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From  the  collection  of  the 


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o  Prelinger 

v    JJibrary 

p 


San  Francisco,  California 
2006 


TREASON'S   PEACE 


HOWARD   WATSON   AMBRUSTER 


TREASON'S  PEACE 


GERMAN   DYES   &   AMERICAN    DUPES 


A  CROSSROADS  PRESS  BOOK 


NEW  YORK:   THE  BEECHHURST  PRESS 


COPYRIGHT   1947 
BY   HOWARD   WATSON   AMBRUSTER 


A       NOTE      OF       APPRECIATION       AND      GRATITUDE 

The  material  for  this  volume  would  neither  have  been  assembled 
nor  recorded  here  except  for  the  loyalty  and  sacrifice  of  Ursula 
Ambruster,  whose  unswerving  support  despite  years  of  hardship, 
made  it  possible  for  both  of  us  to  carry  on. 

The  author  is  deeply  indebted  to  a  number  of  others  whose 
assistance  and  support  have  made  possible  the  preparation  of 
this  book.  To  name  a  jew  of  these  would  be  unfair  to  the  others; 
to  name  all  of  those  who  have  aided  me  would  result  in  disaster 
to  those  to  whom  I  should  not,  knowingly,  bring  disaster.  But  I 
would  be  lacking  in  candor  if  I  did  not  express  here  my  profound 
appreciation  to  Jack  Morris,  to  whose  untiring  efforts  its  final 
publication  is  largely  due,  and  to  Jack  Shuttleworth,  for  his  col- 
laboration in  the  preparation  of  this  volume.  I  pay  grateful  tribute 
also  to  the  fact  that,  as  strangers  to  me,  Jack  Shuttleworth  and 
Jack  Morris  came  forward  from  the  throng  who  turned  away. 

THE  AUTHOR 


PRINTED  IN   THE   UNITED   STATES   OF   AMERICA 


Contents 


Preface  The  Pattern  of  Farben  vii 

I.    Graft— and  America  Unarmed  i 

H.    Congressman  Metz  of  the  Bleeding  Heart  15 

III.  The  Lost  Provinces  Regained  33 

IV.  New  Conquests  of  .America's  Industry  47 

V.  Farben's  Royal  Family  69 
VI.    "Tarnung"  The  Magic  Hood  [which  renders 

the  wearer  invisible]  89 

VII.    False  Fronts  Become  Bold  107 

VIII.    Republicans— Open  the  Door  132 

IX.    Democrats— Facing  Both  Ways  155 

X.    Senators  and  Congressmen— Who  Never  Knew  181 

XI.    Two  Drug  Laws— and  Two  Wars  202 

XH.    Patent  Medicines— and  Freedom  of  the  Press  228 

•  xm.    Good  Neighbors,  and  Bad  254 

XIV.    Again,  Espionage  and  Sabotage  269 

XV.    Propaganda  for  Wall  Street  and  Washington  286 

XVI.    Counter  Propaganda  and  The  Lobby  305 

XVH.    Alibis  and  Excuses  313 

XVIII.    No  Sacrifice  on  the  Altar  of  Moloch  325 

XDC    Behind  America's  Iron  Curtain  350 

XX.   Plans  for  Peace— In  Time  of  War  378 

XXI.     Another  Farben  Peace  395 

Conclusion  Democracy  at  Its  Worst,  and  At  Its  Best  414 

Appendix  4*7 


DEDICATED    TO 

CAPTAIN  WATSON  AMBRUSTER  II,  U.S.A.  AIR  FORCE 

AND    TO    HIS   CHILDREN, 

WATSON    III    AND    MARGARET    URSULA, 

FOR       WHOSE       FUTURE       SECURITY,       WITH 

THOSE    OF    THEIR    GENERATION,    THIS    STORY 

HAS    BEEN    WRITTEN. 


PREFACE 


The  Pattern  ofFarben 


THE  HUGE  INTERNATIONAL 
chemical  combine  and  cartel  leader  that  is  known  today  as  I.  G. 
Farben  had  its  beginning  some  seventy-five  years  ago,  with  the 
founding  in  Germany  of  six  small  coal-tar  dye  companies.  By 
1939  these  six  companies  had  grown  into  the  ominous-sound- 
ing INTERESSEN  GEMEINSCHAFT  FARBENINDUSTRIE 
AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT,  of  FRANKFORT  am  MAIN,  which 
translated  literally,  means  "community  of  interests  of  the  dye 
manufacturing  companies." 

I.  G.  Farben  is  usually  discussed  as  a  huge  German  cartel  which 
controls  chemical  industries  throughout  the  world  and  from  which 
profits  flow  back  to  the  headquarters  in  Frankfort.  Farben,  how- 
ever, is  no  mere  industrial  enterprise  conducted  by  Germans  for 
the  extraction  of  profits  at  home  and  abroad.  Rather,  it  is  and  must 
be  recognized  as  a  cabalistic  organization  which,  through  foreign 
subsidiaries  and  by  secret  tie-ups,  operates  a  far-flung  and  highly 
efficient  espionage  machine— the  ultimate  purpose  being  world 
conquest— and  a  world  super-state  directed  by  Farben. 

vii 


PREFACE 

Perhaps  the  chief  distinguishing  characteristic  of  this  vast  organ- 
ization is  the  definite  pattern  to  which  it  holds.  From  its  beginning 
the  Farben  pattern— based  upon  intensive  research  wedded  to  ap- 
plied science,  plus  a  cynical  disbelief  in  the  existence  of  social,  eco- 
nomic, or  political  morality— has  never  varied;  its  rhythm  appears 
changeless. 

This  book  is  the  story  of  the  Farben  pattern— as  it  has  appeared 
in  the  United  States,  and  a  glimpse  of  its  extent  in  Latin  America. 
It  is  a  story  of  the  shadowy  designs  that  repeatedly  have  come  up 
through  the  fabric  of  our  industrial,  social,  and  political  life. 

Viewed  over  a  long  period  of  years  it  appears  as  an  interlocking 
design  of  propaganda,  espionage,  sabotage,  and  corruption. 

Fragments  of  this  pattern  have  been  revealed  to  the  public  from 
time  to  time  in  press  reports  of  official  investigations  and  court 
actions  here  in  the  United  States.  These  detached  items,  however, 
could  mean  little  to  the  public.  To  understand  their  significance— as 
a  part  of  a  never  ending  menace  to  world  peace— the  activities  of 
Farben  must  be  traced  from  the  beginning,  and  chronicled  in  some 
kind  of  sequence. 

The  events  in  this  story  are  not  set  forth  in  chronological  order. 
Rather,  they  are  grouped  according  to  subject  matter— to  bring  out 
the  many  designs  of  the  pattern,  and  to  make  clear  each  phase  of 
the  menace  that  is  Farben.  Space  does  not  permit  a  history  of  this 
nebulous  structure,  or  the  part  it  has  played  in  German  politics— in 
making  Hitler  Chancellor,  and  providing  money  and  munitions  for 
his  armies. 

For  more  than  forty  years  the  author,  through  business,  profes- 
sional and  official  contacts,  has  followed  the  activities  of  this  colos- 
sal cartel  structure  and  its  predecessors,  the  "Big  Six"  dyestuff 
companies.  He  has  followed  the  establishment  of  their  chemical 
cartels  in  this  country  prior  to  the  first  World  War;  the  partial 
destruction  of  those  monopolies  during  that  war;  and  the  rebuild- 
ing, in  the  next  two  decades,  of  a  far  stronger  and  more  sinister 
framework  inside  our  militarily  strategic  industries,  our  agencies 
of  public  opinion,  and  the  very  fabric  of  government  itself. 


PREFACE  IX 

He  believes  that  the  story  told  here  shows  clearly  that  Farben 
was  largely  responsible  for  our  spiritual  and  physical  disarmament 
when  the  present  war  began— just  as  the  Big  Six  was  largely  respon- 
sible for  our  unarmed  condition  at  the  start  of  the  first  World  War. 

He  believes  also,  that  the  story  shows  what  we  may  expect  from 
Farben  during  the  peace. 

It  is  well  to  say  now  that  every  statement  of  fact  in  this  book  is 
supported  by  irrefutable  evidence  in  the  form  of  official  documents, 
court  records,  or  private  papers.  From  these  the  reader  may  draw 
his  own  conclusions  regarding  the  guilt  or  gullibility— or  both— of 
some  of  those  American  citizens  who  find  mention  in  these  pages. 

Be  it  admitted  that  unhappy  instances  of  corruption,  double  deal- 
ing and  cupidity  appear  and  reappear  in  our  history  from  the 
earliest  days  of  this  republic  and  will  continue— yet  a  distinction 
must  be  made  between  ordinary  violations  of  our  criminal  statutes 
and  those  committed,  or  secretly  instigated,  by  an  enemy  which 
is  obsessed  with  the  lust  of  enslaving  this  nation. 

This,  then,  is  the  pattern  of  Farben. 


CHAPTER 


Graft — and  America  Unarmed 


ON       A       STORMY 

evening  early  in  1912,  a  raiding  party  armed  with  a  search  warrant 
proceeded  to  one  of  the  fashionable  residential  districts  of  Phila- 
delphia, broke  down  the  door,  and  ransacked  the  apartment  of  one 
Alfred  J.  Keppelmann. 

Mr.  Keppelmann  was  the  executive  in  charge  of  the  Philadelphia 
office  of  the  American  Bayer  Company,  owned  and  directed  by 
one  of  the  leading  German  dyestuff  manufacturers.  The  local  office 
of  the  Bayer  company  was  at  9  North  Water  Street,  but  the  young 
attorney  who  led  the  raiding  party  had  been  tipped  off  that  Mr. 
Keppelmann  kept  his  more  important  business  correspondence  in 
his  home. 

The  tip  was  a  good  one  and  resulted  in  a  rich  yield  of  evidences 
of  bribery  and  fraud  engaged  in  by  Mr.  Keppelmann  over  a  period 
of  years. 

Thus  was  launched  an  expose  of  commercial  corruption  that  is 
without  parallel  in  the  history  of  legitimate  business  in  the  United 
States.  But  that  raid  was  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  ineffectual 
blows  at  the  German-controlled  chemical  cartels  that  for  seventy- 
five  years  have  operated  within  our  borders—ineffectual  because 


*  TREASON'S    PEACE 

they  have  not  yet  destroyed  the  corrupt  influence  and  power  of 
these  monopolies,  whose  purpose,  since  their  inception,  has  been 
to  stifle  our  military  effectiveness  and  to  strengthen  the  resources 
of  the  Fatherland. 

The  leading  German  chemical  companies  before  the  first  World 
War  were  known  throughout  the  world  as  the  Big  Six.  Direct  prede- 
cessors of  the  gigantic  I.  G.  Farbenindustrie,  in  which  they  were 
later  merged,  these  six  companies  were: 

1.  Badische  Anilin  und  Sodafabrik.  (known  as  Badische) 

2.  Farbenfabriken  vorm.  Friedr.  Bayer  &  Co.  (known  as  Bayer 
orElberfeld) 

3.  Aktiengesellschaft   fur   Anilinfabrikation.    (known   as    the 
Berlin  Company) 

4.  Farbwerke  vorm.  Meister  Lucius  und  Briining.  (known  as 
theHoechstCo.) 

5.  Leopold  Cassella  G.  m.  b.  H.  in  Frankfurt,    (known  as 
Cassella) 

6.  Kalle  &  Company,  (known  as  Kalle) 

All  of  these  companies  made  dyestuffs  and  the  intermediates  from 
which  coal-tar  dyes  are  produced;  several  of  them  also  produced 
pharmaceutical  products  from  coal-tar  intermediates  and  other 
chemical  bases. 

There  were  numerous  other  smaller  German  dyestuff  producers 
but  these  six  concerns,  with  several  hundred  million  dollars  in 
assets,  united  early  in  the  century  in  two  cartels,  dominated  the 
coal-tar  industry  in  Germany,  and  controlled  the  world's  markets 
for  dye  stuffs. 

In  America,  where  business  was  a  strictly  private  affair,  and  all 
attempts  at  government  supervision  were  fought  tooth  and  nail  by 
our  rugged  individualists,  the  Big  Six  found  fertile  ground  for 
their  "peaceful  penetration."  Here  in  America  with  the  cooperation 
of  the  German  government,  they  established  their  agencies,  and 
pursued  a  ruthless  policy  of  economic  strangulation,  with  the  re- 
sult that  upon  our  entry  into  World  War  I,  America's  organic  chem- 
ical industry,  the  very  lifeblood  of  modern  warfare,  consisted  of 
little  more  than  a  series  of  small  assembly  plants. 

The  completeness  with  which  we  failed  to  develop  this  mili- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  3 

tarily  strategic  industry  attests  the  determination  of  purpose  and 
the  typical  German  thoroughness  with  which  the  representatives 
of  Kultur  carried  out,  within  our  borders,  their  coordination  of 
industry  with  the  forces  of  war. 

The  early  history  of  these  six  German  companies  takes  in  the 
birth  of  the  commercial  development  of  dyes  made  from  coal  tar. 
Three  generations  ago  these  dyes  began  to  replace  many  of  the 
natural  or  vegetable  dyes.  However,  it  was  not  a  German,  but  a 
young  English  chemist,  William  H.  Perkin,  who  discovered  in  1856 
that  a  usable  purple,  or  mauve  color,  could  be  produced  from 
aniline,  the  oil-like  product  distilled  from  coal  tar,  which  had  been 
produced  originally  in  1826. 

History  records  that  young  Perkin  was  not  attempting  to  make 
a  dyestuff  at  the  time,  but  was  experimenting,  unsuccessfully,  with 
the  aniline  in  an  attempt  to  produce  synthetic  quinine.  Some  70 
years  later,  one  of  Farben's  chemists  succeeded  in  doing  what 
Perkin  had  set  out  to  do  and  produced  the  coal-tar  derivative 
known  as  Atabrine  which  today,  as  a  substitute  for  quinine,  oc- 
cupies such  a  vital  place  in  our  control  of  malaria. 

It  was  the  Germans,  however,  who  most  industriously  followed 
up  Perkin's  discovery  of  an  aniline  dye.  Intensive  research  was 
encouraged  at  German  universities,  and  by  subsidies  from  the 
German  government.  The  late  Congressman  Nicholas  Longworth 
told  of  a  conversation  he  had  with  a  distinguished  American  chem- 
ist who  had  graduated  from  the  University  of  Heidelberg  many 
years  before,  and  who  told  Longworth  that  when  he  said  goodbye 
to  his  head  professor  he  asked  why  it  was  that  so  much  of  the 
German  research  work  in  chemistry  was  in  the  development  of  coal- 
tar  dyes.  The  professors  so  engaged  were  receiving  higher  salaries 
than  their  colleagues,  and  the  industries  were  receiving  govern- 
ment bonuses.  The  German  professor  replied,  "Young  man,  some 
day  this  work  will  save  the  Fatherland."  In  light  of  more  recent 
events,  that  professor  can  hardly  be  considered  a  good  prophet, 
but  his  remark  indicated  the  early  German  vision  of  world  suprem- 
acy in  science— out  of  which  the  Farben  pattern  of  world  conquest 
was  to  emerge. 

The  objectives  of  the  original  German  dye  cartels  in  the  United 
States  were  by  no  means  confined  to  obstructing  our  development 


4  TREASON'S   PEACE 

of  the  dye  industry.  It  was  of  utmost  importance  to  forestall  the 
establishment  of  any  primary  phase  of  the  coal-tar  industry  which 
might  make  this  country  independent  of  Germany  for  coal-tar  in- 
termediates, and  for  other  chemical  products  used  in  making  dyes 
during  peace,  or  explosives  and  munitions  during  war.  In  the 
early  development  of  the  dye  industry  in  Germany,  the  high  cost 
of  individual  dyes  was  due  to  the  large  quantities  of  certain  by- 
products which  had  no  value  but  which  had  to  be  extracted  from 
the  coal  tar  in  order  to  produce  the  dyes.  And  the  great  variety  of 
colors  was  due  largely  to  the  continuous  research  devoted  to  the 
profitable  utilization  of  these  by-products.  Despite  this  research, 
however,  the  stock  piles  reached  enormous  size.  Then,  early  in  this 
century  the  Germans  realized  the  military  significance  of  the  coal- 
tar  product,  trinitrotoluol  (TNT)  which  could  readily  be  made 
from  the  by-products.  Thereupon,  research  to  produce  certain  new 
colors  suddenly  ceased,  and  the  stock  piles  were  allowed  to 
accumulate  for  the  war  that  was  to  come. 

The  two  Big  Six  cartels  appeared  perfectly  willing  that  the  few 
American  manufacturers  who  were  trying  to  make  dyes  should 
continue  their  struggle  to  do  so,  providing  they  secured  the  bulk 
of  their  intermediates  from  Germany.  They  laughed  at  this  compe- 
tition, but  they  were  systematic  in  their  price  cutting  and  utterly 
ruthless  in  their  determination  that  a  coal-tar  industry  which  could 
quickly  be  turned  from  dyes  to  munitions  should  not  exist  in  the 
United  States. 

Throughout  this  period,  while  our  coal-tar  industries  languished 
or  were  still-born  whenever  attempts  were  made  to  start  them,  it 
is  estimated  that  we  were  letting  a  billion  dollars  worth  of  coal 
gas  go  to  waste  annually  through  the  chimneys  of  the  old-fashioned 
beehive  ovens  in  which  substantially  all  of  our  coke  was  then  made. 
The  gas  went  to  waste  because  we  had  no  coal-tar  dye  industry 
to  make  it  profitable. 

At  one  time,  when  a  group  of  three  of  the  largest  American 
manufacturers  of  heavy  chemicals  decided  to  start  the  production 
of  aniline  oil  so  that  our  feeble  dye  industry  would  not  be  totally 
at  the  mercy  of  the  Germans,  a  special  emissary  of  the  Big  Six 
came  to  the  United  States  with  the  impudent  demand  that  produc- 
tion of  the  oil  be  stopped,  and  made  the  equally  impudent  offer 


TREASON    S     PEACE  5 

that  the  cartels  would  repay  the  Americans  for  such  expenditures 
as  had  been  incurred. 

To  protect  the  domestic  producers  from  the  price  slashing  on 
aniline  that  followed  the  refusal  of  the  Americans  to  shut  up  shop, 
Congress  placed  a  10  percent  duty  on  aniline  oil.  The  Big  Six, 
however,  retaliated  by  dropping  the  price  on  aniline  far  below  any 
possible  cost  of  production  in  the  United  States. 

Originally  the  German  dyes  were  exported  to  the  United  States 
through  houses  which  handled  a  variety  of  imported  products. 
Later,  exclusive  selling  agencies  or  branch  houses  were  established 
here  by  each  of  the  Big  Six.  These  branches  and  agencies  had  their 
main  office  in  New  York  City,  and  maintained  branches  in  New 
England,  Philadelphia  and  other  centers  where  dyes  were  con- 
sumed in  quantities  by  textile,  leather,  paper  and  printing  ink 
manufacturers. 

The  author's  first  contact  with  these  powerful  German  firms  was 
in  the  early  1900s,  while  working  on  the  original  production  of 
rayon,  or  artificial  silk,  as  it  was  then  known,  in  a  plant  located 
in  the  suburbs  of  Philadelphia.  Continuous  experimental  work  was 
required  in  order  to  determine  which  dyes  were  suitable  for  the 
new  textile  yarn,  and  we  received  much  assistance  and  many  fine 
samples  of  dyes  from  the  local  agents  of  the  Big  Six.  Our  interest 
in  dyes  was  confined  to  samples  and  laboratory  experiments.  The 
subject  of  bulk  purchases  did  not  arise,  and  the  matter  of  graft,  of 
which  I  had  heard  a  great  deal  in  my  visits  to  commercial  dyeing 
establishments,  never  arose.  A  few  years  later,  however,  I  cornered 
a  textile  mill  owner,  a  most  forthright  citizen  with  whom  I  had 
been  doing  business,  and  asked  him  why  he  tolerated  the  graft 
which  the  German  dyestuff  companies  were  handing  out  to  the 
boss  dyers  who  used  their  products.  It  was  common  knowledge,  I 
told  this  mill  owner,  that  this  bribery  was  what  made  it  practically 
impossible  for  the  few  American  makers  of  dyestuffs  to  compete 
with  the  Germans.  My  friend's  reply  was  characteristic  of  the 
dejected  attitude  of  the  men  who  were  paying  the  bills  for  German 
dyes.  Without  pretending  to  quote  his  exact  words,  his  reply  was: 
"I  know  perfectly  well  that  my  boss  dyer  receives  bribe  money  on 
every  ounce  of  dyestuff  that  goes  into  the  products  which  my  mill 
turns  out.  However,  it  happens  that  we  are  making  money  on  the 


6  TREASON'S   PEACE 

work  this  man  is  doing.  Now,  if  I  fired  him,  as  I  am  justified  in 
doing,  I  would  have  to  get  another  boss  dyer.  I  can't  dye  these 
fabrics  myself,  and  the  new  man  would  also  take  bribes  from  the 
German  companies.  Competent  dyers  are  hard  to  get,  but  good  or 
bad,  they  all  accept  the  graft.  So  why  make  the  change?  We  mill 
owners  all  know  that  this  thing  exists,  but  each  of  us  feels  that  he 
is  helpless  to  do  anything  about  it  without  risking  ruin." 

Not  long  after  this  conversation,  I  was  invited  to  have  lunch 
with  an  executive  of  one  of  the  American  branches  of  the  Big  Six. 
This  man  was  a  native  born  American  whom  I  had  known  when 
he  was  engaged  in  another  branch  of  the  chemical  industry.  In 
the  past,  I  had  found  him  a  reputable  business  man.  During  that 
luncheon  he  offered  me  a  position  with  the  German  company  he 
was  representing,  and  quite  casually  mentioned  that  one  of  my 
duties  would  be  to  handle  the  Saturday  pay-offs  of  bribe  money 
to  the  boss  dyers.  He  remonstrated  with  me  when  I  declined.  "It's 
customary,"  he  protested.  "Everyone  in  the  industry  does  it,  every- 
one knows  it  is  done  and  no  one  is  objecting  except  a  few  small 
concerns  that  don't  count— so  why  be  squeamish  about  it?" 

I  have  recounted  these  personal  experiences  to  illustrate  the 
corruption,  and  the  callous  acquiescence  to  it,  through  which  the 
Germans  maintained  their  impregnable  monopoly  in  the  American 
dyestuff  market  during  the  two  decades  preceding  the  first  World 
War.  Along  with  the  bribery  and  other  dishonest  practices  went 
the  legend,  then  accepted  in  America,  that  products  derived  from 
coal  tar  did  not  present  an  attractive  field  for  exploitation  because 
American  chemical  brains  were  inadequate  to  fathom  the  mysteries 
of  coal-tar  dyes. 

However,  the  bribery  of  the  boss  dyers  had  become  so  notorious 
that  the  storm  was  bound  to  break.  Late  in  1911  the  grafting  was 
brought  forcibly  to  the  attention  of  the  top  executives  of  John  and 
James  Dobson,  the  oldest  and  largest  of  the  carpet  manufacturers 
in  the  Philadelphia  area.  The  owners'  investigation  which  followed, 
disclosed  that  an  astounding  annual  excess  cost  was  being  paid  by 
their  firm  for  its  supply  of  colors.  Also,  that  the  bribery  had  reached 
much  higher  up  than  the  boss  dyers  of  the  several  mills  operated  by 
the  Dobsons.  Criminal  proceedings  of  various  kinds  were  started, 
and  a  group  of  mill  owners  from  Philadelphia,  New  York  and  New 


TREASON'S   PEACE  7 

England  formed  themselves  into  the  Textile  Alliance,  Inc.  This 
group  was  very  bitter  at  the  revelations  of  how  its  members  were 
being  robbed  and  their  employees  corrupted  by  the  German  dye 
companies. 

This  investigation,  which  began  with  the  raid  on  Mr.  Keppel- 
mann's  apartment,  was  conducted  by  three  Philadelphia  attorneys 
under  the  leadership  of  the  late  Thomas  Earl  White,  and  lasted  for 
several  years.  Hunolreds  of  witnesses  were  examined,  and  much  of 
the  sordid  story  of  bribery,  corruption  and  fraud  came  tumbling 
out  and  became  a  matter  of  court  record. 

It  might  be  pointed  out  here  that  the  American  dyestuff  market 
of  that  period  was  peculiarly  susceptible  to  dishonest  manipula- 
tions of  both  quality  and  price.  The  consumers  of  coal-tar  dyes 
were  numerous,  and  most  of  them  operated  relatively  small  estab- 
lishments. Few  textile  mills  or  commercial  dye  houses  had  labora- 
tories, so  formulas  and  sample  dyeings  were  frequently  supplied 
by  the  Big  Six  salesmen,  through  their  head-office  laboratory.  In 
many  of  the  dyeing  establishments,  individual  purchases  of  vari- 
ous colors  and  shades,  which  changed  with  the  fashions,  were  small, 
and  the  constant  variations  made  it  impossible  for  the  owners,  who 
were  not  dyers,  to  determine  which  dye  was  best  or  which  should 
cost  the  least.  Under  these  conditions,  the  owners  were  compelled 
to  depend  on  their  boss  dyers.  These  men  were  usually  highly 
skilled,  self-taught  artisans,  frequently  of  foreign  birth,  who  carried 
in  their  heads  the  trade  secrets  of  mixing  colors  and  blending 
shades  for  the  peculiar  requirements  of  each  fabric.  They  had 
neither  union  nor  guild,  each  boss  dyer  was  a  rugged  individualist 
who  regarded  himself  as  a  master  craftsman  and  held  his  employer 
in  contempt. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  huge  extent  of  the  corruption  at  the 
time  of  the  exposure,  it  was  revealed  that  Bayer  claimed  an  allow- 
ance of  $700,000  from  its  colleagues  in  the  German  cartel  on  the 
allegation  that  this  sum  represented  graft  payment  in  the  United 
States  for  the  preceding  year.  Evidence  in  another  case  revealed 
that  a  mill  had  been  paying  eighty-five  cents  a  pound  for  a  black, 
the  correct  price  of  which  was  twenty-one  cents.  When  the  graft 
was  stopped  at  another  mill,  its  yearly  bills  for  dyes  dropped  from 
$265,000  to  $125,000. 


S  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Elaborate  systems  of  bookkeeping  and  filing  were  maintained  in 
the  American  offices  of  the  Big  Six  companies  to  keep  track  of  the 
graft  without  revealing  more  of  its  details  than  were  necessary. 
These  records  identified  each  color  or  blend  shipped  on  each  order, 
with  its  correct  price;  the  phony  name  it  had  been  billed  under; 
whether  salt,  which  adds  to  the  weight,  but  doesn't  affect  the  qual- 
ity of  the  dye,  or  any  other  adulterant  had  been  added;  and,  finally, 
how  much  bribe  money  was  paid  the  boss  dyer.  These  records  went 
to  the  New  York  offices,  other  copies  to  the  home  offices  in  Ger- 
many. All  of  the  records  were  in  code,  except  the  one  set  which  rep- 
resented the  actual  billing.  These  last  records  were  always  available 
in  case  a  customer  should  drop  into  the  office  to  discuss  a  previous 
purchase. 

Alfred  J.  Keppelmann,  the  branch-office  manager  who  played  an 
important  part  all  through  this  expose,  was  an  upper  class  German 
who  apparently  had  no  inhibitions  about  the  peacetime  service  he 
owed  to  the  future  welfare  of  the  Fatherland.  The  boss  dyers  of 
Bayer's  important  customers  were  paid  by  Keppelmann  personally, 
and  Keppelmann's  chauffeur  testified  to  the  frequent  occasions 
when  he  drove  his  employer  to  call  on  these  susceptible  gentlemen. 
Usually  the  car  would  be  parked  around  the  corner  from  the  dyer's 
home.  At  other  times,  this  energetic  executive  would  meet  his 
beneficiaries  at  a  saloon,  or  pick  them  up  in  his  car  at  some  pre- 
arranged place,  for  Keppelmann  had  had  trouble  with  salesmen 
who  held  out  on  the  dyers  and  wickedly  pocketed  the  graft.  In  one 
instance  he  had  lost  a  customer  because  the  dyer  only  secured  half 
the  graft  he  was  "entitled"  to.  According  to  this  dyer'b  own  testi- 
mony, Keppelmann  finally  straightened  this  out  by  a  special  Sun- 
day visit  to  the  dyer's  home,  where  he  gave  the  latter  his  promise 
as  a  gentleman  that  there  would  be  no  further  trouble  about  the 
graft.  "This  promise  he  kept,"  testified  the  dyer.  "Two  or  three 
times  each  month  Mr.  Keppelmann  came  to  my  house  and  paid  me 
the  graft  money  which  was  due  me." 

Another  witness,  a  chemist,  who  had  been  employed  by  the 
Bayer  branch,  testified  that  Keppelmann  had  instructed  him  to 
experiment  in  the  laboratory  to  find  a  compound  which,  when  put 
into  a  dye  bath,  would  ruin  the  fabric.  This  was  to  be  used  when 
Keppelmann  deemed  it  advisable  to  get  rid  of  a  competitor.  The 


TREASONS     PEACE 


compound  to  be  planted  had  to  be  one  which  would  not  so  change 
the  dye  bath  as  to  be  conspicuous,  but  would  be  strong  enough  to 
spoil  or  streak  the  material.  This,  the  witness  said  was  a  common 
practice  and  many  different  compounds  were  devised  to  spoil  the 
various  types  of  dyes  in  use.  Keppelmann  had  still  another  social- 
business  side.  He  kept  a  yacht  on  the  Delaware  River  near  Phila- 
delphia, and  his  engineer  testified  to  luxurious  yachting  parties  that 
were  given  for  employees  of  the  textile  mills  and,  on  occasion,  for 
some  of  the  mill  owners  themselves:  "They  served  rare  food  and 
champagne,  and  ladies  were  frequently  present  to  help  entertain 
the  guests." 

Keppelmann  also  had  a  private  stenographer,  one  of  whose 
duties  was  to  count  out  the  bribe  money  and  place  the  correct 
amounts  in  envelopes  marked  with  the  code  numbers  of  the  boss 
dyers.  The  stenographer  was,  of  course,  in  the  complete  confidence 
of  her  boss.  She  even  went  on  the  yachting  trips  at  times.  After  the 
expose,  this  young  lady  indicated  her  willingness  to  talk  freely 
to  the  investigators,  and  so  was  scheduled  to  become  an  important 
witness  for  the  prosecution. 

Joseph  H.  Choate,  Jr.,  distinguished  New  York  lawyer,  who  was 
one  of  the  early  attorneys  for  the  Textile  Alliance,  told  the  follow- 
ing story  at  a  Congressional  hearing  in  discussing  the  bribery  prac- 
tices of  the  Big  Six:  "A  prosecution  was  begun  against  the  Phila- 
delphia agent  of  the  Bayer  Company,  and  I  might  say  that  they  had 
the  goods  on  him.  The  man  had  a  duplicate  set  of  books  which 
showed  what  he  paid  everybody.  All  the  parties  were  gathered  at 
the  trial,  which  centered  around  the  testimony  of  a  stenographer. 
As  the  trial  was  about  to  be  called,  somebody  burst  into  the  office 
of  the  District  Attorney  and  threw  up  his  hands.  'It's  no  use,  boys, 
it's  all  off,  the  defendant  has  married  the  evidence,  and  it  is  not 
admissible!' " 

Keppelmann,  the  night  before,  had  in  fact  made  his  stenographer 
the  second  Mrs.  Keppelmann,  having  divorced  his  first  wife  after 
settlement  on  her  of  $100,000.  The  Bayer  companies'  Mr.  Keppel- 
mann was  no  piker! 

Criminal  prosecution  of  the  individuals  involved  in  the  dyestuff 
graft  was  faced  with  innumerable  difficulties,  and  the  attorneys 
representing  the  mill  owners  finally  decided  upon  another  ap- 


1O  TREASON    S     PEACE 

proach  to  the  problem— by  invoking  provisions  of  the  Sherman 
Antitrust  Act  against  offenders. 

The  late  Nelson  Aldrich,  Senator  from  Rhode  Island,  had  been 
instrumental  in  having  translated  and  printed  as  a  Senate  Docu- 
ment, a  revealing  German  publication  called,  "The  Great  German 
Banks  and  Their  Concentration  in  Connection  with  the  Economic 
Development  of  Germany"  by  Professor  J.  Riesser  of  the  University 
of  Berlin,  who  described  in  detail  the  then  recent  cartel  alliances 
of  the  Big  Six  dyestuff  companies.  The  professor  also  indulged  in 
a  little  prophecy— which  was  to  come  true— when  he  indicated  that 
a  complete  consolidation  of  all  the  important  aniline  producers  was 
in  prospect.  (In  1916  this  prophecy  was  fulfilled  when  the  com- 
panies comprising  the  Big  Six  were  combined  into  the  German 
I.  G.  Dyes. )  The  translation  of  this  German  book  turned  attention 
to  the  fact  that  Germany  permitted  combinations  which  the  Sher- 
man Act  forbade.  It  was  also  discovered  that  the  United  States 
branches  and  agencies  of  the  German  companies  were  acting  under 
rigid  instructions  from  Germany  in  dividing  the  United  States 
market  on  sales. 

More  than  thirty  separate  actions  under  the  Sherman  Act  were 
thereupon  instituted  in  1913  in  the  Federal  Courts  of  Pennsylvania 
and  New  Jersey  against  the  members  of  the  Big  Six  and  their 
agents  in  the  United  States;  damages  were  asked  not  only  for 
bribery  and  dishonest  commercial  practices,  but  for  combinations 
in  restraint  of  trade  by  all  concerned.  In  these  actions  the  Big  Six 
was  represented  by  a  New  York  attorney,  Charles  J.  Hardy  (later 
to  become  president  of  American  Car  &  Foundry  Company),  who 
fought  so  vigorously  for  his  clients  that  the  cases  were  never 
brought  to  trial.  All  were  finally  dismissed  in  1916,  long  after  the 
outbreak  of  the  war.  Before  the  dismissals,  however,  large  cash 
settlements  were  made  out  of  court  by  several  of  the  defendants. 

Twenty-five  years  later,  after  Germany  had  again  started  a  war 
of  conquest,  another  series  of  anti-trust  law  actions  was  instituted 
against  the  I.  G.  Farben  affiliates  and  subsidiaries  in  the  United 
States.  Among  them  are  the  direct  successors  of  the  Big  Six  affili- 
ates; and  this  time  it  was  not  just  dyestuffs,  but  many  other  vital 
national-defense  products  which  were  involved.  Again,  as  will  be 
discussed  in  other  chapters,  this  second  series  of  antitrust  suits 


TREASON    S     PEACE  11 

against  the  Farben  pattern  of  unlawful  practices  were  ineffectual 
in  providing  real  punishment  for  the  culprits,  and  were  for  the  most 
part  compromised  and  settled,  or  remain,  at  this  writing,  untried. 

One  member  of  the  Big  Six,  the  Hoechst  Co.,  was  first  repre- 
sented in  the  United  States  by  an  importing  house  which  went 
through  several  changes  to  become,  in  1902,  the  H.  A.  Metz  Co., 
of  New  York.  Brooklyn-born  Herman  Metz,  president  of  this  com- 
pany denied  on  numerous  occasions  that  he  or  his  company  had 
ever  been  involved  in  the  bribery  of  boss  dyers.  Elected  to  Congress 
in  1912,  just  before  the  antitrust  suits  were  instituted,  Metz  said 
that  he  knew  he  would  be  "a  shining  mark  for  attack.?  "So/*  said 
Metz,  "I  settled,  rather  than  fight  in  Court." 

In  one  of  his  public  statements  on  the  subject,  made  before  a 
Senate  Committee,  Metz  declared  with  some  heat  that  "so  much 
is  made  of  this  bribing  of  dyers— this  tipping  business.  It  is  not 
limited  to  the  dye  industry/'  Metz  also  pointed  out  that  with  the 
exception  of  Keppelmann,  all  of  the  dye  company  agents  involved 
were  Americans.  "The  Germans  were  not  doing  it/'  said  Metz,  "it 
was  their  agents  here." 

Metz's  special  pleading,  characterizing  the  bribing  of  dyers  as 
a  customary  American  way  of  doing  business,  constituted  a  rather 
contemptible  libel  upon  his  fellow  citizens.  The  author  has  been 
active,  and  behind  the  scenes,  so  to  speak,  in  a  great  many  Ameri- 
can industries  during  the  last  forty-five  years,  especially  those 
connected  with  or  dependent  upon  chemical  products  of  one  kind 
or  another.  Commercial  dishonesty  and  fraud  have  been  encoun- 
tered here  and  there,  it  has  existed  and  always  will  exist  among 
a  small  and  shifty  percentage  of  the  human  race.  But  with  the  ex- 
ception of  one  other  industry,  never  in  my  experience  or  in  the 
knowledge  of  any  one  with  whom  I  have  discussed  the  subject  has 
there  existed  in  the  United  States  such  systematic  corruption,  on 
a  large  scale  and  by  a  recognized  plan,  as  was  engaged  in  by  the 
predecessors  of  I.  G.  Farben  to  obstruct  the  development  of  our 
domestic  coal-tar  industry  during  the  two  decades  preceding  the 
first  World  War.  The  one  exception  mentioned  is  discussed  in  a 
later  chapter  on  patent  medicines. 

The  late  Francis  P.  Garvan,  who  more  than  any  other  prominent 
American  fought  to  destroy  the  German  dye  cartel's  hold  in  Amer- 


i*  TREASON'S    PEACE 

ica  and  to  prevent  its  reentry  after  the  war,  always  refused  to 
accept  the  denials  of  Metz  that  his  company  was  involved  in  the 
bribery.  Garvan  first  delved  deeply  into  the  affairs  of  the  Metz 
company,  and  all  of  the  other  German  dye  houses,  when  he  was 
made  Chief  Investigator  for  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  in  1917. 
He  based  his  allegations  about  Metz  on  letters  which  were  taken 
from  Metz's  own  files  in  the  New  York  offices  of  the  Hoechst  Co. 
Metz,  said  Garvan,  was  present  when  these  letters  were  produced 
at  Congressional  hearings  and  has  never  questioned  their  authen- 
ticity. Some  of  these  letters,  addressed  to  Metz  by  Dr.  Haeuser, 
president  of  the  German  company,  are  revealing.  In  one  of  them 
dated  July  31, 1913,  Dr.  Haeuser  wrote  Metz: 

As  for  what  concerns  the  paying  of  dyers  I  inform  you 
confidentially  about  the  development  of  matters  as  follows: 
The  proper  assistance  has  been  explained  to  the  Elberfeld 
(Bayer)  gentlemen,  at  the  establishment  of  the  new  business 
over  there,  that  they  must  unconditionally  avoid  in  the  future 
any  graft,  else  the  matter  may  become  very  bad  for  them. 
Elberfeld  has  then,  the  comprehensible  endeavor,  that  not 
they  alone,  but  also  all  other  firms,  should  cease  payments  to 
dyers  in  future.  They  immediately  came  to  an  understanding 
with  Ludwigshafen  (Badische)  and  Berlin,  and  then  also 
secured  the  consent  of  Cassella.  After  these  four  firms  were 
agreed,  there  remained  nothing  for  us  to  do  but  to  agree 
likewise,  as  Kalle  had  also  to  consent.  It  is  also  to  be  expected 
that  still  other  factories  will  join,  and  if  they  refuse  to  join  this 

shall  be  used  against  them  among  the  customers Aside 

from  the  fact  that  we  were  in  a  forced  position,  we  had  little 
cause  to  hesitate  as  you  wrote  to  me  repeatedly  that  the  pay- 
ments to  the  dyers  must  unconditionally  stop.  We  are  of  the 
opinion  that  it  must  be  serious,  at  least  for  the  six  firms  con- 
cerned, to  discontinue  all  affairs  with  the  dyers  in  the  future, 
and  we  are  furthermore  of  the  opinion  that  the  business  will 
get  along  very  well  without  the  payments  to  the  dyers,  since 
substantially  all  large  firms  share  the  same  point  of  view.  A 
certain  transition  period  is  very  likely  necessary,  and  therefore 
the  union  should  first  go  into  effect  on  January  1  of  next  year. 


PE  ACE  i£ 

It  will  not  be  feasible  then  any  more  that  you  set  expenses  in 
the  bill;  you  will  have  to  get  along  without  the  expenses. 

Your  independence,  as  far  as  it  is  concerned,  will  not  be 
affected  by  this  agreement,  and  at  all  events,  no  one,  even  in 
America,  will  wish  to  reproach  us  for  an  agreement  whose 
purpose  it  is  to  further  the  discontinuance  of  the  unlawful 
acts  on  the  part  of  our  customers.  If  you  wish  to  come  over 
here  this  year  yet,  which  would  please  me  very  much,  I  would 
ask  you  not  to  arrive  here  in  October,  as  I  must  go  on  my 
vacation  in  that  month  after  having  endured  it  here  the 
whole  summer  long.  In  case  Mr.  George  Gordon  Battle  should 
come  here,  I  will  receive  him  with  pleasure.  With  best  greet- 
ings, yours  respectfully, 

Dr.  Haeuser 

Dr.  Haeuser  was  also  the  president  of  "The  World  Society  for 
the  Preservation  of  German  Business."  Emphatic  as  this  letter  ap- 
pears to  have  been  on  the  matter  of  stopping  the  bribing  of  dyers 
by  January  1, 1914,  a  later  letter  dated  February  6, 1914,  from  the 
German  Hoechst  office  to  Metz  indicated  otherwise.  This  letter 
read: 

Now  as  far  as  extras  are  concerned,  I  hear  with  regret  that 
according  to  your  opinion  not  much  will  be  changed.  I  agree 
with  you  that  you  will  not  be  able  with  one  stroke  to  wipe 
out  all  extras  but  the  striving  must  be  to  abolish  this  unwhole- 
some condition  entirely.  The  propositions  that  you  now  make 
seem  to  me  to  indicate  a  practical  way  in  this  direction,  and 
we  are  satisfied  therewith. 

Again,  on  March  30,  1914  Metz  received  another  letter  from 
Hoechst  from  which  Garvan  quoted  as  follows: 

So  far  as  "extras"  are  concerned,  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  this 
practically  amounts  to  simply  a  transition  period  and  that  the 
same  will  rapidly  go  backward.  At  any  rate,  all  our  endeavors 
must  be  in  that  direction.  Your  idea  that  the  paying  out  of 
extras  in  future  could  be  done  through  a  third  party,  in  cash, 
as  for  instance  through  your  carpet  mill  at  Worcester,  I  do 
not  find  sound.  You  give  yourself  through  this  into  the  hands 


14  TREASON'S    PEACE 

of  such  third  party,  who  could  at  any  moment  turn  against 

you Regarding  the  charging  of  your  account  in  your 

letter  of  March  3,  I  have  to  remark  that  it  is  not  entirely 
clear,  as  in  the  past  year,  besides  the  $100,000  you  also  accord- 
ing to  your  letter  of  October  14,  1913,  have  kept  back  a 
further  dividend  of  $50,000  for  extras.  As  you  do  not  mention 
this  last  $50,000  it  seems  to  me  that  you  have  already  used 
this  in  the  previous  year  for  extras.  Will  you  please  confirm 
this? 

Said  Garvan,  "These  'extras'  meant  graft,  pure  and  simple/' 

Still  another  light  upon  the  pattern  of  bribery  of  the  Big  Six, 
and  the  innocent  surprise  of  their  executives  when  exposed,  is  the 
report  of  a  later  convention  called  by  members  of  the  cartel  at 
which  a  resolution  was  entered  upon  the  minutes  reading  as  fol- 
lows: "Resolved,  that  henceforth  bribery  shall  be  abolished,  except 
in  the  United  States  and  Russia." 


CHAPTER         II 


Congressman  Metz  of  the  Bleeding 
Heart 


"ENGLAND       KEEPS 

her  navy  intact  and  her  soldiers  at  home;  she  will  carry  on  the  war 
until  the  last  Frenchman  has  been  killed."  With  these  words  Dr. 
Hugo  Schweitzer  closed  his  address  to  a  gathering  of  leading 
textile  manufacturers  who,  with  the  speakers  of  the  evening,  were 
guests  of  the  Drysalters  Club  of  New  England  on  January  20, 1915. 

The  next  speaker,  our  old  friend,  Congressman  Herman  A.  Metz, 
began  his  address  with  this  statement:  "If  I  had  any  doubts  about 
Dr.  Schweitzer's  neutrality  before  I  heard  him  speak  tonight  those 
doubts  are  now  removed."  Thus  was  fabricated,  and  approved  by 
a  member  of  Congress,  this  still  familiar-sounding  canard  about 
the  British  people. 

America  had  just  discovered  how  dependent  she  was  on  the 
chemical  industry  of  Germany.  With  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914, 
our  imports  from  that  country  ceased.  American  manufacturers 
were  panicky,  and  President  Wilson  was  being  bombarded  with 
demands  for  relief  in  the  name  of  the  suffering  consumers  of 
German  dyes  and  pharmaceuticals.  Accordingly,  the  President  had 
lodged  a  formal  protest  with  the  British  Government— a  request 
that  the  blockade  be  relaxed  so  that  trade  between  the  United 
States  and  Germany  could  continue. 


16  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Dr.  Hugo  Schweitzer's  address  before  the  Drysalters  Club  was 
entitled,  "The  President's  Protest  to  Great  Britain  and  its  Justifica- 
tion by  Perils  to  Our  Trade  and  Industries."  The  speaker  was  in- 
troduced as  president  of  the  American  Bayer  Co.,  and  former 
president  of  the  Chemists  Club  of  New  York. 

The  Drysalters  Club  guests,  already  in  a  state  of  high  indigna- 
tion about  the  dye  shortage  were,  of  course,  in  a  most  receptive 
mood  for  an  attack  upon  England.  They  ate  it  up  that  night  and 
they  spread  it  far  and  wide  thereafter. 

During  that  period  no  public  suspicion  had  been  aroused  regard- 
ing the  under-cover  activities  of  Dr.  Schweitzer,  and  it  was  not  to 
be  revealed  until  later  that  at  the  very  time  of  his  anti-British 
address  the  illustrious  doctor  was  secretly  making  plans  to  secure 
control  of  substantially  all  of  the  phenol  (carbolic  acid)  then 
manufactured  in  the  United  States,  in  order  to  prevent  its  use 
in  the  manufacture  of  munitions  for  England. 

Thomas  A.  Edison  had  been  a  very  large  consumer  of  phenol 
as  a  material  for  making  phonograph  records.  Prior  to  the  outbreak 
of  the  war  his  supply  had  come  from  Germany— the  cartels  having 
seen  to  it  that  we  had  no  domestic  production.  However,  when  his 
foreign  supply  was  threatened,  Mr.  Edison,  with  characteristic 
initiative,  began  producing  it  here  and  did  so  on  a  scale  sufficiently 
large  to  have  a  considerable  excess  supply  over  his  own  require- 
ments. This  excess  would  have  gone  into  the  production  of  war 
munitions  for  Great  Britain  had  not  the  neutral  Dr.  Schweitzer 
quietly  grabbed  every  bit  of  it. 

Schweitzer  accomplished  this  by  secretly  organizing  a  company 
called  the  Chemical  Exchange  Association  which  contracted  with 
Edison  for  his  entire  excess  production  of  phenol.  The  Chemical 
Exchange  was  not  identified  with  Schweitzer  nor  did  it  become 
known  until  later  that  it  had  been  financed  with  funds  supplied 
by  the  notorious  Dr.  Heinrich  Albert,  financial  adviser  to  the 
German  Government.  Von  Bernstorff,  the  German  Ambassador, 
also  collaborated  in  this  Schweitzer  project.  The  Chemical  Ex- 
change resold  all  of  the  Edison  phenol  to  another  domestic  com- 
pany, also  German  owned,  which  used  it  to  make  salicylic  acid 
for  medicinal  purposes. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  17 

So  delighted  was  Dr.  Albert  with  the  success  of  this  means  of 
depriving  England  of  munitions  that  he  sent  Schweitzer  flam- 
boyant congratulations: 

"One  should  picture  to  himself  what  a  military  coup  would 
be  accomplished  by  an  army  leader  if  he  should  succeed  in 
destroying  three  railroad  trains  of  forty  cars,  containing  four 
and  one-half  million  pounds  of  explosives/' 

Dr.  Albert's  letter  then  went  on  to  urge  the  doctor  to  next  go 
after  America's  bromine  supply,  because: 

"Bromine,  together  with  chloral,  is  used  in  making  nitric 
gases,  which  are  of  such  great  importance  in  trench  warfare. 
Without  bromine  these  nitric  gases  are  of  slight  effect;  in 
connection  with  bromine,  they  are  of  terrible  effect." 

When  it  finally  came  out  that  Dr.  Schweitzer  was  the  brains 
behind  the  Chemical  Exchange-Edison  contract,  Schweitzer  de- 
fied criticism  with  an  attack  upon  what  he  called  the  "greedy 
explosives  manufacturers  who  were  paying  fabulous  prices  for 
carbolic  acid."  Said  Schweitzer: 

"I  wish  emphatically  to  state  that  all  carbolic  acid  purchased 
by  me  is  now  and  will  be  converted  into 'highly  salutary 
medicinal  remedies It  needs  no  imagination  to  real- 
ize how  many  men  would  have  been  killed,  wounded,  and 
maimed  by  the  use  of  this  enormous  quantity  of  one  of  the 
highest  explosives  known.  I  made  Mr.  Edison  especially  happy 
by  converting  this  carbolic  acid  into  medicines,  because,  as 
he  personally  said  to  me,  he  would  dislike  very  much  that 
any  of  the  merchandise  manufactured  by  him  should  be  used 
for  killing  people." 

These  humanitarian  sentiments  of  Dr.  Schweitzer  might  have 
been  more  impressive  but  for  the  fact  that  those  same  deadly 
chemical  gases,  first  used  by  the  Kaiser's  army  at  Ypres  in  viola- 
tion of  Germany's  pledge  at  the  Hague  convention,  were  manu- 
factured by  Dr.  Carl  Bosch,  Schweitzer's  colleague  in  Badische. 
And  the  formula  of  one  of  them,  the  dread  mustard  gas,  had 


i8  TREASON'S   PEACE 

already  been  invented,  in  1913  in  a  New  Jersey  laboratory,  by  a 
Schweitzer  employe,  Dr.  Walter  Scheele.  The  latter,  again  directed 
by  Bayer's  Schweitzer,  later  prepared  the  incendiary  sabotage 
bombs  used  to  destroy  ships  in  New  York  harbor  after  World 
War  I  began. 

During  this  period,  Dr.  Schweitzer's  activities  spread  to  many 
fields  which  were  remote  from  his  duties  as  president  of  a  company 
making  dyes  and  pharmaceuticals  at  Rensselaer,  New  York.  With 
funds  supplied  by  the  German  Government  Schweitzer  organized 
the  Printers  and  Publishers  Association,  and  the  German  Pub- 
lishers Society— for  the  dissemination  of  Teutonic  culture.  He  is 
also  credited  with  being  the  instigator  of  the  scheme  through 
which  the  New  York  Evening  Mail  was  purchased  with  German 
funds  by  Dr.  Edward  A.  Rumely,  and,  for  a  short  time,  turned  into 
an  organ  of  German  propaganda. 

The  good  doctor's  advice  was,  of  course,  relied  upon  by  Am- 
bassador von  Bernstorff  on  all  problems  relating  to  chemical  muni- 
tions. When  Congress,  to  encourage  the  newly  created  domestic 
dyestuff  industry  by  an  embargo  and  very  high  duties,  passed  the 
Tariff  Act  of  1916,  Schweitzer  wrote  von  Bernstorff  that  it  would 
be  "child's  play"  to  defeat  the  purpose  of  the  bill.  A  special  clause 
in  the  Act,  Schweitzer  pointed  out,  permitted  the  President  to 
remove  the  duty  on  certain  of  the  more  essential  dyes  after  five 
years.  In  the  meantime,  the  cartels  could  absorb  the  high  duties 
and  dump  dyes  into  the  United  States  so  far  below  costs  that  they 
could  "apply  the  lever"  and  regain  domination  of  the  market.  Dr. 
Schweitzer's  "child's  play"  also  was  to  include  the  election  of  the 
right  kind  of  a  President  of  the  United  States.  "Party  politics,"  said 
Schweitzer,  will  control  whether  the  President  to  be  elected  to 
office  "will  make  an  honest  effort  to  abolish  the  specific  duty,  and 
again  let  in  the  German  dyes  without  restriction."  His  letter,  how- 
ever, did  not  explain  how  he  proposed  to  bring  about  the  election 
of  the  right  kind  of  President.  Perhaps  he  thought  the  Ambassador, 
or  his  friend,  ex-Congressman  Metz,  could  handle  that  minor  detail. 

The  good  doctor,  of  course,  was  confident  that  Germany  would 
win  the  war  while  the  United  States  was  being  persuaded  by 
propaganda  and  corruption  to  keep  out  of  it.  However,  the  Farben 


TREASON'S   PEACE  19 

pattern  is  always  based  on  win  or  lose,  and  when  Germany  did 
lose,  Farben,  as  will  be  shown  later,  merely  moved  in  and  under 
cover  of  American-born  citizens  and  American  corporation,  re- 
gained control  of  many  of  our  vital  industries. 

Eventually,  it  came  out  that  Bayer's  Dr.  Schweitzer  was  in 
reality  the  undercover  head  of  the  German  espionage  and  sabotage 
organization  in  the  United  States.  When  Dr.  Albert  had  first 
arrived  in  the  United  States,  it  was  Schweitzer  who  met  him  and 
supplied  him  with  an  automobile.  And  when  the  United  States 
Government  forced  Albert's  departure  in  1917,  it  was  to  Dr. 
Schweitzer  that  he  handed  over  his  remaining  espionage  funds- 
some  $1,800,000. 

But  busy  as  he  was,  Dr.  Schweitzer  always  found  time  to  write 
articles  and  make  public  addresses  on  scientific  and  business  sub- 
jects. These,  like  his  Boston  speech  to  the  Drysalters  Club,  were 
then  neatly  reprinted  in  small  booklets  of  uniform  design,  and 
copies  bearing  the  legend,  "Compliments  of  the  Author,"  were 
mailed  to  important  public  and  college  libraries,  and  to  news- 
papers and  other  publications  throughout  the  United  States. 
Schweitzer  always  spoke  and  wrote  as  a  patriotic  American  citizen 
devoted  to  the  welfare  of  his  country;  and  observed  our  relations 
with  Germany  and  England  with  the  detachment  of  a  true  scientist. 
Some  of  the  titles  of  these  speeches  and  articles  are  of  interest: 
"The  Present  and  Future  Peril  to  our  Commerce  and  Industry," 
"German  Militarism  and  Its  Influence  upon  the  Industries,"  "Can 
Germany  be  Starved  into  Submission?"  The  theme  was  always  the 
same,  that  his  fellow- American  citizens  should  learn  from  scientific 
facts  that  friendship  with  Germany  was  a  matter  of  self-interest. 
How  familiar  that  false  slogan  has  become!  In  one  of  his  papers 
entitled,  "The  Chemists'  War,"  Dr.  Schweitzer  set  forth  at  great 
length  how  Germany's  chemists  had  contributed  more  to  the  suc- 
cess of  their  country's  armed  forces  than  either  the  Army  or  Navy. 
He  would  also  seem  to  have  anticipated  some  of  Farben's  future 
activities  and  tie-ups  in  the  United  States  as  he  stated  in  this 
article  that  German  chemists  had  already  solved  the  problem  of 
synthetic  rubber,  and  had  made  the  important  discovery  of  mag- 
nesium-aluminum alloys  for  war  purposes. 


90  TREASON'S   PEACE 

A  decade  later  Schweitzer's  successors  in  I.  G.  Farben  were 
making  their  secret  and  illegal  agreements  with  American  indus- 
trialists to  discourage  or  control  all  developments  here  in  synthetic 
rubber,  magnesium  alloys  and  other  war  essentials.  In  another  ten 
years— when  Schweitzer's  successors  were  to  give  the  word  to  the 
German  army:  "We  are  now  ready,  you  may  start  marching,"  the 
success  of  these  efforts  had  contributed  greatly  to  our  pitiful  state 
of  unpreparedness.  And  when  once  again  Farben's  lust  for  world 
conquest  has  been  thwarted  we  are  now  told,  again,  that  as  a 
matter  of  self-interest  we  should  permit  Farben's  industries  to 
survive. 

When  Congressman  Herman  Metz  at  that  Boston  meeting  in 
January  1915  put  his  public  approval  on  Dr.  Schweitzer's  vicious 
anti-English  sentiments,  he  also  informed  his  audience  that  he 
had  just  returned  from  a  trip  to  Germany  where  he  had  talked 
to  high  officials  in  Berlin  and  to  the  leaders  of  the  German  dye 
cartels,  including,  of  course,  Dr.  Schweitzer's  German  employers  in 
the  Bayer  Company.  Anyone  who  chooses  to  do  so  is  now  welcome 
to  assume  that  Congressman  Metz  at  that  time  had  no  knowledge 
or  suspicion  of  the  real  character  and  purpose  of  Dr.  Schweitzer's 
activities  in  the  United  States.  However,  in  December  1917,  shortly 
after  Dr.  Schweitzer's  death,  and  after  at  least  a  part  of  his  secretly 
conducted  treasonable  activities  had  become  public,  Metz,  by  then 
an  ex-Congressman  and  a  colonel  in  the  U.S.  Army,  joined  with 
several  other  American  representatives  of  the  German  cartel  and 
with  other  citizens  who  should  have  known  better,  in  organizing  a 
Hugo  Schweitzer  Memorial  Committee  to  pay  tribute  to  the  sterl- 
ing qualities  of  this  late-departed  German  spy. 

Five  years  later  Mr.  Metz  was  not  quite  so  proud  in  public  of 
his  late  colleague,  for  although  he  informed  a  Senate  Committee 
in  1922  that  Dr.  Schweitzer  had  a  right  to  buy  up  the  phenol  supply 
with  German  money  in  order  to  deprive  Great  Britain  of  munitions, 
he  also  referred  to  Schweitzer's  activities  as  "unpatriotic"  and  ob- 
jected vigorously  to  being  compared  with  his  former  friend. 

The  part  played  by  Herman  Metz,  however,  in  the  German- 
inspired  political  pressure  upon  the  U.S.  Government  is  indicated 
by  the  following: 


TREASON'S   PEACE  *i 

New  York,  March  6,  1915 
Hon.  William  J.  Bryan, 
Secretary  of  State,  Washington,  D.  C. 
My  dear  Mr.  Bryan: 

Referring  to  my  letter  of  yesterday  regarding  the  dyestuff 
situation,  I  beg  to  say  that  I  received  the  following  cable  this 
morning  from  Germany  via  Milan:  'Latest  developments  make 
further  shipments  dyestuffs  impossible/  The  cable  was  sent  to 

me  by  Dr.  Adolph  Haeuser the  president  of  the  Verein 

zur  Wahrung  der  Interressen  der  Chemischen  Industrie 
Deutchlands,  which  is  composed  of  the  various  chemical  and 
dyestuff  manufacturers  of  Germany,  with  headquarters  in 
Berlin,  and  shows  the  attitude  of  German  manufacturers  of 
dyestuffs  in  the  present  crisis.  It  is  safe  to  assume  that  they 
will  take  every  precaution  and  go  to  any  length  to  prevent 
their  products  from  reaching  consumers  of  enemy  countries, 
and  unless  some  agreement  can  be  reached  to  have  the  pres- 
ent condition  modified,  the  manufacturers  of  this  country 
will  suffer  as  much  as  those  of  belligerent  countries. 

Yours  very  truly, 

H.  A.  Metz. 

Mr.  Metz  thus  served  official  notice  on  his  own  government,  in 
the  name  of  the  German  cartel,  that  we  must  change  our  policy 
toward  Great  Britain  or  suffer  the  consequences.  That  this  diplo- 
matic pressure  was  inspired  by  the  German  Government  was  made 
clear  by  an  intercepted  cable  which  Dr.  Albert  sent  from  the 
United  States  to  his  home  office  on  April  26, 1916.  In  this  message 
Dr.  Albert  said: 

The  policy  of  withholding  dyestuffs  was  at  the  beginning  of 
the  war  without  doubt  the  only  possible  one. 

A  week  after  Metz's  letter  to  Secretary  Bryan,  Ambassador  von 
Bernstorff  contributed  his  advice  to  the  home  office  by  cabling 
Berlin  that: 

the  stock  of  dyes  in  this  country  is  so  small  that  4,000,000 
American  workmen  may  be  thrown  out  of  employment 


2«  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Dyes,  in  fact,  were  so  scarce  that  the  mills  would  pay  any  price 
for  such  as  were  available.  Old  warehouse  stocks  were  overhauled 
and  revealed  priceless  treasure  in  odds  and  ends  of  discarded 
German  colors.  In  one  instance  a  barrel  of  abandoned  dye  which 
originally  cost  23  cents  a  pound  sold  for  $7.50  a  pound. 

Meanwhile  Congressman  Metz  did  succeed  in  arranging  for 
several  cargoes  of  German  dyes  to  be  brought  to  the  United  States 
through  the  British  blockade  and  was  widely  acclaimed  in  certain 
circles  for  his  success  in  so  doing.  Then,  on  March  11,  1915,  the 
British  Government  issued  its  Order  of  Council  prohibiting  all 
trade  with  Germany,  which  so  tightened  the  blockade  that  further 
shipments  appeared  impossible. 

In  July  1916  the  American  people  received  a  real  thrill  of  excite- 
ment when  it  was  announced  that  the  German  submarine  Deutsch- 
land  had  arisen  from  beneath  the  surface  of  Chesapeake  Bay  and 
proceeded  to  a  dock  in  Baltimore  to  discharge  almost  300  tons  of 
dyestuffs.  These  dyes  had  been  concentrated  to  save  cargo  space 
and  the  shipment  really  represented  about  1300  tons  of  dyes  of  the 
prewar  standards.  Hearst's  pro-German  American  hailed  this  ex- 
ploit "as  marking  a  new  era  in  the  world's  commercial  history." 
Another  paper  termed  it  "Man's  greatest  single  victory  over  the 
forces  of  the  sea." 

It  was  of  course  ridiculous  to  suppose  that  an  occasional  sub- 
marine could  bring  any  real  relief  to  the  shortage  of  dyes  and 
medicinals  that  existed  in  the  United  States,  but  as  a  propaganda 
stunt  this  first  submarine  voyage  was  a  great  success.  So,  while 
editorial  writers  were  busy  acclaiming  German  ingenuity,  it  re- 
mained for  a  well-known  consulting  chemist,  the  late  Dr.  F.  X. 
Harold,  to  point  out  that  the  character  of  the  undersea  cargo  indi- 
cated that  the  motive  of  the  German  dye  trust  was  propaganda 
rather  than  profit  or  real  friendship,  since  an  equal  amount  of 
coal-tar  medicinals  would  have  yielded  a  far  greater  return,  and 
would  have  been  even  more  welcome.  Said  Dr.  Harold: 

It  seems  therefore,  that  Germany's  object  in  sending  dyes 
must  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  warning  to  American  manufac- 
turers. If  she  can  postpone,  even  for  a  few  months,  the  invest- 
ment of  further  capital  in  the  American  dyestuff  industry,  it 


TREASON'S   PEACE  23 

will  facilitate  greatly  her  efforts  to  regain  her  dye  monopoly 
after  the  close  of  the  war. 

Despite  the  selection  of  the  less  profitable  merchandise  for  this 
first  cargo,  almost  a  million  dollars  profit  to  the  cartels  was  rep- 
resented by  this  single  trip.  Four  months  later  the  Deutschland 
again  turned  up  in  an  American  harbor,  this  time  at  New  London, 
Connecticut.  It  was  said  that  this  cargo  was  worth  $10,000,000 
and  included  a  limited  quantity  of  drugs,  securities  and  diamonds 
in  addition  to  dyes. 

There  was  a  romantic,  Jules  Verne-like  aspect  to  the  resump- 
tion of  commerce  between  this  country  and  the  German  dye  con- 
cerns, that  appealed  to  the  emotions  of  many  Americans.  This  was 
made  good  use  of  in  anti-British  propaganda,  with  jests  at  the 
futility  of  a  blockade  when  the  Germans  could  outwit  the  great 
British  navy  by  merely  sailing  under  it. 

The  next  German  submarine  that  paid  us  a  visit  shelled  oui 
coast. 

The  Senate  hearings  in  1922  at  which  Mr.  Metz  objected  to 
being  compared  with  the  departed  Dr.  Schweitzer  were  held  in 
compliance  with  a  resolution  introduced  by  Senator  William  H. 
King  of  Utah  which  called  for  an  investigation  of  expenditures 
by  American  dye  interests  for  the  maintenance  of  a  lobby  at 
Washington.  These  expenditures,  Senator  King  alleged,  were  being 
made  to  secure  a  wicked  monopoly  of  the  domestic  dye  markets 
by  keeping  out  the  Germans.  Senator  King  stated  that  this  was 
most  reprehensible.  He  opened  the  proceedings  with  a  vituperative 
attack  upon  American  dye  manufacturers,  and  elaborated  on  six 
reasons  which  he  alleged  proved  that  the  domestic  dye  industry 
needed  no  embargo  to  protect  it.  Ex-Congressman  Metz  supported 
Senator  King's  charges,  and  informed  the  Committee  that  he  had 
placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Congress  one  of  his  own  employes, 
Dr.  Eugene  R.  Pickrell,  who  had  been  chief  chemist  for  the  U.S. 
Customs  Department  from  1912  to  1919,  and  who  was  therefore 
well  qualified  to  advise  the  Senators  on  the  pending  legislation. 

These  hearings  were  lengthy  and  many  witnesses  for  and  against 
the  embargo  were  heard.  Late  in  the  hearings,  Mr.  Metz's  employe, 
Dr.  Pickrell  did  testify,  and,  after  qualifying  as  an  expert  on 


*4  TREASON'S   PEACE 

domestic  dyes  and  dye  imports,  gave  high  praise  to  the  arguments 
and  findings  of  Senator  King,  which  he  termed  unanswerable.  Here 
were  three  American-born  citizens,  one  a  Senator  from  a  western 
state,  one  an  ex-Congressman  and  ex-army  officer,  and  one  an  ex- 
government  expert,  all  vigorously  opposing  the  embargo,  and 
maintaining  that  sufficient  protection  for  the  new  domestic  indus- 
try could  be  had  by  duties  instead.  It  was  only  a  few  years  back 
that  Mr.  Metz's  friend,  Dr.  Schweitzer,  had  written  von  Bernstorff 
that  it  would  be  "child's  play"  for  the  cartel  to  break  through  any 
tariff  duties,  however  high. 

Senator  King  apparently  stood  for  the  highest  ideals  of  dis- 
interest: "The  war  is  over,"  said  King,  "and  if  we  can  begin  to 
think  in  terms  of  world  peace  and  world  unity  it  will  be  better 
for  the  United  States."  The  Senator  went  back  in  history  more  then 
a  century  and  a  half,  to  the  first  treaty  between  the  United  States 
and  Germany,  to  sustain  his  allegation  that  the  United  States 
should  not  have  seized  the  properties  and  patents  of  the  German 
dye  cartel,  and  should  have  returned  them  after  the  war.  Metz 
pleaded  for  the  ultimate  consumers  of  dyes— "for  whom  my  heart 
bleeds,"  he  said.  Dr.  Pickrell  put  into  the  record  of  these  hearings 
page  after  page  of  complex  tables  to  support  his  contention  that  the 
domestic  dye  industry  did  not  need  an  embargo.  However,  Dr. 
Pickrell  made  no  reply  when  a  letter  was  introduced  showing  that 
he,  too,  had  stated  previously,  before  entering  the  Metz  employ, 
that  not  even  a  100  per  cent  duty  on  dyes  would  be  as  efficacious 
as  an  embargo.  None  of  these  three  Americans  appeared  to  be  at 
all  concerned  about  the  danger  to  their  country  if  it  were  again 
to  be  deprived  of  an  essential  war-munitions  industry. 

Eight  years  after  these  hearings  another  Senate  Committee, 
which  was  investigating  lobbies  and  lobbyists,  drew  from  one 
Samuel  Russell,  the  former  secretary  of  Senator  King,  an  admis- 
sion that  in  1922,  in  the  dye-embargo  fight,  Mr.  Metz  had  paid 
Russell  $1000  in  cash  to  be  used  in  the  Senator's  campaign  for 
reelection— and  that  the  money  had  been  handed  to  the  witness 
in  Metz's  New  York  office  by  none  other  than  Dr.  Eugene  R. 
Pickrell.  An  account  of  the  relations  of  these  three  disinterested 
American  citizens,  whose  hearts  bled  for  world  peace  and  the  poor 


TREASON'S   PEACE      <•  25 

consumer,  is  to  be  found  in  the  minority  report  of  the  1930  Lobby 
Committee. 

Dr.  Pickrell  testified  that  he  had  left  the  employ  of  the  H.  A. 
Metz  Co.  the  year  before,  and  had  opened  an  office  in  New  York 
as  a  consulting  chemist.  He  denied  repeatedly  that  he  represented 
the  German  dye  cartel,  or  that  he  knew  anything  about  its  inter- 
ests in  the  United  States.  The  Committee,  however,  drew  an  admis- 
sion from  the  doctor  that  his  income  included  payments  of  $12,000 
a  year,  plus  expenses,  from  four  Farben-controlled  companies. 
These  four  Pickrell  clients  were:  General  Dyestuff  Corp.,  of  which 
Herman  Metz  was  president;  Agfa  Ansco  fcompany,  which,  in 
1929,  had  been  taken  over  by  American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp.; 
Kuttruff-Pickhardt  &  Co.,  the  old  Badische  agency;  and  Farben- 
owned  Synthetic  Nitrogen  Products  Co. 

To  accusations  that  he  had  used  Senator  King's  office  as  his 
headquarters  while  representing  the  interests  of  these  clients,  and 
had  prepared  material  for  the  speeches  of  Senators  favoring  his 
cause,  Dr.  Pickrell  replied  that  he  only  saw  Senator  King  a  few 
times.  The  Committee's  Minority  report  found  this  statement  to 
be  "decidedly  at  variance"  with  other  evidence  given  before  it; 
and  called  Frank  K.  Boal,  a  Washington  newspaper  correspondent, 
to  the  witness  stand.  Mr.  Boal  testified  that  it  was  known  among 
newspaper  men  that  when  Pickrell  was  in  Washington  he  could 
be  found  in  Senator's  King's  office,  and  that  he  had  seen  the  doctor 
there— with  his  coat  off,  dictating  to  a  stenographer.  Direct  ques- 
tioning also  brought  out  that  Dr.  Pickrell  was  the  author  of  ma- 
terial Senator  King  had  presented  to  the  Senate  Committee  of 
1922.  Small  wonder  the  doctor  had  been  so  lavish  with  his  praise. 

Ex-Congressman  Metz  was  inclined  to  be  irascible  on  the  wit- 
ness stand,  and  complained  bitterly  at  questions  of  Republican 
Senator  Arthur  R.  Robinson,  especially  those  which  had  to  do  with 
his  activities  as  treasurer  of  the  American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp., 
ano!  that  company's  relations  with  Farben.  "Everything  is  infer- 
ence," he  protested.  Metz  also  denied  vigorously  that  he  was  a 
lobbyist,  but  he  did  affirm  his  friendship  for  Dr.  Bosch  and  the 
German  dye  companies,  and  described  them  as  "my  friends  abroad, 
by  whom  I  have  been  standing  all  of  these  years,  and  they  have 
stood  by  me." 


26  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Prior  to  the  minority  report  of  the  1930  Lobby  Committee,  I 
had  made  a  number  of  efforts  to  awaken  the  Senate  to  the  menace 
to  our  national  security  that  was  being  revealed  by  that  Commit- 
tee. The  report  was  issued  May  22,  1930.  One  of  my  letters,  dated 
March  8,  1930,  was  as  follows: 

Hon.  Guy  D.  Goff, 
United  States  Senate 
Washington,  D.  C. 

Dear  Senator  Goff: 

Noting  your  remarks  in  the  Senate  yesterday  regarding  the 
activities  of  Dr.  Pickrell,  the  paid  agent  of  the  German  I.  G., 
it  occurs  to  me  to  send  you  herewith  copy  of  a  letter  addressed 
some  time  since  to  the  chairman  of  the  Senate  Lobby  Com- 
mittee. The  information  contained  therein,  so  far  as  I  can 
learn,  has  not  been  utilized  as  yet  for  the  purpose  of  develop- 
ing the  extent  of  the  activities,  the  background,  and  the  con- 
nections of  this  Dr.  Pickrell. 

Without  attempting  to  discuss  the  merits  of  a  high  or  low 
tariff  with  relation  to  any  domestic  product,  I  would  point  out 
that  the  so-called  German  I.  G.  is  the  one  group  which  has 
attempted  to  influence  pending  tariff  legislation  which,  by  no 
stretch  of  imagination,  may  be  said  to  have  any  proper  motive 
relating  to  the  social  well-being  or  prosperity  of  our  working 
class,  our  agricultural  groups,  or  the  industrial  and  commer- 
cial developments  of  the  American  people. 

It  is  also  obvious  that  control  of  our  chemical  manufactur- 
ing industries  means  control  of  the  munition  plants  of  the 
next  war that  control  of  our  pharmaceutical  indus- 
try   means  control  of  an  important  factor  in  the  public 

health. 

It  is  also  obvious  that  secret  control  of  an  enormous  group 
of  the  most  profitable  patent  medicines  in  the  United  States 
means  secret  control  of  the  expenditures  of  unlimited  funds 

for  advertising with  its  secret  influence  on  news  and 

editorial  expression  on  all  subjects. 

I  am  not  an  alarmist  trying  to  wave  a  bloody  shirt,  but  I 
say  to  you  without  fear  of  contradiction  that  the  uncovering 


TREASON'S   PEACE  27 

of  the  tentacles  of  the  so-called  German  I.  G.,  in  every  ele- 
ment of  our  social  order  in  the  United  States  at  this  time, 
will  astound  and  shock  the  American  people. 

Please  use  the  letter  which  I  have  inclosed  herewith  as  you 
see  fit. 

Respectfully  yours, 
H.  W.  Ambruster 

Senator  GofiE  acknowledged  receipt  of  this  letter  with  his 
thanks,  and  the  comment  that  he  would  use  the  material  in  it  to 
advantage  if  the  opportunity  arose.  Apparently  that  opportunity 
did  not  arise. 

A  similar  letter,  sent  to  Senator  Joseph  R.  Grundy,  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, received  a  more  forthright  reply.  "I  am  quite  sure,"  he  wrote, 
"that  not  only  what  you  stated  in  your  letter  but  the  apprehension 
contained  in  your  closing  paragraph  are  correct,  and  the  Ameri- 
can people  have  comparatively  little  knowledge  of  what  is  going 
on  in  this  country  to  undermine  their  material  wellbeing."  Sena- 
tor Grundy,  a  high-tariff  Republican,  was  also  a  Quaker  and 
appears  to  have  had  sufficient  insight  to  be  fearful  of  the  dangers 
to  our  future  peace.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  Senate  took  no  action. 

Twelve  long  years  after  my  letters  to  Senators  Goff  and  Grundy, 
the  "shock  to  the  American  people"  that  I  then  prophesied  was 
echoed  when  Senator  Harry  S  Truman,  in  another  Senate  hearing, 
shouted  "treason"  at  revelations  of  some  of  the  agreements  en- 
tered into  by  the  Standard  Oil  Co.  of  New  Jersey  which  had 
enabled  Farben  to  obtain  such  control  of  our  chemical-manufac- 
turing industries  that  the  production  of  synthetic  rubber  in  the 
United  States  had  been  obstructed  to  the  grave  injury  of  our  war 
economy.  As  will  be  shown  in  a  later  chapter,  these  Standard  Oil- 
Farben  agreements  were  actually  being  arranged  and  consum- 
mated at  the  time  of  Pickreirs  activities  [and  prior  to  the  date 
of  my  letter  to  the  Senators]. 

After  the  1930  exposure  Mr.  Pickrell  dropped  out  of  sight  as  a 
disinterested  dye  expert  before  Congressional  Committees.  Later, 
he  was  listed  as  a  director  of  H.  A.  Metz  Co.,  and  as  an  attorney 
at  10  East  40th  Street,  across  the  hall  from  the  notorious  German- 
American  Board  of  Trade— which  was  organized  by  Herman  Metz 


2 8  TREASON'S   PEACE 

in  1924  and  operated  as  Farben's  high  level  propaganda  machine 
by  one  Dr.  Albert  Degener  until  that  gentleman  was  interned 
after  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war.  According  to  the  published 
statements  of  the  Bulletin  of  the  German-American  Board  of 
Trade,  Attorney  Pickrell  was  listed  as  one  of  its  directors  in  1940; 
and  as  appearing  before  Secretary  of  State  Hull  in  protest  at  the 
British  blockade  after  the  war  started  and  before  the  Treasury 
Department  in  customs  matters  in  1941. 

Senator  William  H.  King  retired  from  the  Senate  in  1940  and 
opened  a  law  office  in  Washington.  As  for  Herman  Metz,  it  seems 
that  while  he  was  still  vehemently  proclaiming  sole  ownership  of 
his  two  companies,  his  loyalty  to  the  German  cartel  was  rewarded 
by  the  round  sum  of  $1,750,000— the  purchase  price  of  his  General 
Drug  Company  and  the  Metz  Laboratories.  While  Winthrop 
Chemical  Company  was  ostensibly  the  buyer  of  these  profitable 
enterprises,  it  was  our  old  friend  I.  G.  Farben  that  put  up  $875,000, 
or  half  the  purchase  price. 

Ex-Congressman  Metz,  the  Democrat,  turned  Republican  to 
support  Harding  because  his  old  party  was  mean  to  his  German 
friends,  the  American  consumer's  friend  with  the  bleeding  heart 
who  had  so  bitterly  denounced  the  American  dye  manufacturers 
as  an  iniquitous  monopoly  in  1922,  and  who  claimed  that  he  did 
not  represent  the  cartel,  in  1925  helped  to  organize,  and  became 
president  of,  the  General  Dyestuff  Corp.,  a  concern  that  was  to 
become  the  exclusive  U.S.  sales  agency  for  Farben's  dyes.  At  the 
very  time  his  company  was  being  sued  for  damages  in  American 
courts  by  Farben's  Hoechst,  Metz  was  being  paid  huge  sums  by 
Farben  to  turn  over  his  drug  and  dye  interests  to  Farben's  new 
American  hideouts.  In  1929  Metz  helped  Hermann  Schmitz,  chair- 
man of  I.  G.  Farben,  organize  the  American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp. 
which  took  over  the  General  Aniline  Works  and  the  Agfa  Ansco 
Corp.  Metz  became  vice-president  and  treasurer  of  American  I.  G., 
and  shortly  afterward  issued  a  public  statement  denying  that  the 
company  was  a  branch  of  I.  G.  Farben.  In  1934,  while  still  head  of 
his  German-American  Trade  Board,  after  a  visit  to  his  friends  in 
Farben  and  in  Hitler's  new  government,  Herman  Metz  died  and 
was  buried  with  military  honors. 

In  1939,  shortly  after  Germany  started  the  present  war,  Farben 


TREASON'i     PEACE  *$ 

caused  the  American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp.  to  change  Its  name  to 
General  Aniline  &  Film  Corp.  In  1941  and  '42  multiple  indictments 
were  filed  in  U.S.  District  Courts  accusing  General  Aniline  &  Film, 
and  several  other  corporations  and  individuals,  of  conspiring  with 
Hermann  Schmitz,  and  with  I.  G.  Farben  to  restrict  the  production 
of  dyes  and  chemicals  in  the  United  States,  to  prevent  domestic 
exports  from  the  United  States,  and  to  control  competition  with 
imports  from  Germany.  Among  those  indicted  on  these  charges 
were  the  E.  I.  duPont  De  Nemours  &  Co.,  Inc.,  and  the  Allied 
Chemical  &  Dye  Corp.  It  was  also  set  forth  in  these  indictments 
that  systematic  efforts  had  been  made  from  the  beginning  to  con- 
ceal the  ownership  by  I.  G.  Farben  of  the  American  companies 
with  which  Metz  had  been  associated. 

In  December  1941,  the  Treasury  Department  seized  General 
Aniline  &  Film  Corp.,  and  prior  to  the  seizure,  Winthrop,  owned 
jointly  by  General  Aniline  &  Film  and  Sterling  Products,  Inc.,  had 
already  been  prosecuted  for  illegal  relations  with  Farben.  After 
the  seizure,  the  Treasury  removed  several  of  Winthrop's  employes 
and  officers  as  objectionable  enemy  aliens,  and  a  complete  removal 
of  every  trace  of  the  Farben  influence  was  announced.  Then,  in 
October  1942,  the  Winthrop  management  announced  in  the  press 
that  as  a  master  stroke  of  this  housecleaning,  it  had  appointed  as 
its  director  of  research  one  Dr.  Chester  M.  Suter,  professor  of 
chemistry  at  Northwestern  University.  One  fact,  however,  that 
the  announcements  neglected  to  mention  was  that  Dr.  Suter  had 
.completed  his  chemical  education  at  Yale  University  on  what 
was  known  as  the  Metz  Fellowship.  This  fellowship  was  estab- 
lished at  Yale  in  1925  by  Farben's  Herman  A.  Metz  and  was 
financed  thereafter  by  Metz  and  his  Farben-controlled  companies. 

Herman  Metz  had  four  sons,  one  of  whom  was  to  carry  on  with 
Farben  as  a  banker  and  an  aid  to  its  Central  Finance  Administra- 
tion at  Berlin  (the  polite  name  for  the  Farben  foreign  espionage 
and  propaganda  bureau )  and  who  was  also  to  marry  into  royalty, 
not  of  the  ersatz  Farben  variety  but  that  of  the  ancient  14th  cen- 
tury duchy  of  Schleswig-Holstein,  subject  of  many  disputes  be- 
tween Denmark  and  Prussia  before  it  became  finally  an  integral 
part  of  Bismarck's  German  Empire. 

So,  when  Richard,  son  of  Herman,  in  1941,  married  Marie  Luise, 


30  TREASON'S   PEACE 

daughter  of  the  14th  Duke  of  this  Danish-German  principality, 
who  came  from  war  torn  Europe  to  wed  in  New  York,  the  family 
of  Metz,  of  humble  Brooklyn  origin,  became  linked  with  the  Royal 
families  both  of  Germany  and  Denmark,  and,  by  those  same  ties, 
with  England's  Kings  and  Queens,  and  even  with  Carol  of  Rou- 
mania.  And  young  Metz  also  became  related,  through  his  princess, 
with  the  millionaire  American  Leishman  family,  the  duke's  first 
wife  having  been  Nancy  Louise  Leishman,  daughter  of  our  Am- 
bassador to  the  Kaiser's  court  when  William  Howard  Taft  was 
President. 

As  some  of  the  readers  of  this  story  may  recall  in  news  dispatches 
at  the  end  of  the  war,  it  was  Princess  Valerie-Marie,  sister  of 
Marie  Louise,  who  was  so  indignant  with  a  squad  of  American 
doughboys  on  their  way  to  Berlin  when  they  bivouacked  on  her 
16,000-acre  estate  and  permitted  her  to  retain  as  living  quarters 
only  14  rooms  of  her  300  room  palace. 

Richard  Metz,  according  to  a  report  of  the  American  Military 
Government  of  Germany  (O.M.G.U.S. ),  as  submitted  to  a  Senate 
Committee  in  1945,  was  in  Belgium  in  1940  in  some  connection 
with  Farben's  espionage  bureau,  and,  returning  to  the  United 
States  in  October  of  that  year,  was  requested  to  deliver  a  message 
to  one  of  Farben's  most  notorious  agents  in  Latin  America,  Alfredo 
Moll  ( see  Chapter  xm )  instructing  the  latter  how  to  get  his  con- 
fidential reports  out  of  Peru,  Brazil  or  Mexico. 

So  Herman's  son,  as  a  private  banker  living  on  Park  Avenue, 
New  York,  carried  on  the  traditions  of  the  name. 

It  would  appear  to  the  author  that  nothing  could  better  reveal 
the  threads  and  texture  of  the  Farben  pattern  than  a  study  of  the 
life  and  activities  of  Herman  A.  Metz,  Brooklyn-born  American. 
Back  in  March  1914  in  one  of  the  letters  written  to  Metz  by  Dr. 
Haeuser— from  which  excerpts  on  bribery  of  the  boss  dyers  have 
already  been  cited— the  head  of  the  German  Hoechst  Co.  wrote 
these  significant  words:  "So  far  as  our  other  agreements  are 
concerned  I  have  no  objection  to  having  you  send  these  back; 
our  entire  relationship  is  really  a  confidential  relationship,  and 
it  will  be  and  must  without  agreements,  so  continue  in  the  future 
as  in  the  past."  When  Dr.  Haeuser  wrote  that  all-inclusive  phrase 
"in  the  future  as  in  the  past"  he  must  have  anticipated  what  was 


TREASON'S   PEACE  31 

to  happen  within  the  five  months  following,  when  Germany  was 
to  make  "scraps  of  paper"  of  written  agreements,  and  begin  its 
march  through  Belgium. 

Should  Germany  have  won  the  first  World  War,  it  is  interesting 
to  speculate  on  the  influence  and  power  which  might  have  come 
to  Colonel  Herman  Metz  through  his  "confidential  relationship" 
with  Dr.  Haeuser  and  other  German  cartel  leaders.  Metz's  pre- 
war written  agreements  with  Hoechst  might  not  carry  over,  but 
the  record  shows  that  the  confidential  relationship  was  all  that 
the.  cartel  required  to  hold  the  Metz  loyalty.  We  have  had  similar 
revelations  of  carry-over  relationships  and  post-war  understand- 
ings reached  by  other  American  industrialists  with  Farben's  leaders 
during  the  early  period  of  World  War  II.  Metz's  career  gives  at 
least  some  indication  of  what  Farben's  leaders  have  prepared  for,, 
and,  unhappily,  have  a  right  to  expect,  in  the  peace  to  come,  as 
will  appear  in  chapters  to  follow. 

Herman  Metz  was  self-made.  Starting  as  an  office  boy  he  became 
a  successful  business  man,  manufacturer,  politician,  Congressman, 
Army  Officer,  philanthropist,  and  leader  in  many  walks  of  Ameri- 
can life.  Always  a  rough-and-tumble  fighter,  he  stormed  through 
all  accusations  of  impropriety  with  assertions  of  patriotic  motive 
and  vindictive  slander  of  his  opponent.  As  a  table  thumper  Metz 
was  in  a  class  by  himself. 

My  personal  acquaintance  with  Metz  started  just  after  the  first 
World  War,  when  the  chemical  company  of  which  I  was  the  gen- 
eral manager  was  supplying  the  Metz  Laboratories  with  arsenic 
acid.  At  an  official  reception  at  Washington  in  1926  I  asked  Metz 
if  he  would  care  to  meet  my  good  friend,  the  late  Dr.  Charles 
Herty,  distinguished  engineer  and  adviser  to  Francis  Garvan  in 
many  of  the  latter 's  battles  with  Farben  and  Farben's  agents. 
"Sure"  shouted  Metz  at  the  top  of  his  lungs.  "Where  is  that  old 
son-of-a-bitch?  I'll  meet  him  any  time,  any  place,  and  tell  him 
what's  what  about  that  gang  of  goddamned  horse  thieves  he 
runs  with."  So  Mr.  Metz  started  with  me  to  look  for  the  mild  and 
gentle  doctor,  and  I  was  much  relieved  that  we  did  not  succeed 
in  finding  him  in  the  crowded  hall. 

In  1932,  several  years  after  I  had  first  publicly  denounced 
Farben  and  its  activities  in  the  United  States,  I  had  my  last 


32  TREASON'S    PEACE 

encounter  with  Herman  Metz,  and  received  the  high  distinction 
of  having  him  call  me  a  lunatic.  This  was  in  reply  to  a  letter  in 
which  I  denounced  as  criminal  the  advertising  slogan  of  Bayer 
aspirin:  "It  does  not  harm  the  heart/'  I  did  not  respond  in  kind 
to  Metz's  description  of  my  mentality. 

Instead  I  sent  him  a  form  of  affidavit  to  fill  out  and  sign  in 
which,  if  he  chose,  he  could  swear  to  his  approval,  as  an  authority, 
of  that  advertising  claim.  This  letter  also  requested  Metz  to  present 
to  his  friend  "Doctor"  Weiss,  of  Sterling,  my  comments  relative 
to  the  advertising.  Metz  declined  to  take  advantage  of  the  oppor- 
tunity to  give  his  personal  seal  of  approval  to  the  therapeutic 
qualities  of  one  of  Farben's  most  celebrated  products.  That  he 
was  wise  in  refraining  came  out  some  two  years  later  when  these 
claims  were  admitted  to  be  dangerously  false— in  actions  brought 
by  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  as  a  result  of  my  complaint. 


CHAPTER       III 


The  Lost  Provinces  Regained 


ON      SEPTEMBER 

1,  1939  when  the  mechanized  armies  of  Adolph  Hitler  thundered 
into  Poland  and  began  a  war  which  was  to  spread  across  the  face 
of  the  earth,  most  of  the  people  of  America  were  smug  in  the 
fancied  security  of  their  geographical  position,  entirely  unaware 
that  a  gigantic  industrial  pincers  movement  had  again  rendered 
them  very  nearly  helpless. 

These  pincers  were  the  result  of  a  grandiose  plan  initiated  by 
the  leaders  of  the  German  chemical  cartel  a  few  short  months 
after  the  gunfire  of  World  War  I  had  ceased— while  the  exile  of 
Kaiser  Wilhelm  and  the  feeble  pretense  of  a  German  Republic 
were  being  hailed  as  the  birth  of  a  new  day  for  the  innocent 
people  of  the  Fatherland. 

In  this  post-war  period  of  delusion  and  muddled  thinking, 
Farben's  predecessors  proceeded  quietly  to  reconstruct  their  inter- 
national framework  of  industrial  and  political  domination.  Dur- 
ing the  war  many  of  their  properties  in  America  had  been  confis- 
cated, and  a  number  of  their  key  men  deported  or  interned.  For 
these  Teutonic  tycoons  the  struggle  for  world  conquest  had  not 
ended  when  the  German  army  had  quit.  The  armistice  and  the 


34  TREASON'S   PEACE 

paper  peace  merely  signalled  a  change  in  pattern  that  had  been 
determined  long  before.  This  time  the  plan  was  to  be  made  pos- 
sible by  corruption  on  a  scale  which  would  make  another  failure 
in  combat  war  impossible.  Industrial  encirclement  was  to  be  ac- 
companied with  peace  propaganda,  social  espionage  and  sabotage 
of  law  enforcement.  Compared  with  these  plans  the  earlier  pattern 
of  activities  of  the  "Big  Six"  was  insignificant. 

In  the  last  months  of  1918  and  thereafter,  when  Germany's 
military  leaders  were  in  disgrace,  the  big  boys  of  I.  G.  Dyes  had 
become  the  strongest  cohesive  force  in  Germany,  despite  their 
apparently  hapless  economic  plight  at  the  mercy  of  the  Allied 
Reparations  Commission.  They  could  say,  with  some  appearance 
of  logic,  that  it  was  not  their  fault  that  the  war  was  lost,  and  that 
Germany,  to  be  restored,  must  depend  upon  their  world-wide 
resources  and  industrial  leadership.  Their  prestige  had  increased 
by  the  failure  of  the  military  war  for  which  they  had  been  so 
largely  responsible.  Chemistry  had  so  advanced  through  the  indi- 
vidual efforts  of  these  men  that  it  was  now  recognized  as  the  key- 
stone of  modern  warfare.  The  tremendous  increase  in  the  quantity 
and  destructiveness  of  gunfire,  due  to  the  use  of  coal-tar  explosives, 
had  lifted  these  Big  Six  leaders  to  positions  of  far  greater  impor- 
tance in  German  military  circles  than  had  been  accorded  them 
prior  to  1914.  The  use  of  poison  gas  was  wholly  their  plan,  and 
the  supply  of  gases  had  come  wholly  from  their  dye  factories. 
The  process  of  extracting  nitrogen  from  the  air  had  been  invented 
by  Dr.  Fritz  Haber,  of  the  Kaiser  Wilhelm  Institute,  and  the  nitro- 
gen production  of  the  Badische  plants,  directed  by  Dr.  Carl  Bosch, 
had  been  on  such  a  vast  scale  that  for  the  first  time  Germany  had 
become  independent  of  the  great  nitrate  beds  of  Chile. 

The  one  great  lesson  which  the  I.  G.  leaders  learned  from  the 
first  World  War  was  that  their  original  pattern  of  industrial  con- 
quest had  not  been  sufficiently  broad  to  prevent  the  twofold 
disaster  of  the  armistice  and  of  the  loss  of  most  of  their  branches 
and  properties  in  the  United  States.  The  seizure  of  thousands  of 
their  United  States  patents  covering  dyes,  pharmaceuticals  and 
other  chemical  products  had  been  an  especially  hard  blow,  and 
it  was  of  the  utmost  importance  that  control  over  these  products 
be  regained  as  quickly  as  possible.  And  it  was  apparent  that 


TREASON'S   PEACE  35 

better  methods  must  be  devised  to  disguise  the  American  fronts  to 
which  titles  to  new  patents  and  processes  might  safely  be  trans- 
ferred. Some  of  the  earlier  disguises  had  been  too  crude  and  their 
wearers  too  obvious.  The  German  industrialists  had  learned  their 
lessons  from  the  war,  but  as  events  were  so  tragically  to  prove, 
the  people  of  the  United  States  had  not. 

To  some  readers,  the  record  which  follows  of  a  few  of  the  many 
agreements  and  tie-ups  consummated  by  Farben  in  the  United 
States  may  prove  a  tiresome  list  of  industries,  companies  and 
dates.  However,  it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  framework 
which  the  men  of  Farben  erected  in  order  to  destroy  our  national 
security,  unless  their  activities  in  this  country  are  pictured  in  some 
kind  of  chronological  grouping  of  the  more  important  products 
and  companies  involved.  These  industrial  tie-ups,  the  start  of  the 
German  pincers  movement  in  America,  included  agreements,  part- 
nerships and  subsidiary  controls  of  every  conceivable  kind  for 
sharing  processes,  patents,  profits  and  markets.  Where  specific 
control  was  not  secured  by  Farben,  a  sharing  of  management  gave 
Farben  great  influence;  where  both  were  lacking,  Farben  held 
negative  control  through  its  power  to  withdraw  its  participation 
and  thus  destroy  the  share  of  profits  by  which  its  American  asso- 
ciates were  induced  to  serve  its  purposes.  Behind  and  above  writ- 
ten documents  and  formal  legal  contracts  were  verbal  under- 
standings and  "pledges  of  gentlemen"  which  bound  certain  of  our 
American  patriots  to  their  Farben  associates  with  personal  ties  and 
obligations  that  neither  court  proceedings  nor  war  itself  might 
obliterate. 

The  list  of  American  corporations  involved  in  the  Farben  pat- 
tern reads  like  a  roster  of  big  business,  high  finance  and  bi-partisan 
politics  in  the  United  States.  A  roil  of  the  names  of  the  men  who 
consummated  these  tie-ups,  and  without  whose  active  participa- 
tion the  Farben  framework  would  have  remained  a  lifeless  skeleton, 
achieves  its  greatest  significance  when  it  is  realized  that  these  indi- 
viduals were  not  the  broken-English,  German-Americans  of  the 
Bunds  and  singing  societies.  They  were  and  are  native  born  Ameri- 
cans, many  of  them  nationally  known  industrialists  to  whom  thou- 
sands of  their  fellow  citizens  look  for  leadership. 

In  those  early  post-war  years  there  was  a  strong  feeling  of  re- 


36  TREASON'S    PEACE 

sentment  at  what  the  "Big  Six"  had  done,  and  an  equally  strong 
and  bitter  conviction  that  our  new  organic-chemical  industries 
must  be  protected  against  competition  from  the  Germans.  This 
latter  belief  was  tempered  somewhat  by  distrust  of  the  two  largest 
American  companies  making  dyes,  E.  I.  duPont  de  Nemours  & 
Company,  and  the  National  Aniline  &  Chemical  Corp.,  the  latter 
having  been  absorbed  into  the  huge  Allied  Chemical  &  Dye  Corp. 
in  1920  by  Eugene  Meyer,  and  the  late  Orlando  Weber. 

M.  R.  Poucher  of  duPont  was  a  former  Badische  agent  in  the 
United  States,  and  William  J.  Matheson  of  National  Aniline  the 
former  Cassella  agent.  Years  later  it  was  to  be  revealed  that  this 
early  distrust  of  duPont  and  Allied  had  some  substance  of  fact  to 
support  it.  As  early  as  1919  and  1920,  while  duPont  and  Allied 
were  leading  the  cry  for  protection  against  imported  dyes,  rep- 
resentatives of  both  companies  were  meeting  the  leaders  of  I.  G. 
Dyes  in  Germany  and  France  to  negotiate  for  process  and  market- 
ing agreements  on  dyestuffs  and  atmospheric  nitrogen. 

