch made his compact withHitler to prepare Germany for war I.G.'s descent into the theory andpractice of Nazi morality moved with astonishing speed" (94). But they knew about it with their minds, seeing reality as some statistical abstraction. Conflicts diderupt between industry which was generally supported by Speer and the SS.Borkin said "it soon became apparent that the 'selections' were being madewithout sufficient regard for the urgent demands of war production. Firms which avoidedentirely or minimized the use of slave labor included the Stuttgart autoparts manufacturer Robert Bosch and the large electrical manufacturers,Siemens and AEG. . The company requested fromGoering and he in turn requested from Himmler that the SS provide 8-12, skilled and unskilled workers from the Auschwitz death camp. Relations between Krupp and Farben and the Nazi regime. Itsunique role in German defense had been cemented in World War I when itsdiscoveries of ammonia and synthetic dyestuffs enabled Germany to becomeself-sufficient in explosives despite the British blockade on theimportation of foreign nitrates. Ideology of Death Why The Holocaust Happened in Germany. Tyrants and Tycoons German Industry From Hitler to Adenauer. These workers werepredominantly civilian workers conscripted by the Nazi Labor office andAllied, mostly Russian, P.O.W.s. Conclusion The only reasonable conclusion one can draw is that top officials ofmany German firms, including some of its most important like Krupp andFarben among others, felt that they had no alternative but to employ Jewsas slave laborers under inhumane conditions and that other firmscontributed in different ways to the Nazi killing machine. In the interwar period it pioneered thedevelopment of synthetic oil and rubber, on which Germany becameincreasingly dependent during World War II. Other suppliers directly involvedincluded I.A. On July 31, 1941,Hermann Goering instructed Reinhard Heydrich, #2 man in the SS, to "makeall necessary preparations . They did not acknowledge reality with their hearts because they did not care . The sanctionsimposed on Krupp, Farben and others and their executives and managers byAllied governments and postwar German courts were light compared with theenormity of their offenses. Thoseobjections were, however, based on efficiency, not morality. New York: Free P, 1978.Friedlander, Saul. The last mass slaughters of Jewsoccurred at the camps and on the SS death marches of inmates in 1944-45. In the 19thand early 2 th centuries, Jews in Germany made great progress, especiallyin the arts, finance and commerce and the liberal professions, butGoldhagen said that in Germany "the central image of the Jews held them tobe malevolent, powerful, a principal . Farben Board of Directors.I.G. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.Weiss, Jonathan. Borkin concluded that Jewish laborers had become non-persons,"IG reduced slavery to a consumable raw material, a human ore from whichthe mineral of life was systematically extracted" (126). The Fuhrer had not asked him[Alfried] to take advantage of the victims of Auschwitz. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1962.Vital, David. This process was accelerated by the pogrom organized byPropaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels on the night of November 9-1 , 1938,Kristallnacht, during which Jewish shops and synagogues were destroyed,many Jews were beaten or harassed, about 1 were killed, 2 to 3 thousand were imprisoned and massive fines were imposed on them (Vital822). Executives of Krupp, including its chief executive and owner, Alfriedvon Krupp, and executives of I.G. Bosch agreed in a meeting with the Fuhrerin early 1933 to join forces with the state in the development of syntheticoil and rubber plants, but disagreed with him over the latter's insistencethat Farben discharge its many Jewish scientists and administrators. Through their campaigns of hate, terror and intimidation, the Nazisheld out the Jews, only 525, of whom lived in Germany in 1933, less thanone percent of the population, as the scapegoats for Germany's defeat inWorld War I, the authors of the Bolshevik threat and the cause of many ofits political, economic and social problems in the 192 s and early 193 s.Jews were portrayed as evil and subhuman, a source of racial pollution ofthe German volk. Many other industrialfirms were involved in the Holocaust, such as the pharmaceutical firmswhich supported hideous medical experiments in the camps. By 1933 it was the leading steel producer in Europe and aprincipal supplier of a wide array of metal-based armaments, shells,artillery, battleships, submarines, etc. This Bunafacility was the largest within an industrial complex which, according toHauser, included in addition to the Farben