It  was  in  this  early  postwar  period  that  Attorney  General  A. 
Mitchell  Palmer,  former  Alien  Property  Custodian,  made  the 
prediction  that:  "The  next  war,  if  it  ever  does  happen,  will  be  a 
chemists'  war,  and  the  country  which  has  the  best-developed  dye 
and  chemical  industry  is  the  country  which  is  going  to  come  out 
on  top."  Mr.  Palmer  said  that,  "of  all  the  important  industries 
developed  during  the  recent  war,  none  stands  out  more  conspicu- 
ously, or  is  of  more  vital  importance  to  the  health,  the  commercial 
life  and  the  preservation  of  American  institutions  than  the  dye 
and  chemical  industry."  There  was  of  course  complete  agreement 
among  patriotic  Americans  with  Mr.  Palmer's  conclusion  that 
the  new  organic  chemical  industries  should  be  developed;  un- 
fortunately, his  forebodings  of  a  future  war  went  unheeded  by 
all  but  a  few. 

Throughout  this  period  the  author  occupied  what  might  be 
called  a  front-row  seat  at  the  fight  between  friends  of  the  "Big 
Six"  and  the  advocates  of  a  strong  American-owned  chemical  in- 
dustry. Early  in  1918  I  had  become  associated  with  the  late  Frank 
Hemingway,  chemical  manufacturer  of  New  York  City  and  Bound 
Brook,  N.  J.,  later  becoming  general  manager  of  his  company; 
Hemingway  was  one  of  the  organizers  of  the  American  Dyes  In- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  37 

stitute,  started  in  1918  to  bring  together  all  of  the  American  manu- 
facturers in  the  fight  to  protect  the  new  industry.  Later,  I  opened 
my  own  office  in  New  York  City  as  a  consultant,  and,  although 
active  in  other  branches  of  the  chemical  industry,  I  was  brought  in 
contact  with  many  of  the  principals  in  the  fight  for  and  against 
American-made  dyes  and  drugs. 

It  was  not  long  after  the  armistice  that  I.  G.  Dyes  resumed  open 
business  relations  with  the  firm  of  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.,  which 
had  escaped  seizure  on  the  specious  plea  that  it  was  not  a  Badische 
branch  or  subsidiary.  However,  that  firm  did  not  hesitate  to  re- 
cross  the  lines  into  the  green  pastures  of  I.  G.  Dyes  as  soon  as 
the  government  lifted  the  ban  on  communications  with  Germany. 
William  Paul  Pickhardt,  son  of  one  of  the  founders,  and  an 
officer  of  the  company,  cabled  Badische  for  prices  on  dyes,  and 
then  left  for  Germany  to  begin  a  vigorous  campaign  to  import 
German  dyes  through  his  firm— dyes  which  the  U.  S.  Government 
had  decreed  could  come  into  this  country  only  on  license  through 
the  Textile  Alliance,  and  then  only  when  they  were  dyes  that  the 
new  domestic  producers  could  not  supply.  As  a  result  of  Pick- 
hardt's  activities,  the  State  Department  cabled  its  representative 
at  Paris  in  December  1919  that  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.  had  at- 
tempted to  induce  the  German  cartel  to  refuse  to  ship  dyes  to 
America  through  the  Textile  Alliance,  in  order  to  force  all  im- 
portations to  come  through  their  own  company. 

As  the  German  I.  G.  got  under  way  in  their  new  activities  in  the 
United  States  a  mass  of  rumor,  conjecture  and,  in  some  instance, 
fact,  was  broadcast  as  each  step  was  taken.  It  so  happened,  how- 
ever, that  the  first  of  the  new  I.  G.  tie-ups,  which  was  in  the  drug 
industry,  attracted  no  attention  at  all.  The  principal  on  this  side 
was  Sterling  Products,  Inc.  (now  Sterling  Drug,  Inc.),  a  com- 
parative newcomer  and  relatively  unimportant  at  the  time.  The 
Sterling  executives  had  a  good  reason  for  keeping  this  first  tie-up 
secret,  as  it  was  made  in  direct  violation  of  a  pledge  they  had 
made  to  the  Alien  Property  Custodian. 

One  of  the  war-time  seizures  of  German  property  which  caused 
great  public  interest  had  been  that  of  the  American  Bayer  Co., 
and  its  subsidiary,  Synthetic  Patents  Corp.,  and  the  partial  dis- 
closure of  the  subversive  activities  of  Dr.  Schweitzer  and  some 


38  TREASON'S   PEACE 

of  his  colleagues  in  Bayer.  This  company,  with  the  Bayer  aspirin 
trademark  as  its  most  valuable  asset,  was  the  first  to  be  offered 
at  public  sale  in  1918  by  the  Alien  Property  Custodian.  Sterling 
Products  was  the  buyer  for  $5,310,000.  Details  of  the  sale  were 
arranged  by  Earl  I.  McClintock,  an  attorney  on  the  staff  of  the 
Custodian,  and  one  of  the  first  acts  of  the  new  owners  was  to 
hire  this  public  servant  at  more  than  triple  his  government  salary. 

Before  the  sale  was  consummated,  Francis  P.  Garvan,  then 
Alien  Property  Custodian,  attempted  to  make  sure  that  the  execu- 
tives of  the  new  company  were  native-born  Americans,  and  de- 
manded their  solemn  pledge  that  there  would  be  no  renewals  of 
the  contacts  with  German  interests. 

The  rules  adopted  by  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  of  World 
War  I  (unlike  those  of  World  War  II)  provided  that  deception 
by  a  purchaser  of  enemy  property  sold,  if  acting  for  an  undis- 
closed principal  or  for  resale  to,  or  for  the  benefit  of,  a  person  not 
a  United  States  citizen,  should  be  subject  to  a  fine  of  $10,000,  or 
10  years  imprisonment,  or  both;  and  the  property  thus  purchased 
should  be  forfeited  to  the  United  States. 

Perhaps  as  this  story  unfolds,  the  reader  may  ponder  on  the 
possible  relation  of  this  rule  to  some  of  the  incidents  which  oc- 
curred after  Warren  Harding  became  president  of  the  United 
States. 

The  original  contact  between  the  Sterling  management  and  the 
German  cartels  is  a  matter  still  shrouded  in  mystery.  In  the  fall 
of  1919,  however,  and  only  a  few  months  after  he  had  given  his 
pledge  to  the  U.  S.  Government,  William  E.  Weiss,  president  of 
Sterling,  was  in  Baden  Baden,  Germany,  in  conference  with  Dr. 
Karl  Duisberg  and  Rudolph  Mann.  At  these  meetings  an  informal 
understanding  was  reached  in  which  the  German  and  American 
Bayer  companies  would  work  in  harmony  in  marketing  Bayer 
aspirin  in  South  America.  Within  a  year  Sterling  had  signed  a 
formal,  fifty-year  agreement  on  this  with  the  Germans. 

In  view  of  subsequent  tie-ups  with  many  of  the  largest  corpora- 
tions in  America,  through  which  the  cartel  extended  its  pattern  in 
dyestuffs  and  in  other  chemical  industries  related  to  our  national 
defense,  it  is  significant  that  this  first  new  tie-up  by  the  Germans 
was  with  a  relatively  small  patent-medicine  group.  Also,  that  the 


TREASON'S   PEACE  39 

agreement  provided,  among  other  things,  that  expenses  for  "prop- 
aganda, advertising  and  legal  costs,"  were  to  be  shared,  and  that 
the  Americans  were  to  consult  with  their  German  partners  on 
their  advertising.  So  far  as  is  known,  not  one  of  the  many  agree- 
ments which  Farben  had  with  other  American  industries  men- 
tioned propaganda,  advertising  and  legal  costs. 

Sterling,  originally  known  as  the  Neuralgyline  Company,  was 
started  in  Wheeling,  West  Virginia,  in  1901  by  two  retail  drug- 
gists, William  E.  Weiss  and  Albert  H.  Diebold.  In  1917,  these  two 
nostrum  vendors  purchased  the  original  Sterling  Remedies,  which 
was  marketing  a  fake,  lost-manhood  cure  called  No-Tobac,  and 
the  candy  cathartic,  Cascarets,  which  had  as  its  slogan,  They 
Work  While  You  Sleep."  Sterling  Remedies  was  founded  in  1887 
in  Attica,  Indiana,  and  is  said  to  have  made  its  early  profits  from 
the  tasty  candy  Cascarets  rather  than  from  the  bad  tasting 
No-Tobac. 

Soon  after  the  purchase  of  Bayer,  Sterling  organized  the  Win- 
throp  Chemical  Company,  Inc.,  to  handle  Bayer's  ethical  prepara- 
tions; a  name  being  needed  to  which  none  of  the  odium  of  Sterl- 
ing's patent-medicine  advertising  was  attached.  Winthrop  was 
made  the  vehicle  of  the  second  important  formal  agreement  with 
the  cartel  in  1923.  On  the  basis  of  a  fifty-fifty  division  of  all  profits, 
the  cartel  agreed  to  assign  to  Winthrop  all  of  its  new  medicinal 
patents  in  the  United  States.  The  agreement  was  perpetual,  and 
Sterling  also  bound  itself  to  keep  hands  off  the  trademarks  and 
patents  of  its  subsidiaries  so  as  not  to  interfere  with  the  cartel's 
profit-sharing  in  Winthrop. 

Weiss  had  written  to  a  German  Bayer  executive  the  day  the 
1920  agreement  was  signed,  that  some  parts  of  that  document  were 
not  altogether  clear  and  "would  have  to  be  worked  out  in  the  spirit 
in  which  it  is  entered  into  as  forming  a  copartnership  in  a  joint 
enterprise."  When  the  1923  Winthrop  agreement  was  signed  a 
clause  was  included  by  the  German  Bayer  company  declaring  that 
it  was  not  "a  partnership  or  a  joint  venture"  between  the  com- 
panies. The  Weiss  theory  of  partnership  implied  an  equality 
which,  apparently,  the  Germans  did  not  relish.  If  Weiss  and 
Diebold  were  to  be  partners  they  must  be  made  to  understand 
that  they  were  the  inferiors  in  the  association. 


40  TREASON'S?  FACE 

In  1925  and  1926  the  I.  G.  Farbenindustrie  succeeded  I.  G. 
Dyes,  adding  to  the  original  "Big  Six"  and  their  earlier  associates 
another  group  of  five  of  the  larger  chemical  companies  of  Ger- 
many. It  was  then  that  Farben,  with  its  world-wide  affiliates,  be- 
came the  largest  corporate  structure  in  the  world's  chemical  and 
allied  industries.  A  new  agreement  was  then  consummated  be- 
tween Farben  and  Sterling  by  which  the  Germans'  share  of  Win- 
throp  profits  was  exchanged  for  assignment  of  fifty  per  cent  of 
Winthrop's  stock. 

In  the  course  of  these  corporate  changes  the  Metz  pharmaceu- 
tical interests  were  transferred  (as  revealed  in  Chapter  n)  to  the 
now  jointly-owned  Sterling-Farben-Winthrop  Company.  Follow- 
ing the  Metz  deal,  Farben  also  contributed  another  million  dollars 
as  half  of  its  share  of  the  purchase  by  Winthrop  of  the  Cook 
Laboratories,  and  the  Antidolor  Company.  So  a  total  of  something 
less  than  $2,000,000  was  all  the  cash  that  Farben  ever  paid  to 
recover  a  firm  hold  on  its  pharmaceutical  interests  in  the  United 
States,— interests  which  we  had  been  told  were  wrested  from 
Germany  for  all  time  during  World  War  I. 

While  the  details  of  the  agreements  with  Farben  remained  a 
secret  so  far  as  the  public  was  concerned,  in  1926  the  fact  that 
Sterling-Bayer-Winthrop  had  close  ties  with  the  great  German 
cartel  began  to  receive  frequent  mention  in  the  press.  "We  now 
have  the  Metz  representation,  and  the  I.  G.  representation," 
boasted  Weiss,  "conditions  are  now  different."  Yes,  conditions 
were,  in  truth,  different.  Sterling  had  become  a  real  power  in 
drugs,  and  Weiss,  even  then,  had  visions  of  the  financial  and 
political  power  which  his  alliance  with  Farben  was  to  bring  him. 

Sterling  had  also  acquired  all  of  Farben's  U.  S.  patent  interests 
and  marketing  rights  in  cosmetics,  perfumery,  agricultural  in- 
secticides and  disinfectants,  and  all  materials  used  in  these  prod- 
ucts. As  a  result  of  these  additions,  the  Sterling- Winthrop  manage- 
ment was  able  to  bring  the  duPont  Company  into  a  Farben  tie-up 
and,  in  1928,  the  Bayer-Semesan  Company  was  formed  with  Weiss 
as  president.  This  company,  which  was  owned  coequally  by  duPont 
and  Winthrop,  was  organized  for  the  development  of  all  inven- 
tions by  either  party  relating  to  insecticides.  (In  1943  Sterling  sold 
its  50  per  cent  share  of  Bayer-Semesan  to  duPont. ) 


TREASON'S    PEACE  41 

Meanwhile,  Sterling  had  purchased  a  number  of  the  most  profit- 
able patent-medicine  concerns  in  the  United  States.  These  in- 
cluded the  makers  of  Fletcher's  Castoria,  Phillips'  Milk  of  Mag- 
nesia, and  other  nationally  advertised  remedies.  Then,  in  1928 
Weiss  started  to  gather  the  entire  American  drug  industry  into 
one  huge  cartel;  and,  with  Louis  K.  Liggett,  put  together  Drug, 
Inc.— a  holding  company  for  all  the  Sterling-Bayer- Winthrop  prop- 
erties, the  United  Drug  Co.  and  the  Liggett  chain  of  retail  drug 
stores.  Farben's  new  affiliate,  Drug,  Inc.,  then  absorbed  Bristol 
Myers  Co.,  owned  by  the  Bristol  family— makers  of  Sal  Hepatica 
and  other  so-called  home  remedies;  Vick  Chemical  Co.,  owned  by 
the  Richardson  family— makers  of  Vick's  Vapo-Rub;  and  Life 
Savers,  Inc.,  controlled  by  Edward  J.  Noble— maker  of  the  well- 
known  package  candies.  Each  of  these  companies  added  to  the 
already  huge  structure  of  Drug,  Inc.,  and  greatly  increased  the 
far  reaching  influences  of  its  enormous  volume  of  national  adver- 
tising. Its  stores  and  distributors  were  found  in  every  city  in 
America,  its  salesmen  in  every  hamlet,  its  advertising  slogans 
and  products  in  every  home. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  another  influential  American  citizen 
whose  name  was  Musica,  but  who  was  known  as  Donald  Coster, 
attempted  to  induce  his  good  friend,  Bill  Weiss,  to  absorb  the 
McKesson  &  Robbins  wholesale  drug  company  into  the  new  phar- 
maceutical cartel.  It  was  reported  in  financial  circles  that  Coster 
worked  hard  to  convince  Weiss  that  it  would  be  a  splendid  ar- 
rangement to  have  under  his  control  not  only  the  thousands  of 
Rexall-Liggett  retail  drug  stores,  but  also  the  hundred  or  more 
wholesale  drug  distributors  which  Coster  already  had  or  was 
preparing  to  absorb  in  the  McKesson  &  Robbins  chain. 

Everyone  who  was  at  all  active  in  the  drug  industry,  however, 
had  heard  rumors  that  Coster  was  a  common  criminal,  that 
McKesson  &  Robbins  was  based  on  fraud  of  some  sort,  and  that 
Coster  was  planning  to  unload  the  securities  on  the  public  as 
soon  as  a  financial  statement  could  be  put  together  which  would 
enable  him  to  list  the  securities  on  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange. 

Weiss  and  his  associates,  although  pressed  by  some  bankers  to 
do  so,  would  have  none  of  Coster's  fake  securities  in  their  Drug, 
Inc.,  but  they  did  encourage  Coster  to  expand,  and  thus  provide 


42  TREASON'SPEACE 

a  more  unified  distribution  for  Sterling's  increasing  lines  of  drugs 
and  patent  medicines. 

Any  one  who  chooses  to  believe  that  no  leader  of  the  drug 
industry  knew  that  Coster  was  a  crook,  and  his  financial  empire 
a  stack  of  phony  bookkeeping  entries,  is  welcome  to  that  opinion. 
The  fact  remains,  and  the  record  proves,  that  I  knew  these  things, 
and  made  repeated  attempts  to  induce  Washington  to  do  some- 
thing about  them.  And  if  I  knew  them,  so  did  others.  Incidentally, 
the  famous  accounting  firm  of  Price,  Waterhouse  &  Co.,  which 
so  conveniently  overlooked  the  nonexistence  of  the  McKesson  & 
Robbins  Canadian  warehouse  inventories— and  received  more  than 
half  a  million  dollars  for  audits  which  included  examination  of 
many  of  these  fraudulent  book  entries— was  the  same  firm  which 
has  been  certifying  and  approving  the  books  and  accounts  of 
two  of  the  leading  American  affiliates  of  Farben:  Sterling,  and 
Standard  Oil  Co.  of  New  Jersey. 

When  Drug,  Inc.,  was  formed  in  1928  Louis  K.  Liggett  made 
the  statement  that  the  tie-up  of  the  United  Drug  Co.  with  the 
Sterling  group  had  the  approval  of  the  Department  of  Justice. 
Liggett  was  Republican  National  Committeeman  from  Massachu- 
setts, and  the  Department  of  Justice,  under  Coolidge,  quite  evi- 
dently was  not  interested  in  the  existing  Sterling-Farben  agree- 
ments—every one  of  which,  thirteen  years  later,  was  admitted  in 
court  to  have  been  illegal  from  the  day  it  was  signed.  The  bless- 
ings of  Washington,  however,  were  not  proof  against  the  coming 
depression  and  the  ousting  of  the  Republicans  which  followed. 
In  1933  after  Herbert  Hoover's  oblivion,  Drug,  Inc.,  was  dissolved, 
and  the  Sterling  group  returned  to  its  original  status  as  Farben's 
principal  affiliate  in  the  American  drug  industry. 

In  1928  Sterling  became  involved  in  a  cartel  agreement  in  the 
vitamin  D  field  through  patent  rights  which  Farben  had  assigned 
to  Winthrop  in  the  United  States,  and  around  which  a  tie-up  was 
arranged  with  Wisconsin  Alumni,  Inc.  (This  has  no  connection 
with  the  University  of  Wisconsin.) 

Conflicting  patents  relating  to  the  activating  of  ergosterol,  the 
product  so  useful  in  fortifying  milk,  bread  and  other  food  products 
to  combat  rickets,  were  thus  pooled  and  restricted.  Winthrop, 
duPonr,  and  numerous  other  leading  pharmaceutical,  dairy  and 


TREASON'S   PEACE  43 

prepared  food  manufacturers  were  then  licensed  under  these 
patents  by  Wisconsin  Alumni. 

Meanwhile  we  observe  two  figures  which  appear  to  be  new  in 
the  Sterling-Farben  post-war  orbit,  in  the  persons  of  the  notorious 
Dr.  Edward  A.  Rumely,  who  had  been  let  out  of  fail  by  President 
Coolidge  after  conviction  for  pro-German  activities  during  the 
first  world  war  (in  which  Bayer's  Dr.  Schweitzer  was  involved), 
and  one  Robert  McDowell  Allen,  president  of  the  Vitamin  Food 
Co.,  of  which  Dr.  Rumely  was  organizer  and  director. 

Under  Sterling  auspices  a  new  company  was  organized  in  1928 
called  Vegex,  Inc.,  with  Dr.  Weiss,  Earl  McClintock  and  Farben's 
Winthrop  director,  William  Hiemenz,  as  officers,  and  the  Rumely- 
Allen  team  as  directors.  Judging  by  their  lavish  advertising  in  the 
Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  and  in  Hygeia, 
Vegex  and  Vitamin  Food  Co.  specialized  in  pepping  up  soups  and 
gravies  with  Vitamin  B,  but  this  advertising  was  repudiated  later 
by  Dr.  Fishbein's  Council  on  Foods  and  Nutrition. 

Dr.  Weiss  soon  lost  his  enthusiasm  for  these  tasty  soup  and  gravy 
flavors,  or  for  the  lack  of  profits  so  derived;  and  Sterling  turned 
Vegex  over  to  Mr.  Allen  who  became  president  of  Vegex  as  well 
as  of  Vitamin  Food,  with  Dr.  Rumely  still  on  their  directorates. 

However  the  Sterling-Winthrop-Farben  interest  in  the  Wiscon- 
sin Alumni  licenses  for  ergosterol  continued  unabated,  and  in 
1937  we  find  Dr.  Weiss  and  his  colleagues  again  discussing  Farben 
vitamin  matters  with  Dr.  Rumely.  (The  latter,  by  that  time  was 
engaged  in  a  new  variety  of  educational  propaganda,  as  will  be 
revealed  later.) 

In  1935  another  new  Sterling-Farben  subsidiary  called  Alba 
Pharmaceutical  Co.,  was  organized  with  capital  supplied  jointly 
by  Farben  and  Winthrop,  and  with  Weiss's  son  William  E.  Weiss, 
Jr.,  as  president.  This  company  received  the  processes  and  Ameri- 
can patents  of  two  of  Farben's  German  subsidiaries.  Meanwhile 
all  of  the  Sterling-Farben  tie-ups  relating  to  Bayer  or  affecting 
property  and  patents  originally  purchased  at  the  auction  of  1918, 
were  in  direct  violation  of  the  pledge  given  to  the  Alien  Property 
Custodian.  In  a  little  over  a  decade,  Weiss  and  his  associates  had 
built  up  Sterling  with  German  aid  into  a  corporate  structure 
which  dominated  the  entire  pharmaceutical  industry  in  America, 


44  TREASON'SPEACE 

Weiss  and  McClintock  dominated  the  small  group  directing 
Sterling,  and  participated  in  the  constant  exchange  German- Ameri- 
can visits  which  the  ramifications  of  the  mutual  interests  of  Sterl- 
ing and  Farben  made  necessary.  Albert  H.  Diebold,  more  con- 
servative, was  the  financial  wheel  horse,  and  James  Hill,  Jr.,  a 
former  Internal  Revenue  official,  the  controller  and  treasurer. 
Another  member  of  this  select  little  band  was  Edward  S.  Rogers, 
the  Weiss  legal  adviser,  whose  connection  with  the  company  dates 
back  almost  half  a  century.  Rogers,  like  McClintock,  had  been  asso- 
ciated with  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  during  World  War  I. 
He  signed  the  1926  Winthrop  contract  with  Farben  as  witness  for 
the  signature  of  Weiss,  and  later  represented  the  Sterling  interests 
before  government  officials  in  tariff  controversies.  He  attained 
prominence  after  1929  as  the  American  delegate  to  several  inter- 
American  conferences  held  in  South  America  on  trademarks  and 
industrial  properties.  The  importance  of  these  conferences  was 
made  clear  some  ten  years  later,  when  Thurman  Arnold  stated 
that,  "German  control  of  drug  outlets  in  South  America  has  been 
one  of  the  most  effective  instruments  of  propaganda  and  German 
influence  in  this  hemisphere." 

The  late  Frank  A.  Blair,  president  of  Sterling's  Centaur  Com- 
pany, and  of  the  Proprietary  Association,  which  Sterling  domi- 
nated, was  one  of  this  group  until  he  died  in  1939.  Blair,  as  will  be 
shown  later  (in  Chapter  xi),  was  also  a  power  behind  the  scenes 
at  Washington. 

In  1941  Weiss  and  Diebold  were  forced  out  of  Sterling  because 
of  their  personal  relations  and  contacts  with  Farben.  The  others 
remained;  McClintock  as  president  of  Sterling  International  in 
charge  of  foreign  sales,  Rogers  as  chairman  of  the  board,  and  Hill 
as  president.  Weiss  died  after  an  automobile  collision  in  Wisconsin 
in  1942.  His  death  was  as  sudden  and  as  unexpected  as  had  been 
the  mysterious  demise  in  1917  of  Dr.  Hugo  Schweitzer,  his  prede- 
cessor as  head  of  the  American  Bayer  Company. 

Once  the  cartel  had  regained  a  foothold  in  the  United  States 
through  the  friendly  offices  of  our  patent-medicine  patriots,  they 
lost  no  time  in  initiating  the  next  step  of  their  pincers  strategy. 
Embargo  and  high  tariff  could  keep  out  most  of  the  German- 
made  dyes,  but  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  "Big  Six"  from 


TREASON'SPEACE  45 

engaging  in  the  production  of  dyes  within  the  United  States, 
always  providing  that  American  companies  and  American  citizens 
could  be  induced  to  make  these  dyes  inside  the  new  tariff  walls. 
Certain  of  our  citizens  not  only  did  not  object,  they  actually 
welcomed  the  Germans  with  open  arms— sold  them  their  hold- 
ings, took  them  in  as  partners  or  entered  into  agreements  and 
iron-clad  contracts  to  share  patents,  profits  and  markets. 

In  1919  the  Grasselli  Chemical  Company  had  established  itself 
firmly  as  a  domestic  dye  producer  by  purchasing  from  Sterling 
all  of  the  dyestuff  interests,  including  patents  which  Sterling  ac- 
quired with  the  American  Bayer  Co.  In  1924  Grasselli  made  an 
agreement  with  German  Bayer  to  pool  their  respective  United 
States  interests  in  dyes  in  a  new  company  known  as  Grasselli 
Dyestuff.  Profits  were  to  be  divided  equally  and  the  initial  Ger- 
man stock  interest,  forty-nine  per  cent,  was  to  equal  that  of  the 
Americans  as  soon  as  certain  financial  obligations  were  met.  The 
control  of  foreign  markets  remained  with  the  I.  G.,  but  the  latter 
bound  itself  to  turn  over  all  of  its  United  States  patents  on  dye- 
stuffs  to  the  new  company.  It  was  also  agreed  that  the  produc- 
tion of  heavy  chemicals  by  Grasselli  should  be  restricted. 

Then,  in  1926  when  the  huge  I.  G.  Farbenindustrie  cartel  was 
formed  in  Germany,  another  new  company  known  as  General 
Dyestuff  Corp.,  became  the  sales  agent  for  all  of  the  dyes  made 
by  Farben's  affiliates  in  this  country.  And  the  Germans  were  back 
in  American  dyes,  in  the  one  industry  that  can  be  converted  over- 
night to  poison  gas  and  munitions  production. 

Dr.  Carl  Bosch,  head  of  I.  G.  Farbenindustrie,  was  not  im- 
pressed when  the  League  of  Nations  outlawed  the  use  of  chemi- 
cal gas  in  warfare.  The  League  had  also  abolished  the  use  of 
force  as  an  international  policy,  and  the  United  States  had  taken 
the  lead  in  disarmament.  These  peace  moves  fitted  splendidly 
into  the  Farben  pattern,  and  Bosch  was  all  the  more  determined 
upon  a  complete  penetration  into  every  phase  of  the  American 
dye  industry.  In  1928  Grasselli  was  taken  over  by  duPont,  and 
the  latter  thereupon  was  induced  to  hand  over  to  Farben  the 
entire  Grasselli  interests  in  the  dyestuff  industry.  The  transfer 
of  title  of  the  Grasselli  dye  interests  to  the  Farben-owned  General 
Aniline  Works  passed  first  through  the  hands  of  Farben's  handy 


46  TREASON'SPEACE 

man,  Herman  Metz,  and  gave  the  Germans  another  good-sized 
chunk  of  the  new  American  dye  industry.  Farben's  strategy  was 
crabwise,  when  a  direct  approach  was  repulsed. 

Later  Allied  Chemical  &  Dye  joined  with  duPont  in  agreements 
with  Farben's  Continental  dye  cartel  covering  certain  foreign  dye 
markets;  these  agreements  were  extended  several  times  to  cover 
different  countries.  Other  agreements  between  duPont  and  Farben 
covered  license  or  assignment  of  dye  patents  in  the  United  States 
and  Germany.  These  various  interests  required  many  meetings 
and  understandings,  the  final  outcome  of  which  (according  to 
allegations  in  several  indictments  handed  down  in  1941  and  1942 
by  Federal  Grand  Juries),  was  to  enable  Farben,  acting  through 
General  Aniline  &  Film  and  other  American  companies,  to  re- 
strict production  of  dyes  and  intermediates  in  the  United  States, 
and  to  eliminate  competition  through  market-sharing  in  foreign 
countries. 

When  World  War  II  began,  Farben  was  not  in  such  complete 
control  of  the  coal-tar  dye  industry  in  the  United  States  as  its 
predecessors  had  been  in  1914,  but  in  1939  Farben's  American 
drug  and  dyestuff  affiliates  were  much  more  powerful  than  those 
"Big  Six"  agents  who  had  so  effectively  prevented  the  establish- 
ment of  our  munitions  industry  prior  to  the  first  World  War. 
Drugs  and  dyes  were  Farben's  "lost  provinces"  in  industrial 
America.  Deprived  of  the  whole  loaf,  Farben  had  crept  back 
through  side  doors  and  cellar  windows  and  seized  a  good  half, 
meanwhile  adding  its  own  Nazi  flavor  to  the  entire  composition. 


CHAPTER       IV 


New  Conquests  of  America's 
Industry 


THE     OIL    INDUSTRY 

came  next  on  Farben's  agenda.  There  were  several  reasons  for 
this,  the  main  one  being  that  Standard  Oil  Co.  of  New  Jersey,  the 
largest  industrial  corporation  in  the  world,  was  reported  to  be 
interested  in  new  chemical  developments  which  were  related  to, 
or  based  on,  the  petroleum  and  natural-gas  industries.  The  Ger- 
mans knew  that  these  new  chemical  products  promised  to  be 
among  the  most  important  munitions  of  the  next  war.  So  Farben, 
within  a  few  brief  years,  had  induced  the  leaders  of  the  all-power- 
ful Standard  Oil  to  pay  them  over  $30,000,000  for  an  oil  refining 
process  that  turned  out  to  be  a  commercial  fizzle  in  the  United 
States.  They  also  bamboozled  the  New  Jersey  executives  into  turn- 
ing over  to  them  technical  details  of  the  new  chemical  processes 
which  Standard  Oil's  research  men  might  discover;  and  were  given 
control  of  the  exploitation  of  such  processes  as  well.  Thus  the 
Farben  overtures  turned  into  an  industrial  strip  poker  game,  the 
results  of  which  would  have  been  highly  amusing  had  not  so 

47 


TREASON    S     PEACE 


much  of  the  Standard  Oil  raiment  which  passed  over  to  Farben 
been  processes  and  products  vital  to  our  national  security. 

The  first  understanding  between  Farben  and  Standard  was  in 
1925,  according  to  statements  made  subsequently  to  stockholders 
by  Walter  C.  Teagle,  then  president  of  Standard.  This  informal 
understanding  developed  into  negotiations  of  a  comprehensive 
character  and,  in  1926,  an  agreement  was  drafted  covering  ex- 
ploitation by  Standard  of  Farben's  new  refining  process  for  the 
hydrogenation  of  oil  through  the  use  of  tremendous  pressures. 
This  process  was  the  bait  which  brought  about  the  strange  union 
between  Farben  and  Standard— a  union  which  ultimately  went 
far  afield  from  petroleum,  and  led  Senator  Truman  to  cry  "treason" 
at  a  Senate  hearing  after  Germany  had  declared  war  upon  the 
United  States. 

In  1927  a  formal  contract  was  consummated  between  Farben 
and  Standard  by  which  Farben  agreed  to  supply  the  details  of 
its  new  refining  process  to  Standard,  and  Standard  agreed  to  erect 
a  commercial  plant  in  the  United  States  to  demonstrate  the  process. 
Others  were  to  be  licensed  to  use  the  processes  on  a  royalty  basis 
in  which  Farben  would  share.  Standard  paid  Farben  with  more 
than  a  half -million  shares  of  its  stock,  worth  approximately  $30,- 
000,000,  as  c6nsideration  for  this  contract.  In  addition  to  the  stock 
transfer,  Standard  expended  a  great  many  more  millions  erecting 
hydrogenation  plants  in  the  United  States  and  demonstrating  that 
the  process  did  not  come  up  to  the  rosy  expectations  of  its  young 
technical  expert,  Robert  T.  Haslam,  who  had  inspected  the  Farben 
plant  in  Germany,  and  had  recommended  the  purchase.  Appar- 
ently Standard  missed  one  point  about  this  new  high-pressure 
cracking  method— its  cost.  Farben  used  it  to  produce  gasoline 
from  coal.  Germany  had  plenty  of  coal,  and  to  the  Germans,  the 
excessive  cost  of  the  gasoline  over  that  produced  from  oil  was  not 
important.  They  knew  that  the  time  was  coming  when  Germany 
would  again  begin  war  and  probably  be  cut  off  from  the  most 
of  its  crude  oil  supplies  by  another  British  blockade. 

Dr.  Bosch  and  Hermann  Schmitz  played  the  leading  parts  for 
Farben  in  negotiating  the  1927  contract;  Teagle  and  Frank  A. 
Howard,  who  was  later  made  head  of  Standard  Oil  Development 
Company,  looked  after  the  interests  of  Standard  and  its  stock- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  49 

holders.  To  Farben  this  tie-up  was  of  vast  importance,  because 
it  not  only  established  a  close  working  alliance  with  the  world's 
largest  industrial  company,  but  it  was  also  to  lead  to  tie-ups  with 
other  American  companies  on  important  chemical  developments 
related  to  the  petroleum  industry.  Some  of  these  new  processes 
have  little  real  relation  to  oil,  but  they  did  very  directly  relate 
to  Farben's  preparation— and  our  own  lack  of  preparation— for 
World  War  II. 

Other  aspects  of  Standard  Oil  which  made  it  an  ally  of  great 
potential  value  in  Farben's  eyes  included  the  fact  that  its  dis- 
tribution system  of  filling  stations  reached  into  the  intimate  life 
of  so  many  communities.  Unlike  Sterling,  prior  to  the  latter's  ex- 
pansion, Standard  already  had  a  nation-wide  army  of  employes. 
Also,  Standard's  organization  was  world-wide— in  South  America 
and  the  Far  East  as  well  as  in  Europe.  This  army  could  feel  the 
pulse,  and  possibly  even  change  the  beat,  of  countless  blood- 
streams. Standard's  political  power  and  influence  with  many  gov- 
ernments were  not  the  least  of  its  attractions  to  Farben. 

That  Farben  had  long  contemplated  and  sought  such  an  ar- 
rangement was  indicated  by  a  statement  made  early  in  1926  to 
William  Weiss  by  one  of  the  Farben  leaders  that  they  had  to  be 
careful  in  negotiating  with  Sterling  for  any  products  other  than 
pharmaceuticals,  because  Farben  was  already  negotiating  with 
Standard  Oil,  and  did  not  want  to  give  Sterling  any  of  the  products 
that  should  go  to  the  other  company.  Standard  was  big  game,  even 
for  Farben,  and  had  to  be  stalked  with  great  care.  Personal  friend- 
ships between  the  negotiators  sometimes  count  much  in  affairs  of 
this  sort,  and  personal  ties  were  made  use  of  in  this  instance. 
Agreements  are  entered  into  by  corporations  acting  as  legal  en- 
tities but  they  are  negotiated,  wrangled  about,  drawn  up  and 
signed  by  corporation  officials  who  are  real  persons,  not  legal 
fictions.  Mr.  Teagle,  in  a  public  statement  quoted  in  the  New 
York  Times  in  November  1929,  referred  to  his  "close  and  pleasant 
personal  relationship  of  some  years  standing  with  the  leaders  of 
the  I.  G.,"  which,  said  Teagle,  was  the  reason  why  he  had  con- 
sented to  serve  as  a  director  of  the  newly  organized  American 
I.  G.  Chemical  Corp.,  in  which  he  denied  Standard  had  any 
financial  interest. 


50  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Dr.  Bosch  of  Farben  reciprocated  these  expressions  of  Teagle's 
friendship  in  1930,  after  Teagle  had  interceded  between  Farben 
and  duPont  in  a  controversy  relating  to  the  manufacture  of  syn- 
thetic ammonia.  Bosch  wrote  his  friend  Teagle  to  thank  him  for 
arranging  the  meeting  with  Lammot  duPont,  and  concluded  his 
letter  with: 

"I  believe  that  as  a  result  of  this  intervention,  the  deadlock 
in  the  negotiations  between  duPont  and  I.  G.  has  now  been 
overcome,  and  that  thereby  our  desire  will  be  realized  to 
reach  a  cooperation  with  this  very  energetic  and  cleverly 
proceeding  firm,  which  we  have  endeavored  to  bring  about 
for  years.  The  reason  for  the  failure  of  our  former  negotiations 
may  be  the  lack  of  the  right  personal  contact  which  has  now 
been  established,  thanks  to  your  personal  interest." 

Farben  was  the  largest  corporation  in  Germany  and  the  great- 
est chemical  cartel  in  the  world;  Standard  was  the  largest  indus- 
trial corporation  in  the  world;  duPont  was  not  much  smaller  and, 
with  its  multiplicity  of  products  and  its  stock  control  of  General 
Motors,  U.  S.  Rubber,  Remington  Arms  and  others,  it  ranked  with 
Farben  and  Standard  in  importance.  When  it  came  to  drawing  up 
written  contracts,  however,  or  even  arriving  at  gentlemen's  agree- 
ments, it  was  the  conclusion  of  Dr.  Bosch  that  the  earlier  refusal 
of  the  huge  duPont  Corporation  to  play  ball  was  due  mainly  to  the 
aloofness  of  Mr.  duPont— an  aloofness  which  Mr.  Teagle,  as  mutual 
friend,  had  changed  into  the  right  personal  contact.  On  the  other 
hand  it  is  quite  possible  that  recollections  of  the  part  played  by 
Bosch  and  his  associates  in  World  War  I  lingered  longer  in  the 
memory  of  Lammot  duPont  than  they  did  in  that  of  Walter  Teagle. 

After  the  1927  contract  Farben  and  the  Standard  leaders  con- 
tinued their  meetings,  Farben  constantly  pressing  Standard  with 
the  advantages  of  a  more  comprehensive  tie-up  between  the  two 
companies.  At  one  of  these  meetings,  early  in  1929,  Dr.  Bosch 
stated  that  it  appeared  certain  Standard  would  be  compelled  to 
expand  its  activities  far  beyond  oil  refining,  into  the  chemical 
field,  and  naively  suggested  that  as  Farben  was  already  supreme 
in  the  chemical  industry,  it  should  of  course  have  a  dominant  posi- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  51 

tion  in  any  such  arrangement.  This  sounded  plausible,  and  Teagle 
signified  his  willingness  to  let  Standard  become  the  junior  partner 
provided  the  minority  interest  was  sufficiently  large.  Mr.  Teagle, 
it  would  seem,  had  little  confidence  in  the  ability  of  Standard's 
research  men  to  forge  ahead  in  those  new  chemical  developments 
which  were  already  being  discussed  in  the  technical  journals  as 
certain  to  arise  from  the  petroleum  industry.  DuPont  and  other 
American  corporations  had  already  demonstrated  that  American 
chemical  research  was  amply  qualified  to  compete  with  the  Ger- 
mans. The  prewar  legend  of  the  supremacy  of  German  chemical 
brains  had  been  punctured.  But  the  Standard  leaders  seemed 
to  ignore  this  fact. 

Thus,  Dr.  Bosch  cozened  his  friend  Teagle  into  handing  over 
to  Farben  what  amounted  to  the  direction  and  control  of  the 
chemical-munitions  affairs  of  the  largest  industrial  organization 
in  America.  If  Mr.  Teagle  and  his  colleagues  realized  what  power 
they  were  giving  away  they  didn't  care.  If  they  did  not  realize  it, 
then  they  were  among  the  few  in  the  chemical  industry  who  were 
not  aware  of  it. 

The  result  of  these  negotiations  was  four  new  agreements, 
entered  into  in  November  1929  between  Standard  and  Farben, 
which  provided  for  exchange  of  chemical  patents  and  processes. 
They  also  covered  the  commercial  exploitation  of  new  products, 
payment  of  royalties,  and  the  division  of  world  markets.  The  more 
important  of  these  agreements  expressed  the  intention  of  the 
parties  to  cooperate  with  each  other  and  avoid  overlapping  and 
competition  through  a  recognition  by  Standard  that  Farben  had 
a  preferred  position  in  chemical  products,  and  a  recognition  by 
Farben  that  Standard  had  a  preferred  position  in  oil  and  natural 
gas.  The  joker  in  the  agreement  provided  that  such  new  chemical 
processes  contributed  by  either  party,  which  were  not  directly 
related  to  the  refining  of  oil  or  natural  gas,  should  be  controlled 
by  Farben.  Dr.  Bosch  thus  extended  the  Farben  pattern  to  a  domi- 
nant position  in  the  group  of  chemical  developments  which  were 
on  the  way,  and  which  he  knew  would  have  a  vital  bearing  on 
the  rearming  of  Germany,  and  on  the  national  defense  of  the 
United  States. 


5*  TREASON'S    PEACE 

The  relationship  established  by  the  1929  agreements  was  aptly 
summarized  several  years  later  by  Mr.  Howard  in  a  letter  to  one 
of  his  colleagues  in  which  he  stated: 

The  I.  G.  may  be  said  to  be  our  general  partner  in  the 
chemical  business  as  to  developments  arising  during  the 
period  beginning  in  1929  and  expiring  in  1947.  The  desire 
and  intention  of  both  parties  is  to  avoid  competing  with  one 

another The  general  theory  of  the  agreement  is  that 

chemical  developments  more  closely  related  to  the  oil  busi- 
ness than  to  the  outside  chemical  business  remain  in  control 
of  Standard,  with  I.  G.  participating whereas  develop- 
ments more  nearly  akin  to  the  outside  chemical  industry  than 
to  the  then  existing  business  of  Standard  pass  to  the  control 

of  I.  G.  with  suitable  participation  by  Standard One 

additional  fact  might  be  pointed  out:  for  a  variety  of  reasons 
it  seems  quite  probable  that  if  we  desire  to  make  any  addi- 
tional important  affiliations  in  the  oil-chemical  field,  such 
affiliations  will  be  with  the  duPonts,  the  Shell  Company  or 
both.  The  I.  G.  relationship  is  in  no  respect  a  handicap  but 
on  the  contrary,  a  definite  asset  to  us  in  considering  the  pos- 
sibility of  any  such  affiliations. 

Standard  was  courting  duPont,  as  was  Farben,  but  for  different 
reasons.  Standard's  great  power  lay  mainly  in  one  industry— oil, 
and  the  Standard  Oil  executives  were  dazzled  by  the  audacity  of 
the  duPonts,  who  were  then  entering  one  new  field  after  another 
with  such  brilliant  success. 

In  1930  another  Standard-Farben  agreement  was  consummated 
which  provided  for  the  organization  of  a  jointly  owned  develop- 
ment company,  later  established  as  Jasco  Inc.,  at  Baton  Rouge,  La. 
The  name  Jasco  stood  for  Joint  American  Study  Company,  but 
might  well  have  meant  Jackass  Americans  Surrender  a  Continent. 
In  Jasco,  under  Standard  management,  but  acting  under  Farben 
instructions,  a  group  of  technicians  were  to  develop  new  chemical 
processes  outside  of  oil  and  gas  refining.  Jasco  appeared  to  be  an 
American  corporation  operated  by  Americans,  and  was  not  iden- 
tified in  the  public  mind  with  Farben.  Actually  it  became  the 
medium  through  which  Farben  secured  the  results  of  chemical 


TREASON'S    PEACE  53 

research  done  by  Standard.  Farben  in  return,  furnished  Standard 
with  a  bare  minimum  of  its  own  research. 

When  pressed  for  more  data  by  Standard,  Farben  at  first  pro- 
crastinated with  the  excuse  that  its  research  was  incomplete,  then 
bluntly  stated  that  the  Hitler  government  would  not  permit  the 
information  to  leave  Germany.  In  one  instance  it  was  revealed 
later  than  Standard  had  even  supplied  data  relating  to  the  pro- 
duction of  high-test  aviation  gasoline  which  Standard  research 
had  not  developed,  but  which  had  been  secured  through  an  asso- 
ciation with  other  large  oil-refining  concerns,  including  the  Anglo- 
Iranian  Oil  Company,  which  is  controlled  by  the  British  Govern- 
ment. Standard  was  accused  of  continuing  to  send  these  develop- 
ments on  aviation  gasoline  to  Farben  until  November  1939,  two 
months  after  the  war  between  Germany  and  England  had  started. 

Synthetic  rubber  was  one  of  the  new  products  which  should 
have  been  turned  over  by  Farben  to  Jasco.  This  development  was, 
in  fact,  the  choicest  bit  of  the  limburger  with  which  Farben  had 
baited  its  trap. 

Back  in  1927  Standard  learned  that  Farben  had  developed  com- 
mercial production  of  synthetic  rubber.  Standard  also  knew  that 
duPont  was  working  on  synthetic  rubber  and,  in  April  1930,  before 
the  Jasco  agreement  was  signed,  a  Standard  vice-president,  E.  M. 
Clark,  wrote  Farben  warning  them  to  review  their  patent  situ- 
ation on  artificial  rubber  so  that  duPont  could  not  get  ahead  of 
them. 

Farben,  in  Germany,  developed  a  type  of  synthetic  rubber  called 
Buna.  Standard,  later  at  Jasco,  developed  one  called  Butyl.  Buna 
was  considered  better  than  Butyl  for  some  purposes,  especially  for 
tires.  Butyl  was  cheaper  to  produce  and  better  for  other  purposes, 
particularly  inner  tubes.  What  happened  in  the  jug-handled  one- 
way pot  called  Jasco?  Standard,  as  rapidly  as  it  made  progress  in 
its  Butyl  research,  supplied  all  pertinent  data  to  Farben,  whereas 
Farben  not  only  delayed  supplying  the  data  on  Buna  but,  for  a 
period,  actually  attempted  to  discourage  Standard  about  its  new 
synthetic.  "It's  not  so  hot,"  indicated  Farben.  "Why  bother  with 
it?  Let's  wait  until  we  develop  something  really  worth  while." 

At  this  time,  duPont  was  making  rapid  strides  in  the  commercial 
production  of  its  own  synthetic  rubber,  Neoprene,  which  had  ex- 


54  TREASON'S   PEACE 

cellent  qualities  but  under  normal  conditions  was  too  expensive  to 
compete  with  natural  rubber  for  making  tires.  Farben  had  already 
succeeded  in  making  a  number  of  agreements  with  duPont  on 
exchange  of  other  patents,  but  duPont  was  still  gun  shy;  and  Far- 
ben wanted  Neoprene  very  badly  indeed.  So,  in  1935  Farben 
notified  Standard  that  they  had  a  proposal  from  duPont  for  a 
tie-up  on  the  latter's  synthetic  rubber.  Accordingly,  suggested 
Farben,  it  might  be  well  if  a  new  development  company  should 
be  organized  to  take  care  of  synthetic  rubber  research  and  ex- 
ploitation for  all  three.  One  third  of  the  proposed  new  company 
was  to  go  to  Standard,  duPont  and  Farben  respectively,  and  each 
was  to  put  all  of  its  synthetic  rubber  patents  and  processes  into 
this  new  pot.  Thus  Farben  tried  to  play  Standard  against  duPont, 
and  duPont  against  Standard.  By  suggesting  a  minority  part  for 
itself  and  leaving  a  two-third  interest  to  the  Americans,  Farben 
was  sugar-coating  the  syphon  through  which  it  hoped  to  extract 
the  desired  technical  information  on  this  vital  synthetic.  This  pro- 
posal did  not  go  through,  possibly  because  the  Messrs.  Irenee, 
Lammot  and  Pierre  duPont  had  a  more  acute  sense  of  smell  than 
had  their  friends,  Messrs.  Teagle,  Howard  and  Haslam. 

Farben,  however,  does  not  become  discouraged  easily,  and 
some  three  years  later  succeeded  in  getting  duPont  to  grant  it 
certain  patent  licenses  to  make  a  Neoprene  type  of  rubber  in 
Germany.  Meanwhile  Farben  was  building  synthetic  rubber 
plants  for  the  Hitler  Government  large  enough  to  supply  Ger- 
many's requirements  and  supplement  the  reserve  stock  pile  of 
natural  rubber  which  was  being  imported  in  anticipation  of  the 
blockade  which  would  again  cut  off  her  outside  supply. 

Reports  of  the  success  of  Germany's  synthetic  rubber  produc- 
tion were  discounted  by  many  when  Austria  was  invaded  in  1938, 
and  stories  strangely  leaked  out  of  Germany  that  its  motorized 
troops  were  delayed  in  getting  to  Vienna  because  the  new  ersatz 
tires  blew  out.  Eventually,  a  few  individuals  in  our  government 
became  mildly  alarmed  at  the  possibility  of  losing  our  natural 
rubber  supply,  and  Standard,  responding  to  pressure,  renewed  its 
efforts  to  induce  Farben  to  put  the  Buna  developments  into  Jasco 
where,  under  the  1930  agreement,  they  belonged. 

In  1938  Howard  reported  to  his  Executive  Committee  that  Far- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  55 

ben  continued  to  decline  to  supply  its  data  on  Buna  rubber,  since, 
because  of  military  expediency,  the  German  Government  refused 
to  allow  the  information  to  leave  Germany.  Thus  the  Farben- 
Hitler  military  machine  clearly  showed  its  teeth. 

As  late  as  October  19,  1939,  after  the  war  had  started,  Howard 
again  reported  sorrowfully  to  his  Standard  colleagues  that  Buna 
rubber  had  never  been  made  at  Jasco  because  Farben  had  not 
supplied  the  necessary  information.  A  week  later  Howard  ex- 
plained in  writing: 

We  haven't  complete  technical  information  on  Buna,  and 
cannot  get  any  more  information  from  Germany.  The  only 
thing  we  can  do  is  to  continue  to  press  for  authority  to  act, 
but  in  the  meantime  loyally  preserve  the  restrictions  they 
have  put  on  us. 

So,  until  December  1940,  after  our  Lend-Lease  program  was 
under  way,  and  Hitler's  intentions  were  clearly  defined  for  the 
whole  world  to  see,  Standard  loyally  continued  to  preserve  the  re- 
strictions of  the  Germans  and  to  transmit  to  Farben  its  latest 
research  data  on  this  strategic  material  of  national  defense. 

Synthetic  rubber  was  by  no  means  the  only  new  research  de- 
velopment which  came  within  the  provisions  of  the  lopsided  m6- 
salliance  between  Farben  and  Standard.  Farben  had  discovered  a 
process  for  making  acetic  acid  from  natural  or  cracked  gas  by 
means  of  an  electric  arc.  This  process  tied  into  synthetic  rubber  re- 
search, and  also  produced  an  acetic  acid  of  superior  purity  and  at 
what  promised  to  be  lower  cost  than  resulted  from  the  methods 
then  in  use. 

Acetic  acid,  widely  used  in  the  industries  of  peace,  is  invaluable 
in  the  manufacture  of  various  chemical , munitions  in  war.  (In 
World  War  I  its  price  advanced  in  this  country  from  a  few  cents 
to  more  than  a  dollar  a  pound. )  This  acid  was  being  made  by  vari- 
ous American  companies,  but  the  market  was  expanding,  and 
Standard  had  ample  supplies  of  both  natural  and  cracked  gas.  So 
the  new  Farben  method  fitted  splendidly  into  the  Jasco  program  of 
joint  research  and  exploitation.  . 

A  pilot  plant  was  erected  at  Baton  Rouge,  and  the  excellence  of 
the  process  demonstrated.  The  plant  produced  acid  beyond  the 


56  TREASON'S   PEACE 

normal  requirements  of  Standard,  and  it  was  proposed  to  sell  the 
surplus  to  various  large  consumers.  Farben,  however,  was  very 
definitely  opposed  to  the  commercial  production  of  acetic  acid,  or 
of  any  other  acetylene  products  from  the  electric  arc  process.  Some 
strange  reasons  were  given:  Farben  had  other  commitments  in 
America  which  might  be  interfered  with;  a  disagreeable  price  war 
might  result  in  Europe;  the  acetic  acid  market  offered  no  incentive 
to  take  up  the  manufacture  of  this  product,  etc,  etc. 

When  Standard  persisted  in  its  desire  to  enter  the  acetic-acid 
field,  Farben  came  up  with  the  suggestion  that  the  acid  sales  be 
handled,  not  by  Jasco  or  Standard,  but  through  Advance  Solvents 
&  Chemical  Corp.,  with  which  Farben  had  other  ties.  This  plan 
fell  through,  however,  as  did  a  later  effort  to  interest  the  Shell  Oil 
Co.,  the  American  subsidiary  of  the  Dutch  Shell  interests.  Farben 
then  informed  Standard  that  it  was  developing  improvements  in 
the  original  acetylene  process  but  that  the  German  Government 
would  have  to  approve  any  contracts  relating  to  it.  Finally,  Farben 
threw  all  pretense  aside  and  requested  that  the  Jasco  acetic  acid 
plant  be  abandoned.  This  was  done.  Standard  dismantled  the 
plant.  In  1940  the  patents  covering  the  acetic  acid  process  were 
transferred  by  Farben  to  its  own  subsidiary  General  Aniline  &  Film 
Corp.,  which  at  the  time  was  engaged  in  a  furious  campaign  to 
convince  the  American  public  and  the  U.  S.  Government  that  it 
was  not  controlled  by  Farben. 

Another  product  which  was  turned  in  to  Jasco  for  development 
was  a  laboratory  curiosity  called  Oppanol.  Oppanol  had  not  been 
considered  previously  as  a  basis  for  compounding  lubricants,  but 
through  Jasco  research  it  was  found  to  have  great  value  in  the 
production  of  a  superior  lubricating  oil  for  planes,  tanks  and  naval 
vessels.  These  developments,  invaluable  in  war,  and  wholly  the 
result  of  research  by  Standard  technicians,  were  promptly  handed 
over  to  Farben  and  thus  became  available  for  the  German  war 
machine.  Other  processes  and  products  which  were  worked  on  by 
Jasco,  became  the  mediums  through  which  numerous  American 
companies  were  brought  within  the  Farben  orbit.  Through  the 
kindly  offices  of  Standard  Oil,  the  intelligence  department  of  Far- 
ben was  thus  enabled  to  peek  into  technical  minds,  and  enter  door- 
ways that  would  not  otherwise  have  been  open  to  it. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  57 

When  the  present  war  started,  Standard  and  Farben  entered 
into  a  new  series  of  agreements,  some  of  which,  by  their  wording, 
were  undoubtedly  intended  for  carry-over  understandings,  effec- 
tive for  the  duration  and  until  such  time  as  the  old  agreements 
could  be  reinstated  and  "business  as  usual"  resumed.  While  Hit- 
ler's army  was  on  its  way  to  Warsaw,  Standard's  Mr.  Howard  was 
on  his  way  to  Europe  to  meet  a  Farben  representative.  This  meet- 
ing resulted  in  what  came  to  be  known  as  the  Hague  Agreement— 
a  most  interesting  document  which  was  signed  by  Mr.  Howard  for 
Standard,  and  by  Dr.  Fritz  Ringer  for  Farben,  on  Sept.  25,  1939, 
two  days  after  the  German  Army  announced  its  victorious  destruc- 
tion of  Poland's  resistance.  Messrs  Howard  and  Ringer,  however, 
dated  the  document  back  a  few  weeks  to  September  first,  feeling 
perhaps,  that  it  would  read  a  bit  better  as  a  peacetime  under- 
standing. 

By  the  Hague  Agreement  Farben  purported  to  transfer  to 
Standard  all  of  its  rights  in  Jasco  in  consideration  of  a  small  cash 
payment  which  was  to  be  paid  to  a  Farben  designee.  A  division 
of  market  rights  on  the  products  was  also  included.  Standard  to 
have  the  United  States,  the  British  and  French  Empires  and  Iraq, 
Farben  to  retain  the  rest  of  the  world.  Then  came  carry-over  pro- 
visions which  obligated  Standard  and  Farben  to  report  to  each 
other  on  all  future  business  in  their  respective  territories,  with  the 
understanding  that  if  there  should  be  inequities  in  the  monetary 
returns,  adjustments  would  be  made  on  the  basis  of  the  original 
agreements  of  1930.  War  or  no  war,  the  Standard-Farben  alliance 
was  to  go  on. 

Mr.  Howard  reported  to  his  colleagues  that  this  agreement  was  a 
modus  Vivendi  which  would  operate  for  the  duration— "whether 
or  not  the  U.S.  came  in."  The  report  continued  with: 

It  is  hoped  that  enough  has  been  done  to  permit  closing 
the  most  important  uncompleted  points  by  cable.  It  is  difficult 
to  visualize  as  yet  just  how  successful  we  shall  be  in  maintain- 
ing our  relations  through  this  period  without  personal  con- 
tacts. 

In  making  this  report,  Mr.  Howard  may  have  had  in  mind  the 


58  TREASON'S    PEACE 

fact  that  the  Trading  with  the  Enemy  Act,  passed  during  the  first 
World  War,  had  never  been  repealed. 

Despite  Mr.  Howard's  anticipated  suspension  of  communica- 
tions, in  June  1940,  Standard  asked  Chemnyco,  Inc.,  Farben's  New 
York  headquarters,  for  a  license  and  transfer  of  title  on  a  patent  on 
an  asphalt  process,  with  a  provision  for  retransfer  of  title  under 
suitable  conditions.  And,  six  months  later,  Farben  suggested  an 
understanding  through  which  it  would  sell  on  a  royalty  basis  cer- 
tain products  for  Standard  in  countries  the  latter  could  not  reach. 
Meanwhile  on  Sept.  4,  1940,  Standard's  executive  committee  rati- 
fied a  brand-new  arrangement,  covering  payment  of  royalties  on 
hydrogenation  patents  with  Farben,  which  was  dated  back  to  Janu- 
ary 1,  and  in  which  some  provision  of  the  original  1929  agreements 
were  either  reaffirmed  or  modified. 

After  the  fall  of  France,  Farben  kept  in  touch  with  Standard  by 
meeting  the  latter's  representative  in  Paris.  And,  in  February  1941, 
a  message  from  the  French  capital  informed  Mr.  Howard  that  his 
friend  Dr.  Ringer  wished  to  reply  to  a  question  raised  by  a  cable 
with  the  advice  that: 

Jasco  cable  will  be  difficult  but  one  underlying  point  is  that 
Jasco  contract  has  not  been  wiped  out  as  agreed  whatever 
done  the  final  financial  outcome  original  intention  of  old  Jasco 
agreement  should  govern. 

The  exchange  of  information  continued  until  a  few  weeks  before 
Germany  declared  war  upon  the  United  States.  On  Oct.  22, 1941  a 
cable  went  to  Farben  advising  that  Jasco  had  filed  suit  against  the 
B.  F.  Goodrich  Rubber  Co.  for  alleged  infringements  of  patents 
covering  Buna.  The  cable  also  asked  Farben  to  send  copies  of  the 
German  patent  applications  which  should  be  duly  certified  by  a 
United  States  Consul.  Again,  war  or  no  war— business  as  usual. 

In  addition  to  Messrs.  Teagle,  Howard,  Haslam  and  Clark, 
among  those  most  actively  concerned  in  the  later  negotiations  with 
Farben  was  the  late  W.  S.  Farish,  who  came  into  the  Standard 
organization  in  1919  when  that  company  purchased  control  of  the 
Humble  Oil  Co.,  of  Houston,  Texas.  Farish  had  organized  the 
Humble  Co.  a  few  years  previously  with  several  men  who  were  high 
in^Texas  political  affairs.  In  1933  Farish  became  chairman  of  Stand- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  59 

ard,  and  in  1937  he  succeeded  Teagle  as  president.  Another  Stand- 
ard stalwart  was  Dr.  Per  K.  Frolich,  director  of  their  chemical 
laboratories.  Dr.  Frolich,  in  1942,  was  elected  president  of  the 
American  Chemical  Society. 

Mention  has  already  been  made  of  the  kindly  intercession  of  Mr. 
Teagle  in  bringing  about  a  friendly  conference  between  Dr.  Bosch 
and  Lammot  duPont.  Previous  meetings  had  not  run  too  smoothly, 
as  indicated  by  the  1929  conference  at  which  Lammot  duPont  chal- 
lenged Dr.  Bosch  about  the  report  that  Farben  and  Standard  Oil 
planned  a  joint  synthetic  nitrogen  plant  in  Louisiana.  Dr.  Bosch 
replied  that  the  report  was  true  and  that  a  company  had  already 
been  formed  in  which  Farben  held  fifty-one  percent  of  the  stock. 
This,  of  course,  was  entirely  untrue.  The  1929  agreements  between 
Farben  and  Standard  had  not  been  signed  at  that  time,  and  the 
stock  interest  of  which  Bosch  bragged  was  not  in  those  agreements. 
Apparently  Farben  was  bluffing  and  had  no  intention  of  building 
a  synthetic  plant  here  in  its  own  name  or  at  its  own  financial  risk. 
Why  invest  in  a  horse  and  buggy  if  someone  else  could  be  in- 
duced to  furnish  a  free  ride?  What  Farben  was  after  was  to  hold 
the  reins,  no  matter  who  owned  the  steed. 

Synthetic  nitrogen  was  the  personal  baby  of  Dr.  Bosch,  and  Far- 
ben's  annual  production  of  600,000  tons  was  one-third  of  the 
world's  consumption.  So  the  good  doctor  was  fully  aware  how  great 
had  been  the  loss  to  Farben  when,  in  1918,  the  Haber-Bosch  patents 
for  the  production  of  the  synthetic  nitrogen  were  seized  by  the 
Alien  Property  Custodian.  Prior  to  the  war,  an  unsuccessful  attempt 
had  been  made  in  the  United  States  to  produce  nitrogen  commer- 
cially by  atmospheric  fixation,  and  while  the  war  was  in  progress  a 
huge  nitrogen  plant  was  started  with  government  aid  at  Muscle 
Shoals,  Alabama— too  late  for  the  war  effort. 

However  in  the  postwar  decade  atmospheric  fixation  had  begun 
in  the  United  States  and  with  this  background  and  the  prospect 
of  a  large  American  production  of  synthetic  nitrogen  and  am- 
monia, Farben  did  not  relish  the  thought  of  new  American  plants 
which  might  serve  as  munition  factories  in  the  next  war.  As  al- 
ways, Farben  was  looking  to  the  future,  and  the  importance  with 
which  its  leaders  regarded  a  participation  in  the  production  of 
these  synthetics  in  the  United  States  has  been  amply  justified  by 


60  TREASON'SPEACE 

the  tremendously  increased  use  of  high  explosives  in  the  present 
war.  Their  use  has  dwarfed  all  earlier  needs  for  nitrates  and  am- 
monia; an  example  were  the  huge  two  and  four-ton  "Block  Bus- 
ters" charged  with  amatol,  a  new  high  explosive  which  is  made 
by  compounding  TNT  with  ammonium  nitrate.  Yes,  Farben  knew 
what  was  coming. 

Eight  years  after  the  friendly  conference  arranged  by  Mr. 
Teagle,  Farben  caused  the  formation  of  the  International  Nitro- 
gen Association,  a  world  cartel,  which  brought  into  unity  of  action 
the  producers  of  both  natural  and  synthetic  nitrogen  and  am- 
monia. Ostensibly  this  cartel  was  to  rule  the  markets  for  fertilizer 
materials.  Actually,  the  far  more  important  objective  was  to  limit 
the  capacity  of  synthetic  nitrogen  plants  outside  of  Germany. 

Farben  went  far  around  Robin  Hood's  barn  to  secure  some  sort 
of  nitrogen  and  ammonia  tie-ups  in  this  country,  and  to  bring 
duPont  within  its  sphere  of  influence  on  these  important  synthetic 
war  munitions.  DuPont's  main  interest  in  synthetic  nitrogen  and 
ammonia  in  the  decade  after  World  War  I  was  for  the  explosives 
department  of  its  business.  Fundamentally  duPont  has  been  a 
producer  of  gun-cotton  rather  than  fertilizer. 

In  January  1926  duPont  entered  into  a  rather  illusive  agreement 
on  explosive  patents  and  processes  with  Dynamit  A.G.,  which 
later  became  a  Farben  subsidiary  in  that  field.  The  agreement  that 
was  drawn  up  was  not  signed,  but  was  held  as  a  gentlemen's  un- 
derstanding. It  covered  ammunition  of  various  sorts,  industrial 
explosives,  and  the  countries  in  which  licenses  under  the  patents 
should  be  granted.  It  did  not  however,  mention  military  explo- 
sives as  such.  Dynamit  A.G.  was  also  a  manufacturer  of  celluloid, 
which  is  made  from  nitre-cellulose,  and  another  informal  agree- 
ment was  reached  by  which  duPont  and  D.A.G.  would  exchange 
information  and  give  each  other  the  first  option  on  rights  to  patents 
and  processes.  These  two  casual  understandings  are  significant 
because,  apparently,  they  were  the  first  through  which  duPont  be- 
came allied  with  Farben. 

A  later  tie-up  which  was  to  have  wartime  repercussions  was 
made  in  1929  between  Dynamit  A.G.  and  the  duPont-owned  Rem- 
ington Arms  Co.,  by  which  information  was  exchanged  and  roy- 
alties paid  by  Remington  on  a  patented  chemical  product  of 


TREASON'S   PEACE  61 

German  invention  known  as  Tetrazine,  a  substance  of  great  value 
as  a  priming  charge  for  ammunition.  This  agreement  stipulated 
that  Remington  could  not  sell  military  ammunition  containing 
Tetrazine  in  any  of  the  countries  comprising  the  British  Empire. 
When  war  began  in  1939,  Remington  received  huge  orders  for 
ammunition  from  the  British  Government,  but  because  of  the 
clause  in  the  contract  with  the  Farben  subsidiary,  it  had  to  supply 
the  British  with  cartridges  containing  an  inferior  priming  agent. 
This  restriction  continued  in  1941.  Later  it  was  rescinded.  Only,  a 
tiny  speck  of  the  primer  is  required  in  each  cartridge,  but  the 
efficacy  of  that  small  particle  might  well  mean  the  life  or  death 
of  a  soldier. 

Returning  for  a  moment  to  the  period  immediately  following 
the  Armistice,  we  find  that  the  great  chemical  plants  that  had 
mushroomed  up  in  the  United  States  during  the  war  presented 
a  big  reconstruction  problem.  Clearly,  it  was  up  to  the  industry 
to  evolve  new  peace-time  products,  and  in  this  effort  the  duPont 
chemists  outstripped  all  other  American  research  workers.  The 
war  plants  which  gave  the  impetus  to  this  research  were  largely 
in  the  organic  chemical  field— based  upon  the  conversion  of  coal 
tar  or  other  once-living  organisms  as  distinguished  from  inorganic 
materials  such  as  sulphur,  sodium  and  other  metallic  elements. 

Among  the  most  important  developments  of  this  post-war  re- 
search were  various  types  of  synthetic  resins  or  plastics  made  by 
what  is  known  as  polymerization.  This  may  be  described  briefly 
as  a  method  of  changing  liquids  into  solids  through  application 
of  heat,  light  or  the  use  of  catalysts.  Chemically,  polymerization 
is  the  combination  of  a  number  of  molecules  to  form  a  single  new 
and  larger  molecule.  The  number  of  new  materials  in  which  these 
rearranged  molecules  may  be  formed  is  endless.  It  might  almost 
be  said  that  the  chemist,  having  unscrambled  matter  down  to 
what  seemed  to  be  its  smallest  particles,  the  physicist  then  stepped 
in  to  rebuild  it  into  heretofore  unsuspected  forms.  Thus  such  ele- 
ments as  oxygen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen,  carbon  and  chlorine,  all  ob- 
tained from  inexpensive  raw  materials,  are  formed  into  solids  of 
surpassing  beauty  that  for  many  constructive  uses  are  unequalled 
in  nature.  Unhappily,  however,  these  new  substances  supply  some 
of  the  most  important  implements  of  war. 


6«  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Among  these  postwar  products  in  which  duPont  research  kept 
so  far  ahead  of  its  competitors  in  the  United  States  and  at  least 
abreast  of  Farben's  technicians  were  Neoprene,  Nylon  and  the 
glass-like  product  called  Lucite.  This  last  was  an  evolution  of  the 
laminated  safety  glass,  designed  primarily  for  automobile  wind- 
shields. Lucite  proved  to  be  a  most  superior  product.  It  was  far 
stronger  than  glass,  was  practically  shatterproof,  and  provided 
equally  good  visibility. 

DuPont's  commercial  production  of  Lucite  began  in  1935.  It 
had  been  preceded  by  the  production  of  a  somewhat  similar  plas- 
tic known  as  Plexiglass  produced  in  Germany  by  the  firm  of  Rohm 
&  Haas  A.  G.,  Darmstadt;  and  in  the  United  States  by  a  company 
of  a  very  similar  name,  Rohm  &  Haas  Co.,  Inc.,  of  Philadelphia. 
Years  before,  when  the  firm  was  founded,  Dr.  Rohm  was  the 
German  and  Mr.  Haas  the  American  partner.  During  World  War 
I  the  American  Rohm  &  Haas  had  been  seized  by  the  Alien  Property 
Custodian  because  of  an  alleged  sixty  per  cent  enemy  interest. 
The  enemy  interest  was  sold  by  the  Custodian  to  a  Chicago  con- 
cern which  promptly  sold  it  back  to  the  American  Rohm  &  Haas 
company.  A  forty  per  cent  interest  in  the  American  company  was 
then  trusteed  so  that  the  dividends  would  go  to  Dr.  Rohm  and  his 
family  in  Germany.  Thus  the  partners  lost  no  time  in  circumvent- 
ing the  seizure  by  the  United  States  Government. 

In  1927  there  began  a  series  of  agreements  between  the  Ameri- 
can and  the  German  Rohm  &  Haas  companies,  and  between  the 
latter  and  I.  G.  Farben.  These  agreements  related  to  new  develop- 
ments in  sheet  plastics.  In  this  same  period  duPont  and  the  English 
Imperial  Chemicals  Industries  were  cooperating  in  similar  plastic 
developments.  Conflict  over  patents  arose  between  these  two 
groups.  Finally,  in  March  1936,  after  protracted  negotiations, 
duPont  and  the  American  Rohm  &  Haas  agreed  on  an  exchange  of 
patents  and  processes,  which  arrangement  tied  in  with  Imperial 
Chemicals  and  the  German  Rohm  &  Haas,  and  thus  with  Farben. 

Three  years  later,  just  a  few  months  before  World  War  II 
started,  the  two  American  makers  of  plastic  glass  entered  into 
several  more  understandings  which  provided  for  control  of  prices, 
market  sharing  and  restriction  of  production.  Also,  restrictions  on 
the  sale  of  the  plastics  abroad  were  entered  into  by  the  American 
Rohm  &  Haas  with  its  German  namesake  and  with  Farben. 


TREASON'SPEACE  63 

By  this  time  the  use  of  plastics  for  airplane  enclosures  and 
gunners'  screens  had  become  of  vital  importance.  And  a  result 
of  the  limitation  of  production  was  said  to  be  a  shortage  of  these 
sheets  of  plastic  for  the  construction  of  military  airplanes  and 
other  military  equipment  scheduled  for  the  Lend-Lease  program, 
and  the  long-delayed  United  States  national  defense  program. 
Farben  strategy,  again  by  the  indirect  approach,  had  succeeded. 

The  relationship  between  the  American  Rohm  &  Haas  and 
Farben  is  illustrated  by  correspondence  between  them  after  the 
war  had  started.  Farben,  in  December  1939,  wrote  to  the  Phila- 
delphia company  releasing  it  from  restrictions  on  the  exportation 
of  certain  of  its  products,  and  requesting  it  to  take  care  of  Farben's 
customers  in  Latin  America— orders  from  whom  would  be  referred 
to  Rohm  &  Haas  through  another  of  Farben's  allies  in  the  United 
States,  Advance  Solvents  &  Chemical  Co.  Mr.  Haas  replied  on  Jan- 
uary 22, 1940,  that  his  firm  would  of  course  comply  with  Farben's 
request,  also  that: 

No  matter  who  is  doing  the  shipping  we  shall  revert  to  the 
status  quo  antem  as  soon  as  normal  conditions  have  been 
restored.  The  thought  uppermost  in  my  mind  is  to  serve  you 
in  the  most  faithful  and  most  efficient  way  possible  in  this 
emergency. 

Otto  Haas,  an  American  citizen  for  many  years,  was  not  only 
faithful  to  Farben  in  the  emergency  of  war,  but  appeared  confi- 
dent that  when  the  war  should  end  he  and  his  supposedly  Ameri- 
can firm  would  be  permitted  to  resume  their  relations  with  Far- 
ben—and  that  Farben  would  again  rule  the  roost  as  before. 

In  October,  1935,  two  of  Farben's  leading  officials,  Georg  von 
Schnitzler  and  Dr.  Fritz  ter  Meer,  came  to  Wilmington  and  at- 
tended a  meeting  at  the  home  of  Lammot  duPont.  At  this  meeting 
Farben's  representatives  pointed  out  how  friendly  Farben's  atti- 
tude had  been  in  cooperating  with  duPont  on  the  amicable  settle- 
ment of  patent  disputes  and  foreign  market  problems  and  that 
Farben  had  invited  duPont  participation  in  the  synthetic  rubber 
developments.  Yet  duPont,  according  to  the  Farben  report  of  this 
meeting,  remained  apprehensive  that  Standard  Oil,  by  reason  of 
its  Farben  tie-ups,  might  break  into  duPont's  field  in  the  chemical 
industry. 


64  TREASON'S   PEACE 

DuPont's  ideas  on  the  subject  of  its  relations  with  Farben  are 
recorded  in  a  memorandum  dated  March  18,  1936,  in  which  was 
stated: 

"The  duPont-I.  G.  relationships  have  notably  improved,  due 
partly  to  the  personalities  of  individuals  entrusted  with  nego- 
tiations, and  partly  to  an  officially  more  friendly  attitude  from 
higher  up  in  the  I.  G.  organization." 

This  memorandum  also  indicated  that  patent  disputes  were 
being  settled  very  satisfactorily,  especially  those  handled  by  Dr. 
George  Lutz,  an  expert  employed  by  duPont,  who  formerly  had 
been  associated  with  I.  G.  Dyes.  The  memorandum  further  sug- 
gested that  the  relations  with  Farben  which  did  not  seem  to  stand 
so  well  were  on  artificial  silk  and  cellophane.  However,  on  May 
23rd,  1939,  Farben  finally  induced  duPont  to  sign  an  agreement 
which  covered  Nylon. 

Artificial  silk  has  had  its  place  in  the  list  of  chemical-munition 
products  since  the  first  World  War,  when  its  value  was  demon- 
strated for  powder  bags,  electric  insulation,  and  other  military 
requirements.  More  recently  the  use  of  different  types  of  rayon  as 
a  substitute  for  cotton  in  heavy-duty  airplane  and  auto  tires,  and 
to  replace  silk  for  parachutes,  had  placed  these  synthetic  textile 
fibers  definitely  among  the  more  important  chemical  munitions. 
These  qualities,  plus  the  adaptability  of  some  of  the  chemical 
processes  involved  in  rayon  production  to  other  war  materials  and 
the  rapid  advance  of  technical  developments,  made  it  important  to 
the  Farben  strategy  to  add  this  industry  to  the  list  of  those  in  the 
United  States  to  be  penetrated,  and  handicapped  for  war. 

Farben  first  reached  into  the  United  States  photographic  field 
in  1926,  shortly  after  it  succeeded  I.  G.  Dyes.  At  that  time  William 
E.  Weiss  of  Sterling  Products  wanted  Farben  to  turn  over  to  him 
the  American  development  of  the  photographic  interests  of  Kalle, 
which  owned  the  German  Agfa,  and  was  already  in  a  strong  posi- 
tion in  Germany.  Farben  refused  Weiss's  request,  and  proceeded  to 
purchase  complete  control  of  the  Ansco  Photo  Products,  Inc.,  of 
Binghamton,  N.  Y.,  the  oldest  maker  of  photo  supplies  in  America. 

Farben  also  organized  Agfa  Raw  Film  Corp.,  and  Agfa  Photo 
Products,  of  New  York  City.  Then,  in  1928,  it  combined  all  these 


TREASON'S   PEACE  65 

interests  in  the  Agfa  Ansco  Corp.  Ten  years  later  Agfa  Ansco  had 
become  the  second  largest  concern  of  its  kind  in  the  United  States. 
Its  importance  as  a  supplier  of  materials  for  war  requirements, 
especially  for  aerial  photographic  maps  and  for  blueprinting  war 
plants  and  equipment,  made  this  Farben-owned  company  a  poten- 
tial menace  to  the  national  defense  of  this  country. 

We  now  come  to  a  phase  of  Farben's  strategy  which  reached  out 
into  metallurgy  rather  than  chemistry,  although  its  inception  came 
from  the  chemical  process  by  which  metallic  magnesium  is  recov- 
ered from  solutions  of  brine.  Farben's  early  development  of  large- 
scale  magnesium  production  and  the  light  metal  alloys  into  which 
this  metal  is  combined,  constituted  a  most  important  contribu- 
tion to  the  German  war  machine— incendiary  bombs  and  airplane 
metals. 

As  already  mentioned  (in  Chapter  n),  Dr.  Schweitzer,  World 
War  spy  and  head  of  the  American  Bayer  Company,  had  boasted 
of  the  day  when  his  colleagues'  development  of  magnesium  alloys 
would  be  of  great  value  to  the  Fatherland.  It  was.  Germany  made 
great  strides  in  the  first  postwar  decade  in  producing  the  metal 
and  its  alloys,  and  in  making  castings  of  the  latter. 

In  this  same  period  the  Dow  Chemical  Co.,  and  the  American 
Magnesium  Co.,  began  to  produce  metallic  magnesium  in  the 
United  States.  The  Aluminum  Co.  of  America  ( Alcoa ),  then  took 
over  the  American  Magnesium  Corp.,  and  shut  off  its  production 
of  the  metal,  leaving  Dow  the  sole  American  producer.  In  1927 
Alcoa  made  a  cross-licensing  arrangement  on  alloys  owned  respec- 
tively by  Dow  and  American  Magnesium,  and  also  secured  licenses 
to  United  States  patents  on  magnesium  owned  by  British  Alum- 
inium Co. 

Farben  had  been  biding  its  time.  It  had  taken  out  various  United 
States  patents  which  were  of  no  great  value  on  the  production  of 
the  metal,  but  which  did  have  some  advantages  in  its  fabrication. 
Then,  in  1929  Farben  made  advances  to  both  Dow  and  Alcoa 
for  partnership  arrangements  covering  the  entire  magnesium  field- 
production,  alloys  and  fabrication.  Dow  repulsed  these  advances 
and  refused  even  to  discuss  any  partnership  with  the  Germans. 

Possibly  they  recalled  an  experience  twenty-five  years  earlier, 
when  a  visitor  from  Germany  came  to  Midland,  Michigan,  and 
warned  the  senior  Dow  that  if  his  firm  did  not  discontinue  export- 


66  TREASON'SPEACE 

ing  bromine,  the  Germans  would  retaliate  by  dumping  two  pounds 
of  bromine  in  the  United  States  for  every  one  that  Dow  exported. 

Dow  had  defied  those  early  threats,  and  the  Germans  dumped 
their  bromine  in  this  country  at  less  than  the  cost  of  transporta- 
tion and  duty.  This  vicious  commercial  blackjacking  continued  to 
handicap  Dow's  business  until  war  broke  out  in  1914,  but  Dow 
had  not  yielded  to  the  Germans  then,  and  did  not  intend  to  do 
so  on  magnesium. 

However,  Dow  failed  to  reckon  with  the  power  of  the  new  Far- 
ben  strategy  which  tied  up  Alcoa  as  its  partner  in  1931,  and  a  year 
later  organized  the  Magnesium  Development  Co.  Under  joint 
ownership,  but  with  Farben's  Dr.  Walter  H.  Duisberg  as  presi- 
dent, the  new  company  pooled  all  the  magnesium  patents  and 
developments  of  Farben  and  Alcoa,  and  notice  was  served  on  Dow 
to  play  ball— or  else. 

Dow  held  what  appeared  to  be  trump  cards  in  development  of 
processes,  valuable  patents  and  contracts  with  Ford  and  other  auto- 
mobile companies.  But  the  heat  was  on,  and  threats  of  patent  litiga- 
tion were  made.  One  suit  was  actually  started. 

A  gentler  approach  was  through  a  series  of  luncheons  at  which 
one  Edward  L.  Cheyney,  suave  Alcoa  sales  executive,  entertained 
an  aged  director  of  the  Dow  company  at  the  gloomy  Union  Club 
in  Cleveland  and,  between  courses,  pictured  the  doleful  things  that 
could  happen  to  a  company  that  persisted  in  bucking  the  Farben- 
Alcoa  combine.  No  threats  were  made  but  the  deep  regret  of 
Alcoa  was  expressed  at  the  unfortunate  obstinacy  of  the  Dow  man- 
agement. The  luncheons  were  held  on  direct  instructions  from 
Farben,  but  Mr.  Cheyney  soft-pedaled  the  Germans'  place  in  the 
setup,  and  emphasized  the  probity  of  Alcoa.  Dow  finally  decided 
that  further  resistance  was  useless,  gave  up  the  unequal  contest 
and,  in  1933,  signed  up  with  the  Farben-Alcoa  magnesium 
team. 

During  this  triumph  of  the  Farben  strategy  in  breaking  into 
another  American  industry  on  the  traditional  German  shoestring, 
its  emissaries  were  negotiating  with  the  Ford  Motor  Company  on 
the  fabrication  of  magnesium  alloys  for  piston  heads  and  other 
automotive  parts  where  light  weight  was  an  advantage.  Quite 
possibly  these  negotiations  traced  back  to  the  Ford  Motor  Com- 
pany's plant  in  Germany,  and  may  also  have  had  bearing  on  the 


'TREASON'S   PEACE  67 

willingness  of  Mr.  Edsel  Ford  to  act  as  one  of  the  directors  of  the 
American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp.  to  which  Farben's  fifty  per  cent 
interest  in  the  Magnesium  Development  Corp.  was  assigned. 

However,  once  Dow  was  securely  tied  into  the  Farben-Alcoa 
combine,  Farben's  next  step  was  to  make  sure  that  the  production 
of  magnesium  metal  in  the  United  States  be  restricted,  and  its 
fabrication  in  alloys  be  developed  as  slowly  as  possible.  This  was 
important,  because  magnesium,  in  its  natural  form,  is  one  of  the 
most  plentiful  of  the  elements,  and  so  many  new  methods  of  ex- 
tracting it  had  been  experimented  with,  and  so  many  new  uses 
were  in  sight  that  there  were  good  prospects  of  lower  costs  for 
the  metal  and  the  consequent  rapid  expansion  of  its  production. 

In  its  first  1931  agreement  with  Farben,  Alcoa  had  accepted  a 
restriction  on  initial  production  of  the  metal  should  a  new  United 
States  plant  be  built  by  the  partners.  When  Dow  signed  up,  the 
plans  for  a  new  plant  were  at  once  abandoned,  and  competition  in 
the  domestic  magnesium  industry  was  at  an  end.  Farben  mean- 
while had  greatly  expanded  its  own  production  of  magnesium  and 
magnesium  alloys  in  Germany.  With  one  hand  Farben  prepared 
Germany  for  war  by  creating  a  sufficient  supply  of  light  metal  for 
its  huge  fleet  of  warplanes;  with  the  other  it  throttled  the  growth 
of  the  industry  in  America,  and  saw  to  it  that  a  good  part  of  the 
limited  United  States  production  was  shipped  out  of  the  country. 

Thus  Farben  inoculated  our  magnesium  producers  with  indus- 
trial sleeping-sickness,  which  the  larger  of  its  partners,  interested 
mainly  in  aluminum,  did  not  resent,  and  which  the  other  partner, 
shanghaied  into  a  shotgun  Farben  marriage,  was  unable  to  pre- 
vent. When  the  United  States  started  its  schedule  of  expanded 
airplane  production,  one  of  the  greatest,  and  seemingly  insur- 
mountable barriers  which  confronted  the  Army  and  Navy  was  the 
acute  shortage  of  magnesium  alloys. 

Other  metals  of  vital  importance  to  national  defense  which  are 
found  in  restrictive  agreements  involving  American  producers  with 
Farben,  directly  or  indirectly,  included  aluminum,  nickel  and 
molybdenum. 

Contrary  to  opinion  so  frequently  expressed  elsewhere,  it  was 
merely  incidental  to  the  Farben  strategy  (as  illustrated  in  this 
chapter  and  that  preceding  it)  that  the  cartel  mechanism  lent 
itself  to  Farben's  purpose  in  tying  into  some  of  the  great  industrial 


68  TREASON'S   PEACE 

corporations  of  this  country.  The  almost  complete  abandonment  of 
anti-trust  law  enforcement  had  made  many  of  these  American 
combinations  inevitable  and  likewise  made  Farben's  technic  pos- 
sible. This  technic  would  have  been  ineffective  and  Farben's  task 
much  more  difficult  if  the  anti-trust  laws  had  been  enforced. 
Farben's  part  in  procuring  two  decades  of  lax  enforcement  of  fed- 
eral statutes  may  best  be  understood  after  reading  other  chapters 
of  this  story. 

When  the  war  started  in  1939  Farben's  tie-ups  in  the  United 
States  were  by  no  means  confined  to  the  particular  products  and 
companies  which  have  been  mentioned  thus  far.  The  thousands 
of  United  States  patents  taken  out  during  the  preceding  seventeen 
years  by  Farben  and  its  affiliates  in  Germany  had  been  utilized  to 
effect  an  almost  countless  number  of  agreements  with  corporations 
and  individuals  in  the  United  States.  These  agreements  ranged 
from  royalty  payments  on  products  of  relative  unimportance  to 
complete  control  of  militarily-strategic  industries.  The  greatest 
number  of  these  patents  related  to  coal-tar  dyes  and  pharmaceu- 
ticals;  others  involved  a  wide  range  of  chemical  and  metallurgical 
products. 

It  is  proper  to  state  that  the  mere  fact  that  each  of  those  many 
companies  had  relations  of  some  sort  with  Farben  or  its  affiliates, 
does  not  necessarily  imply  any  degree  of  illegality  on  the  part 
of  each  such  American  company.  Farben's  broad  purpose  was 
to  accomplish  so  complete  a  saturation  of  our  industrial  struc- 
ture, by  fair  means  or  foul,  that  our  progress  at  all  times  would  be 
under  observation,  and,  when  advisable,  might  be  restricted. 

As  we  have  seen,  some  of  its  contracts  were  viciously  illegal. 
Other  arrangements  however  were  not  tainted  with  illegality. 

An  indication  of  the  extent  and  diversification  of  this  penetration 
is  a  partial  list,  in  the  appendix,  of  some  of  the  better-known  Ameri- 
can corporations,  including  those  already  mentioned,  which  are 
officially  reported  to  have  made  agreements  with  Farben  or  to 
have  been  involved  in  some  of  Farben's  direct  tie-ups  with  other 
companies.  This  list  reads  like  a  directory  of  American  industry. 
Because  of  the  character  of  these  agreements  and  relationships,  at 
least  some  degree  of  Farben's  influence  or  espionage  may  have 
resulted  in  each  instance. 


CHAPTER       V 


Farben's  Royal  Family 


LIKE        MOST 

great  industrial  corporations,  I.  G.  Farben  has  a  royal  family— 
the  original  members  of  which  created  its  pattern  and  formed  its 
corporate  policy. 

Leading  members  of  the  Farben  royalty  are  Dr.  Hermann 
Schmitz,  perhaps  the  most  dangerous  of  Germany's  living  war 
criminals,  and  the  late  Doctors  Karl  Duisberg  and  Karl  Bosch. 

These  three  gentlemen,  their  relatives,  and  their  associates  ap- 
pear from  time  to  time  in  other  chapters  of  this  story.  But  the 
plan  to  plant  their  offspring  in  our  midst  plays  so  important  a  part 
in  the  Farben  pattern  that  the  individual  profiles  gathered  here 
may  appear  of  value. 

Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz,  by  sheer  brain  power  and  complete  ruth- 
lessness,  came  up  the  hard  way  from  his  boyhood  commercial 
school  in  the  iron  city  of  Essen  and  a  bank  clerk's  training.  Then 
World  War  I  shoved  him  into  the  Dye  Trust  Badische  nitrogen 
affairs  as  a  staff  member  of  the  Kaiser's  war  machine. 

Entering  the  Badische  management  in  1919  Dr.  Schmitz  was  an 
Executive  Committee  Managing  Director  of  Farben  from  its  be- 
ginning in  1926— became  chairman  in  1938,  and  also  was  Farben's 

69 


70  TREASON'S   PEACE 

director  on  the  board  of  Fritz  Thyssen's  Vereinigte  Stahlwerke  from 
the  time  the  Steel  Trust  was  tied  in  with  Farben  in  1926.  Active  in 
politics  from  the  early  days  of  the  Weimar  Republic,  Schmitz 
made  personal  contributions  to  the  Nazis,  was  a  member  of  Hitler's 
puppet  Reichstag,  and  War  Economy  Chief  before  and  during 
World  War  II. 

This  elder  statesman  of  the  Schmitz  family  did  not  emigrate  to 
America  to  become  a  citizen  but  he  commuted  regularly  during 
the  years  when,  as  shown  elsewhere,  he  personally  directed  Far- 
ben's  American  subsidiaries  and  consummated  many  of  Farben's 
most  important  partnerships  and  illegal  tie-ups  in  this  country.  He 
enjoyed  intimate  friendships  with  top  men  in  American  industry 
and  finance.  Dr.  Schmitz  created  the  Swiss  I.  G.  Chemie  as  a  hide- 
out for  Farben's  false  fronts  abroad  and  installed  his  brother-in- 
law,  Albert  Gadow,  as  its  resident  manager,  with  instructions  to 
acquire  Swiss  citizenship. 

Dr.  Schmitz  was  also  a  Director  of  the  great  Deutsche  Reichs- 
bank  and  of  the  Bank  of  International  Settlements,  that  financial 
catch-all  for  cartel  members  at  war,  with  its  headquarters  in 
Switzerland  where  Schmitz  throughout  the  war  was  able  to  main- 
tain direct  contact  with  its  American  president,  Thomas  H.  Mc- 
Kittrick,  and  with  various  cartel  associates,  to  put  out  peace 
feelers  after  his  criminal  gang  finally  decided  that  Farben  should 
call  for  an  intermission  before  another  war. 

In  his  various  capacities  in  finance,  industry  and  government, 
corruptionist  in  each,  and  as  chairman  of  the  American  I.  G., 
the  Swiss  I.  G.,  and  the  German  I.  G.,  Schmitz  appears  as  a  triple 
threat,  one  of  the  most  vicious  and  dangerous  of  Germany's  war 
criminals.  Frequently  addressed  as  Geheimrat  (Privy-Councillor), 
the  doctor  was  also  entitled  to  be  called  Justizrat  as  a  doctor  of 
laws  (honoris  causa). 

On  his  many  visits  to  this  country  Dr.  Schmitz  personally  took 
an  active  part  in  directing  Farben's  American  subsidiaries— as  a 
result  of  which  activities  he  won  top  honors  in  having  been  indicted 
on  three  separate  occasions  as  Farben  leader  and  organizer  or 
head  of  General  Aniline.  The  Justizrat  was  also  named  as  co- 
conspirator  in  two  other  criminal  cases.  His  three  indictments  re- 
main untried  as  this  is  written,  also  one  of  those  in  which  he  was 


TREASON'S   PEACE  71 

called  a  co-conspirator,  and  the  other  was  abandoned  by  a  com- 
placent Attorney  General. 

In  July  1945,  while  being  examined  at  Frankfurt  by  the  United 
States  Army,  Schmitz  admitted  that  he  had  tried  to  persuade  Hitler 
to  use  a  new  and  very  deadly  Farben  war  gas  on  the  Allied  Armies. 
Then,  a  few  weeks  later,  the  good  doctor  publicly  proclaimed  his 
ambition  to  become  Germany's  representative  on  the  Security 
Council  of  the  United  Nations.  This  from  the  man  who  is  credited 
with  having  developed  the  plan  of  making  I.  G.  Farben  a  vast 
international  espionage  machine  cloaked  under  cover  of  indus- 
trial and  commercial  activities— and  the  most  important  part  of 
this  vicious  design  was  the  Schmitz  proposal  that  trustworthy 
members  of  the  Farben  families  emigrate  to  other  countries,  espe- 
cially to  the  United  States,  to  serve  the  Fatherland's  Farben  in 
peace  and  in  war. 

Dr.  Karl  Duisberg,  who  died  in  1935,  was  known,  and  deserv- 
edly, as  the  father  of  German  industrial  chemistry.  Holding  high 
office  in  the  first  World  War,  it  was  he,  as  founder  of  the  American 
Bayer  Company,  who  sent  Hugo  Schweitzer  to  this  country  to 
become  Bayer's  chief  chemist  in  public,  and  Germany's  espionage 
and  pay-off  man  in  private.  Dr.  Duisberg  was  also  leader  of  the 
I.  G.  Dyes  plan  of  postwar  strategy,  and  personally  negotiated 
the  first  of  its  new  tie-ups  with  Sterling  by  which  control  over 
American  Bayer  was  reasserted.  His  secretary,  one  H.  Gattineau, 
like  his  son-in-law,  Max  Ilgner,  is  said  to  have  been  a  main  Farben 
connecting  link  with  the  Hitler  Government  after  the  Nazis  came 
to  full  power  in  1933. 

Duisberg  probably  more  than  any  of  his  colleagues  epitomizes 
the  vicious  union  of  applied  science  and  industrial  productive 
brains— which  in  itself  is  the  core  of  Farben's  potential  for  world 
conquest. 

A  young  relative  of  Karl  Duisberg  (through  his  wife,  who  was 
Johanna  Seebohm)  appears  in  the  notorious  Hermann  C.  A. 
Seebohm,  who  had  come  to  America  before  World  War  I  and 
gotten  kicked  out.  He  was  a  director  and  Secretary  of  the  Ameri- 
can Bayer  Company,  involved  in  the  World  War  I  espionage  and 
crooked  business  of  this  Dye  Trust  false  front  by  which  sabotage 


72  TREASON'S   PEACE 

in  North  and  South  America  was  financed  and  the  company  was 
milked  of  its  assets.  So  Mr.  Seebohm  was  arrested  and  interned 
in  1918,  later  to  be  shipped  back  where  he  came  from,  to  turn 
up  as  a  Managing  Director  of  Farben,  and  after  the  rape  of  Austria, 
as  chairman  of  one  of  the  Farben  subsidiaries  in  that  unhappy 
country. 

Dr.  Duisberg  had  two  sons,  Karl  Ludwig  and  Walter  H.  He 
kept  Karl  at  home  to  serve  on  the  Farben  boards,  and  Walter  H. 
was  sent  overseas  to  join  the  Farben  colony  in  America.  Another 
Duisberg,  of  uncertain  relationship,  turned  up  in  Frankfurt  in 
1945  after  the  American  Army  seized  Farben's  headquarters 
there,  and  was  quoted  in  news  dispatches  as  saying  that  "German 
industry  can  make  a  quick  recovery  after  the  war  if  the  Allies  .will 
be  so  kind  as  to  permit  it  so  to  do." 

Dr.  Karl  Bosch,  winner  of  the  Nobel  Prize,  with  Fritz  Haber, 
for  invention  of  the  first  synthetic  ammonia  nitrogen  process  by 
which  Badische  made  it  possible  for  the  Kaiser  to  launch  his  war; 
and  inventor  of  war  gases  introduced  by  the  Kaiser's  armies,  be- 
came the  first  chairman  of  Farben's  board  of  managing  directors. 
After  the  death  of  Duisberg,  Dr.  Bosch  shifted  to  chairman  of  its 
supervising  board  until  he  died  in  1940. 

Bosch,  like  Duisberg,  sought  only  one  thing— world  conquest 
through  perverting  science.  This  criminal  of  two  world  wars  had 
a  son,  Dr.  Karl  Bosch,  Jr.,  whom  he  trained  with  great  care  and 
affection  to  carry  on  for  Farben.  He  also  had  a  brother,  Robert, 
of  Bosch  Magneto  fame— who  also  appears  elsewhere  in  this  story 
and  whose  American  subsidiary,  like  several  of  those  of  brother 
Karl,  had  the  dubious  distinction  of  being  seized  by  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian,  during  both  world  wars. 

This  criminal  of  two  World  Wars  had  a  magnificent  estate  near 
Heidelberg,  where  he  royally  entertained  his  American  partners 
on  their  frequent  visits  to  Germany.  In  his  gentler  moments  of 
relaxation  when  not  planning  treachery,  aggressive  war,  or  mass 
murder,  Dr.  Bosch  enjoyed  displaying  his  collections  of  crystal 
and  of  beetles  and  butterfies,  said  to  be  the  best  in  Germany. 

Another  royal  family  of  Farben,  from  the  earlier  days  of  the 


TREASON'S    PEACE  75 

I.  G.  Dyes  cartel,  was  headed  by  two  Frankfurt  aristocrats  and 
Junkers,  Dr.  Walther  vom  Rath  and  Dr.  Wilhelm  von  Meister,  who 
prior  to  the  formation  of  Farben  in  1926,  had  been  controlling 
and  interrelated  figures  in  Farbwerke  vorm.  Meister  Lucius  & 
Briining,  the  great  Hoechst  firm  in  which  members  of  the  Meister 
family,  from  its  foundation,  had  played  important  parts.  So  they 
sent  their  sons  to  America. 

The  senior  vom  Rath  had  a  nephew,  Georg  von  Schnitzler,  who 
stayed  at  the  royal  court  to  rise  high  in  the  Farben  dynasty. 
Von  Schnitzler  was  a  brother-in-law  of  the  famous,  or  notorious, 
General  Fedor  von  Bock  who  led  the  Nazi  armies  to  defeat  in 
Russia,  got  back  with  a  whole  skin,  to  be  shot  down  by  the  British 
near  Hamburg  as  the  war  was  ending  in  1945. 

Georg  von  Schnitzler,  as  a  managing  director  of  Farben,  be- 
came one  of  its  most  powerful  rulers,  he  was  a  heavy  financial 
contributor  to  Hitler's  rise  from  the  gutter,  and  in  his  handling 
of  Farben's  foreign  tie-ups,  camouflage  and  espionage,  he  appears 
as  among  a  half  dozen  of  the  most  dangerous  of  Germany's  war 
criminals. 

In  1943  von  Schnitzler,  knowing  the  war  was  lost,  established 
a  residence  in  Madrid— a  veritable  castle  in  Spain— where  he  could 
keep  and  renew  his  close  friendships  and  carry  over  alliances 
with  leading  American  cartelists,  to  begin  the  repair  of  Farben's 
war-damaged  foreign  empire  and  preparations  for  World  War  III. 
So  in  1945  this  Farben  Junker  was  back  in  Germany  for  the  finish, 
and  became  the  most  notable  and  possibly  the  most  informative 
of  the  Farben  family  in  giving  up  secrets  and  conclusions  about 
Farben's  war  activities. 

Among  the  statements  in  his  voluminous  "true  confessions"  one 
ended  with:  "Thus  I  conclude  that  I.  G.  Farben  is  largely  respon- 
sible for  Hitler's  policy." 

Georg  von  Schnitzler's  daughter  Lilo,  celebrated  as  a  beauty 
and  an  early  friend  of  Adolf  Hitler  when  the  latter  was  emerg- 
ing, was  married  to  one  Herbert  Scholz,  an  erstwhile  friend  of  the 
lamented  Ernst  Rohm  before  that  degenerate  pal  of  Hitler  was 
bumped  off  by  his  ungrateful  boss.  So  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Herbert  Scholz, 
as  an  effective  team  were  shipped  off  to  American  to  help  along 
Farben's  cause  of  world  conquest 


74  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Not  to  a  Farben  hideout,  but  to  Washington  came  Georg  von 
Schnitzler's  Lilo  and  her  Albert;  sinister  beauty  teamed  with 
vicious  brain,  that  historic  combination  for  diplomatic  intrigue. 
Mr.  Scholz,  as  secretary  to  the  German  Ambassador,  dominated 
his  official  master,  while  Lilo  played  her  dazzling  part  among 
influential  members  of  high  society  in  the  nation's  capital. 

As  she  had  charmed  and  helped  to  train  to  Farben's  social 
graces  the  unspeakable  Adolf,  so  were  those  charms  displayed 
and  used  to  beguile  democracy's  chosen  rulers  to  do  those  things 
that  Farben's  royalty  desired.  Lilo  and  Albert  then  moved  on  to 
conquer  Boston,  Massachusetts,  where  that  precious  scion  of 
Farben,  officially  the  German  Consul,  carried  on  in  secret  as  a 
No.  1  Gestapo  pay-off  man,  until  June  1941,  when  he  was  grabbed 
by  the  F.B.I.,  to  be  kicked  out  of  the  country  with  the  rest  of 
the  official  Nazi  brood.  The  full  story  of  what  Lilo  and  her  Albert 
did  in  Washington  and  in  Boston  in  the  period  after  the  war  had 
begun  in  Europe  must  remain  untold,  still  concealed  in  official 
files— for  some  strange  reason. 

So  now  we  come  to  a  few  highlights  in  the  activities  of  some  of 
the  younger  members  of  the  Farben  dynasty— relatives  who  were 
sent  over  here,  not  as  visitors  but  as  permanent  residents.  Usually 
they  became  American  citizens  without  delay,  they  married,  estab- 
lished homes  in  suburban  districts  where  social  ties  could  readily 
be  formed,  and  they  made  the  right  kind  of  professional  and 
political  contacts. 

As  reputable,  well-to-do  business  men  these  Teutonic  termites 
added  strength  and  respectability  to  Farben's  new  American 
fronts,  and,  in  anticipation  of  the  war  that  was  to  come,  their 
cloak  of  citizenship  was  designed  to  prevent  such  unhappy  inci- 
dents of  the  past  as  internment  and  property  seizure.  They  com- 
posed the  field  staff  of  Farben's  industrial  pincers  in  America; 
they  received  and  carried  out  orders  from  headquarters,  and 
directed  the  accumulation  of  funds  and  information,  much  of 
which  somehow  found  its  way  back  to  Germany. 

Among  the  Farben  delegates  to  this  country  were  William  H. 
vom  Rath  and  F.  Wilhelm  von  Meister.  Here  they  held  important 


TREASON'S    PEACE  75 

positions  in  Farben's  American  subsidiary,  General  Aniline  &  Film 
Corporation. 

William  H.  vom  Rath,  son  of  Walther,  and  cousin  of  Georg  von 
Schnitzler,  was  also  a  cousin  of  Ernst  vom  Rath,  Secretary  of  the 
Germany  Embassy  in  Paris,  who  was  assassinated  in  1938  by  the 
young  Pole,  Herschel  Grynszpan.  During  World  War  I,  Wilhelm 
was  involved  in  the  direction  of  the  German  Secret  Service  at 
Geneva,  Switzerland. 

Wilhelm  came  to  the  United  States  in  the  early  20s  and  after 
a  few  years  was  naturalized  as  William  H.  vom  Rath.  The  "Wil- 
helm" was  no  more.  In  1929,  he  received  his  first  real  Farben  re- 
sponsibility, he  was  elected  Secretary  and  made  a  director  of  the 
newly  organized  American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp. 

Young  vom  Rath  bought  a  fine  home  at  Glen  Cove,  Long  Island, 
and  made  many  influential  friends.  Some  of  his  activities  in  Far- 
ben's interest  will  be  mentioned  later  on  in  this  story.  It  is  suf- 
ficient here  to  relate  that  in  December  1941,  William  H.  vom  Rath, 
was  indicted  for  conspiracy  to  violate  the  anti-trust  laws,  along 
with  other  Farben  agents  and  corporate  subsidiaries.  As  this  is 
written  the  indictment  has  not  been  tried,  nor  is  there  apparently 
any  prospect  of  its  being  tried.  Until  Germany  threw  up  the  sponge 
the  official  excuse  was  given  that  to  try  Mr.  vom  Rath  ( and  some 
of  his  royal  pals )  would  interfere  with  our  prosecution  of  the  war. 

F.  Wilhelm  von  Meister,  son  of  Wilhelm,  Sr.,  and  also  cousin 
of  Georg  von  Schnitzler,  came  to  this  country  to  become  vice- 
president  of  Farben's  photo  paper  subsidiary,  Ozalid  Corpora- 
tion, when  it  was  ostensibly  owned  by  Chemnyco.  In  1940,  when 
Ozalid  became  a  part  of  General  Aniline,  von  Meister  was  made 
manager,  where  he  remained  until  kicked  out  by  the  Treasury 
Department  after  being  indicted  in  December  1941  along  with 
vom  Rath  and  other  members  of  the  royal  family. 

American  citizen  von  Meister  is  as  yet  among  those  sons  and 
brothers  of  Farben  accused  of  criminal  acts  who  remain  untried. 

Dietrich  A.  Schmitz,  brother  of  the  regal  Hermann,  did  many 
odd  jobs  for  Farben  in  this  country  and  in  Latin  America,  but 
two  incidents  stand  out.  One  occurred  when  Dietrich,  as  president 


76  TREASON'S   PEACE 

of  American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corporation,  brazenly  and  falsely  de- 
nied under  oath  before  the  Securities  and  Exchange  Commission 
that  he  had  any  knowledge  of  who  was  the  beneficial  owner  of 
the  controlling  shares  of  that  company. 

Nothing  being  done  to  him  for  this  offense,  he  may  have  felt 
immune,  but  three  years  later  was  indicted  in  three  separate  ( and 
still  untried )  conspiracy  actions.  Then  in  1945  Dietrich  was  sum- 
moned before  a  Federal  Grand  Jury  and  questioned  without 
waiving  immunity;  as  result  of  which  a  Federal  Judge,  with 
consent  and  approval  of  United  States  Attorney  General  Francis 
Biddle  promptly  dismissed  all  three  indictments  against  this 
brother  of  war  criminal  Hermann  Schmitz. 

It  is  perhaps  needless  to  say  that  efforts  to  induce  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice  to  explain  this  chain  of  events  have  been  unavail- 
ing. Neither  has  elucidation  been  forthcoming  as  to  why  the  in- 
dictments against  Hermann  Schmitz  himself— which  were  not 
tried  during  the  war  because  we  couldn't  catch  him— have  not  now 
been  tried;  nor  has  this  distinguished  gentleman  paid  us  a  courtesy 
visit  to  plead  not  guilty  and  have  the  indictments  dismissed. 

Geheimrat  Hermann  Schmitz  also  has  two  promising  nephews, 
Max  and  Rudolph  W.  Ilgner;  Rudolph  was  shipped  off  to  America 
in  the  1920's.  Max,  the  more  brilliant,  remained  with  Uncle  Her- 
mann, married  Karl  Duisberg's  daughter,  and  rose  to  high  rank 
as  a  Managing  Director  and  head  of  Farben's  Central  Finance 
Bureau,  which  polite  name  cloaked  Max's  activities  as  chief  of 
espionage,  sabotage,  and  propaganda.  In  that  capacity,  Max  was 
directly  responsible  for  carrying  out  the  financial  details  of  Far- 
ben's  cartel  and  patent  agreements  and  for  placing  and  using 
secret  funds  and  secret  agents  in  foreign  countries.  Max  Ilgner 
has  admitted  that  these  activities  were  tremendous  in  scope  and 
corrupt  in  character  in  the  United  States. 

Strongly  attracted  to  the  vicious  doctrines  of  Nazism  as  offer- 
ing the  appropriate  vehicle  for  Farben's  pattern  of  world  conquest, 
Max  Ilgner  was  Farben's  main  representative  in  the  inner  councils 
of  the  Nazi  party. 

Nephew  Rudolph  won  the  undying  gratitude  of  his  kinfolk,  in 
Germany  and  in  this  country,  by  destroying  by  fire  not  long  before 
Hitler  invaded  Poland  certain  secret  files  which  a  Grand  Jury  had 


TREASON'S   PEACE  77 

demanded.  These  were  the  files  of  Chemnyco,  Inc.,  the  New  York 
firm  through  which  Rudolph  had  been  publicly  arranging  patent 
licenses,  and  secretly  directing  espionage,  propaganda,  and  other 
subversive  activities. 

Instead  of  being  jailed  and  heavily  fined  for  conspiracy  and 
arson,  Mr.  Ilgner,  on  a  change  of  plea  to  guilty,  was  let  off  with 
a  thousand  dollar  fine  and  precisely  no  years  in  jail.  Whereupon 
he  left  the  country  club  pleasures  and  social  contacts  of  Green- 
wich, for  a  rural  chicken  farm  in  Connecticut,  where  he  is  today. 

Among  Rudolph's  many  propaganda  jobs  was  running  the  Ger- 
man American  Board  of  Trade,  and  his  best  known  feat  was  the 
grand  banquet  he  threw  in  New  York  in  March  1939  to  welcome 
Fritz  Wiedemann,  Hitler's  old  commanding  officer,  who  after  suc- 
cessfully conducting  Herbert  Hoover  about  Europe  on  an  educa- 
tional tour,  had  arrived  in  this  country  to  take  up  his  duties  as  a 
Farben  gumshoe  in  the  Consul  General's  office  at  San  Francisco. 

Walter  H.  Duisberg,  son  of  Karl,  arrived  in  the  promised  land 
in  1927;  settled  first  at  Quogue,  Long  Island,  and  later  in  a  fine 
home  in  Englewood,  New  Jersey;  registered  as  a  consultant  on 
United  States  patents;  and  within  the  next  decade  engaged  himself 
in  multitudinous  activities  both  here  and  in  South  America.  He 
was  a  stockholder,  director  or  .executive  of  every  one  of  Farben's 
important  corporate  hideouts  in  this  country  and  several  in  Latin 
America  as  well. 

This  son  of  America's  vindictive  enemy  won  honors  approxi- 
mating those  of  Hermann  Schmitz  in  the  various  conspif  acy  indict- 
ments which  broke  out  like  a  rash  after  the  war  began;  Mr.  Duis- 
berg was  named  by  various  Grand  Juries  in  no  less  than  five 
different  criminal  cases  involving  charges  of  restricting  the  pro- 
duction of  nitrogen  and  ammonia,  fertilizer  materials,  magnesium 
alloys,  dyes,  chemicals,  and  photo  materials.  Only  the  magnesium 
cases  have  ever  come  to  issue  in  court,  but  Walter  Duisberg  had 
no  cause  to  worry  about  any  of  them  because,  strangely  enough, 
he  was  named  merely  as  co-conspirator.  (A  co-conspirator  desig- 
nation in  a  criminal  indictment  is  like  a  mild  case  of  chicken- 
pox— a  little  rash,  but  no  possibility  of  serious  consequences,  pro- 
vided the  patient  has  competent  doctors. ) 


78  TREASON'S   PEACE 

In  such  a  favorable  atmosphere  it  may  not  appear  strange  that 
Mr.  Walter  Duisberg  should  have  decided  to  press  his  luck  and 
try  to  regain  possession  of  a  large  block  of  stock  in  the  Farben- 
owned  General  Dyestuff  Corporation,  of  which  he  was  registered 
as  the  owner  when  the  United  States  Government  rudely  seized 
it  as  enemy-owned  after  we  entered  the  war. 

At  any  rate,  Mr.  Duisberg  brazenly  went  into  court  with  a  com- 
plaint that  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  had  stolen  his  property, 
and  would  the  judge  please  make  the  thief  give  it  back  to  him. 
The  Court,  to  its  credit,  threw  out  this  complaint. 

Later,  however,  an  appeal  was  filed  on  this  decision  and  lost,  so 
it  appears  that  the  Duisberg  claim  is  no  go;  in  which  respect,  as  will 
be  seen  later,  he  has  not  been  as  fortunate  as  some  of  his  pals. 

Brief  pictures  belong  here  of  other  men  of  Farben,  not  rulers 
nor  kin  of  rulers,  who  also  came  inside  our  lines  in  the  prewar 
invasion.  Also  of  some  who,  although  born  in  America,  appeared 
to  regard  this  great  privilege  as  a  grant  of  right  to  serve  the 
German  Dye  Trust  first  and  always. 

A  Farben  employe  in  South  America  who  proved  most  useful 
in  softening  up  that  continent  for  the  recent  war  was  Kurt 
Wojahn,  brother  of  Max  Wojahn,  manager  of  Sterling's  Export 
Department.  It  was  Kurt's  duty  to  place  Farben's  patent-medi- 
cine advertising  in  those  Latin  American  newspapers  which  pub- 
lished news  and  editorials  friendly  to  the  Nazi  government.  Max 
seems  to  have  had  similar  duties  with  regard  to  Sterling's  advertis- 
ing and,  as  will  be  shown  later,  this  brotherly  relation  was  of 
considerable  value  in  harmonizing  the  advertising  policy  of  Sterl- 
ing with  that  of  Farben. 

Another  close  relationship  in  Farben's  American  family  was  the 
Hutz  father-and-son  combination.  Rudolph  Hutz,  the  father,  was 
head  of  General  Aniline  Works  and  vice-president  and  director  of 
General  Aniline  &  Film  on  that  day  in  January  1942  when  the 
Treasury  Department  requested  him  and  a  number  of  his  col- 
leagues to  take  their  hats  and  go.  His  son,  W.  H.  Hutz,  was  a 
member  of  Farben's  New  York  patent  law  firm  of  Hutz  &  Joslin, 
until  some  time  in  1942,  when  he  also  received  his  marching 
orders  from  the  United  States  Government. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  •  79 

The  story  of  Rudolph  Hutz  goes  back  far  into  the  history  of 
the  Big  Six.  Born  in  Germany  he  was  employed  as  a  chemist  by 
the  German  Bayer  Company  at  Elberfeld  from  1902  to  1909.  He 
was  then  transferred  to  the  American  Bayer  Company  as  Boston 
manager,  and  was  there  when  Bayer  and  the  other  Big  Six  houses 
got  into  a  little  jam  for  bribing  boss  dyers,  salting  dyes  and  faking 
brand  names  in  1913.  Hutz  remained  with  Bayer  until  1918,  when 
he  had  a  misunderstanding  with  the  United  States  Government 
about  espionage,  and  was  indicted  and  interned  at  Ellis  Island. 

After  the  Armistice  Rudolph  was  released  and  soon  thereafter 
became  an  American  citizen  with  the  sanction  of  some  federal 
court  which  was  either  grossly  deceived  or  else  had  a  strange 
concept  of  what  kind  of  citizens  this  country  has  need  of.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  as  a  naturalized  American,  Mr.  Hutz  climbed  high 
in  the  American  front  of  Farben,  his  one  other  mishap  of  record 
being  the  mention  of  his  name  as  a  co-conspirator  in  one  of  those 
1941  conspiracy  indictments  which  are  still  on  the  stove— or  rather 
in  the  icebox. 

Many  others,  not  related  to  Farben's  leaders  but  trained  in  the 
Farben  pattern,  came  to  America  to  enter  Farben's  subsidiaries. 
Hans  Aichelin,-  a  former  Farben  dyestuff  expert  came  over  in  the 
late  20's,  was  put  to  work  with  General  Aniline,  and  later  became 
vice-president  and  director  of  General  Aniline  &  Film.  Mr.  Aiche- 
lin, too,  was  among  those  indicted  in  December  1941  and  was 
named  again  in  a  criminal  complaint  in  1942.  Forced  out  of  Gen- 
eral Aniline's  board,  he  was  finally  ousted  as  vice-president  by  the 
Treasury  in  January  1942.  He,  too,  will  never  be  tried.  He  died 
in  1944. 

Ernest  Schwartz,  himself  a  former  official  of  Farben  and  one  of 
its  leading  research  men,  transferred  his  domicile  to  this  country 
and  became  a  director  and  president  of  Agfa  Ansco  in  1934,  later 
director  and  vice-president  of  American  I.  G.  when  that  company 
changed  its  name  to  General  Aniline  &  Film.  Mr.  Schwartz,  whose 
duties  included  experiments  with  photographic  equipment  for  the 
United  States  Army  and  Navy,  did  not  become  naturalized  until 
late  in  1939,  after  the  war  started— but  when  he  did  so  he  wanted 
everyone  to  know  that  he  was  a  changed  man.  1  am  now  an 


8o  TREASON'S   PEACE 

American  citizen,"  he  announced,  "and  have  only  sympathies  with 
America."  Two  years  later  he,  too,  was  indicted  for  conspiracy. 
And  never  tried. 

Leopold  Eckler,  another  Farben-trained  chemist,  came  to  Amer- 
ica, was  naturalized,  and  took  his  place  in  the  management  of 
Agfa  Ansco.  There  he  stayed  until  ousted  by  the  Treasury,  in 
January  1942. 

J.  Rudolph  Worch  was  still  another  newcomer  whose  rose  to  be 
assistant  vice-president  of  Agfa  Ansco  at  Binghamton,  N.  Y.,  and 
at  one  time  was  president  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  that 
city.  He  left  Ansco  at  the  request  of  the  Treasury  in  March  1942. 

The  plant  manager  of  General  Aniline  Works  at  the  former 
Bayer  dye  plant  at  Rensselaer,  N.  Y.,  was  Harry  W.  Grimmel, 
who  worked  in  a  Farben  dye  plant  prior  to  1926,  and  was  then 
transferred  to  its  American  operations. 

Another  higher-up  technician  was  William  Henry  Cotton,  born 
in  Russia,  who  was  employed  by  the  German  Hoechst  from  1905 
to  1928,  and  then  sent  to  General  Dyestuff  as  chief  chemist. 

Dr.  William  Hiemenz,  a  pharmaceutical  chemist  in  I.  G.  Dyes, 
was  sent  to  Rensselaer,  N.  Y.,  in  the  early  20s  as  Farben's  director 
on  the  Winthrop  board,  and  factory  manager  of  the  Winthrop 
Bayer  manufacturing  plant.  The  Treasury  kicked  him  out  of 
Winthrop  in  December  1941. 

Another  pharmaceutical  expert  came  to  the  United  States  from 
Farbenland  in  the  early  30s,  and  wound  up  in  an  important  posi- 
tion in  the  Winthrop  plant.  His  name  is  Wolfgang  Schnellbach 
and  some  of  the  things  he  took  part  in  require  special  mention 
elsewhere  in  the  story.  However,  it  should  be  related  here  that 
something  actually  did  happen  to  Mr.  Schnellbach.  Not  having 
been  naturalized,  and  appearing  to  be  somewhat  objectionable,  he 
was  interned  at  Ellis  Island  where,  at  last  accounts,  he  was  waiting 
for  his  family  to  join  him  through  some  sort  of  special  dispensation. 

Dr.  Bruno  Puetzer  was  another  Farben  chemist  who  came  to 
this  country  and  became  a  Winthrop  chemist.  Winthrop  also  in- 
herited one  of  the  first  World  War  technicians  of  the  Metz  Labora- 
tories in  the  person  of  the  Swedish-born  A.  E.  Sherndal,  who  later 
became  a  Bayer- Winthrop  expert  at  the  Rensselaer,  N.  Y.,  plant. 

Alba  Pharmaceutical,  after  it  was  organized  in  1935,  was  assisted 


TREASON'S   PEACE  81 

in  its  cooperative  relations  with  Farben  by  the  election  of  a  Ger- 
man national,  H.  Vogel,  as  secretary,  treasurer  and  director. 

Dr.  Karl  Hochswender  came  to  the  United  States  and  served 
in  Chemnyco  as  an  expert  on  Farben  patent  licenses  and  the  collec- 
tion of  royalties.  In  1941,  at  a  critical  time  for  Farben,  the  doctor 
was  twice  indicted  as  president  of  Magnesium  Development  Corp., 
and  denied  knowing  his  master's  voice  with  somewhat  unhappy 
results,  when  Attorney-General  Robert  H.  Jackson  impounded 
Farben's  bank  account  in  1941. 

There  are  many  others  who  might  be  added  to  this  dubious 
honor  roll.  Some  are  important  and  would  be  described  except 
for  the  official  hush-hush  policy  behind  which,  unhappily,  so  many 
of  these  imported  Americans  still  remain  hidden.  One  more  sketch 
belongs  here. 

In  December  1941,  shortly  after  Germany  declared  war  on  the 
United  States,  The  New  York  Times  published  a  statement  by 
Ernest  K.  Halbach  in  which  he  denied  that  General  Dyestuff  Corp. 
was  foreign  owned.  The  Times,  a  few  days  earlier  had  referred 
to  an  action  of  the  United  States  Treasury  Department  in  freezing 
the  assets  of  General  Aniline  &  Film  Corp.  and  of  General  Dyestuff 
"due  to  foreign  ownership." 

Mr.  Halbach,  as  president  of  General  Dyestuff,  thereupon  wrote 
The  Times  that  his  company,  "is  a  New  York  corporation;  that  all 
of  its  stock  is  owned  by  American  citizens;  and  that  all  of  its  officers 
and  directors  are  American  citizens."  "The  ownership  and  manage- 
ment of  General  Dyestuff  Corporation  is  exclusively  in  the  hands 
of  American  citizens,"  continued  Mr.  Halbach,  "therefore  there 
cannot  be  any  possible  justification  for  your  statement." 

Mr.  Halbach,  in  his  dissertation  on  American  ownership  was 
adhering  strictly  to  the  Farben  pattern,  and  repeating  the  exact 
words  used  back  in  1917  by  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.,  and  the 
New  York  Badische,  both  of  which  had  employed  Mr.  Halbach, 
and  were  predecessors  of  General  Dyestuff.  The  occasion  in  1917, 
as  in  1941,  was  the  declaration  of  war  between  Germany  and  the 
United  States,  and  the  imminence  of  the  seizure  of  enemy-owned 
property  in  this  country. 

In  1941  these  protestations  were  of  no  avail.  The  Treasury  De- 
partment disregarded  them.  The  Department  of  Justice  indicted 


82  TREASON'S   PEACE 

both  General  Dyestuff  and  Mr.  Halbach  for  conspiracy,  and  six 
months  later  they  both  were  again  indicted  and  the  new  Alien 
Property  Custodian  seized  General  Dyestuff  as  a  German-  or 
Farben-owned  concern. 

Now  going  back  for  a  moment  to  the  1917  incident,  a  newly 
formed  corporation  called  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.,  of  which 
Halbach  was  an  important  employe,  had  just  become  the  osten- 
sible owner  of  the  assets  of  the  New  York  Badische,  the  American 
branch  of  the  largest  of  the  Big  Six,  which  it  was  claimed,  went 
through  voluntary  liquidation.  However,  World  War  I  had  started 
a  few  months  previously,  the  Trading  with  the  Enemy  Act  had 
been  passed,  and  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  was  threatening 
to  seize  both  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.,  and  Badische.  "You  can't  do 
that  to  us,"  protested  Mr.  Halbach's  employers.  "All  the  officers, 
directors  and  stockholders  of  this  company  are  citizens  of  the 
United  States."  That  time  the  American-citizen  stuff  partially 
worked.  The  new  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  concern  escaped  but  the 
custodian  did  seize  about  half  a  million  dollars  which  was  in  a 
New  York  bank. 

The  Custodian's  investigation  uncovered  the  fact  that  various 
records  and  account  books  had  mysteriously  disappeared  and  cer- 
tain entries  in  those  available  appeared  unexplainable.  For  ex- 
ample, in  the  early  years  of  its  existence  all  importations  from  the 
German  house  were  entered  on  its  books  on  a  consignment  basis. 
Then,  the  year  before  the  war  began,  they  appeared  as  purchases; 
yet  during  the  war  the  bulk  of  its  profits,  amounting  to  more  than 
$1,500,000  were  transferred  to  Germany. 

When  New  York  Badische  secured  German  dyes  from  the  two 
submarine  cargoes  in  1916,  they  were  entered  on  its  books  as  pur- 
chases. Later,  when  a  profit  of  $400,000  was  made  on  these  dyes, 
the  book  entries  were  charged  to  a  consignment,  and  the  funds 
sent  to  the  parent  company. 

Finally,  an  agreement  was  turned  up  by  the  Custodian  which 
showed  that  an  option  was  outstanding  by  which  Messrs.  Kuttroff 
and  Pickhardt  were  obligated  to  turn  back  their  shares  in  the 
New  York  Badische  at  par  value  to  the  Big  Six  house  on  its  demand. 
So  it  was  evident  that  this  company,  like  all  the  other  Farben 
fronts,  had  a  string  tied  to  it— a  German  string  to  be  pulled  at 


TREASON'S   PEACE  85 

the  proper  moment  in  Farben's  perpetual  "All-American  Puppet 
Show/' 

In  1919  we  find  the  patriotic  Mr.  Halbach,  in  the  interest  of 
imported  German  dyes,  canvassing  for  signatures  to  a  petition 
which  protested  the  efforts  of  the  American  Government  to  pro- 
tect the  infant  domestic  coal-tar  dye  industry  then  struggling  to 
survive. 

When  Halbach  in  1941  was  proclaiming  the  American  owner- 
ship of  General  Dyestuff,  successor  to  the  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  dye 
interests,  he  was  referring  to  his  own  alleged  majority  control  of 
its  stock.  This  alleged  Halbach  stock  control  dated  back  to  1939 
when  the  company  transferred  to  his  name  shares  formerly  held 
by  that  other  American  patriot,  Herman  Metz.  Metz  became  ma1 
jority  stockholder  in  General  Dyestuff  through  his  holdings  as  an 
organizer^of  the  company,  plus  the  shares  he  acquired  when 
duPont  turned  over  to  him,  as  Farben's  agent,  the  Grasselli  inter- 
est in  General  Dyestuff. 

These  many  transfers  of  stock  may  appear  complex  and  be- 
wildering, but  the  pattern  is  plainly  discernible— the  objective 
always  the  same.  The  truth  is  that  in  1941  Halbach  held  majority 
stock  control  of  General  Dyestuff,  and  with  W.  H.  Duisberg,  held 
title  to  nearly  all  of  the  shares.  However,  an  option  on  all  of  the 
Halbach-Duisberg  stock  was  held  by  Chemnyco,  Inc.  The  latter's 
stock  was  owned  nominally  by  American  citizens,  but  these  were 
also  Farben  agents,  and  Chemnyco  was  incorporated  and  func- 
tioned exclusively  as  a  Farben  agency. 

Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.,  as  a  name,  t  disappeared  from  the 
scene  in  1931  when  its  various  Farben  interests  in  the  United  States 
were  segregated  into  new  companies.  This  name  had  served  its 
purpose  long  and  well,  the  original  members  of  the  firm  were  gone 
and  Farben  was  now  entrenched  in  several  brand-new  American 
subsidiaries.  However,  William  Paul  Pickhardt,  American-born 
son  of  one  of  the  early  partners,  along  with  Halbach,  continued 
to  play  an  important  part  for  Farben.  Mr.  Pickhardt  during 
the  next  ten  years  held  many  offices  in  Farben  subsidiaries,  in- 
cluding chairman  of  the  board  of  Synthetic  Nitrogen  Products, 
and  of  Agfa  Ansco;  president  of  Chemnyco;  vice-president  of  Gen- 
eral Aniline  &  Film;  and  director  of  American  Magnesium;  Gen- 


84  TREASON'S   PEACE 

eral  Dyestuff;  Ozalid  Corp.;  Jasco;  and  Plaskon  Co.  The  latter 
was  a  manufacturer  of  waterproof  glue  and  plastics,  seldom  rec- 
ognized as  a  Farben  subsidiary. 

William  Paul  Pickhardt  was  indicted  on  Sept.  1,  1939,  along 
with  Synthetic  Nitrogen  Products  and  others  in  the  synthetic 
nitrogen-ammonia  conspiracy.  He  died  in  January,  1941,  while 
the  indictment  was  still  pending. 

Now  let  us  go  back  for  another  moment— a  long  way  back— to 
1871  when  Adolph  Kuttroff  and  William  Pickhardt,  two  young 
German  nationals,  organized  a  firm  called  William  Pickhardt  & 
Kuttroff  to  import  coal-tar  dyes  and  chemicals  from  the  Father- 
land. In  1906  this  firm  changed  its  name  to  Continental  Color  and 
Chemical  Co.  Then,  in  1917,  the  good  old  American  names  of 
Kuttroff  and  Pickhardt  again  appeared  on  its  letterheads. 

Ernest  K.  Halbach  entered  the  employ  of  Pickhardt  &  Kuttroff 
in  1899  and  from  that  day  on,  for  more  than  half  a  century,  this 
native-born  American  was  to  shuttle  back  and  forth  in  the  long 
razzle-dazzle  of  changes  of  name  and  concealment  of  ownership 
through  which  first  Badische,  and  then  Farben  as  the  actual  em- 
ployers of  Mr.  Halbach,  attempted  to  hide  their  identity. 

By  1920  Halbach  had  risen  to  be  a  director  of  Kuttroff,  Pick- 
hardt and  was  directly  involved  in  the  firm's  efforts  to  bamboozle 
the  State  Department  into  turning  over  to  it  the  importation  of 
German  dyes.  In  1926,  when  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  transferred  its 
dye  business  to  General  Dyestuff,  Mr.  Halbach  went  along  with 
the  business. 

And  in  1942  Mr.  Halbach,  living  luxuriously  in  ultra-fashionable 
Short  Hills,  New  Jersey,  environment  with  a  summer  home  at 
Nantucket,  was  presumably  unhappy  because  he,  an  American- 
born  citizen  whose  country  was  at  war,  had  two  criminal  indict- 
ments chalked  up  against  him  which  involved  him  with  the  en- 
emy; also  because  the  4,725  shares  of  stock  registered  in  his  name 
or  that  of  his  wife  and  trustees,  which  carried  alleged  ownership 
control  of  General  Dyestuff  Corporation,  were  now  locked  up  in 
the  strongbox  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian. 

So,  Mr.  Halbach  consulted  counsel— and  it  will  appear  that  he 
chose  his  legal  advisers  wisely,  in  that  old  and  well-known  Wall 


TREASON'S   PEACE  85 

Street  law  firm  which  is  still  addressed  as  Sullivan  &  Cromwell 
( although  its  founders  of  those  names  have  long  since  been  gath- 
ered to  their  fathers ) . 

Ornamenting  this  law  firm  is  that  celebrated  attorney,  public 
spirited  citizen,  religious  leader  and  adviser  on  affairs  of  state, 
John  Foster  Dulles. 

It  was  perhaps  a  coincidence  that  Mr.  Halbach  should  have 
selected  as  his  counsel  the  law  firm  of  Mr.  Dulles  during  the  period 
when  the  latter,  in  addition  to  his  many  other  commendable  public 
activities,  was  the  chief  adviser  of  Republican  Governor  and  can- 
didate for  President  Thomas  E.  Dewey;  was  about  to  become 
adviser  to  our  Secretaries  of  State  on  problems  of  war  and  peace; 
and  was  a  member  of  the  consulting  committee  established  by 
the  Alien  Property  Custodian  to  assist  in  formulating  the  basic 
policies  of  that  office  on  the  methods  of  controlling  foreign  prop- 
erty. As  a  sidelight  on  such  activities  it  might  be  appropriate  to 
mention  here  that  Mr.  Dulles  is  also  listed,  as  recently  as  1945, 
as  one  of  the  directors  of  the  International  Nickel  Co.,  of  Canada, 
which  company,  and  several  of  its  officers  also  have  been  among 
the  unfortunate  corporations  and  individuals  like  Mr.  Halbach, 
to  be  accused  of  conspiracy  with  I.  G.  Farben  and  others. 

As  to  the  two  indictments  in  which  Mr.  Halbach  was  so  un- 
happily accused,  one,  that  of  December,  1941,  was  postponed  as 
has  been  mentioned  before;  and  the  other,  of  May,  1942,  after 
a  long  succession  of  legal  technicalities  and  behind-the-scenes 
wire  pulling  came  finally  to  an  issue  in  1946,  when  eight  of  the 
corporate  defendants,  including  General  Dyestuff,  and  General 
Aniline  &  Film,  along  with  seven  of  the  individuals  named,  were 
found  guilty  on  pleas  of  nolo  contendere,  and  fined  from  $2,000 
to  $15,000  each.  Mr.  Halbach,  along  with  twelve  of  the  other  in- 
dividuals indicted,  was  cleared  of  all  culpability  by  having  the 
charges  dismissed.  So  the  Halbach  indictment  score  now  stands 
at  one  down  and  one  to  go. 

Meanwhile  the  new  management  of  General  Dyestuff  appointed 
by  Mr.  Leo  T.  Crowley,  as  Alien  Property  Custodian,  decided  that 
it  would  be  sadly  handicapped  in  its  efforts  to  drive  the  Farben 
dyestuffs— and  the  Gestapo  secret  agents  who  distributed  them— 


86  TREASON'S    PEACE 

out  of  the  Latin  American  countries  unless  they  should  retain 
the  services  of  Mr.  Halbach,  who  according  to  the  indictments 
pending,  had  enjoyed  such  intimate  conspiratorial  relations  with 
those  very  same  agents  of  the  German  Dye  Trust  both  before  and 
after  the  war  started,  his  company  having  been  grabbed  by  Uncle 
Sam  for  trading  with  the  enemy. 

So  Mr.  Halbach  was  re-engaged  as  an  adviser  to  General  Dye- 
stuffs  at  an  annual  salary  reported  to  have  been  $36,000  a  year, 
plus  bonuses  which  increased  his  annual  take  to  some  $82,000, 
quite  a  bit  more  than  the  president  of  the  company  received  and, 
strictly  speaking,  this  cash  all  came  out  of  the  United  States  Treas- 
ury via  the  office  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  and  the  staff 
appointed  by  the  latter  to  run  this  enemy  property. 

Then,  on  March  18,  1944,  in  the  United  States  District  Court 
at  Newark,  New  Jersey,  Elisabeth  S.  Halbach  and  Franklin  H. 
Stafford,  as  Trustees  for  Ernest  K.  Halbach,  followed  the  example 
set  by  Walter  Duisberg  in  1943,  and  filed  suit  against  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian,  demanding  the  return  of  the  4,725  shares  of 
stock  in  General  Dyestuff  which  had  stood  in  Mr.  Halbach's  name. 
( Mrs.  Halbach  was  not  working  for  Uncle  Sam  or  the  Alien  Prop- 
erty Custodian.  Why  shouldn't  she  sue  them  if  she  felt  so  in- 
clined?) 

At  the  same  time  seven  other  stockholders,  allegedly  owners  of 
a  total  of  1,178  more  shares  in  this  Farben  subsidiary,  also  filed 
suits  against  Mr.  Crowley  in  the  New  Jersey  and  New  York  courts. 
All  of  these  gentry  were  American-born  citizens  who,  while  em- 
ployed by  General  Dyestuff,  had  not  only  taken  title  to  certain 
holdings  in  its  stock  by  paying  various  sums  in  cash  for  same,  but 
each  had  also  signed  an  agreement  which,  among  other  things, 
gave  the  company  an  exclusive  option  to  repurchase  these  hold- 
ings. Same  old  stuff  of  the  first  World  War— American  owned,  with 
a  Farben  string  attached. 

In  these  eight  lawsuits,  as  in  the  Duisberg  case,  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian  very  properly  began  to  defend  the  seizure 
of  these  holdings.  In  an  affidavit  filed  in  December,  1944,  by  James 
E.  Markham,  who  had  succeeded  his  friend  Mr.  Crowley  as  Alien 
Property  Custodian,  the  seizure  was  justified  by  affirmations,  in 
rather  blunt  language  that 


'.'W 

TREASON'SPEACE  87 

General  Dyestuff  Corporation  and  the  record  owners  of  the 
stock  were  acting  in  behalf  and  for  the  benefit  of  I.  G.  Farben- 
industrie,  a  national  of  an  enemy  country,  Germany. 

and  that  the  Government  case  would  be  proved 

by  bringing  together  the  complicated  threads  of  a  conspir- 
acy extending  over  many  years  and  involving  persons  in  many 
different  countries. 

( which  was  a  pretty  good  brief  description  of  I.  G.  Farben's  world- 
wide conspiracy  against  peace). 

This  Custodian  affidavit  contains  some  other  good  points  touch- 
ing on  the  activities  of  Mr.  Halbach  and  these  employes  of  Gen- 
eral Dyestuffs  and,  in  plain  language,  called  the  titles  to  the  stock 
fraudulent  and  a  camouflage  to  cjoak  Farben's  actual  ownership. 
For  all  of  such  reasons  the  Custodian  demanded  a  trial  in  open 
court  of  the  factual  issues  involved  in  these  cases. 

The  Halbach  claim  being  by  far  the  largest,  it  was  decided  that 
this  case  should  be  tried  first,  so  that  decision  on  the  others  could 
be  more  readily  adjudicated. 

Among  the  other  claimants  were  one  Rudolph  Lenz  who,  prior 
to  its  seizure,  had  been  a  vice-president  of  General  Dyestuff, 
H.  W.  Martin,  and  A.  T.  Wingender,  also  executives.  All  three 
were  kept  on  the  job  under  Mr.  Crowley.  Lenz  was  indicted  along 
with  Mr.  Halbach,  in  the  May,  1942  criminal  action  but  unlike 
Halbach  his  indictment  was  not  dismissed  when  fifteen  of  the 
defendants  were  fined. 

Mr.  Lenz  was  also  fortunate  in  having  Mr.  John  Foster  Dulles' 
law  firm,  Sullivan  &  Cromwell,  represent  him  against  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian;  as  did  Mr.  Percy  Kuttroff  another  of  the 
claimants,  of  the  old  family  concern  out  of  which  General  Dyestuff 
was  created. 

What  happened  then  may  appear  strange  unless  we  could  get 
behind  the  scenes  and  listen  in  at  the  secret  agreement  secretly 
arrived  at— instead  of  the  public  trial  in  open  court  as  demanded  in 
the  Custodian's  affidavit. 

As  of  February  2,  1945,  the  settlement  out  of  court  was  made 
public,  eight  separate  settlements,  by  which  the  claimants  were 


88  TREASON'S   PEACE 

paid  off  in  cash  on  condition  that  each  should  withdraw  and  forget 
their  claims  for  the  General  Dyestuff  stock,  sums  totaling  some 
$696,554,  out  of  the  United  States  Treasury. 

The  Halbach  share  of  the  booty  was  the  tidy  sum  of  $557,550. 
Attorney  General  Francis  Biddle,  and  the  Custodian,  announced 
through  the  press  that  the  settlement  "cleared  the  way"  for  the 
sale  of  General  Dyestuff  to  some  one  else.  We  may  agree  that  this 
settlement  might  have  cleared  the  way,  but  it  hardly  cleared  the 
air. 

One  characteristic  may  appear  to  stand  out  in  these  sketches— 
the  arrogant  defiance  of  law,  and  the  gentle  treatment  that  has 
been  accorded  the  royal  family  of  Farben  when  these  gentlemen 
have  been  caught  with  the  goods. 


CHAPTER       VI 


^Tarnung"  The  Magic  Hood 
which  renders  the  wearer  invisible 


"AFTER     THE     FIRST 

war  we  came  more  and  more  to  the  decision  to  'tarn'  ( hood 

or  camouflage)  our  foreign  companies in  such  a  way 

that  the  participation  of  I.G.  in  these  firms  was  not  shown. 
In  the  course  of  time  the  system  became  more  and  more  per- 
fect. 

"If  the  shares  or  similar  interests  are  actually  held  by  a  neu- 
tral who  resides  in  a  neutral  country,  enemy  economic  warfare 
measures  are  ineffectual;  even  an  option  in  favor  of  I.G.  will 
remain  unaffected. 

"Protective  measures  to  be  taken  by  I.G.  for  the  eventuality 
of  war  should  not  substantially  interfere  with  the  conduct  of 
business  in  normal  times.  For  a  variety  of  reasons  it  is  of  the 

utmost  importance that  the  officials  heading  the  agent 

firms  which  are  particularly  well  qualified  to  serve  as  cloaks 
should  be  citizens  of  the  countries  where  they  reside. 

89 


go  TREASON'S    PEACE 

"In  practice  .  .  .  .  .a  foreign  patent  holding  company  could 
conduct  its  business  only  by  maintaining  the  closest  possible 
relations  with  I.G.,  with  regard  to  applications,  processing 
and  exploitation  of  patents— it  is  sufficient  to  refer  to  our 
numerous  agreements  providing  for  exchange  of  patents  or 
.  experience. 

"The  adoption  of  these  measures  would  offer  protection 
against  seizure  in  the  event  of  war." 

The  above  excerpts,  taken  from  original  pre-war  records  of 
Farben's  legal  department,  describe  in  vivid  language  the  purpose 
of  Farben's  American  hideouts  and  the  instructions  by  which 
Farben's  American  agents  were  guided. 

Also  included  in  these  pre-war  memoirs  was  anticipation  of  the 
victory  which  at  that  time  Farben  contemplated,  when  disguises 
would  no  longer  be  in  order,  as  follows: 

In  the  case  of  winning  this  war  the  mightful  situation  of 
the  Reich  will  make  it  necessary  to  re-examine  the  system 
of  Tarnung.'  Politically  seen,  it  will  often  be  wished  that  the 
German  character  of  our  foreign  companies  is  openly  shown. 

After  the  war  began  Farben's  legal  solons  continued  their  dis- 
cussions and  reports  on  tarnung.  Some  of  these  also  may  appear 
appropriate  here— as  follows: 

"These  camouflaged  companies proved  very  useful. 

"Only  about  1937  when a  new  conflict  became 

apparent  did  we  take  pains  to  improve  our  camouflage  in 

the  endangered  countries  in  a  way  that  they  should even 

under  wartime  difficulties,  at  least  prevent  immediate  seizure. 

"Camouflage  measures  taken  by  us  have  stood  us  in  good 
stead,  and  in  numerous  cases  have  even  exceeded  our  expecta- 
tions." 

Reference  in  these  reports  to  Farben  American  hideouts  permits 
no  doubt  as  to  the  importance  attributed  to  the  use  of  tarnung s 
magic  in  this  country. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  91 

The  firm  of  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.  was  always  meticulous  in 
the  handling  of  its  commercial  affairs.  It  held  itself  aloof  from  the 
rough  stuff  indulged  in  by  other  Farben  agents  and  conducted 
its  business  dealing  with  the  American  public  with  a  dignity  and 
courtesy  which  was  in  marked  contrast  to  the  loud-mouthed  bull- 
dozing and  slapstick  with  which  Herman  Metz  displayed  his  Far- 
ben wares  in  the  American  marketplace.  But  both,  in  their  respec- 
tive fields,  were  of  similar  value  to  Farben.  They  were  "Ameri- 
cans." 

My  own  contacts  with  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.,  originated  in 
the  early  1920's  through  a  request  for  advice  regarding  the  pro- 
duction of  arsenical  insecticide  products  which  that  company  had 
made  to  the  Crop  Protection  Institute  of  the  National  Research 
Council  in  behalf  of  the  German  Badische.  The  Institute  referred 
the  inquiry  to  me,  and  I  am  happy  to  relate  that  as  a  result  of  my 
advice,  Badische  and  Farben  did  not  enter  the  field.  That  was 
one  of  the  few  branches  of  the  chemical  industries  in  the  United 
States  which  Farben  decided  to  keep  out  of;  possibly  they  con- 
sidered it  wiser  to  save  up  Germany's  arsenic  as  a  reserve  for  mak- 
ing the  deadly  arsine  war  gas. 

It  may  appear  uncertain  whether  the  earlier  creation  of  the 
illusion  of  American  ownership  of  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  was  due 
to  the  threat  of  anti-trust  proceedings  or  was  in  anticipation  of 
the  first  World  War.  On  the  record,  however,  the  concealment  of 
ownership  of  both  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  in  1914,  and  of  General 
Dyestuff  in  1941,  directly  preceded  our  two  wars  with  Germany. 
And  in  both  instances  Yankee  Halbach  was  in  there  pitching  for 
Farben. 

In  1919  Francis  P.  Garvan  denounced  the  conduct  of  Kuttroff, 
Pickhardt  with  the  statement  that: 

"If  they  were  American  citizens  their  conduct  was  such  as 
would  not  entitle  them  to  much  consideration,  because  Mr. 
Kuttroff  endeavored  to  send  as  much  property  as  possible  to 
Europe  after  Bernstorff  had  gotten  his  papers,  and  when  war 
with  Germany  was  certain  he  collected  every  bit  of  cash  pos- 
sible and  resorted  to  every  possible  subterfuge  in  the  manipu- 
lation of  books  etc.,  to  transfer  those  assets  to  our  enemy  a 


9*  TREASON'S   PEACE 

few  days  before  we  actually  went  into  the  war,  and  long  after 
relations  had  been  severed  and  Bernstorff  had  gone  back/' 

When  he  said  this  Mr.  Garvan  might  well  have  been  foreseeing 
some  of  the  same  kind  of  transfers  of  American  funds  which  in 
1941  were  passing  into  the  invisible  hands  of  Farben  from  suc- 
cessors of  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt. 

Nor  did  Mr.  Garvan  hesitate  to  express  his  convictions  about 
the  relations  between  these  native-born  American  citizens  and 
their  German  I.G.  masters.  In  1922,  after  years  of  searching  in- 
vestigation of  the  Badische  and  Hoechst  American  companies,  he 
announced  his  conclusion  that  the  German  owners  had  never 
really  parted  with  control  of  these  branches.  Said  Garvan: 

"The  truth  is  that  neither  Metz  nor  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co. 
—it  is  my  contention— ever  owned  a  dollar's  worth  of  their 

companies  here They  never  have  been  and  never  will 

be  anything  but  clerks  of  the  German  I.G." 

Mr.  Garvan  deeply  resented  the  fact  that  after  he  had  seized 
tfee  Hoechst-Metz  company  as  Alien  Property  Custodian,  Metz 
claimed  that  he  had  already  "bought"  back  the  assets  of  the  com- 
pany in  an  absurd  jack-in-the-box  transaction  by  which  not  one 
cent  of  money  was  passed,  and  in  which  Metz  signed  an  irrevo- 
cable power  of  attorney  transferring  back  to  Hoechst  the  shares 
he  had  pretended  to  purchase.  This  transfer  was  attached  to  the 
stock  certificate,  deposited  in  a  safety  deposit  box  outside  the 
United  States,  and  held  at  the  sole  disposition  of  the  German 
company. 

In  1919,  over  Metz's  violent  protests,  Garvan  seized  the  Hoechst 
New  York  bank  account  and  attached  the  Hoechst  shares  in  the 
name  of  the  United  States  Government  as  enemy  owned.  Then 
started  a  protracted  court  battle  in  which  Metz  exhausted  his 
vocabulary  on  the  witness  stand  and  in  the  courthouse  corridors 
in  expressing  his  opinion  of  Garvan. 

There  followed,  in  1921,  one  of  the  most  notable  triumphs  ever 
scored  by  Metz  in  his  long  career  as  the  I.G.  hatchet  man  in  the 
United  States.  On  June  2nd,  Judge  Julius  M.  Mayer  in  the  Federal 
Court  in  New  York  City,  handed  down  a  verbose  decision  which 


TREASON'S  PEACE  93 

awarded  the  title  of  the  Hoechst  shares  to  Herman  Metz.  Judge 
Mayer  predicated  his  decision  upon  several  rather  naive  pro- 
nouncements: 

"As  a  seizure  by  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  is  likely 
to  carry  the  suggestion  to  those  not  informed  in  respect  of  the 
controversy,  that  the  demandee  ( Metz )  in  some  manner  may 
have  been  improperly  associated  with  the  enemy,  it  is  de- 
sirable at  the  outset  to  state  that  no  such  situation  exists  here 

The  transactions  here  took  place  long  before  our  entry 

into  the  war  and,  indeed,  before  the  European  war  started 
and  had  no  relations  to  either." 

The  court's  decision  conceded  that  some  of  the  correspondence 
between  Metz  and  Hoechst  bearing  on  the  transaction  was  miss- 
ing, and  that  the  testimony  of  Metz  contained  what  the  Judge 
politely  described  as  "inaccuracies."  "However,"  held  the  court, 
"that  Metz  should  deliberately  by  his  testimony  falsify  the  true 
transaction  is  not  to  be  thought  of."  Finally  the  court  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  although  the: 

"Stock  ownership  would  not  affect  the  apportionment  of 
profits  (between  the  Metz  Hoechst  and  the  German  Hoechst) 

this  testimony  of  Haeuser  can  only  be  rejected  upon 

the  theory  that  both  Haeuser  and  Metz  have  willfully  deceived 
the  court  by  false  testimony." 

Judge  Mayer  rejected  the  Garvan  proofs  that  Messrs.  Haeuser 
and  Metz  had  for  years  been  willfully  deceiving  the  American 
people  as  well  as  the  court.  So  Metz  got  back  the  Hoechst  stock 
and  the  Hoechst  New  York  bank  account  of  more  than  $500,000— 
a  sum  which  came  in  very  handy  in  the  development  of  the  dye 
and  pharmaceutical  factories  which,  a  few  years  later,  Metz  was 
to  turn  over  to  Farben's  new  American  fronts. 

Shortly  after  this  decision  was  handed  down,  the  Harding- 
Daugherty  administration  recognized  the  keen  legal  mind  of 
Judge  Mayer  and  elevated  him  to  the  Federal  circuit  court. 

Two  of  the  more  prominent  of  the  Metz  employes  during  this 
period  were  his  brother,  the  late  Gustave  P.  Metz,  and  Alfred  E. 
Sherndal,  both  of  whom  were  educated  in  Germany.  Gustave  was 


94  TREASON'S    PEACE 

also  vice-president  of  Farbwerke  Hoechst  during  the  fight  about 
its  seizure,  and  in  that  official  capacity  served  notice  on  the 
Alien  Property  Custodian  in  1919  that  he  would  be  held  responsi- 
ble for  all  loss  or  damage  for  having  swiped  brother  Herman's 
property.  Later,  both  of  these  men  were  to  have  important  posi- 
tions on  the  staff  of  the  Winthrop  Chemical  Company. 

Winthrop,  it  will  be  recalled,  was  started  so  that  Sterling  could 
have  an  outlet  for  so-called  ethical  medicinals.  Having  progressed 
from  the  status  of  patent-medicine  pitch  artists  by  the  acquisition 
of  the  Bayer  Company,  the  Sterling  management  decided  that  a 
Dr.  Jekyll  was  needed  to  sell  prescription  medicines  to  physicians, 
while  the  Mr.  Hydes  of  Sterling  peddled  the  nostrums. 

One  fact  stands  out  in  the  history  of  Bayer,  from  the  time  it 
first  became  prominent  as  the  Farben  Fabriken  of  Elberfeld,  up 
to  the  recent  war:  its  pattern  of  hidden  control,  unlawful  activities 
and  subservience  to  Farben  has  varied  only  in  the  type  of  treachery 
employed  and  the  identity  of -the  individuals  involved.  On  the 
record,  if  any  one  of  the  Farben  names  should  be  selected  to  head 
the  roll  of  dishonor,  that  name  is  Bayer. 

The  name  Bayer  Company  was  first  used  in  the  United  States  in 
1906;  the  plant  of  the  Hudson  River  Aniline  Works  at  Albany  was 
acquired,  and  the  manufacture  of  aspirin  and  a  limited  number 
of  dyes  was  started.  It  was  recognized  as  the  American  branch  of 
the  German  company,  but  after  the  war  started  in  1914  the  entire 
stock  of  the  American  company  stood  in  the  name  of  H.  E.  See- 
bohm,  one  of  its  German-born  officers.  Seebohm  held  this  stock 
as  trustee  for  fhree  of  the  major  stockholders  of  the  German  com- 
pany, Dr.  Karl  Duisberg,  Rudolph  Mann  and  Christian  Hess. 

Thereafter  a  subsidiary  was  set  up  called  Synthetic  Patents  Co., 
the  stock  of  which  was  also  trusteed  for  Duisberg,  Mann  and  Hess. 
An  elaborate  bookkeeping  system  was  devised  by  which  almost 
all  of  the  profits  of  the  parent  company  were  siphoned  off  to  Syn- 
thetic Patents  on  the  pretext  of  patent  royalties  and  rentals.  Sev- 
enty-five percent  of 'the  Synthetic  profits  then  went  to  Duisberg 
and  his  colleagues  for  the  pay-off  men  of  German  espionage  and 
sabotage  in  the  United  States. 

After  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  Bayer  resorted  to  the 
old  shell  game;  they  organized  a  new  company,  the  Williams  & 


TREASON'SPEACE  95 

Crowell  Color  Co.,  and  quietly  slid  the  cash  drawer  under  this 
third  shell. 

The  Alien  Property  Custodian  was  gratified  and  surprised  when 
the  Bayer  executives  stated  frankly,  "We  are  enemy  owned/'  and 
permitted  seizure  without  protest.  It  was  not  until  some  time  after- 
ward that  Mr.  Garvan's  bookkeeping  bloodhounds  uncovered  the 
dodge  by  which  everything  of  value  was  being  transferred  out  of 
Bayer's  custody  to  their  newly  organized  and  nominally  American- 
owned  subsidiary. 

Charles  J.  Hardy,  the  New  York  attorney  who  had  represented 
the  Big  Six  houses  in  the  pre-war  anti-trust  cases,  was  attorney  for 
Bayer  when  it  was  seized,  and  he  was  retained  by  the  Custodian 
to  continue  to  act  in  that  capacity  while  the  property  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  Government.  However,  according  to  Mr.  Garvan,  it 
was  discovered  that  Hardy  was  still  representing  the  German  in- 
terests, and  that  they  were  conspiring  to  establish  an  underlying 
company.  So  Mr.  Garvan  bounced  Mr.  Hardy  and  hired  a  new 
attorney. 

After  months  of  painstaking  investigation,  Mr.  Garvan's  sleuths 
uncovered  the  whole  sorry  Bayer  mess,  and  proved  that  German 
nationals  and  American-born  citizens  had  worked  together  for  a 
long  period  of  years  under  the  directions  of  German  Bayer  and 
the  German  government  to  set  up  and  operate  an  espionage,  sabo- 
tage and  propaganda  machine  in  the  guise  of  an  American  manu- 
facturing plant  producing  dyes  and  pharmaceuticals. 

In  the  final  report  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian,  relative  to 
Bayer,  there  was  summarized  the  utterly  treasonable  character  of 
its  hidden  control  and  secret  activities,  in  part  as  follows: 

"The  Bayer  Co.,  of  New  York,  was  the  largest  and  most 
powerful  German-owned  dye  and  drug  manufacturing  con- 
cern in  America  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  Carl  Duisberg, 
the  chief  of  the  War  Trade  Board  of  Germany,  was  the  owner 
of  one  third  of  the  stock,  and  the  company  was  largely  used 
for  the  distribution  of  German  propaganda  funds  in  America. 
The  higher  officials  of  the  Bayer  Co.  were  nearly  all  unnatur- 
alized  German  citizens,  and  the  entire  capital  stock  was  vol- 
untarily reported  as  enemy  property  within  two  or  three 


96  TREASON'S   PEACE 

months  after  the  passage  of  the  Trading  with  the  Enemy  Act. 
It  became  apparent,  however,  that  this  voluntary  surrender 
was  simply  in  line  with  German  cunning." 

"Examination  of  depreciation  charges,  profit-sharing  pay- 
ments, and  royalties,  resulted  in  uncovering  and  paying  to 
the  United  States  Treasury  over  $1,000,000  income  taxes  run- 
ning back  to  1913  which  had  been  systematically  concealed/' 

Ten  years  later  I  was  publicly  accusing  the  new  owners  of  that 
same  Bayer  Company  of  doing  many  of  the  same  things  their  pred- 
ecessors had  done.  My  reward  was  a  kick  in  the  pants— many 
kicks.  Another  ten  years  passed,  and  the  proofs  that  I  was  right 
about  Bayer  and  all  the  rest  of  Farben's  evil  brood  began  to  come 
out.  I  say  these  proofs  began  to  come  out  because  that  coming  out 
was  stopped  ruthlessly  in  federal  administrative  offices,  in  courts 
of  law  and  in  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  of  the 
United  States,  as  will  be  shown  in  detail  before  this  story  is  con- 
cluded. 

The  Sterling  agreements  have  been  described  in  Chapter  m. 
Messrs.  Weiss,  McClintock,  Rogers  and  the  others  never  had  any 
illusions  about  the  Germans  with  whom  they  were  dealing.  Weiss, 
bumptious  and  arrogant  by  nature,  did  at  times  attempt  to  out- 
brazen  the  I.G.  leaders;  as  when  Duisberg  and  Mann  demanded 
that  Sterling  permit  them  to  buy  openly  into  the  capital  structure 
of  the  Sterling-Bayer  Company. 

During  the  early  negotiations  for  the  I.G.  comeback,  Weiss  fre- 
quently harked  back  to  his  promise  to  the  Alien  Property  Custo- 
dian, and  in  one  letter  stated: 

-  The  advice  of  our  counsel  is  that,  this  sale  having  been 
made  by  the  United  States  Government,  and  this  country  still 
being  technically  at  war  with  Germany,  the  Peace  Treaty  not 
being  signed,  we  would  run  a  grave  risk  of  destroying  the 
business,  and  of  incurring  the  charge  of  bad  faith  in  our 
dealings  with  the  Government,  if  we  entered  into  any  contract 
affecting  the  property  acquired  by  us  at  the  Government  sale 
of  any  part  thereof. 


PEACE  97 

In  later  years,  when  Sterling,  Winthrop  and  Bayer  had  become 
in  effect  an  integral  part  of  the  Farben  Empire,  and  the  1919  pledge 
had  been  violated  repeatedly  both  in  letter  and  spirit,  Weiss  again 
referred  to  his  probity  as  a  reason  why  Farben  should  not  assume 
any  technical  ownership  in  the  Bayer  plant  at  Rensselaer,  N.  Y. 
In  this  instance  Weiss  stated  his  position  in  these  words: 

I  had  always  stressed  to  Dr.  Mann  and  Justizrat  Doermer 
the  undertaking  which  we  had  to  give  to  the  United  States 
Government  at  the  time  of  the  purchase  of  the  Bayer  Com- 
pany, Inc.,  from  the  Alien  Property  Custodian,  that  under 
no  circumstances  would  the  property  purchased  at  that  sale 
be  otherwise  owned,  in  whole  or  in  part,  than  by  interests 
one  hundred  percent  American.  The  grounds  and  the  building 
at  Rensselaer  are  part  of  the  property  purchased  and  are 
therefore  covered  by  the  undertaking  given  by  us. 

So  Sterling  then  put  entries  on  its  books  by  which  Bayer  ap- 
peared to  rent  part  of  the  Bayer  land  and  factory  to  Winthrop— 
which  was  not  one  hundred  percent  American  owned— and  also 
sold  to  Winthrop  machinery  and  equipment  in  the  Bayer  factory. 
This  was  done  in  order  that  Winthrop  might  claim  to  be  a  manu- 
facturer of  the  medicinals  it  was  getting  from  Farben  and  packag- 
ing as  "Made  in  America."  The  manufacturing  consisted  mainly 
in  diluting  or  tableting  imported  Farben  products  and  putting 
them  in  Winthrop  bottles.  The  celebrated  Winthrop  Research  Lab- 
oratories were  in  Leverkusen,  Germany,  where  most  of  its  prod- 
ucts were  made. 

An  early  and  flagrant  instance  of  breach  of  faith  was  the  turning 
over  to  Winthrop  of  patents  and  trademarks  on  so-called  ethical 
medicinals  which  were  involved  in  the  purchase  of  the  Bayer  Co. 
Veronal  and  Luminal  were  two  of  the  better  known  Bayer  trade- 
marks transferred  to  Winthrop  in  violation  of  the  pledge. 

However,  the  I.  G.  people  were  persistent.  During  the  negotia- 
tions one  of  them  wrote:  "I  quite  understand  that  in  its  final  form 
the  agreement  will  have  to  leave  room  to  read  between  the  lines." 
Later,  another  letter  expressed  their  abiding  determination  in  the 
following: 


98  TREASON'SPEACE 

If  you  should  still  hesitate  because  of  Washington,  it  should 
be  taken  into  consideration,  that  for  a  certain  provisional  time, 
say,  for  instance,  five  years,  another  way  could  be  found  to 
get  together  so  that  no  relation  between  our  firm  of  Leverku- 
sen  and  your  firm  of  New  York  would  be  apparent  to  the  out- 
side world We  are  sure  that  if  the  will  exists,  a  way  can 

be  found  to  attain  the  purpose  we  have  in  mind. 

Weiss  and  his  usual  associate  in  the  dickering,  McClintock, 
stepped  back  gradually  from  critical  opposition  to  most  of  the 
proposals  put  forward  by  Dr.  Duisberg  and  Rudolph  Mann.  A 
possible  explanation  of  this  more  compliant  attitude  is  found  in  a 
letter  written  by  Mann  to  Weiss  during  the  1926  negotiations.  This 
letter  contained  what  may  appear  to  have  been  the  tender  of  very 
personal  advantages  to  Weiss.  One  paragraph  read: 

As  a  personal  remark,  we  would  like  to  add  that  the  friend- 
ly relations  between  you  and  ourselves  through  such  a  new 

organization  become  only  still  more  intimate You  can 

be  convinced  that  in  the  long  end  the  new  situation  will  be 
more  advantageous  to  you. 

Whatever  these  personal  advantages  may  have  been  they  were 
evidently  effective,  and  for  many  years  Sterling  worked  hand  in 
glove  with  Farben  in  concealing  Winthrop's  German  ownership. 

And  the  United  States  was  not  the  only  country  with  which 
Sterling  broke  faith.  Pledges  or  understandings  were  made  to  the 
British  and  French  Governments  when  Sterling  purchased  the 
English  Bayer  Co.,  and  the  French  Bayer  trademarks  respectively. 
In  each  instance  it  was  specifically  understood  that  Sterling  was 
buying  these  foreign  property  rights  as  Americans  for  American 
ownership;  instead  Messrs.  Weiss,  Diebold  and  McClintock  were 
acting,  in  effect,  as  agents  of  the  German  I.G.,  to  whom  partial  or 
total  ownership  in  these  properties  eventually  passed. 

Another  instance  of  flagrant  deception  resulted  because  of  a 
requirement  by  the  Chemical  Foundation  that  all  licenses  granted 
by  it  under  former  LG.  patents  should  go  to  companies  owned 
at  least  seventy-five  percent  by  Americans.  The  Metz  company, 
after  one  half  interest  in  it  had  been  "purchased"  for  Winthrop 


-TREASON'S   PEACE  99 

with  Farben  funds,  needed  a  Chemical  Foundation  license.  So 
the  license  was  applied  for,  obtained  and  signed  for  on  the  basis 
of  utterly  false  statements  which  denied  a  fifty  percent  foreign 
interest. 

In  August  1928,  word  came  to  the  leaders  of  Sterling  that  that 
ancient  institution  of  learning,  the  University  of  Cologne,  had  con- 
ferred upon  Weiss  the  degree  of  Doctor  Philosophia  honoris  causa. 

Then,  shortly  after  the  election  of  President  Hoover,  three  of 
the  University's  directors  came  to  the  United  States,  and  at  a  ban- 
quet at  the  Biltmore  Hotel,  made  the  formal  presentation  to  Herr 
Wilhelm  Weiss,  their  beloved  brother  in  intellectual  attainment. 

The  three  directors,  Justizrat  Otto  Doermer,  Dr.  Rudolph  Mann 
and  Dr.  O.  von  Hoeffer  of  Farben,  were,  on  this  auspicious  occa- 
sion, tactfully  announced  as  die  direktoren  of  the  University  of 
Cologne. 

Dr.  Fritz  ter  Meer  was  present,  also  Walter  Duisberg.  Dr.  Wil- 
helm Hiemenz,  Colonel  Metz,  and  Dr.  E.  von  Salis  of  the  original 
Bayer  organization.  Leader  of  the  American  cheering  section  was 
the  great  Republican  potentate,  the  late  Louis  K.  Liggett,  who,  of 
course,  shared  in  the  congratulations  with  Weiss  for  the  recent 
triumph  at  the  polls  of  his  candidate,  that  eminent  student  of  busi- 
ness and  international  affairs,  Herbert  Hoover.  As  Sterling  window 
dressing  came  H.  F.  Behrens,  Stanley  P.  Jadwin,  John  F.  Murray, 
George  C.  Haigh,  C.  A.  Aul  and  Otto  Schenk;  along  with  Earl  I. 
McClintock,  A.  H.  Diebold,  Frank  A.  Blair,  Raymond  Foster  and 
brother  Fred  E.  Weiss.  It  was  a  happy  occasion  for  all  concerned. 

The  Farben  academicians  who  were  present  must  have  laughed 
up  their  sleeves  at  the  notable  success  of  such  inexpensive  soothing 
syrup  for  the  rambunctious  Weiss.  A  piece  of  parchment  with  a 
wax  seal  and  a  bit  of  ribbon  attached  was  a  small  price  to  pay  for 
a  more  docile  obedience  on  the  part  of  the  wild  west  patent-medi- 
cine man  who  had  already  demonstrated  his  abilities  to  bully  the 
American  press  and  seduce  the  learned  professions  of  this  country. 
When  it  included  a  tie-string  to  the  Hoover  Republican,  Louis 
Liggett,  the  doctorate  became  a  rare  bargain  indeed.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  those  slick  Farben  scholars  should  have  made  it  an  earned 
degree,  rather  than  an  honoris  causa.  His  acquaintances  said  at 


ioo  TREASON'S   PEACE 

the  time  that  Wild  Bill  Weiss  had  surely  earned  everything  that 
Farben  gave  him. 

-  So  the  ceremony  of  robing  the  learned  Weiss,  the  delivery  by 
Justizrat  Doermer  of  the  Rektors  address  in  high  Latin;  and  the 
candidate's  humble  response  ( in  drug  store  Latin )  came  to  a  glori- 
ous end  with  buckets  of  champagne  and  the  haunting  strains  of 
"Nach  die  Heimat  Wieder"  stirring  the  potted  palms  and  guests  of 
the  decorous  Biltmore.  A  waiter  who  understood  neither  German 
nor  Latin  decided  that  it  must  be  some  kind  of  Ku  Klux  enrobing 
event.  It  was  just  that. 

According  to  the  announcements  the  degree  was  awarded  Mr. 
Weiss,  in  recognition  of  the  arduous  labors  of  the  recipient  in  pro- 
moting more  cordial  industrial  and  scientific  relations  between 
German  and  American  pharmaceutical  companies.  Thereafter  it 
was  always  "Doctor"  Weiss.  The  pharmacist  who  had  left  his  pre- 
scription counter  to  peddle  patent  medicines  could  now  point 
with  pride  to  a  title  which  gave  rise  to  a  belief  in  the  minds  of 
many  that  he  was  a  member  of  the  profession  of  medicine.  Even 
real  physicians  were  fooled  by  that  title. 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  I  was  appealing  in  vain  to  Senator 
David  I.  Walsh  of  Massachusetts  to  demand  a  Senate  investigation 
of  Drug,  Inc. 

On  Nov.  8, 1928, 1  wrote  Senator  Walsh  a  forecast  which  missed 
the  Hoover  1929  Stock  Market  debacle  by  six  months.  In  part, 
that  letter  read  as  follows: 

Many  of  these  who  gave  the  mandate  on  Tuesday  will  be 
sick  of  their  work  inside  of  eighteen  months,  unless  I  miss 
my  guess. 

I  would  like  very  much  to  be  permitted  to  call  to  your 
personal  attention  a  situation  which  I  am  convinced  warrants 
your  official  scrutiny,  and  which  later,  after  investigation, 
you  may  be  inclined  to  bring  to  the  attention  of  those  of  your 
colleagues  in  the  Senate  who  appreciate  the  real  significance 
of  what  happened  on  Tuesday. 

A  few  days  later  I  talked, to  Senator  Walsh  at  some  length  about 
the  situation  as  I  saw  it  and  received  his  assurances  of  great  in- 
terest. On  Nov.  19,  1928  I  wrote  him  the  following: 


TREASON'S   PEACE  101 

Dear  Senator  Walsh: 

To  further  illustrate  the  point  I  made,  when  I  saw  you  last 
week,  about  the  power  behind  the  National  Republican  Com- 
mitteeman  from  Massachusetts,  I  enclose  herewith  a  collec- 
tion of  advertisements  clipped  from  a  limited  number  of 
daily  papers  purchased  at  random  in  different  parts  of  the 
United  States. 

I  also  enclose  a  list  of  the  companies  which  are  alleged  to 
be  now  all  under  one  control,  and  which  include  these  na- 
tional advertisers  and  many  others. 

If  you  think  it  would  be  helpful  or  informative  to  you  I 
will  undertake  to  have  a  file  prepared  which  will  include: 

1.  The  advertisements  under  one  control  appearing  on  the 
same  day  in  at  least  one  daily  paper  in  every  state  in  the 
Union. 

2.  The  advertisements  under  one  control  appearing  on  the 
same  day  or  week  in  every  paper  published  in  one  or  more 
states.  East  or  West,  which  you  may  designate. 

3.  The  advertisements  under  one  control  appearing  in  the 
same  week  or  month  in  the  weekly  or  monthly  journals  of 
the  U.S.,  popular  and  professional. 

I  do  believe  that  if  this  exhibit  were  made  available  to  you 
you  would  have  a  picture  of  the  background  or  twilight  zone 
of  the  Republican  Party  as  now  constituted  that  would  make 
the  Trade  Commission  investigation  of  the  Power  Trust  look 
like  small  potatoes  indeed. 

Hoping  this  may  interest  you  and  thanking  you  indeed  for 
the  courtesy  you  showed  me,  I  remain 
Respectfully  yours, 

Howard  W.  Ambruster 

Enclosed  with  this  letter  was  a  list  of  thirty  odd  American  drug 
and  patent-medicine  companies  and  national  advertisers  which, 
according  to  published  reports  and  trade  rumors,  had  been 
brought  into  direct  or  indirect  affiliation  with  the  German  I.  G. 
Far  ben  as  part  of  the  German- American  relations  promoted  by 
"Doctor"  Weiss  and  the  Liggett  Republican  machine. 

That  was  the  end  of  the  interest  of  Senator  Walsh  in  this  sub- 


102  TREASON'S    PEACE 

ject,  as  regards  any  expression  to  me,  or  to  the  public,  so  far  as  I 
have  heard. 

It  was  never  a  secret  that  Bayer's  Dr.  Karl  Duisberg,  as  former 
chief  of  the  German  War  Trade  Board,  and  Cassella's  Dr.  Karl 
Weinberg,  as  first  president  of  the  I.G.  Dyes,  were  among  the 
strongest  early  supporters  of  the  Weimar  Republic.  As  cabinet 
ministers,  Reichstag  members  and  Councillors,  a  succession  of 
dye  trust  leaders  served  and  directed  the  Reich;  and  through 
ownership  of  leading  German  newspapers,  helped  to  make  and 
break  its  ministries. 

It  was  also  a  matter  of  official  record  in  the  United  States  that, 
in  1926,  when  I.G.  Farben  was  put  together,  under  Dr.  Duisberg 
as  its  first  chairman,  to  become  the  largest  industrial  combination 
in  Germany,  it  promptly  tied  in  to  an  indissoluble  union  with  the 
Hugo  Stinnes  and  Fritz  Thyssen  steel  interests  which,  as  the 
Vereinigte  Stahlwerke,  had  become  the  second  largest  cartel  in 
Germany. 

United  through  their  jointly  owned  coal  mining  combine,  the 
Rheinische  Stahlwerke,  and  through  interlocking  directorates  and 
mutual  stock  ownership,  Farben  and  the  Thyssen  Steel  trust  from 
then  on  were  the  dominant  force  behind  the  scenes,  of  a  succession 
of  German  governments  which  finally  descended  to  the  gutters 
of  Munich  for  Hitler's  Nazis. 

And  it  was  Dr.  Duisberg,  for  the  industrialists,  who  joined  with 
the  Junkers  or  Reichs-Landbund  (landed  agricultural  gentry)  in 
1927,  to  make  the  gift  of  the  Neudeck  Castle  and  huge  estate  to 
the  senile  Hindenburg,  thus  securing  a  stranglehold  on  the  aged 
soldier  and  inducing  scandals  which,  when  the  time  came,  served 
as  a  pretext  for  the  downfall  of  the  republic  and  the  elevation  of 
a  Hitler,  also  financed,  armed,  and  implemented  for  conquest,  by 
the  combined  Farben-Thyssen  interests. 

While  the  elder  Duisberg  was  thus  occupied  with  the  Father- 
land's puppet  show,  his  son  Walter,  as  an  American  citizen  by 
choice,  was  becoming  a  chief  connecting  link  with  substantially 
all  of  Farben's  false  fronts  in  the  United  States  and  Latin  America. 
Weiss,  McClintock,  and  other  Sterling  leaders  were  continually 
in  Germany  and  they  were  advised  from  the  inside  how  politi- 
cal and  governmental  affairs  were  developing.  In  the  early  30s 


TREASON'S    PEACE  103 

Farben's  leaders  began  bringing  the  Nazi  government  into  the 
picture  as  a  reason,  or  pretext,  for  the  restrictions  and  conditions 
which  they  insisted  upon  in  their  dealings  with  Sterling.  Time  and 
again  Sterling  yielded  to  Farben  demands  that  were  predicated 
on  an  alleged  government  requirement.  However  the  Sterling  peo- 
ple were  told  that  the  Hitler  Reich  was  right  down  Sterling's  alley 
for  sound  money  and  safe  international  trade. 

Rudolph  Mann  communicated  the  complacent  viewpoint  of 
Farben  towards  the  Nazi  government  in  a  letter  to  his  good  friend 
Doctor  Weiss  in  1933: 

With  regard  to  Germany  we  undoubtedly  are in 

a  clearly  noticeable  change  for  the  better,  as  the  present  Na- 
tional government  has  within  their  rows  prominent,  moderate 
elements  so  that  all  of  us  confidently  believe  that— irrespec- 
tive of  the  maintenance  of  the  strong,  psychologically  valu- 
able, national  feeling— they  will  desist  from  making  commer- 
cial experiments. 

I  lay  special  stress  on  telling  you  and  all  my  friends  in  Amer- 
ica that  the  ghastly  fictions  on  the  activity  of  the  National 
Socialists,  which  have  appeared  in  some  American  papers,  do 
not  correspond  to  real  facts  whatsoever.  We  actually  have  be- 
hind us  a  revolution  which  will  entail  a  complete  remodeling 
of  our  spiritual  and  commercial  life  in  the  positive  direction. 
That  such  a  revolution  will  not  go  by  without  some  single 
cases  which  have  been  dealt  with  in  a  somewhat  unfortunate 
way,  is  not  worth  the  while  being  mentioned.  In  German  this 
is  called:  Where  one  planes,  there  will  fall  shavings' 

Today's  Germany  is  the  safest  country  you  can  find  in  Eu- 
rope, free  from  Communism,  strongly  conducted,  with  their 
currency  in  good  order,  and  with  men  who  not  only  have  the 
desire  but  also  the  force  and  capability  of  changing  the  im- 
portant commercial  problems  for  the  better  in  the  interest 
of  Germany  and  of  international  trade. 

Mann  was  making  Farben's  support  of  Hitler  attractive  in  the 
kind  of  language  which  Weiss  and  his  pals  could  comprehend. 

Some  writers  who  have  discussed  this  matter  appear  to  believe 
that  Farben  was  helpless  to  control  the  actions  of  Hitler's  officials. 


104  TREASON'S   PEACE 

But  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  the  Nazis  were  financed  by 
Farben,  that  Farben  leaders  occupied  high  places  in  the  Nazi  gov- 
ernment from  its  beginning,  and  that  Hitler's  armies  would  have 
been  helpless  without  the  years  of  preparation  and  continued  sup- 
port of  Farben.  History  will  tell  which  end  of  the  dog  was  Farben. 

However  in  considering  the  subservience  of  Sterling's  leaders  to 
the  restrictions  and  continued  deceptions  insisted  upon  by  Farben, 
it  makes  no  difference  whether  the  latter  was  in  fact  compelled 
to  so  instruct  Sterling  or  whether  Farben  itself  was  really  responsi- 
ble for  the  alleged  official  instructions  which  it  passed  out  on 
alleged  compulsion.  Either  way  the  result  was  that  Sterling,  and 
all  of  the  others  in  the  United  States  who  yielded  to  any  such  in- 
structions and  deceptions  were  in  plain  fact  acting  as  agents  for 
the  Farben-Hitler  government,  and  helped  conduct  its  economic 
industrial  warfare  and  subversive  activities. 

The  "government"  instructions  insisted  upon  by  Farben  and 
with  which  Sterling  complied  covered  every  important  aspect  of 
the  relationship  between  them.  Farben  compelled  Sterling  to  pay 
large  sums  of  money  over  and  above  the  contract  provisions  on 
the  plea  that  these  funds  were  required  by  order  of  the  Hitler 
government;  Sterling  was  denied  technical  information  relative  to 
patents  and  processes  to  which,  under  the  contracts  Sterling  was 
entitled,  on  the  plea  that  the  Nazi  officials  would  not  permit  that 
data  to  leave  Germany;  Sterling  was  required  to  conceal  various 
phases  of  its  relationship  with  Farben  on  the  plea  that  the  gov- 
ernment might  not  approve  of  them;  and  finally,  Sterling's  officials 
were  compelled,  or  instructed,  to  assist  in  the  Nazi  underground 
work  in  the  American  Hemisphere. 

What  all  this  amounted  to  was  that  Farben  was  conveying  to 
the  Sterling  leaders  orders  from  the  Nazi  government,  and  Sterl- 
ing's officials  obeyed  them.  Their  absolute  loyalty  was  to  Farben 
and  to  Farben's  government,  to  the  complete  exclusion  of  all  other 
considerations. 

In  1934  after  Farben's  interest  in  Winthrcp  had  been  transferred 
to  the  American  I.G.  it  was  gently  intimated  to  Sterling  that  it 
might  not  look  right  if  the  German  government  discovered  all 
that  Farben  was  doing  for  Winthrop  without  getting  paid  for  it. 
(American  I.G.  was  meanwhile  getting  the  dividends  on  fifty 


TREASON'S   PEACE  105 

per  cent  of  the  Winthrop  stock  but  the  German  government,  as 
well  as  that  of  the  United  States,  was  not  supposed  to  know  that 
Farben  owned  American  I.G.)  Therefore,  suggested  Farben,  a 
"service  fee  of  $50,000  a  year"  over  and  above  all  existing  contract 
arrangements,  should  be  forthcoming.  So  Sterling,  or  Winthrop, 
came  across  with  the  extra  $50,000  a  year. 

In  1938  another  squeeze  play  was  worked,  this  time  it  was  actu- 
ally claimed  that  the  German  government  had  just  discovered 
Farben's  agreement  with  Winthrop  and  was  upset  because  Farben 
apparently  was  not  getting  anything  out  of  Winthrop  on  the 
Winthrop-Sterling  contract.  A  hurried  call  was  sent  out  for  a  con- 
ference at  Basle,  Switzerland.  Several  of  the  highest  Farben  lead- 
ers, headed  by  Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz,  attended,  and  Earl  I.  Mc- 
Clintock  was  sent  to  represent  Sterling  and  Winthrop.  Walter 
Duisberg,  D.  A.  Schmitz  and  Hugh  Williamson  were  present, 
presumably  to  represent  the  interest  of  American  I.G. 

McClintock,  according  to  his  account  of  the  meeting,  was  taken 
for  a  ride  around  the  city  of  Basle  while  the  delegates  conferred. 
Then  he  was  led  into  the  meeting  and  taken  for  another,  and  dif- 
ferent, ride.  They  told  him  that  the  German  government  had  de- 
creed that  somebody,  Sterling  or  Winthrop,  would  have  to  come 
across  again  with  another  good,  fat  annual  sum.  It  was  all  very 
pleasant  and  just  too  bad  that  the  Nazis  were  so  nosey  but  what 
could  poor  Farben  do  but  to  tell  Sterling  to  tell  Winthrop  to  pay 
up— or  else?  So  Winthrop  began  paying  a  new  "service  fee"  of 
$100,000  a  year.  As  a  pre-war  gangster's  squeeze  play  it  was  perfect. 

However,  the  Sterling  leaders  knew  they  were  trapped  long 
before  this;  if  they  refused  to  play  ball  Farben  could  cut  off  their 
supplies  of  Winthrop's  "American  made"  products.  The  patents 
under  which  these  products  were  sold  in  the  United  States  ex- 
clusively by  Winthrop  were  of  little  use  to  Sterling  except  to  pro- 
tect the  monopoly,  because  Farben  had  not  told  Winthrop  how  to 
make  them  and  accordingly,  Winthrop  did  not  know  how  to  do  so. 

Weiss  and  his  colleagues  also  had  ample  warning  that  war  was 
coming,  and  then  they  began  to  squirm  in  earnest.  When  one  of 
the  Alba  contracts  was  being  entered  into  between  Sterling  and 
Farben  in  1937,  Nazi  government  restrictions  were  the  reason 
given  for  refusal  to  assign  Farben  United  States  patents  to  Alba 


io6  TREASON'S    PEACE 

unless  a  re-transfer  clause  was  included.  At  this  time  the  possi- 
bility of  war  between  the  United  States  and  Germany  was  defi- 
nitely indicated  in  correspondence  between  Alba  and  Sterling  of- 
ficials, both  of  whom,  it  appears,  were  former  Farben  employes. 
In  a  letter  dated  July  29,  1937  which  passed  between  these  two 
American  companies  about  the  Farben  Alba  patents  it  was  stated: 

It  is  to  be  considered,  however,  that  the  patents,  if  as- 
signed to  an  American  firm,  cannot  be  seized,  say  in  the  case 
of  international  complications. 

The  only  kind  of  international  complications  which  could  pos- 
sibly result  in  seizure  of  Farben's  United  States  patents  was  war 
between  Germany  and  the  United  States.  Despite  the  warning, 
Sterling  officials  went  right  along  expanding  and  even  tried  to  get 
Farben  to  join  them  in  further  relations.  The  latter  replied  that 
they  could  not  spare  the  funds  just  then. 

Some  futile  efforts  were  made  to  get  data  from  Farben  in  order 
that  products  which  were  being  imported  could  be  made  at  the 
Rensselaer  plant,  "in  case  manufacture  should  become  necessary." 
Atabrine,  the  antimalaria  substitute  for  quinine,  was  one  of  these 
products.  Winthrop  had  never  made  Atabrine  and  did  not  know 
how  to  make  it  when  the  threat  of  losing  our  supply  of  quinine 
from  Dutch  East  Indies  gradually  began  to  dawn  upon  our  super- 
statesmen  at  Washington. 

The  Farben  pincers  through  Sterling  on  Atabrine  worked  in 
conjunction  with  that  applied  by  the  Japs  in  the  Dutch  East  Indies 
on  quinine;  just  as  the  Farben  pincers  through  Standard  Oil,  on 
synthetic  rubber  worked  in  conjunction  with  the  Japs  on  natural 
rubber.  There  is  evidence  also  that  Farben  intended  to  work  its 
pincers  on  synthetic  nitrogen  in  conjunction  with  a  friendly  Chile 
staying  with  the  Axis  and  cutting  off  our  supply  of  natural  nitrates. 

However,  that  Atabrine  story  belongs  in  another  chapter,  as 
do  the  details  of  deception  and  downright  sabotage  that  involved 
Sterling's  agents  in  South  America. 


CHAPTER       VII 


False  Fronts  Become  Bold 


ON     APRIL     20,     1929, 

Dr.  Carl  Bosch  and  a  coterie  of  his  Farben  associates  waved 
triumphant  farewells  to  the  Statue  of  Liberty  and  marched  into 
the  bar  of  the  Hamburg-American  liner  New  York,  to  celebrate 
the  success  of  their  mission  to  America. 

The  Germans  were  returning  to  the  Fatherland  with  all  that 
they  could  have  hoped  for.  Their  understandings  with  our  myopic 
industrialists  had  been  most  satisfactory,  their  arrangements  with 
our  avaricious  financiers  most  profitable.  And  less  than  a  week 
after  their  departure  the  American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.  was 
launched  suddenly  and  with  a  great  blare  of  Wall  Street  pub- 
licity. According  to  reports  on  the  Street  that  afternoon,  its  entire 
issue  of  $30,000,000  of  5%  percent  convertible  debentures  was 
oversubscribed  in  an  hour. 

The  formation  of  American  I.G.  had  been  a  closely  guarded 
secret,  but  after  its  announcement  on  April  26th  no  attempt  was 
made  to  conceal  Farben's  part  in  the  achievement.  Both  the  pror 
spectus  and  the  half -page  advertisements  announcing  the  under- 
writing contained  a  letter  addressed  to  the  National  City  Bank 
and  signed  by  Geheimrat  Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz  and  Dr.  Wilfrid 

107 


io8  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Greif,  as  managing  directors  of  Farben,  which  recited  the  huge 
size  of  Farben  and  stated  that: 

As  a  result  of  the  development  of  its  worldwide  activities, 
I.G.  Dyes  ( Farben )  has  found  it  desirable  to  cause  a  corpora- 
tion to  be  organized  in  the  United  States,  under  the  name  of 

American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp with  broad  corporate 

powers  to  foster  and  finance  the  development  of  chemical 
and  allied  industries  in  the  United  States  and  elsewhere. 

The  prospectus  then  went  on  to  state  that  all  of  the  common 
stock  to  be  presently  outstanding  would  be  issued  against  cash, 
or  to  acquire  stocks  of  Agfa  Ansco  Corp.,  and  General  Aniline 
Works.  Both  of  these  companies  were  known  to  be  controlled  by 
Farben.  The  prospectus  also  announced  that  the  principal,  interest 
and  premium  upon  redemption  of  the  Bl/2%  debentures  were  un- 
conditionally guaranteed  by  I.G.  Farben  and  were  payable  at  the 
National  City  Bank  of  New  York  in  gold,  with  approximately 
$450,000,000  in  Farben  assets  back  of  the  guarantee. 

It  was  thus  evident  that  the  American  I.G.  was  to  be  a  Farben 
holding  company  for  its  manufacturing  subsidiaries  in  the  United 
States.  The  Farben  guarantee  of  the  interest  on  the  debentures, 
plus  the  big  names  of  the  financial  houses  which  underwrote  the 
issue,  and  the  big  names  of  the  American  industrial  and  financial 
leaders  on  the  board  of  the  new  company  were  sufficient  incentive 
to  cause  unthinking  American  investors  to  fall  over  themselves 
in  the  rush  to  get  in  on  a  good  thing. 

It  should  have  been  apparent  by  the  most  casual  reading  of  the 
prospectus  that  control  of  American  I.G.  would  remain  not  with 
the  owners  of  the  debentures  but  with  the  Farben  promoters.  Ap- 
proximately ten  percent  of  the  voting  stock  was  all  that  the 
American  investors  could  possibly  secure. 

Just  before  Farben  organized  this  new  company  and  thereby 
financed  its  American  industrial  pincers  with  thirty  million  good 
American  dollars  on  a  prospectus  signed  by  its  Geheimrat  Schmitz, 
that  astute  gentleman  had  also  organized  another  dummy  com- 
pany in  Switzerland  with  the  imposing  name  of  Internationale 
Gesellschaft  fur  Chemische  Unternehmungen  A.  G.  of  Switzerland. 
Known  as  the  I.G.  Chemie,  this  Swiss  concern  was  a  holding 


TREASON'S    PEACE  109 

company  for  Farben's  properties  in  foreign  countries,  and  a  part 
of  its  stock  was  offered  to  Farben's  stockholders  with  Farben's 
guarantee  of  payment  of  dividends. 

When  American  I.G.  was  organized,  I.G.  Chemie  did  not 
appear  as  the  recorded  holder  of  majority  control  of  its  voting 
stock.  But  by  1940,  after  the  war  was  started,  this  "neutral"  Swiss 
concern,  with  one  of  its  Swiss  subsidiaries,  held  title  to  over  85 
percent  of  the  outstanding  shares  of  General  Aniline  &  Film, 
successor  of  American  I.G.  At  one  time  in  the  history  of  these 
two  Farben  fronts,  the  Swiss  company  was  the  recorded  holder 
of  something  over  10  percent  of  the  stock  of  the  American  com- 
pany, while  the  latter  was  also  the  owner  of  some  9  percent  of 
the  outstanding  stock  of  the  Swiss  company.  This  exhibition  of 
two  Farben  snakes  swallowing  each  other  by  the  tail  undoubtedly 
afforded  much  amusement  at  the  home  office. 

However,  back  in  April  1929,  I.G.  Chemie  was  a  dark  secret. 
Farben's  ballyhoo  centered  around  the  names  of  the  American 
financiers  and  industrialists  who  participated  in  the  underwriting 
of  American  I.G.,  and  much  was  made  of  the  fact  that  the  bank- 
ing syndicate  that  floated  the  debentures  was  headed  by  National 
City  and  included  such  houses  as  International  Manhattan  Co., 
Lee  Higginson  &  Co.,  Harris  Forbes  &  Co.,  Brown  Bros.  &  Co., 
and  the  Continental  Illinois  Co. 

Still  greater  acclaim  was  accorded  the  prominent  Americans 
whose  names  appeared  on  the  board  of  directors  of  this  new  symbol 
of  Germany's  friendship  for  the  United  States.  Listed  in  the  pro- 
spectus and  in  the  newspaper  advertising  were  Walter  C.  Teagle, 
Charles  E.  Mitchell,  Edsel  B.  Ford,  Paul  M.  Warburg,  William  E. 
Weiss,  Adolph  Kuttroff,  and  Herman  A.  Metz. 

The  three  other  directors  were  Carl  Bosch,  listed  under  the  im- 
posing title  of  "Professor  Doctor,"  Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz;  and  Dr. 
Wilfrid  Greif . 

Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz,  president  of  the  unheralded  I.G.  Chemie, 
was  also  the  first  president  of  the  widely  publicized  American  I.G., 
and  soon  after  its  successful  financing  the  campaign  to  conceal  the 
ownership  of  American  I.G.  began  in  earnest.  In  October  1929  ( as 
already  related  in  Chapter  n)  Herman  Metz  started  the  ball  roll- 
ing by  his  public  statement  that  although  Farben  was  a  stock- 


no  TREASON'S    PEACE 

holder  in  American  I.G.,  the  latter  should  not  be  referred  to  as 
the  American  branch  of  the  German  I.G.,  because  that  was  just 
not  so.  Some  three  months  later,  while  testifying  before  the  Senate 
Lobby  Committee,  Metz  again  denied  the  Farben  ownership: 

The  Germans  haven't  got  a  dollar's  worth  of  stock  in  the 
American  I.G.,  of  record;  nor  the  Swiss,  either. 

Finally  Metz  gave  the  whole  thing  away  when  Senator  Robin- 
son stated: 

Now,  it  is  pretty  clear  that  the  American  I.G.  was  organ- 
ized by  the  German  I.G.,  and  that  they  both  are  officered  by 
the  same  people,  and  therefore  are  practically  the  same  con- 
cern. 

Mr.  Metz  replied: 

Well,  that  can  be  so  construed,  but  the  reason  for  it  was 
to  take  over  what  the  Germans  had  or  were  trying  to  do  in 
this  country,  and  get  the  industry  established,  which  I  always 
preached  to  them,  to  come  over  here  and  manufacture  over 
here. 

The  Geheimrat  Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz,  along  with  Prof.  Dr. 
Carl  Bosch  and  the  other  Farben  executives,  did  everything  in  his 
power  to  hide  Farben's  control  of  the  new  holding  company  in  the 
United  States.  The  Geheimrat  even  tried  to  pull  the  wool  over  the 
eyes  of  the  two  duPont  representatives  who  visited  him  in  Berlin 
in  July,  1933,  to  discuss  the  possibility  of  exchanging  some  duPont 
investments  in  Farben  for  shares  in  either  I.G.  Chemie  or  in  the 
American  I.G.  The  growth  of  nationalism,  the  Wilmington  execu- 
tives naively  explained,  made  it  advisable  for  their  company  to 
get  rid  of  its  interests  in  Farben. 

Dr.  Schmitz  opined  that  such  a  horse  trade  was  impossible  and 
solemnly  stated  that  I.G.  Chemie  was  strictly  a  Swiss  company, 
and  that  Farben  owned  not  a  single  share. 

The  duPont  officials  were  not  impressed  with  the  truthfulness 
of  Dr.  Schmitz's  statements  and  reported  to  the  home  office  that 
they  presumed  Farben  had  a  dummy  Swiss  director  in  I.G.  Chemie. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  111 

They  also  reported  that  in  London  an  official  of  Imperial  Chemical 
Industries  told  them  definitely  that  the  Geheimrat  had  lied  to  them. 

In  1934,  Mr.  Teagle  decided  that  he  had  better  resign  as  director 
of  American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.,  but,  instead  of  exercising  his 
own  discretion  and  resigning,  he  cabled  his  subordinate,  Frank 
Howard,  who  was  in  Paris,  to  find  out  whether  he  should  take  up 
the  matter  with  Dr.  Bosch,  or  whether  Howard  would  ask  Mr. 
Schmitz  about  it. 

Howard  cabled  back  on  November  29th,  that  Teagle  take  a 
firm  stand  with  Dr.  Bosch,  and  stated  that  the  resignation  was 

certainly  wise  under  present  conditions  since  it  will 

tend  minimize  chauvinistic  comments  in  both  countries  should 
there  be  any  public  interest  aroused  in  the  relations  of  the  two 
companies. 

However,  Mr.  Teagle  did  not  resign  as  director  of  American  I.  G. 
Both  Bosch  and  Schmitz  refused  their  permission,  despite  a  rather 
pathetic  letter  dated  June  6, 1935,  in  which  Mr.  Teagle  begged  Dr. 
Schmitz  "to  permit  Mr.  Clark  (a  Standard  vice-president)  to  re- 
place me  on  the  board." 

The  Hitler  regime  in  Germany  had  aroused  some  official  inter- 
est at  Washington  in  American  companies  with  German  ties,  and, 
in  1938,  the  Securities  and  Exchange  Commission  decided  to  go 
through  the  motions  of  investigating  the  ownership  of  American 
I.G. 

In  its  preliminary  exploration  of  the  records,  the  S.E.C.  dis- 
covered that  although  Farben  was  never  to  be  a  record  shareholder, 
a  resolution  was  adopted  at  the  first  board  meeting  of  this  "Ameri- 
can" company,  before  the  public  had  bought  its  stock,  by  which 
the  officers  were  authorized  to  loan  any  part  of  its  funds  to  either 
Farben  or  to  I.G.  Chemie. 