plants, a Krupp automaticweapons factory, other "chemical and metal factories, gas works, a railwayrepair shop, quarries, agricultural and timber enterprises" (169). The Hitler of History. Manchester saidKrupp built the Berthawerke at Auschwitz "with Auschwitz Jews over theobjections of government engineers . At Auschwitz andelsewhere, Krupp and Farben managers displayed little, if any, concern overthe treatment or fate of the Jews who worked for them. The list includes all of Germany's armsmanufacturers, its chemical producers, its coal and other mining firms andits air, sea and land equipment manufacturers, including major autocompanies such as Mercedes and Porsche-Volkswagen. After he became Chancellor in1933, he elevated to the level of national policy German anti-semitismwhich Friedlander said by 1914 was "in comparison to that of France,Austria, and Russia, . For centuries,the Jews in Europe had been reviled and persecuted --i.e "slaughtered,driven out, or forced into ghettos and restricted to demeaning trades,"primarily because of the traditional belief that they had murdered Christ(Weiss 1). By1933, it was a vast international concern, which had been consolidated in1925 as a gigantic chemical and pharmaceutical trust with interlockingcross-licensing and other agreements with major international chemicalcompanies such as ICI in Britain and Dupont in the United States. They gave most of theirfinancial support to other right-wing political parties such as AlfredHugenberg's German People's Party (DVP). Involvement of Krupp, Farben and Others in Use of Slave Labor Due to labor shortages, Germany made extensive and increasing use ofslave labor during the war: over four million in 1942, over six million in1943 and 7.5 million in 1944 (Goldhagen 29 ). Their careersand firms profited from these activities and they showed no concern for theJewish victims, except earlier on for some of their higher level Jewishscientists and managers. Mass deportations to the East of German Jews followed. "Life Unworthy of Life". . . Works CitedBaum, Rainer C. Krupp,which had been in the iron and steel business since medieval times, basedon the rich iron ore and coal deposits of the Ruhr valley, had been theprincipal arms supplier to the Kingdom of Prussia and modern Germangovernments. It, too, originally developed in the Ruhrbecause its original chemical inventions were derived from coal gases. Farben. A People Apart The Jews in Europe 1789-1939. . The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968. There was only marginal accountability for theiracts. Farben were prosecuted in 1946-1947 inNuremberg by American tribunals, because they were high profile employersof slave labor at Auschwitz and other death camps and because of theirimportance to the German war effort; however, many other firms employedJews as slave laborers. Krupp was convicted of slavery and massmurder and sentenced to 12 years and his property was confiscated. Path to the Final Solution According to Goldhagen, "sometime either at the end of 194 or inearly 1941, [Adolf] Hitler . Hitler had signaledhis intentions when he told the Reichstag on January 3 , 1939: If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe succeed again in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth and the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race throughout Europe (Lukacs 188). Alfried said at his trial, "we were compelled to accept forcedlabor like other industrialists. . The Krupp weapons plant at Auschwitz was smaller, and, according toLochner, was only built in 1943 after Krupp was ordered to build it bySpeer (222). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Topf and Sohne, who built the crematory ovens, W. for bringing about a complete solution . certainly the most extreme" (25). After that method and the use of gassing bymobile gas vans were discarded as inefficient, mass killings through theuse of Zyklon B were approved by Heinrich Himmler and introduced at the newdeath camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland in March 1942. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.Borkin, Joseph. source of the ills that besetGermany, and therefore dangerous to the welfare of Germany" (77). When Krupp requestedthat Jews be made available to work in its munitions factories in May 1942,the SS agreed to make available 4 percent of those who were fit to workwhich it estimated was 25 percent, which would yield a figure of 1 percent, but the SS consistently underdelivered on its promises to industrybecause it was more intent on killing Jews than in increasing warproduction (Manchester 467). New York: HarperCollins, 1997.Glass, James M. They relied on theSS for the selection, transportation and non-technical supervision of theJews, who were