At  that  same  meeting,  the  sum  of  $10,000,000— ostensibly  trans- 
ferred to  the  United  States  by  Edward  Greutert  &  Cie.,  Farben's 
Swiss  bankers,  for  the  purchase  of  voting  shares  in  the  new  com- 
pany, was  adroitly  switched  back  to  Farben  as  a  loan  from  the 
new  American  I.G.  That  ten-million-dollar  silver  spoon  from 
Grandpa  Farben  never  entered  the  new  infant's  mouth— it  got 
only  a  book  entry  on  its  birth  certificate. 


na  TREASON'S   PEACE 

This  ingenious  method  of  tapping  Wall  Street  was  worked 
overtime  and,  within  a  few  weeks  after  the  public  had  planked 
down  its  cash,  nearly  $20,000,000  of  American  I.G/s  capital  funds 
had  been  transferred,  by  vote  of  its  directors,  to  Switzerland  or 
Germany  as  loans  to  Farben. 

The  S.E.C.  accountants  also  uncovered  data  which  established 
nominal  stock  control  of  American  I.G.  by  Swiss  I.G.  Chemie 
from  the  date  of  organization.  This  condition  had  never  changed 
and,  at  the  time  of  the  investigation,  I.G.  Chemie  held  nominal 
control  of  more  than  85  percent  of  the  shares  of  American  I.G. 

With  these  facts  established,  Mr.  Teagle  was  called  to  the  wit- 
ness stand  and  sworn  to  tell  the  truth,  the  whole  truth  and  nothing 
but  the  truth.  Unhappily,  however,  he  did  not  know  who  owned 
control  of  American  I.G.— the  company  of  which  he  was  a  director. 
More,  he  had  never  known,  from  the  day  the  company  was  organ- 
ized. He  did  not  know  who  owned  the  little  block  of  500,000  shares 
of  the  company  stock  that  had  been  issued  in  his  name— stock 
worth  at  least  half  a  million  dollars.  He  did  not  know  how 
many  shares  I.G.  Chemie  owned,  or  who  owned  I.G.  Chemie. 

It  was  just  too  bad,  but  Mr.  Teagle  really  could  not  tell  to 
the  S.E.C.  things  about  the  company  which  no  one  had  ever 
told  him. 

Mr.  David  Schenker,  chief  attorney  for  the  S.E.C.,  was  ex- 
quisitely polite  in  his  questioning.  After  some  discussion  of  the 
snake-swallowing  act  by  which  American  I.G.  and  Swiss  I.G. 
Chemie  purchased  each  other's  shares,  the  question  was  asked: 

SCHENKER:  So  that  you  have  a  situation  where  the  American 
I.G.  Corporation,  the  control  of  which  is  unknown  to  us, 
is  buying  over  a  period  of  one  year  approximately  $21,- 
000,000  of  the  stock  of  this  I.G.  Chemie  Corp.,  the  control 
of  which  is  unknown  to  us  and  to  you;  is  that  not  so? 

TEAGLE:  That  is  correct. 

SCHENKER:  So  far  as  you  know,  you  do  not  know  the  exact 
extent  of  the  control  of  the  I.G.  Chemie  in  American  I.G. 
Corporation;  is  that  true? 

TEAGLE:  That  is  correct. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  113 

SCHENKER:  And  you  do  not  know  at  the  present  time  who 

controls  that  corporation? 
TEAGLE:  That  is  correct;  yes. 

The  examiner's  queries  continued  to  be  approved  by  Mr.  Teagle. 

SCHENKER:  Throughout  your  entire  tenure  of  directorship  you 
say  you  did  not  know  who  the  controlling  owners  of  Ameri- 
can I.G.  Chemical  Corp.  were? 

TEAGLE:  That  is  correct. 

On  the  little  matter  of  500,000  shares. 

SCHENKER:  Now,  the  record  discloses  that  500,000  common 
shares  were  issued  to  you.  Were  you  the  beneficial  owner 
of  those  shares? 

TEAGLE:  I  was  not. 

SCHENKER:  Do  you  know  how  it  was  that  those  shares  got 
into  your  name? 

TEAGLE:  No,  I  do  not. 

When  asked  whether  he  thought  that  his  colleague  on  the  board, 
Mr.  Edsel  Ford,  might  be  better  posted  than  he  was,  Mr.  Teagle 
expressed  the  opinion  that  Mr.  Ford  did  not  know  any  more  about 
it  than  he  did.  Teagle  also  stated  that  he  did  not  know  who  was 
voting  for  him  at  the  stockholders'  meetings. 

When  asked  to  express  an  opinion  as  to  whether  all  this  was 
a  healthy  condition,  Mr.  Teagle  begged  to  be  excused  from 
answering. 

One  thing  Mr.  Teagle  could  explain.  He  recalled  distinctly 
that  he  went  on  the  Board  at  the  request  of  his  friend  Dr.  Bosch: 

My  connection  with  the  American  I.G.  came  about  through 
an  explanation  made  to  me  by  Dr.  Bosch  of  the  German  I.G. 
of  his  plans,  and  my  interest  was  prompted  by  the  fact  that 
I  hoped  to  secure  for  the  Standard  Oil  Co.  of  New  Jersey 
a  supply  of  the  raw  product  for  the  fertilizer  plant. 

Just  how  his  American  I.G.  directorship  was  to  help  supply 
Standard  Oil's  proposed  fertilizer  plant  with  raw  products,  while 
he  was  voting  for  loans  to  Farben,  Teagle  did  not  explain,  neither 
did  he  mention  the  efforts  he  had  made  to  resign  from  the  board. 


ii4  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Another  matter  which  Mr.  Teagle  neglected  to  mention  was  a 
letter  which  he  had  received  back  in  1932  from  Dr.  Wilfrid  Greif , 
the  managing  director  of  Farben.  Written  on  the  letterhead  of  the 
American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.,  521  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York  City, 
and  dated  May  6,  1932;  the  letter  read,  in  part: 

I.G.  Chemie  is,  as  you  know,  a  subsidiary  of  I.G.  Farben, 

organized  in  1928 As  officially  stated  in  the  annual 

report  of  the  I.G.  Farben  for  1931,  the  net  income  of  I.G. 
Chemie  for  1931  is  sufficient  to  pay  on  its  stock  the  same 
dividend  which  will  be  paid  by  I.G.  Farben. 

Another  item  of  possible  pertinency  to  the  S.E.C.  inquiry 
which  was  not  brought  out  in  the  Teagle  examination,  was  the 
fact  that  Standard  Oil  had  decided  not  to  be  identified  publicly 
as  a  stockholder  in  American  I.G.  This  had  been  the  subject  of  a 
cable  sent  to  Teagle  by  Mr.  Howard  on  May  27,  1930,  when  the 
former  was  in  London: 

In  view  of  fact  that  we  have  repeatedly  denied  any  financial 
interest  in  American  I.G.  it  seems  to  me  to  be  unwise  for  us 
to  now  permit  them  to  include  us  as  stockholders  in  their 
original  listing  which  is  object  of  present  transaction.  It 
would  serve  their  purpose  to  issue  this  stock  to  you  person- 
ally   Will  this  be  agreeable  to  you  as  a  temporary 

measure? 

Mr.  Teagle,  or  the  S.  E.  C.  investigators,  might  also  have  dug 
up  correspondence  which  passed  between  Teagle  and  Mitchell 
back  in  1932,  when  those  two  American  I.  G.  directors  for  a  time 
opposed  the  action  of  the  board  in  swapping  Farben  securities 
for  those  of  the  I.G.  Chemie. 

One  of  these  letters,  dated  May  27,  revealed  the  existence  of 
a  contract,  or  option  through  which  Farben  might  completely 
absorb  I.G.  Chemie  by  exchanging  its  own  shares  for  those  of 
the  Swiss  company.  Mr.  Mitchell's  letter  to  his  friend  Teagle  went 
on  to  say  that: 

Professor  Bosch  and  Dr.  Schmitz  should  thoroughly  under- 
stand how  anxious  we  are  to  be  of  assistance  to  them  in 


TREASON'S    PEACE  115 

bringing  about  a  development  of  the  chemical  industry  along 
most  approved  lines  in  the  United  States,  but  they  should 
realize  just  as  fully  the  fact  that  you  and  I  are  in  a  very  em- 
barrassing situation  whenever  transactions  are  proposed  as 
between  the  German  I.G.  and  the  American  I.G. 

Finally,  there  was  the  letter  which  Mr.  Teagle  wrote  to  Mr. 
Mitchell  on  May  26,  1932,  enclosing  a  memorandum  which  he 
stated  had  been  prepared  at  his  direction  to  be  used  in  discussions 
with  Dr.  Bosch  about  the  exchange  by  American  I.G.  Farben 
securities  for  those  of  I.G.  Chemie. 

It  might  appear  from  two  statements  of  fact  in  the  memorandum 
that  Mr.  Teagle  had  already  reached  a  very  definite  conclusion 
regarding  the  ownership  of  both  American  I.  G.  and  I.  G.  Chemie. 
The  statements  were; 

The  transaction  between  American  I.G.  and  the  I.G.  parent 
company  involving  the  exchange  of  I.G.  bonds  against  the 

I.G.  Chemie  shares 

Transaction  between  parent  and  subsidiary  company  like 
that  of  the  exchange  of  I.G.  bonds  against  the  I.G.  Chemie 
shares 

It  may  be  assumed  that  if  Mr.  Teagle's  testimony  before  the 
S.  E.  C.  had  been  more  informative,  Mr.  Schenker  might  not  have 
felt  it  necessary  to  also  summon  Messrs.  W.  H.  Duisberg  and 
D.  A.  Schmitz. 

Mr.  Duisberg  qualified  as  director,  first  vice-president  and 
treasurer  of  American  I.G.  and  stated  solemnly  that  he  didn't 
know  who  owned  it.  He  then  produced  correspondence  which  he 
had  conducted  with  Farben  and  with  Edward  Greutert  &  Cie., 
bankers  of  I.G.  Chemie,  at  the  request  of  S.E.C.,  requesting  them 
for  information  about  who  was  which  and  which  controlled  whom? 

Farben's  reply  dated  August  13, 1937,  was  brief  and  to  the  point: 

We  have  no  direct  or  indirect  participation  either  in  the 
American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.,  nor  in  the  other  corporations 
mentioned  in  your  letter  (I.G.  Chemie  and  other  stock- 
holders of  record). 


n6  TREASON'S   PEACE 

This  letter  added  that  it  was  not  Farben's  custom  to  give  such 
information,  so  no  precedent  was  to  be  established  in  making 
the  exception;  also  that  the  letter  was  to  be  treated  as  confidential. 
Greutert's  response  was  a  rebuke  for  making  so  unethical  a  re- 
quest of  a  banker  about  its  clients.  On  August  18,  1937,  Greutert 
wrote: 

We  regret  not  to  be  in  a  position  for  reasons  of  principle,  to 
give  you  the  requested  information.  Such  a  disclosure  by  us 
would  be  entirely  irreconcilable  with  the  bank  secret,  particu- 
larly strictly  observed  in  our  country  by  the  banking  com- 
munity, and  with  the  duties  and  practices  resulting  there- 
from. 

(It  is  of  interest  here  that  the  so  ethical  Greutert  &  Co.,  and 
Edward  W.  Greutert,  head  of  this  Swiss  banking  firm,  were  among 
those  named  as  co-conspirators,  along  with  various  officers,  sub- 
sidiaries and  affiliates  of  Farben,  in  the  indictment  of  September 
1,  1939,  for  conspiracy  with  Farben's  international  nitrogen  cartel 
which  restricted  production  of  nitrogen  and  ammonia.  This  dis- 
tinction did  not  cause  either  co-conspirator  Greutert  or  any  of 
those  indicted  any  real  trouble  because  this  multiple  indictment 
was  one  of  those  nolle  pressed  by  a  complacent  Department  of 
Justice. ) 

Also  called  to  testify  by  the  S.E.C.  was  D.  A.  Schmitz,  brother  of 
Dr.  Hermann  (the  Geheimrat)  Schmitz,  who  added  his  bit  to  this 
fantastic,  corporate  merry-go-round.  After  qualifying  as  a  director 
of  American  I.G.  since  1933,  and  its  president  since  1936,  he  was 
asked  by  Mr.  Schenker: 

Do  you  know  who  was  the  beneficial  stockholders 

of  the  class  A  and  class  B  stock  of  American  I.  G.  Chemical 

Corp.? 

SCHMITZ:  No,  no  more  than  the  records  we  have  here. 
SCHENKER:  So  the  only  thing  you  know  is  who  the  record 

holders  are  and  whether  they  are  the  beneficial  owners  or 

not  you  do  not  know? 
SCHMITZ:  No. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  117 

Perhaps  the  crowning  gem  of  the  hearing  was  the  tribute  paid 
to  the  witnesses  at  its  close.  Said  Mr.  Schenker: 

I  would  like  the  record  to  indicate  we  are  appreciative  of 
the  full  cooperation  that  was  given  to  us  in  connection  with 
our  study  of  the  American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.  and  that 
they  have  made  available  to  us  all  of  the  information  we 
asked. 

Some  mention  having  been  made  in  the  press  of  the  acarpous 
nature  of  the  public  hearing,  I  wrote  to  the  S.E.C.,  offered  my 
services,  and  enclosed  various  papers,  one  of  which  was  a  copy 
of  the  diagrammatic  chart  I  had  prepared  in  1931  for  pongress. 
This  chart,  or  flow  sheet,  set  forth  in  detail  what  Farben  was 
doing  and  proposed  to  do  in  this  country  through  its  control  of 
American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.,  and  other  United  States  companies. 

My  letter  to  the  S.E.C.,  dated  Feb.  5,  1938,  and  addressed  to 
the  Chairman,  Hon.  William  O.  Douglas  (made  Supreme  Court 
Justice  in  1939),  stated  in  part: 

Having  noted  in  the  press  that  you  are  having  difficulty  in 
uncovering  the  identity  of  those  interests  which  control  the 
American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp.,  due  to  the  unfortunate  lapse 
of  memory  indicated  by  some  of  your  witnesses,  I  am  enclos- 
ing herewith  copies  of  some  papers  and  documents  which  may 

assist  your  investigators my  own  diagrammatic  chart 

or  flow  sheet  was  worked  out  in  1931  with  the  hope  that 
Congressional  investigation  might  be  induced  into  one  of  the 
most  sinister  groups  which  has  ever  been  assembled  in  indus- 
try, finance,  and  politics  in  this  country. 

Considerable  water  has  gone  over  the  dam  since  I  put  this 
chart  together,  but  in  its  essential  aspects  of  objective,  the 
ramifications  and  offshoots  of  this  grouping  of  interests  still 
persist.  It  would  be  a  very  valuable  public  service  if  your 
investigators  should  uncover  some  of  its  present  connections 
and  agencies— but  I  suggest  you  will  have  to  arm  them  with 
brass  knuckles  and  a  sublime  indifference  to  their  own  future 
welfare  if  they  really  dig  into  it. 

If  you  feel  that  I  can  be  of  assistance  let  me  know. 


n8  TREASON'S   PEACE 

I  doubt  whether  the  S.E.C.  Chairman  ever  saw  this  letter.  It 
was  acknowledged,  however,  by  Mr.  David  Schenker,  S.E.C. 
counsel,  who  expressed  appreciation  for  my  cooperation,  but  did 
not  indicate  a  desire  for  any  more  of  it. 

As  an  immediate  aftermath  of  the  S.E.C.  public  hearing 
Mr.  Teagle's  earlier  desire  to  resign  as  an  American  I.G.  director 
was  seconded  vigorously  by  his  colleagues,  and  considerable  indig- 
nation was  expressed  at  the  embarrassment  to  which  both  Mr. 
Teagle  and  Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey  had  been  subjected.  Stand- 
ard Oil  was  not  amused!  And  a  memorandum  by  one  of  the  Stand- 
ard Oil  staff,  uncovered  later  in  Mr.  Teagle's  files,  contained  these 
statements: 

The  commission  wants  to  know  the  true  foreign  ownership 
since  American  I.G.  is  a  chemical  company.  In  case  of  any 
war  anywhere  this  ownership  would  be  wanted  by  the  United 
States  Government. 

Mr.  Wellman  (Standard  Oil  attorney)  explained  to  Mr. 
Schenker  that  any  conclusion  by  the  Commission  that  Ameri- 
can I.G.  is,  or  is  possibly,  owned  by  I.G.  Farben  or  allied 
interests  may  well  result  in  an  ownership  by  the  German 
Government  with  all  the  attendant  risks  to  the  American 
owners  of  the  twenty-five  million  of  American  I.G.  deben- 
tures. 

It  is  a  real  possibility  that  if,  in  another  war,  Germany  and 
U.  S.  A.  should  again  be  enemies  the  non-German  financial 
interest  in  American  I.G.  shares  would  have  to  be  shown  to 
the  satisfaction  of  the  U.  S.  Government  to  escape  seizure 
as  German-owned  property. 

Mr.  Teagle  as  a  director  was  placed  in  a  most  embarrassing 
position  at  the  hearing  and  also  in  press  releases  because  he 
did  not  know  the  beneficial  ownership  of  any  of  the  large 
blocks  of  American  I.G.  shares.  To  the  public,  at  any  rate, 
it  seems  impossible  that  a  man  in  his  position  would  not 
know  something  as  to  who  owns  the  company. 

"For  Duisberg  and  Schmitz  to  say  in  effect  that  they  knew 
nothing  about  the  holdings  of  this  company,  and  that  they 


TREASON'S   PEACE  119 

had  made  the  investment  entirely  on  the  recommendation  of 
Dr.  Schmitz,  is  just  a  plain  dereliction  of  their  duty  as  direc- 
tors. 

It  seems  to  us  also  that  the  best  thing  Mr.  Teagle  can  do  is 
to  resign  from  the  American  I.G.,  for,  while  the  present 
inquiry,  I  believe,  is  closed,  we  have  certainly  not  heard  the 
last  of  it.  It  may  be  contended  that  the  S.E.C.  is  poking 
into  things  that  are  none  of  its  business,  but  after  all,  they 
take  the  attitude  that  the  company  raised  $30,000,000  from 
the  American  public  and  they  have  a  right  to  know  what 
has  been  done  with  this  money. 

The  pithy  comment  on  various  aspects  of  the  S.E.C.  hearings 
was  unsigned,  but  some  of  the  writer's  forebodings  about  war  and 
the  seizure  of  American  I.G.  as  German  owned  were  to  come 
true.  He  was  correct  also  in  his  forecasts  that  the  S.E.C.  inquiry 
was  closed,  but  that  Standard  had  not  heard  the  last  of  it. 

Mr.  Howard  wrote  Standard's  European  representative  on  Feb. 
19,  1938,  that  "a  very  unfavorable  impression"  had  been  created 
by  newspaper  reports  of  Mr.  Teagle's  apparent  lack  of  any  real 
knowledge  of  the  ownership  or  business  of  the  company  of  which 
he  was  a  director,  and  in  which  the  records  indicated  he  had 
500,000  shares. 

"I  am  afraid,"  the  letter  continued,  "that  one  of  us  or  both 
of  us  will  have  to  have  some  pretty  straight  talk  with  Geheimrat 
Schmitz  about  this  American  I.G.  Chemical  business." 

Apparently,  however,  it  was  the  Geheimrat  who  did  the  straight 
talking,  when  Howard  rushed  to  Berlin  to  see  him.  For,  in  a  letter 
dated  March  11,  1938,  Mr.  Howard  reported  to  Teagle  that  he 
was  doubtful  that  Dr.  Schmitz  would  consent  to  the  resignation, 
and  went  on  to  say  that  Dr.  Schmitz  appeared  to  see  no  advantage 
in  further  talk  about  the  matter.  Wrote  Howard: 

He  knows  what  happened  in  Washington,  and  despite  every- 
thing he  still  believes  that  his  course  has  been  the  best  course 
that  could  be  taken  and  he  wishes  to  continue  it.  He  has 
pointed  out  to  me,  however,  reasons  why  he  believes  there 
will  be  no  recurrence  of  any  of  the  past  troubles  in  connection 


i2o  TREASON'S   PEACE 

with  the  American  I.G.  Company.  Unfortunately,  these  are 
matters  which  I  can  only  talk  about  when  I  see  you— this 
at  Dr.  Schmitz's  specific  request. 

The  occult  powers  which  Dr.  Schmitz  indicated  relating  to 
the  non-recurrence  at  Washington  of  the  troubles  of  American 
I.G.  were  never  revealed  publicly  by  Mr.  Howard,  and  it  is 
worthy  of  note  here  that  subsequent  to  the 'inclusion  of  this  par- 
ticular letter  in  the  record  of  the  hearings  of  the  United  States 
Senate  Committee  investigating  the  National  Defense  Program 
(Truman  Committee)  in  1942,  Mr.  Howard,  who  had  appeared 
as  a  witness  before  the  committee,  was  not  asked  to  disclose  those 
statements  of  Geheimrat  Schmitz  which  he  had  not  dared  to  put 
in  his  confidential  report  to  Mr.  Teagle.  Mr.  Howard  also  ap- 
peared later  as  a  witness  before  the  Senate  Committee  on  Patents 
( Bone  Committee )  but  again  failed  to  relate  just  what  the  Geheim- 
rat had  said  that  he  could  "only  talk  about"  when  he  saw  Teagle. 

Mr.  Teagle  was  not  called  as  a  witness  before  either  of  those 
Senate  hearings.  He  did,  however,  finally  succeed  in  his  long 
cherished  desire  to  resign  from  the  board  of  the  Farben  subsidiary, 
about  which,  as  a  witness,  he  knew  so  little.  On  April  4,  1939, 
seven  long  years  after  he  had  first  requested  permission  to  resign 
and  just  a  few  months  before  the  start  of  the  war,  D.  A.  Schmitz 
wrote  Mr.  Teagle  that  his  resignation  as  director  had  been  ac- 
cepted "with  regret." 

Brother  Hermann  the  Geheimrat,  and  Carl  Bosch  the  Profes- 
sor Doctor  apparently  had  instructed  D.  A.  Schmitz  to  be  nice 
about  it,  and  that  they  could  now  spare  from  the  board  of  Farben's 
American  I.G.  the  august  name  of  the  chairman  of  the  board  of 
Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey.  That  name  had  served  its  purpose 
in  the  Farben  pattern  for  ten  vital  pre-war  years. 

Apropos  of  the  non-recurrence  of  troubles  for  American  I.G., 
as  foreseen  by  Dr.  Schmitz.  the  S.E.C.  held  no  more  public  hear- 
ings on  the  subject,  and  issued  no  public  statement  about  it  until 
June  9,  1941.  This  was  a  few  days  after  the  discerning  Lowell  L. 
Leake  in  newspaper  PM  had  published  the  first  informative  article 
which  ever  appeared  in  the  press  about  my  earlier  protests  at  Far- 
ben's  activities  in  the  chemical  industries  of  this  country. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  121 

The  S.E.C.  statement  took  the  form  of  a  report  to  Congress. 
In  this  report  of  its  four  years  of  lethargic  efforts  to  uncover  the 
ownership  of  American  I.G.,  the  S.E.C.  included  the  following: 

All  attempts  to  ascertain  the  beneficial  ownership  of  the 
controlling  shares  have  been  unsuccessful As  a  conse- 
quence the  American  investors,  mainly  bondholders,  are  in 
the  peculiar  position  of  being  creditors  of  a  corporation  under 
an  unknown  control. 

A  few  days  later  I  prepared  an  analysis  of  that  report  for  the 
Non-Sectarian  Anti-Nazi  League  which  in  part  was  as  follows: 

The  monkey  in  the  box  and  circus  merry-go-round  of  con- 
cealed stock  ownership  fools  only  those  individuals  who  want 
to  be  fooled,  or  who  are  willing  for  some  reason  to  play  a 
part  in  the  attempted  deception.  Unhappily  an  agency  of 
the  United  States  Government  has  now  issued  an  official  re- 
port or  presentation,  which,  when  we  finally  get  to  the  point 
of  seizing  enemy  property,  as  we  must,  will  provide  a  docu- 
ment to  be  utilized  as  a  pretext  to  permit  the  German  I.G. 
Farben  to  continue  its  operations  in  this  country,  under  the 
present  management,  and  in  the  interest  of  the  German 
Reich. 

A  year  later  I  made  one  more  attempt  to  induce  the  S.E.C.  to 
reopen  its  inquiry  into  other  ramifications  of  the  activities  of  I.G. 
Farben  and  its  agents  and  affiliates  in  the  United  States.  In  a  com- 
munication dated  August  8,  1942,  I  called  attention  to  the  fact 
that  during  the  earlier  period  of  its  American  I.G.  investigation 
it  had  been  rumored  that  Earle  I.  McClintock,  high  official  of 
Sterling  Products,  was  being  considered  to  succeed  Messrs.  Joseph 
P.  Kennedy  and  William  O.  Douglas  as  chairman  of  S.E.C.  when 
those  two  gentlemen  resigned  that  office  in  1937  and  1938  re- 
spectively. I  pointed  out  that  regardless  of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Mc- 
Clintock was  not  made  chairman,  any  attempt  to  secure  his  ap- 
pointment became  a  matter  which  the  S.E.C.  might  properly 
inquire  into— in  view  of  the  Sterling  and  Farben  secret  agreements. 
Again  the  S.E.C.  declined  to  follow  my  suggestion. 

The  S.E.C.  report  on  the  lily-white  purity  of  American  I.G., 


122  TREASON'S    PEACE 

as  submitted  to  Congress,  was  prepared  under  the  supervision  of 
Commissioner  Robert  E.  Healy,  assisted  by  the  gentle  Mr.  Schen- 
ker,  as  counsel. 

In  the  past  I  had  made  other  appeals  to  agencies  advised  by 
these  two  distinguished  public  servants.  In  1929,  when  Mr.  Healy 
was  chief  counsel  for  the  Federal  Trade  Commission,  I  requested 
an  investigation  of  the  German  affiliations  of  American  I.G.,  Drug, 
Inc.,  and  the  American  Medical  Association.  And  two  years  later, 
I  again  asked  that  agency  to  dig  into  the  McKesson  &  Robbins 
mess.  Mr.  Schenker's  first  job  in  Washington  was  assistant  to  Ferdi- 
nand Pecora,  counsel  for  the  Senate  Committee  on  Banking  and 
Currency,  which  drafted  the  S.E.C.  legislation.  And  it  was  this 
committee  that  ignored  my  appeals  to  explain  the  New  York  Stock 
Exchange  listing  of  the  fraudulent  McKesson  &  Robbins  securities, 
and  also  to  investigate  what  I  described  as  "a  reign  of  terrorism 
utilized  by  our  so-called  financial  leaders  to  cow  into  sub- 
mission any  one  who  protested  against  the  prostitution  of  our 
governmental  machinery  at  Washington." 

Messrs.  Pecora  and  Healy  became  members  of  the  S.E.C.  when 
it  was  organized  in  1934,  and  Mr.  Schenker  became  its  counsel. 

On  June  11,  1941,  just  two  days  after  the  S.E.C.  report  on  Far- 
ben's  American  front  was  filed  with  the  Congress,  Mr.  Schenker 
retired  as  its  counsel  and  returned  to  the  private  practice  of  law 
in  New  York  City. 

When  the  war  started  in  Europe,  Farben  decided  that  it  might 
be  wise  to  do  a  little  face  lifting  on  its  American  offspring.  So,  on 
October  30,  1939,  the  directors  of  the  American  I.G.  Chemical 
Corp.  announced  that  there  was  no  longer  an  American  I.G.  be- 
cause one  of  its  subsidiaries,  General  Aniline  Works,  had  first 
absorbed  it  and  then  had  changed  its  own  name  to  General  Aniline 
&  Film  Corporation.  Just  like  that.  How  could  it  be  related  to 
German  I.G.  when  the  I.G.  had  vanished  from  its  name. 
There  would  be  no  change,  it  was  announced,  in  the  management 
but  the  offices  were  to  move  from  Fifth  Ave.  to  Park  Ave.  Careful 
in  small  details,  Farben  was  moving  its  renamed  child  from  the 
too  close  environment  of  other  Farben  subsidiaries,  which  still 
occupied  offices  at  the  old  Fifth  Ave.  address. 

Despite  the  unhappy  experiences  of  Mr.  Teagle  as  an  American 


TREASON'S   PEACE  123 

I.G.  director,  Standard  continued  its  intimate  relations  with  Far- 
ben  and  permitted  its  vice-president,  E.  M.  Clark,  to  remain  as  a 
director  of  American  I.G.,  or  General  Aniline  &  Film,  until  1940. 
Standard  also  took  part  in  several  sizeable  financial  negotiations 
with  Farben,  one  of  which,  in  1940,  involved  a  Standard  proposal 
that  Farben  exchange  its  interest  in  General  Aniline  &  Film  for 
Standard's  oil-refining  properties  in  Germany.  In  reply  General 
Aniline's  New  York  management  solemnly  informed  Standard  that 
Farben  had  no  interest  in  it  or  in  any  other  American  properties; 
and  then,  by  way  of  proof,  arranged  a  conference  in  Switzerland 
at  which  representatives  of  the  three  companies  met. 

The  real  purpose  of  this  conference  came  out  when  Farben  and 
its  American  front  both  suggested  that  Standard  purchase  control 
of  General  Aniline  &  Film  from  its  Swiss  "owners."  This  would 
make  everybody  happy  and  prevent  any  possibility  of  General 
Aniline  &  Film  getting  into  a  jam  with  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment. Standard,  for  some  reason,  did  not  bite  on  that  one. 

Some  months  later  Mr.  Hugh  S.  Williamson  (prominent  mem- 
ber of  the  New  York  law  firm  of  Breed,  Abbott  and  Morgan,  also 
vice-president  and  treasurer  of  General  Aniline  &  Film),  was  in 
Europe  discussing  matters  with  the  home  office.  Possibly  Mr. 
Williamson  feared  that  the  S.E.C.  whitewash  might  not  stand 
exposure  to  the  stormy  weather  in  prospect,  and  that  the  Farben 
name  might  show  through  on  the  General  Aniline  signboard.  In 
any  event,  late  in  October,  1940,  Mr.  Williamson  put  in  a  New 
York  call  from  Switzerland  for  his  friend  Mr.  Orville  Harden  then 
vice-president  of  Standard  and,  as  a  representative  of  Farben, 
asked  whether  Standard  would  not  like  to  sell  Farben  its  very 
valuable  Hungarian  oil  properties. 

Standard  by  then  was  more  than  willing  to  get  some  of  its 
assets  out  of  Europe  and  suggested  a  price  of  $30,000,000  as  about 
right.  Farben  declined  with  thanks  and,  after  protracted  negotia- 
tions, came  back  with  a  counter  offer  of  $24,000,000,  mostly  in 
cash  but  including  a  note  for  $5,000,000,  which  was  to  be  secured 
by  collateral  in  the  form  of  a  lien  on  Farben's  American  proper- 
ties (which  it  had  just  denied  owning)  and  was  to  be  payable 
"three  months  after  the  end  of  the  war." 

Standard's  directors  bit  at  this  last  offer;  took  it  to  Washington 


124  TREASON'S   PEACE 

and  secured  the  approval  of  the  State  Department  (so  they  said) 
but  the  chief  counsel  for  the  Treasury,  and  Vice  President  Henry 
A.  Wallace,  as  chairman  of  the  Board  of  Economic  Warfare,  re- 
fused official  permission.  This  was  in  August,  1941;  by  this  time 
Farben's  tie-ups  with  American  war  industries  were  beginning 
to  receive  some  rather  critical  public  attention,  and  the  atmosphere 
in  official  circles  was  a  bit  thick  when  anything  relating  to  Farben 
came  up. 

While  the  S.E.C.  staff  was  still  fabricating  its  conclusion  that 
American  I.G.  was  nullius  filius,  several  other  branches  of  the 
Government  refused  to  accept  the  theory  of  illegitimate  Swiss 
parentage,  and  concluded  that  American  I.G.  actually  meant 
German  I.G.  Among  those  who  discredited  the  woods-colt  story 
were  members  of  the  Antitrust  staff  of  Assistant  Attorney  General 
Thurman  Arnold,  who  had  uncovered  evidence  of  the  Farben 
pattern  in  investigations  of  some  of  its  tie-ups  in  the  synthetic 
nitrogen-ammonia  field,  and  in  the  magnesium  industry  and  had 
instituted  actions  accordingly. 

And,  on  April  10,  1941,  the  Antitrust  Division  issued  subpoenas 
calling  for  the  complete  records  of  General  Aniline,  Winthrop 
Chemical,  and  Sterling  Products.  Then  began  the  sort  of  dragnet 
investigation  into  the  ramifications  of  Farben's  affiliates  and  per- 
sonal agents  in  this  country  that  I  had  first  asked  the  Department 
of  Justice  to  make  thirteen  years  previously,  in  1928. 

There  was  consternation  in  the  ranks  of  Farben's  New  York 
and  Berlin  offices  when  word  of  those  subpoenas  reached  them. 
The  management  of  General  Aniline  at  first  declined  to  comment 
publicly;  later  a  press  statement  was  issued  which  read: 

The  officers  of  General  Aniline  &  Film  Corporation  stated 
that  the  report  it  was  among  the  companies  whose  books  and 
records  had  been  subpoenaed  in  connection  with  the  Govern- 
ment's investigation  of  the  drug  and  pharmaceutical  trade 
was  an  error. 

It  was  an  error  all  right,  a  very  bad  error  on  the  part  of  Dr. 
Schmitz  who  had  assured  Standard  Oil's  Frank  Howard  that  there 
would  be  no  recurrence  at  Washington  of  the  past  troubles  of 
American  I.G. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  125 

Three  weeks  later  came  another  blow  for  Farben's  "American" 
citizens.  On  May  1,  1941,  the  British  Minister  of  Economic  War- 
fare, Dr.  Hugh  Dalton,  threw  some  very  pointed  comments  about 
conditions  in  the  Western  hemisphere  into  an  informal  statement 
which  he  made  to  American  correspondents  in  London.  The  gist 
of  these  remarks  was  cabled  to  the  United  States  and  received 
considerable  publicity  in  the  press.  They  reflected  a  very  natural 
feeling  of  irritation  in  the  British  Cabinet  at  the  fact  that  Farben's 
affiliates  in  the  United  States  were  helping  effectively  to  nullify 
the  British  Navy's  blockade  of  Germany's  export  trade  by  shipping 
American-made  dyes,  drugs,  and  chemicals  to  Farben's  agents  in 
Latin  America,  and  thus  helping  Farben  to  hold  its  trade  and  to 
finance  German  propaganda  and  espionage  in  those  countries. 

Dr.  Dalton  suggested  that  the  United  States,  for  its  own  pro- 
tection and  security,  might  well  follow  Britain's  example  by  freez- 
ing the  assets  of  Axis  countries  and  by  blacklisting  all  concerns 
whose  profits  were  being  utilized  to  finance  Nazi  activities  in  the 
Western  Hemisphere. 

The  Minister  named  some  of  the  German-controlled  companies 
in  the  United  States  that  had  been  carefully  organized  before  the 
war  to  supply  the  requirements  of  German  agencies  in  South 
America— when  Britain  should  shut  off  their  supply  of  products 
from  Germany. 

Among  the  most  important  of  these  companies  was  General 
Aniline  &  Film,  which  was  supplying  Farben's  Latin  American 
agents  with  dyes,  photographic  materials  and  other  products,  ship- 
ping them  through  General  Dyestuff  or  other  companies  acting 
for  it.  Sterling  Products  was  also  branded  and  Messrs.  Weiss  and 
McClintock  were  named  in  person  by  Mr.  Dalton  for  similar  of- 
fenses. 

There  were  immediate  repercussions  of  this  blast  at  Farben's 
American  front.  The  American  patriots  who  sat  in  the  New  York 
office  of  General  Aniline  promptly  issued  another  chapter  of  the 
bedtime  story  of  their  firm's  parentage.  They  denied  emphatically 
the  allegation  of  the  British  Ministry  that  it  was  owned  or  con- 
trolled by  I.G.  Farben,  which  has  "no  interest,  direct  or  indirect, 
in  or  control  over  the  affairs  of  General  Aniline  &  Film  Corpora- 


126  TREASON'S    PEACE 

tion."  They  were  not  acting  for  Farben  or  in  its  interest  in  export- 
ing merchandise,"  etc.,  etc. 

One  of  its  officers  was  interviewed  by  The  New  York  Times  at 
his  home  in  Englewood,  N.  J.  This  was  Dr.  Rudolph  Hutz,  General 
Aniline's  vice-president  who,  in  World  War  I,  was  an  official  of 
the  Bayer  Company  and  had  been  arrested  and  interned  in  1918. 
When  asked  about  this  incident  by  the  Times  he  treated  it  lightly 
and  described  the  arrest  as  "a  so-called  Presidential  warrant— a 
purely  formal  charge  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian." 

Dr.  Hutz  also  stated  that  he  knew  nothing  about  any  relations 
between  General  Aniline  and  Farben.  However,  that  gentleman's 
peculiar  lack  of  knowledge  about  such  things  did  not  save  him, 
seven  months  later,  from  being  named  as  a  co-conspirator  in  an 
indictment  against  General  Aniline,  Farben,  and  his  earlier  em- 
ployer, Bayer. 

The  United  States  Government  was  prompt  to  take  the  hint 
from  the  British  Minister's  blunt  remarks,  and  things  started  to 
happen.  On  May  9,  1941,  Attorney  General  Robert  H.  Jackson 
attached  about  $250,000,  which  was  on  deposit  in  the  account  of 
I.G.  Farben  in  the  National  City  Bank  of  New  York.  An  order 
was  secured  from  Federal  Judge  John  C.  Knox  directing  the  bank 
to  hold  all  funds  or  credits  owing  to  Farben  pending  disposition 
of  antitrust  suits  in  which  Farben,  as  a  defendant,  had  refused 
to  put  in  an  appearance. 

Two  weeks  later  the  Justice  Department  tied  up  some  additional 
funds  which  were  about  to  be  paid  to  Farben's  account  by  General 
Dyestuff  and,  following  the  usual  Farben  procedure,  were  in- 
formed by  that  company's  president,  E.  K.  Halbach,  that  General 
Dyestuff  was  completely  independent,  as  it  was  owned  100  per- 
cent by  American  citizens. 

On  June  14,  another  real  blow  was  dealt  Farben  when  President 
Roosevelt  issued  an  order  freezing  all  funds  belonging  to  Axis 
nationals. 

Mr.  Henry  Morgenthau,  Jr.,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  to  whom 
enforcement  of  the  freezing  was  delegated,  had  long  been  urging 
that  step  but,  according  to  press  dispatches  from  Washington,  had 
been  blocked  by  the  unwillingness  of  Secretary  of  State  Cordell 
Hull  to  give  the  Axis  a  pretext  for  reprisals.  Our  distinguished 


TREASON'S   PEACE  127 

Secretary  of  State  apparently  did  not  appreciate  the  important 
part  which  Farben  played  in  any  decision  as  to  reprisals. 

Secretary  Morgenthau,  however,  was  better  advised  and  had 
already  expressed  the  opinion  that  the  delayed  freezing  action 
would  be  a  matter  of  locking  the  stable  after  the  horse  was  gone; 
but  the  White  House  statement  indicated  that  it  was  also  intended 
to  curb  subversive  activities  in  this  country. 

The  Treasury  regulations  included  one  clause  calculated  to  give 
Farben's  American  agents  a  headache;  it  read  that  on  or  before 
July  14  a  report  should  be  filed  setting  forth  all  information  rela- 
tive to  property  in  the  United  States  in  which  any  foreign  country 
or  national  had  any  interest,  direct  or  indirect.  This  meant  Farben 
patents  as  well  as  other  Farben  property.  It  also  meant  that  it 
mattered  not  a  bit  whether  I.G.  Chemie  was  Farben  owned  or  not; 
Switzerland  was  a  foreign  country  and  the  General  Aniline  shares 
were,  therefore,  to  be  frozen  by  the  Treasury.  Mr.  Dalton's  brutal 
frankness  had  turned  the  tide.  The  foundations  of  Farben's  frame- 
work in  the  United  States  were  beginning  to  crumble. 

On  July  17,  the  President  issued  another  proclamation  that  hit 
Farben  in  another  highly  vulnerable  spot.  This  time  the  Secretary 
of  State  was  instructed  to  publish  a  blacklist  of  companies  in 
Latin  America  and  elsewhere  which  were  affiliated  with  Axis 
powers.  This  list  included  the  names  of  every  known  agent,  affili- 
ate or  branch  house  of  I.G.  Farben  in  all  of  the  Latin  American 
countries. 

While  these  storm  clouds  were  gathering  about  Farben's  Amer- 
ican fronts,  there  came  to  the  rescue  one  Dr.  Werner  Karl  Gabler, 
who  had  moved  to  Washington  some  years  previously  as  an  advo- 
cate of  the  social  and  economic  policies  of  the  New  Deal.  Dr. 
Gabler  now  appeared  as  an  accredited  representative  of  the  Swiss 
I.G.  Chemie,  and  approached  various  government  officials  with 
impressive  looking  documents  to  support  his  arguments  that  I.G. 
Chemie  was  a  wholly  independent  Swiss  company. 

According  to  Time,  Dr.  Gabler  had  become  well  known  in 
Washington  as  an  "economist  lobbyist"  for  the  American  Retail 
Federation  and  had  also  done  work  for  the  late  Edward  A.  Filene, 
Boston  capitalist  and  department  store  operator.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  Dr.  Gabler  certainly  blossomed  out  in  his  new  role  at  Wash- 


128  TREASON'S   PEACE 

ington.  He  had  secured  his  assignment  through  the  Swiss  Minister 
at  Washington,  the  Hon.  Charles  Bruggmann.  And  the  fact  that 
the  Swiss  Minister's  wife,  the  former  Mary  O.  Wallace,  was  a  sister 
of  Henry  A.  Wallace,  then  Vice  President,  did  not  detract  from  the 
prestige  and  dignity  with  which  Dr.  Gabler  conducted  his  efforts 
to  checkmate  those  who  were  saying,  "Why  argue  any  more,  seize 
General  Aniline  and  get  it  over  with/'  Needless  to  say  neither  the 
Vice  President  nor  his  sister  was  involved  in  aiding  the  Gabler 
efforts. 

In  its  article  about  Dr.  Gabler,  Time  included  this  comment: 

Some  of  Dr.  Gabler's  fellow  New  Dealers  though  no  more 
anti-Nazi  than  he,  believe  he  was  hired  because  he  had  an 
"in"  with  the  New  Deal.  If  that  was  a  Nazi  plan,  it  could  be 
an  example  of  the  super-ingenuity  of  Nazi  infiltration  tactics. 

Economist-negotiator  Gabler,  to  give  him  a  more  polite  title 
than  'lobbyist/'  went  about  his  task  with  great  circumspection, 
he  always  notified  the  authorities  before  he  put  in  telephone  calls 
for  Switzerland  (undoubtedly  they  were  all  listened  in  on  any- 
how) and  a  stage  battle  of  noisy  name  calling  went  on  between 
him  and  some  of  General  Aniline's  German-born  directors. 

Finally,  after  it  appeared  fruitless  for  even  a  Doctor  Gabler  to 
gabble  any  more  about  I.G.  Chemie's  being  a  safe  and  neutral 
guardian  of  the  General  Aniline  shares,  this  New  Deal  economist 
proposed  a  new  deal  for  General  Aniline— an  American  voting 
trust  was  to  be  set  up  to  control  the  I.G.  Chemie  shares  on  which 
a  United  States  Government  official  and  an  I.G.  Chemie  nominee 
should  have  equal  voice.  This  was  rather  far  fetched  as  the  Gov- 
ernment already  had  frozen  the  stock  and  was  about  to  take  over 
the  property. 

About  this  time  one  Ernest  W.  Flender,  German  born  share- 
holder in  General  Aniline,  and  a  member  of  the  private-banking 
house,  C.  B.  Richard  &  Co.,  dealt  himself  into  the  situation  by 
starting  a  mysterious  equity  suit  in  a  Delaware  Court  to  secure 
an  order  compelling  a  stockholder's  meeting.  However,  the  U.  S. 
Treasury  intervened  and  the  suit  was  dismissed  after  Mrs.  Dorothy 
Pickhardt  Kahle,  another  stockholder,  had  been  substituted  for 
Mr.  Flender  as  the  complainant. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  129 

The  General  Aniline  directors  made  many  moves  on  the  Wash- 
ington chessboard  to  strengthen  their  position.  One  of  these  was 
to  retain  the  services  (at  an  annual  retainer  reported  to  be  $100,- 
000)  of  former  Attorney  General  Homer  S.  Cummings,  who  had 
opened  an  office  for  the  practice  of  law  in  the  nation's  capital  a 
few  months  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  More  will  appear 
about  this  later. 

As  the  date  of  the  declaration  of  war  between  Germany  and 
the  United  States  drew  near,  the  board  of  General  Aniline  was 
in  a  state  of  wild  confusion.  A  number  of  the  old  German-born 
directors  resigned  and  were  replaced  by  several  well  known  Amer- 
icans who  had  no  prior  connection  with  the  company.  Finally, 
D.  A.  Schmitz  was  asked  to  resign  as  president  and,  when  he  re- 
fused, the  board  voted  to  remove  him.  For  several  weeks  the 
company  had  no  president.  Then,  on  October  30,  1941,  the  direc- 
tors elected  as  president  former  Judge  John  E.  Mack,  of  Pough- 
keepsie.  The  name  of  Judge  Mack,  known  to  be  an  intimate  friend 
and  neighbor  of  President  Roosevelt,  was  calculated  to  lend  such 
an  aura  of  American  respectability  to  General  Aniline  that  this, 
in  itself,  might  prevent  actual  seizure  of  the  company  as  enemy 
owned.  Judge  Mack  had  had  no  previous  experience  as  head  of 
an  $86,000,000  corporation  with  6,000  employees.  Nevertheless, 
his  salary  was  reported  to  be  fixed  at  $90,000  a  year.  Not  long 
afterward,  on  December  5,  1941,  another,  even  bigger,  name  was 
added  to  the  General  Aniline  board,  through  the  election  of  Wil- 
liam C.  Bullitt.  Mr.  Bullitt,  however,  never  actually  served,  as  he 
left  that  same  day  for  Africa  and  the  Far  East,  on  a  personal  mis- 
sion for  the  President. 

This  frantic  Americanization  of  Farben's  offspring  might  at  least 
have  stalled  off  the  seizure  had  not  the  Japanese  time-table  decreed 
otherwise.  With  the  attack  on  Pearl  Harbor  the  energetic  and 
able  Assistant  Counsel  of  the  Treasury  Department,  J.  J.  O'Con- 
nell,  Jr.,  (later  to  become  its  chief  counsel)  moved  in  on  General 
Aniline  with  a  commando  squad  of  seventeen  supervisors  and  took 
over  in  earnest.  Evidently  he  was  not  content  with  previous  house- 
cleaning  which  had  consisted  in  taking  a  few  offensive  I.G. 
pictures  off  the  wall  and  hiding  some  of  the  hired  help  in  the 
cellar. 


igo  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Within  a  week  a  New  York  Grand  Jury  had  returned  the  three 
indictments  already  mentioned  charging  conspiracy  by  General 
Aniline,  Farben,  General  Dyestuff  and  several  of  its  officers  and 
directors  with  numerous  acts  of  conspiracy  in  restricting  produc- 
tion of  dyes,  photographic  materials  and  chemicals,  along  with 
other  violations  of  the  criminal  statutes  of  the  United  States. 

Two  months  passed  during  which  Mr.  O'Connell  and  his  super- 
visors did  some  checking  up,  and  then  ousted  five  of  the  principal 
operating  executives  of  General  Aniline,  all  naturalized  Americans 
who  were  accused  of  obvious  Farben  affiliations. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  Leo  T.  Crowley,  head  of  the  government- 
owned  Federal  Deposit  Insurance  Corporation,  and  also  high- 
salaried  president  of  a  public  utility  company,  was  offered  by  the 
President  the  additional  position  of  Alien  Property  Custodian. 
However,  Mr.  Crowley  appeared  none  too  anxious  to  accept  this 
responsibility  unless  complete  freedom  of  action  was  assured  him. 
So  Treasury,  for  a  time,  remained  supreme  in  General  Aniline 
affairs. 

On  February  16,  1942,  Secretary  Morgenthau  addressed  an 
official  notice  to  General  Aniline  that  he  had  vested  in  his  own 
name,  title  to  all  of  the  shares  of  the  company  listed  in  the  names 
of  Geheimrat  Professor  Dr.  Carl  Bosch  of  Ludwigshaf en,  Geheim- 
rat  Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz  of  Berlin,  and  of  the  Swiss  I.G.  Chemie 
or  its  nominees  in  Switzerland  and  the  Netherlands. 

Prior  to  this  final  seizure  of  the  controlling  shares  of  General 
Aniline,  that  company,  as  one  of  Farben's  American  dummy  fronts 
had  controlled  not  only  its  own  immense  war  material  manufac- 
turing plants,  but  had  also  owned  huge  blocks  of  stock  worth  some 
$11,500,000  in  the  following  American  Corporations:  Standard 
Oil  Co.,  of  New  Jersey;  Standard  Oil  Co.,  of  California;  Standard 
Oil  Co.  of  Indiana;  E.  I.  duPont  de  Nemours  &  Co.,  Sterling  Prod- 
ucts, Inc.,  Plaskon  Co.,  American  Magnesium  Corp.,  Alba  Phar- 
maceutical Co.,  and  Winthrop  Chemical  Co.  ' . 

What  came  after  February  16,  will  appear  in  a  later  chapter, 
but  it  was  this  date  which  marked  the  end  of  the  long  fabric  of 
lies  and  subterfuge  behind  which  Farben  had  almost  succeeded 
in  veiling  its  identity.  Perhaps,  more  important,  it  exposed  official- 
ly the  use  which  these  Teutonic  builders  of  a  secret  world  empire 


TREASON'S   PEACE  131 

had  made  of  some  of  our  esteemed  citizens  and,  to  quote  from  a 
later  U.  S.  Treasury  Department  report,  how  Farben  had: 

been  plotting  the  downfall  of  the  free  peoples  who  gave 

them  an  opportunity  to  prosper  and  grow  rich  by  honest  trade 

by  control  of  corporations,  by  accumulating  stocks  of 

raw  materials,  by  carefully  directed  but  unlimited  bribery, 
by  the  use  of  force  and  threats  of  force,  and  by  any  other 
methods  which  came  to  hand. 

Which  is  a  pretty  good  description  of  the  Farben  pattern. 


CHAPTER       V  I  M 


Republicans — Open  The  Door 


ON     OCTOBER     20, 

1942,  The  New  York  Times  published  a  sensational  story  about 
a  "sealed"  gift  to  the  Library  of  Congress  of  some  nine  thousand 
letters  comprising  the  files  of  the  late  Edward  T.  Clark,  private 
secretary  to  President  Calvin  Coolidge.  The  story  attracted  in- 
terest because  it  stated  that  these  files  had  been  advertised  to  be 
sold  at  public  auction  on  Oct.  28  at  the  Parke-Bernet  Galleries 
in  New  York  City,  but  instead  were  suddenly  withdrawn  from 
sale  and  presented  to  the  nation  by  one  Charles  Kohen,  proprietor 
of  the  Hobby  Shop  of  Washington,  D.  C.,  who  had  secured  the 
files  from  Clark's  widow. 

The  Times  article  stated  that  the  correspondence  covered  ten 
years,  from  1923  to  1933,  which  period  included  part  of  the  time 
Clark  spent  with  President  Coolidge  at  the  White  House.  It  was 
also  stated  that  the  catalog  listing  of  the  letters  classed  some  of 
them  as  sensational. 

What  the  Times  article  did  not  reveal,  however,  was  that  Edward 
Terry  Clark,  or  Ted  Clark  as  he  was  known  in  Washington  until 
his  sudden  death  in  1935,  was  not  only  personal  secretary  to  Presi- 
dent Coolidge  until  March  4, 1929,  but  that  immediately  after  that 
132 


TREASON'S   PEACE  133 

date  he  became  Washington  representative  of  Drug,  Inc.  Clark, 
with  the  title  of  vice-president,  was  in  charge  of  "government  re- 
lations" from  then  until  1933  when  Drug,  Inc.  was  unscrambled, 
and  Sterling  returned  to  its  earlier  status  as  the  Farben  partner 
in  the  patent  medicine  industry.  Drug,  Inc.,  it  will  be  recalled, 
was  the  tie-up  of  Sterling  and  the  Louis  K.  Liggett  group  in  1928 
which  later  took  in  Bristol  Myers,  Vick,  Life  Savers  and  other 
large  national  advertisers. 

Ted  Clark  was,  in  plain  English,  a  Washington  lobbyist,  main- 
tained at  the  national  capital  in  the  interest  of  Farben's  original 
postwar  tie-ups  in  the  drug  industry,  which  tie-ups  ten  years  later 
were  admitted  by  all  concerned  (excepf  Fctrben)  to  have  been 
illegal  from  the  day  on  which  they  were  first  entered  into.  After 
Clark  left  the  President  of  the  United  States  his  boss  was  William 
E.  Weiss,  senior  vice-president  and  general  manager  of  Drug, 
Inc.,  who,  some  twelve  years  later,  was  to  be  prosecuted  and  fined 
under  a  federal  criminal  statute,  and  forced  out  of  Sterling  be- 
cause of  what  the  United  States  Treasury  termed  his  "undesirable" 
relations  with  I.G.  Farben  in  the  latter's  "plotting  of  the  downfall 
of  the  United  States." 

The  Times  story  also  neglected  to  mention  that  in  August,  1932, 
when  Herbert  Hoover  was  running  for  reelection  as  President 
against  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt,  his  White  House  secretary,  the 
late  Thomas  G.  Joslin,  went  off  on  a  vacation  and  Mr.  Hoover 
"borrowed"  Ted  Clark  from  Farben's  Drug,  Inc.  Thus  Mr.  Clark 
became  the  official  secretary  to  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
while  Drug,  Inc.,  agent  of  Farben,  continued  to  pay  his  salary 
as  though  no  interruption  had  occurred  in  his  services  as  its  Wash- 
ington representative.  (And  perhaps  none  had.) 

At  the  time,  this  incident  created  something  of  a  stir.  It  was 
too  much  for  the  New  York  World-Telegram's  usually  sweet-tem- 
pered Raymond  Clapper,  who  described  the  temporary  secretary 
to  Mr.  Hoover,  as  a  "lobbyist  whose  salary  was  paid  by  Drug,  Inc." 
Editorially  the  World-Telegram  commented  that,  "the  President 

must  be  very  insensitive" "Much  more  than  the  vagary  of 

Hooverian  taste  is  involved." 

The  day  after  the  Times  first  published  the  story  of  the  sudden 
decision  to  get  these  Clark  files  under  lock  and  key,  the  New  York 


i§4  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Herald  Tribune  still  further  whetted  the  curiosity  of  those  who 
knew  of  Clark's  activities  by  quoting  Mr.  Kohen  as  having  said 
that  the  files  included  correspondence  with  Col.  William  J.  Dono- 
van, who  was  Assistant  Attorney  General  during  the  Coolidge  Ad- 
ministration; Charles  D.  Hilles,  member  and  former  chairman  of 
the  Republican  National  Committee;  and  others.  Also  that  there 
were  letters  pertaining  to  South  and  Central  American  countries, 
and  that  it  would  be  a  terrible  thing  if  German  agents  got  hold 
of  them. 

The  description  of  these  files  printed  in  the  Parke-Bernet  cata- 
log is  intriguing  in  its  implications.  Whoever  wrote  it  would  seem 
to  have  examined  the  files  carefully  and  to  have  had  a  deft  sense 
of  the  value  of  spicy  historical  documents: 

They  provide  an  insight  into  the  political  workings  of  offi- 
cial Washington and  much  important  information  of  a 

private  nature  on  various  public  ancj  political  matters 

The  correspondents  are  persons  of  note,  including  members 
of  Congress,  governors  of  states,  government  officials,  busi- 
ness men,  financiers,  personal  friends,  politicians,  and  others 
in  various  walks  of  life.  The  letters  pertain  to  matters  of  gov- 
ernment, public  works,  political  matters,  etc.  Some  of  the 
letters  may  be  classed  as  sensational;  they  reveal  the  work- 
ings of  a  political  machine.  The  writers  seek  legislation  in 
favor  of  their  business,  seek  appointments  to  positions  for 

friends  of  the  Republican  party Another  folder  contains 

correspondence  between  Mr.  Clark  and  the  holder  of  an 
important  office  during  the  Coolidge  Administration,  and  who 
has  been  appointed  by  President  Roosevelt  to  a  high  govern- 
ment office  since  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war on 

political  and  private  matters. 

With  regard  to  those  letters  referred  to  in  the  catalog  as  having 
been  written  by  seekers  of  official  favors,  it  should  be  recalled 
here  that  in  the  case  of  such  "favors"  as  may  have  related  to  the 
affairs  of  Sterling,  Bayer,  and  Winthrop,  these  companies  had 
clauses  in  their  contracts  which  stipulated  that  Farben  would 
share  in  their  expenses.  The  possibility  of  Farben  thus  having  been 
charged  its  proportionate  share 'of  Clark's  salary  while  he  was 


TREASON'S    PEACE  135 

"Acting  Secretary"  of  the  President  of  the  United  States,  is  not 
edifying. 

However,  to  return  to  the  story  of  the  aborted  auction  of  the 
files.  Several  months  after  they  had  gone  to  their  Congressional 
guardians,  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  Mr.  Kohen.  His  little 
Hobby  Shop  is  just  around  the  corner  from  the  White  House,  on 
17th  St.  near  Pennsylvania  Avenue;  its  windows  and  the  counters 
and  cases  inside  display  autographed  letters,  historic  documents, 
stamps,  coins  and  medals.  Its  proprietor  told  me  a  dramatic  story. 

As  soon  as  the  story  of  the  Clark  files  was  published,  fantastic 
things  began  to  happen.  In  one  instance  an  imposing-looking  in- 
dividual came  into  the  shop,  while  two  other  men  stationed  them- 
selves outside  the  door.  His  visitor,  who  gave  no  name,  was  brief 
and  to  the  point.  He  merely  announced  that  he  had  come  to  get 
the  Clark  files,  and  had  brought  with  him  $100,000  in  cash  as 
purchase  money.  When  Mr.  Kohen  refused  this  bizarre  sum,  his 
mysterious  customer  denounced  him  as  a  fool,  and  departed  with 
his  little  black  bag. 

Mr.  Kohen  had  another  visitor,  this  one  a  gorgeous  young  lady 
—"and  I  mean  gorgeous,"  he  assured  me— who  came  into  the  shop 
and  wanted  to  know  whether  a  certain  gentleman  had  written  any 
of  those  letters  to  Mr.  Clark.  On  being  told  that  he  had,  the  young 
lady  informed  Mr.  Kohen  that  she  would  take  those  particular 
letters  at  his,  Mr.  Kohen's  price.  Again  the  offer  was  rejected. 

The  high  point  in  Mr.  Kohen's  story  was  the  reason  he  gave 
for  donating  the  files  to  his  country.  "As  a  veteran  of  the  last  war/' 
he  said,  "I  feared  that  if  I  let  the  auction  go  through,  a  German 
agent  might  get  the  files,  destroy  those  which  were  objectional 
to  the  Nazi  cause,  and  make  use  of  other  letters  to  embarrass  our 
present  war  effort." 

After  I  first  heard  the  story,  but  before  I  met  Mr.  Kohen,  I  sug- 
gested to  government  authorities  that  in  view  of  my  own  knowl- 
edge of  Clark's  activities,  an  official  examination  should  be  made 
of  this  correspondence.  So  far  as  I  can  learn  this  was  not  done. 

That  suggestion  was  by  no  means  my  first  effort  to  induce  official 
Washington  to  look  into  the  lobbying  activities  of  Mr.  Clark.  In 
December,  1929, 1  had  written  to  the  late  Thaddeus  H.  Caraway, 
asking  that  his  lobby  committee  question  Mr.  Clark  about  the 


136  TREASON'S   PEACE 

connection  between  Drug,  Inc.,  and  I.G.  Farben.  I  also  called 
the  Senator's  attention  to  the  fact  that  a  few  years  back,  Secre- 
tary of  Commerce  Herbert  Hoover  had  appointed  what  he  called 
a  Chemical  Advisory  Committee  to  help  him  decide  what  to  do 
about  the  encroachments  of  I.G.  Farben;  and  that  some  of  the 
individuals  who  had  been  appointed  to  that  committee  were  under 
the  influence  of  that  same  German  combine. 

With  that  letter  I  enclosed  a  reprint  of  an  editorial  from  the 
publication  Chemicals  of  May  13, 1929,  entitled  "Does  the  Ameri- 
can Chemical  Industry  Need  Guts/'  Senator  Caraway  never  ac- 
knowledged either  the  letter  or  the  editorial.  The  editorial  was 
written  by  my  good  friend  Sidney  W.  Dean,  Sr.,  one  of  the  few 
writers  in  the  chemical  industry  who  did  not  hesitate  to  express 
publicly,  what  was  said  privately  by  substantially  all  of  his  less 
robust  colleagues  when  the  subject  of  Farben  came  up. 

That  reads  in  part  as  follows: 

Several  weeks  ago.  through  the  financial  pages  of  the  met- 
ropolitan press,  it  was  announced  that  a  banking  group, 
headed  by  the  National  City  Bank  of  New  York,  was  offering 
$30,000,000  in  guaranteed  5%%  debentures  of  what-the 
American  I.G.  Chemical  Corporation.  This  American  (?) 
annex  to  the  German  dye  and  chemical  cartel— the  Interessen 
Gemeinschaft  Farbenindustrie  Aktiengesellschaft  of  Frank- 
fort-on-the-Main  in  Germany— proposes  to  manufacture  in 

America such  chemical  and  dye  products  as  synthetic 

gasoline  and  motor  fuels,  products  from  the  hydrogenation 
of  coal,  dyestuffs,  synthetic  fertilizers,  artificial  silks,  and 
solvents  and  lacquers.  While  not  so  stated,  this  new  colossus 
with  a  German  accent  will  also  manufacture  and  vend  medi- 
cinals,  pharmaceuticals,  photographic  chemicals,  biological 
stains,  etc 

It  is  an  amazing  program— yet  the  most  amazing  thing 
about  it  is  the  roster  of  American  business  men  announced 
as  affiliated  with  it  as  executives  and  as  directors 

Now,  what  is  this  $30,000,000  for?  Simple  enough  when  you 
stop  to  think  it  over— for  the  acquisition  of  stocks  of  certain 
prominent  American  chemical  companies already  deeply 


TREASON'S   PEACE  137 

attached  to  the  I.G.  by  agreement  or  friendship  or  relation- 
ship, or  patent  agreement,  or  what  have  you,  by  filaments  so 
fine  as  to  be  almost  invisible  to  the  general  public  and  chem- 
ical buyer  of  this  country,  and  yet  as  strong  as  steel 

Is  there  to  be  repetition  of  the  cut-throat  tactics  existing 
before  the  War  in  the  battle  for  dye  and  chemical  markets, 
not  only  in  the  United  States  but  in  Central  and  South  Amer- 
ica?   

Are  we  to  again  see  the  source  of  our  explosives  (for  every 
dye  laboratory  is  a  potential  arsenal)  under  the  dexterous 
thumb  of  gentlemen  wearing  honorary  degrees  from  Cologne 
or  Heidelberg  or  Berlin? 

Shall  our  recent  discoveries  in  the  realms  of  film  and  pho- 
tographic chemistry;  in  serums  and  stains,  in  pharmaceuticals, 
synthetics,  lacquers  and  solvents,  be  gathered  into  a  mighty 
merger  under  the  shadow  of  the  world's  most  grasping  and 
most  powerful  cartel? 

Dare  we,  realizing  that  mergers  and  trusts  cannot  be  oper- 
ated legally  in  this  country  with  foreign  control,  insist  that 
the  actual  ownership  and  direction  of  such  new  mergers  as 
shall  appear  from  now  on  in  the  field  of  chemistry  and  allied 
industries  be  probed  to  the  last  proxy  in  the  safe  deposit 
vaults  of  Wall  Street  or  the  depositaries  of  the  I.G.? 

Have  the  American  chemists  and  chemical  producers  and 
dye  makers  and  distributors  the  guts,  as  we  have  so  expressed 
it,  to  fight  this  new  battle  to  a  finish  so  that  we  may  know 
now  and  in  the  future  into  just  what  pockets  and  just  what 
coalitions  the  products  of  American  plants  and  laboratories 
are  descending? 

Have  the  American  chemists  forgotten  just  how  and  where 
many  of  the  formulae  were  obtained  for  products  which  have 
now  entered  world  trade  in  competition  with  Germany?  No? 
Well,  you  may  be  assured  that  Germany  has  not. 

Is  it  not  the  proper  moment  to  erect  a  few  tank-proof  ob- 
stacles in  the  way  of  such  international  merger-colossi  instead 
of  greasing  their  path  with  tears  of  sorrow  at  our  own  help- 
lessness, while  decking  the  oncoming  monopolies  with  the 


138  TREASON'S   PEACE 

coupons  of  bonds  sold  to  American  purchasers  by  American 
banking  houses? 

In  God's  name!  Has  the  American  chemical  industry  no 
guts? 

Full  credit  for  that  editorial  challenge  to  the  power  of  Farben 
belongs  to  Sidney  Dean,  but  I  had  some  small  part  in  its  inspira- 
tion and  I  also  secured  a  large  number  of  reprints  with  which  for 
some  time  afterward,  I  belabored  official  Washington  in  a  vain 
attempt  to  arouse  a  realization  of  what  Farben  had  already  done, 
and  proposed  to  do,  to  our  national  security. 

As  part  of  the  story  of  this  editorial  it  should  be  added  that  the 
publication  Chemicals  no  longer  exists.  It  met  with  the  sad  fate 
that  so  frequently  has  been  visited  upon  those  who  rushed  in,  in 
print,  where  the  Farben  brand  of  angels  fear  to  tread. 

The  story  of  Secretary  of  Commerce  Herbert  Hoover's  Chemical 
Advisory  Committee  goes  back  to  1925,  when  Mr.  Hoover  an- 
nounced that  he  had  appointed  a  group  of  nine  men,  each  promi- 
nent in  some  branch  of  the  chemical  industry,  to  act  as  a  liaison 
body  between  the  industry  and  the  Department  of  Commerce. 

One  member  of  that  original  committee  was  Henry  Howard, 
vice-president  of  the  Grasselli  Chemical  Co.  Later  Mr.  Howard's 
name  on  the  committee  was  to  assume  a  very  definite  significance. 

In  December,  1926,  several  hundred  men  more  or  less  promi- 
nent in  the  chemical  industry  received  invitations  signed  by  Mr. 
Hoover  which  stated  that  he  was  calling  a  conference  in  Wash- 
ington at  the  suggestion  of  the  Chemical  Advisory  Committee  in 
order  to  inform  the  Department  as  to  the  needs  of  the  industry. 

Being  one  of  the  elect  I  attended  the  conference  and  the  ban- 
quet which  followed.  By  that  time  I.G.  Farben  had  been  formed. 
Its  gigantic  proportions  were  realized  and  the  character  of  its 
early  tie-ups  in  the  American  drug  and  dye  industries  had  become 
public.  For  this  reason  the  main  subject  of  private  discussion  on 
the  floor  of  the  conference  was  Farben.  And  the  one  great  question 
in  the  minds  of  all  present  was  where  Mr.  Hoover  stood  on  the 
issue.  The  answer,  as  far  as  the  conference  was  concerned,  was 
zero. 

Mr.  Hoover  spoke  feelingly  of  the  wonderful  service  to  business 


TREASON'S    PEACE  139 

the  reorganized  and  enlarged  Commerce  Department  was  pre- 
pared to  render,  and  of  his  own  determination  to  assist  the  chem- 
ical industiy.  However,  when  some  of  the  diners  asked  questions 
which  approached  the  Farben  issue,  it  was  impossible  to  deter- 
mine from  the  replies  what,  if  anything,  the  Federal  Government 
intended  to  do  to  put  a  stop  to  foreign  encroachments  upon  the 
industry. 

A  year  later  it  was  announced  that  a  second  conference  of  execu- 
tives of  the  chemical  industry  was  to  be  called  by  Secretary  Hoover, 
and  this  time  the  engraved  invitation  tacitly  recognized  the  Farben 
issue  by  stating  that  its  purpose  was  "to  consider  present  world 
conditions  as  they  affect  the  American  chemical  industry.''  Mean- 
while, and  as  a  preliminary  to  this  second  conference,  it  was 
announced  that  Secretary  Hoover  had  decided  to  increase  the 
membership  of  his  Chemical  Advisory  Committee  with  eight 
additional  executives,  three  of  whom  were  Walter  Teagle,  presi- 
dent of  Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey,  Lammot  duPont  of  the  duPont 
Company  and  Frank  A.  Blair,  president  of  the  Sterling  subsidiary, 
Centaur  Co.  It  had  already  been  announced  publicly  that  Stan- 
dard, under  Teagle's  leadership,  had  entered  into  the  first  of  its 
tie-ups  with  Farben.  The  duPont  relationship  was  recognized.  And 
Sterling  was  boasting  openly  of  its  newly  gained  power  as  Farben's 
American  partner  in  the  drug  industry.  Blair  was  recognized  as 
the  most  active  of  the  lobbyists  who  represented  Sterling's  inter- 
ests at  Washington,  especially  in  legislative  matters. 

So,  here  were  four  men,  Teagle,  duPont,  Blair  and  Howard,  serv- 
ing on  the  Secretary's  Chemical  Advisory  Committee  to  tell  him 
what  the  chemical  industry  wanted  done  about  Farben.  And  the 
companies  of  all  of  them  may  appear  to  have  been  on  the  Farben 
side  of  the  fence. 

About  this  time,  many  articles  were  being  published  about  the 
tremendous  strides  the  Germans  were  making  in  their  attempt 
to  draw  the  chemical  industries  of  the  entire  world  into  their 
sphere  of  influence.  And  not  a  few  of  the  articles  had  to  do  with 
Farben's  new  ventures  in  the  United  States. 

In  the  New  York  Journal  of  Commerce  of  January  12,  1928, 
Department  of  Commerce  officials  were  quoted  as  having  stated 
that  they  had  no  confirmation  from  their  representatives  abroad 


140  TREASON'S   PEACE 

regarding  the  proposed  entry  of  I.G.  Farben  into  the  American 
chemical  industry,  and  refused  to  comment  upon  the  report  that 
Farben  was  seeking  to  purchase  American  companies.  The  cor- 
respondent of  the  Journal  then  went  on  to  state  that  there  was 
some  agitation  in  Washington  for  legislation  to  combat  the  en- 
croachments of  the  Germans,  but  that  Secretary  of  Commerce 
Herbert  Hoover  had  expressed  the  opinion  that  "lengthy  study 
of  the  situation  would  be  necessary  before  steps  could  be  taken 
to  amend  the  law,  and  that  hasty  action  should  not  be  counte- 
nanced." 

As  events  were  to  prove,  neither  hasty  action  nor  any  other 
kind  of  action  was  taken,  save  to  unlock  all  the  legal  doors  and 
throw  away  the  keys. 

Many  of  us  who  made  the  trip  to  Washington  for  the  second 
conference  expected  some  enlightenment,  and  possible  encourage- 
ment, on  the  Government's  attitude  towards  Farben.  We  got  the 
enlightenment— but  not  the  encouragement. 

Among  the  speakers  announced  were  Colonel  William  J.  Don- 
ovan, Acting  Attorney  General;  William  T.  Daugherty,  Trade 
Commissioner  of  the  Commerce  Department  at  Berlin;  and  Dan- 
iel J.  Reagan,  Commercial  Attache  at  Paris. 

Some  pointed  questions  had  been  prepared  to  be  put  to  Colonel 
Donovan  regarding  enforcement  of  the  antitrust  laws.  However, 
that  was  not  to  be.  The  open  forum,  which  had  been  scheduled, 
was  turned  into  a  closed  shop  by  the  opening  remarks  of  the  chair- 
man who  announced  that  it  had  been  decided  to  dispense  with 
questions  from  the  floor  because  they  would  not  be  as  beneficial 
as  questions  that  had  been  coordinated  by  the  Advisory  Committee. 

Mr.  Daugherty,  the  Secretary's  ace  investigator  of  the  German 
cartel,  made  some  interesting  observations.  "The  cartel,"  said  Mr. 
Daugherty,  "when  it  combines  producers  of  varying  production 
costs,  protects  the  weak  against  the  strong"  (a  beautiful  thought 
but  hardly  an  accurate  one).  Mr.  Daugherty  went  on  to  say: 

German  dye  trust  officials  have  been  considerably  exer- 
cised of  late  by  press  reports  that  their  chemical  industry  cal- 
culated to  consolidate  for  the  particular  purpose  of  opposing 
the  best  interests  of  the  American  chemical  industry.  While 


TREASON'S   PEACE  141 

it  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  discussion  to  reach  any  definite 
conclusion  on  this  controversial  issue  .....  I  can  quote  cer- 
tain leading  figures  of  the  German  dye  trust  who  deny  first 
that  they  are  out  to  fight  the  American  chemical  industry,  and 
secondly  that  the  dye  trust  has  bought  heavily  into  shares 
of  the  American  chemical  industry. 

They  emphasize  on  the  other  hand  that  it  is  their  wish 
to  frame  agreements  with  elements  in  the  American  chemical 
industry and  cite  as  proof  of  this  at  least  three  German- 
American  agreements  arrived  at  in  the  past  year.  They  indi- 
cate also  that  further  special  agreements  with  American  chem- 
ical and  related  companies  are  in  sight 

Before  leaving  Berlin  last  month,  I  was  told  substantially 
the  same  thing  by  Dr.  Bueb,  the  dye  trust's  leading  figure 
in  that  city,  that  if  accurate  information  were  wanted  concern- 
ing the  dye  trusts'  plans  in  connection  with  international  tie- 
ups,  either  he  or  Dr.  Bosch  would  welcome  questions  from 
any  reasonable  American  firm,  association,  or  individual. 

The  dye  trust's  argument  is  of  course  that  rationalization, 
begun  after  the  inflation  period  in  Germany,  is  now  being 
sought  internationally  in  the  interest  of  lowering  costs  by 
combatting  over-production,  by  allocating  markets,  and  it 
follows  that  such  arrangements  involve  price  fixing.  This  effort 
is  only  in  its  beginning  now  and  the  future  may  bring  forth 
many  significant  international  associations. 

When  Mr.  Daugherty  finished  his  address  I  found  myself  stand- 
ing at  the  elbow  of  Mr.  H.  Hill  of  Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.  I  asked 
him  how  he  liked  the  speech.  "Very  good,  splendid"  replied  that 
member  of  Farben's  American  front. 

Mr.  Reagan's  speech,  in  light  of  later  events,  contained  some 
food  for  thought.  He  quoted  the  head  of  the  French  dyestuff  in- 
dustry as  saying  that  he  considered  it  the  policy  of  the  French 
chemical  industry  to  promote  peace  by  effecting  international 
ententes. 

Colonel  Donovan  was  the  most  important  speaker  at  the  con- 
ference, and  his  subject,  as  announced,  "Foreign  Cartels  and  Amer- 
ican Industry"  gave  promise  of  a  clear-cut  statement  of  the  attitude 


142  TREASON'S   PEACE 

of  the  Justice  Department  towards  I.G.  Farben  and  the  latter 's 
American  tie-ups.  Stated  the  Colonel: 

It  is  the  belief  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  that  when  a 
foreign  monopoly,  though  legal  in  its  place  of  origin,  comes 
into  this  country,  and,  by  collusion  with  our  citizens  enters 
into  agreements  here  for  the  restraint  of  trade  and  the  en- 
hancement of  prices,  those  agreements  are  just  as  illegal,  and 
just  as  much  subject  to  our  laws,  as  they  would  be  if  the  cor- 
porations and  individuals  involved  were  creatures  of  our  gov- 
ernment. 

This  part  of  the  talk  sounded  as  though  the  Colonel  was  clearing 
the  decks  for  action.  Thurman  Arnold  could  not  have  put  it  strong- 
er. A  bit  later,  however,  he  said: 

So  far  as  it  presently  appears,  the  so-called  chemical  en- 
tente and  the  Franco-German  dyestuffs  agreement  appear  to 
involve  no  attempt  to  exploit  this  market.  In  fact,  we  have 
authentic  assurances  that  these  arrangements  are  not  directed 
against  this  market. 

Two  days  before  the  conference  those  of  us  who  had  accepted 
the  invitation  received  a  wire  stating  that  Mr.  Hoover  would  be 
unable  to  attend.  His  apologies,  read  to  the  conference,  expressed 
his  regret  at  not  being  present,  and  complimented  the  industry 
for  having  solved  some  of  its  difficulties.  "The  Department  of 

Commerce/'  said  the  absent  Secretary,  "is  created  for  service 

We  can  serve  only  by  direction  of  the  leaders  of  the  industry. 
Therefore  the  industry  is  asked  to  express  its  needs  to  the  Advisory 
Council/' 

It  was  a  happy  thought,  we  could  write  to  Mr.  Teagle  or  to 
Mr.  Blair.  In  my  own  case  all  doubts  were  removed.  I  declared  an 
all-out  war. 

Mr.  Hoover  became  Secretary  of  Commerce  in  1920,  when  the 
original  postwar  Republican  Cabinet  was  installed  by  Warren  G. 
Harding.  His  official  activities  in  Europe  during  the  war,  and 
as  an  adviser  at  the  Peace  Conference,  had  given  him  much  first- 
hand knowledge  of  the  backstage  connections  of  Kaiser  Wilhelm's 


TREASON'S   PEACE  143 

war  machine.  As  Secretary  of  Commerce  for  eight  years,  he  was 
to  be  supplied  with  much  additional  data  which  pictured  the  pat- 
tern of  I.  G.  Farben  in  all  of  its  many  manifestations  in  other 
countries  and  inside  the  United  States. 

In  January,  1924,  Dr.  Julius  Klein,  Director  of  the  Bureau  of  For- 
eign and  Domestic  Commerce,  transmitted  to  Secretary  Hoover 
a  report  prepared  by  Thomas  W.  Dalahanty,  of  the  Chemical 
Division,  which  contained  a  very  excellent  historical  sketch  and 
chart  of  the  German  dye  companies.  The  report  referred  to  the 
part  played  by  the  German  government  in  the  success  of  the  car- 
tel; to  the  cartel's  practice  of  taking  out  basic  patents  in  all  coun- 
tries in  order  to  stifle  others  in  its  field;  and  to  the  dishonest  prac- 
tices of  dumping,  bribery,  deceptive  labeling,  and  false  propa- 
ganda; and  the  setting  up  of,  or  control  of  factories  in  this  and 
other  countries  in  order  to  assist  the  mother  industry. 

No  one  reading  that  report  could  have  any  doubt  as  to  pre- 
cisely what  the  Germans  proposed  to  do  and  would  accomplish, 
if  permitted,  in  the  establishment  of  new  tie-ups,  partnerships  and 
subsidiaries,  inside  the  United  States. 

In  1927  Dr.  Klein  and  Mr.  A.  Cressy  Morrison,  Union  Carbide  & 
Chemical  Corp.,  executive,  and  chairman  of  Hoover's  Chemical 
Advisory  Committee,  attended  the  Economic  Conference  of  the 
League  of  Nations  as  unofficial  observers  for  the  United  States. 
Mr.  Morrison's  widely  published  accounts  of  the  conference  dis- 
cussed at  some  length  the  so-dalled  "Rationalization  of  Industry" 
by  which  I.G.  Farben,  as  a  cartel,  was  alleged  to  reduce  costs 
and  therefore  lower  prices  to  the  consumer.  Mr.  Morrison  was 
somewhat  skeptical  about  the  usefulness  of  the  cartel  theory,  and 
stated  quite  plainly  that  its  strength  lay  in  its  centralized  control 
and  ability  to  dump  its  products  or  utilize  other  competitive  de- 
vices to  strangle  its  competitors.  He  recited  one  illustration,  dis- 
cussed at  Geneva,  of  the  prewar  activities  of  the  German  dye  cartel 
in  a  South  American  country,  which  made  this  vicious  part  of 
the  Farben  pattern  stand  out  in  such  high  relief  that  it  should 
have  been  sufficient  warning  to  all  concerned  that  Farben  was 
again  erecting  an  espionage  machine.  As  Mr.  Morrison  described 
it: 


144  TREASON'S   PEACE 

In  Brazil,  for  illustration,  representatives  of  the  German 
Government  were  everywhere,  in  banks  and  other  clerical 
positions,  acquiring  information  regarding  contracts  and 
trade  relations  with  other  countries,  so  that  the  information 
might  be  transmitted  to  Germany  and  there  acted  upon  by 
the  cartel  for  the  benefit  of  German  commerce. 

Then,  in  February  1928,  at  the  time  of  the  Chemical  Executives' 
conference,  the  Commerce  Department  published  a  lengthy  anal- 
ysis of  the  progress  of  I.G.  Farben,  which  referred  to  the  1927 
tie-up  with  Standard  Oil;  to  its  ties  on  rayon  with  the  English 
Courtaulds,  owners  of  American  Viscose;  and  with  Metz,  Gras- 
selli,  and  Sterling-Bayer. 

Thus  the  record  of  this  entire  period  proves  conclusively  that 
during  what  Thurman  Arnold  later  called  "the  era  of  non-en- 
forcement of  the  antitrust  laws/'  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  knew  in  ample  detail  what  Farben  was  doing  in  Europe 
and  in  precise  detail  how  illegal  its  tie-ups  were  inside  the  United 
States. 

Colonel  Donovan  made  another  noteworthy  contribution  to 
the  picture  on  May  9,  1929,  after  Mr.  Hoover  had  become  Presi- 
dent and  Donovan  had  resigned  from  the  Justice  Department.  Al- 
though then  in  private  practice,  his  views  were  regarded  as  in- 
dicating what  action  might  be  expected  from  the  Hoover  adminis- 
tration with  regard  to  the  financing  of  Farben's  American  I.  G. 
Chemical  Corporation  with  thirty  million  good  American  dollars, 
which  operation,  successfully  consummated  within  a  few  weeks 
of  Mr.  Hoover's  inauguration  as  President,  had  incited  the  out- 
spoken wrath  of  many  men  in  the  industry. 

The  Colonel's  address  to  a  large  gathering  of  members  of  some 
fifteen  technical  associations  at  the  annual  chemical  industries 
banquet  said  little  about  the  Farben  issue,  but  that  little  was  to 
the  point.  He  stated  that  if  the  United  States  could  build  plants  in 
France  and  in  Germany  for  the  production  of  American  automo- 
biles and  machinery,  then  the  Germans  had  an  equal  right  under 
the  law  to  erect  chemical  plants  in  this  country. 

The  loaning  of  American  money  to  Farben  to  enable  it  to  erect 
plants  in  the  United  States,  and  the  illegal  character  of  the  tie-ups 


TREASON'S   PEACE  145 

by  which  Farben  was  tightening  its  grip  upon  our  munition  in- 
dustries, did  not  enter  into  the  argument. 

In  March  1930,  Representative  Wright  Patman  of  Texas  made 
a  bitter  attack  upon  both  the  Justice  Department  and  the  Federal 
Trade  Commission  for  not  enforcing  the  antitrust  laws,  and  gave 
special  mention  to  the  Standard  Oil  group,  to  which  he  accused 
the  new  Attorney  General,  William  D.  Mitchell,  of  turning  over 
his  office.  "This"  said  Patman,  "is  because  he  is  following  directly 
in  the  footsteps  of  Harry  Daugherty."  Patman's  reference  to  for- 
mer Attorney  General  Daugherty  takes  us  back  to  some  of  the 
notorious  instances  of  criminal  malfeasance  and  official  degrada- 
tion of  the  Harding  Administration. 

Among  these  shameful  incidents  were  the  indictment  and  trials 
of  Daugherty  and  Thomas  W.  Miller,  former  Alien  Property  Cus- 
todian, for  conspiracy  in  receiving  bribes  from  German  and  Swiss 
interests  in  consideration  for  the  return  of  some  $7,000,000  of 
German  property  which  had  been  seized  by  A.  Mitchell  Palmer 
and  Francis  Garvan.  Others  indicted  were  John  T.  King,  former 
Republican  National  Committeeman  from  Connecticut;  and  Jesse 
W.  Smith,  this  friend  of  Daugherty,  who  lived  in  the  "little  house 
with  the  green  shutters"  had  an  appointment  to  "talk"  one  morn- 
ing but  never  kept  it— he  was  found  quite  dead  with  a  revolver  in 
his  hand  and  a  hole  in  his  head.  King  died  before  the  first  trial 
of  Daugherty  and  Miller,  at  which  a  hung  jury  resulted.  In  the 
second  trial  Miller  was  convicted,  but  the  jury  failed  by  a  single 
vote  to  convict  the  former  Republican  Attorney  General. 

Regardless  of  the  extent  to  which  I.G.  Dyes  was  directly  in- 
volved with  the  German  and  Swiss  individuals  named  in  these 
indictments,  the  purpose  of  those  who  supplied  the  $400,000  bribe 
was  the  development  of  the  Farben  pattern. 

In  1929  Francis  P.  Garvan  brilliantly  summed  up,  on  a  court 
record,  some  of  the  official  infamies  which  accompanied  the  be- 
ginnings of  Farben's  comeback  in  the  United  States.  Garvan  was 
the  most  conspicuous  defendant  in  a  case  which  was  instituted 
during  the  Coolidge  administration  against  A.  Mitchell  Palmer, 
Garvan,  and  a  number  of  others  in  the  federal  court  at  Boston, 
Mass.,  for  alleged  improper  handling  of  the  sale  of  Bosch  Magneto 


146  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Co.,  headed  by  Robert  Bosch,  brother  and  close  associate  of  Carl 
Bosch  head  of  I.G.  Dyes  and  I.G.  Farben. 

The  charges  were  made  and  publicized  continuously  from  the 
time  Palmer  and  Garvan  first  seized  and  then  sold  the  Bosch  prop- 
erty for  over  $4,000,000,  under  authority  and  instructions  of  Presi- 
dent Woodrow  Wilson.  They  constituted  the  high  point  in  the 
propaganda  to  discredit  the  seizure  of  the  properties  and  patents 
of  the  Germans,  and  to  justify  their  return  by  the  Republican  post- 
war administrations. 

Among  those  involved  was  Merton  E.  Lewis,  a  lawyer  who  was 
first  retained  by  the  Bosch  interests  in  1919  to  attack  Mr.  Palmer 
before  a  Senate  Committee.  Later,  Mr.  Lewis  was  made  an  assis- 
tant to  the  Attorney  General  to  prosecute  Garvan  and  Palmer,  and, 
fantastic  as  it  may  appear,  his  pay  for  this  official  service  again 
came  out  of  Bosch  funds. 

Among  others  named  by  Garvan  in  scathing  language  were  John 
Grim,  former  counsel  for  the  German  Embassy  who  was  appointed 
by  the  Justice  Department  to  secure  Garvan's  indictment;  along 
with  former  Attorney  General  Daugherty  and  his  notorious  pals, 
Jesse  Smith,  Gaston  B.  Means,  Thomas  B.  Felder,  John  T.  King, 
Thomas  W.  Miller  and  a  long  list  of  others  identified  by  Garvan 
as  German  agents., 

Republican  Senator  George  H.  Moses  was  pictured  as  instigat- 
ing Gaston  Means  to  "get"  Garvan  by  fair  means  or  foul,  and  as 
appointing  Otto  Kahn,  partner  of  Paul  M.  Warburg,  of  Ameri- 
can I.G.,  as  treasurer  of  the  Republican  Committee  to  raise  funds 
with  which  to  elect  Senators  who  would  vote  favorably  to  Farben's 
interests. 

Mr.  Garvan's  testimony,  with  citations  from  official  records,  was 
couched  in  language  without  precedent  in  denouncing  high  gov- 
ernment officials  in  a  court  proceeding.  Garvan,  waiting  for  years 
for  the  opportunity,  forced  into  one  concise  record  the  assembly  of 
facts  which  not  only  cleared  him  and  the  others  of  wrong  doing, 
but  proved  the  infamy  which  had  indicted  them.  He  let  loose 
with  both  barrels  and  the  result  was  devastating. 

While  Mr.  Garvan  was  testifying  relative  to  the  Bosch  Magneto 
case  one  of  the  government  attorneys  asked: 


TREASON'S   PEACE  147 

Has  anything  occurred  since  Jan.  1,  1919,  which  had  been 
the  occasion  of  your  having  a  rather  accurate  memory  with 
respect  to  the  details  of  the  Bosch  transaction? 

Garvan  in  reply  let  loose  a  barrage  of  fact  which  completely 
destroyed  the  case  against  him,  and  which  pictured  the  pattern 
of  Farben  and  its  allies  in  all  of  its  vicious  ramifications.  For  stark 
indecency  there  is  no  page  in  the  history  of  this  republic  which 
approaches  the  recital  of  shameless  bribery,  brazen  corruption  and 
foul  pollution  of  official  power  which  Garvan,  on  Dec.  11,  1929, 
hurled  into  the  faces  of  his  accusers,  and  burned  into  the  records, 
of  the  case. 

Incriminating  his  persecutors  with  one  sordid  fact  after  an- 
other Garvan  traced  each  link  in  the  chain  of  official  degradation 
straight  back  to  Robert  and  Carl  Bosch,  and  to  the  latter's  plan 
to  destroy  the  military  security  of  this  nation. 

It  is  imperative  to  quote  Garvan's  testimony  at  some  length  in 
order  that  the  reader  may  perceive,  in  its  full  significance,  how  the 
sinister  facts  from  the  record  fit.  together  to  form  the  pattern  of 
what  has  already  happened— and  the  prospect  of  what  was  yet  to 
come.  In  part,  Mr.  Garvan's  testimony  was  as  follows: 

In  answer  to  your  question  as  to  the  refreshing  of  my 
recollection  .....  I  think  it  is  probably  better  to  state  it 
this  way:  that  the  overpowering  fact  that  has  illuminated  my 
memory,  has  made  me  search  every  possible  record  and  has 
made  me  ceaselessly  work  night  and  day  to  ascertain  the  truth 
of  the  facts  in  this  case,  was  the  charge  in  the  complaint  here, 
signed  and  sworn  to  by  Merton  E.  Lewis,  to  the  effect  that 
when  our  country's  darkest  hour,  in  April  1918,  was  at  hand, 
when,  as  President  Wilson  said,  we  were  with  our  backs  to 
the  wall,  that  I  betrayed  my  country  and  entered  into  a  con 

spiracy to  turn  over  this  company for  less  than 

its  value.  That  is  a  charge  of  treason  and  there  has  not  been 
one  word  of  testimony,  and  furthermore  there  never  can  be 
one  word  of  testimony  adduced  as  to  the  truth  of  that  charge 

and  then  I  found the  following  facts:  that  in  our 

files  (Alien  Property  Custodian)  on  the  payroll  of  the  Ham- 
burg American  line  for  three  years  before  the  war  was  a  man 


148  TREASON'S   PEACE 

by  the  name  of  John  T.  King,  receiving  a  salary  of  $15,000  a 
year  for  mysterious  services;  that  on  that  payroll  was  Gaston 
B.  Means;  that  Means  had  been  a  German  spy  in  this  country 

for  years  and  years and  then  this  man  John  T.  King 

shows  up  in  my  office  and  says  he  is  to  be  appointed  Alien 
Property  Custodian John  King  told  me  his  appoint- 
ment had  been  obtained  by  himself  from  Senator  Moses, 

and  next  we  find that  he  and  Senator  Moses  had 

obtained  the  appointment  of  Thomas  W.  Miller  of  Wilming- 
ton, Delaware. 

Then,  the  day  after  Miller  is  appointed I  find  Sena- 
tor Moses  in  Tom  Miller's  office asking  about  the  Bosch 

case next,  in  May  1921,  two  months  after  I  left  the 

office,  we  find  Gaston  Means  is  put  in  on  the  investigation 
of  the  Bosch  Magneto  case.  I  refer  now  to  Gaston  Means' 
testimony  in  which  he  admits  he  had  been  a  German  spy  for 
six  years;  that  he  got  $1,000  a  week  from  Boy-ed;  that  he  had 

been  tried  for  murder  in  Carolina and  he  himself  says 

that  Senator  Moses  put  him  in  charge  of  the  Bosch  case 

then  we  find  that  they  must  have  a  lawyer  to  take  charge 
of  this  case,  and  whom  do  they  select  but  John  Grim,  spelled 

in  English  C-r-i-m  but  in  German  K-r-i-m Who  is  John 

Grim?  During  the  war  he  was  counsel  for  Hays,  Kaufman  and 
Lindheim,  the  counsel  for  the  German  Embassy,  two  mem- 
bers of  which  firm  I  sent  to  State's  Prison.  He  was  counsel 
for  Hans  Tauscher,  who  tried  to  blow  up  the  Welland  Canal, 
and  he  was  counsel  for  the  German  who  tried  to  put  bombs 
on  ships  in  our  harbor,  and  his  entire  war  service  was  that 

of  serving  German  malefactors When  the  war  is  over 

he is  put  down  in  Washington  in  charge  of  the  prosecu- 
tion of  the  officers  of  the  United  States  Government  who 
seized  German  property  during  the  war.  Thus  it  goes  on; 
from  that  time  on  we  find  Means  and  Grim  and  Burns  in 
charge  of  the  proceedings;  we  find  Means  reporting  to  Jesse 
Smith  of  Attorney  General  Daugherty's  staff;  we  find  Bosch 
now  hiring  another  man,  Thomas  Felder,  who  is  Daugherty's 
ward  man,  who  since  was  convicted  and  is  dead;  Means  since 
convicted  of  defrauding  the  United  States  Government  and 


TREASON'S   PEACE  149 

bribing  its  officers Later  we  find  Miller  convicted  and 

sent  to  Atlanta  Prison  for  being  an  employe  of  the  Germans 

in  this  country.  Poor  Tom  Miller,  a  decent  clean  boy 

a  beautiful  clean  record  in  the  war,  and  then  this  bunch 
picked  him,  because  he  was  a  weakling,  and  then  corrupted 
him  with  German  funds— for  what?  For  getting  behind  their 
movement  to  recover  not  only  the  Bosch  Magneto  but  to 
recover  the  whole  six  hundred  millions  of  German  property. 

Always  remember  that  this  case  is  only  the  bellwether 

of  German  propaganda.  This  case  was  really  over  in  1928 

when  they  had  befogged  the  mind  of  Congress,  and  befogged 
the  issue  as  the  bill  was  passed  which  returned  every  dollar 
of  German  property  that  had  been  seized  during  the  war 

Next  they  concocted  the  scheme  of  indicting  me  in  the 
Chemical  Foundation  case  .....  I  went  down  there  and  Mr. 
Grim,  this  counsel  for  the  German  Embassy,  counsel  for  Hans 
Tauscher,  counsel  for  explosive  bombs,  counsel  for  members 
of  the  bar  convicted  for  defrauding  the  Government  during 
the  war,  and  German  spies,  opened  the  door  of  the  United 
States  Grand  Jury  room  and  said,  'Please  give  me  your  books/ 

and  I  said,  'No  sir,  I  will  walk  in  with  them'  and when 

I  got  in  I  offered  to  waive  all  immunity  and  I  asked  Mr.  Grim 
to  turn  right  around  and  explain  to  the  Grand  Jury  who  he 
was  and  what  he  was  doing  there  and  what  his  former  record 
was,  and  how  this  was  not  a  case  of  the  United  States  against 
Garvan,  but  that  it  was  a  case  of  Germany  against  the 

United  States,  and  I  asked  the  Grand  Jury to  make  Mr. 

Grim  tell  them  who  he  was  and  what  he  was  doing  there. 
And  that  was  the  last  of  Grim  in  the  Chemical  Foundation 
case  or  in  the  Bosch  case 

Another  thing  that  has  made  this  thing  burn  into  my 
mind is  the  fact  that  the  man  who  sat  in  at  the  begin- 
ning of  these  charges  in  1919  (M.  E.  Lewis)  now  is  able  to 
make  this  charge  in  this  complaint  under  a  salary  of  $1,000 
per  month  drawn  from  the  German  funds  in  direct  viola- 
tion of  the  Penal  Law  of  the  United  States 

America  is  entitled  to  know  that  the  propaganda  for  the 


150  TREASON'S    PEACE 

return  of  German  property  which  seemed  to  necessitate  be- 
spattering public  officials was  founded  upon  misstate- 

ment  of  facts  and  false  charges,  and  I  want  to  ask  that  at  the 
conclusion  of  this  hearing  Mr.  Lewis  stand  on  his  feet  and 
say  what  he  had  in  his  heart  and  mind  when  he  made  those 
charges,  and  to  ask  me  any  questions  under  the  sun,  because 
now,  at  last  I  see  him  face  to  face 

I  wanted  to  prove  this  whole  historical  picture.  I  wanted  to 
call  Senator  Moses  before  you  and  Merton  E.  Lewis  and  Otto 

Heins  and  Robert  Bosch and  I  wanted  to  show  you  how 

the  two  Bosch  brothers  in  Germany,  Robert,  the  head  of  this 
concern,  with  his  powers  of  attorney  from  twenty  or  fifty 

other  big  concerns  in  Germany,  and  Carl the  head  of 

the  chemical  cartel  of  the  world,  joined  forces and 

show  you  the  whole  historical  picture  which  came  to  a  close 
with  the  successful  return  of  German  property 

I  would  like  to  insert  in  the  record  from  Means'  own  tes- 
timony the  fact  that  he  admits  that  Senator  Moses  obtained 

his  appointment  on  the  Bosch  case; they  published 

across  the  country  that  a  conspiracy  had  been  established 

and  then  came  the  tie-up  with  Hearst and  the 

great  publications  in  his  office  where  you  will  find  all  the 
private  papers  of  the  Attorney  General's  office  and  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian's  office 

The  pressure  of  the  government  of  Germany  which  had 

bought  Attorney  General  Daugherty  and  Tom  Miller 

those  are  the  things  that  burn  this  case  into  my  mind 

they  obtained  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Lewis  as  Attorney 
General I  particularly  want  to  put  into  the  record  let- 
ters from  Senator  Moses,  from  his  office  rather,  Mrs.  Gold  to 
Mr.  Bennett,  showing  his  control  of  the  Bosch  Magneto  case 
and  showing  the  linking  of  it  together  with  the  fight  against 
our  building  up  the  chemical  industry 

All  that  time  the  Attorney  General  of  the  United  States, 
Daugherty,  and  the  Alien  Property  Custodian,  Thomas  Miller, 
were  in  the  employ  and  pay  of  German  people  and  had  $50,000 
worth  of  U.  S.  Government  bonds  handed  them  and  put  in 


TREASON'S   PEACE  151 

their  pockets  by  whom— Go  back,  go  back,  go  back— by  John 
T.  King,  the  $15,000  representative  who  died  three  days 
before  he  could  be  tried 

Some  of  you  saw  the  other  day  that  Senator  Moses  had 
appointed  Otto  Kahn  as  treasurer  for  the  election  of  new 
Senators.  You  did  not  associate  the  fact  that  his  friend  and 
partner,  Warburg,  is  the  head  and  front  of  the  American 
interest  in  the  American  Interessen  Gemeinschaft,  in  its  at- 
tempt to  destroy  our  chemical  industry,  and  that  there  is  a 
tariff  pending  in  the  U.  S.  Senate,  and  that  the  same  ques- 
tion is  left  open,  and  that  the  same  Pickrell  and  the  same 
agents  that  worked  in  this  case,  are  working  around  the  cor- 
ridors of  the  Senate  today.  The  endeavor  was  that  Kahn 
would  furnish  the  money  for  the  election  of  the  Senators  who 
would  vote  upon  the  question  of  American  valuation  or  for- 
eign valuation.  German  propaganda  again  eating  into  the 
vital  problem  of  the  life  or  death  of  the  second  greatest  in- 
dustry of  the  country  today,  the  chemical  industry.  It  is  never 
a  dead  issue.  Peace?  There  is  no  Peace.  Always  the  fight  goes 
on  for  the  supremacy  in,  the  chemical  industry  because  it  is 
the  keystone  to  the  safety  of  the  United  States  or  of  any  coun- 
try in  the  world  today.  Your  rules,  your  statutes,  your  Bosch 
case  are  only  appendages,  they  are  only  part  of  a  great,  great, 
struggle  of  Germany  to  recover  the  position  of  throttling 
chemical  development  and  of  domniating  over  the  entire 
world  the  development  of  the  chemical  industry,  which  is 
the  secret  of  industrial  prosperity  and  the  secret  of  military 
prosperity,  and  the  secret  of  the  peace  and  happiness  and 
health  of  the  nation,  that  is  why  I  put  into  this  record  a  bit 
of  the  historical  picture  because  you  will  find  the  same  bunch 
down  in  Washington,  you  will  find  Bennett  in  Washington, 
you  will  find  Herman  Metz,  you  will  find  Pickrell,  you  will 
find  the  same  bunch  working  from  the  same  offices,  with  the 
same  sources  of  money,  using  every  contention  possible  to 
befog  the  minds  of  Congress,  which  is  charged  with  the 
protection  of  this  country  in  its  industries  and  in  its  military 
equipment.  That  is  about  all  I  think  of. 


152  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Merton  E.  Lewis,  after  an  unsuccessful  effort  to  have  Garvan's 
entire  statement  stricken  from  the  record,  began  a  rambling  dis- 
course on  the  circumstances  which  he  said  led  to  his  original 
association  with  the  Bosch  interest,  and  to  his  later  appointment 
as  a  special  assistant  at  $10^000,  a  year  to  prosecute  the  case 
against  Garvan  and  Palmer.  Garvan  continued  to  torment  Lewis 
during  the  latter's  attempt  to  explain  away  the  charges;  at  one 
point  Garvan  demanded  that  Lewis  cross-examine  him  on  the  al- 
leged conspiracy: 

Now  is  the  opportunity,  if  there  is  any  question  lurking  in 
any  man's  mind,  why  for  God's  sake,  let  him  speak  up  and 

ask  me  questions I  don't  care  how  far  astray  or  how 

personal  or  how  anything  else  the  questions  are,  but  ask 
them  of  me  now. 

Mr.  Lewis  apparently  did  not  choose  to  ask  Garvan  a  single 
question.  He  did  not  care  for  the  way  Garvan  answered  ques- 
tions. So  Mr.  Garvan,  the  defendant,  finally  asked  Mr.  Lewis  the 
prosecutor: 

I  understand  you  said  that  neither  Attorney  General  Sargent, 
nor  his  assistant.  Mr.  Letts,  ever  told  you  you  were  being 
paid  by  the  Germans? 

MR.  LEWIS:  I  don't  think  they  did  at  that  time.  I  learned  of 
it  of  course,  when  a  check  came  to  me 

Mr.  Garvan  later  put  into  the  record  a  letter  describing  how 
the  plans  for  recovering  German  properties  were  progressing.  This 
was  written  by  Harvey  T.  Andrews,  agent  of  the  Bosch  interests, 
in  July  1922  to  one  of  his  employers  in  Germany.  It  stated,  in  part: 

The  work  entailed  on  my  office  in  the  disentangling  of  the 
German  property  proposition  has  entailed  profound  and  con- 
stant attention.  Sundays,  nights,  holidays  and  every  day  have 

been  all  alike  since  you  left 

It  appears  at  the  present  time  as  if  I  was  among  the  few 
who  really  had  the  right  angle  on  this  matter The  recog- 
nition on  the  part  of  the  Administration  of  the  fundamental 
principles  is  due  largely  to  my  efforts  as  well  as  to  my  con- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  153 

nections,  and  it  would  be  futile  for  me  to  attempt  to  explain 
how,  where  and  through  what  agencies  I  succeeded  in  getting 

it  done I  have  done  all  that  my  thirty-five  years  of 

practical  knowledge  of  political  affairs  in  this  country  induced 

me  to  do  in  order  to  win Have  a  little  patience  and 

everything  will  be  much  better  than  you  anticipated. 

This  astounding  document  was  sworn  to  by  Mr.  Garvan  on  Jan. 
22,  1930,  and  was  then  made  a  part  of  the  record  of  the  federal 
court  at  Boston,  whereupon  Attorney  General  Mitchell  promptly 
announced  that  the  suit  was  dismissed  because  no  wrongdoing 
had  been  shown  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Palmer  or  Mr.  Garvan  or  any 
of  the  other  officials  accused  in  the  complaint  of  conspiracy  in  the 
seizure  and  sale  of  the  Bosch  property.  If  the  government  had  won 
this  suit  the  chief  beneficiaries  would  have  been  Robert  Bosch  and 
his  associates.  Yet  to  this  day,  mud  continues  to  be  thrown  at  the 
memory  of  Francis  P.  Garvan  on  the  basis  of  those  fake  charges 
first  made  and  broadcast  by  some  of  Harding's  gang. 

Inevitably  as  the  pattern  is  unfolded  the  story  now  goes  back 
still  further— it  goes  back  to  the  letter  written  in  1916  by  the  Bayer 
Company's  Dr.  Hugo  Schweitzer  to  Ambassador  von  Bernstorff, 
in  which  that  celebrated  head  of  German  espionage  spoke  of  elect- 
ing a  President  of  the  United  States  whose  party  politics  were 
more  in  harmony  with  the  cause  of  the  German  dye  trust.  The 
story  goes  back  also  to  Herman  A.  Metz,  the  dyed-in-the-wool 
Tammany  leader  and  life-long  Democrat  who  suddenly  switched 
his  allegiance  to  the  Republican  Party. 

In  1930,  while  Metz  was  explaining  to  the  Senate  Lobby  his 
campaign  contributions  to  Senator  King,  he  also  gave  his  reasons 
for  having  deserted  the  Democrats  in  1919.  Senator  Caraway  de- 
veloped this  in  the  following  testimony: 

SENATOR  CARAWAY:  You  came  to  Congress  as  a  Democrat? 

MR.  METZ:  Yes  Sir. 

SENATOR  CARAWAY:  I  believe  you  were  one  of  the  Harding 

Democrats?  A  Democrat  that  supported  Mr.  Harding? 
MR.  METZ:  Well,  I  contributed  to  the  Harding  campaign  fund 

afterward;  yes,  sir.  I  did  not  like  the  treatment  some  of  the 

Democrats  gave  me. 


154  TREASON'S    PEACE 

(Metz'  dislike  for  the  treatment  that  some  of  the  Democrats 
gave  him  and  his  I.G.  friends  is  understandable.  So  it  is  per- 
missible to  conclude  that  he  bolted  the  Democrats  for  a  more 
sympathetic  party.) 

However,  according  to  Metz  his  "people  abroad"  did  not  alto- 
gether approve  of  his  holding  public  office  because  they  thought 
that  it  interfered  with  his  business  activities;  or  at  least  so  he 
once  informed  a  Senate  Committee.  Possibly  the  I.G.  considered 
Metz  more  useful  from  the  less  conspicuous  vantage  point  as  a 
business  man  and  philanthropist  who  would  be  free  to  contribute 
campaign  gifts  where  they  would  do  the  most  good. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  postwar  decade  President  Herbert 
Hoover  wrote  to  his  good  friend,  Dr.  William  O.  Thompson,  presi- 
dent emeritus  of  Ohio  State  University,  a  plaintive  discourse 
upon  the  problems  confronting  a  chief  executive  of  the  nation. 
In  that  letter,  dated  Jan.  10,  1930,  President  Hoover  said  in  part: 

We  can  and  must,  however,  greatly  increase  the  production 
of  truth,  and  we  must  know  the  truth,  before  the  grave  inter- 
est of  120,000,000  people  is  involved  in  government  policies. 

The  author  has  had  Mr.  Hoover's  quaintly  expressed  goal  con- 
stantly in  mind  for  many  years;  he  believes  it  to  be  particularly 
applicable  to  this  chapter. 


CHAPTER         IX 


Democrats — Facing  Both  Ways 


EARLY      IN      MARCH 

1942  six  distinguished-looking  gentlemen  were  seated  around  a 
conference  table  in  one  of  the  high-ceilinged  rooms  of  that  archi- 
tectural monstrosity,  the  Treasury  Building.  One  of  those  present 
was  contending  earnestly  that  the  Americanization  of  General 
Aniline  &  Film  Corp.  had  been  assured,  first,  by  the  election  of 
Judge  Mack  as  president,  and  later  by  the  appointment  of  other 
well-known  Americans  as  directors.  The  speaker  droned  on  and 
on.  Finally,  he  was  interrupted  by  Leo  T.  Crowley,  long  time  head 
of  the  Federal  Deposit  Insurance  Corporation,  who  said,  "See 
here,  Homer,  we're  all  grown  up— you  know,  and  everyone  else 
knows  that  John  Mack,  splendid  citizen  that  he  is,  is  not  the  man 
to  head  General  Aniline." 

Thus  rebuffed,  Homer  S.  Cummings,  counsel  for  General  Aniline, 
cut  short  his  argument  for  inaction,  and  the  meeting  proceeded 
with  its  business  of  approving  the  new  four-man  board  of  direc- 
tors for  General  Aniline  which  the  Treasury  had  agreed  upon. 

Mr.  Cummings  had  good  reason  to  plead  for  a  status  quo.  The 
new  Treasury-appointed  board  could  not  be  expected  to  con- 

155 


156  TREASON'S   PEACE 

tinue  his  retainer  as  Washington  attorney  (rumored  to  be  $100,000 
a  year)  which  had  been  arranged  by  the  old  Farben  board. 

In  this  connection,  and  as  another  example  of  how  precisely 
the  Farben  pattern  repeats,  it  is  interesting  to  look  back  to  the 
time  when  the  I.  G.  Dyes  crowd  hired  John  King,  former  national 
committeeman  from  Connecticut  to  help  Attorney  General  Harry 
Daugherty  give  back  the  German  properties  that  had  been  seized 
during  World  War  I.  Then,  some  two  decades  later,  when  it  again 
became  advisable  to  take  on  some  additional  help  in  Washington— 
this  time  to  prevent  another  seizure  of  similar  properties— Farben's 
General  Aniline  hired  Homer  S.  Cummings,  who  was  not  only 
a  former  national  committeeman  from  Connecticut,  but  a  former 
chairman  of  the  Democratic  National  Committee  itself,  and  who 
had  just  completed  a  six-year  term  as  Attorney  General  of  the 
United  States. 

While  Farben  always  plays  both  ends  against  the  middle, 
politically  it  strings  along  with  the  party  in  power  and  so,  with 
the  passing  of  the  old  "Ohio  gang,"  Farben's  American  fronts  sud- 
denly became  Democratic  strongholds,  at  least  as  far  as  the  nation's 
capital  was  concerned. 

In  1932,  James  A.  Farley,  chairman  of  the  Democratic  National 
Committee,  had  solicited  my  support  for  his  candidate,  and  asked 
me  to  discuss  with  Mr.  Charles  Michelspn,  publicity  director  of 
the  Committee,  such  issues  as  I  thought  should  be  brought  into 
the  campaign.  The  result  was  what  is  known  as  the  brush-off. 
To  keep  the  record  straight,  I  confirmed  the  meeting  in  a  letter 
to  Mr.  Michelson,  in  which  a  high  point  of  our  disagreement  was 
recorded  as  follows: 

When  you  assert  that  Eddie  Clark,  Louis  K.  Liggett's  lobby- 
ist is  a  'nice  chap/  and  that  you  don't  blame  Mr.  Hoover 
for  securing  the  support  of  Drug,  Inc.,  who  pay  for  Clark's 
lobbying,  you  are  really  admitting  the  very  point  I  allege,  i.e., 
that  Hoover's  connection  with  this  outfit  of  patent-medicine 
fakirs  is  so  clearly  defined  that  Governor  Roosevelt  could 
find  no  more  powerful  illustration  of  the  hypocrisy  of  the 
present  occupant  of  the  White  House. 


PEACE  157 

On  the  same  day  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Farley,  enclosed  a  copy  of 
my  letter  to  Michelson,  and  restated  the  Clark-Drug,  Inc.  issue: 

Mr.  Hoover's  recent  performance  in  taking  into  the  White 
House  as  his  secretary,  Mr.  Liggett's  lobbyist,  is  in  itself, 
without  trimmings,  a  major  issue. 

Diplomatically,  I  had  referred  to  Clark  as  Liggett's  lobbyist 
rather  than  Farben's.  Mr.  Farley  acknowledged  this  letter  with 
assurances  of  appreciation  for  my  suggestions,  and  with  a  nice 
word  of  thanks  for  my  cooperation.  However,  he  did  not  bring 
the  Clark-Drug,  Inc.  issue  into  the  campaign. 

After  the  election  of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  the  announcement  that 
Senator  Thomas  Walsh,  of  Montana,  was  to  be  the  new  Attorney 
General  gave  a  tremendous  boost  to  the  hopes  of  those  of  us  who 
had  been  working  for  some  such  strong  arm  and  keen  mind  to 
direct  the  affairs  of  the  Justice  Department— for  someone  who 
would  start  delving  into  the  whys  and  wherefores  of  the  inaction 
against  the  flagrant  violations  of  our  antitrust  laws,  and  other 
federal  statutes,  that  had  stigmatized  the  three  preceding  ad- 
ministrations. 

These  hopes  expired,  however,  when  Tom  Walsh  died  suddenly 
in  a  Pullman  sleeper  not  long  before  he  was  scheduled  to  take 
over  the  direction  of  the  Department  from  W.  D.  Mitchell.  Who 
can  say  how  or  why  the  hand  of  Fate  which  led  Tom  Walsh  to  his 
untimely  end,  at  a  moment  of  triumph,  should  also  have  induced 
the  selection  of  Homer  S.  Cummings  to  occupy  the  high  office 
thus  left  open  to  some  deserving  Democrat. 

The  official  pronouncements  during  Mr.  Cummings'  regime  as 
Attorney  General  are  of  interest  in  their  relation  to  the  phrase, 
"the  era  of  non-enforcement  of  the  antitrust  laws"  coined  by  Mr. 
Thurman  Arnold.  One  was  a  broadcast  by  the  new  Attorney  Gen- 
eral on  June  10,  1933,  in  which  he  referred  feelingly  to  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield's  complaint  that  "the  laws  govern  the  poor  and  the 
rich  governs  the  law,"  and  then  announced  that  a  vigorous  cam- 
paign against  racketeers  was  to  be  started.  It  was  a  beautiful  ad- 
dress. Everybody  is  against  racketeers. 

The  other  announcement  came  from  Mr.  John  Dickinson  when 


158  TREASON'S   PEACE 

that  gentleman  was  appointed  by  Mr.  Cummings  to  take  charge 
of  antitrust  law  enforcement.  Mr.  Dickinson  stated  that  those 
laws  would  be  enforced  to  the  hilt  only  when  someone  was  get- 
ting hurt,  and  explained  that  the  Antitrust  Division  was  not  a 
"detective  agency."  So  far  as  Farben  was  concerned,  no  detec- 
tive agency  was  needed  to  reveal  the  illegality  of  their  contracts; 
but  this  was  in  1935,  no  one  was  being  hurt— then. 

Later,  millions  were  to  die. 

My  own  relations  with  Mr.  Cummings  began  at  arms  length  in 
1933,  when  he  became  Attorney  General,  and  later  developed  to 
sword's  point.  Finally,  in  a  letter  not  intended  for  my  eyes,  the 
Attorney  General  warned  a  member  of  the  Senate  that  it  was 
considered  "dangerous  to  correspond  with  Ambruster."  Indicat- 
ing an  official  state  of  mind  which  perhaps  Mr.  Cummings  may 
share  with  other  figures  in  the  story  of  I.  G.  Farben. 

The  real  gem  of  Homer  Cummings'  official  writings,  was  the 
naive  allegation  which  appeared  in  his  1937  Annual  Report  to 
Congress,  of  his  administration  as  Attorney  General,  that: 

"The  antitrust  laws have  saved  us  from  any  cartel 

system." 

Perhaps,  though,  we  are  going  too  fast  with  the  Democratic 
part  of  the  story.  Away  back  in  September  1918,  when  Francis 
Garvan  house-cleaned  the  American  Bayer  Company,  he  in- 
stalled a  new  set  of  officers  to  take  the  places  of  those  he  had 
jailed  or  put  in  internment  camps.  Unquestionably  Mr.  Garvan's 
intentions  were  just  what  he  stated  them  to  be— to  create  an  ail- 
American  concern  by  putting  native-born  Americans  in  charge 
of  the  company;  Americans,  who  so  far  as  was  known,  had  no 
connections  with  the  former  German  owners. 

As  stated  in  Chapter  in,  among  these  new  Bayer  executives,  was 
a  young  Democratic  attorney  named  Earl  I.  McClintock.  He  had 
been  just  added  to  the  staff  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  to 
become  secretary  of  the  seized  Bayer  Company,  and  retained  that 
position  all  through  the  sale  of  the  company  and  the  transfer  of  its 
title  to  Sterling  Products,  Inc.  When  the  latter  took  title,  Mc- 
Clintock went  along  with  the  plant  and  goodwill  of  the  business. 
He  tossed  aside  his  salary  of  $3,000  a  year  and  opportunities  for 
advancement  in  Government  service  for  $13,000  a  year  as  an 


TREASON'S    PEACE  159 

executive  for  the  new  owners.  This  modest  sum  was,  of  course, 
to  increase  as  McClintock  rose  to  become  the  right-hand  man  of 
Doctor  William  E.  Weiss  in  those  deals  which  were  to  return 
the  "Americanized"  Bayer  to  the  not  too  remote  control  of  its 
former  German  owners. 

As  an  executive  of  Sterling,  Mr.  McClintock  climbed  steadily 
while  the  Republicans  held  sway  at  Washington.  Politically,  how- 
ever, he  remained  in  a  state  of  suspended  animation  until  after 
that  fateful  period  when  the  sun  of  Herbert  Hoover  slid  over 
the  horizon,  leaving  neither  chickens  nor  pots;  only  a  sheriff's 
notice  on  the  empty  garage. 

When  the  Democrats  got  back  in  the  saddle,  however,  Mr. 
McClintock  began  to  go  to  town,  and  it  was  not  long  before  he 
was  reputed  to  have  become  a  figure  of  importance  among  the 
group  that  had  put  the  New  Deal  into  power. 

One  of  the  claims  to  fame,  boasted  of  by  Mr.  McClintock's 
friends,  was  his  membership  in,  and  some  said  his  chairmanship 
of,  the  Finance  Committee  of  the  Democratic  National  Committee. 
Later,  in  1941,  after  various  official  investigations  had  started 
some  of  the  Government's  keen  young  bloodhounds  on  the  trail 
of  the  illegal  Sterling-Farben  tie-up,  I  heard  more  about  Mr.  Mc- 
Clintock's association  with  the  Democratic  National  Committee. 
Usually  the  comment  was  highly  critical,  as  the  relationship  was 
regarded  as  a  definite  obstacle  to  further  investigation.  So,  on 
November  22,  1941,  I  wrote  to  Senator  Guy  M.  Gillette,  Chair- 
man of  the  Senate  Committee  to  Investigate  Campaign  expendi- 
tures, asking  for: 

A  searching  investigation  to  determine  the  size  and  number 
of  contributions  which  have  been  made,  directly  and  in- 
directly, to  the  Republican  and  Democratic  National  Com- 
mittees, and  to  the  campaign  funds  of  individual  candidates 
for  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives,  during  the  last 
ten  years,  by  the  German  I.G.  Farben  and  its  American 
corporate  allies;  especially  those  included  in  the  Sterling 
Products,  Inc.,  group  of  patent-medicine  manufacturers 

Senator  Gillette's  reply  was  not  encouraging.  I  was  a  bit  too 
late;  the  committee  had  been  appointed  for  the  1940  campaign 


160  TREASON'S   PEACE 

only,  and  had  been  dissolved,  "So  it  has  no  authority  or  existence 
at  the  present  time/' 

It  appeared  that  there  is  an  open  and  a  closed  season  for  in- 
vestigating campaign  funds.  So,  I  put  that  correspondence  in  my 
"await  events"  file.  Then,  nearly  a  year  later,  on  September  12, 
1942,  I  tried  again.  This  time  I  wrote  to  the  Hon.  Ernest  W. 
McFarland,  the  new  chairman  of  the  Senate  Campaign  Contribu- 
tions Committee,  suggesting 

The  urgent  necessity  for  an  inquiry  into  past  and  current 
contributions  by  allies,  affiliates,  and  agents  of  the  German 
I.G.  Farben. 

Such  contributions  coming  directly  or  indirectly  from 

this  vicious  German  cartel  played  a  tragic  part  in  the  past 
in  influencing,  or  controlling,  legislative  and  administrative 
acts  in  these  United  States.  There  is  an  abundance  of  evi- 
dence available  to  prove  this. 

Largely,  as  a  result  of  not  stopping  this  kind  of  thing  here- 
tofore, we  found  ourselves  in  the  relatively  unarmed  condition 
Avhen  the  combat  war  which  these  people  planned  for  so  long 
finally  began.  It  is  unthinkable  that  repetition  should  be 
permitted,  or  that  we  should  ignore  it  now  that  we  are  pay- 
ing the  price,  in  blood,  for  our  neglect. 

If  we  are  to  win  the  war,  if  our  democracy  is  to  survive 
it  has  got  to  be  stopped.  And  the  only  way  to  stop  it  is  by  a 
drastic  investigation  of  all  who  have  been,  and  all  who  still 
are,  involved  in  any  phase  of  it  ..... 

Should  you  request  further  details,  names,  dates,  amounts, 
etc.,  I  shall  consider  it  my  duty  as  a  citizen  to  supply  them 
to  you. 

Receiving  no  reply  I  called  upon  the  Senator  on  Oct.  9,  1942, 
and  was  received  by  the  energetic  young  counsel  for  the  com- 
mittee, James  A.  Walsh,  who  appeared  to  be  intrigued  by  my  visit, 
and  undertook  to  find  out  the  date  when  Mr.  McClintock  had 
retired  as  chairman,  or  as  a  member  of  the  finance  committee  of 
the  Democratic  party.  Some  time  later  Mr.  Walsh  wrote  me  the 
result  of  his  inquiry: 


TREASON'S   PEACE  161 

Following  your  call  at  the  office,  I  contacted  the  Democratic 
National  Committee  and  was  advised  that  Mr.  McClintock  is 
not  presently  a  member  of  the  Finance  Committee  of  that 
organization. 

That  information  not  being  as  complete  as  it  might  be,  I  wrote 
Mr.  Walsh  again  on  Dec.  24,  1942: 

Many  thanks  for  your  letter  of  the  14th.  Can  you  advise 
me  of  the  date  when  Mr.  McClintock  was  first  appointed 
to  the  Finance  Committee  of  the  Democratic  National  Com- 
mittee by  the  Hon.  Jas.  A.  Farley.  Also,  whether  he  was  asked 
to  resign,  or  did  so  without  being  so  requested  after  his 
Farben  affiliations  became  more  or  less  public  property. 

I  am  assuming,  of  course,  that  by  use  of  the  word  "pres- 
ently" your  informant  on  the  National  Committee  meant  to 
imply  that  McClintock  was  just  getting  out  or  had  just  an- 
nounced his  intention  so  to  do.  I  think  that  you  would  be 
performing  a  very  useful  public  service  if  you  would  check 
and  record all  contributions  which  McClintock  se- 
cured from  I.G.  Farben  and  its  American  affiliates;  also  his 
relations  with  the  Hague  machine  in  New  Jersey.  Such  facts 
are  all  matters  of  record,  though  more  or  less  concealed  and 
disguised,  and  should  be  brought  out  into  the  sun-light.  .  .  . 

You  will  understand,  I  hope,  that  I"  do  not  imply  for  a 
moment  that  Farben  money  went  only  to  the  Democrats,  or  to 
those  who  call  themselves  Democrats.  Far  from  that!  I  hap- 
pen to  know  that  the  record  of  those  labeled  Republicans  is 
every  bit  as  bad,  especially  when  they  were  in  power. 

One  thing  I  am  very  sure  of;  these  matters  must  not  be 
kept  under  cover  now.  If  the  Senate  continues  to  ignore  them 
while  lives  are  being  lost,  then  there  is  something  very 
rotten  indeed. 

I  am  sure  that  you  feel  the  same  way  about  it.  Otherwise 
I  would  not  write  you  with  such  brutal  frankness. 

In  his  response,  Mr.  Walsh  indicated  that  I  was  again  trying 
to  shoot  at  campaign  contributors  out  of  season,  which  was 


162  TREASON'S    PEACE 

positively  not  permitted  by  the  Senate.  As  Mr.  Walsh  put  it  in  a 
letter  dated  Jan.  14,  1943: 

with  reference  to  possible  campaign  contributions 

by  I.G.  Farben  and  its  American  affiliates: 

I  should  perhaps  explain  that  the  information  I  obtained 
concerning  Mr.  McClintock  did  not  indicate  the  recency  of 
his  separation  from  the  Finance  Committee,  but  was  limited 
to  the  statement  that  he  is  not  a  member  of  the  Committee. 
While  an  inquiry  into  this  phase  of  campaign  contributions 
in  years  past  might  be  very  revealing  and  informative,  you 
will  remember  that  the  present  Campaign  Investigation  Com- 
mittee is  limited,  by  the  terms  of  the  resolution  creating  it, 
to  matters  occurring  in  the  1942  campaigns. 

The  season  must  have  been  closed  early  that  year,  for  no  further 
word  came  from  the  Senate  Campaign  Expenditures  Committee 
or  its  counsel.  However,  I  determined  to  continue  my  official  in- 
quiries into  the  mystery  of  when  Mr.  McClintock  started  and 
stopped  being  a  member  of  the  Democratic  Finance  Committee. 
So,  I  applied  to  the  Democratic  National  Committee  itself,  and, 
diplomatically,  merely  asked  to  be  advised  the  names  of  the 
members  of  its  finance  committee  for  the  years  1936  and  1940. 
In  order  to  maintain  my  amateur,  or  nonpartisan  status,  I  also 
made  the  same  request  to  the  Republican  National  Committee. 
The  responses  disclosed  a  deplorable  lapse  of  memory  on  the 
part  of  many  well-known  personages. 

Under  date  of  Feb.  13,  1943  I  received  the  following  reply 
from  the  Democratic  National  Committee,  signed  by  its  dis- 
tinguished Chairman: 

Dear  Mr.  Ambruster: 

I  sincerely  regret  that  we  are  unable  to  comply  with  your 
request  for  a  list  of  the  Finance  Committee  of  the  Democratic 
National  Committee  for  the  years  1936  and  1940.  Our  Audi- 
tor, who  has  made  a  search  informs  me  that  no  such  lists 
are  available.  We  have  recently  consolidated  our  quarters 
and  in  making  the  change  the  campaign  lists  of  former  years 
were  disposed  of.  You  will,  probably,  find  these  lists  pub- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  165 

lished  in  the  metropolitan  press  of  the  years  during  the 
campaigns  to  which  you  refer. 

Sincerely  yours, 

Frank  C.  Walker 

Not  being  able  to  find  the  information  in  the  metropolitan 
press,  I  called  at  the  committee  headquarters  in  the  Mayflower 
Hotel  in  Washington,  and  explained  to  a  most  gracious  young 
lady  that  if  they  could  not  recall  the  names  of  all  the  members 
of  the  finance  committee  they  might  at  least  be  able  to  tell  me 
when  Mr.  McClintock  started  and  stopped  being  a  member.  She 
assured  me  that  she  would  ask  someone  who  would  know,  and 
that  I  would  then  be  advised.  Apparently  no  one  knew,  as  no 
further  word  was  received. 

I  also  called  at  the  Republican  National  Committee  head- 
quarters and  was  told  by  Mr.  Spangler  himself  that  they  had 
their  records  for  at  least  ten  years  back,  and  that  he  would  send 
me  the  lists  very  shortly.  Apparently,  however,  they  got  lost,  too. 

Meanwhile,  not  being  too  easily  discouraged,  I  had  written 
to  Mr.  James  A.  Farley  at  his  New  York  address  to  see  what  he 
might  remember.  Mr.  Farley's  reply,  dated  March  3,  1943,  was 
very  discouraging  except  that  it  did  not  deny  that  Mr.  McClintock 
had  been  a  member  of  the  committee. 

Dear  Mr.  Ambruster: 

I  have  your  letter  of  March  1st,  and  am  very  sorry  that 
I  cannot  give  you  the  information  you  desire  concerning  Earl 
I.  McClintock. 

For  your  information,  a  finance  committee  is  appointed  for 
the  duration  of  a  campaign.  They  exist  until  the  campaign  is 
over  and  then  pass  out  of  existence.  We  have  no  records 
here  of  the  campaign  committees  for  the  years  1932  and  1936. 
I  resigned  as  National  Chairman  the  last  of  July  and  Ed. 
Flynn  was  not  appointed  until  August  17th  of  1940,  and,  as 
you  know,  I  had  nothing  to  do  with  appointing  committees 
for  that  campaign.  The  list  serves  no  purpose  after  election 
and  there  is  no  reason  for  keeping  any  records.  It  would 
appear  that  you  are  out  of  luck  unless  you  can  run  across 


164  TREASON'S   PEACE 

one  of  the  old  letterheads  showing  the  names  of  the  com- 
mittee. 

Very  frankly,  I  did  not  know  that  Mr.  McClintock  ever 
served  as  chairman  of  the  finance  committee.  I  regret  my 
inability  to  give  you  the  information  you  desire,  but  know 
you  will  understand  that  it  just  isn't  possible. 

Sincerely  yours, 

J.  A.  Farley 

I  next  decided  to  try  the  New  York  Public  Library  document 
room  but  the  only  thing  which  bore  on  the  subject  was  a  copy 
of  that  celebrated  1936  Democratic  Convention  Souvenir  book 
from  which  the  party  treasury  received  several  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  for  advertising  placed  by  numerous  large  corpora- 
tions. Incidentally,  most  of  the  advertisers  described  or  pictured 
their  products.  One  full-page  ad,  however,  was  what  is  known 
in  the  program  agency  business  as  a  complimentary  card,  and 
just  said,  "Sterling  Products,  Inc."  The  editors  of  the  book,  or 
Sterling,  either  did  not  want  the  readers  to  know  what  Sterling 
Products  was,  or  else  they  thought  that  everybody  already  knew, 
and  that  it  was  unnecessary  to  go  into  details. 

In  this  splendidly  bound  memorial  volume  of  the  convention 
at  Philadelphia,  there  was  a  handsome  photograph  of  James 
Aloysius  Farley,  chairman  of  the  Democratic  Party.  Under  and 
around  the  picture  was  a  sketch  written  by  the  late  J.  Fred  Essary. 

In  view  of  my  correspondence  with  Mr.  Farley  I  was  intrigued 
to  read  Mr.  Essary's  eulogistic  description  of  him  as  the  man  who, 
"carried  in  his  prodigious  memory  the  names  and  identity  of 
thousands  of  the  faithful."  This  description  recalled  other  things 
I  had  heard  about  Big  Jim's  card-index  memory,  so  I  wrote  him 
again  on  March  11,  1943,  saying: 

I  guess  I  must  have  been  misled  by  the  many  state- 
ments which  I  have  heard  and  seen  about  the  wonderful 
system  of  names  and  deeds  kept  by  Big  Jim,  and  the  in- 
fallible memory,  which  gives  up  instantly every  name 

which  has  contributed  to  the  Party  since  he  quit  box- 
fights  for  the  big  show. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  165 

As  you  say,  I  am  just  out  of  luck— unless  I  can  dig  up  an 
old  letterhead  or  something. 

By  a  quite  natural  error  my  secretary  addressed  this  letter  to 
Washington  instead  of  New  York.  And  again  a  deplorable  lapse 
of  memory  was  recorded— this  time  by  the  post  office— for  some 
one  had  stamped  the  envelope,  in  big  red  letters,  right  over  the 
name  of  James  A.  Farley,  "No  Such.  Return  to  Sender."  So,  I  for- 
warded the  letter  to  Mr.  Farley's  correct  address  in  New  York 
with  the  notation,  "What  awful  memories  everybody  is  getting." 
Mr.  Farley  apparently  did  not  see  the  joke;  his  reply  indicated 
that  he  had  nothing  further  to  say  about  Mr.  McClintock.  (A 
few  months  later  Mr.  Farley  was  saying  plenty  about  the  war, 
"which,"  he  was  quoted  as  declaring  "wasn't  our  war.") 

I  also  tried  another  prominent  Democrat  who  had  been  Chair- 
man of  the  Party's  Finance  Committee  in  1936,  Mr.  James  W. 
Gerard.  No  luck  there  either,  save  another  suggestion  to  seek 
the  information  from  the  Democratic  National  Committee.  * 

During  the  period  which  Mr.  Farley  now  forgets,  Mr.  McClin- 
tock's  achievements  as  a  Sterling  executive  included  engaging 
the  services  of  Mr.  David  Corcoran  as  an  officer  of  the  Sidney 
Ross  Co.,  a  Sterling  subsidiary  that  distributes  patent  medicines 
in  Latin  America.  Mr.  David  Corcoran  was  an  automobile  sales- 
man. He  switched  to  patent  medicines  in  the  period  when  his 
brother,  Mr.  Thomas  G.  Corcoran,  as  a  lawyer  on  the  staff  of 
the  Reconstruction  Finance  Corp.,  was  reputed  to  telephone  Sen- 
ators and  bureau  chiefs  with,  "This  is  White  House,  Corcoran 
speaking." 

Disregarding  for  the  moment  the  extent  to  which  Mr.  Corcoran, 
or  Tommy  the  Cork,  was  ever  authorized  to  speak  for  the  White 
House,  his  welcome  there  was  well  known.  Under  the  circum- 
stances, the  addition  of  brother  David  to  the  payroll  of  Sterling 
was  recognized  as  a  master  stroke  on  the  part  of  Earl  McClintock. 

As  the  decade  preceding  the  fateful  year  1939  progressed,  Mr. 
McClintock  spent  more  and  more  time  in  Washington.  His  status 
grew  with  his  recognition  as  a  factor  in  Democratic  Party  finances, 
and  gained  additional  lustre  from  the  new  ties  formed  through 
brother  David  with  that  spoiled  darling  of  the  New  Deal,  Tommy 


166  TREASON'S    PEACE 

the  Cork.  Many  of  McClintock's  activities  appear  in  other  chap- 
ters. He  intrudes  here  merely  as  a  political  angel— the  Democratic 
angel  whom  Farley  can't  remember. 

Thomas  G.  Corcoran  originally  was  employed  by  the  New  York 
law  firm  of  the  late  Joseph  P.  Cotton,  President  Hoover's  Under 
Secretary  of  State  who  approved  the  huge  loan  made  to  Germany 
when  the  Nazis'  rise  to  power  began.  He  became  counsel  on  the 
staff  of  the  Reconstruction  Finance  Corporation  in  1932  during 
the  sad,  dark  days  of  the  close  of  the  Hoover  administration.  Cor- 
coran held  onto  the  job  when  the  Democrats  came  into  power 
and  became  an  important  figure  among  the  inside  New  Dealers. 

His  fame  rested  upon  a  versatility  which,  as  the  legends  grew, 
was  said  to  include  playing  a  piano  with  one  hand,  while  writing 
New  Deal  legislation  with  the  other. 

With  due  allowance  for  exaggeration  the  fact  remains  that  Mr. 
Corcoran  was  a  much  more  influential  figure  in  Washington  than 
his  official  responsibilities  in  the  R.F.C.  could  have  caused.  He 
was  too  light  in  weight,  and  too  young,  to  play  on  the  varsity, 
but  he  was  a  big  shot  on  the  Washington  campus.  That  he  was 
a  young  man  of  great  personal  charm  and  nimbleness  of  mind 
was  conceded  by  all  who  came  in  contact  with  him. 

Many  of  Corcoran's  activities  had  no  apparent  relation  to  the 
R.  F.  C.  This  was  especially  true  with  regard  to  lobbying  activities 
for  legislation  favored  by  the  Administration.  In  1935,  in  one 
such  legislative  battle,  Corcoran  was  accused  by  Representative 
(now  Senator)  Ralph  Brewster  of  Maine  with  having  used  im- 
proper influence  and  threats  to  induce  Brewster  to  change  his 
vote.  Mr.  Corcoran  denied  this  charge  and  a  Congressional  Com- 
mittee that  investigated  the  row  spanked  both  Corcoran  and  the 
Congressman  by  expressing  its  disapproval  of  their  actions,  then 
absolved  each  from  any  suspicion  of  improper  motives. 

Mr.  Corcoran  resigned  his  government  job  on  Sept.  22,  1940  to 
direct  what  was  called  the  Independent  Voters  Committee  for 
Roosevelt  and  Wallace.  His  subsequent  occupation  in  Washington 
raised  a  storm  of  criticism  when  reports  began  to  circulate  that 
Tommy  the  Cork  was  getting  sizeable  fees  for  using  his  New  Deal 
influence  to  get  war  defense  contracts  and  other  official  favors 
for  his  clients. 


TREASON'S   PEAGE  167 

Among  the  official  favors  was  one  that  bore  directly  upon  na- 
tional defense.  This  was  the  arrangement  whereby  the  investiga- 
tion of  Sterling's  tie-ups  with  I.G.  Farben  were  concluded  with 
the  filing  of  "informations"  and  "consent  decrees"— instead  of 
Grand  Jury  indictments  which  were  contemplated  by  those  mem- 
bers of  the  Justice  Department  who  had  started  the  dragnet  in- 
vestigation of  Sterling  in  April,  1941.  In  the  Sterling  case  rumor 
had  it  that  the  Corcoran  fee  reached  huge  proportions. 

This  scandal  finally  reached  such  proportions  that  in  Dec.,  1941, 
the  Senate  Committee  to  Investigate  the  National  Defense  Pro- 
gram (Truman  Committee)  began  an  inquiry  and  public  hear- 
ings on  lobbying.  Corcoran  appeared  as  a  witness  before  this 
Committee  on  Dec.  16,  1941.  "There  are  five  stories,"  he  testified, 
"which  have  been  whispered  about  me  as  a  symbol  in  connection 
with  defense  industries."  In  each  of  the  stories  thus  defined  by 
Mr.  Corcoran,  he  testified  that  his  services  were  strictly  those 
of  an  attorney:  in  one  instance  he  received  no  fee;  in  the  others, 
a  total  of  $100,000.  (Which  did  not  by  any  means  represent  his 
total  business  for  the  year.)  They  concerned  a  shipyard  (organ- 
ized by  a  gentleman  with  a  past),  an  engine  contract,  a  magne- 
sium plant,  an  oil  well  in  Alaska  (that  was  never  drilled)  and 
Lend  Lease  supplies  for  China.  Mr.  Corcoran  was  emphatic  in 
asserting  that  in  none  of  these  cases  had  he  acted  as  a  broker. 
He  added  to  his  denial,  "And  I  don't  know  what  a  broker  is, 
either." 

Senator  Brewster,  of  Maine,  then  put  the  following  statement, 
quoted  from  the  public  papers  of  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt,  into  the 
record: 

I  have  felt  all  along  that  it  is  not  quite  in  accord  with  the 
spirit  of  the  administration  that  any  individual  who  holds 
a  high  party  position  should  earn  a  livelihood  by  practicing 
law,  because,  in  a  sense,  he  holds  himself  out  as  having  access 
to  the  backdoor  of  the  administration.  It  just  "is  not  done." 

Finally,  Senator  Joseph  H.  Ball  of  Minnesota,  another  member  of 
the  committee,  attempted  to  question  Mr.  Corcoran  about  his  re- 
lations with  Sterling  Products  and  the  consent  decrees.  Mr.  Cor- 
coran objected  to  discussing  Sterling. 


168  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Senator,  that  isn't  a  defense  matter.  I  have  certain  confiden- 
tial relations  with  my  clients.  Very  frankly,  if  this  isn't  a  mat- 
ter of  the  kind  that  the  committee  generally  is  looking  into, 
I  would  prefer  not  to  go  into  that  matter.  I  have  always  made 
it  very  clear  that  I  was  willing  to  talk  about  this  with  the 
Judiciary  Committee  or  anyone  else,  but  my  own  relation- 
ships with  my  clients  are  such  that  I  would  rather  not  discuss 
them  in  connection  with  Empire  Ordnance,  Savannah  Ship- 
yards, and  a  lot  of  other  things,  because  the  public  might 
get  the  impression  that  there  was  defense  brokerage  in  Ster- 
ling Products. 

Unconvinced  that  the  relations  between  Sterling  and  Farben 
did  not  relate  to  the  national  defense  program,  Senator  Ball  said: 

It  seems  to  me  that  it  ties  in  with  this  all-out  war  we  are 
in,  and  also  it  certainly  ties  in  with  this  question  we  have 
been  discussing  quite  a  bit  here,  of  practicing  before  Gov- 
ernment departments.  If  we  are  to  believe  the  newspaper 
stories,  you  had  quite  a  bit  to  do  with  the  appointment  of 
Mr.  Biddle  (the  Attorney  General)  originally,  and  then  had 
quite  a  bit  to  do  with  him  in  developing  this  consent  decree. 

Far  from  denying  this  last  statement  Mr.  Corcoran  indulged  in 
a  little  modest  self-praise  regarding  his  part  in  arranging  the 
Sterling  consent  decrees: 

I  am  being  perfectly  frank  with  you,  Senator.  I  have  always 
been  perfectly  willing  to  discuss  the  Sterling  case,  because, 
if  you  don't  mind  my  saying  so,  I  think  it  was  a  very  far- 
sighted  job.  And  as  I  told  you  before,  when  I  last  talked  to  the 
chairman  of  the  Committee,  I  had  just  come  back  from  the 
completion  of  the  Sterling  reorganization,  which  I  think  is 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  things— not  from  my  point,  but  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  action  of  the  board  of  directors  them- 
selves—that has  been  done  in  the  defense  effort The 

only  objection  I  am  making  is  I  don't  want  the  Sterling  busi- 
ness bracketed  with  an  inquiry  about  defense  brokerage 

I  am  concerned  that  the  name  of  Sterling  shall  not  be  brack- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  169 

eted  in  press  reports  and  the  rest  of  it  with  Charles  West 
and  Empire  Ordnance  and  the  rest  of  it 

The  reader  should  keep  in  mind  Mr.  Corcoran's  use  of  the 
phrase,  "far-sighted  job,"  in  describing  the  Sterling  Consent  De- 
crees. The  chairman  of  the  Committee  then  ruled  that: 

The  committee  will  proceed  with  the  program  as  outlined, 
and  when  that  is  finished,  we  will  ask  you  to  come  back  and 
discuss  this  under  another  heading. 

There  followed  some  further  discussion  of  Mr.  Corcoran's  keen 
desire  to  not  testify  about  the  Sterling  case  at  that  particular  time. 
The  chairman,  Senator  Harry  S  Truman  finally  recessed  the  Com- 
mittee, and  thanked  the  witness  with  the  advice  that:  "at  a  future 
date  we  will  expect  you  to  appear,  Mr.  Corcoran."  However,  Mr. 
Corcoran  did  not  again  appear  before  the  Truman  Committee 
to  be  questioned  about  the  Sterling  case  or  any  other  matter. 

The  date  of  the  first  intercession  in  behalf  of  Sterling  by  Thomas 
Corcoran  is  a  matter  still  shrouded  in  mystery.  Requests  made  to 
various  governmental  departments  to  investigate  this  have  been 
ignored  or  rebuffed.  Yet  he  did  so  intercede  even  though  his  name 
does  not  appear  in  the  list  of  attorneys  who  signed  the  consent 
decrees  and  other  court  papers  for  Sterling.  That  list  includes 
the  firm  of  Rogers,  Hoge  and  Hills,  the  regular  Sterling  attorneys; 
and  John  T.  Cahill,  a  former  associate  of  Corcoran  in  the  New 
York  law  firm  of  Cotton  and  Franklin  who,  with  Corcoran's  back- 
ing, had  been  United  States  Attorney  at  New  York  City  from 
March,  1939,  to  March,  1941,  during  the  period  of  the  investiga- 
tion, trial,  and  acquittal  of  the  only  two  directors  of  the  McKesson 
&  Robbins  swindle  who  were  ever  brought  even  within  speaking 
distance  of  the  bar  of  justice.  At  that  trial  Howard  Corcoran,  an- 
other brother  of  Thomas,  was  in  charge  of  the  prosecution  as 
assistant  to  United  States  Attorney  Cahill. 

The  two  acquitted  directors  testified  that  they  had  never  sus- 
pected Coster  of  wrongdoing.  And  it  might  be  mentioned  here 
that  Howard  Corcoran  refused  the  testimony  and  the  proofs  which 
I  offered  to  present  to  the  jury  at  that  trial,  that  it  had  long  been 
well  known  to  the  drug  trade  that  Coster  was  a  common  criminal, 


170  TREASON'S    PEACE 

and  that  after  the  Hoover  depression  started,  McKesson  &  Rob- 
bins  was  concealing  its  financial  difficulties  with  fraud. 

Sterling  Products  and  its  chief  executives  were  named  on  the 
list  which  I  had  already  supplied  those  investigating  the  McKes- 
son &  Bobbins  mess  as  being  among  those  who  had  knowledge 
of  Coster's  criminal  activities.  This  list  also  included  executives  of 
the  trade  associations  and  trade  papers  which  Sterling  dominated. 

Mr.  Cahill  resumed  the  practice  of  law  at  about  the  time  the 
Justice  Department  was  beginning  its  dragnet  inquiry  into  the 
Sterling-Farben  relations.  Robert  H.  Jackson  was  Attorney  Gen- 
eral and  in  official  circles  he  was  regarded  as  "tough."  Certainly 
he  was  not  soft  when  he  slapped  court  orders  on  Farben's  huge 
deposits  in  the  National  City  Bank,  and  instructed  Thurman  Ar- 
nold, head  of  the  Antitrust  Division,  to  turn  the  Farben  mess 
inside  out,  no  matter  who  was  hurt. 

Then,  on  June  2, 1941,  a  long-expected  vacancy  on  the  Supreme 
Court  occurred  with  the  resignation  of  Chief  Justice  Charles 
Evans  Hughes.  Attorney  General  Robert  Jackson  was  nominated 
to  fill  the  Supreme  Court  vacancy,  and  according  to  Washington 
reports,  one  of  the  most  active  supporters  for  his  promotion  was 
Mr.  Thomas  Corcoran.  Francis  Biddle,  then  Solicitor  General, 
was  named  to  succeed  Mr.  Jackson  as  Acting  Attorney  General 
but  was  not  actually  nominated  until  spme  two  months  later. 

Meanwhile,  rumors  of  pressure  in  connection  with  the  Ster- 
ling investigation  abounded.  In  July,  Messrs.  Corcoran  and  Cahill 
held  several  long  conferences  at  the  Department  of  Justice,'  at 
which  consent  decrees  were  proposed  as  an  alternative  to  crim- 
inal indictment  of  Sterling  and  its  executives.  And,  strange  as  it 
may  seem,  the  conferences  were  not  held  with  those  members 
of  the  antitrust  staff  who  were  conducting  the  investigation. 

As  a  result  of  these  discussions  there  was  submitted  to  the  Jus- 
tice Department  a  paper  dated  Aug.  15,  1941,  and  entitled,  "The 
Sterling  Representations  to  the  Interdepartmental  Committee  of 
the  Departments  of  State,  Treasury  and  Justice."  In  this  document 
Sterling,  over  the  signature  of  its  chairman,  William  E.  Weiss, 
graciously  promised  to  cancel  its  illegal  contracts  with  Farben, 
and  to  obey  all  criminal  statutes  and  war  regulations  of  the  United 
States  Government.  The  crowning  gem  of  the  sixteen  paragraphs 


TREASON'S    PEACE  171 

in  this  promise  to  "go  straight,"  was  the  agreement  to  remove  any 
director,  officer  or  employee  of  Sterling  or  its  subsidiaries  who 
was  deemed  by  the  Government  to  be  engaged  in  any  activities 
for  the  benefit  of  Axis  powers  or  otherwise  engaged  in  activities 
contrary  to  the  national  interest. 

This  fantastic  piece  of  impudence  was  the  birth  of  Sterling's 
alleged  repentance,  reform  and  reorganization.  It  was  the  docu- 
ment which  Mr.  Corcoran  later  acclaimed  as,  "very  far-sighted" 
and  "one  of  the  most  brilliant  things  that  has  been  done  in  the 
defense  effort." 

Thurman  Arnold's  little  band  of  determined  investigators,  how- 
ever, did  not  feel  that  it  was  either  far-sighted  or  brilliant  insofar 
as  the  national  security  was  involved.  Some  of  them  refused  to 
abandon  their  investigation,  or  to  withhold  from  the  grand  jury 
evidence  already  gathered  which  involved  Sterling's  executives 
in  subversive  relations  with  Farben  leaders.  And  resignations,  to 
be  accompanied  by  public  statements,  were  threatened. 

Just  about  this  time  items  began  to  appear  in  the  press  that 
all  was  not  well  inside  the  Department  of  Justice  with  regard 
to  the  Sterling  case.  The  Washington  Times  Herald  published 
a  full-page  Sunday  feature  story  about  the  "young  man  who 
practices  law  out  of  his  hat,"  which  quoted  Mr.  Corcoran  as  say- 
ing that  he  wanted  to  make  a  million  dollars  in  a  year  practicing 
law,  and  then  re-enter  official  life  and  spend  the  rest  of  his  days 
improving  the  Government. 

Referring  to  the  Sterling  investigation,  the  article  stated  that 
Tommy's  brother  David  did  not  want  to  be  bothered  by  the 
Department  of  Justice  about  those  who  had  been  holding  up 
the  price  and  keeping  down  the  production  of  drugs  and  chem- 
icals essential  to  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  and  went  on  to 
say: 

Dave  Corcoran  is  an  officer  of  Sidney  Ross  &  Co of 

Sterling  Products somehow  Sterling  Products  has  got 

itself  tangled  up  in  a  Department  of  Justice  investigation 

Tommy,  with  Cahill  and  brother  Dave  is  defending 

Sterling's  interests.  The  temperature  in  the  air-conditioned 
Department  of  Justice  is  said  to  have  risen  on  occasion  to 


172  TREASON'S   PEACE 

something  more  than  blood  heat.  "Tommy  can't  get  it  through 
his  head,"  reports  one  observer,  "that  he  is  not  in  the  Govern- 
ment any  more." 

Pearson  and  Allen  in  their  Sunday  night  broadcast  on  Aug.  17, 
1941,  announced  that  a  big  explosion  was  due  inside  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice  if  criminal  prosecution  was  not  pressed  of  Ameri- 
can firms  for  their  cooperation  with  Germany  on  restraint  of  trade. 
"A  high  departmental  official"  stated  the  broadcasters,  "is  holding 
back  the  prosecutions." 

On  Aug.  25, 1941,  Mr.  Biddle  was  finally  nominated  to  the  office 
of  Attorney  General.  On  Sept.  4,  the  Senate  confirmed  the  nomina- 
tion, and  the  next  day  the  Sterling  consent  decrees  were  made  a 
matter  of  record  in  the  District  Court  of  New  York.  In  just  one 
particular  Messrs.  Corcoran  and  Cahill  had  been  compelled  to 
yield  ground.  Thurman  Arnold  and  his  staff  insisted  that  the  pro- 
ceedings must  have  some  relation  to  the  criminal  provisions  of 
the  law,  so  an  information  was  filed  in  the  criminal  court  against 
Sterling  and  its  three  subsidiaries:  Bayer,  Winthrop  and  Alba, 
and  two  of  its  officers:  Messrs.  Weiss  and  Diebold.  All  pleaded 
No/o  contendere,  and  were  fined  a  total  of  $26,000.  This  sum  repre- 
sented an  infinitessimal  fraction  of  the  illegal  profits  made  by 
Sterling  as  result  of  the  unlawful  Farben  agreements.  The  sub- 
versive activities  of  the  Sterling  executives  could  not  be  even  con- 
sidered for  the  good  and  sufficient  reason  that  they  were  not 
mentioned  in  the  information. 

The  consent  decrees  purported  to  abrogate  the  formal  agree- 
ments with  Farben,  seven  of  which  were  recited  at  length.  How- 
ever, it  is  doubtful  whether  Farben  will  recognize  the  abrogation 
of  its  agreements  with  Sterling  any  more  than  its  predecessors 
recognized  the  seizure  of  Bayer  during  World  War  I.  For  one 
thing  these  Farben  agreements  contained  clauses  requiring  Ster- 
ling to  settle  any  questions  relating  to  them  in  a  German  court, 
for  another,  it  has  been  admitted  by  a  representative  of  Sterling 
that  William  E.  Weiss  sent  a  message  to  his  Farben  friends  in 
Germany  not  to  worry  about  what  was  going  on  in  the  United 
States  because  Sterling  would  find  ways  of  continuing  its  rela- 
tions with  its  Farben  associates. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  173 

It  should  also  be  pointed  out  that  the  Treasury's  freezing  of 
foreign  funds  and  property  and  the  black  lists  of  foreign  nationals 
issued  by  the  Secretary  of  State  already  effectually  restrained 
all  relations  between  Sterling  and  Farben.  So  the  alleged  conces- 
sions by  Sterling,  as  stipulated  in  the  consent  decrees,  were  an 
empty  gesture  by  which  Sterling  gave  up  nothing  that  was  not 
already  forbidden  or  impossible.  In  reality  the  decrees  had  just 
two  positive  effects,  they  served  to  prevent  indictment  and  pros- 
ecution of  Sterling's  executives,  and  they  put  a  stop  to  the  Justice 
Department  investigation  of  subversive  activities  by  some  of  the 
Sterling  people  that  was  then  in  progress. 

An  official  statement  issued  in  the  name  of  Attorney  General 
Biddle,  at  the  time  the  consent  decrees  were  recorded,  contained 
allegations  and  conclusions  which  were  so  at  variance  with  facts 
known  to  exist  that  a  wave  of  caustic  criticism  arose  immediately. 
Stories  appeared  in  the  press  about  the  open  rebellion  which 
existed  inside  the  Justice  Department,  due  to  Corcoran's  brazen 
actions,  and  also  because  evidence  prepared  for  submission  to 
the  grand  jury  was  being  pigeonholed.  Mr.  Biddle's  statement  of 
Sept.  5,  it  was  said,  was  actually  prepared  by  Corcoran,  and  read 
like  a  Sterling  patent-medicine  advertisement. 

On  September  25,  another  official  press  release  was  issued  about 
the  Sterling  case  (this  time  in  the  name  of  Thurman  Arnold) 
which  also  contained  statements  completely  the  reverse  of  facts 
apparent  on  the  record.  Men  who  knew  Mr.  Arnold  and  were 
familiar  with  the  vigorous  language  of  his  privately  expressed 
opinions,  were  confident  that  he  had  not  prepared  this  second 
apology  for  the  consent  decrees,  and  that  it  must  have  been  issued 
over  his  protest. 

Among  the  more  absurd  allegations  in  the  Arnold  press  release 
was  the  statement  that: 

The  illegal  contracts  (with  Farben)  were  entered  into  in 
1926 long  before  the  Hitler  revolution. 

On  the  record,  the  consent  decrees  listed  seven  illegal  contracts 
of  which  three  were  entered  into  in  1936,  1937  and  1938,  long 
after  Hitler  seized  power  in  Germany.  Another  statement  in  the 
release  argued  that: 


174  TREASON'S    PEACE 

The  Sterling  organization  must  not  be  destroyed,  nor  its  ef- 
ficiency hampered,  in  the  present  emergency,  because  of  the 
necessity  for  American  outlets  for  drugs  in  this  hemisphere. 

The  falsity  of  this  argument  was  self-evident.  The  Sterling-Far- 
ben  branches  in  Latin  America  had  to  be  abolished,  and  the 
purpose  of  the  decrees  was  not  to  preserve  the  existing  Sterling 
organization,  but  to  destroy  those  outlets  for  all  time.  Whoever 
prepared  that  statement  for  Mr.  Arnold's  official  rubber  stamp 
had  small  regard  for  the  lustre  of  Mr.  Arnold's  name. 

While  this  press  release  was  issued  in  the  name  of  Assistant 
Attorney  General  Arnold,  copies  of  it  were  mailed  out  over  the 
signature  of  one  James  Allen'  as  "Special  Executive  Assistant  to 
the  Attorney  General."  Mr.  Allen,  according  to  press  reports,  was 
one  of  the  numerous  young  men  originally  brought  into  the  gov- 
ernment service  by  Thomas  Corcoran.  Mr.  Allen  turned  up  later 
in  the  Office  of  War  Information  where,  in  April,  1942,  he  was 
one  of  the  higher-ups  said  to  be  responsible  for  the  resignation 
of  a  group  of  writers  who  issued  a  statement  that  they  were  get- 
ting out  of  the  O.W.I,  because  it  was  impossible  to  tell  the  full 
truth  when  those  in  control  were  turning  the  O.W.I,  into  an  office 
of  war  ballyhoo.  Later  it  was  reported  that  Mr.  Allen  was  again 
Mr.  Biddle's  assistant,  this  time  at  the  Nuremberg  trials  of  Nazi 
war  criminals. 

One  of  the  most  notable  aspects  of  the  Corcoran,  Trojan-horse 
trade  with  the  United  States  Government,  was  the  fact  that  only 
two  of  the  executives  and  directors  of  Sterling  were  named  in 
the  criminal  informations  as  in  any  way  involved  in  the  unlawful 
agreements  with  Farben. 

Mr.  McClintock,  chief  aide  to  Mr.  Weiss  in  the  Farben  rela- 
tions, was  not  named,  nor  was  Mr.  Rogers  whose  active  legal 
mind  worked  on  the  details  of  some  of  those  illegal  agreements 
and  whose  signature  actually  appears  on  one  of  them. 

Others  whose  names  were  conspicuously  missing  in  the  informa- 
tions are  James  Hill,  Jr.,  director  and  treasurer  of  Sterling  and 
of  Sterling  subsidiaries;  William  E.  Weiss,  Jr.,  president  of  Alba; 
and  Dr.  William  Hiemenz,  Farben's  director  and  plant  manager 
of  Winthrop.  All  of  these  obviously  had  something  to  do  with 


TREASON'S   PEACE  175 

carrying  out  the  contracts  with  Farben  as  covered  by  the  infor- 
mation, and  the  pleas  of  nolo  contendere.  Dr.  Hiemenz  stayed 
right  on  as  manager  of  Winthrop  until  O'Connell's  Treasury 
squad  showed  him  the  door  several  months  after  the  consent 
decrees  had,  by  negative  action,  coated  him  with  nice  fresh 
Corcoran  whitewash. 

Another  notable  who  had  retained  his  seat  at  the  Sterling  board 
as  one  of  the  consent  decree  "unmentionables"  is  one  George  C. 
Haigh,  whose  contact  with  Sterling  goes  back  to  September,  1918, 
when  A.  Mitchell  Palmer,  as  Alien  Property  Custodian,  made  him 
a  director  of  the  Bayer  Co. 

In  1919,  after  Sterling  took  over  and  pledged  to  keep  Bayer 
inviolate  from  any  return  of  German  influence,  Mr.  Haigh  was 
made  a  director  of  Sterling.  He  continued  as  a  director  all  through 
the  negotiations  of  the  long  string  of  illegal  contracts  and  agree- 
ments which  violated  in  spirit  and  in  letter  the  pledge  and  the 
purpose  of  the  Americanization  of  Bayer. 

Others  were  involved,  but  the  above-mentioned  principals  are 
sufficient  to  indicate  the  fine  legal  work  done  by  Mr.  Corcoran 
in  consummating  his  far-sighted  and  brilliant  contribution  to  our 
national  defense. 

It  may  be  relevant  at  this  point  to  cite  from  the  Canons  of  Pro- 
fessional Ethics  of  the  American  Bar  Association,  with  which  Mr. 
Corcoran,  no  doubt,  is  familiar. 

The  responsibility  for  advising  questionable  transactions 
for  urging  questionable  defenses,  is  the  lawyer's  respon- 
sibility. He  cannot  escape  it  by  urging  as  an  excuse  that  he 
is  only  following  his  clients  instructions  "When  a  lawyer  dis- 
covers that  some  fraud  or  deception  had  been  practiced, 
which  has  unjustly  imposed  upon  the  court  or  a  party,  he 
should  endeavor  to  rectify  it."  The  canons  of  the  American 
Bar  Association  apply  to  all  branches  of  the  legal  profession; 
specialists  in  particular  branches  are  not  considered  as  ex- 
empt from  the  application  of  these  principles. 

Many  of  the  American  newspapers  accepted  Mr.  Biddle's  state- 
ment on  the  consent  decrees  as  conclusive  and  final,  some  even 
commended  the  outcome.  Time,  on  Sept.  15,  exclaimed  exultingly: 


176  TREASON'S   PEACE 

The  Justice  announcement  last  week  gave  Sterling  a  clean 
bill  of  health  as  far  as  further  Nazi  influence  is  concerned. 
This,  it  hoped,  might  undo  some  of  the  damage  done  by 

Arnold's  previous  blasts The  Sterling  deal  was  Tommy 

Corcoran's  fourth  big  job  since  he  left  the  R.F.C.  last  year. 

In  view  of  the  amount  of  advertising  with  which  Time  and  Life 
have  been  favored  by  American  affiliates  of  Farben  this  rather 
crude  bombast  in  one  of  the  Henry  Luce  publications  may  war- 
rant calling  attention  to  an  accusation  published  by  columnist 
Leonard  Lyons  in  the  New  York  Post  that  Time  had  slanted  a 
story  in  favor  of  a  Luce  advertiser,  and  that  its  managing  editor, 
T.  S.  Matthews,  had  confessed  that  his  stories  definitely  were 
slanted. 

The  admission  made  publicly  by  the  Time  Editor  was  that: 

Facts  are  the  raw  material common  to  the  whole  press, 

but  the  products  are  as  different as  the  men  who  run 

the  papers a  sane  journalist  cannot  be  completely  im- 
partial   the  stuff  he  writes  will  be  definitely  slanted 

Leading  trade  papers  also  were  jubilant.  Drug  Trade  News, 
companion  publication  to  Drug  Topics,  which  admittedly  is  sub- 
sidized by  the  drug  manufacturers,  came  out  with  an  editorial 
rejoicing  that  "there  was  no  evidence  of  willful  wrong-doing  on 
the  part  of  Sterling  and  its  subsidiaries." 

Other  press  comment,  however,  was  decidedly  critical.  PM, 
Marshall  Field's  New  York  daily  paper,  had  already  published 
several  informative  articles  regarding  the  Sterling-Farben  tie-ups 
and  its  comments  on  the  consent  decrees  and  on  the  Biddle  and 
Arnold  press  statements  were  numerous  and  caustic. 

The  most  devastating  criticism,  however,  appeared  in  a  long 
series  of  articles  by  Thomas  Lunsford  Stokes,  Jr.,  Scripps-Howard 
feature  writer,  and  probably  the  most  feared  of  those  Washing- 
ton correspondents  who  consider  it  their  function  to  seek  out  and 
write  the  truth,  regardless  of  the  high  places  or  the  immaculate 
shirt  fronts  of  the  personages  involved.  Mr.  Stokes,  winner  of  the 
Pulitzer  Prize  in  1938  for  exposing  political  monkey  business  in 
the  W.P.A.,  performed  a  notable  public  service  in  writing  a  de- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  177 

tailed  running  story  of  the  lobbying  activities  of  Corcoran  in  con- 
nection with  the  Sterling  case. 
On  Sept.  15,  Mr.  Stokes'  comments  included: 

Consent  decrees have  left  a  sour  aftermath  in  the 

Antitrust  Division  of  the  Justice  Department The  dis- 
satisfaction attributed  to:  (1)  The  pressure  and  pull  exerted 
by  Thomas  G.  Corcoran,  one  time  New  Deal  brain  truster 
and  now  a  lawyer-lobbyist  who  represented  Sterling.  (2) 
Failure  of  the  government  to  take  the  evidence  before  a 

grand  jury and  the  terms  of  the  consent  decrees,  which, 

in  the  opinion  of  some  are  not  as  strong  as  they  might  be  and 
might  become  unhinged  after  the  war.  (3)  The  fact  that 
settlement  was  imposed  from  the  top  by  Attorney  General 

Biddle Mr.  Corcoran  is  an  old  friend  of  Mr.  Biddle. 

He  was  influential  in  bringing  Mr.  Biddle  into  the  administra- 
tion and  was  active  on  behalf  of  Mr.  Biddle's  recent  promo- 
tion from  Solicitor  General  to  Attorney  General. 

Mr.  Corcoran  practically  camped  in  Mr.  Biddle's  offices 

was  given  access  to  secret  information  of  the  department 

and  contributed  to  the  writing  of  the  statement  for  the 

press  which  is  described  by  those  who  know  the  facts  as 
whitewash,  with  misleading  inferences  and  actual  misstate- 

ments Investigators  were  still  at  work  when  the 

settlement  was  reached  and  the  consent  decrees  taken  into 

the  court They  were  called  from  their  inquiry,  which 

was  turning  up  some  evidence  which  does  not  appear  in  the 

'information' nor  in  the  consent  decrees,  and  is  now  a 

closed  book unless  it  is  called  for  by  Congress. 

On  Sept.  17,  Mr.  Stokes'  column  contributed  the  following: 

A  federal  grand  jury  never  got  to  hear  the  evidence  dug  up 
by  the  Department  investigators It  can  be  stated  author- 
itatively that  they  were  turning  up  some  rather  sensational 
evidence  about  operations  of  subsidiary  companies  of  Sterling 
Products,  Inc.  in  South  America,  evidence  which  leaves  a 
question  mark  as  to  the  efficacy  of  the  consent  decrees  de- 
signed to  drive  the  Germans  out  of  that  market Who 


178 

stopped  the  investigation?  Who  stopped  submission  of  the 
evidence  to  a  Grand  Jury? 

From  December,  1939,  to  April,  1941,  Bayer  shipped  aspirin 

to  I.G.  (Farben)  agencies  in  South  America made  in 

the  United  States  but  packaged  just  like  the  German  product. 

The  income  of  German  agents  of  I.G.  Farben  in  South 
America  was  increased  during  the  war  by  Sterling's  pay- 
ments to  them  for  the  distributing  of  Bayer In  at  least 

one  case,  in  Colombia,  one  of  these  agents,  manager  of  a 
local  company  there,  heads  the  Arbeitsfront  in  the  Nazi  or- 
ganization   Dr.  E.  Wolff,  arrested  in  Panama  with  a 

trunk  containing  various  documents,  was  tried  and  fined.  He 
was  on  his  way  from  Berlin  to  Buenos  Aires  to  work  in  an 
I.G.  Farben  factory. 

On  Sept.  18,  Mr.  Stokes'  column  on  Sterling  and  Bayer  went 
back  to  the  days  of  World  War  I  and  expressed  the  fear  that  his- 
tory might  repeat— that  after  this  war  the  Germans  might  again 
gain  a  position  of  dominance  in  our  chemical  and  allied  indus- 
tries. This  article  again  castigated  Corcoran  as  a  lobbyist  for  Ster- 
ling, and  brought  Earl  I.  McClintock  into  the  picture  as  one  of 
those  who  used  his  official  friendships  during  the  negotiations  to 
stop  the  Sterling  investigation  from  going  any  further. 

Another  phase  of  the  investigation  revealed  by  Mr.  Stokes  was 
the  fact  that  a  grand  jury,  if  it  had  been  permitted  to  examine  the 
evidence  assembled  in  the  Justice  Department,  might  have  acted 
upon: 

The  expenditure  by  Sterling  in  the  last  eight  years  of  large 
sums  for  advertising  in  pro-Nazi  newspapers  in  Latin  Amer- 
ica while  only  negligible  advertising  was  done  in  the  anti- 
Nazi  papers/' 

On  Sept.  19,  Mr.  Stokes  discussed  Mr.  Corcoran's  part  in  the 
preparation  of  the  Biddle  press  release  saying: 

This  may  not  be  the  first  time  that  a  private  citizen,  repre- 
senting defendants  in  an  antitrust  case,  has  supervised  the 
writing  of  a  government  press  release  but  it  is  the  first  one 


TREASON'S    PEACE  179 

that  anyone  seems  to  know  about;  and  certainly  takes  the 
prize  for  flagrancy. 

Soft-spoken  Raymond  Clapper,  Scripps-Howard  columnist  and 
colleague  of  Stokes,  used  very  strong  language  about  Corcoran's 
lobbying  just  as  he  had  in  1932  about  that  other  ex-official,  Ed- 
ward T.  Clark.  On  Oct.  7,  he  concluded  his  comments  with: 

What  is  to  be  the  effect  on  these  junior  officials,  working  on 
moderate  salaries,  when  they  see  this  cynical  kind  of  funny 
business  going  on  in  the  very  heart  of  the  New  Deal? 

On  November  27,  1941,  The  New  York  Times  discussed  "lobby 
lawyers"  in  an  article  which  referred  to  Mr.  Corcoran's  activities, 
and  quoted  Mr.  Biddle  as  stating  that  he  planned  no  investigation 
of  lobby  contracts: 

Such  lobbying,  Mr.  Biddle  said,  would  be  inquired  into 
if  the  Department  of  Justice  was  so  directed  by  some  proper 
agency,  but  not  otherwise. 

According  to  the  Times,  when  asked,  if  he  thought  he  or  other 
government  officers  should  make  public  the  names  of  ah1  persons 
visiting  their  offices,  the  Attorney  General  replied  that  he  thought 
it  would  be  very  inappropriate  to  give  out  such  names,  and  that 
the  public  must  depend  upon  the  honesty  of  its  officials.  (Three 
years  later  one  of  Mr.  Biddle's  chief  assistants  was  to  denounce 
the  handling  of  this  case  in  damning  terms. ) 

I  have  already  mentioned  that  I  had  some  part  in  inducing 
the  Justice  Department  to  investigate  Sterling.  Also,  I  had  been 
supplying  the  Department  with  historical  and  background  data 
which  bore  upon  Farben's  activities  in  the  United  States,  and  the 
conspiracies  and  subversive  activities  of  those  involved  with  Far- 
ben. 

In  some  instances,  at  least,  my  aid  was  of  value,  and  on  more 
than  one  occasion  I  was  officially  thanked  for  my  assistance.  In 
any  event,  I  was  sufficiently  close  to  what  went  on  both  inside  and 
outside  the  Department,  relative  to  that  investigation,  to  recog- 
nize the  danger  signs  as  they  began  to  be  visible,  and  to  realize 
that  regardless  of  the  integrity  and  high  purpose  of  those  young 


i8o  TREASON'S   PEACE 

men  of  Arnold's,  the  quarry  would  not  be  brought  to  bay  unless 
the  scope  and  broad  purpose  of  the  hunt  was  enlarged.  Accord- 
ingly, immediately  after  the  records  of  Sterling  and  Winthrop 
were  subpoenaed,  I  sent  Mr.  Arnold  a  number  of  exhibits  which 
brought  out  the  fact  that  the  Washington  lobby  had  never  been 
identified  in  the  public  mind  as  representing  other  than  American 
interests.  My  letter,  dated  April  15,  1946,  stated  that: 

In  view  particularly  of  the  refusals  of  the  Senate  Lobby 
Committee  of  1929  and  1935  to  investigate  the  lobby  main- 
tained in  Washington  by  these  people I  do  not  believe 

that  your  own  efforts  can  ever  be  effective  unless  this  lobby 
is  included  in  your  investigation  and  action.  The  present 

lobby  includes  some  of  those  mentioned  by  me as  being 

paid,  directly  or  indirectly,  by  the  German  government. 

That  communication  was  never  acknowledged  by  Mr.  Arnold. 
Perhaps  the  lobby  saw  to  it  that  it  never  reached  his  eyes;  cer- 
tainly he  never  mentioned  it  to  me  afterward.  However,  Thurman 
Arnold  cannot  say  that  I  did  not  attempt  to  warn  him  of  what 
was  going  to  happen  to  his  Sterling  case,  and  to  some  of  his  other 
Farben  investigations,  if  he  did  not  use  a  repeating  rifle  on  the 
Farben  partners— and  a  shotgun  on  the  Farben  lobby. 


CHAPTER 


Senators  and  Congressmen — Who 
Never  Knew 


MENTION        IS 

made  elsewhere  of  the  concealed  interference  by  the  German  dye 
trust  with  tariff  and  patent  legislation;  also  the  strange  desire 
of  members  of  the  House  and  Senate  to  force  through  the  act 
of  1928  for  the  payment  of  claims  and  the  restoration  of  German 
property  which  had  been  seized  in  the  First  World  War.  One  of 
the  Senators  who  joined  with  King  and  Moses  to  help  put  through 
that  1928  statute,  was  Doctor  Royal  S.  Copeland. 

The  nonpartisan  broadmindedness  of  the  German  dye  trust  in 
chosing  its  American  friends  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  Copeland 
held  office  and  was  a  candidate,  from  time  to  time,  as  a  Repub- 
lican, a  New  Deal  Democrat  and  an  anti-New  Deal  Democrat. 
Farben  also  appeared  to  have  no  objections  to  the  friendship  of 
a  doctor  whose  medical  attainments  did  not  qualify  him  for  mem- 
bership in  his  own  county  medical  society,  or  for  the  dubious 
honor  of  belonging  to  the  American  Medical  Association.  Cope- 
land  once  made  the  claim  that  he  was  a  former  professor  in  the 
Medical  School  of  the  University  of  Michigan  but,  according  to 


182  TREASON'S    PEACE 

the  University  authorities,  his  teaching  experience  was  in  a  de- 
funct homeopathic  college  which  was  in  no  way  related  to  Michi- 
gan's famous  school  of  medicine. 

As  a  Senator  and  a  doctor  of  medicine,  Copeland's  name  and 
picture  and  voice  were  seen  and  heard  in  press  advertisements 
and  radio  broadcasting  for  patent  medicine— or  home  remedies, 
as  they  were  politely  termed.  And  among  those  advertised  nos- 
trums were  preparations  manufactured  and  sold  by  two  of  the 
leading  American  affiliates  of  I.G.  Farben— Sterling  Products  and 
Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey.  Such  arrangements  for  the  Senator's 
services  were  presumably  made  at  the  New  York  offices  of  Cope- 
land  Service,  Inc.,  where  one  Ole  Salthe,  his  manager  (of  whom 
more  later),  was  also  prepared  to  arrange  for  the  advice  of  the 
Senator  on  matters  pertaining  to  the  enforcement  of  Food  and 
Drug  Laws.  These  were,  of  course,  strictly  business  or  semipro- 
fessional  arrangements  and  bore  no  relationship  to  the  Senator's 
engagements  as  a  statesman,  or  his  daily  newspaper  contributions 
as  a  literary  authority  on  public  health  matters. 

As  to  his  kindly  feeling  towards  I.G.  Farben  and  its  affiliates, 
our  Senatorial  healer  made  the  record  very  clear  in  a  speech  on 
the  Senate  floor  on  February  21, 1928,  just  before  the  final  approval 
of  the  statute  to  pay  Farben's  claims  and  to  return  Farben's  prop- 
erties. His  address,  in  part,  was  as  follows: 

Can  we  doubt  that  international  business  partnerships  are 
the  best  preventative  of  international  wars  and  conflicts  that 
statesmen  can  devise?  It  is  time  to  cease  ringing  the  changes 
upon  war  hatreds  and  animosities,  and  extend  the  helping 
hand  of  friendship  to  our  former  enemies 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  some  of  our  infant  industries 
are  predicated  upon  the  confiscated  inventions  of  the  people 
of  a  nation  originally  invited  into  our  midst  by  the  terms  of 
our  Constitution.  No  compensation  has  ever  been  paid  to 
them.  I  am  glad  they  are  to  be  paid  under  the  terms  of  the 
bill  passed  yesterday 

The  domestic  problems  of  farm  relief,  of  national  defense, 
of  destruction  of  industry  by  ruinous  foreign  competition, 
would  be  brought  nearer  'to  solution  by  such  commercial 


TREASON'S   PEACE  183 

alliances.  The  occupation  of  some  paid  Jeremiahs  constantly 
prophesying  war  and  woe  would  probably  be  rendered  super- 
fluous   

Let  us  have  done  with  vituperative  attacks  on  nonexistent 

enemies we  have  read  from  time  to  time  in  the  chemical 

trade  journals  and  in  the  lay  press  of  how  wicked,  designing, 
unashamed  and  dangerous  were  those  corporations  whose 
patents  we  confiscated  for  the  benefit  of  a  privileged  few 

European  combinations  in  these  industries  provide  addi- 
tional products  for  farsighted  Americans  who  have  formed 
alliances  with  the  possessors  of  the  'know  how/  The  question 
is  shall  we  welcome  alien  industry  and  capital  to  our  shores, 
in  accordance  with  the  traditional  policy  of  our  nation,  or 
shall  we  lend  ear  to  the  affrighted  clamor,  denunciation  and 
invective  of  a  selfish  minority?  It  is  high  time  that  we  had  an 
official  expression  of  the  administration's  attitude  in  the  in- 
terests of  world  peace  and  domestic  prosperity. 

American  capital  is  hesitant.  American  industrialists  are 
reluctant  to  enter  into  agreements  with  other  manufacturers 
to  obtain  for  this  country  that  which  we  have  not,  and  which 
would  be  of  benefit  to  us,  so  long  as  the  newspapers  are  filled 
with  vituperative  abuse  and  vague  suggestions  of  Sherman 
Act  prosecutions. 

This  address  is  important  to  this  story  because  it  records  the 
beginning  of  the  second  postwar  decade  when  Farben  and  its 
American  stooges  had  decided  that  everything  was  under  control, 
and  therefore  their  plans  for  expansion  could  be  more  open,  with 
safety  to  all  concerned.  The  speech  is  also  important  because  it 
is  a  condensation  of  substantially  every  false  argument  and  sophis- 
try of  Farben  propaganda.  Copeland  also,  unwittingly,  recorded 
officially  the  unheeded  protests  at  Farben's  comeback,  and  the 
unheeded  demand  for  Sherman  Act  prosecutions.  Copeland,  in 
the  name  of  the  United  States  Senate,  was  bidding  Farben  wel- 
come just  as  the  Hoover  subordinates,  and  Donovan,  in  the  name 
of  the  executive  branch  of  the  government  had  extended  a  similar 
invitation  a  few  days  earlier,  as  related  in  Chapter  vn. 

From  its  earliest  days,  the  German  dye  trust  has  utilized  the 


184  TREASON'S    PEACE 

patent  laws  of  the  United  States  to  obstruct,  cripple  or  control 
our  dye,  drug,  and  chemical  munitions  industries.  The  president 
of  the  American  Bayer  company,  acting  on  instructions  from  Ber- 
lin, persuaded  the  State  Department  to  send  our  Commissioner 
of  Patents  as  a  delegate  to  the  International  Patent  Convention  in 
Stockholm  prior  to  World  War  I.  The  result  was  that  our  unsus- 
pecting commissioner  wound  up  as  the  guest  of  honor  on  Kaiser 
Wilhelm's  yacht,  and  upon  his  return  was  in  complete  accord  with 
the  desires  of  his  Teutonic  hosts. 

As  a  result,  the  United  States  negotiated  a  new  treaty  with  Ger- 
many which  complied  with  the  dye  trust's  wishes  that  the  work- 
ing of  a  patent  in  either  country  was  sufficient  to  protect  the  in- 
ventor, or  his  assignee,  in  both  countries.  And  the  president  of 
Bayer  boasted  openly  of  his  smart  trick  in  getting  the  Kaiser  to 
help  soften  up  our  patent  laws. 

Meanwhile  Herman  Metz  turned  up  on  the  Congressional  Com- 
mittee on  patents.  Metz  was  irritated  at  any  attempt  to  interfere 
with  the  rights  of  his  German  friends  to  do  as  they  pleased,  saying: 

Legally  there  could  be  no  reason  at  all  why  the  Germans 
should  not  obtain  a  patent  in  this  country  for  which  a  patent 
could  be  obtained,  and  do  with  that  patent  what  they 
pleased. 

Again  Metz  declared  that  German  patents: 

have  no  value  a  ssuch  except  for  the  purpose  of 

keeping  out  infringing  products.  They  are  simply  clubs  to 
keep  out  other  manufacturers. 

After  World  War  I,  when  tariff  and  embargo  barred  German 
imports,  the  dye  trust  began  using  its  patents  to  implement  the 
illegal  tie-ups  by  which  it  reestablished  itself  in  the  United  States. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  reestablishment  would  not  have  been  pos- 
sible if  our  antitrust  laws  had  been  enforced.  Nor  would  it  have 
been  possible  had  Congress  interceded  to  prevent  misuse  of 
United  States  patents,  especially  those  relating  to  the  national 
defense. 

Can  anyone  doubt  that  Congress  would  have  been  compelled 
to  take  drastic  steps  had  Mr.  Teagle,  or  Mr.  duPont,  or  Dr.  Weiss, 


TREASON'S    PEACE  185 

or  even  Herman  Metz,  ever  protested  to  Congress  or  even  to  the 
public  at  the  illegal  agreements  proposed  by  Farben.  The  fact 
is  that  they  did  neither. 

All  through  this  second  prewar  period  the  public  was  largely 
uninformed,  or  greatly  misinformed,  about  these  Farben  tie-ups. 
But  the  record  proves  that  Congress  had  known  for  many  years 
that  the  more  important  of  the  illegal  agreements  were  in  opera- 
tion, and  that  others  were  in  the  making. 

Members  of  the  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives  un- 
covered evidence  of  the  dye  trust's  plans  and  agreements  in  al- 
most every  session  of  Congress  from  the  end  of  World  War  I  to 
the  beginning  of  World  War  II.  They  also  knew  the  identity  and 
the  activities  of  the  horde  of  lobbyists  who  haunted  the  hallways 
of  the  Capitol  and  the  bars  and  club-rooms  of  Washington  in 
the  interests  of  Farben  and  Farben's  American  partners. 

Despite  this  knowledge  Congress  did  nothing  until  the  1941 
and  '42  exposures  and  prosecutions.  Then  loud  were  the  lamenta- 
tions of  some  of  its  members  at  the  "surprising"  revelations  of 
what  Farben  had  been  doing  to  keep  the  United  States  disarmed. 

In  order  to  comprehend  the  breadth  and  scope  of  the  Farben 
pattern,  we  might  examine  some  of  the  crocodile  tears  shed  so 
publicly  at  not  knowing  things  that  had  been  blazoned  on  the 
records  of  Congress  all  along.  It  is  necessary  also  to  observe  how 
these  facts  come  to  be  on  those  records,  and  what  influences  may 
have  caused  them  to  be  ignored. 

One  member  of  the  Senate  who  in  1942  appeared  not  to  know 
anything  about  the  Farben  tie-ups  in  the  United  States  was  the 
Honorable  Scott  W.  Lucas,  Illinois  Democrat,  who  was  elected 
to  Congress  in  1934  and  moved  up  to  the  Senate  in  1938. 

In  April,  1942,  Senator  Lucas,  as  a  member  of  the  Patents  Com- 
mittee, made  some  comments  about  the  ignorance  of  official  Wash- 
ington regarding  the  activities  of  I.G.  Farben.  An  official  of  the 
Justice  Department  had  just  testified  that  some  of  Farben's  illegal 
affiliations  had  been  secret  until  the  Attorney  General's  office 
went  into  their  files.  Said  Senator  Lucas: 

But  before  the  Attorney  General's  office  went  into  the 
files  to  inspect  these  documents  nobody  in  the  government 


186  TREASON'S    PEACE 

as  I  understand  it,  or  in  this  country,  knew  anything  about 

these  international  cartel  arrangements 

I  am  not  condemning  anyone  particularly  for  what  hap- 
pened in  the  past,  but  I  am  speaking  for  the  future.  We  all 
learn  by  experience.  This  country  ought  to  have  a  right  at 
least  to  examine  and  ascertain  whether  or  not  a  contract  of 
this  kind,  if  it  went  into  effect,  would  affect  the  life  and  se- 
curity of  the  United  States. 

Anxious  as  the  Senator  appears  to  have  been  to  learn  by  experi- 
ence, something  must  have  caused  him  to  conclude  otherwise, 
because  he  was  one  of  the  five  members  of  the  Senate  Patents 
Committee  who  later  voted  to  prevent  Senator  Bone,  its  chairman, 
from  continuing  these  hearings  into  Farben's  agreements  with 
Sterling,  and  the  relations  of  the  Sterling  executives  with  subver- 
sive activities  of  their  German  partners. 

Senator  Tom  Connally,  Texas  Democrat,  started  as  a  Congress- 
man in  1917  and  became  a  Senator  in  1929.  The  Senator  is  re- 
puted to  be  a  political  colleague  of  former  Governor  William  P. 
Hobby  of  Texas,  who,  with  the  late  W.  S.  Parish,  organized  the 
Humble  Oil  Co.,  and  sold  control  of  that  company  to  Standard. 
Senator  Connally  contributed  a  naive  conclusion  as  to  the  inno- 
cence of  all  concerned  about  Farben's  intentions.  The  Senator  was 
a  member  of  the  Truman  Committee  which  was  examining  Mr. 
Farish  of  Standard  Oil  in  March  1942  at  a  closed  hearing.  When 
Mr.  Farish  appeared  uncertain  as  to  just  what  testimony  he  should 
give  about  Standard's  relations  with  Farben,  Senator  Connally 
asked  him: 

When  you  entered  into  these  negotiations  with  Farben 

in  Germany did  you  do  it  with  any  contemplation  of 

war  or  of  our  becoming  involved  in  war  and  needing  these 
articles  in  the  way  that  we  now  find  ourselves  needing  them? 
Or  was  it  simply  a  commercial  business  transaction  that  you 
were  contemplating? 

Mr.  Farish  responded: 

It  was  always.  Senator,  on  a  commercial  or  business  basis, 
and  with  only  commercial  objectives  in  mind 


"TREASON'S   PEACE  187 

Senator  Homer  T.  Bone,  Washington  Democrat,  came  to  the 
Senate  in  1932,  and  two  years  later  sat  through  the  lengthy  hear- 
ings of  the  Senate  Munitions  Investigating  Committee  which  went 
deep  into  the  Farben  activities.  In  1942  Senator  Bone,  as  Chair- 
man of  the  Senate  Patents  Committee,  investigated  the  activities 
of  Farben  for  several  months— until  the  aforementioned  five  mem- 
bers ganged  up  on  him  and  refused  to  permit  the  investigation 
to  be  completed. 

At  these  1942  hearings  Senator  Bone  did  recall  that  the  subject 
was  not  a  new  one,  but  he  also  indicated  an  unfortunate  lack  of 
memory  about  the  revelations  before  the  Nye  Munitions  Commit- 
tee and  elsewhere  concerning  Farben.  The  Senator's  comment 
was: 

I  know  little  about  LG.  Farbenindustrie  in  Germany  be- 
cause it  is  shrouded  in  mystery.  I  know  back  in  1934  and  '35 
when  I  served  on  the  Senate  Munitions  Committee,  we  were 
not  able  to  get  anything  definite  out  of  Germany.  There  was 
great  secrecy  manifested  even  in  some  of  our  own  depart- 
ments   At  that  time  I  was  fearful  that  what  our  nationals 

were  doing  might  be  aiding  in  the  rearmament  of  Germany, 
thus  making  her  a  menace  to  the  world. 

Assistant  Attorney  General  Thurman  Arnold,  while  testifying 
before  the  Truman  Committee  in  March,  1942,  paid  a  peculiar 
tribute  to  his  own  belated  investigation  of  the  Farben  tie-up  ar- 
rangements, and  put  the  entire  blame  for  the  continuance  of  these 
agreements  on  the  lax  enforcement  of  the  anti-trust  laws  during 
the  Hoover  Republican  administration  from  1929  to  1933.  For 
some  reason  he  did  not  mention  that  this  lax  enforcement  con- 
tinued right  on  from  1933  to  1941  during  the  Democratic  adminis- 
tration, Mr.  Arnold's  comment  in  part  was  that: 

The  cost  of  preventing  such  cartel  restrictions  in  the  fu- 
ture is  eternal  vigilance  and  the  existence  of  a  wide-awake 
investigating  agency  to  enforce  the  Sherman  Act.  Had  there 
been  such  an  agency  operating  in  1929,  had  this  conduct 
been  actually  hazardous  at  that  time,  these  arrangements 
would  never  have  been  contemplated.  But  from  1929  to  1933 
business  men  felt  safe  from  discovery. 


i88  TREASON'S    PEACE 

In  view  of  these  and  other  Senatorial-Congressional  expressions 
of  ignorance  about  what  Farben  was  up  to,  it  is  of  interest  here 
to  refer  to  some  of  the  extensive  evidence  available,  from  1919 
to  1939,  to  members  of  the  House  and  Senate. 

This  consideration  is  warranted  in  order  to  understand  the  pre- 
cise detail  with  which  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  first  ex- 
plored and  recorded  the  activities  and  purposes  of  the  German 
dye-trust  leaders,  then  ignored  its  own  findings  and  finally,  when 
disaster  had  arrived,  began  pitifully  weeping  "we  didn't  know." 
It  is  for  the  reader  to  decide  from  these  facts  whether  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  American  people  were  dolts  or  knaves— or  an 
unhappy  combination  of  both. 

During  the  decade  that  followed  the  close  of  the  first  World 
War,  the  German  Dye  Trust  was  the  subject  of  many  hours  of  dis- 
cussion and  thousands  of  pages  of  testimony  before  committees 
of  the  Senate  and  House.  Later  hearings  brought  out  more  facts 
about  Farben;  about  its  lobby  and  campaign  contributions;  about 
its  industrial  tie-ups  and  subsidiaries;  and  about  its  propaganda 
and  its  expenditures  for  espionage  and  other  subversive  activities. 

From  1919  to  1922  there  were  a  number  of  hearings  before  the 
committees  of  the  House  and  Senate  which  recorded  the  testimony 
of  a  great  number  of  witnesses  who  argued  whether  high  tariff 
duties  or  an  absolute  embargo  would  best  protect  the  new  Amer- 
ican dye  industry  from  the  threat  of  German  imports.  At  these 
hearings  there  was  very  little  left  unsaid  about  what  Farben's 
predecessors  in  I.G.  Dyes  would  do  to  this  country's  new  chemi- 
cal industry  if  they  were  given  the  opportunity;  or  of  the  proba- 
bility of  another  war  of  conquest,  if  and  when  Germany  got  the 
chance. 

When  the  next  war  did  start  more  than  a  dozen  members  of 
the  Senate,  and  several  times  that  many  members  of  the  House, 
still  occupied  the  same  positions  at  Washington  as  they  had  dur- 
ing those  early  hearings  at  which  the  records  and  plans  of  the 
German  dye  trust  were  spread  upon  the  Congressional  records. 
A  number  of  these  legislators  were  members  of  the  committees 
that  held  the  hearings.  Coming  down  to  the  1934^1936  period 
when  further  hearings  delved  deep  into  Farben's  consummated 
plans,  we  find  that  an  actual  majority  of  the  members  of  both 


TREASON'S   PEACE  189 

chambers  were  still  representing  their  constituents  when  the  last 
war  began. 

It  would  appear  from  the  record,  therefore,  that  the  failure  of 
Congress  to  act  has  not  been  due  to  lack  of  ample  information 
about  Farben,  nor  to  lack  of  repeated  warnings  as  to  what  dis- 
aster that  neglect  might  bring  about. 

There  were  many  charges  and  countercharges  against  lobbyists 
and  German  agents  at  those  early  hearings.  Francis  P.  Garvan, 
among  others,  made  definite  charges  that  the  German  dye  trust 
had  attempted  to  influence  legislation  in  the  past  and  was  still 
doing  so  at  the  very  time  that  Senator  King  and  his  campaign- 
fund  contributor,  Herman  Metz,  were  denouncing  everyone  who 
wished  to  protect  America's  new  chemical  industry.  Garvan  ac- 
cused Metz  of  standing  on  the  floor  of  Congress,  as  representa- 
tive of  the  German  I.G.,  shaking  his  fist  at  American  manufac- 
turers in  the  gallery  and  exclaiming,  "I  got  you  licked— I  got 
you  licked." 

"And  then/'  said  Garvan,  "we  were  like  the  blind  beggar  at 
the  gate  in  Kipling's  story,  1  cannot  see  my  enemy  but  I  can 
hear  his  footfalls.' " 

In  another  of  the  Senate  hearings  in  1920,  before  the  Finance 
Committee,  Mr.  Irenee  duPont,  president  of  the  duPont  Company, 
made  the  rather  remarkable  request  that  in  addition  to  embargo 
and  high  tariff  to  keep  out  German  dyes,  Congress  might  well  pass 
legislation  which  would  authorize  some  government  official  to  set 
aside  the  Sherman  Act  as  it  applied  to  the  dye  industry,  if,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  official,  it  became  necessary  for  the  dye  manufac- 
turers to  get  together  on  short  notice  to  exchange  information. 

Congress  did  not  then  pass  such  a  law,  but  Mr.  duPont  had 
little  cause  to  complain  about  any  enforcement  of  the  Sherman 
Act  until  Thurman  Arnold  got  busy  after  World  War  II  had 
started.  Then  duPont  and  all  the  other  leading  American  dyestuff 
makers  were  indicted  for  conspiring  with  I.G.  Farben,  and  the 
Congress  kindly  did  permit  the  Attorney  General  to  waive  or 
suspend  prosecution  of  all  concerned  on  the  pretext  that  prosecu- 
tion would  interfere  with  the  war  effort.  The  case  finally  ended 
when  duPont,  among  others,  pleaded  nolo  contendere  and  took 
a  fine.  But  that  belongs  in  another  part  of  this  story. 


190  TREASON'S   PEACE 

There  was  much  testimony  in  these  early  hearings  which  gave 
unmistakable  warning  of  what  the  German  dye  trust  might  do 
when  the  next  war  should  come.  Here,  again,  it  was  Francis  Garvan 
who  put  those  warnings  into  pungent,  dramatic  form  which,  it 
is  hoped,  some  members  of  the  Senate  may  now  recall  with  shame. 

Time  and  again  Garvan  denounced  the  German  dye  leaders  as 
a  menace  to  the  peace  of  the  world— in  the  future  as  in  the  past. 
For  example,  in  1920  he  warned  the  Senate  Finance  Committee: 

Industrial  Germany  waged  this  war;  and  industrial  Ger- 
many was  the  first  to  see  defeat,  and  forced  the  military  peace 
in  order  that  with  her  industrial  equipment  intact  she  might 
continue  that  same  war  by  intensified  and  concentrated  eco- 
nomic measures.  It  was  Germany's  chemical  supremacy  that 
gave  her  confidence  in  her  avaricious  dream  of  world  empire, 
it  was  Germany's  chemical  supremacy  that  enabled  her  to 
wage  four  years  of  pitiless  warfare,  and  it  is  Germany's  chemi- 
cal supremacy  upon  which  she  relies  to  maintain  the  war. 