considered the least worthy of care or attention of all thecoerced laborers, with a status below even that of Russian POWS and commoncriminals. Eichmann in Jerusalem. Farben,Carl Bosch, nor most of the other leaders of German heavy industry wereespecially enamored with Hitler or the Nazis. Farbenwas Germany's largest company. In the late 18th century Jews were emancipated in Holland,France and England --i.e. For them, it [the Holocaust] was a sideshow, something you did not bother about while engaged in the big show, securing a place for yourself in the wonderland of the Nazi New Order in Europe (9). Bosch, who wasopposed to Germany's war with the West, had little to do with the activemanagement of I.G. Farben, which was heavily involved in the secret developmentof the Luftwaffe through its hydrogenation process which made aviationgasoline more efficient, was Aryanized by 1937 or 1938. . Gerhard Peters, a director of Degussa, was given a five year sentenceby a German court (Shirer 1265). I. Glass said "considerableparticipation, from a variety of professional and industrial sectors, wasrequired in the construction, maintenance, and supply of the camps" (28).Some pharmaceutical firms, including Farben's Bayer Pharmaceutical Co.,Behring-Werke, Madaus & Co. After Alfred Speer became Minister for Armaments and Munitions inearly 1942, Germany went on a total war footing, one of the consequences ofwhich was the increased use of Jewish concentration camp inmates atAuschwitz and other Polish camps. No Jews were brought back, however, toGermany to work until April 1944, primarily in defense industries such asKrupp's plant at Essen, and in mines and underground bunkers where missilesand aircraft were produced. Other Culprits. Thesedecisions were political, prompted by the exigencies of the Cold War. Other major death camps or vernichtungslager operated in Poland,Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Farben after he moved to Sicily in 194 . Borkin quoted a late 1942 report from its Buna manager that "ourexperience has shown that only brute force has any effect on these people"(119). Other firms participated in the Holocaust killingmachine through the products they supplied, such as Degussa, which Farbenlicensed and partly owned and from which Farben's dividends doubled after1941, Farben licensee Tesch & Stabenow of Hamburg and the German PestControl Company in Frieburg, all of which supplied the deadly Zyklon B gas.Knowledge of its intended use was certain because the SS had the vendorsremove the tell-tale warning odor. . New York: Harper & Row, 1966.Lochner, Louis P. Accountability Nine Farben executives, including several members of its board ofdirectors, were convicted on various charges, including slavery and massmurder and sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from six to one and ahalf years, most of which were later commuted by the American HighCommissioner for Germany, John McCloy in January 1951, or by German courts.The proposed destruction of the Farben Trust which Dwight Eisenhower amongothers recommended was abandoned in favor of its split-up into three hugecompanies, Bayer, BASF and Hoechst. Farben's managers tended afterawhile to identify with the interests of the SS with whom they were inbusiness. The American tribunal acknowledged that an element ofcompulsion was present, but nevertheless convicted Krupp on grounds ofslavery and crimes against humanity because of the poor conditions andbrutal treatment of laborers at Auschwitz and elsewhere. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964.Shirer, William. He exploited themvoluntarily" (429). Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Manchester documents repeated requests by Krupp forslave laborers, including 5 14 year-old Hungarian Jewesses which werediverted to work at its Essen Steel Works in 1944 and were consigned toback-breaking heavy labor. made the decision to kill all of EuropeanJewry" (147). New York: Knopf, 1997.Manchester, William. Under such conditions bad things happen"(Lochner 234). .. Farben enterprises, whichemployed large numbers of Jewish death camp inmates as slave laborers underinhumane conditions, as did many other companies, large and small; and theprivate vendors and suppliers of the critical implements of death, carbonmonoxide and hydrogen cyanide gas contained in prussic acid crystals(Zyklon B), and of the gas ovens, furnaces and chimneys used in the deathcamps to kill humans or dispose of their corpses. Rationswere inadequate, medical facilities were practically non-existent andcruelty, in the form of verbal abuse, beatings and hangings for minorinfractions of the rules were common. That turned out tobe a substantial underestimate inasmuch as the number of claimants underthe 1949 settlement reached between the Conference on Jewish War MaterialClaims Against Germany and Krupp greatly exceeded that percentage(Manchester 756). Neither the head of Krupp, Gustav von Krupp, the head of I.G. which Hitler attacked on June 22, 1941. Conditions in the Krupp and Farben Factories. Farben financed itself the entire cost of construction (115-116).Shirer said the availability of cheap slave labor was the criticalconsideration (4 DMs a day per inmate) (878). . However, things changed quicklyafter Hitler became Chancellor. No precise figures are available. Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1996.----------------------- 14 The Holocaust and the German Elite. Jewish workers were a small minority, which in1946 Krupp estimated were 5 percent of all forced labor. For tactical reasons, German policy between 1933 and 1937was largely confined to economic and psychological harassment and legallysanctioned discrimination and social exclusion which were designed and hadthe effect of inducing all but about 19 , of Germany's Jews to emigrateby the end of 1939. to the Nazi regime. The Crime And Punishment of I.G. With very few exceptions, German industry gave its wholeheartedsupport to the Nazi war machine and knowingly and actively participated inthe implementation of the Final Solution (Endlosung) of the 'JewishQuestion.' It did so for a number of reasons related to the furtherance ofcorporate interests; and it acted with at best a crippling moralindifference to the suffering and fate of the Jews. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.Goldhagen, Daniel. Reidel &Sohne, which supplied the reinforced concrete, the Robert Kohlerconstruction firm and Mannesman Rohrenwerke, which supplied the carbonmonoxide gas used in early killings (Glass 86). Kruppwas after 1938 effectively run by Alfried because of Gustav's increasingsenility. . In the 192 s Hitler made the goal of making Germany Judenrein or freeof Jews, a cardinal tenet of Nazi ideology. GERMAN INDUSTRY AND THE HOLOCAUST This research paper discusses the role of German industry, itsinvolvement, culpability and accountability, in and for the Holocaust, thesystematic extermination or mass genocide of about six of the elevenmillion Jews in Europe by the government of National Socialist (Nazi)Germany between 194 and 1945. By then, Poland's three million Jews and most of the rest ofEurope's Jews were under Germany's control. Toomany skilled and reasonably strong workers were being rushed to the gravealthough months of useful labor were 'still in them'" (126). Baum summarized the mindsetof most German business leaders toward the killing of the Jews, as follows: people in leading positions 'knew' about the production of death. Another six million Jews livedin the U.S.S.R. At the Krupp and I.G. Nazi Germany And The Jews Vol. A Britishmilitary court sentenced two of the owners of Stabenow & Tesch to death.Dr. New York: Knopf, 1998.Hausner, Gideon. Gustavvon Krupp gave way quickly on the Aryanization of Krupp's management, andbecame almost overnight an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler, if not of someof the Nazis' policies. Farben trials, it was established beyond doubtthat the inhuman conditions at their Auschwitz and other slave labor plantswere communicated to all levels of management. . TheKrupp settlement with the Jewish survivors or their families cost Krupponly $2.5 million. and others supported the dreadful experimentsconducted by Nazi doctors on Jews on the effects of various diseases andlethal items such as incendiary bombs (Glass 65, 96 and 97). Three and half to4 million inmates, mostly Jews, were gassed to death at Auschwitz beforethe ovens and crematoria were shut down in October 1944 (Borkin 2; & Hauser169). Jews were firstemployed at SS owned enterprises, the notorious clothing works at theMajdanak, Lipowa and Flughafenlager camps in Poland in 1941-1942, whereGoldhagen said the monthly death rates were 1 percent and "Jewish 'work'was not work in any ordinary sense of 'work,'but a suspended form of death"(323). I.G. I.G. Those industries mostdirectly involved were the major manufacturers of arms and critical rawmaterials, such as the huge Krupp and I.G. When I.G. Twelve hour work days seven days a week were the rule. Farben swallowed up their European competitors in the occupiedcountries for a song. . Krupp used slave labor not only at Auschwitz butat nearly 1 facilities, which Manchester said used inmates of 138concentration camps (Manchester 1 and 469). Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954.Lukacs, John. Karl Krauch ofthe I.G. OskarSchindler who made such arguments to save Jews at his enamel factoryoutside Krakow did so for humanitarian reasons; the others did not. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.