Another  emphatic  warning  was  sounded  to  members  of  the 
Senate  by  Dr.  C.  J.  Thatcher,  one  of  the  smaller  dye  manufac- 
turers, when  he  told  that  same  Senate  Committee: 

"No  matter  what  importers  or  their  friends  of  Germany 

may  say The  ruthless  war  for  chemical  domination  by 

Germany,  started  at  least  as  early  as  1880 was  not 

ended  by  the  Armistice  or  by  the  Treaty  of  Versailles 

any  treaty,  law,  or  other  provision  which  a  German  can  by 
any  means  avoid  in  the  warfare  for  industrial  chemical  su- 
premacy is,  just  as  in  actual  warfare,  'a  mere  scrap  of  paper.' " 

Rear  Admiral  Ralph  Earle,  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  of 
the  Navy  Department,  also  gave  the  Senate  some  words  of  advice 
at  that  time  which  were  complacently  forgotten.  In  discussing  the 
need  for  encouraging  and  protecting  our  coal-tar  industry  as  a  vital 
measure  of  national  defense,  Admiral  Earle  said,  in  part: 

During  the  war  we  used  as  much  toluol  as  could  be  ob- 
tained, but  the  production  of  that  material  was  not  suf- 
ficient   Time  is  a  very  important  element in 


."*.    TREASON'S   PEACE  191 

reference  to  war from  the  standpoint  of  national  de- 
fense we  do  not  think  we  ought  to  be  put  in  that  position 
again. 

The  admiral  also  advised  the  committee  that  the  production  of 
synthetic  drugs  from  coal  tar  should  be  encouraged  through  pro- 
tection of  the  industry,  as  coming  under  the  general  head  of 
preparedness. 

Another  unmistakable  warning  is  to  be  found  in  the  report  of  a 
Senate  Finance  Subcommittee  in  1920,  which  said,  in  part: 

One  who  has  read  the  story  of  the  German  Government 
in  the  United  States  just  prior  to  the  war,  knows  that  the 
chemical  industry  in  this  country  which  was  under  the  con- 
.trol  of  the  German  Government  was  the  center  of  espionage, 
German  propaganda,  and  direct  government  activities.  They 
prevented  the  use  of  coal-tar  products  in  the  munitions  in- 
dustry   

We  know  what  Germany  will  do  to  regain  her  hold  on  the 
industry  in  this  country.  We  know  that  she  will  resort  to  state 
and  cartel  combinations,  trade  export  premiums,  dumping, 
bpbery,  espionage  and  propaganda.  She  did  this  before,  and 
she  will  do  it  again. 

In  1930  the  records  of  the  Senate  Lobby  Committee  were  em- 
bellished with  a  detailed  history  of  the  I.G.  Farbenindustrie  which 
was  presented  by  Senator  Arthur  R.  Robinson  of  Indiana.  This 
document  had  been  filed  by  the  American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp. 
with  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange,  and  it  included  much  infor- 
mation regarding  the  enormous  size  and  growth  of  Farben;  its 
huge  production  of  synthetic  nitrogen  and  its  other  products.  The 
1929  agreement  between  Farben  and  Standard  Oil  was  described, 
and  the  negotiations  for  later  tie-ups  were  mentioned. 

Senator  Robinson's  minority  report,  with  which  Senator  Cara- 
way, its  chairman,  and  other  members  of  the  committee  declined  to 
be  identified,  summed  up  the  status  of  the  American  I.G.  as  a 
subsidiary  of  the  German  I.G.,  and  the  detailed  recital  in  these 
hearings  that  Farben  had  become  far  stronger  in  the  United 
States  than  prior  to  the  first  World  War  was  sufficient  to  warn 


192  TREASON'S    PEACE 

any  member  of  the  Senate  or  House  that  the  menace  to  American 
industry  and  to  national  security  was  already  a  very  real  one. 

Additional  detailed  data  about  Farben  went  into  the  record  in 
1931  when  the  late  Representative  Louis  T.  McFadden  of  Penn- 
sylvania, testifying  before  the  Senate  Committee  on  Banking  and 
Currency  on  the  nomination  of  Eugene  Meyer  to  the  Federal 
Reserve  Board,  inserted  several  lengthy  documents  describing  the 
German  chemical  trust  and  its  American  I.G.  subsidiary.  Mc- 
Fadden commented  that  the  "queer  purpose"  of  the  latter  was  to 
buy  up  American  companies  dealing  in  chemical  and  allied  prod- 
ucts. Mr.  Meyer  w*as  not  accused  of  participation  in  Farben's 
subsidiary,  but  this  record  made  much  additional  data  about 
Farben  available  to  members  of  the  House  and  Senate— had  they 
been  interested. 

The  Senate  Special  Committee  to  investigate  the  munitions  in- 
dustry was  appointed  in  1934,  under  the  chairmanship  of  Gerald 
P.  Nye,  Republican  isolationist  and  pacifist  from  North  Dakota. 
The  other  members  of  that  committee  were  Walter  F.  George, 
Georgia;  Bennett  C.  Clark,  Missouri;  Homer  T.  Bone,  Washing- 
ton; James  P.  Pope,  Idaho;  Democrats,  and  A.  H.  Vandenberg, 
Michigan;  and  W.  Warren  Barbour,  New  Jersey,  Republicans.  Six 
of  the  seven  were  still  members  of  the  Senate  in  1941  when  Ger- 
many declared  war  on  this  country,  and  when  revelations  of  the 
subversive  activities  of  I.G.  Farben's  affiliates  had  attracted  so 
much  public  notice  that  the  Senate  began  a  new  series  of  investi- 
gations to  rediscover,  amid  loud  protestations  of  surprise  and  in- 
dignation, many  of  the  very  same  facts  about  Farben  which  the 
Nye  Committee  had  recorded  back  in  1934.  In  general  the  public 
has  accepted  those  expressions  of  surprise  as  genuine  and  it  is, 
therefore,  necessary  to  go  into  some  detail  in  discussing  how 
voluminous  were  those  revelations  of  1934. 

The  Nye  Committee  delved  into  all  kinds  of  munitions  and  im- 
plements of  war.  Farben's  tie-ups  not  only  were  discussed  gen- 
erally as  a  menace  to  world  peace  and  to  the  national  security 
of  the  United  States;  they  were  presented  in  great  detail  in  charts 
and  lists  of  companies  and  products  showing  that  the  Farben  agree- 
ments at  that  time  in  the  United  States  covered  explosives  and 
ammunition,  dyestuffs,  drugs,  photographic  materials,  rayon,  mag- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  193 

nesium  alloys,  synthetic  oil  products,  miscellaneous  chemicals  and 
insecticides;  also  that  products  on  which  possible  arrangements 
were  contemplated  included  synthetic  nitrogen,  synthetic  rubber, 
and  plastics. 

It  might  be  remarked  here  that  this  list  of  chemical-munitions 
is  almost  identical  to  the  products  I  had  listed  as  under  the  control 
or  influence  of  Farben  in  the  diagramatic  chart  which  I  had  sent 
to  the  members  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  in 
1931.  Copies  of  that  chart,  like  so  many  other  documents  of  mine, 
stirred  up  the  usual  tempest  in  the  waste  baskets  of  Washington. 
However,  this  time,  three  years  later,  they  dug  out  the  facts  them- 
selves and  put  them  in  the  record  and  on  large  elaborate  charts 
of  their  own  devising. 

Among  the  most  important  contributions  which  the  Nye  Com- 
mittee hearings  recorded  and  which  both  the  committee  and  the 
Senate  thereupon  promptly  ignored,  were  the  proofs  which  indi- 
cated plainly  that  Farben  and  the  Hitler  government  were  on 
extremely  close  terms,  and  that  the  rearming  of  Germany  and 
preparations  for  war  were  proceeding  at  an  alarming  rate. 

In  one  instance  while  Lammot  duPont  was  testifying,  Senator 
Clark,  Missouri  Democrat  and  isolationist,  queried  him  on  the 
possibility  that  secret  and  patented  explosive  formulas  which 
duPont  had  turned  over  to  Farben  for  commercial  uses  might  be 
utilized  for  military  purposes.  The  Senator  asked  the  witness: 

There  would  be  nothing  to  prevent  them  from  taking 
those  processes  and  using  them  in  the  manufacture  of  war 
explosives,  would  there? 

Mr.  duPont  apparently  had  no  answer  to  that. 

Repeated  warnings  that  Germany  was  rearming  included  ad- 
vice from  duPont's  Paris  representative  in  1932  and  1933  that 
the  Nazis  were  armed  with  American  machine  guns,  and  that  a 
regular  business  had  been  established  (not  by  duPont)  of  boot- 
legging weapons  from  this  country  to  Germany. 

From  another  duPont  foreign  relations  representative  came 
the  advice  in  March  1932  that: 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  in  Germany  that 
I.G.  Farben  is  financing  Hitler There  seems  to  be  no 


194  TREASON'S    PEACE 

doubt  whatsoever  that  Dr.  Schmitz  is  at  least  personally  a 
large  contributor  to  the  Nazi  party. 

This  was  supplemented  by  a  later  report  from  the  duPont 
London  office  which  stated: 

Dr.  Bosch spends  practically  all  of  his  time  between 

his  dwelling  in  Heidelberg  and  the  government  offices  in 
Berlin,  thus  leaving  little,  if  any,  time  for  the  affairs  of  the 
I.G.  Farbenindustrie. 

Limitations  of  space  permits  inclusion  here  of  only  these  few 
bits  of  the  very  complete  evidence  assembled  by  the  Nye  Com- 
mittee relative  to  the  rearming  of  Germany,  and  Farben's  part  in  it. 

The  Nye  Committee  charts  and  lists  also  showed  many  com- 
panies in  Belgium,  France,  Holland^  Italy  and  other  countries 
that  were  tied  to  Farben.  Thus  pictured  graphically,  Farben  was 
revealed  as  the  greatest  aggregation  of  industrial  strength  and 
military  preparedness  ever  assembled  under  the  direction  or  in- 
fluence of  a  single  small  group  of  men.  Readers  of  this  book  may 
wonder  why  the  proven  propensities  of  relatively  small  makers  of 
munitions  to  bribe  and  corrupt  government  officials  merely  to  sell 
them  guns  and  powder  did  not  suggest  to  the  Senators  that  the 
greatest  munition  makers  of  all  time,  self-designated  supermen 
and  self-elected  for  world  conquest,  would  not  hesitate  to  utilize 
bribery  and  corruption  on  a  huge  scale  to  accomplish  their  aims 
among  the  officials  of  our  own  government.  Perhaps  the  title  of 
this  chapter  should  be,  "Facts  of  Life  that  a  Prewar  Senator  Ought 
to  Have  Known." 

The  Nye  Committee  spent  many  days  and  recorded  many  pages 
with  testimony  about  scheming  lobbyists  who  worked  against  dis- 
armament and  bribed  officials  of  foreign  governments  in  the  in- 
terest of  builders  of  warships  and  war  weapons;  it  also,  unjustly, 
grouped  with  such  sordid  individuals  various  American  scientists 
of  the  most  distinguished  character,  like  Dr.  Charles  H.  Herty 
and  Dr.  Edgar  Fahs  Smith,  beloved  provost  of  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania  and  president  of  the  American  Chemical  Society, 
whose  attainments  were  recognized  the  world  over  and  whose 
probity  not  even  a  Senate  Committee  could  attack. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  195 

However,  no  attempt  was  made  to  record  on  the  pages  of  these 
hearings  the  names  and  activities  of  the  lobbyists  who  were  haunt- 
ing the  capital  in  the  interest  of  I.G.  Farben,  and  who  were  on 
the  payroll  of  certain  of  its  American  affiliates. 

The  committee  report  on  chemical  munitions  came  in  1936  after 
long  and  painful  consideration  of  the  evidence.  Its  recommen- 
dations were  tortured  and  ponderous,  they  appeared  to  ignore  the 
significance  of  the  Farben  tie-ups  in  the  United  States,  but  did 
not  hesitate  to  condemn  practices  of  lobbying  and  of  bribery 
which  "tends  to  rob  the  governments  concerned  of  the  inability 
to  work  freely  for  peace."  The  issue  to  these  Senators  was  our 
disarmament— not  Farben's  rearmament. 

The  committee  apparently  was  obsessed  with  the  thought  that 
war  could  be  prevented  by  government  ownership  of  the  chemi- 
cal industry.  However,  it  finally  recorded  its  dilemma: 

The  committee  recognizes  the  difficult  problems  involved 
in  the  control  of  the  chemical  industry  in  view  of  the  extent 
of  its  peacetime  activities. 

With  this  profound  thought,  the  members  of  the  Nye  Com- 
mittee allowed  the  visible  intrigues  of  Farben  to  rest  in  peace 
until  after  a  new  war  had  begun. 

While  the  Nye  Committee  was  fumbling  with  Farben's  war 
chemicals,  a  committee  on  the  other  side  of  the  capital  was  bring- 
ing to  light  some  other  Farben  activities  of  an  equally  dangerous 
but  more  insidious  character— propaganda.  In  March  1934  a  special 
committee  was  appointed  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  to 
investigate  foreign  propaganda  and  other  subversive  activities. 
This  was  the  origin  of  what  later  became  famous,  or  perhaps 
only  notorious,  as  the  Dies  Committee. 

Its  Chairman,  in  1934,  was  the  Honorable  John  W.  McCormack, 
of  Massachusetts.  Samuel  Dickstein,  New  York;  Carl  M.  Weide- 
man,  Michigan;  Charles  Kramer,  California;  Thomas  A.  Jenkins, 
Ohio;  J.  Will  Taylor,  Tennessee,  and  U.  S.  Guyer,  Kansas,  were 
the  original  members. 

Among  the  witnesses  examined  by  the  McCormack  Committee 
were  Mr.  Ivy  L.  Lee,  the  famous  public  relations  counsel,  his 
partner  Burnham  Carter,  and  one  Dudley  Pittenger,  bookkeeper 


196  TREASON'S    PEACE 

for  the  Lee  firm.  The  testimony  of  Lee  and  his  associates  revealed 
that  the  firm  had  been  employed  by  the  American  I.G.  ever 
since  the  latter  was  organized  in  1929,  and  that  in  1933,  when 
Hitler  became  Chancellor,  the  German  I.G.-  also  retained  Lee  to 
give  advice  as  to  how  to  improve  relations  between  Germany 
and  the  United  States. 

Some  of  Mr.  Lee's  testimony  was  confusing.  For  instance,  his 
annual  retainer  from  Farben  was  $25,000  paid  in  odd  sums  by 
the  Swiss  I.G.  and  the  American  I.G.,  yet  he  paid  his  own 
expenses,  and  these  appeared  to  include  the  $33,000  a  year  which 
he  paid  to  his  son  to  stay  in  Berlin  and  study  the  German  mind. 

The  Lee  bookkeeper  could  throw  no  light  on  the  discrepancy 
between  the  $25,000  which  the  firm  received  from  Farben  and  the 
$33,000  which  it  paid  out  to  keep  its  mind  reader  in  Germany. 
Mr.  Pittenger  knew  of  no  other  work  which  young  Lee  was  doing 
in  Germany  except  on  the  Farben  account. 

Mr.  Ivy  Lee's  testimony  on  his  relations  with  the  Hitler  gov- 
ernment were  also  confusing.  At  the  start  of  the  examination  he 
stated  positively  that  he  had  no  contract  with  the  German  Govern- 
ment and  that  his  arrangement  was  solely  with  the  I.G.  However, 
Mr.  Lee  did  get  around  a  bit,  and  found  time  to  advise  the 
Nazi  big  shots  on  their  propaganda.  Testified  Mr.  Lee: 

I  first  talked,  of  course,  with  my  friends  in  the  I.G.  They 
all  sympathized  with  my  advice  and  they  asked  me  if  I  would 
repeat  that  advice  to  different  officers  of  the  government.  So, 
Dr.  Ilgner  introduced  me  to  various  ministers.  He  went  with 
me  to  see  Goebbels,  the  Minister  of  Propaganda;  Von  Papen, 
the  Vice  Chancellor;  Von  Neurath,  the  Foreign  Minister; 
Schmidt,  the  Minister  of  Economics 

In  explaining  that  his  Farben  contract  was  made  within  two 
or  three  months  after  Hitler's  advent  as  head  of  the  government, 
Mr.  Lee  also  stated: 

At  that  time  I  did  not  contact  any  government  officials 
except  Hitler  himself.  They  were  anxious  for  me  to  meet  him, 
just  as  a  personal  matter,  to  size  him  up. 

I  had  a  half  hour's  talk  with  Hitler  .         .  asked  him  some 


TREASON'S   PEACE  197 

questions  about  his  policies,  told  him  I  would  like  better  to 
understand  him  if  I  could,  and  he  made  me  quite  a  speech. 

When  asked  whether  it  had  occurred  to  him  that  because  of 
the  contract  with  the  German  I.G.  he  was  acting  at  least  in- 
directly in  behalf  of  the  German  government,  Mr.  Lee  replied 
in  the  negative. 

Mr.  Lee's  partner,  Mr.  Carter,  appeared  to  diEer  on  the  pur- 
pose of  the  contract.  He  testified  that  sending  advice  to  the  German 
firm  was,  in  a  sense,  advising  the  German  Government;  and  stated: 

The  contract was  an  advisory  one  whereby  we  were 

to  report  to  them  concerning  American  opinion  in  regard  to 
Germany.  The  general  purpose  of  the  contract  being  to  pro- 
mote better  understanding  between  the  Germans  and  Ameri- 
can people. 

The  reluctance  of  Mr.  Lee  to  admit  that  he  had  been  hired  to 
advise  the  Nazi  Government  on  how  to  win  the  friendship  of  the 
United  States  is  understandable,  especially  after  examining  some 
of  the  recommendations  which  his  firm  sent  to  Farben.  The  fol- 
lowing memorandum  was  identified  by  Mr.  Carter  as  having  been 
supplied  by  the  Lee  firm— a  sort  of  press  release  which,  it  was 
recommended,  should  be  broadcast  to  the  world  by  some  respon- 
sible German  official: 

Questions  have  been  raised  concerning  the  status  of  Ger- 
many's so-called  "storm  troops."  These  number  about  2,500,000 
men  between  the  ages  of  18  and  60,  physically  we  rained 
and  disciplined,  but  not  armed,  not  prepared  for  war  and 
organized  only  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  for  all  time  the 
return  of  the  Communistic  peril.  In  view  of  the  misunder- 
standing in  regard  to  these  civil  forces,  however,  Germany  is 
willing  to  permit  an  investigation  into  their  character  by 
such  international  arms  control  organization  as  is  eventually 
established. 

According  to  Mr.  Carter  the  Lee  advice  also  recommended 
that  Joachim  von  Ribbentrop  undertake  a  definite  campaign  to 


198  TREASON'S   PEACE 

clarify  the  American  mind  on  the  disarmament  question,  first  by  a 
series  of  press  conferences,  then  by  radio  broadcasts  to  the  Ameri- 
can people,  and,  finally,  by  articles  in  important  American  pub- 
lications. 

Mr.  Lee  finally  conceded  that  his  intention  was  that  these  sug- 
gestions should  ultimately  be  considered  by  the  officials  of  the 
German  Government,  and  while  he  was  not  making  the  sugges- 
tions for  dissemination  in  this  country,  they  were  for  the  benefit 
of  the  whole  world,  including  the  United  States. 

One  point  was  apparently  lost  sight  of  by  all  concerned.  The 
question  was  not  asked,  nor  was  information  volunteered,  as  to 
whether  or  not  what  Mr,  Lee  was  actually  doing,  as  a  hired  Farben 
publicity  agent,  was  to  outline  highf alutin  speeches  for  Nazi  offi- 
cials to  send  back  to  America,  regardless  of  whether  or  not  they 
were  truthful,  in  order  to  make  the  American  people  less  suspicious 
of  the  real  objective  of  I.G.  Farben. 

Mr.  Lee  appeared  unable  to  agree  with  members  of  the  com- 
mittee as  to  just  what  kind  of  material  came  under  the  classifica- 
tion of  propaganda.  Asked  whether  he  ever  received  any  propa- 
ganda material  from  Germany  he  replied: 

It  is  a  question  of  what  you  call  propaganda.  We  have 

received  an  immense  amount  of  literature books  and 

pamphlets  and  newspaper  clippings  and  documents,  world 
without  end. 

Congressman  Dickstein  questioned  Mr.  Lee  about  one  particu- 
lar lot  which  he  described  as  a  "tremendous  >quantity  of  propa- 
ganda, shipped  from  Germany  on  the  steamship  Bremen,  ad- 
dressed to  Ivy  Lee  &  Co.,  New  York/'  Mr.  Lee  could  not  remember 
that  particular  shipment. 

The  committee  heard  many  other  witnesses  in  the  course  of  its 
1934  hearings  on  un-American  activities,  some  of  whom  could 
also  have  been  tied  into  the  Farben  propaganda  machine  without 
difficulty  if  the  committee  had  been  so  minded.  However,  this 
testimony  of  Ivy  Lee  and  his  colleagues  was  so  definitely  related 
to  Farben  and  Farben's  part  in  the  rearming  of  Germany,  that  it 
must  be  considered  in  all  its  sinister  significance  along  with  simi- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  199 

lar  evidence  uncovered  during  that  same  period  by  the  Senate 
Munitions  Committee. 

Appeals  which  I  made  to  Chairman  McCormack  and  other 
members  of  his  committee  to  unmask  fully  this  "German  I.G. 
control  of  American  affairs,"  and  my  offers  of  evidence  pertain- 
ing to  same,  were  brushed  aside  as  out  of  order.  It  was  also  in 
1934  that  the  Hon.  James  F.  Byrnes,  who  was  to  go  from  the 
Senate  to  the  Supreme  Court  and  then  become  postwar  Secre- 
tary of  State,  ignored  my  offer  of  pertinent  data  relating  to  the 
unsenatorial  activities  of  his  colleague,  Dr.  Copeland.  And,  over 
the  next  several  years  similar  rebuffs  were  received  from  the 
Senate  Lobby  Investigating  Committees  headed  by  Hon.  Hugo 
L.  Black,  who  was  also  to  move  on  to  a  seat  on  the  High  Court. 

In  April  1935  every  member  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives of  the  United  States  received  a  brief,  in  the  form  of  a 
printed  thesis  prepared  by  Francis  P.  Garvan,  protesting  against 
the  extension  of  reciprocal  trade  treaties  to  Switzerland.  This 
brief  had  been  prepared  in  1934  and  was  submitted  in  behalf  of 
"Chemistry  in  the  United  States/'  Mr.  Garvan's  authorization  to 
present  it  came  from  the  Chemical  Foundation  and  several  of 
the  other  important  organizations  which  represented  the  chemi- 
cal industry  of  this  country.  It  was  also  sent  to  Cabinet  members, 
officers  of  executive  departments  and  others.  This  brief  faced 
all  concerned  with  a  powerful  and  unanswerable  indictment  of 
the  policy  of  governmental  inaction  in  ignoring  the  dangers  to 
our  economic  security  and  national  defense  which  was  apparent 
in  the  penetration  of  our  industries  by  I.G.  Farben,  and  the  lat- 
ter's  identification  with  Hitler  and  the  Nazi  government. 

The  reciprocal  trade-treaty  statute,  authorizing  the  President  to 
enter  into  foreign  trade  agreements,  had  been  passed  by  Congress 
in  June  1924,  and  among  the  first  countries  to  ask  for  the  advan- 
tages in  reduced  tariff  rates  to  be  derived  from  such  a  treaty  was 
Switzerland,  where  the  chemical  industry  was  completely  domi- 
nated by  Farben.  In  his  brief,  Mr.  Garvan  paid  his  respects  to 
those  who  were  attempting  to  breach  the  tariff  walls  that  pro- 
tected our  chemical  industries  from  a  renewal  of  dumping  by 
Farben  through  its  backdoor  in  Switzerland,  and  castigated  them 
with  these  words: 


2oo  TREASON'S   PEACE 

I  say  it  with  all  solemnity— that  this  industry  is  as  sacred 
to  the  American  people  as  the  grave  of  the  Unknown  Soldier, 
and  only  a  traitor  or  a  fool  dare  touch  it. 

Of  Farben's  ties  with  Hitler  he  said: 

the  chemical  industry  is  under  the  direct  supervision 

and  control  of  a  Minister  of  Industry  who  in  turn  is  subject 
to  the  absolute  will  and  word  of  Adolph  Hitler,  the  Fuehrer. 
Therefore,  in  all  dealings  with  the  Swiss  chemical  industry, 
the  actual  partner  and  active  member  of  the  European  dye 
cartel  which  is  dominated  and  controlled  by  the  German 
I.G.,  you  are  dealing  with  Adolph  Hitler. 

Garvan  sketched  the  history  of  what  the  German  dye  trust, 
its  Herman  Metz,  and  its  spies,  had  done  before  and  during  World 
War  I;  his  own  early  fight  against  them,  and  the  efforts  of  the 
Wilson  Administration  to  aid  in  the  development  and  protection 
of  a  coal-tar  chemical  industry  in  America.  His  paper  made  clear 
the  vital  importance  of  an  independent  and  powerful  chemical 
industry  for  the  United  States,  in  peace  and  in  war;  and  he  came 
back  time  after  time  to  what  Farben  had  done  and  was  still  doing 
with  the  aid  of  its  many  new  industrial  patents,  its  I.G.  sub- 
sidiaries, and  its  literary  Ivy  Lees. 

In  one  respect  Garvan's  brief  was  prophetic,  although  he  was 
mistaken  in  the  optimism  on  which  his  forecast  was  predicated. 
He  warned  of  the  time  when  our  supply  of  natural  rubber  might 
be  cut  off  by  Japan,  but  he  erred  in  a  belief  that  the  development 
of  our  chemical  industry  was  a  guarantee  that  we  would  have  a 
substitute  sufficient  for  our  needs  when  that  time  should  come. 

The  contemptuous  response  of  Congress  to  the  Garvan  brief 
might  be  observed  in  the  adoption  of  a  reciprocal  treaty  with 
Switzerland  in  1936,  and  subsequent  reductions  in  the  duties  on 
coal  tar  and  other  chemical  products  from  that  country.  In  1943, 
after  Congress  had  again  "found  out"  about  Farben  and  Farben's 
war,  a  clause  was  actually  inserted  in  the  renewal  of  the  Recip- 
rocal Trade  Agreement  Act  which  purported  to  deprive  cartels  of 
any  benefit  from  such  treaties. 

As  confirmation  of  his  own  warning,  Mr.  Garvan  quoted  in  his 


TREASON'S   PEACE  201 

brief  from  the  then-scorned  statesman  of  another  nation  who  was 
also  attempting,  in  vain,  to  arouse  his  fellow  countrymen  and  the 
world  to  what  was  coming.  The  man  who,  six  years  later— when 
he  was  called  upon  almost  too  late,  was  to  win  immortal  fame 
as  the  inspired  defender  of  human  dignity  and  liberty  against  the 
Nazi  brutality  which  Farben  had  planned  and  armed.  Garvan's 
quotation  was  from  a  debate  in  the  English  House  of  Commons 
in  1934,  in  which  Winston  Churchill  had  said: 

The  great  new  fact  that  is  riveting  the  attention  of  every 
country  in  Europe  and  the  world  is  that  Germany  is  rearm- 
ing. This  fact  throws  everything  else  in  the  background.  Her 
factories  are  working  under  practically  war  conditions.  Ger- 
many is  rearming  on  land,  to  some  extent  on  sea;  and  what 
concerns  us  most,  in  the  air. 

The  most  dangerous  attack  is  the  incendiary  bomb 

Ten  days  of  intensive  bombing  of  London  would  kill  or  maim 

thirty  or  forty  thousand  people We  must  face  this  peril 

where  we  stand;  we  cannot  move  away  from  it.  I  hope  the 
Government  will  not  neglect  the  scientific  aspect  of  protec- 
tion of  the  population,  but  pending  some  new  discovery, 
the  only  practical  measure  for  certain  defense  is  being  able  to 
inflict  as  much  damage  on  the  enemy  as  he  can  inflict.  That 
procedure,  might,  in  practice,  give  complete  immunity. 

This  historic  premonition  and  warning  from  England's  future 
Prime  Minister  went  unheeded,  and  in  America  as  in  the  British 
Empire,  professonal  politicians  took  refuge  beneath  a  shabby 
umbrella  covered  with  the  flimsy  fabric  of  pacifism,  and  refused 
to  act  on  the  evidence  under  their  noses  of  what  Germany,  and 
Farben,  were  again  preparing  to  do. 


CHAPTER       XI 


Two  Drug  Laws-  -And  Two  Wars 


ON      DECEMBER 

3, 1942,  the  Federal  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals  in  New  York  handed 
down  a  decision  which  if  it  had  been  sustained  would  have  sub- 
stantially ended  all  possibility  of  successful  prosecution  of  cor- 
poration officials  and  employes  for  violation  of  the  new  Food, 
Drug  and  Cosmetic  Act,  sometimes  known  as  the  Copeland  law. 

With  that  decision  the  court  put  its  judicial  interpretation  on 
the  result  of  long  years  of  effort  through  which  Senator  Royal  S. 
Copeland,  with  the  assistance  of  the  Sterling-Farben  drug  lobby, 
and  various  public  officials,  extracted  the  teeth  from  the  Harvey 
Wiley  Food  and  Drugs  Act,  and  had  enacted  in  its  place  a  legalis- 
tic monstrosity  so  full  of  jokers  and  ambiguities  as  to  afford  no 
protection  whatsoever  against  influential  violators. 

The  case  in  which  the  decision  was  handed  down  involved 
a  shipment  of  adulterated  and  misbranded  digitalis,  and  the  ap- 
peal from  conviction  of  the  president  of  the  corporation  which 
had  shipped  it.  The  learned  appeal  judges  reversed  the  convic- 
tion, and  stated  that  it  would  be  "extremely  harsh"  to  charge  a 
corporation  official  with  a  criminal  offense—regardless  of  his 
actions,  or  inaction— unless  he  was  an  officer  of  a  very  small  cor- 
202 


TREASON'S    PEACE  203 

poration.  The  new  law  was  as  cock-eyed  as  that!  Or  so  the  appeal 
court  held.  ( Later  the  Supreme  Court  reversed  the  findings  of  the 
Appeal  Court,  in  a  close  decision  with  four  of  the  high  court  Justices 
upholding  the  appellate  decision. ) 

Under  the  old  Wiley  law,  officers  of  corporations  could  be, 
and  were  at  times,  prosecuted,  convicted,  and  sent  to  jail.  Un- 
happily, the  old  law  was  seldom  invoked  against  important  of- 
fenders, but  it  did  authorize  and,  in  fact,  require  such  prosecutions. 

It  can  easily  be  imagined  how  disastrous  it  would  have  been  to 
the  Farben  plans  had  Herman  Metz,  or  Doctor  Weiss,  or  Earl 
McClintock,  or  Dr.  Hiemenz,  or  any  of  the  other  Sterling- Win- 
throp-Bayer  executives  been  held  criminally  responsible  for  some 
of  the  vicious  violations  of  the  Food  and  Drug  Law  practiced  by 
their  companies— some  of  which  will  be  discussed  in  just  a  moment* 
And  it  has  long  been  my  contention  that  the  frantic  demands  of 
Copeland  and  his  clients  for  a  new  law  were  to  prevent  that  very 
possibility. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  in  June  1933,  it  was  to  Senator  Copeland  that 
the  task  of  putting  through  the  new  law  was  entrusted. 

Professor  Rexford  Guy  Tugwell  was  alleged  to  be  the  author 
of  the  first  bill  submitted  to  the  Senate  by  Dr.  Copeland.  This 
bill  was  bad  enough— it  omitted  all  traces  of  mandatory  enforce- 
ment. In  the  second  bill,  drafted  by  Ole  Salthe,  the  Copeland 
business  manager,  no  misunderstanding  was  possible— a  clause  was 
inserted  which  actually  instructed  the  enforcement  official  never 
to  take  to  court  any  "minor  violation"  when  he  "believed"  that 
the  public  interest  would  be  served  by  a  "suitable  written  notice 
or  warning." 

As  the  phrase  minor  violation  is  not  defined  anywhere  in  the  law, 
it  is  obviously  meaningless  in  a  legal  sense.  In  the  administration 
of  the  law  it  means  whatever  the  enforcement  official  choses  to 
believe  it  means.  And,  in  August  1935,  before  a  subcommittee  of 
Congress  I  challenged  Representative  Virgil  Chapman,  chairman, 
to  define  the  word  "minor"  as  used  in  the  Copeland  bill,  saying: 

If  anyone  can  define  the  word  "minor"  as  used  in  this  bill, 
I  will  withdraw  my  objection I  have  been  asking  every- 
one I  have  been  able  to  talk  to  here  to  define  the  word  minor. 


204  TREASON'S    PEACE 

"Don't  make  me  laugh,"  they  answer.  The  whole  purpose  of 
this  legislation  is  to  get  rid  of  the  mandate  in  Harvey  Wiley's 
law  for  criminal  prosecution,  and  to  replace  it  with  a  law 
which  puts  in  the  hands  of  an  enforcement  official  the  power 
to  do  absolutely  as  he  pleases  on  each  individual  offense. 

Representative  Chapman  refrained  from  accepting  my  chal- 
lenge, and  instead  contented  himself  with  constant  heckling,  and 
demands  that  I  discontinue  my  testimony. 

The  final  version  of  the  many  Copeland  bills  was  passed  by 
the  House  and  Senate  on  June  13,  1938,  and  became  law  by  the 
President's  signature  two  weeks  later,  a  few  days  after  the  sudden 
and  unexpected  death  of  its  sponsor,  Senator  Copeland. 

In  the  long  and  bitter  struggle  over  this  legislation,  one  of  the 
numerous  protests  was  a  brief  prepared  by  Dr.  Norman  W.  Burritt, 
as  representative  of  the  Medical  Society  of  New  Jersey.  Dr.  Bur- 
ritt's  brief  contained  the  following: 

Let  it  be  thoroughly  understood  that  the  Wiley  Act  is  a 
mandatory  criminal  statute  on  which  have  been  based  a  large 
mass  of  district,  appellate,  and  supreme  court  opinion.  This 
mass  of  judicial  interpretations  would  be  entirely  obliterated. 

if  the  Wiley  Act  is  repealed This  is  so  important  in  itself 

as  to  be  the  basis  for  summary  rejection  (of  the  Copeland 

bin). 

Some  of  the  story  of  the  Food  and  Drugs  law  has  been  told 
in  a  book*  published  by  my  wife  and  myself  in  1935.  Dr.  Harry 
Elmer  Barnes  concluded  a  review  of  that  book  with  the  comment 
that  his  column  was 

not  the  place  to  pass  any  verdict  upon  the  charges 

preferred  by  Mr.  Ambruster,  but  it  is  evident  that  they  can- 
not be  overlooked.  Either  he  should  be  prosecuted  for  crim- 
inal libel,  or  those  whom  he  denounces  should  be  relentlessly 
exposed  and  properly  punished. 

Being  in  complete  agreement  with  Dr.  Barnes,  I  wrote  to  the 
three  individuals  who  were  principally  denounced  in  my  book, 

*  "Why  Not  Enforce  the  Laws  We  Already  Have?" 


TREASON'S    PEACE  205 

and  requested  them  to  prosecute  me  for  criminal  libel  should  any 
of  them  feel  that  my  accusations  were  false  and  unjustified.  The 
three  were  Dr.  Morris  Fishbein,  editor  of  the  Journal  of  the  Ameri- 
can Medical  Association;  Walter  G.  Campbell,  Chief  of  the  Food 
and  Drug  Administration,  and  Dr.  Royal  S.  Copeland,  United 
States  Senator. 

It  would  take  another  volume  as  large,  or  larger,  than  this  one 
to  tell  the  full  story  of  the  legislative  battle  to  repeal  the  Wiley 
law.  However,  it  is  only  necessary  here  to  outline  briefly  those 
parts  of  the  fight  which  bear  directly  upon  the  immunity  accorded 
Farben's  drug  and  patent  medicine  affiliates. 

When  the  campaign  for  a  new  law  was  getting  under  way, 
there  was  a  strange  unanimity  in  the  expressed  opinions  of  the 
principals  involved— men  whose  interests  should  have  been  as  far 
apart  as  the  poles.  Professor  Tugwell,  the  Assistant  Secretary  of 
Agriculture,  Frank  Blair,  Sterling's  president  of  the  Proprietary 
Association,  and  Dr.  Morris  Fishbein,  all  agreed  that  the  poor 
old  Wiley  law  was  no  good.  Said  Tugwell:  "Dr.  Wiley's  law  is 
obsolete."  Said  Mr.  Blair:  "It  has  been  an  effective  statute  ..... 
but  it  does  not  go  far  enough."  Said  Dr.  Fishbein:  "The  Food  and 
Drugs  Act  of  1906  failed  largely  of  its  purpose/'  Somehow  they 
all  forgot  to  mention  that  the  real  trouble— and  the  only  trouble— 
with  the  Wiley  law  was  lax  enforcement. 

One  of  the  problems  which  confronted  those  directing  the  fight 
to  get  rid  of  the  Wiley  law,  was  the  remarkable  record  which  that 
law  had  made  whenever  it  was  invoked  in  the  courts.  The  record 
showed  that  out  of  over  31,000  cases  taken  to  court  in  the  thirty- 
three  years  of  its  existence,  less  than  175  were  lost  by  the  Govern- 
ment, or  a  bare  half  of  one  percent.  According  to  several  informed 
public  officials  with  whom  I  have  discussed  the  subject,  no  other 
federal  statute  has  ever  made  anything  like  such  a  record.  For 
example,  the  F.B.I.,  with  its  fine  record,  is  said  to  have  lost  a 
higher  percentage  than  this  of  its  court  cases. 

To  justify  the  repeal  of  the  Wiley  law,  a  list  of  thirty-four  allega- 
tions was  prepared,  and,  believe  it  or  not,  each  and  every  one  of 
those  allegations  was  either  directly  false  or  based  upon  a  mistruth. 
This  list  made  its  appearance  early  in  the  fight  and  kept  on  reap- 
pearing in  committee  reports,  and  on  the  floor  of  the  House  and 


2o6  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Senate  until  the  Copeland  bill  became  law.  Among  those  who 
issued  the  list  as  an  official  paper,  or,  at  least,  as  officially  sanc- 
tioned, was  one  Paul  Appleby,  at  that  time  assistant  to  Secretary 
of  Agriculture  Henry  A.  Wallace.  Mr.  Appleby  posed  as  an  author- 
ity on  the  subject  of  both  the  Wiley  law  and  the  pending  legisla- 
tion. He  was  neither. 

In  1936  he  sent  this  list,  as  proof  of  the  superiority  of  the  Cope- 
land  bill,  to  a  prominent  educator  who  had  suggested  that  the 
Department  might  benefit  from  discussing  the  Food  and  Drug 
law  situation  with  me.  Mr.  Appleby's  response  to  that  suggestion 
was  to  say  that: 

I  will  not  join  in  a  recommendation  that  more  of  this  De- 
partment's time  be  wasted  on  Ambruster;  I  shall  oppose  it 
emphatically  in  defense  of  good  administration  and  proper 
use  of  time. 

One  of  the  thirty-four  alleged  improvements  of  Copeland's  bill 
over  the  Wiley  law  was  that  the  new  bill  forbade  traffic  in  con- 
fectionery containing  metallic  trinkets  and  other  inedible  sub- 
stances and  the  old  bill  did  not.  Another,  that  the  bill  pending 
provided  for  food  standards.  The  fact  was  that  court  cases  were 
then  on  record  in  which  the  government  was  successful  in  securing 
the  condemnation  of  candy-coated  trinkets  as  adulterated  under 
the  Wiley  law;  while  food  standards  covering  everything  edible 
from  soup  to  nuts  had  been  issued  by  the  Food  and  Drug  Admin- 
istration for  use  in  enforcing  the  Wiley  law  from  the  time  it  was 
passed. 

Senator  Copeland  made  frequent  use  of  this  list  in  the  Senate 
and  in  public.  He  was  especially  fond  of  the  one  about  the  candy 
trinkets  because  it  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  emote  on  the  sa- 
credness  of  childhood,  and  the  grave  danger  of  trinket-swallowing. 
In  an  exchange  with  Senator  A.  Harry  Moore,  of  New  Jersey, 
when  these  two  ornaments  of  our  highest  legislative  body  staged 
their  mock  debate  on  amendments  proposed  by  the  Medical  So- 
ciety of  New  Jersey,  Senator  Copeland  ended  his  speech  with: 

If  we  were  to  accept  the  substitute  presented  by  the  Sen- 
ator from  New  Jersey,  there  would  be  no  such  prohibition 


TREASON'S    PEACE  207 

as  is  contemplated  by  the  pending  bill.  I  know  that  Senator's 
kind  heart  and  that  he  would  not  wish  this  to  be  the  case. 

Both  Senators  seem  to  have  been  terribly  anxious  that  day  to 
have  it  appear  that  serious  consideration  was  being  given  to  the 
Medical  Society's  amendments  to  the  Wiley  act  which  Senator 
Moore  had  introduced.  For  three-quarters  of  an  hour  they  staged 
what  appears  on  the  record  to  have  been  a  valiant  fight.  Yet,  in  the 
entire  exchange,  not  one  of  the  proposals  made,  or  the  facts  sub- 
mitted, by  the  New  Jersey  doctors,  was  accurately  stated  or  truth- 
fully debated. 

In  addition  to  Dr.  Burritt's  brief,  Senator  Moore  also  inserted 
in  the  record  a  statement  which  had  been  prepared  for  him,  ex- 
plaining the  amendments.  Within  an  hour  and  of  course  long 
before  the  record  was  printed,  the  amendments  proposed  by  the 
Medical  Society  were  rejected  by  a  snap  vote  on  which  the  yeas 
and  nays  were  not  taken. 

It  so  happens  that  under  the  rules  of  the  Senate  the  bill  pro- 
posed by  the  Medical  Society  should  have  gone  directly  to  the 
committee  in  charge  of  such  legislation,  where  it  could  have  had 
a  hearing  and  have  been  studied  by  the  members  of  the  commit- 
tee before  it  was  presented  on  the  floor.  Senator  Moore,  however, 
chose  a  questionable  alternative  when  he  introduced  it  as  an 
amendment  to  the  Copeland  bill,  then  threw  it  into  the  debate 
at  the  last  moment. 

It  was  by  such  tactics  that  the  stage  was  set  for  the  court  de- 
cision some  years  later  which  so  discouraged  criminal  prosecu- 
tions of  the  executives  of  corporations,  like  Standard  Oil  and  Ster- 
ling, which  firms,  it  so  happens,  were  clients  of  Copeland  Service, 
Inc. 

Representative  Frank  W.  Towey,  of  New  Jersey,  made  a  real 
fight  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Representatives  against  the  am- 
biguities and  impotence  of  the  Copeland  bill  as  pointed  out  by 
the  Medical  Society  of  his  State.  Congressman  Towey  was  par- 
tially successful  in  limiting  the  most  vicious  provision  of  the  bill, 
the  "minor  violation"  joker,  with  a  restriction  which  forbade  the 
enforcement  official  to  give  more  than  one  warning  to  any  one 
offender  before  instituting  court  proceedings.  The  House  version 


ao8  TREASON'S    PEACE 

of  the  Copeland  bill  was  passed  with  Mr.  Towey's  amendment 
in  it;  the  bill  then  went  to  a  Conference  Committee  headed  by 
Doctor  Copeland  where,  by  a  very  simple  legislative  operation 
the  limitation  on  the  number  of  warnings  was  quietly  snipped  off 
and  deposited  in  the  waste  basket.  This  action  thus  served  notice 
on  all  concerned  ( including  any  judge  who  may  become  intrigued 
about  "minor"  violations)  that  its  administrator  is  instructed  to 
continue  in  perpetuity  to  issue  warnings  "please  not  to  do  it  again" 
—to  the  same  offender  for  the  same  offense  no  matter  how  dan- 
gerous to  the  lives  and  health  of  the  public  that  offense  might  be. 

Possibly  the  crowning  use  of  the  false  allegations  about  the 
improved  protection  afforded  the  public  by  the  Copeland  law 
was  made  by  Senator  Alben  W.  Barkley,  majority  leader  of  the 
Senate.  On  July  5,  1938,  Senator  Barkley  indicated  that  Cope- 
land's  law  was  better  than  Wiley's  because  food  standards  were 
not  amenable  to  control  under  the  old  law.  At  this  distance  it 
is  difficult  to  judge  whether  Senator  Barkley  did  not  know,  or 
did  not  care,  what  he  was  talking  about. 

No  bets  were  overlooked,  and  no  methods  were  too  low  for 
those  who  emasculated  the  food  and  drug  law  for  the  benefit 
of  Farben's  American  drug  front.  In  the  final  stages  of  the  fight, 
the  New  Jersey  Medical  Society  asked  for  a  public  hearing  to 
present  and  discuss  its  objections  to  the  Copeland  bill.  At  the 
same  time,  the  drug  lobby,  headed  by  Sterling's  Frank  Blair,  re- 
quested a  private  hearing.  The  drug  lobby  got  its  private  hearing 
—from  Clarence  Lea,  chairman  of  the  House  of  Representatives 
Committee.  The  Medical  Society  was  refused  any  hearing  what- 
soever. 

When  the  Copeland  bill  finally  became  law,  the  job  of  estab- 
lishing suitable  regulations  for  its  enforcement  arose.  And  it  began 
to  dawn  on  those  most  concerned  that  as  no  one  had  the  slightest 
idea  of  what  many  of  its  provisions  meant,  and  as  enforcement 
officials  were  now  possessed  of  heretofore  unheard  of  discretion- 
ary powers,  there  was  danger  that  the  new  law  would  turn  out 
to  be  a  boomerang.  So  Commissioner  Campbell  was  persuaded 
to  appoint,  as  his  "technical  consultant,"  the  man  who  had  drafted 
the  bill  for  Senator  Copeland,  Mr.  Ole  Salthe;  he,  at  least,  ought 


TREASON'S   PEACE  209 

to  know  what  it  meant.  Mr.  Salthe,  by  now  operating  his  own  com- 
mercial consulting  business  as  a  successor  to  the  late  Senator  Cope- 
land,  took  the  job  and  then  proceeded  to  seek  clients  by  advertis- 
ing his  services  as  an  official  of  the  Food  and  Drug  Administration. 
And  please  don't  say  he  couldn't  do  that— he  did! 

Under  the  language  of  the  Copeland  law  all  new  drugs  would 
surely  be  safe  because  they  would  have  to  be  inspected  and  ap- 
proved by  the  Food  and  Drug  Administration  before  they  were 
put  on  the  market. 

So  early  in  December  1940,  the  Farben-Sterling  subsidiary, 
Winthrop,  shipped  some  400,000  tablets  of  a  newly  developed  drug 
labeled  Sulfathiazole,  which  at  that  time  was  the  most  recent 
modification  of  the  original  sulfa  germ  destroyer,  Sulfanilamide. 

Sulfathiazole  Winthrop  had  been  approved  by  the  food  and 
drug  official  in  charge  of  new  drugs,  one  Dr.  J.  J.  Durrett,  who 
some  years  previously  had  called  on  one  of  the  foremost  physi- 
cians of  his  generation  and  threatened  him  with  dire  consequences 
should  he  testify  before  a  Senate  committee  about  the  lax  en- 
forcement of  the  Wiley  law. 

However,  as  it  was  later  revealed,  Dr.  Durrett's  approval  did 
not  mention  the  "inadequacy  of  controls"  which  existed  in  the 
Winthrop  factory.  The  400,000  tablets  labeled  Sulfathiazole  were 
a  mixture  of  the  germ-destroying  sulfa  drug  and  the  remedy  called 
Luminal,  which  puts  people  to  sleep.  Some  of  these  tablets  con- 
tained more  than  five  grains  of  Luminal,  the  usual  safe  dosage 
of  which  is  one  grain.  So,  during  the  next  three  months,  numerous 
patients  to  whom  the  Winthrop  tablets  were  administered  did 
go  to  sleep— and  never  woke  up! 

Whether  any  of  the  Winthrop  staff  actually  knew  that  the  tab- 
lets were  adulterated  when  they  were  shipped— or  whether  some- 
one mixed  the  ingredients  deliberately  as  sabotage— has  never  been 
revealed.  The  fact  is  admitted,  however,  that  the  Winthrop  man- 
agement knew  about  the  adulteration  very  shortly  after  the  ship- 
ments went  out— when  complaints  came  in  from  physicians  in 
Louisville,  Ky.,  and  analysis  revealed  the  admixture  of  Luminal. 

Yet  the  Sterling- Winthrop  executives  did  not  issue  any  public 
warning  to  the  pharmacists  and  physicians  who  were  dispensing 
and  administering  these  deadly  tablets.  Instead  they  instructed 


210  TREASON    S     PEACE 

their  personnel  to  repossess  the  tablets,  giving  as  the  utterly  false 
reason  that,  "they  do  not  disintegrate  properly." 

Then  began  a  publicity  campaign  to  push  the  sale  and  use  of 
Winthrop  Sulfathiazole— a  campaign  which  had  the  cooperation 
of  Dr.  Morris  Fishbein,  in  the  Journal  of  the  American  Medical 
Association— a  procedure  completely  unbelievable,  if  the  record 
did  not  prove  it.  On  January  25, 1941,  the  Journal  announced  that 
"Sulfathiazole-Winthrop,  U.  S.  Patent  applied  for"  had  been  ac- 
cepted by  its  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  for  inclusion 
in  its  official  volume  of  New  and  Nonofficial  Remedies.  (Possibly 
it  should  be  stated  here  that  a  vast  majority  of  members  of  the 
medical  profession  regard  this  "acceptance"  of  a  new  remedy  as 
a  solemn  guarantee  to  them  by  the  officers  of  their  national  organ- 
ization that  an  investigation  has  been  made  and  that  the  product 
could  be  relied  upon  for  quality  and  efficacy. ) 

For  good  measure,  and  in  that  same  issue  of  the  Journal,  there 
appeared  a  scientific  treatise  on  Sulfathiazole,  with  a  footnote 
indicating  that  its  authors  were  research  workers  for  Winthrop, 
and  were  advising  the  drug  authorities  at  Washington  on  the 
subject.  And  finally,  as  though  to  make  certain  that  no  reader 
would  miss  the  good  news,  the  Journal  carried  a  full-page  adver- 
tisement: "Sulfathiazole  Winthrop  Now  Accepted."  Included  was 
the  shield  of  the  council,  and  the  added  legend,  "Winthrop  Chem- 
ical Co.,  Pharmaceuticals  of  Merit  for  the  Physician."  On  Febru- 
ary 1,  and  March  15,  this  advertisement  of  Sulfathiazole  was  re- 
peated. 

In  any  event,  it  was  not  until  April  3,  1941,  that  the  Winthrop 
Chemical  Co.  issued  its  first  warning  to  the  public  and  the  med- 
ical profession  that  some  of  its  Sulfathiazole  tablets  were  not  safe 
to  use  because  they  were  "accidentally  contaminated."  The  return 
of  any  tablets  which  were  still  outstanding  was  requested  and,  to 
indicate  a  suitable  appreciation  of  its  public  responsibility,  the 
company  also  expressed  its  profound  regret  at  the  occurrence. 

The  Winthrop  warning  was  an  anticlimax.  The  real  warning 
had  come  a  week  earlier,  on  March  28th,  when  state  health  and 
pharmacy  departments,  and  local  police  authorities  all  over  the 
United  States,  began  sending  out  notices  to  hospitals  and  drug- 
gists not  to  dispense  any  more  Sulfathiazole. 


TREASON    S     PEACE  211 

Meanwhile,  in  March,  and  shortly  before  the  Sulfathiazole  story 
broke,  Dr.  Durrett  transferred  his  services  to  the  Federal  Trade 
Commission  to  become  its  authority  on  medical  advertising.  Ac- 
cording to  Drug  Trade  News,  the  industry  highly  approved  the 
way  he  had  handled  new-drug  applications  under  the  Oopeland 
law. 

Dr.  Durrett's  work  as  new-drug  supervisor  was  taken  over  by 
Dr.  Theodore  G.  Klumpp,  head  of  the  division  which  inspected, 
sampled,  and  tested  all  drugs.  Dr.  Klumpp's  inspectors  do  not 
appear  to  have  done  much  inspection,  sampling,  and  testing  on 
the  Winthrop  shipments.  Seventeen  deaths  were  reported  by  physi- 
cians as  apparently  due  to  administration  of  these  tablets  during 
the  three  months  of  the  concealment,  no  computation  was  possible 
of  those  who  were  injured  but  stayed  alive. 

In  April,  when  the  various  official  state  and  federal  agencies 
completed  their  search  of  drug  stores  and  hospitals,  a  hundred 
thousand  tablets,  or  25  percent  of  the  December  shipments  were 
still  missing,  and  unaccounted  for— except  by  the  deaths. 

Food  and  Drug  Commissioner  Campbell  issued  a  statement. 
He  declared  that  the  actions  of  the  Winthrop  Chemical  Company, 
after  it  discovered  that  the  tablets  were  in  circulation,  "had  not 
been  satisfactory."  "The  company,"  said  Mr.  Campbell,  "had 
known  of  the  situation  in  December,  but  the  government  was  not 
informed  until  March  20th.  The  failure  of  the  responsible  officials 
of  the  Winthrop  Chemical  Company  to  notify  the  Food  and  Drug 
Administration  immediately  of  this  incident,  has  as  yet  not  been 
satisfactorily  explained."  Apparently  an  explanation  that  satisfied 
Mr.  Campbell  was  made  later,  because  he  never  took  any  action 
to  hold  the  Sterling- Winthrop  executives  responsible  in  court, 
either  for  having  filed  a  false  application  for  a  new  drug,  or  for 
having  permitted  adulterated  tablets  to  be  manufactured  and 
shipped;  or  for  conspiring  among  themselves  and  with  others  to 
conceal  the  adulteration  while  they  were  advertising  to  the  med- 
ical profession  the  alleged  guarantee  of  Dr.  Fishbein's  Council 
on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry. 

However,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Copeland  law  does  not  require 
the  administrator  to  ask  for  an  explanation;  it  merely  authorizes 
him  to  do  what  he  thinks  desirable.  And,  if  he  should  decide  that 


212  TREASON'S   PEACE 

a  deliberate  silence  which  resulted  in  seventeen  deaths  was  a 
minor  violation,  he  might  also  decide,  lawfully,  that  a  letter  of 
warning  was  sufficient. 

Again,  we  have  to  consider  that  Circuit  Court  decision  of  De- 
cember 1942  which  held  that  under  the  Copeland  law  executives 
and  employes  of  a  corporation  like  Sterling  could  not  be  prose- 
cuted, no  matter  what  they  did.  Perhaps  Mr.  Campbell  saw  that 
decision  coming,  or  perhaps  Mr.  Ole  Salthe,  his  technical  con- 
sultant, advised  him  that  it  would  be  useless  to  try  those  responsi- 
ble. Whatever  the  reason,  the  executives  were  never  taken  to 
court.  The  Winthrop  Company,  however,  was  prosecuted  for  some 
of  the  shipments,  and,  after  pleading  guilty,  was  fined  $15,800; 
which  sum  about  equaled  the  selling  price  of  the  400,000  tablets. 

Strangely  enough,  at  the  very  time  when  the  gentle  action 
against  Winthrop  was  filed  in  December  1941,  a  little-known  con- 
sultant for  a  new  skin  remedy  was  indicted  in  Washington  on 
a  charge  of  falsifying  the  application  he  had  filed  with  the  Food 
and  Drug  Administration.  When  this  individual  failed  to  make 
bail,  lie  was  arrested  and  lodged  in  jail.  Evidently  Mr.  Campbell 
did  not  believe  that  that  particular  violation  was  a  minor  one— 
the  remedy  was  said  to  have  damaged  the  livers  of  animals  used 
in  experiments  with  it. 

Commissioner  Campbell  also  rejected  the  thought  that  such 
crimes  as  leaving  too  many  cherry  pits  in  a  can  of  cherries  should 
be  classed  as  minor  violations  of  the  Copeland  law.  In  a  bulletin 
issued  just  at  the  time  of  the  Sulfathiazole  expose,  there  were 
notices  of  successful  court  actions  against  canned  cherries  be- 
cause they  had  more  than  one  pit  per  20  oz.  tin;  canned  peas  be- 
cause they  were  not  immature,  canned  tomatoes  because  the 
pieces  were  too  small,  and  canned  apricots  because  they  were 
not  uniform  in  size. 

Perhaps  this  is  an  appropriate  time  to  point  out  that  the  Cope- 
land  law  is  so  powerful  an  instrument  for  the  public  health  that 
certain  of  its  sections  also  forbid,  and  permit  severe  punishment 
for,  adulterating  horseshoe  nails,  and  misbranding  ladies'  bras- 
siers;  and  if  Mr.  Campbell  or  his  successor  Dr.  Paul  Dunbar,  really 
got  het  up  about  it  he  could  prosecute  a  dealer  in  pigs  nose-rings 
because  the  premises  where  the  rings  were  stored  were  unsanitary 


TREASON'S    PEACE  213 

(Doubters  please  see  sections  201  (h);  301  (a)  (b);  and  501  (a) 
(1)  and  (2),  Federal  Food,  Drug  and  Cosmetic  Act  of  1938). 

On  April  22,  1941,  Winthrop's  license  to  ship  Sulfathiazole  was 
revoked.  Three  months  later  it  was  restored,  and  the  company 
promptly  reduced  its  prices  on  Sulfathiazole  Winthrop,  with  the 
announcement  that  the  tablets  were  again  for  sale  as  "Pharma- 
ceuticals of  Merit  for  the  Physician." 

Dr.  Klumpp,  by  this  time,  had  moved  onward  and  upward.  He 
had  accepted  a  position  awarded  him  by  Dr.  Fishbein  and  become 
Director  of  the  A.  M.  A.  division  on  food  and  drugs  and  secretary 
of  its  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  (the  same  council 
that  had  "accepted"  Winthrop's  Sulfathiazole  and  approved  its 
advertising).  And  Dr.  Klumpp  kept  moving.  Not  long  thereafter, 
Edward  S.  Rogers,  chairman  of  the  Board  of  Sterling  Products, 
announced  that  Dr.  Klumpp  had  been  elected  president  of  Win- 
throp. 

One  aftermath  of  the  Sulfathiazole  affair  belongs  in  this  story. 
The  first  expose  came  just  when  the  Antitrust  Division  of  the  Jus- 
tice Department  was  starting  its  grand  jury  investigation  of  Ster- 
ling and  Winthrop.  When  I  mentioned  the  adulteration  and  its 
concealment  to  one  of  the  staff  he  advised  me  to  "keep  my  shirt 
on,"  as  drastic  action  was  on  the  way.  This  was  before  he  and 
his  colleagues  had  felt  the  full  weight  of  the  Corcoran  big  toe. 

Time  went  on  and  there  was  no  indication  that  the  Justice  De- 
partment would  act,  so  I  placed  the  matter  squarely  up  to  Federal 
Security  Administrator  Paul  V.  McNutt,  to  whose  authority  the 
Food  and  Drug  Administration  had  been  transferred  in  1940.  He 
advised  me  that  an  information  had  been  filed  against  Winthrop 
and  that  he  considered  further  discussion  unnecessary,  as  I  had 
already  been  in  correspondence  with  the  Justice  Department 
about  it.  McNutt  indicated  full  approval  of  Commissioner  Camp- 
bell, and  was  just  not  interested  in  the  Farben-Sterling  conspiracy 
angle. 

Later,  in  July  1942,  a  forthright  member  of  the  Justice  Depart- 
ment staff  indicated  his  agreement  with  my  conclusions  about  the 
guilt  of  those  involved  in  the  concealment  of  the  adulterated  tab- 
lets and  in  my  presence  gave  instructions  that  the  case  should 
be  reopened  on  the  basis  of  the  statute  which  covers  conspiracy 


214  TREASON'S    PEACE 

against  the  United  States.  At  his  request,  I  submitted  a  brief  out- 
lining all  the  circumstances  involved.  The  brief  cited  several  con- 
spiracy actions  in  which  jail  sentences  had  resulted  for  such  crimes 
as  conspiring  to  ship  oleomargarine  as  butter  and  mixing  olive  oil 
with  a  cheaper  product. 

A  few  weeks  later  that  particular  member  of  the  justice  staff 
was  no  longer  holding  down  that  particular  job.  I  was  told  that 
he  had  resigned.  That  Winthrop  case  was  not  reopened. 

In  February  1944,  long  after  an  alleged  "housecleaning,"  Win- 
throp was  again  in  serious  trouble  with  the  Food  and  Drug  Ad- 
ministration when  the  latter  seized  and  destroyed  several  thou- 
sand cartons  of  Winthrop  ampules  labeled  as  containing  "Atabrine 
Dihydrochloride"  and  "Sterile  Distilled  Water/'  but  which  were 
found  to  be  adulterated.  These  ampules  were  to  be  used  by  physi- 
cians for  hypodermic  injections. 

Three  months  later  Winthrop  was  again  prosecuted  criminally, 
charged  with  shipping  adulterated  ampules  as  above  noted,  and 
others  containing  "Neoarsphenamine"  and  "Dextrose"  (the  latter 
being  used  respectively  for  treatment  of  syphilis  and  as  a  diluent 
for  "Pontocain,"  for  spinal  anesthesia). 

When  this  prosecution  was  filed  in  the  New  York  Federal  Court 
the  United  States  Attorney  in  charge  announced  that  batches  of 
the  ampules  had  been  picked  up  in  navy  hospitals  and  army 
bases;  that  more  than  90,000  ampules  and  other  packages  had 
been  recalled;  that  the  damage  apparently  was  due  to  lax  control 
and  failure  at  the  Winthrop,  Rensselaer,  N.  Y.  plant  to  keep  the 
apparatus  clean,  and  that  the  situation  had  been  uncovered  when 
seven  persons— one  of  whom  died— showed  unusual  symptoms 
after  receiving  spinal  anesthetics  containing  a  Winthrop  solution. 
Other  hospital  patients  were  adversely  affected,  said  the  prose- 
cutor, and  he  concluded  that  the  possible  fines  in  the  case  could 
total  $120,000,  if  the  company  were  found  guilty. 

Winthrop's  Dr.  Klumpp  immediately  denied  the  charges  in 
vehement  public  statements,  then  a  few  months  later  the  com- 
pany changed  its  plea  to  "Guilty"  and  took  a  fine— nicely  marked 
down— of  $18,000.  Shipments  of  these  adulterated  ampules  were 
found  in  numerous  states  as  far  west  as  California  in  1943  and 


TREASON'S    PEACE  215 

1944.  And  during  the  period  of  these  seizures,  but  before  the 
criminal  prosecution  resulted  in  publication  of  the  affair  in  the 
lay  press,  Dr.  Fishbein's  Journal  of  the  A.  M.  A.  was  repeatedly 
publishing  full  page  advertisements  featuring  Winthrop  products 
—including  "Winthrop"  Atabrine  Dihydrochloride,  winner  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  "E"  flags;  with  which 

competent  medical  officers  responsible  for  the  health  of  our 
armed  forces  have  seen  to  it  that  every  soldier,  sailor  and 
marine  will  have  the  fullest  protection  against  malaria  that 
modern  methods  can  afford. 

In  appraising  these  two  Winthrop  cases,  as  the  design  may  ap- 
pear to  fit  into  the  pattern  of  Farben,  the  reader  is  now  asked 
to  look  back.  This  time  the  story  returns  to  an  earlier  war,  when 
the  Kaiser's  armies  were  fighting  in  Europe,  and  the  German  espi- 
onage and  propaganda  machine  in  the  United  States  was  under 
the  direction  of  Bayer's  Dr.  Hugo  Schweitzer.  It  was  then,  in 
1915,  that  the  United  States  was  also  faced  with  an  immediate 
internal  peril  because  imports  of  the  supply  of  another  important 
new  drug,  Salvarsan,  had  been  cut  off  along  with  other  medicinals 
and  dyestuffs. 

Salvarsan,  the  Hoechst  trademark  for  the  product  arsphena- 
mine,  or  arsenobenzol  as  it  was  then  known,  had  been  one  of 
a  number  of  important  medical  products  imported  by  Herman 
Metz.  As  the  only  known  remedy  for  syphilis,  it  was  indispen- 
sable in  this  country  for  the  public  health  and  for  the  efficiency 
of  our  armed  forces. 

In  June  1917,  after  this  country  had  entered  the  war,  Dr.  George 
Walker  of  the  Council  on  National  Defense  appeared  before  the 
Senate  Patents  Committee  to  urge  that  Salvarsan  patents  be  abro- 
gated. Metz,  after  threatening  patent  suits  against  new  makers, 
was  finally  compelled  to  renounce  his  German  friends'  determina- 
tion that  his  country  should  "starve  to  death"  for  vital  drugs— to 
use  his  own  expression— and  began  to  produce  Salvarsan  himself, 
through  the  Metz  Laboratories.  He  also  was  compelled  to  permit 
several  other  concerns  to  begin  commercial  manufacture.  How- 
ever, the  shortage  was  not  relieved  until  after  the  Federal  Trade 


216  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Commission  and  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  had  seized  all  of 
the  Hoechst  patents,  and  granted  licenses  to  several  concerns  to 
manufacture  arsphenamine. 

While  the  design  may  vary  with  the  times,  the  Farben  pattern 
never  changes  and  so  we  find  that  the  adulterated  Sulfathiazole 
of  World  War  II  had  its  counterpart  in  World  War  I— when  adult- 
erated arsphenamine  made  its  appearance  in  the  United  States, 
and  Metz  cabled  Hoechst:  "Spurious  and  infringing  products 
simply  flooding  market."  At  that  time,  too,  there  was  no  direct 
proof  that  the  adulteration  was  deliberate. 

Another  important  U.  S.  patent  owned  by  Hoechst  covered  the 
local  anesthetic,  procaine,  protected  under  the  Hoechst  trademark 
as  Novocain.  Other  patents  covered  antipyrine,  the  first  coal-tar 
headache  cure;  and  phenacetin,  the  shortage  of  which  for  treat- 
ment of  influenza  had  also  caused  much  unnecessary  suffering. 

Two  of  the  other  Big  Six  German  dye  companies  held  numerous 
U.  S.  Patents  on  important  medicinals.  One  of  these  was  Kalle 
which  controlled  the  remedies  known  as  Bismon,  Formicin,  and 
Menthol  lodol.  Bayer  controlled  Aspirin  (until  1917  when  the 
U.  S.  patent  on  acetylsalicylic  acid  expired)  Luminal  and  Veronal. 
The  last  two  were  also  made  in  the  American  Bayer  plant. 

When  World  War  I  broke  out,  all  of  the  above  and  many  others, 
were  among  the  "accepted"  new  and  nonofficial  remedies  of  the 
A.  M.  A.  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry.  At  that  time  the 
real  boss  of  the  A.  M.  A.,  and  chairman  of  its  Council  was  "Doctor" 
George  H.  Simmons,  the  charlatan  whose  name  remained  on  the 
masthead  of  the  Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Association 
until  he  died  in  1937. 

When  Simmons  withdrew  from  the  limelight  in  1924,  and  Dr. 
Fishbein  took  his  place,  the  German  I.G.  Dyes  owned  the  Big 
Six  and  its  drug  fronts  here  had  been  Americanized  under  the 
names  of  Sterling,  Winthrop  and  the  Bayer  Co.  of  New  York.  The 
names,  but  not  the  pattern,  had  changed. 

There  is  no  implication  here  that  some  of  the  German  dye-trust 
medicinals  thus  "accepted"  by  the  A.  M.  A.  Council  are  not  useful 
in  the  relief  of  human  sufferings.  The  most  objectionable  feature 
of  these  acceptances  is  that  they  made  it  possible  to  charge  ex- 
cessive prices,  and  that  the  resulting  tremendous  profits  were 


PEACE  217 

used  to  help  finance  subversive  activities  in  the  United  States 
before  and  during  two  World  Wars. 

Also,  the  A.  M.  A.  guarantees  served  as  a  cover  for  violations 
of  the  food  and  drug  laws,  and  the  false  advertising  laws  long 
before  the  Sulfathiazole  affair.  Many  of  these  violations  by  Farben 
affiliates  remain  concealed  in  official  files  where  they  were  placed 
by  Mr.  Campbell,  in  ''permanent  abeyance,"  and  without  court 
action.  However,  some  did  reach  the  light  of  day. 

For  example,  in  1928,  shortly  after  the  Cook  Laboratories  came 
into  the  Farben-Sterling-Metz  family,  a  prosecution  was  started 
against  that  company  for  having  shipped  a  long  list  of  so-called 
ethical  and  official  remedies  which  were  adulterated  and  mis- 
branded  under  the  Wiley  law.  For  years  this  case  was  shelved, 
and  ignored  by  all  concerned.  Then,  in  1932,  something  slipped. 
Cook  Laboratories  pleaded  guilty,  and  was  fined  $750.  The  pen- 
alties, under  the  Wiley  law,  could  have  been  more  than  $5,000 
and  a  good  many  years  in  jail  for  some  of  the  executives.  Mean- 
while, Cook  Laboratories'  remedies  remained  in  the  New  and 
Nonofficial  list  as  "accepted." 

In  1936,  in  California,  a  criminal  prosecution  was  brought  under 
the  Wiley  law  for  shipments  of  adulterated  Amidopyrine  tablets, 
Novocain  ampules,  and  another  medicinal  by  a  local  company 
which  pleaded  guilty  and  was  fined.  The  Novocain  ampules  were 
identified  as  the  Metz  Laboratories'  brand,  and  the  charge  was 
that  the  ampules  contained  a  greater  quantity  of  Novocain  than 
the  label  stated  (i.e.,  an  overdose).  Why  the  prosecution  was 
brought  against  the  shipper  instead  of  Metz  or  Winthrop  was  not 
explained. 

It  seems  preposterous  that  the  U.  S.  Patent  Laws  could  have 
been  utilized  to  injure  the  public  health  and  the  health  of  our 
armed  forces  before  and  during  World  War  I.  Even  more  out- 
rageout  it  is  that  precisely  the  same  thing  has  been  allowed  to  hap- 
pen in  this  war— when  the  Farben-Sterling  ownership  of  Winthrop 
used  its  patents  on  Atabrine  to  restrict  the  production  of  that 
remedy  for  malaria  after  Japan  had  cut  off  our  supply  of  quinine 
from  the  Dutch  East  Indies. 

The  history  of  the  drug  called  Atabrine  goes  back  to  the  ex- 
periments of  the  young  English  chemist  Perkin  almost  a  century 


2i8  TREASON'S   PEACE 

ago,  as  mentioned  in  Chapter  i,  when  the  attempt  to  make  synthetic 
quinine  from  coal  tar  resulted  in  the  discovery  of  coal-tar  dyes. 

It  was  in  1927  that  Farben  chemists  first  thought  they  had  per- 
fected quinine  synthesis  from  a  coal  tar  base.  However,  this 
product,  called  Plasmochin,  was  only  partially  efficient  for  malaria 
control;  it  did  kill  the  germs  but  it  did  not  cure  the  disease.  So 
the  research  continued  and  Quinacrine  Hydrochloride,  now  sold  as 
Atabrine,  was  discovered  some  five  years  later.  In  the  early  thir- 
ties Atabrine  was  introduced  in  the  United  States  as  a  Winthrop 
product.  But  it  was  made  by  Farben— all  Winthrop  did  was  to  put 
it  in  ampules  or  to  compress  it  into  tablets  and  distribute  the 
new  remedy  under  its  own  label  as  made  in  America. 

It  should  be  unnecessary  here  to  go  into  the  history  of  malaria 
from  the  time  when  its  epidemics  played  a  part  in  the  destruction 
of  Athens  and  Rome,  to  its  present  ravages  upon  the  health  and 
lives  of  a  large  percentage  of  the  world's  population. 

According  to  the  National  Institute  of  Health  it  is  estimated  that 
under  normal,  or  pre-war  conditions,  not  less  than  500,000,000 
persons  suffer  yearly  from  malaria.  Others  estimate  that  one-third 
of  the  population  of  the  globe  is  afflicted  with  this  disease. 

As  illustrative  of  its  importance  to  the  national  defense,  the 
annual  report  of  the  Surgeon  General  of  the  United  States  Army 
in  1941  indicates  that  hospitalization  of  enlisted  men  for  malaria 
in  Panama  and  the  Philippines  has  been  well  over  100  for  each 
1000  stationed  there.  Under  these  conditions  the  grave  danger 
to  the  health  and  efficiency  of  thousands  of  men  in  the  Army  and 
Navy,  many  of  whom  were  never  previously  exposed  to  malaria, 
is  obvious. 

It  may  be  added  that  this  story  is  not  the  place  to  present  or 
argue  the  merits  of  Atabrine  as  compared  with  quinine.  It  is 
necessary,  however,  in  appraising  its  place  in  the  Farben  pattern, 
to  record  the  fact  that  a  wide  discrepancy  in  medical  opinion  has 
been  revealed  regarding  the  merits  of  Atabrine  as  a  malaria  rem- 
edy. Possibly  the  highest  point  in  the  controversy  is  to  be  found 
in  a  voluminous  treatise  on  the  subject  by  Dr.  Aubrey  H.  Hamil- 
ton, Lieutenant  Commander  in  the  United  States  Navy,  who  re- 
turned to  Washington  when  the  war  started,  after  twenty  years 
of  clinical  observations  of  the  incidence  and  treatment  of  malaria 


TREASON'S   PEACE  219 

in  the  tropics.  The  treatise  was  prepared  and  published  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Board  of  Economic  Warfare  and  the  Depart- 
ment of  Commerce.  In  it  Dr.  Hamilton  left  no  doubt  as  to  his  own 
findings,  and  those  of  numerous  other  medical  men,  that  Atabrine, 
as  it  was  then  made,  presented  no  advantages  over  quinine 
in  the  treatment  of  malaria,  and  had  certain  toxic  properties  which 
had  to  be  eliminated  through  change  in  its  formula  before  its  final 
acceptance  as  anything  but  an  emergency  substitute  for  the  older 
remedy. 

Back  in  1935,  when  Atabrine  was  first  being  tried  out  in  the 
United  States  on  a  large  scale,  medical  authorities  reported  that 
mental  disturbances  followed  its  use.  The  public  relations  experts 
of  Sterling  neither  conceded  this  fault  possible  nor  mentioned  it, 
They  contented  themselves  with  statements  issued  either  directly 
or  through  sources  not  readily  identified  as  friendly  which  en- 
larged upon  the  tremendous  expansion  made  in  Winthrop's  pro- 
duction of  Atabrine  for  national  defense  purposes,  and  the  reduc- 
tion in  selling  price  to  a  figure  less  than  one-tenth  of  that  which 
was  charged  before  the  war  ( and  before  the  subversive  tie-up  of 
Winthrop  with  Farben  was  officially  exposed). 

One  notable  example  of  this  kind  of  publicity  was  a  full-page 
Winthrop  advertisement  in  the  daily  press  and  various  lay  journals 
in  December  1942  and  January  1943  proclaiming  the  receipt  of 
the  Army  and  Navy  "E."  One  Joseph  Jacobs,  head  of  an  advertis- 
ing organization,  then  sent  out  full  size  reprints  of  this  advertise- 
ment to  professional  men.  Mr.  Jacobs  also  made  similar  distribu- 
tion of  copies  of  a  letter  addressed  to  him  by  Edward  S.  Rogers, 
Sterling's  Chairman  of  the  Board,  in  which  the  latter  dwelt  upon 
the  foresight  of  Winthrop  in  starting  to  make  Atabrine  in  October 
1940  out  of  domestic  raw  materials  (when  they  no  longer  were 
obtainable  from  Farben)  and  in  increasing  the  production  (when 
the  government  so  instructed). 

The  Rogers  letter,  nine  long  pages,  proved  the  case  for  Winthrop 
by  references  to  praises  which  had  been  heaped  upon  its  perfor- 
mances by  various  individuals,  including  Dr.  Morris  Fishbein, 
who  was  to  preside  at  the  Army-Navy  "E"  ceremony  and  by  Dr. 
Paul  de  Kruif,  the  author,  who  had  just  published  an  article  in 


22o  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Readers'  Digest  which  lauded  Winthrop's  Atabrine  as  a  major 
victory  for  the  United  Nations. 

By  something  of  a  coincidence  the  Rogers  reference  to  the 
Readers'  Digest  article  was  being  circulated  among  anti-Farben 
professional  men  at  the  very  time  that  I  was  in  correspondence 
with  de  Kruif  about  that  same  article.  I  had  written  him  on 
December  24,  1942,  to  ask  whether  his  source  of  data  was  the 
Sterling- Winthrop  press  agent,  one  Mermey  of  the  firm  of  Bald- 
win, Beech  and  Mermey  (of  whom  more  later).  I  also  asked 
Dr.  de  Kruif  whether  he  was  familiar  with  the  official  record  of 
Winthrop's  lack  of  manufacturing  integrity  as  illustrated  by  the 
Sulfathiazole  horror;  or  of  the  relations  of  Dr.  Fishbein  with  Win- 
throp; or  of  the  pro-Nazi  interests  of  the  Sterling- Winthrop  per- 
sonnel. 

To  my  surprise  and  gratification,  de  Kruif  replied  on  December 
31,  1942  that  he  had  sent  my  serious  charges  to  his  friend  Dr.  T. 
G.  Klumpp,  President  of  Winthrop: 

I  shall  forward  his  reply  to  you  when  it  comes.  I  am  ask- 
ing him  to  answer  your  charges  one  by  one  and  in  detail. 

For  the  moment  I  thought  I  had  drawn  a  bit  of  blood.  How- 
ever, something,  or  somebody,  caused  Dr.  de  Kruif  to  change  his 
mind.  In  a  later  letter  he  intimated  that  I  was  being  influenced 
by  the  Dutch  quinine  syndicate  (which  was  a  rather  absurd  as- 
sumption), and  he  resolutely  declined  to  advise  me  what  reply 
Dr.  Klumpp  had  made  to  him  relative  to  my  accusations  about 
the  integrity  of  Winthrop,  its  manufacturing  record,  its  officers 
and  its  employees. 

Later  it  was  recalled  to  me  that  Dr.  de  Kruif  had  been  an  early 
propagandist  for  Winthrop  and  Farben's  Atabrine,  back  in  1938, 
when  he  published  an  article  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  which 
boasted  of  the  triumph  of  the  German  dye  trust  in  producing 
a  new  medicine  so  much  better  than  quinine  that  it  was  no  longer 
a  question,  "whether  we  can  wipe  malaria  out  of  the  United 
States,"  but,  "will  we?"  (It  appears  that  either  we  could  not  or 
we  would  not). 

Meanwhile  a  battle  in  official  circles  to  force  open  the  Farben 


PEACE  821 

patent  on  Atabrine  had  resulted  in  bitter  clashes  between  the 
administration  officials  of  the  highest  rank  at  Washington,  and 
efforts  in  the  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives  to  conduct 
an  investigation  of  the  matter  had  resulted  in  threats  and  other 
types  of  coercion  to  prevent  exposing  the  fact  that  the  supply  of 
this  important  medicinal  was  not  all  that  it  should  have  been. 

Senator  Bone,  Chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Patents, 
announced  to  the  press  on  April  12,  1942  that  the  hearings  which 
were  to  begin  next  day  into  restrictions  on  the  use  of  Farben- 
owned  patents  would  include  the  subject  of  synthetic  quinine. 
But  Senator  Bone  was  in  error.  He  was  never  permitted  to  open 
up  his  hearings  of  any  feature  of  the  Farben  tie-ups  with  Sterling 
or  Winthrop.  His  hands  were  tied  although  his  committee  sub- 
poena reached  into  the  Anti-Trust  Division  of  the  Justice  Depart- 
ment and  seized  over  twenty-five  thousand  documents  from  the 
Sterling  files  and  elsewhere,  which  revealed  the  details  relative 
to  Atabrine,  as  well  as  other  facts  which  had  been  pigeonholed 
in  September  1941  when  Mr.  Thomas  Corcoran  succeeded  in 
choking  off  the  Justice  proceedings  against  Sterling. 

In  August,  over  the  vigorous  protest  of  Senator  Bone,  five  other 
members  of  the  Patents  Committee  voted  not  to  permit  its  Chair- 
man, and  its  two-fisted  incorruptible  counsel,  Creekmore  Fath,  to 
produce  a  single  witness,  or  document,  relating  to  Sterling  and 
Winthrop  at  a  public  hearing. 

Having  been  requested  to  assist  the  staff  which  was  assembling 
the  evidence,  I  watched  with  indignation  these  efforts  to  strangle 
the  hearings.  The  five  members  of  the  committee  who  yielded  to 
the  persuasions  of  those  who  were  determined  not  to  have  the 
Sterling- Winthrop  situation  disclosed,  were  Claude  Pepper  of  Flor- 
ida; D.  Worth  Clark  of  Idaho;  Scott  W.  Lucas,  of  Illinois;  Wallace 
H.  White,  Jr.,  of  Maine;  and  John  A.  Danaher  of  Connecticut. 

One  of  these  five,  Senator  Pepper,  prior  to  the  vote  which  tied 
the  hands  of  Senator  Bone,  received  an  appeal  from  the  Non-Sec- 
tarian Anti-Nazi  League  to  continue  the  hearings  of  the  Patents 
Committee  on  the  "patent  and  cartel  connection  between  Ameri- 
can concerns  and  Axis  interests  until  all  pertinent  facts  have  been 
uncovered/'  Senator  Pepper  replied: 


222  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Appreciate  your  message  and  am  sure  that  investigation 
will  be  all-inclusive  before  it  is  finished.  Regards. 

The  Senator,  according  to  Thomas  L.  Stokes  in  the  World-Tele- 
gram of  August  6,  1942,  was  a  friend  of  Mr.  Thomas  Corcoran 
and  the  latter 

is  proudly  wearing  another  feather  in  his  cap  as  a  super 

lobbyist.  He  who  once  started  Congressional  investigations 
has  now  stopped  one— one  that  was  due  to  produce  sensa- 
tional revelations  about  a  corporation  with  former  German 
connections,  which  he  has  been  protecting  from  the  govern- 
ment. 

The  Stokes  article  went  on  to  describe  two  turbulent  sessions 
of  the  committee  in  which  Thurman  Arnold,  who  had  been  so 
hot  after  other  German  cartel  affiliates,  took  a  very  different  posi- 
tion as  regards  Sterling  Products,  and  favored  dropping  the  in- 
vestigation. Said  Mr.  Stokes: 

So  did  Undersecretary  of  War  Patterson  who  sat  with  the 
Committee,  along  with  Leo  Crowley,  Alien  Property  Custo- 
dian   Suppression  of  the  Sterling  investigation  climaxes 

one  of  the  most  amazing  examples  of  "inside  baseball"  ever 
seen  here.  Suspicions  were  aroused  that  high  administration 
officials  were  trying  to  duck  the  inquiry  when  Mr.  Crowley 
was  asked  to  testify  about  Sterling  with  particular  reference 
to  the  synthetic  quinine  monopoly  which  one  of  its  subsidi- 
aries, the  Winthrop  Co.— still  owned  50%  by  I.G.  Farben- 
industrie— possess  by  virtue  of  its  control  of  German  patents- 
Mr.  Growley  kept  postponing  his  appearance.  Despite  earlier 
assurances  that  he  was  going  to  take  over  the  substitute  qui- 
nine patents  and  release  them  generally he  never  did 

Questions  in  a  public  hearing  might  have  proved  em- 
barrassing. So  he  never  did  appear. 

Another  short-lived  effort  to  force  out  the  facts  about  the  Ata- 
brine  supply  was  begun  by  Republican  Congressman  Bertrand  W. 
Gearhart  of  California  who  made  a  brave  start  to  accomplish 
this  purpose  in  the  House  of  Representatives  on  August  13,  1942, 


TREASON'S   PEACE  223 

with  a  ringing  speech  on  the  Atabrine  production  in  which  he 
criticised  what  he  called  the  dark  curtain  of  mystery  which  had 
hung  over  the  subject.  Gearhart  minced  no  words  and  ended  his 
remarks  with  several  queries: 

Therefore,  Mr.  Speaker,  I  ask  what  is  being  done  to  meet 
this  critical  situation?  What  is  our  supply?  Has  the  free  flow 
of  this  indispensable  medicine— quinine  and  its  substitutes- 
been  interfered  with ?  Is  it  true  that  our  soldiers,  sailors 

and  marines  are  today  threatened  with  disablement  because 
of  a  scarcity  of  this  indispensable  medicine?  What  are  our 
war  leaders  doing  about  this  all-important  problem?  The 
American  people  are  entitled  to  know  and  to  know  right  now. 

The  Congressman  stated  to  me,  and  to  others,  that  he  proposed 
to  continue  the  fight  until  an  investigation  should  result,  but  the 
subject  of  Sterling  and  Winthrop  and  Atabrine  was  from  then  on 
definitely  verboten  in  the  House  and  Senate  of  the  United  States. 

Perhaps  the  most  inexplicable  aspect  of  the  throttling  of  these 
Sterling- Winthrop  investigations  was  the  part  played  by  Mr.  Ar- 
nold in  his  official  capacity,  as  compared  with  his  caustic  remarks 
in  private,  and,  on  one  occasion,  in  public.  In  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
for  August  1942,  Mr.  Arnold  published  an  article  relative  to  re- 
form of  the  patent  law  which  he  considered  necessary  and  in 
this  he  discussed  the  control  of  the  Atabrine  patent  by  I.G.  Farben 
as: 

The  spectacle  of  the  production  of  this  essential  drug,  left 
so  long  to  the  secret  manipulation  of  a  German-American1 
combination  during  a  period  when  Germany  was  preparing 
for  war  against  us,  is  too  shocking  to  need  elaboration. 

Shortly  after  Mr.  Arnold  had  made  this  vigorous  statement  he 
was  himself  sitting  in  with  the  hush-hush  Senators  in  the  Patents 
Committee. 

About  this  time  I  was  taken  to  the  office  of  the  Alien  Property 
Custodian  by  a  member  of  the  Justice  Department  staff,  and  re- 
quested to  give  them  such  assistance  as  my  knowledge  of  the 
Farben  situation  might  permit.  I  was  informed  that  the  Custodian 
had  seized  50  percent  of  the  stock  of  Winthrop  but  had  100  per- 


224  TREASON'S    PEACE 

cent  control  over  its  Atabrine  patent.  Also,  that  a  contract  which 
had  been  given  to  Merck  to  make  Atabrine  constituted  a  license 
(which  it  did  not),  and  that  no  further  licenses  would  be  given 
because  there  was  no  necessity  for  them.  Several  other  rather  pe- 
culiar allegations  were  made  to  me  on  that  visit. 

Six  months  later,  after  rather  extended  and  unproductive  cor- 
respondence with  the  members  of  the  Custodian's  staff  I  paid  an- 
other call  at  that  office.  And  as  the  acute  shortage  in  the  supply 
of  Atabrine  had  by  then  reached  a  critical  stage,  I  asked  what 
they  proposed  to  do  about  it.  I  was  informed  curdy  that  there 
was  no  shortage;  that  Winthrop  was  producing  all  the  Atabrine 
that  was  needed;  and  that  anyone  who  made  such  a  statement 
was,  in  plain  language,  a  liar. 

However,  at  that  time  it  was  common  knowledge  in  Washington 
that  a  shortage  did  exist,  and  that  allotments  of  this  vital  drug  for 
the  Army  and  Navy,  and  for  the  extension  of  malaria  control  in 
Latin  America,  had  been  necessarily  reduced. 

Several  months  previously  then  Surgeon  General  of  the  Navy, 
Rear  Admiral  Ross  T.  Mclntyre,  issued  an  urgent  appeal  to  the 
pharmacists  of  the  United  States  asking  them  to  collect  and  do- 
nate all  available  supplies  of  quinine  which  they  might  have  in 
reserve  stocks  in  their  dispensaries.  In  that  appeal  Admiral  Mc- 
lntyre made  this  statement: 

Although  Atabrine  is  a  very  valuable  antimalaria  drug, 
there  are  many  individuals  in  whom  quinine  is  still  the  drug 
of  choice  and  in  certain  cases  it  is  life-saving  and  cannot  be 

replaced  by  synthetic  drugs the  need  for  more  quinine 

is  becoming  increasingly  urgent  as  the  number  of  men  fight- 
ing in  malarial  regions  increases  and  the  stock  pile  dwindles. 

Under  these  circumstances  something  had  to  give  way,  even 
though  the  most  serious  aspects  of  the  shortage  were  given  no 
official  publicity.  Beginning  in  January  1943,  long  after  the  short- 
age had  become  acute,  arrangements  were  made  quietly  by  which 
ten  other  manufacturers  were  instructed  by  the  government  to 
begin  at  once  the  production  of  Quinacrine  Hydrochloride:  some 
to  make  the  base  material;  others  to  process  it  through  the  inter- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  225 

mediate  steps;  and  others  to  put  it  into  tablets  for  distribution 
to  the  armed  forces,  and  as  Lend-Lease  supplies  for  Latin  America. 

The  new  Atabrine  mess  rescue  squad  now  included,  in  addi- 
tion to  Merck,  the  following:  Abbott  Laboratories,  American 
Home  Products  Co.;  Hilton  Davis  Co.;  Eli  Lilly  &  Co.;  William 
S.  Merrell  &  Co.;  National  Aniline  &  Chemical  Co.;  Pharma  Chem- 
ical Corp.;  Sharpless  Chemicals  Co.;  E.  R.  Squibb  &  Sons,  and 
Frederick  Stearns  &  Co. 

None  of  these  were  given  licenses  permitting  sale  to  the  public. 
This  monopoly  was  still  reserved  to  Winthrop.  The  newcomers 
were  merely  given  contracts  to  contribute  to  the  huge  government 
requirements  for  Atabrine  which  Winthrop  had  failed  so  tragically 
to  supply.  It  is  of  interest  here  that  among  those  thus  invited  to 
participate  in  the  official  Atabrine  pie  were  concerns  which  al- 
legedly have  had  relations  with  I.G.  Farben  or  with  Sterling. 

Next  to  Sterling,  American  Home  Products  was  the  largest  pat- 
ent medicine  and  cosmetic  combination  in  the  country,  the  Weiss 
and  the  Diebold  families  have  been  among  the  largest  stock- 
holders. The  Merrell  company  is  owned  outright  by  Vick  Chem- 
ical, one  of  the  Farben-Sterling  affiliates  in  Drug  Inc.  Abbott  and 
Squibb  were  reported  to  have  had  negotiations  with  Farben  dur- 
ing the  Drug,  Inc.,  period;  while  National  Aniline  &  Chemical,  with 
its  owner,  Allied  Chemical  and  Dye,  were  both  among  those 
indicted  in  1942  for  conspiracy  with  I.G.  Farben  in  the  dyestuff 
industry. 

And  the  hush-hush  continued.  One  F.  J.  Stock,  a  division  chief 
of  the  War  Production  Board,  who  handled  the  Atabrine  expan- 
sion program,  felt  the  strange  necessity  of  keeping  the  whole  af- 
fair an  official  secret. 

After  several  letters  on  the  subject,  Mr.  Stock  finally  replied. 
On  May  31,  1943,  he  wrote  me  that: 

A  number  of  the  most  reputable  drug  companies  are  pro- 
ducing Atabrine.  We  do  not,  however,  normally  make  avail- 
able names  of  producers  of  critical  items Supplies  are 

sufficient  to  meet  Army,  Navy  and  Lend-Lease  requirements, 
as  well  as  export  and  domestic  civilian  use. 


226  TREASON'S   PEACE 

While  the  shy  Mr.  Stock  refused  to  name  his  "most  reputable 
drug  companies,"  their  identity  was  known  throughout  the  trade; 
as  was  the  undercover  row  which  had  been  stirred  up  by  the 
Alien  Property  Custodian's  endeavor  to  protect  Winthrop's  mo- 
nopoly on  the  quinnine  substitute,  regardless  of  the  needs  of  the 
Army  and  Navy. 

The  War  Production  Board  was  not  the  only  official  agency 
which  appeared  reluctant  to  reply  to  queries  about  the  Atabrine 
mess.  Among  others  who  declined  to  comment  were  the  Federal 
Security  Administration  assistant,  Mary  Switzer,  who,  as  ruler 
over  the  Public  Health  Service,  had  discussed  the  subject  with 
me  back  in  July  1940.  At  that  time  she  told  me  the  medical  men 
in  Public  Health  Service  were  expressing  alarm  because  of  the 
exclusive  control  the  Atabrine  patent  by  the  Farben-Sterling- 
Winthrop  management.  Three  years  later,  when  the  alarm  had 
been  vindicated,  Miss  Switzer  chose  not  to  discuss  the  subject. 

The  National  Research  Council,  which  might  be  considered 
an  official  and,  therefore,  disinterested  party  to  the  Atabrine  con- 
troversy, also  refused  to  express  an  opinion  or  even  to  admit  hav- 
ing one.  Herr  Goebbels  himself  could  not  have  improved  upon 
.the  way  someone— perhaps  Mr.  Corcoran— enforced  the  verboten 
order  on  all  public  mention  of  how  Winthrop  had  failed  to  make 
good. 

As  an  aftermath  of  Vice  President  Henry  Wallace's  fights 
with  Jesse  Jones  on  the  quinine  shortage  and  with  Leo  Crowley 
on  the  Atabrine  shortage  Wallace  was  vindicated  on  both  scores— 
and  then  was  fired  from  his  job  as  Chairman  of  the  Board  of 
Economic  Warfare  after  the  row  between  the  Vice  President 
and  Jesse  Jones  resulted  in  the  President  being  persuaded  to  turn 
the  whole  mess  over  to  Leo  Crowley  in  July  1943.  Why  Mr. 
Wallace,  the  official  who  was  right  on  Atabrine  was  made  the 
victim  of  Mr.  Crowley  the  official  who  was  wrong  on  Atabrine 
is  one  of  those  things  yet  to  be  explained. 

The  humiliating  record  shows  Sterling- Winthrop  executives, 
while  boasting  publicly  of  Atabrine  as  better  than  quinine,  and 
of  their  huge  production  as  saving  the  nation,  were  still  entrenched 
behind  the  Farben  patent  and  secretly  refusing  to  permit  others 
to  utilize  ample  facilities  for  production  and  research,  which 


TREASON'S   PEACE  2*7 

Winthrop  lacked,  to  supply  the  quantities  needed  and  to  correct 
admitted  defects  in  the  formula. 

The  record  likewise  shows  high  government  officials,  charged 
with  the  duty  to  provide  Atabrine  to  our  armed  forces,  instead 
were  secretly  permitting  this  gross  misuse  of  our  patent  law  and 
defending  Winthrop  against  all  comers,  while  publicly  they  cov- 
ered up  the  facts— and  the  disaster  that  resulted. 

The  horrors  of  war  are  usually  remote  to  those  who  remain 
at  home.  However,  to  the  soldier  or  sailor  whose  life  may  have 
hung  in  the  balance  there  could  be  nothing  remote  or  abstract 
in  the  story  of  Atabrine. 

To  those  who  may  feel  it  difficult  to  appraise  properly  the 
significance  of  these  facts  about  Atabrine  it  is  suggested  that 
they  project  themselves,  in  thought,  to  a  hospital  cot,  or  a  fox- 
hole, in  the  jungles  of  Asia  or  the  South  Pacific;  racked  with 
malaria  and  near  death— as  result  of  a  wartime  shortage  of  quinine 
or  an  insufficient  supply  of  the  only  quinine  substitute;  which 
deficiency  may  have  been  caused  by  some  one  at  the  nation's 
capital  who  was  aiding  in  the  protection  of  alleged  patent  rights 
of  I.G.  Farben  and  its  allies. 

Perhaps,  some  day,  as  one  result  of  the  part  played  in  the  last 
war  by  Farben,  and  by  Farben's  allies,  will  come  a  demand  for 
new  definitions  of  the  words  "enemy"  and  "treason." 


CHAPTER        XII 


Patent  Medicines — And  Freedom 

% 

of  the  Press 


IN      MARCH,      1938 

the  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  of  the  American  Medical 
Association  announced  that  it  was  going  to  enforce  a  rule  which 
provided  that  the  Council  should  not  "accept"  products  of  a  con- 
cern which  was  more  largely  engaged  in  selling  patent  medicines 
than  in  distributing  ethical  preparations.  The  rule  had  existed 
for  many  years,  but  had  never  been  applied  to  the  Winthrop,  Alba, 
Metz  and  Cook  subsidiaries  of  Sterling— not  even  after  the  ghastly 
Sulf athiazole  affair.  Yet  no  firm  had  as  many  nationally  advertised 
patent  medicines  as  Sterling,  and  it  may  appear  that  no  firm  had 
made  more  dangerous  false  advertising  claims  than  they. 

An  interesting  light  on  the  attitude  of  this  company  appears 
in  its  first  report  to  the  stockholders,  after  its  purchase  of  the  Bayer 
company.  This  read,  in  part: 

Bayer  aspirin  was  introduced  throughout  the  United 
States  by  the  medical  fraternity,  and  it  is  the  object  of  Ster- 
ling Products  to  popularize  this  product  to  the  laity  by  means 
~ 


TREASON'S   PEACE  229 

of  newspaper  advertising  and  other  mediums  of  publicity. 
Sterling  Products  is  the  largest  advertiser  in  the  world.  We 
believe  we  know  more  about  proprietary  advertising  than 
anyone  else,  and  as  far  as  aspirin  is  concerned,  we  know 

that  the  field  has  been  merely  scratched  on  the  surface 

We  intend  to  develop  Bayer  aspirin  not  only  in  this  country 

but  all  over  the  world we  estimate  that  the  earnings 

of  these  two  companies  will  be  at  least  $2,000,000  per  year, 
and  we  know  that  the  future  of  the  business  is  a  bright  one. 

Mr.  Weiss  either  underestimated  his  own  capabilities  or  else 
he  had  not  begun  to  realize  how  far  he  would  go  with  Farben's 
help.  In  the  next  twenty  years  the  gross  profit  was  to  increase  to 
more  than  seven  times  that  estimate.  And  in  those  two  decades 
Sterling  spent  many  millions  of  dollars  to  popularize  the  name 
Bayer,  and  to  hold  the  price  at  a  level  which  showed  at  least 
1,000  percent  spread  between  the  cost  of  acetylsalicylic  acid  and 
the  price  that  the  consumer  paid  when  he  specified  Bayer. 

As  the  Sterling  position  grew  stronger,  fantastic  advertising 
claims  were  made  about  the  cure-all  properties  of  Bayer  aspirin. 
Salesmen  for  the  company  alleged  that  their  employers  had  ample 
medical  opinion  to  support  their  advertising,  but  somehow,  those 
opinions  were  not  broadcast  with  the  identifications  of  the  physi- 
cians who  allegedly  gave  them. 

Throughout  this  period,  the  Journal  of  the  American  Medical 
Association,  and  its  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry,  were 
strangely  silent.  And  the  A.  M.  A/s  widely  heralded  reform  cam- 
paign contended  itself  mainly  with  exposing  little-known  fake 
nostrums  in  which  few  of  the  public  and  none  of  the  physicians 
could  have  had  any  possible  interest.  The  fact  that  the  Bayer 
claims  went  uncontradicted  by  the  spokesmen  for  the  medical 
profession  was  the  strongest  argument  in  Sterling's  favor,  at  least 
in  the  minds  of  the  public;  and  many  professional  men  justified 
their  own  silence  by  that  of  the  A.  M.  A. 

It  was  in  this  period  that  purchasers  of  the  tablets  were  handed 
the  little  tin  box,  or  the  bottle,  enclosed  in  an  envelope  on  which 
the  utterly  false  claim,  "Genuine  Bayer  Aspirin  Does  Not  Harm 
The  Heart"  appeared  in  conspicuous  lettering.  This  use  of  a  false 


230  TREASON'S   PEACE 

legend  on  an  enclosure,  or  circular  accompanying  the  package, 
was  criminal  misbranding  under  the  Wiley  law.  And  while  Mr. 
Campbell  of  the  Food  and  Drug  Administration  steadfastly  re- 
frained from  taking  any  action  to  restrain  Bayer,  another  maker 
of  aspirin— a  small  concern  in  Little  Rock,  Ark.,  was  taken  into 
court  in  1933  for  precisely  that  offense— f or  claiming  that  his  aspirin 
would  not  depress  the  heart. 

The  Bayer  advertising  was  national  advertising  on  a  huge  scale, 
and  it  served  a  double -purpose;  it  sold  enormous  quantities  of 
aspirin  at  a  tremendous  profit,  and  it  served  to  legitimatize  a  huge 
subsidy  to  the  press  of  the  United  States  at  a  time  when  the  friend- 
ship of  the  publishers  was  highly  essential  to  the  purpose  of  Far- 
ben.  Such  leading  newspapers  as  The  New  York  Times  held  their 
noses,  and  accepted  the  account. 

The  following  are  a  few  examples  of  the  countless  indecencies 
published  as  legitimate  advertising  by  American  publications: 

Bayer  Aspirin quick  complete  relief— and  no  harm 

done no  effect  on  the  heart;  nothing  in  a  Bayer  tablet 

could  hurt  any  one it  can  head-off  the  pain  altogether; 

even  those  pains  many  women  have  thought  must  be  en- 
dured. 

Hearst's  Cosmopolitan,  Jan.  1929. 

The  fastest  possible  relief the  sure  safe  way  is  to 

see  that  the  name  Bayer  is on  any  tablet  that  you  take 

carry  in  mind  too  that  Genuine  Bayer  Aspirin  Does  Not 

Harm  the  Heart. 

Collier's,  Sept.  24, 1929. 

Headaches  come  at  the  most  inconvenient  times 

often  it's  the  time  of  the  month why  wait Bayer 

Aspirin  can't  harm  you  because  there  is  nothing  harmful  in  it. 

N.  Y.  Daily  News,  Nov.  11, 1930. 

Sick  headache the  modern  woman  feels  a  headache 

coming  on systematic  pains Bayer  won't  fail  you 

and  can't  harm  you.  They  don't  depress  the  heart and 

take  enough  to  stop  the  pain. 

•      N.  Y.  Journal,  Nov.  5, 1931. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  231 

They  don't  depress  the  heart  and  may  be  taken  freely. 
That  is  medical  opinion. 

N.  Y.  Sun,  Oct.  15, 1931. 

Genuine  Bayer  Aspirin  will  not  harm  you.  Your  doctor 
will  tell  you  it  does  not  harm  the  heart. 

Saturday  Evening  Post,  Nov.  26, 1932. 

Don't  take  chances  with  "cold  killers"  and  nostrums 

the  quickest,  safest,  surest  way get  the  real  Bayer 

Aspirin  tablets. 

Capper's  Weekly,  Dec.  24, 1932. 

Quicker  relief the  fastest,  safe  results,  it  is  said, 

ever  known  to  pain Genuine  Bayer  Aspirin  does  not 

harm  the  heart. 

McCalTs,  Nov.  1933. 

Of  course  the  Bayer  advertising  was  not  the  only  instance  of 
false  claims  by  Sterling;  it  was  merely  the  most  extensive  and  the 
most  obvious.  At  the  same  time,  because  of  its  utter  disregard  for 
truth  and  legality,  it  appeared  to  be  the  most  vulnerable  point 
of  attack  upon  Farben's  American-drug  front. 

Accordingly,  in  1929, 1  decided  to  force  the  matter  to  an  issue. 
Sterling,  I  knew,  was  wide  open  under  both  the  Federal  Trade 
Commission  Act,  and  state  laws.  My  campaign  got  under  way 
with  an  open  letter  to  Dr.  Fishbein,  which  included  the  following 
queries: 

Why  is  it  that  in  your  "exposure"  of  fake  influenza  cures 
(A.  M.  A.  Journal,  Jan.  19,  1929,  page  253)  you  failed  to 
mention  any  of  the  products  of  the  one  large  group  of  brands 
and  trademarks  under  a  single  unified  financial  control,  de- 
spite the  fact  that  this  group  was  among  the  most  flagrant 
violators  of  all  the  canons  of  medical  ethics  in  the  advertising 
it  published  at  that  time? 

Was  this  suppression  because  this  same  unified  patent- 
medicine  group,  unbeknown  to  the  rank  and  file  of  the  medi- 
cal profession,  also  controls  about  one  out  of  every  five  retail 
pharmacies  in  the  country  along  with  a  number  of  the  largest 


232  TREASON'S    PEACE 

and  supposedly  most  ethical  pharmaceutical  manufacturers, 
whose  constant  advertising  in  the  A.  M.  A.  publications  must 
be  very  profitable  financially? 

Will  you  or  will  you  not  list  the  brands,  trademarks  and 
company  names  of  this  gigantic  monopolistic  group  or  "corner" 
of  patent  and  ethical  medicines  and  pharmacies,  and  indicate 
which  are  financial  supporters  of  the  A.  M.  A.  Journal  and 
of  Hygeia  together  with  the  extent  of  their  existing  control 
of  the  medicine  industry  and  of  its  advertising  expenditures? 

As  an  ethical  medical  question,  what  is  your  opinion  of 
patent  and  proprietary-medicine  advertising  which  teaches 
materia  medica,  self -medication  and  home  treatments  by  the 
legends  on  the  bottles,  and  glowing  advertisements  in  the 
lay  and  popular  press? 

Then  in  1930,  before  a  Senate  Committee  on  the  enforcement 
of  the  Wiley  Food  and  Drugs  Act,  I  took  the  opportunity  afforded 
by  a  rebuttal  statement  to  force  the  issue  of  the  Bayer  advertising 
into  the  official  records  of  the  Senate.  One  of  my  statements  in 
these  hearings  was  as  follows: 

To  those  of  your  committee  who  may  now  say  that  I  am 
going  far  afield  from  the  enforcement  of  the  Federal  Food 
and  Drugs  law  permit  me  to  point  out  that  a  situation  such  as 
I  have  attempted  to  disclose  has  always  two  general  motives 
greed  and  power. 

So  in  this  presentation  I  deem  it  my  duty  to  point  in  one 
direction  where  your  committee  may,  if  it  follows  through, 
discover  a  part  of  the  responsibility  for  the  flooding  of  this 
country  with  impure  drugs;  and— far  more  important  and 
menacing— a  long  arm  reaching  out  in  an  attempt  to  control 
by  devious  ways  not  only  our  health  but  some  of  our  vital 
resources  for  national  defense  and  our  channels  of  public 
information  and  editorial  opinion. 

I  repeated  this  same  statement  several  times  over  the  air— in 
the  fall  of  1930,  when  for  a  few  short  weeks  I  was  given  broad- 
casting privileges  by  a  small  station  owned  by  a  brother  of 
Bernard  Baruch.  Then  one  evening  the  engineer  in  charge  of  the 


TREASON'S    PEACE  233 

station  greeted  me  with,  "Better  give  'em  hell  tonight,  mister,  this 
is  your  last  chance." 

"How  come?"  I  asked,  "My  time  isn't  up." 

"Your  time  may  not  be,"  was  the  answer,  "but  the  station's  is." 

"I  just  got  my  orders  to  tear  'er  down,  and  down  she  comes 
tomorrow." 

So  ended  that!  I  might  add  here  that  when  I  asked  permission 
to  speak  on  the  subject  over  the  National  Broadcasting  Company 
chain,  I  was  informed  that  it  would  not  be  ethical,  and  that  the 
management  feared  that  what  I  had  to  say  might  alarm  some  of 
its  audience.  There  was  much  truth  in  that  latter  conclusion. 

Not  long  after  the  1930  Senate  hearings  appeared  in  print,  and 
my  broadcasting  had  met  its  sudden  demise,  I  wrote  to  the  presi- 
dents of  all  the  state  medical  societies  calling  their  attention  to 
the  abominable  character  of  the  Bayer  aspirin  broadcasting  and 
advertising  as: 

absolutely  contrary  to  the  truth  as  regards  legitimate 

medical  opinion,  and  a  distinct  menace  to  the  public  health 

I  am  writing  you  this  letter  to  ask  what  the  medical 

profession,  and  the  organization  of  which  you  are  the  head, 
proposes  to  do  about  this. 

For  good  measure,  I  added  this  postscript: 

as  I  stated  over  the  air  last  fall,  the  man  who  wrote 

this  aspirin  advertising,  and  the  executives  of  Drug  Inc.,  re- 
sponsible for  it,  ought  to  be  in  jail. 

Copies  of  this  letter  were  sent  to  various  publishers;  one  went 
to  the  late  Louis  Wiley,  business  manager  of  The  New  York  Times; 
and  to  my  gratification  Mr.  Wiley  replied  promptly,  as  follows: 

Dear  Mr.  Ambruster: 

We  acknowledge  your  letter  of  November  17th,  and  a 
copy  of  your  letter  concerning  the  advertising  of  a  medical 
preparation. 

The  New  York  Times  regularly  takes  up  with  various 
scientific  authorities  any  advertising  which  is  offered  to  us. 

We  have  recently  been  looking  into  this  specific  statement 


234  TREASON'S    PEACE 

concerning  which  you  write.  Originally  the  statement  was 

made  to  us  by  more  than  one  physician  that  this  preparation 

did  not  depress  the  heart.  Our  physicians  now  inform  us  that 

in  certain  cardiac  cases  there  may  be  a  depressive  effect. 

We  have  already  taken  up  the  matter  with  the  advertiser. 

Very  truly  yours 

Louis  Wiley. 

And  for  a  period  the  Times  did  not  carry  Bayer  aspirin  adver- 
tising. Then  it  backslid.  I  had  several  heated  discussions  with 
that  paper's  advertising  censor,  who  described  himself  as  a  high 
churchman,  although  what  that  had  to  do  with  false  advertising 
I  did  not  entirely  comprehend.  He  never  appeared  to  get  my  point 
of  view,  and  I  confess  I  never  got  his. 

However,  immediately  after  receipt  of  Mr.  Wiley's  encouraging 
letter,  I  put  the  matter  up  to  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  by 
sending  them  copies  of  the  correspondence  with  Mr.  Wiley,  with  a 
statement  that  I  assumed  the  Commission  would  immediately 
institute  proceedings  to  stop  that  kind  of  advertising.  I  also  of- 
fered to  submit  additional  data.  My  assumption  of  immediate  ac- 
tion was  incorrect.  All  that  the  Commission  instituted,  so  far  as 
Bayer  was  concerned,  was  two-and-a-half  years  of  procrastination 
and  evasion. 

Meanwhile  my  letters  to  the  state  medical  societies  had  brought 
a  few  responses.  In  one  of  them,  a  president  of  the  Kansas  Medical 
Society,  Dr.  L.  F.  Barney,  assured  me  that  he  was  wholly  in 
accord  with  my  reference  to  criminal  advertising,  and  that  due 
to  such  advertising,  far  too  much  aspirin  was  being  taken. 

Another  state  society  president,  Dr.  Arthur  S.  Fort,  of  Atlanta, 
Ga.,  advised  me  that  there  were  regularly  organized  agencies  of 
the  Government,  and  the  American  Medical  Association,  to  handle 
such  matters  and  that  he  would  await  their  instructions  before 
acting.  Apparently  these  agencies  instructed  the  good  doctor  to 
forget  it. 

In  December  1931, 1  began  needling  the  National  Broadcasting 
Company  stations  that  carried  the  Bayer  Program,  and,  for  good 
measure,  threw  in  some  pointed  comments  about  Dr.  Fishbein  and 
Dr.  Copeland.  The  latter  at  that  time  was  on  the  air  for  Sterling's 


TREASON'S    PEACE  235 

Milk  of  Magnesia  which  was  sold  to  the  public  as  Phillips,  the 
name  of  its  original  producer.  My  first  letters  to  the  stations 
concluded  with  the  following: 

Won't  you  also  advise  me  whether  you  are  handling  the 
N.B.C.  hookup  for  the  women  in  the  week-day  morning 
hours  when  that  Senatorial  medical  faker,  Royal  S.  Copeland, 
is  handing  out  propaganda  for  this  same  Drug,  Inc.,  concealed 
under  the  title  "Health  Clinics'? 

You  are  at  liberty  to  read  this  letter  over  your  station  if 
you  so  desire. 

Those  stations  that  did  not  reply  promptly  to  my  first  letter 
received  a  follow  up  which  repeated  my  challenge  to  Drug,  Inc., 
to  produce  a  single  reputable  member  of  the  medical  profession 
who  would  publicly  defend  the  allegations  made  on  behalf  of 
Bayer. 

With  the  first  of  these  letters  the  fun  began  in  earnest,  with 
the  honors  undoubtedly  going  to  one  Clarence  G.  Cosby  of  Sta- 
tion KWK,  St.  Louis,  Mo.,  who  headed  his  letter: 

Re  Criminal  Aspirin  Broadcasting 

This  station  does  not  broadcast  the  Bayer  aspirin  account  or 
Senatorial  medical  faker,  Royal  S.  Copeland. 

One  other  station,  KGA,  of  Spokane,  Wash.,  indicated  that  the 
matter  had  been  taken  up  with  NBC  and,  for  the  time  being,  Bayer 
advertising  was  not  being  released  over  that  station. 

Others,  however,  were  critical  or  querulous  of  my  intrusion, 
and  my  motive  in  the  matter  gave  them  more  concern  than  the 
falsehoods  they  were  sponsoring.  Some  of  the  replies  were  in- 
triguing, and  a  few  are  worthy  of  brief  note  here: 

The  Secretary  of  the  Maine  Medical  Association  (advises) 
that  your  claim  as  regards  the  ethics  of  aspirin  advertising 
from  a  medical  standpoint,  do  not  hold  in  this  territory  at 
least.  Eastland  Station,  Portland,  Me. 

See  nothing  criminal  about  either  the  aspirin  or  the  pro- 
grams in  which  Copeland  is  featured.  WEBC,  Superior,  Wis. 


236  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Suggest  that  you  take  the  matter  up  with  the  proper  medi- 
cal authorities Until  you  do  something  about  what  you 

plainly  call  a  criminal  situation,  I  doubt  that  1*11  have  time 
to  conduct  any  more  correspondence.  WDAY,  Fargo,  N.  D. 

The  Bayer's  Aspirin  program  and  Dr.  Royal  S.  Copeland's 
Health  Clinic  program  are  very  well  received  and  we  regard 
them  as  praiseworthy.  WJDX,  Jackson,  Miss. 

interested  to  know  just  what  your  connection  is 

which  would  make  these  programs  so  objectionable  to  you. 
WKY,  Oklahoma  City,  Okla. 

I  cannot  see  anything  in  the  credit  lines  of  the  Bayer's 
aspirin  copy  that  could  be  considered  harmful.  WMAQ, 
Chicago,  III. 

We  do  not  hesitate  to  accept  any  program  which  the  N.B.C. 

send  us We  feel  that  the  complaint  you  make  is  their 

problem,  not  ours.  WRVA,  Richmond,  Va. 

I  continued  to  badger  the  stations  as  long  as  any  of  them  would 
reply.  Only  one  answered  more  than  two  letters,  and  apparently 
all  that  any  of  them  did,  save  those  at  St.  Louis  and  Spokane, 
was  to  pass  the  buck  to  NBC  or  to  Dr.  Fishbein. 

When  the  Crosley  stations  WLW  and  WSAI  of  Cincinnati 
demanded  to  know  my  identity  and  business  connections  I  sent 
them  the  information,  and  added  a  suggestion  that  they  notify 
NBC  that  they  would  discontinue  broadcasting  the  Bayer  program 
unless  NBC  and  Drug,  Inc.,  brought  immediate  criminal  action 
against  me  for  libel.  That  ended  the  correspondence  with  Crosley. 

KOMO,  of  Seattle,  Wash.,  sent  me  a  copy  of  a  letter  signed  by 
the  executive  secretary  of  the  Public  Health  League  of  Washington 
which  stated  that  from  a  purely  health  standpoint  the  Bayer  ad- 
vertising was  not  objectionable.  My  correspondence  with  the  Pub- 
lic Health  League  brought  no  response  except  a  rebuke  for  my 
reference  to  Dr.  Fishbein  which,  they  wrote,  "seems  entirely  un- 
justifiable/' Apparently,  the  members  of  the  league  were  indiffer- 
ent to  positive  proof  of  injury  to  the  public  health.  But  they 
went  all  out  to  defend  the  professional  standing  of  the  medical 


TREASON'S    PEACE  237 

editor  whose  prolonged  silence  on  the  subject  was  the  one  chief 
reason  why  Sterling  was  able  to  avoid  prosecution  for  the  false 
and  dangerous  claims. 

Another  set  of  letters  went  to  more  publishers,  and  W.  L. 
Chenery,  Editor  of  Collier's,  responded  in  one  instance  with  the 
emphatic  statement  that  "Colliers  does  not  publish  patent-medi- 
cine advertising/'  I  wrote  back  asking  how  he  classified  Bayer 
aspirin.  And  that  ended  that. 

Throughout  this  one-man  campaign,  governors  and  attorney 
generals  were  receiving  my  demands  that  they  prosecute  the 
Bayer  company  under  their  rigid  state  laws.  The  Governors 
usually  stalled  or  referred  the  matter  to  their  health  officials.  In 
not  one  instance  was  any  action  taken,  but  some  amusing  replies 
were  received. 

Governor  Pinchot's  Deputy  Attorney  General  naively  referred 
to  the  Bayer  broadcasting  as  originating  not  in  Pennsylvania  but 
in  New  York,  and  wrote  that  he  would  be  pleased  to  hear  from 
me  as  to  what  action,  if  any,  New  York  State  had  taken  in  con- 
nection with  the  alleged  misrepresentation.  My  reply  called  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  several  NBC  stations  in  Pennsylvania  carried 
the  Bayer  advertising,  and  that*newSpapers  circulated  in  his  state 
did  likewise. 

The  Governor  of  New  York,  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt,  referred  the 
Bayer  hot  potato  to  John  J.  Bennett,  the  State  Attorney  General. 
And  Mr.  Bennett,  through  a  subordinate,  advised  me  that  his 
"unofficial  answer"  was  that  the  matter  was  one  for  the  local 
district  attorneys. 

Governor  John  G.  Pollard  of  Virginia  wrote  me  graciously  if 
plaintively,  that: 

It  is  a  national  question,  and  there  is  no  legislation  in 
Virginia  that  will  allow  us  to  deal  with  the  question  ade- 
quately. 

I  replied  quoting  chapter  and  verse  of  the  Virginia  statute 
which  penalizes  false  advertising,  and  reminded  the  governor  of 
the  ancient  and  honorable  doctrine  of  States  Rights.  No  response. 

The  Indiana  State  Board  of  Health  also  had  a  good  excuse; 
its  secretary  advised  me  that  that  Board  "is  not  charged  with 


238  TREASON'S   PEACE 

the  responsibility  of  enforcing  any  statute  either  specific  or  general 
on  this  subject." 

Governor  Albert  C.  Ritchie  of  Maryland,  referred  me  to  the 
State's  Attorney  at  Baltimore,  one  Herbert  P.  O'Coner,  who  in 
1939  was  also  to  begin  a  long  career  as  Governor.  Mr.  O'Coner 
advised  me  that  no  action  condemning  the  Bayer  advertising 
had  been  taken  by  either  state  or  city  medical  organizations, 
and  that: 

if  criminal  action  is  to  be  taken  it  should  be  as  a  result 

of  some  action  taken  by  the  American  Medical  Association. 

So  here  again  the  evidence  of  criminal  advertising,  which  was 
broadcast  to  millions  over  the  air,  and  circulated  in  millions  of 
printed  pages,  was  officially  weighed  in  the  balance  against  the 
silence  of  Dr.  Fishbein;  and  as  usual  the  silence  won. 

Finally,  in  April  1933,  John  A.  Renoe,  an  able  and  earnest  attor- 
ney for  the  Federal  Trade  Commission,  paid  me  a  visit,  and  in- 
formed me  very  frankly  that,  more  than  sufficient  evidence  was 
available  to  sustain  a  complaint  against  Bayer,  which  he  said 
would  be  filed  very  soon.  Mr.  Renoe  evidently  meant  business, 
and  I  rejoiced— but  too  soon.  Several  weeks  later  I  called  at  the 
New  York  office  of  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  and  was  advised 
that  Mr.  Renoe  had  been  transferred  to  another  "highly  important" 
investigation.  His  successor  on  the  Bayer  case  indicated  that  the 
subject  bored  him,  and  demanded  to  know  what  my  motive  was 
in  persisting  in  the  matter.  The  "highly  important"  investigation 
to  which  Mr.  Renoe  had  been  transferred  I  was  later  informed, 
concerned  the  possible  injurious  effect  of  the  iodine  content  of 
seaweed,  when  used  as  cattle  feed,  upon  the  digestive  processes 
of  cows! 

About  that  time  a  shakeup  took  place  in  the  Federal  Trade 
Commission.  Former  chairman  W.  E.  Humphrey  was  booted  out 
by  the  President,  and  a  new  Commissioner,  former  Congressman 
Ewin  L.  Davis  of  Tennessee,  came  in.  Judge  Davis  was  one  of 
the  very  few  members  of  the  House  of  Representatives  who  had 
acknowledged  receipt  of  my  chart  and  proposed  resolution  and, 
as  Chairman  of  the  House  Committee  in  charge  of  Radio  legisla- 
tion he  proposed  to  do  something  about  it. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  239 

He  did  what  was  probably  the  most  useful  thing  a  man  of  his 
high  character  could  do;  he  accepted  the  appointment  to  the 
Federal  Trade  Commission,  and,  in  1934,  forced  through  a  com- 
plaint against  Bayer,  and  compelled  Sterling  to  accept  a  cease 
and  desist  order,  without  defense,  and  thus  admit  on  the  official 
record  of  the  case  that  every  single  therapeutic  claim  they  had 
made  for  the  safety,  and  curative  powers  of  Bayer  Aspirin,  was 
false,  misleading,  and  illegal;  and  would  not  be  repeated.  The 
complaint  also  required  that  Bayer  cease  to  claim  that  only  Bayer 
was  true  aspirin,  and  that  competitive  brands  were  spurious. 

However,  Sterling  did  not  give  in  immediately  or  graciously, 
and  for  some  time  the  illegal  advertising  continued.  It  must  have 
been  impossible  for  the  Sterling-Farben  regime  to  believe  that 
such  an  affront  to  its  power  and  prestige  could  persist.  Finally, 
one  Sunday  evening,  my  wife  and  I  were  listening  to  the  radio  to 
find  out  if  Howard  Clancy  would  repeat  his  unctuous  statement, 
"It  cannot  harm  the  heart."  The  program  ended,  and  Mrs.  Am- 
bruster  turned  to  me  with,  "Daddy,  he  didn't  say  it.  You've  actu- 
ally done  it  at  last!"  But  it  was  Judge  Ewin  L.  Davis  who  had  done 
it.  For  once  Farben  and  Sterling  had  met  their  match. 

The  significance  of  this  Bayer  aspirin  story,  as  it  serves  to  illus- 
minate  the  Farben  pattern,  is  twofold;  the  criminal  violations  of 
the  law  were  publicly  committed  over  a  long  period  of  years  and, 
as  these  facts  reveal,  hundreds  of  respectable  citizens,  many  of 
them  prominent,  were  involved  directly  or  indirectly.  Some  of 
them  knew  that  such  advertising  was  dangerously  false  and 
illegal,  yet  would  make  no  move  to  help  put  a  stop  to  it.  Call  it 
fear,  call  it  corruption,  call  it  indifference— this  long  period  of 
inaction  by  so  many  goes  right  to  the  crux  of  the  pattern  of 
Farben's  intrusion  on  the  affairs  of  the  American  people. 

In  March  1935,  nine  months  after  the  Federal  Trade  Commission 
had  started  its  proceedings  against  Bayer,  and  members  of  the 
Medical  Society  of  New  Jersey  were  publicly  criticising  the  ad- 
vestising  policies  of  the  A.  M.  A.  Journal,  the  Council  on  Pharmacy 
and  Chemistry  issued  its  first  report  on  the  Commission's  action, 
and  Dr.  Fishbein,  in  an  editorial,  made  the  first  comment  on  Bayer 
aspirin  that  had  appeared  in  the  Journal  since  May  14,  1921,  save 
for  praise  of  Sterling  advertising. 


240  TREASON'S   PEACE 

At  this  late  date,  the  Council  and  Dr.  Fishbein  approved  the 
action  of  the  Federal  Trade  Commission,  and  summarized  the 
voluminous  medical  data  long  available  which  proved  the  falsity 
and  the  danger  to  public  health  of  the  various  Bayer  claims.  The 
final  paragraph  of  the  Council's  1935  report  included  the  following: 

The  indiscriminate  use  of  Bayer  aspirin,  as  urged  in  the 
advertising,  is  inimical  to  public  and  individual  health,  both 
directly  and  indirectly.  Aspirin  ( acetylsalicylic  acid)  is  po- 
tentially a  dangerous  drug  and  its  unqualified  use  as  a  home 
remedy  should  be  undertaken,  originally  in  any  case,  under 
the  guidance  of  the  family  physician,  whose  knowledge  of 
the  personal  characteristics  of  the  individual  patient  can  alone 
render  such  use  safe  and  advisable. 

It  is  of  course  impossible  even  to  estimate  how  many  individuals 
in  the  United  States  were  injured  by  the  unwise  use  of  aspirin  in 
those  years  of  silence  on  the  part  of  the  A.  M.  A.  It  is  quite  possible, 
however,  to  reach  the  very  definite  conclusion  that  that  silence 
contributed  in  several  ways  to  the  consummation  of  Farben's  plans 
for  the  present  war. 

After  its  squelching  by  the  Federal  Trade  Commission,  Sterling 
continued  to  advertise  Bayer  aspirin  on  a  lavish  scale,  but  did 
not  repeat  the  forbidden  claims.  Its  revised  appeal  rested  upon  the 
fact  that  the  aspirin  dissolved  quickly  in  a  glass  of  water;  price 
reductions  also  received  constant  mention.  The  ads  did  not  ex- 
plain that  the  quick  dissolving  was  due  to  the  addition  of  corn- 
starch  or  some  other  harmless  ingredient. 

More  recently  Sterling  started  a  new  series  of  full-page  adver- 
tisements depicting  famous  discoveries  of  serums  and  medical 
remedies  (with  which  Sterling  has  no  connection).  Only  the 
lower  section  of  the  page  mentions  Bayer— "The  Famous  Name  in 
Aspirin/'  In  view  of  the  history  of  the  company  the  choice  of 
the  word,  "famous,"  seems  an  unfortunate  one.  Bayer  would 
hardly  appear  a  name  to  brag  about— in  the  United  States. 

Finally  resorting  to  claims,  in  radio  advertising,  that  the  drug- 
gists of  America  were  sponsoring  a  national  advertising  campaign 
for  "Bayer"  aspirin,  and  that  the  price  had  "recently"  been  re- 
duced to  fifteen  cents  per  dozen;  the  Federal  Trade  Commission 


TREASON'S   PEACE  241 

again  jumped  on  Sterling,  in  June  1946,  charging  that  the  drug- 
gists were  not  sponsoring  and  the  price  had  been  fifteen  cents  for 
years. 

Then,  shortly  after  this  unfortunate  incident  Harvey  M.  Manss, 
Sterling's  Vice  President  in  charge  of  Bayer,  was  announced  as 
the  new  Chairman  of  the  Proprietary  Association  Committee  on 
Advertising,  to  set  up  rules  for  decency  in  advertising  copy. 

The  period  of  time  required  to  induce  action  against  Bayer, 
overlapped  the  span  of  existence  of  Drug,  Inc.,  which  had  planned 
to  continue  its  expansion  and  become  the  American  counterpart 
of  Farben  as  a  drug  and  patent-medicine  cartel.  Among  those  tied 
in  with  Sterling  in  Drug,  Inc.,  it  will  be  recalled,  was  The  Bristol 
Myers  Company. 

The  Bristol  Myers  advertising  presented  a  number  of  fine  tar- 
gets for  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  sharpshooters.  Much  of  it 
was  so  fat  with  absurdity  and  glamorous  untruth  that,  when  the 
Commission  finally  went  to  work  on  it,  it  was  like  shooting  ducks 
in  a  barrel.  Five  of  the  best-known  products  of  the  firm  were 
brought  down  with  cease  and  desist  orders;  another  has  been 
shot  at,  but  is  still  on  the  wing  as  this  is  written. 

Those  to  feel  the  corrective  action  of  the  Commission's  stop- 
lying  orders  were,  Sal  Hepatica,  Ingrain's  Shave  Cream,  Ingram's 
Milkweed  Cream,  Minit-Rub  and  Vitalis.  Action  against  the  claims 
for  Ipana  Toothpaste  was  still  pending  over  three  years  after  it 
was  started. 

Early  in  1931,  before  the  start  of  the  all-out  fight  on  Bayer 
aspirin,  Sterling  had  started  an  advertising  campaign  for  its  Phil- 
lips' Milk  of  Magnesia  in  which  mothers  were  warned  of  children 
having  been  made  ill  by  "bad"  milk  of  magnesia.  Therefore  only 
Genuine  Phillips'  should  be  specified,  etc.  The  resentment  of 
competing  manufacturers,  and  threats  of  retaliation,  finally  caused 
Sterling  to  withdraw  this  type  of  copy. 

Some  years  later,  Phillips  started  advertising  two  milk  of  mag- 
nesia cosmetic  creams  with  the  fantastic  claim  that  they  would 
overcome  a  disease  called  "acid  skin"  (which  is  non-existent). 
Again  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  called  a  halt.  And  in  1946 
another  action  was  begun  on  claims  for  Phillips  Milk  of  Magnesia 
facial  creams. 


342  TREASON'S    PEACE 

One  of  the  earliest  Sterling  remedies  was  Cascarets,  long  ad- 
vertised as  safe  for  children.  The  advertising,  and  the  label,  dis- 
played claims  that  the  preparation  was  essentially  a  harmless 
candy,  and  that  physicians  declare  cascara  ( a  botanical  drug )  an 
ideal  laxative.  However,  it  finally  leaked  out  that  a  habit-forming 
coal-tar  derivative,  phenolphthalein,  was  being  added  to  the  pills 
without  any  change  in  the  label  or  warning  that  cascarets  were  no 
longer  harmless. 

In  1933,  various  uncontested  actions  resulted  in  condemnation 
of  these  new-style  Cascarets,  and,  two  years  later,  criminal  prose- 
cution was  begun  (after  complaints  of  lax-enforcement  of  the 
Wiley  law).  This  was  the  first  time  that  Sterling  Products  had 
ever  been  taken  into  court  in  a  prosecution  of  this  kind.  However, 
it  caused  Sterling  only  slight  inconvenience;  their  attorneys  al- 
leged that  the  complaint  was  so  vague  they  could  not  answer  the 
charges  intelligently.  A  West  Virginia  judge  appeared  to  agree 
with  them,  and  dismissed  the  case.  Why  the  government  never 
amended  the  complaint  so  as  to  remove  the  alleged  vagueness 
does  not  appear  on  the  record. 

Another  patent  medicine  of  a  Sterling  subsidiary  on  which  the 
formula  was  changed,  and  which  got  into  serious  trouble,  was 
Midol,  sold  originally  by  the  General  Drug  Co.  Midol  was  exten- 
sively advertised  as  a  harmless  remedy  for  the  ills  of  women: 
"Midol  is  the  discovery  of  specialists";  "Midol  means  complete 
comfort  for  women";  "No  need  to  suffer,  no  need  to  be  inactive"; 
"It  is  not  a  narcotic";  "It  is  safe,"  etc.,  etc.  These  statements  were 
grossly  false.  The  label  did  not  say  so,  but  Midol  was  a  power- 
ful compound  containing  aminopyrine  (or  amidopyrine). 

In  1936  and  1937,  Mr.  Campbell  seized  shipments  of  Midol  in 
several  states,  alleging  that  it  was  misbranded  as  a  safe  remedy 
for  women.  In  all  of  these  cases  Sterling  chose  not  to  enter  any 
denial  of  the  accusations  of  dangerous  fraud.  As  these  proceed- 
ings were  libels  directed  merely  at  this  highly  dangerous  nostrum 
itself  and  not  against  the  maker,  the  responsibility  of  the  Sterling- 
General  Drug  people  for  it  was  never  explored  in  a  court  action. 
Mr.  Campbell  chose  not  to  prosecute. 

Some  interesting  inside  information  about  the  Midol  affair  was 
uncovered  in  the  material  assembled  from  Sterling's  files  in  prep- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  243 

aration  for  the  1942  hearings  before  the  Senate  Patents  Committee. 
A.  record  of  the  minutes  of  a  conference  held  at  Leverkusen  in 
1935  between  Dr.  Weiss,  his  son,  and  Farben  officials,  stated  that 
the  1934  turnover  on  Midol  had  been  $629,000  with  sales  increas- 
ing in  1935. 

The  amidopyrine  scare  has  therefore  not  had  any  effect 

on  this  preparation,  as  its  composition  is  not  made  known 

popularly. 

The  minutes  went  on  to  indicate  that  Midol  was  being  sold  in 
the  Argentine  as  Evanol. 

Another  memorandum,  which  was  represented  as  prepared  in 
Mr.  McClintock's  office  in  1936,  referred  to  the  fact  that  amido- 
pyrine had  been  placed  on  the  poison  list  in  England.  And,  on 
September  2  1937,  according  to  a  file  copy,  the  Weiss  Secretary 
wrote  to  Mr.  McClintock: 

I  have  just  received  from  Mr.  Weiss  your  telegram  of 
August  31st  (re  Midol  seizures),  on  which  he  has  made  the 
following  notation,  for  your  attention:  "this  is  serious;  can  you 
use  your  influence  in  Washington  to  get  this  settled"? 

A  strange  request  to  make  to  one  of  the  financial  pillars  of  the 
Democratic  National  Committee  which  was  appealing  for  the 
support  of  the  feminine  voters  of  the  nation. 

The  upshot  of  the  impasse  on  Midol,  according  to  these  records, 
was  a  determination  to  salvage  the  stock  already  made  up  by 
shipping  it  out  of  the  United  States.  One  memorandum  indicated 
that  Mr.  McClintock  would  discuss  with  Mr.  Wojahn,  his  export 
manager,  the  possibility  of  getting  rid  of  the  nasty  stuff  in  the 
Argentine  and  Cuba.  Another  indicated  that  Argentine  health 
authorities  were  already  aware  of  the  dangerous  ingredient  in 
Evanol,  and  objected  to  its  sale;  so  the  McClintock  influence  was 
again  called  for.  This  time  McClintock  was  instructed  by  Weiss  to 

use  every  possible  means  to  get  pressure  from  Wash- 
ington which  will  allow  us  to  import  these  old  Midol  stocks 
into  Argentine.  Please  keep  me  informed. 

That  kind  of  international  team  play  might  be  called  the  Bad 
Neighbor  policy  of  Sterling— under  Farben  direction. 


244  TREASON'S    PEACE 

And  at  the  very  time  all  this  was  going  on,  Sterling's  Frank 
Blair  made  a  speech  about  overseas  drug  markets  before  the 
Export  Managers  Club.  Said  Mr.  Blair: 

a  single  racketeering  concocter  of  a  fake  cure  can 

bring  discredit  on  the  entire  industry,  and  when  the  law 
catches  up  with  him  he  frequently  flees  with  speed  to  the 
export  markets. 

Which,  coming  from  a  Sterling  executive,  was  about  as  neat  a 
bit  of  irony  as  one  could  ask. 

In  1937  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  also  closed  down  on 
Midol,  and  Sterling  was  compelled  to  admit  the  falsity,  and  agree 
to  discontinue  all  claims  that  Midol  was  a  special  medicine,  or 
that  it  was  recommended  by  specialists,  or  that  it  was  safe.  Those 
women  readers  who  may  have  wondered  what  became  of  the 
old  style  Midol  now  know  the  story. 

Among  the  well  known  remedies  which  many  do  not  realize 
is  owned  by  Sterling,  Ironized  Yeast  ran  afoul  of  the  Food  and  Drug 
people  in  1941  for  misbranding  claims  that  this  preparation  would 
add  to  the  user's  weight,  vigor,  charm,  and  other  blessings.  Not- 
withstanding this  official  rebuke  Ironized  Yeast  was  in  trouble 
again  in  1944  for  press  and  radio  claims  that  its  vitamin  content 
builds  rich  red  blood  and  cures  low  spirits,  jitters,  and  lack  of 
energy.  These  allegations  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  rudely 
denied  as  fiction. 

And,  curiously,  a  seizure  of  misbranded  "Special"  pills,  and  of 
"Formerly  Madam  Dean"  pills,  occurred  on  July  6, 1944,  less  than 
a  week  after  Sterling  had  taken  over  Frederick  Stearns  &  Co.  of 
Detroit,  a  company  which  had  been  making  both  ethical  and 
trademarked  preparations.  In  this  case  the  "Formerly  Madam's" 
pills  and  the  "Specials"  lacked  label  warnings  of  dangers  if  used 
under  certain  conditions.  However  the  new  proprietors  should 
not  be  blamed  for  these  oversights;  and  this  was  not  the  first 
time  that  Stearns  preparations  had  been  in  trouble  with  the  pure 
drug  laws. 

Another  huge  group  of  home  remedies  was  acquired  by  Ster- 
ling when  it  purchased  the  R.  L.  Watkins  Company  in  1934,  and 
soon  thereafter  the  advertising  of  Dr.  Lyon's  tooth  powder,  a 


TREASON'S    PEACE  245 

Watkins  product,  drew  the  fire  of  the  Commission,  and  received 
a  cease  and  desist  order  on  the  claim  that  it  would  correct  acid 
mouth. 

Watkins  products  taken  to  court  in  numerous  actions  for  mis- 
branding  or  aduleration,  or  both;  included  Aspirol  tablets,  two 
Watkins  headache  and  cold  remedies;  vitamin  pills;  cod  liver  oil 
tablets;  and  tonic  for  hogs  and  chickens.  Quite  a  range. 

Among  other  showpieces  of  this  assortment  of  Sterling  exhibits 
the  parent  company  was  caught  in  1943  shipping  adulterated 
senna,  a  U.S.P.  product;  and  two  of  its  other  subsidiaries  were 
in  double  trouble  with  both  the  Drug  Administration  and  the 
Trade  Commission.  These  were  the  Vita  Ray  Company  which 
Sterling  took  over  in  1938  and  let  go  of  in  1943;  and  the  W.  B. 
Caldwell  Company  which  is  one  of  the  oldest  Sterling  possessions. 

In  1941  Vita  Ray  Vitamin  Cream,  another  vitamin  product  for 
which  the  label  claimed  power  to  produce  soft,  radiant  smooth  skin, 
was  decreed  misbranded  under  the  Food,  Drug  &  Cosmetic  law;  as 
was  a  Caldwell  vitamin  product  labeled  for  pale  underweight 
females.  Despite  these  warnings  the  companies  did  not  reform; 
so  in  1942  and  '43,  the  Commission  ordered  Sterling  to  stop  ad- 
vertising that  Vita  Ray  Vitamin  Cream  cured  wrinkles  and  coarse 
pores,  made  its  user  radiantly  happy,  and  that  its  discoverer  was 
honored  in  the  Hall  of  Science.  The  Commission  also  decreed,  in 
abrupt  legal  language,  that  no  more  claims  should  be  made  that 
the  pepsin  in  one  of  old  Doc.  Caldwell's  compounds  had  any 
effect  on  its  therapeutic  qualities. 

Before  closing  this  grim  and  incredible  tale  of  deceit  and  lying 
in  advertising,  mention  might  be  made  of  a  Standard  Oil  (N.  J.) 
product  called  Mistol  put  out  in  different  forms  which  have  been 
in  trouble  with  the  Food  and  Drug  Administration  over  a  little 
matter  of  misbranding,  and  with  the  Federal  Trade  Commission 
for  advertising  which  did  not  sufficiently  warn  prospective  users 
that  these  nose  drops  were  not  safe  for  feeble  infants  nor  for  vari- 
ous types  of  adults. 

It  should  be  stated  here  that  evidences  of  many  more  violations 
of  the  Food  and  Drugs  Act  are  concealed  in  the  secret  files  of  the 
enforcement  officials  then  ever  become  public  in  court  proceed- 
ings. However,  sufficient  evidence  is  available  in  the  cases  which 


246  TREASON'S   PEACE 

have  been  mentioned  here  to  illustrate  the  indifference  and  con- 
tempt with  which  Farben's  patent-medicine  partners  have  re- 
garded public  health,  the  professions  of  pharmacy  and  medicine, 
and  the  governmental  agencies  charged  with  law  enforcement. 

In  September  1934  a  few  weeks  after  the  cease  and  desist  order 
in  the  Bayer  aspirin  case  was  issued,  Dr.  Weiss  announced  Ster- 
ling's advertising  plans  for  the  following  year.  For  Bayer  aspirin 
these  plans  included  1200  newspapers,  leading  magazines,  and 
radio  programs  on  both  national  networks.  Phillips'  Milk  of  Mag- 
nesia; Dr.  Caldwell's  Syrup  of  Pepsin;  General  Drug's  Midol; 
California  Syrup  of  Figs;  and  Fletcher's  Castoria  were  among  the 
numerous  subsidiary  products  for  which  advertising  was  then 
announced— to  be  placed  in  3,500  newspapers,  in  magazines,  in 
radio  and  in  drug  store  display  material. 

Advertising  expenditures  of  the  Sterling  group  alone,  can  only 
be  guessed  at.  In  1935  the  total  for  twenty  years  was  given  as 
not  less  than  150  million  dollars.  In  1940,  Sterling's-radio  bill  alone 
was  just  under  six  million  dollars.  And  in  1941  it  was  reported 
that  its  advertising  in  Latin  America  ran  to  about  two  million 
dollars. 

We  know  the  sales  formula  of  the  patent  medicine  industry: 
one  third  for  production  and  distribution,  one  third  for  advertis- 
ing, and  one  third  for  profit.  Examine  Sterling's  1942  financial 
statements:  gross  sales  approximately  $53,400,000,  and  gross  profit 
(before  taxes)  approximately  $16,000,000.  The  one-third-profit 
formula  about  checks,  and  it  can  be  accepted  that  Sterling  is  one 
of  the  half-dozen  largest  advertisers  in  this  country.  We  are  con- 
fronted with  staggering  totals  if  we  add  to  Sterling's  the  advertis- 
ing expenditures  of  Farben's  other  industrial  partners  in  the 
United  States. 

Here  then,  is  a  tremendous  sum  of  money  which  conceivably 
might  have  been  used  to  exert  pressure  on  publishers  to  suppress 
or  color  news,  and  to  modify  editorial  opinion.  That  the  same  pro- 
cedure operates  for  radio  stations  has  been  made  apparent. 

In  1932,  when  Bristol  Myers  was  a  Farben  affiliate  through 
Drug  Inc.,  its  vice-president,  Lee  H.  Bristol,  was  also  president 
of  the  Association  of  National  Advertisers,  of  which  the  Farben- 
Sterling  affiliates  were  important  members.  The  Association  at- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  247 

tempted  to  put  the  heat  on  publishers  who  were  expecting  to 
share  the  advertising  budgets  of  its  members  by  threatening  to 
reduce  their  expenditures  unless  the  publishers  acceded  to  their 
wishes.  Moreover,  the  threat  was  publicly  made. 

Pointed  comment  on  this  came  from  Editor  and  Publisher,  lead- 
ing journal  of  the  newspaper  fraternity,  whose  forceful  editor  at 
that  time  Arthur  T.  Robb,  was  always  at  his  best  when  castigating 
any  suggestion  of  censorship. 

In  an  editorial  on  May  11,  1929,  Editor  and  Publisher  com- 
mented on  conditions  in  the  drug  industry,  and  then  declared: 

If  a  pharmaceutical  trust  can  use  its  advertising  appropria- 
tion as  a  screen  to  cloak  the  unlawful  manufacture  of  prepara- 
tions which  aggravate  rather  than  ease  the  pains  of  illness 

The  scandal  involved  makes  the  power  trust's  iniquities 

virtues  by  comparison. 

More  revealing  was  the  radio  debate  between  Secretary  of  the 
Interior  Harold  L.  Ickes  and  Frank  Gannett,  in  January  1939. 
The  celebrated  curmudgeon  sustained  his  argument  that  the  press 
was  not  free  by  the  charge  that  the  patent-medicine  and  cosmetic 
industries,  through  their  advertising  agencies,  had  directed  the 
newspapers  to  kill  the  original  Tugwell  Food  and  Drug  Bill. 

A  few  days  later  the  Philadelphia  Record,  suffering  from  an 
overdose  of  remorse,  or  from  a  desire  to  please  Mr.  Ickes,  stated 
editorially  that  much  he  had  said  was  true,  adding: 

We  are  ready  to  confess  that  along  with  the  rest  of  the  news- 
papers we  deserve  criticism  for  the  shameful  part  the  press 
played  under  pressure  from  patent-medicine  advertisers  in 
fighting  the  so-called  Tugwell  Bill  in  1933. 

The  accusation  and  the  admission  were  clean  cut  enough  to 
sustain  our  thesis  that  the  German  I.G.  Farben,  through  Sterling 
was  in  a  position  to  put  pressure  on  the  publishers  of  this  country. 
Mr.  Ickes,  however,  appeared  to  weaken  his  own  case  in  this  re- 
spect when  he  picked  the  Gannett  newspapers  and  New  York 
World  Telegram  of  the  Scripps-Howard  chain  as  two  of  his  targets. 

It  so  happens  that  Mr.  Chauncey  F.  Stout,  publisher  of  the 
Plainfield,  New  Jersey,  Courier-News,  a  Gannett  paper,  has 


248  TREASON'S   PEACE 

opened  his  news  columns  time  and  again  to  my  battle  with  Far- 
ben's  affiliates  when  the  story  was  being  ruthlessly  suppressed 
elsewhere.  And  no  newspaper  editor  in  America  has  been  more 
willing  to  publish  news  and  editorial  expressions  which  have  dealt 
severely  with  Farben  and  the  Sterling  patent-medicine  group 
than  Lee  B.  Wood,  Executive  Editor  of  the  World-Telegram, 
while  Thomas  L.  Stokes,  as  a  Scripps-Howard  feature  writer,  con- 
tributed by  far  the  most  powerful  series  of  exposures  on  the  Farben 
influence  in  official  Washington  of  any  writer  in  the  country. 

Nor  did  the  World-Telegrams  gentle  and  fair-minded  premier 
columnist,  the  late  Raymond  Clapper,  ever  pull  his  punches  in 
comment  about  Farben's  lobby. 

However  as  to  publishers  in  general,  and  especially  as  to  cer- 
tain very  conspicuous  ones,  I  accept  Mr.  Ickes'  accusation,  and 
the  Records  confession,  that  they  all  got  kissed— and  some  kissed 
back. 

On  May  15, 1943,  the  Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Associa- 
tion reported  on  another  defective  preparation,  Fletcher's  Castoria, 
put  out  by  one  of  Sterling's  companies,  with  the  statement  that: 

At  the  time  The  Journal  goes  to  press  there  seem  to  have 
been  three  deaths  in  which  physicians  reporting  the  inci- 
dents feel  that  the  toxicity  of  the  product  were  responsible. 

In  this  instance  Dr.  Fishbein's  journal  was  much  more  prompt 
( the  news  was  out  already )  in  informing  his  professional  readers 
of  a  medical  calamity  than  he  had  been  during  the  long  period 
of  silence  while  the  Winthrop  Sulf  athiazole  was  causing  death  and 
injury.  In  this  case  it  was  a  Sterling  patent  medicine  that  was  in 
serious  trouble,  and  that  kind  of  stuff  could  not  be  advertised  in 
the  Journal,  even  under  Dr.  Fishbein's  elastic  code. 

On  May  3,  1943,  announcements  in  the  press  had  made  public 
the  fact  that  one  of  the  oldest  and  best  known  of  Sterling's  patent 
medicines  was  in  serious  trouble.  Fletcher's  Castoria,  that  age-old 
remedy,  advertised  since  the  dawn  of  time  as,  "Babies  Cry  for  It" 
had  suddenly  been  found  to  make  babies  cry  at  it.  And  adults 
who  tried  a  spoonful  of  the  stuff  very  promptly  lost  their  dinners. 
It  was  announced  by  an  official  Sterling  statement  that  all  out- 
standing Castoria  in  the  United  States,  estimated  at  3,000,000 


TREASON'S   PEACE  *49 

bottles,  was  being  recalled.  Next  day,  advertisements  appeared 
in  all  leading  newspapers  announcing  that  some  of  the  supposedly 
gentle  cathartic  contained  a  foreign  ingredient  which  caused  nau- 
sea and  vomiting,  and  as  consumers  could  not  tell  the  difference 
between  the  good  and  the  bad,  it  was  necessary  to  recover  it  all. 
Much  mystery  surrounded  the  incident;  both  the  company  and 
Commissioner  Campbell  announced  that  it  had  not  been  possible 
to  determine  the  cause  of  the  adulteration  or  the  nature  of  the 
injurious  ingredient. 

Some  years  before,  the  label  on  the  Castoria  bottles  indicated 
that  its  contents— "Recipe  of  Old  Dr.  Samuel  Fletcher"— included 
Rochelle  salts  (potassium  and  sodium  tartrate),  in  addition  to  bi- 
carbonate of  soda  and  various  vegetable  drugs  and  flavoring  mat- 
ter. However,  it  was  advertised  as  a  "Pure  Vegetable  Compound" 
for  babies  and  children,  and  in  later  years  the  Rochelle  salts  were 
not  mentioned  on  the  bottle,  although  it  was  still  labeled  and  ad- 
vertised as,  "Original  Chas.  H.  Fletcher's  Castoria/' 

The  advertising,  especially  in  the  women's  magazines,  usually 
pictured  a  series  of  touching  family  incidents  which  ended  with 
mother  inserting  a  spoon  in  her  smiling  infant's  mouth. 

Sterling,  with  a  blaze  of  publicity,  proceeded  to  make  a  virtue 
of  necessity,  and  the  Food  and  Drug  Commissioner  joined  in  with 
a  public  statement  praising  that  company  for  having  gone  to  "un- 
usual and  very  commendable  lengths"  in  calling  in  the  adulterated 
material  (Each  shipment  of  which  was  a  criminal  violation  of 
the  law).  The  Commissioner  also  stated: 

It  is  inevitable  that  instances  of  this  kind  will  occur  even 
in  the  best  regulated  plants. 

If  Mr.  Campbell  is  correct  about  this,  then  it  is  no  longer  safe 
to  take  any  medical  preparation  without  testing  it  first.  However, 
I  can  assure  the  former  Food  and  Drug  Commissioner,  and  so 
can  a  great  many  others,  that  his  statement  was  untrue;  because 
it  is  a  complete  and  utter  impossibility  for  an  incident  of  this 
kind  to  occur  in  a  "best  regulated  plant."  If  proper  tests  are  made 
to  check  each  step  in  the  compounding  of  the  product,  such  a  de- 
fect would  be  detected  before  the  product  was  bottled.  And  if 
sufficient  controls  are  instituted  on  the  finished  product,  it  surely 


250  TREASON'S    PEACE 

would  be  detected  before  shipment.  No  properly  managed  chem- 
ical plant  or  pharmaceutical  plant  is  operated  without  both  of 
these  types  of  tests. 

Mr.  Campbell,  in  issuing  this  apology  for  Sterling,  evidently 
forgot  his  comment  on  the  adulterated  Sulfathiazole— when  he 
finally  admitted  that  his  belated  investigation  of  the  Sterling- 
Winthrop  plant  disclosed  sufficient  evidence  of  inadequacy  of 
controls  in  the  process  by  which  the  Sulfathiazole  was  manufac- 
tured, to  warrant  revocation  of  the  Winthrop  license  to  manufac- 
ture this  product. 

In  excusing  Sterling's  Castoria  offense  as  unavoidable,  Mr. 
Campbell  also  appears  to  have  forgotten  the  criminal  prosecution 
which  he  caused  to  be  instituted  in  1940  against  a  chemical  com- 
pany for  shipping  tartar  emetic,  a  poisonous  substance,  which  a 
shipping  clerk  had  labeled  by  mistake,  "Tartaric  Acid  U.  S.  P.," 
a  nonpoisonous  substance.  The  distinction  which  Mr.  Campbell 
appears  to  have  made  between  the  misbranded  tartar  emetic  and 
the  adulterated  Castoria— with  error  the  defense  in  each  instance 
—indicated  either  an  undue  harshness  in  the  one  case  or  a  strange 
gentleness,  toward  Sterling,  in  the  other. 

Mr.  Campbell  likewise  must  have  forgotten  that  in  1941  he 
caused  another  brand  of  Castoria  (Pitcher's)  to  be  condemned 
in  court  for  misbranding  because  the  label  created  a  false  "im- 
pression" and  the  "active  ingredients"  were  not  properly  listed. 

However,  this  is  somewhat  aside  from  the  story.  More  than 
a  year  before  the  discovery  of  the  contaminated  Castoria,  Sterling 
had  announced  what  it  was  pleased  to  call  a  national  defense  drive 
in  Latin  America,  the  purpose  of  which  seems  to  have  been  to 
bring  the  war  to  a  victorious  conclusion  by  means  of  hair  tonics 
and  bellyache  cures.  Unhappily,  though,  it  was  our  allies  who  got 
the  nostrums  instead  of  our  enemies.  Of  which  more  later. 

Because  Castoria  was  sold  extensively  throughout  Latin  Amer- 
ica, and  because  the  blaze  of  publicity  about  recalling  all  Castoria 
made  no  mention  of  what  had  been  exported,  I  determined  to  try 
and  find  out  how  much  of  the  adulterated  product  had  been  in- 
flicted upon  our  good  neighbors  to  the  south. 

The  replies  from  Government  departments  which  might  be  sup- 
posed to  have  such  information,  State,  Treasury,  and  Board  of 


TREASON'S    PEACE  251 

Economic  Warfare,  were  polite  but  highly  uninformative.  One 
paragraph,  however,  in  a  letter  from  the  Coordinator  of  Inter- 
American  Affairs,  bears  quoting: 

I  am  informed  that  a  complete  investigation  has  been 
made  in  connection  with  Fletcher's  Castoria  that  has  been 
exported  to  the  other  American  republics.  This  investigation 
proved  that  none  of  the  exported  Castoria  contained  the  un- 
fortunate toxic  ingredient. 

Thank  you  for  calling  this  to  our  attention. 
Sincerely, 
Harry  W.  Frantz 
Acting  Director 
Press  Division. 

My  reply  was,  in  part,  as  follows : 

Statements  issued  by  the  Sterling  Executives,  and  by 
Food  and  Drug  Commissioner  Walter  G.  Campbell,  are  to 
the  effect  that  it  had  not  been  possible  to  determine  the  iden- 
tity of  the  toxic  ingredient  in  the  Castoria  which  caused  the 
trouble.  Obviously  if  they  have  not  been  able  to  identify  the 
ingredient  which  was  added  to  the  Castoria  by  some  one 
then  it  is  impossible  for  anyone  to  say  that  none  of  the  ex- 
ported product  contained  this  toxic  ingredient.  Either  they 
know  what  it  is  and  how  it  got  there,  or  they  don't  know 
anything. 

One  of  the  Sterling  Company's  statements  also  said 

"It  is  necessary  to  recover  all  Fletchers  Castoria  outstanding." 
"All"  means  everywhere. 

If  you  will  be  so  kind  as  to  advise  me  promptly  of  the 
identity  of  the  individual  who  made  the  statement  to  you 
which  your  letter  referred  to,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that 
I  can  be  of  further  assistance  to  you  in  this  fantastic  affair. 

And  then,  while  waiting  for  further  word  from  Mr.  Frantz,  the 
great  mystery  of  the  nauseous  nostrum  was  abruptly  solved.  For 
seven  weeks,  according  to  the  official  Sterling  statement,  twenty 
Castoria  chemists  had  worked  on  the  strange  case  of  the  cathartic 
that  had  suddenly  become  an  emetic,  and  at  last  had  made  known 


25*  TREASON'S   PEACE 

their  findings— it  was  sugar  and  water.  Under  war-time  conditions, 
the  sugar  content  had  been  reduced,  and  the  water;  well,  it 
seems  that,  "a  chemical  change— harmless  in  itself— occurred  in 
the  characteristics  of  the  water  used  in  making  Castoria,"  and  that 
this  change,  "in  combination  with  the  reduced  sugar,  increased 
the  degree  and  rate  of  normal  fermentation/'  And  that  was  that. 

Sterling  announced  that  in  future  their  Castoria  carton  would 
state  that  the  product  was  "Laboratory  Controlled"  and  would 
have  a  green  band  around  it.  The  old  carton  stated  that  it  was 
"Chemically  Controlled/'  It  had  a  yellow  band  around  it.  Great 
is  science! 

In  theory,  at  least,  all  of  Sterling's  Latin  American  advertising 
had  been  subject  to  scrutiny  and  approval  of  Government  officials. 
And  in  this  connection  it  is  of  interest  that  among  the  Sterling 
documents  which  the  Senate  Patents  Committee  had  available, 
and  which  presumably  the  Justice  Department  staff  had  access 
to  in  1941,  when  the  Sterling  investigation  was  stopped,  were  a 
number  which  revealed  that  the  sales  agencies  of  the  Farben- 
Sterling  partnership  in  South  America  used  the  blackjacking  tech- 
nic  of  withholding  advertising  from  newspapers  which  refused 
to  be  friendly  to  the  Nazi  cause. 

Max  Wojahn,  head  of  Sterling's  Bayer  Export  Department  prior 
to  the  alleged  house-cleaning,  was  a  brother  of  one  Kurt  Wojahn, 
of  Farben's  South  American  staff,  (as  mentioned  in  Chapter  v). 
In  January  1938  Kurt  Wojahn  was  informed  by  Farben  that  one 
of  the  Argentine  newspapers,  La  Razon,  which  was  friendly  to 
the  Nazis,  was  not  getting  its  share  of  the  Sterling  advertising, 
and  that  an  anti-German  paper,  "Critica,"  was  getting  much  ad- 
vertising. So  Farben  demanded  of  Sterling  that  this  situation  be 
corrected  at  once,  saying: 

for  us  Germans  it  is  intolerable  that  this  newspaper 

should  be  aided  by  being  given  such  important  advertising 
orders,  while  the  pro-German  newspapers  either  gets  no 
orders  or  very  modest  ones. 

Max  Wojahn,  according  to  these  records,  replied  to  this  Farben 
complaint  by  stating  that: 


TREASON'S   PEACE  855 

Naturally,  we  are  quite  inclined,  everything  else  being 
equal,  to  give  preferences  in  our  advertising  schedules  to 
newspapers  which  are  fair  minded  in  their  editorial  policy. 

The  exhibits  bearing  upon  the  cooperative  blackjacking  of 
Latin  American  newspapers  for  propaganda  purposes,  included 
the  report  of  a  conference  between  Farben  and  Sterling  officials 
at  which  Mr.  Weiss  is  recorded  as  undertaking  to  issue  whatever 
instruction  might  be  necessary  so  that  proper  attention  would  be 
given  to  requests  made  by  the  German  Government  concerning 
Kurt  Wojahn— as  conveyed  to  Weiss  by  Farben's  Counsel  General, 
Mann.  It  was  team  work  all  right— Hitler  to  Farben  to  Weiss  to 
McClintock  to  Wojahn— and  smack  went  a  blackjack  on  the  pock- 
etbook  of  an  Anti-Nazi  newspaper.  Shall  we  believe  that  none 
of  these  smacks  are  ever  directed  at  pocketbooks  nearer  home? 


CHAPTER       XIII 


Good  Neighbors,  and  Bad 


GEHEIMRAT  SCHMITZ, 

Director  von  Schnitzler  and  Professor  Herlein,  who  send  their 
best  regards  to  Mr.  Diebold  and  you,  are  very  happy  over 
the  valuable  support  and  assistance  that  you  have  extended 
to  us. 

With  this  expression  of  gratitude  Dr.  William  E.  Weiss,  of 
Sterling  received  the  thanks  of  Farben's  top  leaders  for  defeating 
the  British  blockade  by  supplying  Sterling-made  drugs  to  Farben's 
outlets  in  Latin  America  where  they  could  be  sold  as  German 
products. 

The  letter  was  written  to  Dr.  Weiss  by  Dr.  Wilhelm  R.  Mann, 
the  Farben  director  in  charge  of  Bayer,  on  February  8,  1940,  in 
Florence,  Italy,  after  an  extended  conference  with  Earl  McClin- 
tock,  head  of  Sterling's  Latin  American  affairs,  who  had  gone  to 
Italy  to  meet  the  Farben  leaders  to  make  a  deal  which  would 
protect  their  joint  business  dealings  from  injury  by  the  war,  and 
from  certain  seizure  as  soon  as  the  United  States  should  enter  it. 

Other  excerpts  from  these  Farben  war-time  greetings  to  Ster- 
ling's Fuehrer  are  as  follows: 
254 


TREASON'S    PEACE  255 

Our  conferences  were  held  in  the  spirit  of  trust  and  friend- 
ship that  you,  dear  Dr.  Weiss,  strove  in  such  an  understand- 
ing manner  to  create  already  in  times  of  peace 

Your  and  our  power  will  lead  us  to  a  solution  which  will  not 
mean  relinquishing  our  pre-war  position. 
I  view  the  future  with  calm,  confidence  and  trust,  which 
will  be  influenced  by  you  and  our  work,  by  our  experience, 

by  the  strength  of  the  knowledge  of  our  collaboration 

we  are  living  today  only  to  fulfill  our  duty  to  serve  our  Father- 
land. 

Mac  (McClintock)  will  tell  you  the  rest;  he  was,  and  is,  a 
splendid  interpreter  of  your  thoughts  and  wishes,  but  also 

a  true  friend  of  our  common  interests 

May  the  time  soon  come  when  we  can  emerge  from  the 

darkness  of  these  months  into  the  light,  and  continue  our 

activities! 

Dear  Dr.  Weiss,  my  revered  friend,  I  clasp  your  hand!  In 

true  and  devoted  friendship. 

Always  yours, 

Wilh.  R.  Mann. 

Several  years  previously  when  America  was  still  being  lulled 
to  sleep  by  assurances  that  we  could  deal  profitably  with  Hitler, 
and  that  war  was  an  impossibility,  Sterling's  management  had 
begun  conferences  with  Farben's  leaders  about  the  dangers  to 
their  Latin  American  partnership  that  would  arise  when  war  be- 
gan. In  1938,  McClintock  went  to  Europe  to  ask  Farben  to  sign 
a  document  in  blank  by  which,  if  need  be,  a  transfer  to  Sterling  of 
the  Latin  American  inventories  and  machinery  could  be  recorded. 
Negotiations  continued  at  conferences  in  Europe  and  in  New  York, 
but  when  the  war  began  the  assets  of  Sterling  and  Farben  were 
still  hopelessly  scrambled  in  various  Latin  American  countries. 
Sterling's  requests  for  a  blanket  assignment  were  refused,  and 
Farben  countered  with  proposals  that  new  outlets  be  formed 
which  ostensibly  would  be  owned  by  Sterling  but  actually  would 
be  operated  by  Farben  agents. 

The  most  active  and  influential  of  the  Farben  pre-war  agencies 
in  Latin  America  were  those  which  handled  Bayer  aspirin  and 


256  TREASON'S   PEACE 

similar  drugs;  where,  as  in  the  United  States,  with  customers  in 
every  hamlet,  and  advertising  before  every  eye,  they  created  a 
huge  machine,  and  an  effective  screen,  for  espionage  xand  propa- 
ganda. 

So,  when  the  British  blockade  cut  off  Farben's  exports  to  Latin 
America  late  in  1939,  Sterling  rushed  into  the  breach  and  began 
shipping  quantities  of  aspirin,  Winthrop  specialties  and  other 
drugs,  in  bulk,  or  in  cartons  and  packages  which  closely  resembled 
Farben's.  The  Farben  agents  frequently  were  not  required  to  pay 
Sterling  for  this  merchandise.  When  it  was  sold,  the  proceeds  were 
retained— for  Gestapo  purposes. 

Late  in  1940  it  became  evident  that  the  situation  might  lead 
to  trouble  because  of  Sterling's  too  direct  dealing  with  German 
agents.  So  what  appeared  to  be  an  entirely  new  set  of  branch 
houses,  owned  and  operated  exclusively  by  Sterling,  was  organ- 
ized. The  plan  was  to  continue  taking  care  of  the  Latin  American 
business  in  Bayer  aspirin  and  other  Farben-Sterling  prepara- 
tions under  cover  of  these  new  houses. 

These  Sterling  storm  cellars,  known  as  Farma  companies, 
were  actually  erected  in  seven  Latin  American  countries  during 
the  first  half  of  1941,  some  of  them  after  President  Roosevelt's 
freezing  orders  of  June  18,  1941,  which  tied  up  all  German  assets 
in  this  country.  This  order  of  course  covered  all  such  partnership 
arrangements  as  Sterling  had  with  Farben.  This  was  also  the 
period  of  the  Justice  Department  dragnet  investigation  into  the 
relations  of  Sterling's  executives  with  Farben  (referred  to  in 
Chapter  IX)  which  was  halted  by  Attorney  General  Biddle. 

Even  up  to  the  last  moment,  William  E.  Weiss  apparently  never 
gave  up  hope  of  inducing  Farben  to  turn  over  the  Latin  American 
aspirin  business  (worth  a  million  a  year  in  profits)  to  Sterling, 
for  the  duration,  on  some  basis  that  might  block  action  by  the 
United  States  Government.  On  August  14th  the  day  before  Ster- 
ling submitted  its  proposals  to  the  Government  to  break  its  al- 
ready outlawed  agreements  with  Farben,  Weiss  sent  a  long  cable 
begging  his  Frankfurt  friends  to  consent.  The  Farben  directorate 
replied  tersely  insisting  on  fulfillment  of  their  partnership  agree- 
ments. 

The  extent  of  the  assistance  which  Sterling's  executives  had 


TREASON'S    PEACE  257 

rendered  Farben's  agents,  and  were  still  arranging  to  give  when 
threats  of  criminal  indictments  became  a  reality,  was  indicated 
in  later  statements  that,  subsequent  to  the  consent  degrees,  the 
company  destroyed  more  than  100,000,000  pieces  of  advertising 
and  packaging  prepared  for  its  Farben  Latin  American  brigade. 
The  material  destroyed  carried  Farben's  trademarks  such  as  Cafi- 
aspirina,  Bayer  Aspirina,  Instantina  and  Tonico  Bayer,  at  a  cost 
for  printed  matter  alone  of  $100,000. 

The  total  cost  of  Sterling's  alleged  housecleaning,  including 
repackaging  of  huge  stocks  bearing  Farben's  trademarks,  closing 
all  of  the  old  offices,  and  liquidating  all  of  its  branch  tie-ups  with 
Farben,  and  its  1941  Farma  branches,  was  in  excess  of  $450,000, 
according  to  a  statement  which  Sterling's  new  Chairman  E.  S. 
Rogers,  filed  on  February  10^1942,  with  the  Interdepartmental 
Committee  of  the  Government.  This  was  to  prove  that  the  face 
lifting  operation  on  Sterling  was  not  a  mere  relabeling,  but  a 
true  reform  and  rebirth  of  Americanism. 

Sterling  and  Farben  had  disposed  of  over  a  quarter  million 
pounds  of  aspirin  in  Latin  America  in  1938,  enough  to  produce 
over  300,000,000  five-grain  tablets.  But  it  also  takes  a  tremendous 
number  of  Bayer  Aspirin  tablets  to  make  a  $100,000  bill  for  new 
cartons  and  circulars. 

A  vivid  indictment  of  Sterling's  part  in  the  Farben-Nazi  activi- 
ties in  Latin  America  was  pronounced  by  former  Assistant  At- 
torney General  Norman  M.  Littell  after  he  was  removed  from  office 
in  December  1944,  because  of  differences  with  Attorney  General 
Francis  Biddle  on  the  Corcoran  affair. 

Mr.  Littell's  accusations,  as  they  appeared  in  the  Congressional 
Record  were  in  part: 

In  many  cases  the  funds  of  this  business  were  diverted  from 
the  German  agents  to  spread  German  propaganda.  Payments 
were  made  to  I.G.  Farben's  agents  in  South  America  and 
supplies  were  sent  to  German  agents  in  South  America.  The 
German  Bayer  Co.  in  Rio  de  Janeiro  was  accused  of  divert- 
ing funds  to  the  German  embassy;  and  Renata  Kohler,  head 
of  the  German  Bayer  Co.  was  accused  in  Brazil  of  being  a 
Nazi  Agent.  A  new  branch  of  the  Bayer  Co.  of  New  York 


258  TREASON'S    PEACE 

was  organized  in  Venezuela  in  March  1941  and  a  German 
citizen  was  made  the  head  of  that  branch.  Many  of  the  agents 
in  South  American  countries  were  exposed  as  Gestapo  agents, 
as  abundant  records  in  the  State  and  the  Department  of 
Justice  will  show 

every  avenue  of  trade  penetration  was  used  for  political 

propaganda,  collection  of  strategic  information  about  foreign 
countries,  and  efforts  to  suppress  the  development  of  strategic 
industries  in  areas  which  might  be  hostile  to  Germany.  As 
an  example,  in  1934,  I.G.  Farbenindustrie  and  Sterling  Prod- 
ucts agreed  to  use  their  advertising  as  a  political  weapon  and 
decided  that  notoriously  anti-German  newspapers  should  not 
receive  any  advertisements  for  Cafiaspirina  or  other  products 
showing  the  Bayer  cross 

These  actions  were  carried  out  under  the  direction  of  Wil- 
liam E.  Weiss,  President;  Earl  I.  McClintock;  A.  H.  Diebold, 
and  other  personnel,  some  of  whom  owed  their  positions  to 
I.G.  Farbenindustrie,  which  had  sent  them  to  this  country. 

A  few  months  later,  in  June  1945,  Assistant  Secretary  of  State 
William  L.  Clayton  brought  out  some  of  the  State  Departments 
secrets  when  he  testified  before  Senator  Kilgore's  Sub-Committee 
about  the  Farben  "safe  havens"  in  foreign  countries;  where,  he 
said,  the  facilities  for  another  war  were  being  hidden. 

Among  other  exhibits  which  the  Assistant  Secretary  introduced 
were  several  reports  made  to  Farben  by  its  Latin  American  agents 
as  late  in  the  war  as  July  1943.  These  contained  references  to  the 
activities  of  the  Farben  sister  firms  in  various  South  American 
countries,  and  the  ease  with  which  drug  supplies  were  still  made 
available  to  Farben's  agents  in  certain  countries,  until  things  tight- 
ened up.  Mr.  Clayton  then  identified  the  sister  firms  as  Farben's 
cartel  associates,  or  former  associates,  in  the  United  States. 

And  in  the  State  Departments'  famous  Anti-Peron  Blue  Book 
issued  in  February  1946,  stress  was  laid  on  the  part  played  by 
Farben's  Quimica  Bayer  and  Anilinas  Alemanas  in  furnishing  fi- 
nancial support  to  the  pro-Nazis  of  the  Argentine,  and  in  assisting 
in  building  up  secret  intelligence  service  on  the  political,  social  and 
economic  life  of  the  country. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  259 

Let  it  be  stated  that  Sterling  was  not  the  only  Farben  affiliate  in 
the  United  States  which  "helped  out"  Farben's  Latin  American 
agents  after  Winston  Churchill  locked  them  inside  a  ring  of  float- 
ing steel. 

There  was  the  old  established  dye  stuff  jobbing  firm  of  Fezandie 
&  Sperrle  which  took  over,  as  a  blind,  the  export  of  General  Aniline 
dyes  to  Farben  agents  who  were  on  the  British  and  American 
blacklists;  also  Rohm  &  Haas  as  mentioned  in  Chapter  IV,  began 
taking  care  of  the  blockaded  South  American  agents  and  promised 
faithfully  to  give  them  back  to  Farben  when  the  war  ended.  Ad- 
vance Solvents  &  Chemical  Co.,  of  New  York,  another  Farben 
affiliate,  joined  in  this  war  emergency  relief  of  Farben's  customers. 
And  Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey,  faithful  unto  death,  also  con- 
tinued to  supply  gasoline  through  its  South  American  sales  branch 
to  Nazi  airlines  operating  across  the  South  Atlantic. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  arranging  for  General  Aniline 
to  take  over  Farben's  South  American  business  in  the  last  months 
of  1939  after  the  war  began,  two  executives  who  handled  the  mat- 
ter were  our  old  acquaintances  E.  K.  Halbach,  president  of  Gen- 
eral Dyestuff,  and  Rudolph  Hutz,  vice-president  of  General  Ani- 
line. 

It  may  be  recalled  that  Halbach  and  Hutz  were  officials  of  the 
Badische  and  Bayer  American  fronts  during  the  first  World  War, 
so  they  already  knew  just  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it. 

A  Farben  sub-manager  in  the  Argentine,  named  Alfredo  Moll 
made  the  arrangements  for  blinds  or  dummy  houses  there  through 
which  Fezandie  &  Sperrle,  a  New  York  Farben  ally,  shipped  Gen- 
eral Aniline  dyes  which  ultimately  reached  Farben  agents.  It 
was  a  game  of  double  dummy— one  at  each  end— and  Farben  took 
all  the  tricks. 

In  November  1941,  some  one  in  General  Aniline  attempted  to 
have  Moll,  who  worked  with  Halbach,  approved  by  the  Treasury 
and  State  Departments  as  the  company's  representative  in  the 
Argentine.  This  was  after  Judge  Mack  had  become  president  of 
General  Aniline  and  Homer  Cummings  was  its  attorney.  Every 
known  Farben  agency  in  Latin  America  was  at  that  time  on  the 
State  Department's  official  blacklist.  Moll,  who  was  well  connected 
in  the  Argentine,  is  reported  to  have  sold  out  his  interest  in  Ani- 


260  TREASON'S   PEACE 

linas  Alemanas,  the  Farben  dyestuff  subsidiary,  and  retired  as 
its  manager  just  before  the  company  was  blacklisted.  As  the  Treas- 
ury agents  caught  up  with  the  identity  of  the  various  dummy 
fronts  set  up  by  Moll  for  Fezandie  &  Sperrle,  Moll  would  then 
arrange  new  ones.  Finally  some  of  the  Treasury  rough-neck  squad 
cracked  down  and  put  Fezandie  &  Sperrle  out  of  business.  But 
Alfredo  Moll  retained  his  standing,  or  his  stand-in,  with  the  State 
Department— which,  with  characteristic  blindness  apparently  con- 
tinued not  to  disapprove  of  Farben's  ex-manager. 

Meanwhile  the  office  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian,  after  tak- 
ing over  General  Aniline  in  1942,  is  reported  to  have  permitted 
Moll  to  act  as  its  sales  agent  in  the  Argentine.  In  midsummer  of 
1943,  Mr.  Moll  still  had  friends  in  high  places;  according  to  an 
official  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian's  office  it  was  not  neces- 
sary to  blacklist  everyone  just  because  he  had  dealings  with 
Farben. 

In  supplying  gasoline  to  the  Fascist  South  American  Lati  and 
Condor  Air  Lines,  Standard  Oil  alleged  compulsion  to  do  so  under 
the  terms  of  a  binding  contract,  but  according  to  one  government 
official  in  testifying  before  the  Truman  Committee  in  April  1942, 
no  such  contract  existed. 

When,  in  October  1941,  Standard  Oil  refused  to  comply  with 
the  State  Department's  request  to  desist,  Assistant  Secretary  of 
State,  A.  A.  Berle,  Jr.,  announced  that  steps  might  be  taken  to 
put  Standard's  Brazil  subsidiary  on  the  blacklist.  Mr.  Berle,  of 
sterner  stuff  than  some  of  his  colleagues,  used  the  diplomatic  "per- 
haps" but  obviously  meant  "no."  Blacklisting  would  have  been 
a  solar  plexus  smack  on  Standard's  protestations  of  patriotism; 
still  worse,  it  would  have  prevented  Standard  from  supplying  any- 
thing to  its  Brazil  subsidiary,  either  for  Nazi  planes  or  for  any 
other  customers.  The  objectionable  deliveries  of  gasoline  ceased 
forthwith:  call  it  voluntary  compliance— or  shotgun  diplomacy, 
and  divorce  for  cause. 

According  to  other  testimony  before  the  Truman  Committee 
in  April  1942  by  William  La  Varre,  South  American  expert  of  the 
Commerce  Department,  the  two  Farben  affiliates,  Standard  Oil 
and  Sterling,  were  among  the  few  American  corporations  that  did . 


TREASON'S    PEACE  261 

not  fully  cooperate  with  Government  agencies  in  eliminating  Nazi 
agents  in  their  operations  in  Latin  America. 

Late  in  November  1941,  on  the  eve  of  Pearl  Harbor,  Attorney 
General  Biddle  described  to  a  Congressional  committee  a  manual 
of  instructions  for  German  spies  which  contained  propaganda  and 
espionage  directions  for  both  North  and  South  America. 

Significantly  Mr.  Biddle  added  that  the  Nazi  organization  in 
the  United  States  worked  ostensibly  without  a  chief;  through  in- 
dividuals who  might  not  even  know  of  the  existence  of  other  oper- 
ators. 

A  few  days  later,  on  December  5,  1941,  in  a  public  address, 
Mr.  Biddle  protested  the  immense  amount  of  propaganda  coming 
into  this  country,  some  of  it  intended  for  distribution  in  Latin 
America,  and  demanded  identification  of  "its  source  and  financial 
backing so  that  the  public  shall  know  and  judge." 

Official  identification  of  the  companies  and  individuals  thus 
accused  or  suspected  of  propaganda  and  other  subversive  activi- 
ties in  the  United  States  and  Latin  America,  did  not  emerge. 
Rather  did  they  tend  to  submerge  under  an  unfortunate  policy 
of  inaction. 

However  some  of  the  evidence  which  persistent  inquiry  made 
available  is  revealing— so  it  is  now  possible  to  comply  with  Mr. 
Biddle's  request  of  December  5,  1941,  "so  that  the  public  shall 
know  and  judge." 

For  example,  in  one  of  the  frank  protests  by  the  British  Minister 
of  Economic  Warfare  in  May  1941  he  named  William  E.  Weiss, 
and  Earl  I.  McClintock,  of  Sterling,  and  described  the  activities 
directed  by  these  gentlemen  in  South  America  as: 

Financial  assistance  (which)  they  have  heretofore  felt  obliged 
to  render  to  a  country  which  is  now  unblushingly  engaged  in 
trying  to  make  both  hemispheres  unsafe  for  democracy. 

So,  too,  the  press  statement  credited  to  Assistant  Attorney  Gen- 
eral Thurman  Arnold  on  September  25,  1941,  relative  to  the  Ster- 
ling consent  decrees,  contributed  a  ray  of  light  on  the  subject  with 
the  comment  about  German  control  of  drug  outlets  in  South 
America:  as  "one  of  the  most  effective  instruments  of  propaganda 
and  German  influence  in  this  hemisphere." 


262  TREASON'S    PEACE 

When  this  1941  statement  was  issued,  Mr.  Arnold  had  before 
him  certain  evidence  pertaining  to  the  subject  which,  on  Mr. 
Corcoran's  instructions,  Mr.  Arnold  was  not  permitted  to  present 
to  the  Grand  Jury.  Lack  of  space  makes  it  impossible  to  do  more 
than  outline  such  material  here.  It  is  voluminous. 

The  Treasury  report,  already  referred  to,  which  was  originally 
prepared  for  an  Inter- American  Conference  to  discuss  Latin  Amer- 
ican problems  in  June  1942,  indicated  the  official  conclusion  that 
the  "personal  fealty"  or  "close  personal  relationships"  of  individu- 
als involved  in  the  I.G.  Farben  business  tie-ups  had  aided  the  latter : 

To  finance  propaganda,  sabotage,  and  other  subversive  ac- 
tivities in  the  United  States  and  other  areas  (Latin  America) 
of  strategic  importance  to  this  country 

As  an  example  let  us  examine  the  1933  message  sent  to  Max 
Wojahn,  the  Sterling-Bayer  manager  of  its  exports  to  South  Amer- 
ica from  the  Farben  Board  of  Directors,  dated  March  29,  in  which 
employes  of  Farben  in  foreign  countries  were  told  to  hold  their 
noses  and  refrain  from  objecting  to  the  indecencies  practiced  by 
the  New  Order  in  Germany,  and 

immediately  upon  receipt  of  this  letter  to  contribute 

to  the  spread  of  information  as  to  the  actual  facts  in  a  manner 

in  which  you consider  best  adapted  to  the  conditions 

in  your  country  and  to  the  editors  of  influential  papers,  or  by 
circulars  to  physicians  and  customers;  and  particularly  to 
stress  that  part  of  our  letter  which  states  that  in  all  the  lying 
tales  of  horror  that  is  not  one  word  of  truth  ( italics  underlined 
in  original  document). 

Instructions  of  this  character  came  to  the  Sterling  organization 
in  Latin  American  companies  in  accordance  with  the  original 
agreements  with  Farben,  which  provided  that  German  Bayer,  or 
I.G.  Dyes,  should  suprvise  and  share  various  expenses,  including 
Latin  American  advertising  and  propaganda.  Out  of  that  begin- 
ning had  come  mutual  ownership  by  Farben  and  Sterling  of  a 
lengthy  string  of  branch  houses  and  sub-agencies  in  Latin  Amer- 
ica, also  other  agencies  owned  solely  by  Sterling  or  Farben. 

The  stake  for  which  Farben  played  in  Latin  America,  assisted 


TREASON'S    PEACE  263 

by  its  tie-ups  with  huge  corporate  entities  in  the  States,  was  the 
ultimate  control  of  both  continents.  And,  unbelievable  as  they 
may  appear,  there  are  proofs  that  Farben  affiliates  in  the  United 
States,  directed  by  native-born  American  citizens,  actually  took 
care  of  a  large  share  of  Farben's  expense  for  these  subversive  ac- 
tivities. Let  it  be  read  with  shame  that  this  continued  even  after 
the  United  States  by  Lend  Lease  and  other  actions,  had  allied 
itself  definitely  against  the  Nazis. 

The  fact  that  much  of  the  evidence  of  how  such  activities  were 
financed  by  Americans  seems  to  have  be.en  pigeonholed  in  the 
files  of  the  State,  Justice,  Treasury  and  Commerce  Departments, 
may  appear  to  be  as  bad,  or  worse,  than  the  treachery  thus  immu- 
nized. 

In  Colombia,  the  country  nearest  to  the  defenses  of  Panama, 
Farben  branches  had  as  advisers  with  excuse  for  frequent  visits 
two  distinguished  "American"  citizens  who  were  closest  to  the 
top  Farben  leaders— Deitrich  Schmitz,  as  director  of  Colombia's 
Anilinas  Alemanas;  and  Walter  Duisberg,  as  "visiting"  director  of 
Colombia's  Quimica  Bayer.  Both  of  these  ersatz  "Americans"  made 
frequent  business  trips  to  Colombia— as  the  day  approached  when 
the  possible  destruction  of  the  Panama  Canal  might  mean  the 
destruction  of  liberty  on  both  continents. 

According  to  the  Treasury  report  referred  to,  Farben  placed 
assistant  business  managers  in  its  branches  in  eight  Latin  Amer- 
ican countries  who  knew  nothing  about  the  business  but  were 
there  solely  for  political  purposes  and  for  espionage  and  sabotage. 

While  these  Farben  activities,  directed  at  the  security  of  the 
American  continents,  were  taking  place  in  Latin  America,  a  bar- 
rage of  high-class  pacificist  propaganda  was  laid  down  by  the 
Farben  directed  Board  of  Trade  for  German- American  Commerce. 
This  propaganda,  circulated  in  the  most  influential  circles  of 
American  industry,  finance  and  politics,  included  such  appeals  as 
the  following  excerpts  from  the  German-American  Commerce 
Bulletin  of  March  1941: 

And  what  about  Germany's  trade  with  the  Latin  American 
countries?  Germany  has  not  the  slightest  intention  of  de- 
stroying American  trade  with  Latin  America.  Her  trade  with 


264  TREASON'S    PEACE 

the  Spanish  American  Republics  has  never  and  never  will 
constitute  a  threat  to  the  U.  S.  A Therefore  a  side-by- 
side  rather  than  a  counterplay  of  German  and  American  inter- 
ests in  South  America  is  not  only  desirable  but  inevitable. 
In  these  days  when  the  military  conflict  is  still  the  immediate 

issue,  Germany  already  thinks  in  terms  of  a  peace which 

offers  unlimited  opportunities  for  the  restoration  of  the  old 
as  well  as  the  development  of  many  new  ways  for  mutually 
beneficial  trade 

Having  thus  disposed  of  all  menace  to  the  United  States  by 
appeal  to  the  commercial  instincts  of  American  business  leaders 
and  politicians,  the  editorial  concluded  with  this  tender  of  ap- 
preciation for  the  efforts  of  the  Farben  cartel  partners: 

There  is  still  a  sufficient  number  of  influential  people  in  the 
United  States  who  have  a  realistic  understanding  of  present 
events,  and  therefore  demand  that  America  preserve  her  in- 
dependence and  freedom  of  action  for  her  own  sake.  This 
course  includes  the  maintenance  of  peaceful  relations  with 
the  German  people. 

As  Farben's  Dr.  Mann  wrote  to  Sterling's  influential  Dr.  Weiss 
in  the  letter  cited  at  the  start  of  this  Chapter:  I  view  the  future 

with  confidence influenced  by the  knowledge  of  our 

collaboration. 

The  high  talent  of  Sterling  during  the  1940-41  period  of  pinch- 
hitting  for  Farben  in  Latin  America,  among  others  included 
David  Corcoran  (brother  of  Thomas)  in  charge  of  the  Sidney 
Ross  Company,  export  subsidiary  with  its  numerous  Latin  Amer- 
ican branches  which  prior  to  that  time  had  been  distributing  only 
such  Sterling  patent  medicines  as  Fletcher's  Castoria,  Phillips' 
Milk  of  Magnesia,  and  Cascarets;  in  which  Farben  presumably 
had  no  direct  interest. 

Weiss  (who  died  in  1942)  and  Diebold,  both  were  forced  off 
the  Sterling  Board  in  December  1941,  as  result  of  the  agreement 
on  which  the  consent  decrees  were  based.  Of  the  others  involved 
in  guiding  Sterling  during  the  period  of  continued  cooperation 
with  Farben  in  Latin  America,  and  in  the  United  States,  Messrs. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  265 

Roger*,  McClintock,  James  Hill,  Jr.,  G.  S.  Hills  and  George  C. 
Haigh  continued  in  the  saddle. 

In  December  1941  shortly  after  Pearl  Harbor,  Sterling  blithely 
announced  in  the  press  that  it  was  beginning  an  economic  war 
against  German  domination  of  Central  and  South  America  with 
the  purpose  of  strengthening  American  defense  efforts  throughout 
all  parts  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 

This  economic  war  was  inaugurated  in  Mexico  City  with  large 
scale  advertising  by  press  and  radio  and  a  parade  of  pretty  Seriori- 
tas  handing  out  samples  of  Sterling's  Bayer  Aspirin  which  had 
been  renamed  Majoral  in  Latin  America;  and  a  procession  of 
trucks  carrying  enlarged  photographs  of  Sterling  Radio  stars 
heard  on  Mexican  broadcasting  stations. 

In  addition  to  Majoral  the  Mexican  campaign  included  other 
Sterling  trademarked  remedies  such  as  Phillips'  Milk  of  Magnesia, 
Ross  Pills,  Adams  Tablets,  Glostora  and  Fletcher's  Castoria. 

As  this  "national  defense"  drive  to  push  Sterling's  widely  adver- 
tised preparations  in  the  Southern  Hemisphere  got  under  way, 
the  methods  of  the  old  time  pitch  artists  were  revived  and  refined, 
with  the  use  of  sound  trucks,  free  moving  pictures,  and,  in  one 
instance  a  modernized  show  boat  which  chugged  its  way  up  to 
river  towns  in  the  Republic  of  Colombia— the  advertising  of  patent 
medicines  being  blended  in  with  moving  pictures  and  messages  on 
the  blessings  of  hemispheric  solidarity. 

Another  novelty  in  the  sale  of  such  products  was  introduced  by 
Sterling's  when  "bullboards"  were  used  instead  of  "billboards"  as 
outdoor  advertising  of  its  product  Majoral,  the  name  being 
painted  on  the  sides  of  the  bulls  that  went  to  their  doom  in  view 
of  shouting  thousands  in  Latin  American  bullfight  arenas. 

And  in  Mexico  City  it  was  reported  that  a  parrot  was  being 
trained  to  shout  Majoral,  but  either  the  word  or  the  remedy  was 
too  much  for  the  bird,  or  perhaps  it  was  not  a  pro-Farben  mem- 
ber of  the  feathered  family,  as  this  psychological  warfare  stunt 
failed  to  materialize. 

According  to  reports,  more  than  10,000,000  free  samples  of 
Majoral  were  given  away  and  more  than  one  million  dollars  was 
expended  during  the  first  twelve  months  in  advertising  this  new 
aspirin  trademark  in  the  press  while  another  million  was  spent 


266  TREASON'S   PEACE 

advertising  other  Sterling  preparations;  along  with  several  hun- 
dred radio  shows  from  Latin  America's  leading  broadcasting  sta- 
tions. The  fleet  of  autos  and  trucks  equipped  with  sound  equip- 
ment and  motion  picture  projectors  for  propaganda  concerts  and 
shows  increased  to  nearly  two  hundred  and  the  Majoral  drive 
was  proclaimed  as  the  biggest  American  promotional  job  ever 
undertaken  in  Latin  American  history. 

As  one  of  the  conditions,  or  Sterling  promises,  which  led  up 
to  the  Sterling  consent  decrees  in  1941,  all  employes  of  Sterling 
in  the  United  States  and  in  South  America  were  carefully  scru- 
tinized, and  supposedly  those  with  pro-Nazi  affiliations  were  re- 
moved. That  some  were  discharged,  and  a  few  in  the  United 
States  interned,  has  been  stated,  but  the  list  has  always  been 
an  official— and  a  Sterling— secret. 

However,  an  unfortunate  incident  occurred  in  1943,  when  the 
F.B.I,  arrested  a  Spanish  Count  named  Cassina  at  the  export 
offices  of  Sterling  in  Newark,  New  Jersey,  where  he  was  being 
trained  to  become  a  field  agent  in  Brazil.  The  company  stating  that 
this  man  had  been  employed  in  good  faith  by  Sterling  on  the 
basis  of  high  recommendations.  On  December  20,  1943,  Cassina 
pleaded  guilty  to  a  charge  of  failing  to  register  with  the  State 
Department  as  an  agent  of  the  Nazi  Government,  and  was  sen- 
tenced to  a  term  in  jail  to  be  followed  by  deportation.  He  had 
been  sent  to  America  in  November  1940  by  Gestapo  agents  who 
expected  him  to  furnish  information  to  Germany  through  letters 
to  his  father  in  Spain. 

An  example  of  the  official  attitude  of  the  State  an.d  Treasury 
Departments  and  the  Board  of  Economic  Warfare  was  a  refusal 
by  those  agencies  to  comment  in  writing  on  two  peculiar  radio 
broadcasts  delivered  by  Earl  I.  McClintock,  over  Station  WMCA 
in  June  and  July  1942.  In  these  radio  addresses  the  former  financial 
aid  of  the  Democratic  National  Committee  told  his  listeners  that 
he  had  just  returned  from  South  America,  then  explained  at  some 
length  why  a  certain  well-informed  Chilean  believed  that  his 
country  should  not  declare  war  on  the  Axis. 

These  broadcasts  were  delivered  at  a  time  when  the  United 
States  Government  was  making  desperate  efforts  to  induce  both 
Chile  and  the  Argentine  to  join  the  other  American  nations  by 


TREASON'S    PEACE  267 

breaking  with  the  Axis.  Such  remarks  made  so  publicly  by  a  man 
reputed  to  have  high  official  connections  caused  much  indignant 
comment  in  Washington,  especially  among  members  of  the  staffs 
of  those  agencies  engaged  in  promoting  friendly  relations  with 
our  neighbors  to  the  South. 

So,  in  a  visit  to  the  State  Department,  I  asked  several  questions 
of  one  member  of  the  staff  who  appeared  to  be  informed: 

"Did  the  State  Department  know  that  McClintock  intended 
to  make  those  remarks  about  Chile?"  "No,"  was  the  reply. 

"Did  the  State  Department  approve  of  them  after  they 
were  delivered?"  "No,"  was  the  reply. 

"What  did  the  State  Department  do  about  it?"  "We  told 
McClintock  we  did  not  approve  of  it,"  was  the  reply. 

"What  else  did  the  State  Department  do  about  it?"  "Noth- 
ing," was  the  reply. 

Mr.  McClintock,  vice-president  and  director  of  Sterling,  subject 
to  the  continued  approval  by  the  United  States  Government,  con- 
tinued to  hold  his  job.  And  Edward  J.  Noble,  former  director  of 
Drug,  Inc.,  who  had  made  that  broadcasting  possible,  recently 
had  purchased  station  WMCA  (with  the  reputed  assistance  of 
Tommy  Corcoran ) ;  also  subject  to  the  approval  of  a  Government 
agency,  the  Federal  Communications  Commission,  the  very  Com- 
mission which  for  several  years  had  declined  ah1  suggestions  that 
Farben's  influence  over  broadcasting  chains  required  investigation 
and  action. 

Attorney  General  Biddle  was  heard  later  to  complain  to  Congress 
that  he  had  a  headache  because  that  body  had  not  defined  more 
accurately  the  meaning  of  the  word  "subversive."  Examination  of 
the  McClintock  broadcast  and  of  the  conditions  existing  when  it 
was  delivered,  along  with  a  glance  through  various  statutes  relat- 
ing to  such  matters,  might  have  afforded  the  Attorney  General 
greater  relief  from  his  official  headache  than  could  a  trunkful  of 
Sterling's  Bayer  aspirin.  The  best  cure  for  headache  is  to  eradicate 
the  cause. 

Possibly  there  is  no  better  illustration  of  official  hush-hush 
policy  than  the  war-time  reluctance  of  the  State  Department  to 
reveal  voluminous  reports  in  its  possession  regarding  the  activities 


268  TREASON'S    PEACE 

of  I.  G.  Farben  and  the  latter's  agents  in  various  parts  of  the  world, 
especially  those  in  North  and  South  America.  This  reluctance  to 
mention  Farben  as  a  factor  in  Germany's  domestic  and  foreign 
activities  was  apparent  in  the  State  Department's  1943  Red  Book 
on  Peace  and  War  which  disclosed  Germany's  step-by-step  re- 
arming; and  in  its  1943  White  Book  on  National  Socialism  which 
revealed  details  of  the  Nazis'  domestic  and  foreign  organizations. 
In  neither  of  these  publications  was  the  name  Farben,  or  of 
Farben's  leaders  and  allies,  even  mentioned.  The  files  of  the  State 
Department,  it  is  reported,  tell  a  different  story. 

It  may  not  be  fair  to  refer  to  our  State  Department  as  Sees  All, 
Knows  All,  and  Does  Nothing,  but  the  unhappy  fact  remains  that 
in  the  record  of  Secretary  Hull's  staff  there  appeared  few  if  any 
public  statements  on  the  subject  of  Farben. 

However,  the  State  Department  did  respond  with  one  opinion 
regarding  the  distribution  and  advertising  of  such  patent  medi- 
cines as  Castoria  in  Latin  America.  Advertising  Castoria  in  lead- 
ing Latin  American  papers  as  the  laxative  which  "is  meant  for 
children,"  containing  "no  substance  which  harms,"  good  neighbor 
Sterling  had  been  begging  the  mothers  of  those  babies  never  to 
make  the  "serious  mistake"  of  giving  their  children  any  laxative 
but  Castoria. 

One  Bernard  Meltzer,  State  Department  Acting  Chief  of  For- 
eign Funds  Control,  advised  that  investigation  of  such  matters 
could  not  be  undertaken,  and  that: 

Neither  the  (State)  Department  nor  any  other  agency  of 
this  Government  has  taken  any  measures  which  may  be  con- 
strued as  approving  all activities,  including  advertising, 

of  Sterling  Products,  Inc. 

Which  pronouncement  appears  to  be  a  somewhat  comprehen- 
sive denial  of  responsibility  for  matters  which  related  to  our  war- 
time good-neighbor  policy,  as  well  as  for  one  of  the  conditions 
of  the  1941  Sterling  consent  decrees. 


CHAPTER        XIV 


Again,  Espionage  and  Sabotage 


A"...     STRUCTURE 

of  espionage/'  which  made  "weekly  and  monthly  reports  to 
Germany They  were  soldiers  in  the  army  of  Germany." 

So  said  Francis  P.  Garvan,  Alien  Property  Custodian,  in  1919, 
when  denouncing  certain  American  agents  of  I.G.  Dyes. 

An instrument  so  aptly  devised  for  espionage  pur- 
poses. Persons  were  carried  on  the  payroll  of  the  General 
Aniline  and  Film  Corporation  who  were  unknown  in  the 
company.  There  was  a  constant  traffic  in  German  agents  who 
would  be  employed  by  General  Aniline  and  Film  Corporation 
for  a  few  months  and  then  moved  on  to  other  fields. 

So  said  Henry  Morgenthau,  Jr.,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  in 
1942,  when  denouncing  certain  of  the  successors  of  I.G.  Dyes  ( in- 
cluding some  of  the  same  individuals  who  had  been  involved  in 
Mr.  Garvan's  charges). 

The  part  played  by  Bayer's  Schweitzer  and  other  I.G.  Dyes 
agents  as  saboteurs  in  World  War  I  need  not  be  repeated.  Over 
two  decades  later  another  Government  official,  who  like  Garvan, 

269 


270  TREASON    S     PEACE 

had  spent  months  digging  beneath  the  surface  of  the  activities  of 
the  dye  trust  agents  in  this  country  before  and  during  World  War 
II  made  precisely  the  same  charges  which  Garvan,  in  his  attempts 
to  induce  senatorial  action,  had  first  made  years  previously. 

This  later  official  indictment  of  Farben's  espionage  and  saboteurs 
in  a  Treasury  report  of  investigations  made  in  1941  and  1942, 
said  in  part: 

In  the  twenty-year  period  between  1919  and  1939  German 
interests  succeeded  in  organizing  within  the  United  States 
another  industrial  and  commercial  network  centered  in  the 

chemical  field It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  that  these 

business  enterprises  constituted  a  base  of  operations  to  carry 
out  Axis  plans  to  control  production,  to  hold  markets  in  this 
Hemisphere,  to  support  fifth  column  movements,  and  to  mold 

our  postwar  economy  according  to  Axis  plans This 

problem  with  which  we  are  now  faced  is  more  difficult  than, 
although  somewhat  similar  to,  the  problem  faced  by  us  in 
1917.  The  background  is  vastly  different  from  that  which 
existed  in  1917. 

The  report  went  on  to  say  that: 

Certain  individuals  who  occupied  a  dominant  place  in  busi- 
ness enterprises  owed  all  of  their  success  to  their  business 
contacts  in  the  past  with I.G.  Farben. 

Also  that  it  was  regarded  as  "naive  in  the  light  of  Axis  practices" 
to  believe  that  Farben  relied  only  upon  the  services  of  those  who 
were  actually  citizens  of  Axis  countries. 

This  Treasury  report,  in  discussing  the  Farben  practice  of 
sending  spies  and  agents  to  become  citizens  of  this  country  (see 
Chapter  v)  stated  that  it  had  been  found  necessary  to  dismiss 
one  hundred  American  citizens  from  General  Aniline  and  Film 
Corp.,  including  five  key  executives,  three  of  whom  received 
salaries  in  excess  of  $50,000  a  year;  also  that  it  had  been  neces- 
sary to  liquidate  the  General  Aniline  patent  law  firm,  composed 
of  W.  H.  Hutz,  son  of  the  only  original  Bayer's  Rudolph  Hutz 
(bobbing  up  again),  and  another  attorney  named  H.  M.  Joslin. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  271 

The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  according  to  the  report,  had 
the  power  to  define  as  a  national  of  Germany  any  person  deter- 
mined to  have  acted  directly  or  indirectly  for  the  benefit  of,  or 
under  the  direction  of,  Germany.  To  the  reader  of  this  story  it 
may  appear  that  this  power  has  not  been  utilized  as  fully  as 
might  be. 

The  report  described  how  the  payroll  of  this  American  front 
for  the  German  dye  trust  in  World  War  II,  as  in  World  War  I, 
was  being  utilized  by  Farben's  spy  bureaus.  Under  these  condi- 
tions any  past  connection  with  Farben  by  a  General  Aniline  em- 
ploye appeared  to  be  considered,  by  the  Treasury,  as  cause  jfor 
immediate  dismissal. 

Among  the  pre-war  activities  of  the  Agf  a-Ansco  Division  of  Gen- 
eral Aniline  &  Film  are  reported  (by  others,  not  this  Treasury 
document)  to  have  been  demonstrations  of  its  photographic  and 
blueprint  apparatus  and  materials,  conducted  ostensibly  for  the 
edification  of  our  army  and  navy  authorities.  It  is  said  that  these 
tests  included  the  taking  of  stills  and  moving  pictures,  and  the 
reproduction  of  drawings  and  documents,  of  what  may  have  been 
regarded  as  "top  secrets"  of  the  limited  national  defense  prepara- 
tions which  were  permitted  by  a  stupid  Congress  prior  to  the  out- 
break of  combat  war  in  Europe. 

Complacent  Government  officials  who  permitted  these  generous 
tokens  of  Agfa-Ansco  patriotism  may  have  felt  suitably  compen- 
sated with  copies  of  the  films  and  photoprints  thus  supplied,  gratis, 
for  their  use.  And  we  may  safely  assume  that  Max  Ilgner,  in  Berlin, 
was  also  gratified  to  see  such  movies  and  pictures  of  American 
defense  plans  as  may  have  reached  him  through  these  channels. 

When  it  came  to  weeding  out  the  undesirables  in  Sterling  the 
Treasury  firing  squad  was  unable  to  apply  its  formula  and  the 
report  states  that  the  removal  of  some  forty-two  persons  on  the 
payroll  (for  relations  with  Farben)  was  merely  suggested.  The 
suggestion  evidently  went  to  the  Justice  Department— and  Mr. 
Corcoran. 

If  it  may  appear  difficult  to  understand  why  such  discrimination 
would  be  tolerated  it  should  be  understood  that  the  German  dye 
trust  had  immeasurably  improved  its  technic  over  that  employed 


27*  TREASON'S   PEACE 

in  World  War  I  both  in  espionage  and  sabotage,  and  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  more  important  of  its  agents.  This  was  especially 
true  in  the  case  of  Sterling's  Bayer. 

During  the  months  following  Pearl  Harbor,  when  the  attempted 
housecleaning  of  the  Sterling-Bay er-Winthrop  organization  at 
Rensselaer,  New  York,  got  under  way,  considerable  excitement 
prevailed  in  that  town  and  at  Albany,  across  the  Hudson  River, 
where  many  of  the  personnel  of  the  Sterling  companies  resided. 

The  head  of  a  beauty  parlor  which  was  patronized  by  ladies 
of  the  Winthrop-Bayer  families  was  reputedly  put  on  the  F.B.I, 
payroll,  and  feared  for  her  life  while  thus  serving  her  country 
in  checking  on  subversive  utterances  of  some  of  the  lovely  patrons 
whose  husbands'  loyalty  to  this  country  was  under  observation. 

One  of  the  Winthrop  scientific  staff  who  was  removed  from 
his  duties  and  locked  up  on  Ellis  Island  was  Wolfgang  Schnell- 
bach,  mentioned  in  Chapter  v,  who,  it  developed,  had  charge  of 
"testing"  the  400,000  adulterated  Sulfathiazole  tablets  shipped  out 
in  1940  which  caused  so  much  death  and  injury  before  the  Win- 
throp management  warned  the  public  of  this  danger. 

At  Ellis  Island,  Mr.  Schnellbach  protested  vehemently  that  the 
catastrophe  was  not  his  fault— that  his  superiors  refused  to  permit 
him  to  make  proper  tests  on  the  tablets. 

Months  before  the  United  States  entered  the  war  in  December 
1941,  there  was  available  to  the  Congress  testimony  direct  from 
the  Gestapo  relating  to  Farben's  espionage  and  sabotage  activi- 
ties in  this  country  and  Latin  America.  This  information  was 
publicly  presented  to  the  Dies  Committee  on  un-American  Activi- 
ties in  May  1941  by  the  celebrated  Richard  Krebs,  who  wrote  "Out 
of  the  Night,"  under  the  pen  name  of  Jan  Valtin. 

Mr.  Krebs,  as  a  former  Gestapo  agent,  testified  at  length  from 
personal  knowledge  regarding  the  part  played  by  the  German 
dye  trust  in  the  organization  of  Nazi  propaganda,  espionage  and 
sabotage  in  this  hemisphere. 

Naming  Hamburg-American  Line  offices,  and  the  Zapp  Trans- 
ocean  News  Service  as  mere  appendages  of  the  Gestapo,  Krebs 
told  how  business  houses  in  the  United  States  employed  Gestapo 
agents  themselves  and  also  placed  these  agents  in  other  concerns 
which  were  not  pro-German.  The  Gestapo,  said  Krebs,  had  its 


TREASON'S   PEACE  273 

"Industrial  Reports  Department"  with  special  schools  for  train- 
ing Germans,  or  Americans  of  German  origin,  to  go  to  America 
as  mechanics,  engineers,  and  draftsmen,  also  as  newspaper  men 
and  teachers— for  work  in  vital  industrial  and  cultural  establish- 
ments of  North  and  South  America. 

According  to  the  witness,  the  Gestapo  regarded  any  country 
where  it  operated  as  a  "hostile  country"  with  which  "war"  began 
the  moment  one  of  its  agents  crossed  the  border.  (The  country 
would  learn  in  good  time  that  "war"  was  going  on. )  In  addition 
to  inducing  propaganda  which  might  retain  a  semblance  of 
legality,  the  purpose  of  the  Gestapo,  and  especially  of  its  Farben 
spies,  was  revealed  by  Mr.  Krebs  to  be: 

to  obtain  information  about  our  security  (defense) 

program,  and  to  produce  choke  points,  or  to  sabotage  our 
war  efforts."  (We  may  recall  that  Francis  Garvan  had  said 
the  same  thing  in  1919,  and  that  Henry  Morgenthau  repeated 
it  in  1942.) 

Mr.  Krebs  was  specific  when  he  stated: 

The  I.G.  Farbenindustrie,  I  know  from  personal  experience, 
was  already  in  1934  completely  in  the  hands  of  the  Gestapo. 
They  went  so  far  as  to  have  their  own  Gestapo  prison  on  the 

factory  grounds  of  their  large  works  at  Leuna,  and 

began,  particularly  after  Hitler's  ascent  to  power,  to  branch 

out  in  the  foreign  field  through  subsidiary  factories It 

is  the  greatest  poison  gas  industry  in  the  world,  concentrated 
under  the  title  of  I.G.  Farbenindustrie 

During  World  War  II  there  may  have  been  fewer  instances 
than  in  World  War  I  of  destruction  of  ships  and  munition  plants 
by  explosive  bombs  but  the  new  technic  did  largely  delay,  and  in 
some  instances  may  have  prevented,  building  the  ships  and  the 
plants. 

Possibly  readers  may  perceive  little  difference  in  results  be- 
tween the  "sabotage"  that  destroys,  with  bombs,  a  munition  plant, 
after  it  is  built;  and  the  "sabotage"  that  prevents,  by  what  Harry 
Truman  called  treason,  the  utilization  of  an  improved  process  or 
the  building  of  a  new  munition  plant. 


274  TREASON'S    PEACE 

In  August  1942  during  the  closing  days  of  the  Bone  Committee 
hearings  the  word  "sabotage"  rang  out  in  the  Committee  room 
while  Standard  Oil's  Frank  Howard  was  attempting  to  explain 
why  a  Farben-Standard  patent  restricting  tie-up  forbade  Standard 
from  using  an  advantageous  process  for  making  synthetic  nitrogen 
and  ammonia. 

Irritated  at  cross-examination  of  the  committee  counsel,  which 
brought  out  an  admission  that  Standard  did  not  appeal  to  the 
United  States  Government  to  do  something  about  the  matter  until 
August  1941,  Mr.  Howard  exclaimed: 

The  sabotage  you  speak  of,  Mr.  Fath,  was  simply  a  blanket 
refusal  on  the  part  of  the  German  Government  to  do  any 

business  at  all  in  America You  are  arguing  that  we 

should  have  disregarded  the  limitations  that existed  on 

our  rights.  I  might  tell  you  that  if  we  felt  it  was  necessary, 
and  important  in  the  national  defense,  we  certainly  would 
have  done  it;  but  at  the  moment  we  apparently  did  not  think 
it  was  necessary  to  do  anything  different  from  what  we  had. 

As  indicative  of  the  significance  of  the  use  of  the  word  "sabotage" 
in  that  connection  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  when  Mr.  Howard 
gave  this  testimony  the  "limitations"  on  Standard's  rights  had  al- 
ready been  adjudicated  as  criminal  violations  of  our  laws;  and 
the  "moments"  when  Standard  did  not  find  it  necessary  to  act 
extended  until  August  1941,  within  a  few  short  months  of  our 
entrance  in  combat  war,  the  importance  to  our  national  defense 
being  that  synthetic  nitrogen  was  vital  in  our  production  of  mili- 
tary explosives. 

Just  as  this  kind  of  "sabotage"  went  on  before  and  during  the 
war,  it  may  also  occur  to  readers  of  this  chapter  that  in  some 
of  the  law  enforcement  problems  to  be  mentioned  later  another 
type  of  "sabotage"— of  government— may  be  observed. 

Another  incident  of  the  Standard-Farben  partnership  which 
should  properly  be  classified  as  "sabotage"  had  to  do  with  that 
other  vital  military  need,  toluol.  Back  in  1920  appeal  was  made  by 
the  United  States  Navy  authorities  to  the  Senate  that  we  should 
not  again  be  caught  short  of  toluol  for  TNT  as  we  had  been  in 
World  War  I.  But  the  Senate,  and  every  one  else  in  authority, 


TREASON'S    PEACE  375 

apparently  forgot  that  warning;  so  we  were  again  short  of  this  all- 
important  military  requirement  because,  among  other  reasons, 
of  restriction  imposed  by  Farben  upon  the  use  of  a  new  process 
for  producing  synthetic  toluol  which  was  developed  by  Standard 
from  the  germ  of  one  of  the  Farben  patents  on  the  hydrogenation 
of  oil.  Although  the  process  was  developed  long  before  the  war, 
Standard's  Frank  Howard  appeared  to  believe  that  even  after  the 
war  began  Farben  still  controlled  its  use  because  it  did  not 
relate  directly  to  the  oib  industry.  So  Standard,  in  May  1940, 
turned  down  requests  for  the  synthetic  toluol  which  the  Trojan 
Powder  Co.,  required  for  a  War  Department  contract. 

Large  scale  production  of  this  product  was  delayed  by  Standard 
out  of  deference  to  Farben  until  1941,  long  after  the  need  for 
immense  quantities  of  synthetic  toluol  had  become  pressing.  In 
World  War  I  toluol  was  needed  mainly  for  TNT.  In  World  War  II 
its  use  for  TNT  was  tremendously  increased  because  of  the  larger 
use  of  military  explosives,  and  also  because  of  further  enormous 
requirements  of  toluol  for  production  of  butadiene,  an  essential 
infredient  for  synthetic  rubber,  and  for  high-test  aviation  gasoline. 

But  Standard  feared  that  Farben  might  object  to  the  use  of  this 
process— and  sue  for  damages  after  Farben  had  won  the  war. 

In  1944  the  United  States  was  still  short  of  high-test  aviation 
gasoline  and  Buna  rubber. 

Instances  of  this  later  variety  of  sabotage  have  been  indicated 
and  it  may  be  that  here  is  the  place  to  include  an  excerpt  from  the 
"Act  (of  April  20,  1918)  to  punish  the  wilful  injury  or  destruc- 
tion of  war  material and  for  other  purposes/'  which  was 

amended  on  Nov.  30, 1940  and  includes  this  addition  to  the  original 
law: 

Sec.  5.  That  whoever,  with  intent  to  injure,  interfere  with, 
or  obstruct  the  national  defense  of  the  United  States,  shall 
wilfully  injure  or  destroy,  or  shall  attempt  to  so  injure  or 

destroy,  any  national  defense  material shall,  upon 

conviction  thereof,  be  fined  not  more  than  $10,000.00  or 
imprisoned  not  more  than  ten  years,  or  both. 

However  it  was  not  the  above  statute  but  the  antitrust  laws 
which  were  invoked— oh,  how  gently— in  such  cases  of  Farben's 


276  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Industrial  espionage  and  sabotage,  as  were  taken  to  court  after 
Thurman  Arnold  finally  got  his  Irish  up  and  went  gunning  for 
the  dye  trust  American  fronts. 

General  Aniline  and  Film  is  amply  discussed  elsewhere  in  this 
story.  This  Treasury  report  of  1942  also  described  the  seizure  of 
Farben-owned  Chemnyco,  Inc.,  which  was  incorporated  in  1931 
as  successor  of  the  United  States  and  Transatlantic  Service  Corp., 
Inc.,  a  high  sounding  title  that  had  succeeded  a  group  called  the 
Committee  on  Political  Economics  in  1930.  Max  Ilgner  was  its 
organizer. 

Wilfrid  Greif,  a  Farben  director  and  also  one  of  the  top  men 
in  American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.,  originally  held  stock  control 
of  Chemnyco  and  he  was  succeeded  in  1935  by  our  old  acquaint- 
ance D.  A.  Schmitz. 

William  vom  Rath,  another  of  the  sons  of  Farben  was  a  part- 
time  holder  of  Chemnyco  stock  and  his  pal  Walter  Duisberg  in- 
cluded this  organization  among  his  multitudinous  duties  as  Far- 
ben's  chief  trouble  shooter  in  its  American  hideouts. 

Among  the  notables  who  served  as  directors  of  Chemnyco  were 
Dr.  Karl  Hochswender,  who  was  also  active  in  Farben's  mag- 
nesium set-up;  Carl  B.  Peters,  vice-president  of  Synthetic  Nitrogen, 
and  its  one-time  president  (of  whom  more  later);  and  the  late 
William  Paul  Pickhardt,  son  of  one  of  the  Kuttroff  &  Pickhardt 
founders  who  started  as  an  office  boy  in  that  Badische-Farben 
hideout,  became  its  president  and,  before  he  died  in  1941  had 
also  served  as  an  American-born  figurehead  for  Farben  in  many 
of  its  hideouts. 

Mr.  Pickhardt  was  also  president  of  Chemnyco  but  its  real  head 
was  Rudolph  Ilgner.  Each  of  these  four  Chemnyco  directors,  as 
told  elsewhere,  was  indicted  one  or  more  times— and  never  pun- 
ished save  for  the  picayune  $1,000  fine  paid  by  Ilgner  for  burning 
Chemnyco  secret  files. 

Nominally  a  wholly  American-organized  and  owned  corpora- 
tion, Chemnyco  started  out  with  a  yearly  subsidy  from  Farben 
of  $84,000  which  annual  retainer  by  1938  had  increased  to  $240,000. 
However  it  was  not  restricted  to  this  generous  budget  outlay, 
the  Chemnyco  management  being  authorized  to  incur  any  addi- 
tional or  "special"  expenses  which  were  considered  "necessary  or 


TREASON'S   PEACE  277 

expedient."  This  blank  check  arrangement  indicated  that  Uncle 
Hermann  and  brother  Max  had  great  confidence  in  Rudolph 
Ilgner— or  else  they  thought  that  this  might  be  a  convenient 
method  of  denying  responsibility  for  expenditures  which  later 
could  be  embarrassing  to  the  Farben  high  command  at  Frankfurt. 

In  addition  to  its  stated  income  and  special  expenses,  Chemnyco 
also  handled  enormous  sums  while  acting  as  a  receiving  or  collec- 
tion agency  for  funds  due  Farben  from  various  partnership  and 
patent  license  agreements  in  America. 

Among  the  services  which  Chemnyco  was  obligated  to  perform 
was  to  "facilitate"  the  activities  of  such  individuals  that  Farben 
chose  to  send  to  this  country— including  their  introduction  to  our 
top  level  notables,  when  such  contacts  were  deemed  essential 
to  the  "accomplishment  of  the  purpose  of  their  visit." 

The  details  of  these  services  as  outlined  in  the  agreement  may 
appear  sinister  in  view  of  some  of  the  activities  which  have  been 
uncovered. 

The  Chemnyco  staff  undertook  to  make  reports  and  act  for 
Farben  on  governmental  matters,  including  the  recovery  of  prop- 
erty which  had  been  seized  by  the  Alien  Property  Custodian 
during  the  first  World  War,  or  to  induce  compensation  (from  the 
United  States  Treasury)  for  same.  They  also  conducted  negotia- 
tions and  liaison  relations  with  American  corporations;  acted  as 
blind  holders  of  American  securities,  prying  into  the  affairs  of 
such  concerns,  and  reporting  on  scientific  developments. 

Chemnyco  was  forbidden  to  do  one  thing—it  was  specifically 
provided  that  it  had  no  authority  to  do  anything  which  American 
courts  could  construe  as  the  "doing  of  business"  by  Farben  inside 
of  the  United  States.  Thus  its  status  as  a  false  front  was  established 
in  pseudo-legal  language.  However,  Joseph  J.  O'Connell,  Jr.,  head 
of  the  raiding  squad  of  Treasury  Secretary  Henry  Morgenthau,  Jr., 
disregarded  this  camouflage  and  on  December  11, 1941,  the  day  on 
which  Germany  declared  war,  seized  Chemnyco  as  a  Farben 
property. 

A  great  mass  of  Chemnyco's  secret  records  were  burned  by 
order  of  Rudolph  Ilgner  after  the  F.B.I,  came  to  examine  them 
in  July  1939,  as  told  elsewhere,  but  those  which  have  been  un- 
covered reveal  in  part  the  comprehensive  character  of  Chemnyco 


278  TREASON'S    PEACE 

espionage  on  industrial  developments,  especially  as  they  related  to 
war-making  potentials.  The  Chemnyco  pre-war  reports  to  Farben 
dealt  with  such  things  as  progress  of  the  research  in  atomic  fission, 
synthetic  rubber  tires,  duPont's  Nylon  invention,  manganese  and 
magnesium  resources  and  the  annual  production  of  the  coke  ovens 
of  America. 

While  the  war  in  Europe  was  in  progress  there  were  compiled, 
under  dates  in  June,  1941,  long  lists  of  reports  on  research  and 
developments  in  Standard  Oil  (N.  J.)  laboratories  and  produc- 
ing plants. 

Ostensibly  occupied  wholly  with  the  handling  of  patent  appli- 
cation licenses  and  matters  of  this  sort,  Chemnyco  practised  espio- 
nage on  the  secrets  of  American  industry,  with  results  which  were 
of  tremendous  value  to  Farben's  preparations  for  war  in  Germany 
and  for  crippling  and  obstructing  preparations  for  war  in  Amer- 
ica. By  its  great  number  of  industrial  contacts  permitting  corre- 
spondence, reports,  and  inspection  visits  which  produced  up-to- 
the-minute  information  of  scientific  and  industrial  progress  here, 
Chemnyco  was  enabled  to  transmit  secret  intelligence  to  Max 
Ilgner's  spy  bureau  at  Berlin.  This  included  confidential  data  which 
could  not  possibly  be  obtained  by  the  conventional  methods  of 
secret  agents.  As  a  friendly  patent  holding  company  Chemnyco 
readily  obtained  the  desired  data  at  little  cost  and  no  risk,  through 
exploitation  of  its  industrial  and  commercial  contacts.  Tons  of  this 
material;  process  secrets,  blueprints  and  national  defense  plans, 
were  thus  transmitted  to  Farben. 

An  example  of  this  pre-war  espionage  of  a  vicious  type  in  spying 
upon  American  synthetic  rubber  research  was  revealed  before  the 
Bone  Patents  Committee  of  the  Senate  on  May  20,  1943.  This 
espionage  was  directed  at  development  work  on  rubber  sub- 
stitutes which  had  been  conducted  for  some  years  by  Dow  and 
Goodyear;  both  companies  had  expended  large  sums  and  made 
good  progress  in  this  field;  Dow  already  was  marketing  a  rubber 
substitute  which  was  acceptable  for  some  purposes. 

According  to  testimony  given  before  the  Bone  Committee  by 
Professor  R.  M.  Hunter,  of  the  Justice  Department's  Antitrust 
Division,  a  request  was  made  by  Dow  and  Goodyear  for  licenses 
to  utilize  the  Buna  synthetic  patents,  about  which  it  will  be  re- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  279 

called  (from  Chapter  iv)  Farben  kept  Standard  guessing  for  many 
years  as  a  bait  for  the  lopsided  exchange  of  processes  between 
them,  and  finally  refused  point  blank,  for  military  reasons,  to  sup- 
ply the  know  how.  Dow  and  Goodyear  got  a  runaround  instead  of 
a  license  to  make  Buna.  An  act  was  staged  by  Standard  and  I.G. 
Farben  for  the  rubber  companies,  while  they  were  kidded  into 
believing  that  licenses  might  be  forthcoming. 

And  documentary  evidence  was  also  presented  to  the  Com- 
mittee showing  that  Chemnyco,  as  Farben's  patent  agent,  re- 
ported to  headquarters  on  June  3,  1937,  that: 

We  thought  it  expedient  to  conduct  the  negotiations  in 
such  a  way  that  we  would  continue  to  observe  and  become 
acquainted  with  Dow's  and  Goodyear's  experiments. 

Posing  as  patent  license  negotiators  on  this  vital  munitions 
product,  Rudolph  Ilgner's  Chemnyco  spies  wer£  pillaging  results 
of  this  invaluable  research  work  done  by  Americans  for  secret 
transmittal  to  Max  Ilgner's  espionage  bureau  in  Berlin. 

During  the  summer  of  1945,  after  Germany  was  occupied  and 
some  of  Farben's  staff  were  in  custody,  Dr.  Oscar  Loehr  of  the 
Farben  staff  at  Frankfurt  recalled  that  particular  report  from 
Chemnyco  on  synthetic  rubber  snooping,  and  admitted  frankly 
that  this  Farben  front  in  the  United  States  did  "conduct  indus- 
trial espionage  for  I.G/' 

A  general  conclusion  recorded  by  Dr.  Loehr  during  one  of  his 
examinations  is  to  the  point: 

Question:  So  I.G.  was  able  to  suppress  completely  the  syn- 
thetic rubber  production  in  the  United  States,  was  able  to 
use  an  American  company,  Standard  Oil,  to  protect  I.G.'s 
patents  in  case  of  war  between  the  United  States  and 
Germany,  and  in  that  way  I.G.  itself  undermined  the  mili- 
tary potential  of  the  United  States,  and  I.G.  itself  was 
able  to  carry  on  industrial  espionage  in  the  United  States 
using  its  representatives,  its  participations  and  its  agree- 
ments with  American  firms,  to  carry  on  economic  warfare 
against  the  United  States.  Is  that  true? 


280  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Answer:  These  are  the  conclusions  which  seem  to  disclose 
that  I.G.  impaired  the  military  strength  of  the  United 
States  Yes. 

Likewise  informative  are  excerpts  from  interoffice  reports  be- 
tween Farben's  offices  and  government  officials  in  1940,  when  the 
Germans  thought  that  the  war  was  already  won,  and  that  the 
United  States  would  stay  out  of  it. 

One  report,  dated  August  8, 1940,  praises  Chemnyco's  services: 

Extensive  information  which  we  receive  continuously  from 

the  Chemnyco is  indispensable  for  our  observations  of 

the  American  conditions  especially  with  a  view  to  the  tech- 
nical development Moreover  this  material  is,  since  the 

beginning  of  the  war,  an  important  source  of  information  for 
governmental,  economical  and  military  offices.  Also  in  view 
of  the  later  revival  of  trade  with  America,  these  informations 
are  of  importance  to  us. 

Another  communication  indicates  prewar  knowledge  by  officials 
of  the  United  States  Government  of  precisely  what  Chemnyco 
was  up  to.  This  report,  dated  July  20, 1940,  states: 

We  would  not  fail  to  mention  that  the  Chemnyco  was  several 
times  examined  by  the  Authorities  in  the  U.  S.  A.  on  its  work 
and  its  connections  with  the  I.G.  and  we  would  like  to  point 
out  the  confidential  character  of  the  above  mentioned  fact. 

Some  day,  it  may  be  hoped,  these  pre-war  "examinations  of 
Chemnyco"  by  officials  of  our  own  government  will  also  be  brought 
to  light,  and  the  identity  revealed  of  those  so  complacent  "authori- 
ties'* who  did  not  act  when  the  character  of  Chemnyco's  espionage 
was  uncovered,  especially  after  destruction  of  its  secret  files  in 
1939.  Perhaps  those  prewar  investigators  of  ours  are  among  the 
men  who  expressed  such  shocked  surprise  when,  after  we  entered 
the  war,  some  of  the  truth  about  Farben's  allegedly  secret  activi- 
ties inside  the  United  States  came  out  in  Congressional  hearings 
(before  these  were  choked  off). 

Chemnyco  had  its  headquarters  at  551  5th  Avenue  in  New 
York,  and  during  the  prewar  period  there  was  also  located  at 


TREASON'S   PEACE  281 

that  address  the  Chemical  Marketing  Company,  another  hideout 
of  a  Farben  affiliate,  the  Deutsche  Gold-und-Silberscheide  Anstalt- 
a-g.  This  American  front  was  incorporated  in  1935  as  the  Frank 
von  Kroop  Company,  changed  its  name  to  Chemical  Marketing 
in  1937,  and  was  headed  by  a  German  chemist,  Dr.  Ferdinand 
A.  Kertess.  That  individual  came  to  the  United  States  in  1923  and 
commuted  regularly  back  to  Germany  without  becoming  an  Amer- 
ican citizen  until  1938,  by  which  time  he  had  prospered  in  many 
varieties  of  activities  and  was  established  in  a  sumptuous  suburban 
estate  in  Westchester  County,  New  York. 

Dr.  Kertess  won  what  appears  to  have  been  the  exclusive  honor 
of  being  the  only  one  of  Farben's  ersatz  citizens  to  be  lodged  in 
jail  in  the  United  States.  The  crime  for  which  he  and  his  company 
were  indicted  in  four  different  actions  on  November  6,  1942,  was 
violation  of  the  Trading  with  The  Enemy  Act,  for  which  the 
defendants  were  convicted  in  July,  1943.  The  court  fined  them 
$14,000  and  also  awarded  Dr.  Kertess  six  years  in  jail,  where, 
supposedly,  he  now  languishes. 

Farben's  connection  does  not  appear  in  the  record  of  these 
cases  but  its  war  plants  undoubtedly  were  in  dire  need  of  the 
rare  metals  shipped  by  Kertess,  such  as  palladium,  rhodium  and 
iridium,  all  invaluable  in  the  production  of  war  munitions  and 
implements.  Dr.  Kertess  made  use  of  a  woman  courier  to  smuggle 
the  precious  metals  out  of  this  country  to  Germany  via  a  circuitous 
route  first  to  the  Canal  Zone,  then  to  Colombia  and  Chile  in  South 
America,  and  overseas  to  Italy  by  plane. 

This  criminal  agent  appears  to  have  been  deeply  involved  in 
many  varieties  of  subversive  activities.  He  was  known  as  the. 
power  behind  the  scenes  in  the  Board  of  Trade  for  German- 
American  Commerce,  Farben's  hideout  for  Nazi  propaganda 
agencies,  which  is  discussed  in  the  next  chapter.  According  to 
statements  which  he  made  to  the  Dies  Committee  in  1940,  his 
Chemical  Marketing  Company  had  acquired  the  Maywood  Chemi- 
cal Company  of  Maywood,  New  Jersey,  to  manufacture  a  "spe- 
cialty," which  he  did  not  identify.  The  Maywood  company  was 
the  long  established  narcotic  producer  of  cocain  from  coca  leaves 
and  kola  nuts.  Also  the  maker  of  the  syrup  known  as  "Merchandise 
No.  5,"  which  is  used  in  well-known  beverages,  and  around  which 


282  TREASON'S   PEACE 

revolved  one  of  the  most'  bitterly  contested  court  cases  in  the 
early  years  of  Harvey  Wiley's  Pure  Food  and  Drug  Law. 

Why  Dr.  Kertess  should  have  acquired  a  large  plant  for  the 
production  of  narcotics  has  not  been  revealed.  He  was  also  on 
close  terms  with  the  American  I.G.  Chemical  people  and  was 
active  after  the  war  broke  out  in  shipping  chemicals  to  Farben's 
South  American  agents,  whose  supplies  had  been  cut  off  by  the 
British  blockade.  His  company  likewise  served  as  an  alleged 
American  assignee  of  German  patents,  in  a  vain  attempt  to 
prevent  their  seizure  after  the  war  started. 

Among  his  other  public-spirited  activities,  Dr.  Kertess  took  a 
leading  part  in  promoting  an  organization  called  the  American 
Foreign  Trade  Association  which,  according  to  a  letter  written 
in  August,  1939,  to  Germany  about  it,  was  promoting  a  friendly 
attitude  towards  Germany  among  members  of  Congress  by  the 
employment  of  lobbyists  at  $50  per  day,  plus  expenses  for 
"secretaries." 

This  reference  to  the  use  of  money  by  the  phony  Kertess  organi- 
zation to  influence  members  of  Congress  as  World  War  II  was 
beginning,  may  be  a  reminder  of  the  statement  made  on  the  floor 
of  the  House  of  Representatives  on  September  31,  1917,  by  Tom 
Heflin  of  Alabama,  then  a  Congressman,  when  it  was  revealed 
that  German  Ambassador  von  Bernstorff,  prior  to  our  entry  into 
the  first  world  war,  had  cabled  the  Kaiser's  government  at  Berlin 
for: 

authority  to  pay  out $50.000  in  order,  as  on 

former  occasions,  to  influence  Congress,  thru  the  organiza- 
tion you  know  of,  which  can  perhaps  prevent  war. 

Tom  Heflin,  later  to  become  famous  as  a  firebrand  in  the  Senate, 
asked  for  investigation  of  those  members  of  the  House  and  Senate 
who  had  acted  in  a  suspicious  manner  by  their  pro-German 
speeches,  resolutions  or  bills,  and  demanded  their  expulsion  if 
found  guilty  of  being  influenced  by  the  mysterious  organization 
referred  to  by  von  Bernstorff. 

Having  placed  this  challenge  to  his  colleagues  on  the  record 
Mr.  Heflin  followed  up  with  some  even  more  crude  remarks  in 


TREASON'S    PEACE  283 

the  press  about  "lady  spies"  and  a  gambling  room  in  Washington 
where  "peace-at-any-price"  members  of  Congress  were  extraordi- 
narily lucky  at  cards. 

The  only  result  of  these  1917  charges  was  a  rebuke  to  Congress- 
man Heflin.  Demands  for  investigation  of  similar  legislative  mis- 
conduct before  and  during  World  War  II  were  likewise  ignored. 

On  May  4,  1939,  four  months  before  the  German  army  crossed 
the  Polish  border,  Dr.  Kertess  cabled  one  of  his  friends  in  Frank- 
furt that  he  was  "together  with  friends,  ready  for  war."  Shortly 
after  this  he  engaged  a  New  York  newspaperman,  James  E. 
Edmunds,  for  espionage  work,  which  he  termed  "research,"  and 
for  which  Mr.  Edmunds  was  paid  some  $1,500  by  Chemical 
Marketing. 

In  justice  to  Mr.  Edmunds,  it  should  be  stated  that  his  activities 
in  reality  constituted  counter-espionage  of  a  very  clever  character, 
and  were  conducted  under  the  directions  of  the  F.B.I,  and  British 
and  French  Intelligence  officials,  to  whom  he  reported  as  soon 
as  he  realized  the  character  of  the  "research"  he  was  to  do.  Origi- 
nally engaged  by  a  representative  of  the  Japanese  News  Agency 
Domei,  who  paid  him  handsomely,  Edmunds  became  suspicious 
and  reported  to  the  authorities.  These  suspicions  became  a  cer- 
tainty when  the  Jap,  Mr.  T.  Sato,  sent  him  to  Dr.  Kertess,  and  the 
latter  in  turn  asked  him  to  contact  one  Dr.  Herbert  Gross,  de- 
scribed as  a  German  agent,  who  was  operating  a  news  agency  in 
New  York  as  a  front.  Gross  wanted  information  about  American 
war  plants,  British  and  French  ships  sailing  from  the  United 
States  and  Canada,  and  other  espionage  matters.  Mr.  Edmunds 
accordingly  traveled  to  Halifax,  Nova  Scotia,  on  his  pretended 
spying,  hoping  to  contact  the  Kertess-Gross  agent  across  the 
border,  and  supplied  his  treacherous  paymasters  with  much  false 
data  which  was  gotten  up  for  him  by  the  American  and  British 
authorities.  He  had  some  difficulty  in  securing  from  Dr.  Gross 
the  additional  funds  which  the  latter  promised  him,  but  appeal 
to  Dr.  Kertess  always  caused  such  financial  troubles  to  be  ad- 
justed. The  latter  assured  Edmunds  that  he  was  personally  deliver- 
ing the  data  thus  secured  to  the  German  Naval  Attache  at  Wash- 
ington. Gross  also  asked  Edmunds  to  bribe  employees  of  Pan- 


284  TREASON'S   PEACE 

American  Airways  to  supply  information  about  British  defenses 
at  Bermuda,  and  the  establishment  of  a  convoy  base  there,  with 
reports  on  its  shipping. 

Finally,  according  to  Edmunds*  sworn  statements,  Dr.  Kertess 
solicited  his  aid  in  getting  shipments  of  chemicals  through  the 
British  blockade.  On  the  record,  Dr.  Kertess  appears  to  have  been 
a  most  important  cog  in  Farben's  domestic  espionage  machine. 
But  Mr.  Edmunds  made  a  monkey  out  of  this  Farben  agent  with 
his  counter-espionage  fairy  stories. 

Our  old  acquaintance,  Dr.  Eugene  R.  Pickrell,  the  Metz  handy- 
man and  Farben  lobbyist,  reappears  in  the  picture  as  receiving 
an  annual  stipend  of  $6,000  from  Chemnyco  on  an  arrangement 
that  was  made  in  1931,  by  which  Dr.  Pickrell  represented  Far- 
ben's  interests  in  a  legal  capacity.  Unhappily  for  Dr.  Pickrell,  the 
freezing  order  issued  by  President  Roosevelt  in  June,  1941,  ap- 
pears to  have  interfered  with  the  delivery  of  the  Pickrell  meal 
ticket  in  the  customary  manner,  and  Farben  accordingly  cabled 
its  good  friends  Rohm  &  Haas,  of  Philadelphia,  to  please  arrange 
a  special  license  from  the  Treasury  so  that  Chemnyco  could  pay 
Pickrell  out  of  funds  which  the  Philadelphia  firm  owed  to  Far- 
ben, for  which  Chemnyco  acted  as  collector. 

Mr.  Morgenthau  unkindly  said  "nothing  doing/'  so  Mr.  Pickrell, 
who  is  not  easily  discouraged,  made  another  try  after  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian  had  taken  possession  of  funds  due  Farben 
from  Rohm  &  Haas.  In  1943  Dr.  Pickrell  put  in  a  claim  to  the 
Custodian  for  the  $4,500  still  unpaid  on  his  1941  salary  for  serving 
Farben  in  his  native  land.  Again  Dr.  Pickrell  lost  out.  The  Cus- 
todian's Vested  Property  Committee  decided  that  the  Pickrell 
"evidential  burden  has  not  been  sustained." 

Dr.  Pickrell,  like  Dr.  Kertess,  appears  again  in  the  next  chapter 
as  an  important  figure  in  Farben's  propaganda  hideout. 

Among  other  duties  Chemnyco  and  its  predecessors  also  agreed 
to  prepare,  publish  and  circulate  in  America  any  advertising  or 
other  publicity  which  Farben  might  request.  Chemnyco  had  no 
publication  of  its  own.  Here  obviously  was  where  the  joint  direc- 
tion by  Rudolph  Ilgner  of  both  Chemnyco  and  the  German- 
American  Board  of  Trade  became  so  useful.  The  latter's  monthly 
Bulletin  circulated  among  the  cream  of  American  industry,  com- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  285 

merce  and  finance,  as  the  organ  of  a  group  of  top  ranking  public 
spirited  companies  and  individuals.  Farben  thus  possessed  an 
agency  to  wield  influence  in  business  circles  and  on  high  Gov- 
ernmental policies  which  far  exceeded  that  of  all  the  rest  of  the 
blatant  pro-Nazi  publications  representing  the  Bund  and  other 
groups  of  the  less  respectable  levels  of  American  society. 

So  Rudolph  Ilgner's  powers  as  Chairman  of  the  Board  of  Trade 
executive  committee  fitted  in  splendidly  with  those  which  he 
exercised  as  head  of  Chemnyco. 

Which  activities  his  brother  Max,  head  of  Farben's  world-wide 
spy  bureau  in  Berlin,  was  to  admit  (after  his  capture  in  1944) 
"might"  have  violated  the  United  States  security  statutes.  They 
did.  But  Rudolph,  by  then  raising  chickens  in  Connecticut,  should 
worry. 


CHAPTER       XV 


Propaganda  for  Wall  Street 
and  Washington 


"EVERY     AMERICAN 

businessman  should  endorse  what  James  S.  Kemper,  President 
of  the  United  States  Chamber  of  Commerce  said  in  a  state- 
ment issued  on  May  18th:  "The  primary  concern  of  American 
business  today  is  that  our  country  will  not  become  involved 
in  any  foreign  war.  Business  is  not  looking  for  the  advantage 
of  war  profits  and  definitely  is  opposed  to  sending  American 
boys  and  young  men  to  fight  on  foreign  soil!" 

The  pacifist  views  of  Mr.  Kemper,  who  was  elevated  to  pre- 
eminence among  business  men  and  politicians  by  his  title  as  Presi- 
dent of  the  U.  S.  Chamber  of  Commerce,  were  thus  extolled  in  the 
Bulletin  of  the  Board  of  Trade  for  German-American  Commerce 
for  June  1940,  during  that  tragic  period  of  the  war  when  Germany's 
ultimate  victory  appeared  inevitable— providing  a  craven  America 
could  be  persuaded  to  keep  out  of  it,  disarmed  spiritually  and 
physically,  and  thus  he  destined  to  stand  alone  in  a  final  hour 
of  German  triumph. 
986 


TREASON'S   PEACE  287 

After  the  death  of  Wendell  Willkie,  on  October  8th,  1944,  it  was 
revealed  that  when  the  Republican  National  Committee  was  being 
reorganized,  he  aided  in  assembling  data  which  was  published 
regarding  the  isolationist  record  of  James  S.  Kemper,  who  had 
been  appointed  financial  chairman  for  the  Dewey  campaign.  He 
was  designated  to  handle  the  task  of  securing  contributions  from 
those  business  men  and  industrialists  who  believed  that  their  best 
chance  for  a  peace-time  set-up  satisfactory  to  their  purposes  would 
be  by  a  Republican  victory  in  that  November  election. 

It  would  appear  that  Mr.  Willkie,  in  examining  Mr.  KemperV 
record,  did  not  grasp  the  full  significance  of  the  use  which  had 
been  made  of  the  Kemper  doctrines  by  the  organization  which 
had  so  praised  his  appeal  to  American  industrial  leaders  that 
America  must  keep  out  of  the  war. 

This  organization  was  the  supposedly  respectable  Board  of 
Trade  for  German-American  Commerce,  the  New  York  offices 
of  which  were  finally  raided  and  closed  in  December  1941,  when 
the  secretary  and  editor,  Dr.  Albert  Degener,  was  interned  and 
later  shipped  back  to  his  native  Germany. 

Mr.  Kemper's  full  statement  as  it  appeared  in  the  June,  1940, 
Bulletin,  followed  the  usual  isolationist  line  but  was  slanted  to 
the  viewpoint  of  businessmen  by  enlarging  on  the  inevitable  in- 
crease in  our  national  debt  and  heavy  taxes  should  we  become 
involved  in  the  war.  It  demanded  that  "we  must  be  realistic  and 
not  emotional"  by  refusing  to  fight  Germany.  Insofar  as  the  Euro- 
pean war  was  concerned,  profits  rather  than  patriotism  appeared 
the  important  thing  for  businessmen  to  consider. 

That  this  kind  of  an  appeal  in  the  name  of  the  United  States 
Chamber  of  Commerce  should  have  appeared  in  such  a  publica- 
tion, and  at  such  a  time,  is  ominous.  Probably  neither  Mr.  Kemper, 
nor  many  of  the  respectable  American  business  companies  which 
belonged  to  the  Board  of  Trade  ever  took  the  trouble  to  find  out 
that  this  organization  was  registered  with  the  State  Department 
as  a  representative  of  foreign  principals,  the  names  of  which  in- 
cluded German  I.G.  Farben  and  other  German  industrial  and 
financial  enterprises  which  were  tied  into  that  huge  war  machine. 
However,  these  gentlemen  could  have  discovered  that  many  of  its 
American  members  were  affiliates  or  subsidiaries  of  I.G.  Farben, 


288  TREASON'S   PEACE 

and  that  its  executive  officers  were  employees  of,  or  dominated 
by,  I.G.  Farben. 

The  German-American  Board  of  Trade  as  a  source  of  pro-Nazi 
propaganda  was  immune  until  after  we  entered  the  war  because 
of  the  apparent  respectability  and  high  position  of  some  of  its 
members.  A  fact  which  escaped  Mr.  Willkie  and  those  who  dug  into 
Mr.  Kemper's  record  is  that  ample  evidence  was  available  that 
this  allegedly  legitimate  organization  of  businessmen  engaged  in 
import  and  export  with  Germany  appears  in  reality  to  have  been 
just  another  one  of  the  "Tarnung"  or  false  fronts  of  German  I.G. 
Farben,  set  up  in  this  country  by  its  predecessors  of  the  Dye 
Cartel  and  directed  by  its  employes  under  cover  of  the  names  of 
respectable  American  companies  which  either  did  not  realize  its 
real  purpose  or  which,  for  benefits  received,  were  willing  to  act 
as  stooges  for  the  mighty  I.G.  Cartel. 

Chief  organizer  of  the  German-American  Board  of  Trade,  in 
1924,  was  the  notorious  Herman  Metz,  who  has  already  been  re- 
vealed as  one  of  the  most  obnoxious  American  agents  of  the  Dye 
Cartel  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  a  professed  Democrat  who  in 
1919  switched  his  political  and  financial  support  to  the  Republican 
Ohio  gang  and  its  weakling,  Warren  Harding,  for  President.  Metz, 
as  its  first  president,  announced  that  the  purpose  of  the  German- 
American  Board  of  Trade  was  to  find  proper  outlets  for  American 
products  in  Germany  and  to  divert  German  imports  in  this  country 
to  channels  where  they  would  not  conflict  with  American  indus- 
tries. To  Metz  it  was  to  be  a  commercial  "love  thy  neighbor" 
affair.  (Love  thy  German  neighbor— forget  the  war.) 

In  1934,  when  Metz  passed  to  his  reward,  he  was  still  president 
of  the  Board  of  Trade  and  by  that  time,  according  to  evidence 
revealed  before  the  Congressional  Committee  on  un-American 
Activities,  some  of  the  board's  officers  and  members  were  busily 
engaged  in  spreading  the  Nazi  brand  of  sweetness  and  light  (kill 
thy  non-Ayran  neighbor)  in  the  United  States. 

When  legislation  for  return  of  enemy  properties  was  pending 
in  Congress  in  the  1920's,  the  German-American  Board  of  Trade 
vehemently  denounced  all  those  who  opposed  this  proposal  with 
insistent  demands  that  "American  honor  would  be  stained"  unless 
all  German  properties  we  had  seized  were  handed  back. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  289 

Again  in  the  late  1930's  it  was  the  Farben  Board  of  Trade 
that  led  the  assaults  on  Washington,  first  in  protest  to  the  Treasury 
Department  for  imposing  countervailing  duties  on  German  im- 
ports; and,  after  the  war  began,  to  the  State  Department  for  not 
breaking  the  British  blockade. 

These  Board  of  Trade  gentry,  from  the  time  that  it  was  organ- 
ized, included  a  considerable  number  of  those  who  during  World 
War  I  had  been  engaged  in  similar  subversive  activities,  in  close 
cooperation  with  the  American  representatives  of  the  German  Dye 
Cartel  of  that  earlier  period.  Herman  Metz  merely  had  the  stage 
scenery  repainted  for  the  new  false  front— the  actors  and  the  action 
were  frequently  the  same  as  before  and  during  the  first  World  War. 

When  officers  and  directors  of  the  German-American  Board  of 
Trade  wrote  to  or  appeared  before  Cabinet  officials  and  Congres- 
sional Committees,  they  had  behind  them  a  list  of  representative 
American  corporations  which  appeared  untainted  by  Nazi  influ- 
ence. They  disguised  and  kept  well  in  the  background  the  I.G. 
Farben  controlling  influence. 

It  was  James  S.  Martin  of  the  War  Division  of  the  Justice  De- 
partment, who  later  was  to  try  to  undue  some  of  the  post-war  mess 
created  by  Farben's  friends  in  Germany— who  finally  realized  the 
true  significance  of  the  German-American  Board  of  Trade  as  the 
headquarters  where  Metz  and  Ilgner  had  brought  together  the  old 
crowd  of  Dye  Trust  pals  of  World  War  I  with  those  newly  added 
to  Farben's  Tarnung.  And  these  important  figures,  when  asso- 
ciated with  other  influential  personages  who  were  untainted  by 
Nazi  ties,  were  then  able  to  flaunt  their  high  place  in  public 
banquets  and  thus  launch  materialistic  propaganda  aimed  at  the 
cream  of  America's  social  and  political  economy. 

In  the  fateful  year  of  1939  the  Honorary  President  of  the  German- 
American  Board  of  Trade  was  the  late  Julius  P.  Mayer,  American- 
born  top  man  of  the  Hamburg-American  Steamship  Lines  in  the 
United  States  for  many  years,  the  same  Mr.  Mayer  who,  during 
World  War  I,  was  closely  associated  with  that  notorious  German 
spy,  the  American  Bayer  Company's  Dr.  Hugo  Schweitzer;  with 
the  Kaiser's  pay-off  man,  Dr.  Heinrich  Albert,  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  gang  of  German  agents  who  made  the  Hamburg-American 
offices  headquarters  for  propaganda,  espionage,  and  sabotage  dur- 


290  TREASON'S    PEACE 

ing  the  war  period  until  the  United  States  Government  finally 
raided  it  and  sent  some  of  its  personnel  to  jail. 

Among  Mr.  Mayer's  other  World  War  I  associates  in  the  conduct 
of  the  earlier  "Keep  Us  Out  of  the  War"  campaign,  was  none  other 
than  the  still-celebrated  Edward  A.  Rumely,  who  in  April  1946, 
was  to  win  an  acquittal  after  two  trials  on  an  indictment  for  re- 
fusal to  show  a  Congressional  Committee  the  names  of  contribu- 
tors to  his  more  recent  activities. 

It  was  an  executive  secretary  of  the  Committee  for  Constitu- 
tional Government,  in  which  Mr.  Frank  Gannett  was  a  prominent 
participant,  that  Mr.  Rumely  crossed  swords  with  Congressional 
Committees  in  1938  and  1944  for  refusing  to  reveal  the  identity  of 
those  who  put  up  the  funds  used  by  his  new  organization;  much 
of  which,  before  the  war  began,  was  violently  isolationist  and 
anti-war.  Mr.  Rumely,  being  held  in  contempt  by  Congress  for 
his  refusal  to  tell  all,  finally  went  free  by  grace  of  a  second  trial 
jury,  despite  his  earlier  record  as  an  ex-convict. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  during  the  earlier  war  Rumely  conspired 
with  Bayer's  Schweitzer  to  purchase  the  New  York  Evening  Mail 
with  secret  German  funds,  and  after  the  war  served  a  jail  term 
for  these  subversive  activities.  As  was  elsewhere  shown  he  also 
came  within  the  Sterling-Farben  orbit  in  1929. 

Mr.  Mayer's  training  during  the  first  war,  which  qualified  him 
to  become  the  honorary  head  of  the  Board  of  Trade  in  prepara- 
tion for  the  next  war,  included  membership  in  the  fake  German 
University  League,  a  propaganda  agency  financed  largely  by  the 
American  Bayer  Company  through  H.  C.  Seebohm,  Bayer's  secre- 
tary; with  Dr.  Schweitzer  as  a  trustee,  and  all  of  the  other  im- 
portant Bayer  officers  (including  those  who  were  indicted  and 
interned)  among  its  members. 

It  was  the  president  of  this  German  University  League,  Dr. 
Edmund  von  Mach,  who  in  February  1917,  bombarded  members 
of  Congress  with  impudently  worded  pamphlets  and  letters  at- 
tacking President  Wilson's  request  for  a  declaration  of  war  on 
Germany. 

President  of  the  German-American  Board  of  Trade  in  1939 
until  he  died  on  February  20th  of  that  year,  was  Herbert  A.  John- 
son, whose  ostensible  business  was  that  of  handling  publicity  for 


TREASON'S    PEACE  291 

the  Leipzig  Trade  Fair  (of  Germany)  in  the  United  States.  Mr. 
Johnson's  death  occasioned  a  noteworthy  tribute  in  the-  next  issue 
of  the  Bulletin,  which  featured  cables  and  letters  of  condolence 
received  from  Dr.  Max  Ilgner  of  Berlin  (Head  of  Farben's  Secret 
Intelligence  Bureau);  attendance  at  the  funeral  of  representa- 
tives of  Farben's  Chemnyco,  Inc.,  and  beautiful  flower  arrange- 
ments bearing  the  card  of  I.G.  Farbenindustrie  a.-g.  of  Frank- 
furt, Germany.  (A  long  distance  to  say  it  with  flowers.) 

However  the  actual  director  of  the  Board  of  Trade  after  Herman 
Metz  died  appears  to  have  been  the  chairman  of  its  executive 
committee,  Rudolph  Ilgner,  brother  of  Max  and  head  of  Chemnyco, 
whose  job  there  was  described  in  the  last  chapter  and  discussed 
elsewhere.  Rudolph  Ilgner  was  indicted  on  the  day  Germany 
invaded  Poland,  for  destroying  evidence  in  the  files  of  Chemnyco 
which  a  federal  grand  jury  had  demanded.  This  indictment  was 
kept  a  secret  from  the  public  for  a  long  time  after  it  was  handed 
down,  but  Mr.  Ilgner  and  Farben  knew  about  it,  and  in  Novem- 
ber 1939  the  Board  of  Trade,  with  expressions  of  deep  regret  and 
praises  for  his  invaluable  services,  accepted  Mr.  Ilgner 's  resigna- 
tion as  chairman  of  its  executive  committee.  Perhaps  the  vote  of 
thanks  had  special  reference  to  Mr.  Ilgner's  criminal  destruction  of 
records  which  would  have  exposed  some  of  the  treasonable  activi- 
ties which  were  being  conducted  through  the  offices  of  Chemnyco 
and  other  Farben  affiliates  in  the  United  States;  or  perhaps  the 
Board's  directors  merely  wished  to  pay  tribute  to  their  chairman 
for  having  arranged  an  elaborate  reception  and  dinner  at  the 
Deutsche  Verein  in  New  York  City  in  honor  of  Captain  Fritz 
Weidemann  who  had  just  arrived  in  this  country  to  become  Con- 
sul General  for  Nazi  Germany  by  order  of  Adolph  Hitler,  and 
who  had  acted,  a  few  months  before,  as  the  official  escort  of  former 
President  Herbert  Hoover  during  the  latter's  grand  inspection  tour 
of  Nazi  Germany  in  1938  (of  which  more  later).  This  Ilgner- 
Weidemann  dinner  took  place  some  months  before  Captain 
Weidemann  was  exposed  as  Pacific  Coast  head  of  Nazi  espionage 
and  was  ordered  to  get  out— and  stay  out— of  the  United  States. 

The  Farben-Ilgner  executive  body  of  the  German-American 
Board  of  Trade  included  Ernst  Schmitz,  director  of  the  German 
Railroad  Information  Service;  J.  Schroeder  and  C.  J.  Berk  of  the 


292-  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Nazi  combined  Hamburg-American  and  North  German  Lloyd 
Steamship  Company  and  other  notables.  Mr.  Schmitz's  Informa- 
tion Services,  financed  by  the  Nazi  government,  had  included 
engaging  the  public  relations  firm  of  Carl  Byoir  and  Associates 
for  $6,000  per  month,  presumably  to  give  council  to  Americans 
how  to  become  German  tourists.  The  ubiquitous  George  Sylvester 
Viereck,  editor  of  the  German  Library  of  Information  "Facts  on 
Review"  was  also  on  the  Byoir  payroll  at  $1,750  per  month,  plus 
many  more  thousands  from  other  sources,  helping  to  edit  a  propa- 
ganda sheet  called  the  German-American  Bulletin— tor  the  guid- 
ance of  the  prospective  tourists,  Mr.  Schmitz  also  tied  in  with  the 
notorious  Manfred  Zapp,  the  Casanova  head  of  the  Nazi  handout 
agency  Transocean  News  Service,  until  the  latter  was  interned 
and  indicted  in  1941;  Transocean,  according  to  information  found 
in  Zapp's  files,  was  owned  among  others  by  I.G.  Farben's  Robert 
Bosch,  and  the  Hamburg-American  Lines. 

On  November  30,  1939,  according  to  a  letter  written  by  Mr. 
Schmitz,  that  member  of  the  Board  of  Trade's  directorate  wrote 
inviting  Zapp  to  attend  a  meeting  at  the  Schmitz  apartment  in 
New  York  of  a  "number  of  people  of  the  Intelligence  Service  of 
the  Rome-Berlin  Axis."  This  invitation  gives  some  indication  of 
the  kind  of  people  included  in  the  management  of  the  Metz- 
Ilgner-Farben  Board  of  Trade.  Mr.  Schmitz,  like  Mr.  Mayer,  had 
World  War  I  training  in  pro-German,  anti-war  activities;  he  was 
then  an  editor  of  the  Ridder  family's  Staatz-Zeitung,  which  at- 
tained notoriety  during  the  first  war  and,  while  preparations  for 
the  next  war  were  under  way,  heaped  editorial  ridicule  on  the 
heads  of  those  who  saw  the  slightest  impropriety  in  I.G.  Farben's 
penetration  into  American  munition  industries. 

Mr.  Schroeder,  who  had  been  with  Hamburg-American  for 
thirty  years,  was  vice-president  of  the  Board  of  Trade  in  1939 
as  well  as  director  and  member  of  its  executive  committee; 
Schroeder,  along  with  his  North  German  Lloyd  colleague,  C.  J. 
Berk,  also  aided  in  Viereck's  editorial  labors.  Among  the  Ham- 
burg-American propaganda  activities  during  the  second  world 
war,  as  during  the  first  one,  was  the  transportation. to  this  country 
of  tons  and  tons  of  printed  matter  of  the  most  vicious  character 
such  as  Ivy  Lee,  Farben's  American  hired  press  agent,  once  de- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  293 

scribed  as  "books  and  pamphlets,  and  newspaper  clippings  and 
documents,  world  without  end." 

Incidentally  it  was  the  Hamburg-American-North  German 
Lloyd,  and  the  German  Railroad  Information  Office  which  relayed 
from  the  Hitler  government  the  funds  through  which  Heinz 
Spanknoebel  (until  he  was  indicted  and  skipped)  had  financed 
the  original  gutter  publication  of  the  Nazis  in  this  country  Das 
Neues  Deutschland  (The  New  Germany).  The  Board  of  Trade's 
Mr.  Schroeder  saw  to  it  that  this  alleged  newspaper  he  was  help- 
ing to  finance  had  plenty  of  readers— in  1932  he  sent  a  letter  to 
each  Hamburg-American  employe  instructing  them  to  join  the 
Friends  of  New  Germany.  The  ships  of  these  German  lines,  in- 
cluding the  Bremen  and  Europa,  when  docked  in  New  York  be- 
tween trips,  were  thrown  open  to  the  Bund  and  other  Nazi  groups, 
for  meetings  and  banquets  in  full  uniform.  The  Hamburg-Ameri- 
can did  yeoman  service  in  the  inside  job  of  softening  up  America 
for  World  War  H-just  as  it  did  for  World  War  I. 

Officers  of  the  Board  of  Trade  who  were  not  members  of  the 
select  Ilgner  committee  included  Dr.  Degener,  already  mentioned, 
and  Heinrich  Freytag  its  Treasurer,  who  was  also  an  employe  of 
the  German  Embassy  at  Washington.  Dr.  Degener,  according  to 
evidence  said  to  have  been  seized  and  suppressed  by  the  McCor- 
mack  Committee  in  1934,  contributed  large  sums  to  Nazi  organiza- 
tions in  America.  Degener  started  a  red  hot  campaign  against  the 
anti-Nazi  boycotts  when  they  began  in  1933;  he  threatened  pub- 
licly that  the  boycott  would  cost  this  country's  businessmen  their 
most  profitable  customers  in  Germany,  and  the  interest  on  over 
two  billion  dollars  of  American  investments  in  the  Fatherland. 
Degener  was  particularly  bitter  at  New  York  City's  LaGuardia 
for  advocating  the  boycott;  he  denounced  the  pugnacious  Little 
Flower  for  endangering  what  he  termed  the  "peaceful  relations" 
between  the  United  States  and  Germany. 

One  of  the  directors  of  the  Board  of  Trade  in  1939  when  the 
war  began  was  our  old  friend  Dr.  Eugene  R.  Pickrell.  This  ubiqui- 
tous gentleman,  still  on  Farben's  payroll  as  revealed  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter,  was  now  listed  as  a  customs  attorney,  his  office 
was  across  the  hall  from  the  Trade  Board  at  10  East  40th  Street, 
New  York  City;  and  he  made  another  trip  to  Washington  on  De- 


294  TREASON'S    PEACE 

cember  1,  1939  with  Dr.  Robert  Reiner  then  president  of  the 
Trade  Board,  to  protest  bitterly  to  Secretary  Hull  against  the 
British  embargo  on  exports  from  Germany.  These  Farben  Board 
of  Trade  protests  in  1939,  after  Germany  had  gone  to  war,  at 
interference  with  the  rights  of  American  citizens  to  engage  in 
trade  with  Germany,  were  framed  in  almost  the  same  words  as 
those  made  by  the  Dye  Cartel's  Herman  Metz  to  Secretary  Bryan, 
and  to  President  Wilson  himself  in  1915  about  the  British  blockade 
in  Germany's  first  world  war.  History  repeats. 

Carl  Schreiner,  of  the  Pilot  Insurance  Company  of  New  York, 
was  also  a  director  of  the  German-American  Board  of  Trade  in 
1939.  Back  in  World  War  I  days  Schreiner  had  achieved  notoriety 
through  mention  as  an  alien  enemy  in  a  Justice  Department  re- 
port on  what  was  called  the  German  Insurance  Pools  conspiracy, 
the  purpose  of  the  pool  being  to  fight  the  British  boycott  and  black- 
list by  the  creation  of  dummy  insurance  companies.  The  Justice 
report  indicated  that  the  German  Dye  Trust's  American  Bayer  and 
Cassella  outfits  were  involved  in  this  insurance  monkey  business. 

Another  1939  director  of  the  Farben  Trade  Board  whose  name 
recalls  World  War  I  was  George  W.  Simon,  listed  as  vice-president 
of  the  Heyden  Chemical  Company.  Back  in  1915,  Mr.  Simon  was 
chief  chemist  for  the  Heyden  concern  when  Dr.  Hugo  Schweitzer 
put  over  his  phenol  deal  on  Tom  Edison  with  the  assistance  of 
Simon's  father-in-law,  Richard  Kny.  It  was  Heyden,  it  may  be 
recalled,  who  purchased  the  surplus  Edison  phenol  and  used  it 
in  making  drugs  in  order  to  prevent  its  conversion  into  munitions 
for  use  against  Germany. 

Active  in  the  behind-the-scenes  affairs  of  the  German-American 
Board  of  Trade  until  the  end  was  Dr.  Kertess,  whose  jail  term  and 
espionage  escapades  appear  in  the  previous  chaptqr.  To  be  always 
available,  Dr.  Kertess  moved  his  offices  to  the  same  building  as 
those  of  the  Trade  Board  and  his  colleague,  Dr.  Pickrell,  and  as  a 
supporter  of  Nazi  propaganda,  in  1939,  helped  to  found  the  notor- 
ious American  Fellowship  Forum,  whose  "Today's  Challenge"  was 
edited  by  George  Sylvester  Viereck  (before  he  was  jailed),  and 
whose  National  Director  was  Dr.  Friedrich  Ernst  Auhagen, 
former  instructor  at  Columbia  University,  who  was  also  jailed 
for  failure  to  register  as  a  German  agent,  and,  when  he  got  out, 


TREASON'S    PEACE  295 

was  promptly  interned  as  an  enemy  alien,  and  his  citizenship 
revoked. 

Dr.  Kertess  protested  to  the  Dies  Committee  in  1941  that  he 
took  no  active  part  in  organizing  the  Forum,  but  it  developed 
that  he  paid  the  rent  for  its  offices  on  West  Forty-Second  Street, 
New  York,  out  of  his  personal  funds.  The  vice-president  of  his 
Chemical  Marketing  Company,  Richard  Koch,  was  one  of  its 
founders,  and  when  Dr.  Auhagen  retired  as  Director,  Dr.  Kertess 
became  one  of  the  holders  of  the  registered  title  of  the  Forum. 
Until  he  got  into  difficulties  with,  the  law,  Dr.  Kertess  devoted 
much  time  and  talent  to  arranging  a  grandiose  plan  for  what  he 
called  the  "Organization  of  German  Industry  in  America  after 
the  War."  This  peace-time  absorption  of  American  industry  was  to 
be  managed  by  none  other  than  the  Board  of  Trade  for  German- 
American  Commerce— with  Dr.  Kertess  and  othe~r  representatives 
of  I.G.  Farben  as  Directors. 

A  1939  director  of  the  German-American  Board  of  Trade  who 
had  an  exemplary  record  as  an  American-born  citizen  and  who 
engaged  in  pronounced  isolationist  propaganda,  was  James  D. 
Mooney,  World  War  I  veteran,  Lieutenant-Commander,  U.  S.  N. 
R.,  and  vice-president  of  General  Motors  Corporation.  One  of  Mr. 
Mooney 's  anti-war  contributions  was  an  appeal  on  the  subject 
which  was  introduced  into  the  Congressional  Record  by  Demo- 
cratic Senator  E.  C.  Johnson  of  Colorado,  reprinted  and  distributed 
as  a  pamphlet  and  then  published  in  amplified  form  in  the  Satur- 
day Evening  Post,  August  3,  1940,  under  the  title  "War  or  Peace 
in  America." 

In  that  article  Mr.  Mooney  described  the  horrors  of  war  and 
Germany's  defense  of  her  own  position.  He  criticized  our  attempt 
to  aid  England  as  futile,  and  insisted  that  the  influence  of  the 
United  States  should  be  directed  toward  saving  England  a  further 
beating  by  using  our  strength  in  the  situation  to  compel  a  peace 
with  Germany. 

As  a  native-born  American,  Mr.  Mooney  was  in  strange  company 
among  some  of  the  German  nationals  of  the  Board  of  Trade.  Ac- 
cording to  Who's  Who  of  1940-41  Mr.  Mooney  was  awarded  the 
"Order  of  Merit  of  the  German  Eagle."  Apparently  some  one  in 
the  Fatherland  liked  his  brand  of  Americanism. 


296  TREASON'S   PEACE 

In  the  Bulletin  of  the  Board  of  Trade  for  October,  1940,  General 
Motors'  Mr.  Mooney  was  quoted  as  saying,  with  reference  to  our 
possible  entrance  into  the  war: 

"On  the  day  was  is  declared,  we  can  kiss  democracy  good-bye." 

When  Mr.  Ilgner  threw  a  banquet  it  was  a  sumptuous  affair, 
with  big  names  on  the  seating  list  overshadowing  the  identity  and 
purposes  of  those  in  the  background.  For  a  grand  luncheon  which 
he  gave  in  the  name  of  the  German-American  Board  of  Trade  on 
May  27, 1937,  to  honor  His  Excellency  Dr.  Hans  Heinrich  Dieck- 
hoff,  the  German  Ambassador,  parts  of  the  seating  list  read  like 
a  directory  of  representatives  of  Farben  hideouts  and  affiliates  in 
this  country. 

One  table  seated  I.G.  Farben's  distinguished  Director  Dr.  Wil- 
helm  Ferdinand  Kalle,  along  with  Sterling's  president,  A.  H.  Die- 
bold;  General  DyestufFs  E.  K.  Halbach;  Synthetic  Nitrogen's  A.  L. 
Mullaly;  W.  P.  Pickhardt  of  the  old  Badische  agency;  and  Dr. 
E.  R.  Pickrell,  the  Metz  handyman.  With  these  close  pals  of  Far- 
ben sat  E.  H.  Meili,  vice-president  of  the  J.  Henry  Schroder  Bank- 
ing Corporation,, of  New  York  and  London,  lending  a  high  note 
of  Anglo-American  financial  approval  to  that  group,  and  Ferdi- 
nand Andreas,  Prince  of  Liechtenstein,  added  a  touch  of  royalty. 

Another  table  was  graced  by  Rudolph  Ilgner  himself;  Dr.  K. 
Hochswender,  of  Magnesium  Development  and  Chemnyco  and 
D.  A.  Schmitz,  of  General  Aniline.  Among  other  Farben  affiliates 
American  Bemberg  Company  was  represented  by  director  H.  W. 
Springorum;  Fezandie  &  Sperrle  by  Oscar  E.  Sperrle." 

Scattered  through  the  seating  arrangements  were  George  Syl- 
vester Viereck  and  Fritz  Kuhn  ( this  was  some  time  before  these 
two  were  convicted  and  locked  up),  also  another  celebrated  pair, 
Dr.  F.  E.  Auhagen  and  Dr.  A.  Degener  (this  was  also  before 
that  couple  were  picked  up  by  the  F.B.I. ) . 

Two  other  notables  who  graced  this  gathering  were  Dr.  Herbert 
Gross  who  hired  an  American  spy  for  Dr.  Kertess,  as  revealed  in 
the  previous  chapter;  and  Col.  Ed.  Emerson,  notorious  as  a  Ger- 
man agent  during  both  world  wars.  Theodore  Dinkelacker  and 
Willy  Luedtke,  national  leaders  of  the  Bund,  were  also  present. 
It  was  what  might  be  called  a  "mixed"  gathering. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  297 

On  the  dais  with  the  guest  of  honor  and  Board  of  Trade  officers 
sat  James  D.  Mooney  of  General  Motors;  Editor  Victor  F.  Ridder; 
F.  W.  La  Frentz,  president  of  the  American  Surety  Corp.;  Col. 
Sosthenes  Behn,  of  the  International  Telephone  &  Telegraph,  and 
other  notables.  It  surely  appeared  to  be  a  representative  peace- 
time gathering  of  influential  American  citizenship. 

When  its  connections  are  noted  it  may  be  more  readily  under- 
stood that  this  Farben  organized  and  directed  Trade  Board  was 
so  respectable  or  so  powerful,  even  after  its  offices  had  been 
raided  and  closed  in  December  1941,  that  its  name  was  conspicu- 
ously missing  from  the  long  list  of  propaganda  agencies,  espionage 
hideouts  and  subversive  organizations  which  was  published  as 
defendants  or  participants  in  four  blanket  indictments  handed 
down  in  the  District  of  Columbia  in  1941-'42  and  '43,  out  of  which 
George  Sylvester  Viereck  drew  one  conviction  in  1942,  which  was 
reversed  by  the  Supreme  Court,  and  one  in  1943,  which  put  hin> 
back  in  jail. 

The  Trade  Board's  subversive  activities  were  largely  ignored  by 
the  Dies  Committee  when  the  latter  partially  uncovered  many 
of  the  less  important  pro-Nazi  propaganda  agencies  in  the  United 
States,  and  by  the  Truman  and  Bone  Senate  Committees  when 
they  partially  lifted  the  lid  on  other  Farben-American  hideouts. 
It  remained  for  hard-hitting  James  S.  Martin,  Chief  of  the  Justice 
Department  Economic  Warfare  squad  to  bring  out  some  of  the 
background  facts  and  pre-war  activities  of  the  Board  of  Trade 
in  testifying  before  Senator  Kilgore's  Sub-Committee  on  War  Mo- 
bilization in  September  1944. 

Ample  evidence  has  been  revealed  in  Chapter  II  and  elsewhere 
in  this  story  that  the  German  I.G.  through  Bayer  and  other  Amer- 
ican fronts  engaged  in  propaganda,  espionage  and  sabotage  prior 
to  and  during  World  War  I.  The  Ivy  Lee  advisory  service  engaged 
by  Farben  as  discussed  in  Chapter  x  revealed  how  that  agency 
of  the  dye  trust  continued  its  propaganda  activities  in  anticipa- 
tion of  World  War  II. 

In  considering  much  of  the  evidence  relating  to  appeals  for 
pacificism,  isolation  and  disarmament,  it  is  frequently  difficult 
to  distinguish  criminal  propaganda  from  the  protest  which  arises 


298  TREASON'S   PEACE 

in  the  idealism  of  thousands  of  patriotic  citizens  whose  normal, 
sincere  hatred  of  war  formed  the  nucleus  of  much  of  the  pre-war 
sentiment  which  has  divided  public  opinion  in  the  United  States 
on  our  mythical  isolation. 

To  step  away  from  the  domestic  scene  for  the  moment,  we 
might  consider  the  "Union  of  Democratic  Control"  of  London 
which,  in  1932,  published  an  expose  of  what  its  authors  described 
as  the  secret  "Bloody  International'*  or  munitions  combination, 
which  included  I.G.  Farben  and  was  accused  of  continually 
conspiring  to  cause  wars  in  order  to  reap  profits  from  the  result- 
ing demand  for  battleships,  guns  and  munitions. 

This  pamphlet  advocated  abolition  of  private  manufacture  of 
arms  and  munitions  to  insure  world  peace  by  disarmament.  This 
was  the  same  thesis  which  allegedly  motivated  the  United  States 
Senate  Munitions  Committee  in  1934  when  it  uncovered  the  hold 
that  Farben  had  already  secured  on  our  national  defense  indus- 
tries—and then  did  nothing  about  it  except  to  aid  in  weakening 
our  own  security. 

Evidently  the  idealistic  English  group  was  not  directly  inspired 
by  Farben;  actually  that  doctrine  of  disarmament  thus  preached 
was  an  integral  part  of  the  pattern  of  propaganda  of  the  German 
dye  trust  in  the  period  before  we  entered  World  War  I,  and  again 
in  the  period  before  we  entered  World  War  II. 

When  we  examine  the  activities  of  many  of  the  peace  groups 
in  the  United  States  during  the  last  pre-war  period,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  thousands  of  those  men  and  women  were  sincerely 
patriotic  citizens  who  would  be  quick  to  rebuke  the  suggestion 
that  their  detestation  of  war  was  induced  even  indirectly  by 
foreign  propaganda. 

One  such  group  was  World  Peaceways  Inc.,  of  New  York  City, 
the  letterhead  of  which  carried  the  names  of  many  distinguished 
citizens.  This  organization  advertised  its  demands  for  peace  by 
picturing  the  fact  that  women  and  children  would  be  killed  in 
the  next  war.  On  June  26,  1941,  it  issued  an  appeal  for  funds, 
copy  of  which  was  handed  to  me,  with  a  message  entitled  "A  Ref- 
erendum on  War/*  Accompanying  that  World  Peaceways  circular 
letter  was  a  single  page  entitled  "Sorry  to  Bother  You,"  on  which 
a  wistful-looking  youth  asked  you  to  talk  over  his  plea  to: 


TREASON'S    PEACE  299 

Be  a  little  careful,  willya,  about  whether  you  send  me  to 
war  or  not.  I  mean,  I'd  hate  to  have  you  send  me  over  to 

-fight  and  maybe  die and  then  find  out  you'd  made  a 

mistake  again,  etc. 
Underneath  was  the  demand: 

Keep  America  from  making  mistakes  with  her  boys'  lives. 
Write  to  the  President  today.  Issued  by  World  Peaceways, 
Inc.  103  Park  Ave.,  New  York. 

This  appeal  was  sent  out  a  few  short  weeks  before  the  near 
tragedy  in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  on  August  12,  1941, 
when  the  addition  of  just  one  more  negative  vote  would  have  de- 
stroyed the  training  of  our  new  Army. 

The  vast  majority  of  members  of  World  Peaceways,  and  of 
its  contributors,  who  would  bitterly  resent  an  intimation  that 
I.G.  Farben  or  any  of  its  friends  had  anything  to  do  with  this 
organization,  may  be  equally  indignant  to  have  it  appear  that 
an  elaborate  radio  program  which  was  staged  in  the  name  of 
World  Peaceways  some  years  previously  was  paid  for  by  a  phar- 
maceutical house  which  enjoyed  close  relations  with  Farben  af- 
filiates in  the  United  States,  and  the  head  of  which  was  reported 
to  have  approached  Farben  officials  at  Berlin  with  the  intention 
of  offering  the  latter  a  participation  in  the  business  of  this  com- 
pany in  the  United  States. 

After  Pearl  Harbor,  contributions  were  again  solicited  by  World 
Peaceways  in  letters  stating  that  funds  were  needed  to  enable 
it  to  resume  advertising— to  educate  leadership  for  the  next  peace. 

Other  expressions  of  this  same  type  of  idealism  were  found 
in  numerous  articles  and  books  published  in  America  during  that 
critical  period  when  it  seemed  at  times  that  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  and  its  government,  would  never  start  to  arm,  or 
take  a  stand  until  too  late  to  do  so— except  alone. 

One  such  book  was  "War,  Peace  &  Change"  by  John  Foster 
Dulles,  published  in  1939,  a  very  studious  pre-war  volume  which 
indicated  the  author's  conclusion  that  quarantine,  non-recogni- 
tion and  sanctions  were  not  solutions  for  problems  of  aggression 
by  "dynamic"  nations  such  as  Germany,  Italy  and  Japan. 

Mr.  Dulles  appeared  to  praise  the  peoples  of  these  countries 


300  TREASON'S    PEACE 

and  to  believe  that  they  should  not  be  confused  with  adventurers, 
soldiers  of  fortune  or  criminals,  who  might  be  "safely"  repressed. 

The  arguments  and  the  peaceful  desires  of  Mr.  Dulles  as  thus 
expressed  were  no  doubt  welcome  to  the  peace-at-any-price  ideal- 
ists of  this  country  during  that  tragic  period.  It  may  also  appear 
that  they  were  equally  welcome  to  those  who  in  Germany  were 
guiding  the  behind-the-scenes  preparations  for  war. 

Thus  the  great  value  for  Farben  of  the  propaganda  agencies 
controlled  or  guided  from  within  the  membership  of  the  German 
American  Board  of  Trade  was  the  fact  that  among  its  members 
were  honorable  American  companies  and  individuals  whose  com- 
mercial relations  with  Germany  were  legitimate  and  of  long  stand- 
ing. For  this  reason  the  Trade  Board  for  a  long  time  was  looked 
upon  as  above  suspicion  and  as  it  spoke  for  business— big  busi- 
ness at  that— it  was  not  subjected  to  that  kind  of  public  suspicion 
and  distrust  which  was  attached  to  groups  like  the  Bund  in  the 
minds  of  many  citizens  during  the  decade  before  the  entry  of 
the  United  States  into  World  War  II.  When  on  June  16,  1941 
the  United  States  Government  struck  its  first  real  blow  at  Nazi 
propaganda  and  subversive  activities  in  this  country,  the  three 
organizations  which  were  ordered  to  close  up  with  the  twenty- 
four  German  consulates  for  "Activities  of  improper  and  unwar- 
ranted character"  were  the  German  Railroad  Information  Office; 
German  Library  of  Information,  and  Transocean  News  Service- 
as  three  of  the  principal  Nazi  propaganda  agencies  in  this  country. 
All  of  these  were  tied  in  with  the  I.G.  Farben-directed  German- 
American  Board  of  Trade  as  a  clearing  house  for  information, 
and  a  safe  refuge  until  then  for  their  personnel.  But  the  Board 
stayed  open  until  after  Pearl  Harbor. 

When  President  Harry  S  Truman,  in  December  1945,  stated 
that  the  American  people  were  responsible  for  what  happened 
at  Pearl  Harbor  as  much  as  were  our  military  forces,  it  might 
appear  that  our  Chief  Executive  overlooked  several  highly  im- 
portant factors  which  are  brought  to  light  in  this  book,  and  espe- 
cially in  this  chapter.  Granted  that  the  spiritual  disarmament 
of  the  American  people  was  due  in  part  to  the  genuine  idealism 
and  pacificism  of  many  honorable  citizens,  the  fact  remains  that 
much  of  that  idealism  had  a  materialistic  background,  and  much 


TREASON'S   PEACE  301 

of  this  was  induced,  directly  or  indirectly,  by  the  top  level  prop- 
aganda created  and  broadcast  among  our  most  influential  circles 
to  which  I.  G.  Farben  was  able  to  appeal  through  the  highly  re- 
spectable Board  of  .Trade  for  German- American  Commerce.  The 
President,  in  that  blanket  indictment  of  American  public  opinion, 
overlooked  what  is  perhaps  the  more  important  aspects  of  Far- 
ben's  secret  weapon— of  influence  at  the  top  levels  of  industry, 
finance,  and  politics— which  made  it  impossible  for  those  who 
not  only  saw  what  was  coming,  but  wanted  something  done  about 
it,  to  be  heard. 

Regardless  of  how  the  President's  remarks  may  be  taken,  the 
excuse  may  be  offered  that  when  the  Bulletin  of  the  subversive 
agency  parading  as  a  Board  of  Trade  publicized  the  isolationist 
views  of  Republican  Finance  Chairman  James  S.  Kemper  it  meant 
no  more  than  when  the  opinions  of  other  prominent  American 
citizens  were  likewise  broadcast  in  this  or  any  other  publication. 
It  is  thus  interesting  to  examine  the  contents  of  an  issue  of  the 
German-American  Commerce  Bulletin  which  appeared  in  March 
1941,  somewhat  later  than  that  containing  Mr.  Kemper's  appeal. 
Many  of  the  articles  and  editorials  in  this  issue  were  emphatic 
pro-Nazi,  anti-war  propaganda  appealing  to  the  "business  as  usu- 
al" and  appeasement  sentiments  of  its  readers.  Various  Farben 
officials  and  Farben's  war-time  accomplishments,  making  Germany 
now  invulnerable,  received  mention  in  sketches  and  news  articles. 
Included  were  pleas  for  appeasement  of  Germany  and  isolation 
for  this  country  by  pacificist  advocates  like  General  Robert  E. 
Wood,  National  Chairman  of  the  America  First  Committee,  and 
Dr.  Edward  Lodge  Curran,  who  stated  that  current  "war  monger- 
ing  propaganda"  ignored  the  fact  that  we  had  fought  two  wars 
with  Great  Britain  in  our  history.  A  New  York  Daily  News  article, 
also  bitterly  anti-British,  was  reprinted,  and  the  leading  article, 
entitled  "German-Americans  in  the  World  War,"  by  Frederick 
Franklin  Schrader,  compared  the  hostility  to  German  nationals 
in  the  United  States  during  World  War  I,  to  current  harrowing  re- 
ports of  racial  persecutions  by  the  Nazis  in  Germany.  A  descrip- 
tion of  Mr.  Schrader  as  a  well  known  author  of  historical  works 
failed  to  mention  other  activities,  such  as  associate  editorship  of 
the  Fatherland  propaganda  journal  published  during  World 


302  TREASON'S    PEACE 

War  I,  by  our  old  friend  George  Sylvester  Viereck;  and  during 
the  present  war  again  assisting  the  Viereck  literary  efforts  as  editor 
of  Facts  in  Review,  for  the  German  Library  of  Information. 
According  to  Congressional  records,  Schrader  was  also  for  a  time 
editor  of  Deutscher  Weckruf  und  Beobachter,  official  organ  of 
the  German-American  Bund,  which,  it  need  not  be  said,  circulated 
among  citizens  of  much  lower  levels  of  society  than  those  of  the 
highly  refined  industrialist  readers  of  the  Board  of  Trade  Bulletin. 
In  such  select  company  there  was  also  published  in  this  same 
issue  of  the  Bulletin  an  urgent  appeal  to  its  readers  to  read  a 
book  entitled  "Shall  We  Send  Our  Youth  to  War/'  which  was 

described  as  a  "a  plea that  the  United  States  should  stay 

out  of  the  war."  This  book,  which  appears  to  have  escaped  the 
notice  of  the  literary  reviewers  of  this  country,  recited  from  the 
personal  experiences  of  its  author  the  "unparallelled  famine  and 
pestilence"  which  resulted  from  World  War  I.  A  few  of  the  sig- 
nificant passages  in  the  book  may  be  quoted  here: 

Amid  the  afterglow  of  glory  and  legend  we  forget  the 
filth,  the  stench,  the  death  of  the  trenches.  We  forget  the  dumb 
grief  of  mothers,  wives  and  children.  We  forget  the  unending 
blight  cast  upon  the  world  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  flower  of 
every  race. 

We  may  need  to  go  to  war  again.  But  that  war  should  be 
on  this  hemisphere  alone  and  in  defense  of  our  firesides  or 
our  honor. 

We  should  hold  that  the  basis  of  international  relations 
should  not  be  force,  but  should  be  law  and  free  agreement. 
The  first  thing  required  is  vigorous,  definite  statement  from 
all  who  have  responsibility,  both  publicly  and  privately,  that 
we  are  not  going  to  war  with  anybody  in  Europe  unless  they 
attack  the  Western  Hemisphere.  The  second  thing  is  not  to 
sit  in  this  game  of  power  politics.  These  are  the  American 
policies  that  will  make  sure  that  we  do  not  send  our  youth 
to  Europe  to  War. 

The  author  of  this  book  also  stated  that  prior  to  World  War  I 
he  had  lived  with  the  "invisible  forces  which  moved  its  causes," 
that  he  knew  Europe  intimately,  "not  as  tourist  but  as  a  part  of 


TREASON'S   PEACE  303 

my  workaday  life,"  and  that  in  1938  he  had  spent  "some  months 
in  Europe  with  unique  opportunity  to  discuss  its  problems  with 
the  leaders  of  fourteen  nations."  On  the  cover  of  this  book  is  a 
picture  of  a  soldiers'  cemetery,  row  after  row  of  little  white  crosses; 
with  quotations  from  the  book,  and  a  blunt  request: 

If  you  want  the  United  States  to  keep  out  of  war,  here  is 
a  book  to  send  to  your  friends,  to  your  Representatives,  to 
all  people  who  have  power,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  sway 
public  and  legislative  opinion. 

Neither  The  New  York  Times  nor  the  Herald  Tribune  book  re- 
view sections  ever  mentioned  this  book,  and  according  to  the 
Book  Review  Digest,  no  other  literary  publication  gave  it  any 
notice.  That  honor  was  reserved  for  the  Bulletin  of  the  German 
American  Board  of  Trade,  which  urged  its  purchase  and  also 
announced  its  author  to  have  been  Herbert  Hoover,  former  Pres- 
ident of  the  United  States  and  Elder  Statesman  of  the  Republican 
party  who  strangely  enough  was  to  be  elevated  an  expert  emeritus 
on  post-war  problems  of  world  famine  by  President  Truman. 

In  reply  to  my  inquiry,  Mr.  Thomas  R.  Coward,  of  Coward, 
McCann,  Inc.,  advised  that  the  book  was  contracted  for  with  the 
personal  representative  of  Mr.  Hoover,  and  that  insofar  as  he 
knew,  no  one  connected  with  the  German-American  Commerce 
Bulletin  had  anything  to  do  with  it. 

This  statement  may  be  accepted  as  entirely  sincere  as  would 
be  the  protestations  from  thousands  of  Mr.  Hoover's  followers 
that  his  sentiments  did  credit  to  him  and  were  shared  by  many 
others. 

The  fact  remains  that  the  German- American  Commerce  Bulletin 
appears  to  have  been  the  only  publication  in  which  mention 
of  this  book  appeared.  And  that  Bulletin  was  the  official  organ 
of  the  Board  of  Trade  for  German-American  Commerce,  Inc., 
the  organization  started  by  Herman  Metz,  in  1924;  registered  with 
the  State  Department  as  the  agent  of  a  foreign  principal;  and 
directed,  in  1939,  by  Rudolph  Ilgner,  head  of  Chemnyco,  the 
patent-holding  and  espionage  outfit  maintained  by  Farben  in  the 
United  States.  And  Mr.  Hoover's  guide  in  Europe  in  1938  during 
his  "unique  opportunity  to  discuss  its  problems"  was  Captain  Fritz 


304  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Weidemann.  The  position  occupied  in  the  public  mind  by  our 
only  living  ex-President,  a  highly  educated  man  of  long  experi- 
ence in  international  affairs,  gave  dignity  and  impressiveness  to 
his  demands  that  we  keep  our  sons  out  of  the  war— unless— and 
until— the  invasion  of  the  American  continents  should  begin.  ( This 
could  only  have  occurred  after  Hitler  had  conquered  Europe, 
and  had  landed  in  the  Argentine,  or  Panama,  or  Long  Island.) 
So  Mr.  Kemper,  again  the  National  Committee  Treasurer,  was 
still  in  good  Republican  company. 


CHAPTER        XVI 


Counter-Propaganda  &  the  Lobby 


IT      IS       A       SAD 

thing  to  find  men  so  money  mad  as  to  be  willing  to  betray 
their  country  and  their  families  for  just  a  few  more  dollars. 

Thus  Francis  Patrick  Garvan,  in  a  speech  before  the  American 
Institute  of  Chemists,  summed  up  his  feelings  about  those  Ameri- 
cans who  had  helped  his  life  long  enemy  reestablish  itself  in  the 
United  States. 

For  Garvan,  until  the  day  of  his  death  in  1937,  was  the  implac- 
able foe  of  the  German  dye  trust— a  tireless  crusader  who  never 
gave  up  trying  to  warn  his  countrymen  of  the  industrial  Trojan 
Horse  of  the  Germans  had  deposited  on  these  shores. 

One  of  Garvan's  greatest  triumphs  was  the  1926  decision  of 
the  Supreme  Court  which  decreed  that: 

The  purpose  of  the  Trading  with  the  Enemy  Act  was  not 
only  to  weaken  enemy  countries  by  depriving  their  supporters 

of  their  property but  also  to  promote  production  in 

the  United  States  of  things  useful  for  the  effective  prosecu- 
tion of  the  war. 


306  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Aside  from  the  importance  of  that  decision  in  preventing  the 
immediate  destruction  of  our  new  organic-chemical  industry  by 
returning  the  seized  patents  to  the  Germans,  it  is  of  tremendous 
significance  to  many  phases  of  this  story. 

Garvan  made  good  use  of  this  decision  in  meeting  the  many 
German-inspired  attacks  made  upon  him,  and  to  further  his  work 
as  director  of  the  Chemical  Foundation.  The  Foundation  distrib- 
uted millions  of  pieces  of  educational  literature;  books,  periodicals 
and  pamphlets,  and  for  many  years  was  the  strongest  single  force 
in  America  in  pointing  out  the  importance  of  organic  chemistry 
to  national  security. 

The  fact  that  Francis  Garvan,  who  had  wealth,  power,  and 
prestige  to  support  his  efforts,  was  ineffectual  in  curbing  the  en- 
croachments of  the  German  industrialists,  makes  more  under- 
standable my  own  many  failures  to  break  through  the  Farben  de- 
fenses. And  perhaps  it  should  be  explained  here  that  despite  the 
suggestion  of  mutual  friends  that  Garvan  and  I  should  work  to- 
gether, we  never  did.  So  I  fought  my  own  fight,  in  my  own  way. 

From  the  very  beginning,  the  only  organized  support  I  received 
was  of  an  indirect  character  from  groups  of  physicians  and  phar- 
macists, mainly  in  New  Jersey.  In  just  one  instance  was  financial 
assistance  given  me  by  one  of  these  groups— and  stark  tragedy 
was  in  the  aftermath  of  that  contribution.  After  the  recent  war 
began,  I  did,  however,  receive  very  welcome  cooperation  from 
a  propaganda  organization  which  started  when  Hitler  came  to 
power,  the  Non-Sectarian  Anti-Nazi  League. 

Founded  by  the  late  Samuel  Untermyer  in  the  early  1930's, 
the  League  began  a  boycott  against  the  Nazis  which  included  allies 
of  Farben  in  the  United  States,  and  imports  of  Farben  products. 

In  Philadelphia,  at  one  of  its  early  mass  meetings  in  1934,  the 
League  was  addressed  by  a  local  attorney  named  Francis  Biddle, 
who  demanded  action,  "in  the  only  effective  way  that  Mr.  Hitler 
can  understand— the  economic  boycott,  sustained,  aggressive  and 
unrelenting."  "Words  become  pallid/'  said  Mr.  Biddle,  "a  little 
absurd  in  the  face  of  Nazi  actions.  We  too  must  act/' 

Seven  years  later  it  was  the  same  Francis  Biddle  who  as  At- 
torney General  substituted  the  "pallid  words"  of  consent  decrees 


TREASON'S    PEACE  307 

for  criminal  prosecution,  "sustained,  aggressive  and  unrelenting." 
And,  when  the  Anti-Nazi  League  wrote  to  the  Attorney  General 
about  one  of  those  polite  consent  decrees,  the  reply,  by  his  execu- 
tive assistant,  the  James  Allen  of  Chapter  ix,  indicated  that  the 
Attorney  General  considered  Sterling  to  be  of  great  value  to  the 
nation  in  its  war  with  Farben's  empire. 

While  the  bellicose  views  of  Mr.  Biddle  have  softened  with 
the  passing  of  time,  those  of  the  Anti-Nazi  League  as  directed 
by  Professor  James  H.  Sheldon  never  wavered,  and  its  Bulletin 
distributed  much  valuable  data  regarding  the  danger  of  Farben, 
and  the  necessity  of  boycotting  the  products  of  such  firms  as 
Sterling,  Winthrop,  and  General  Dyestuff. 

In  May  1941  after  the  failure  of  my  efforts  to  induce  Assistant 
Attorney  General  Arnold  to  tackle  the  Farben  lobby  (Chapter 
ix )  I  turned  my  attack  back  on  the  Senate  with  an  appeal  to 
its  Majority  Leader,  Alben  W.  Barkley.  My  letter,  in  part,  follows: 

I  say  that  the  lobby  is  now  and  has  been  since  I  first  ex- 
posed it,  the  spearhead  of  the  German  plan  of  pacifism,  isola- 
tion and  to  stop  us  from  arming,  or  from  using  the  arms  we 
have. 

Some  of  the  lobby  members  identified  on  my  1931  chart 
are  still  on  the  job  among  your  members,  others  have  joined 
the  lobby  in  recent  years. 

The  vindication  of  my  forecast  and  warning  ten  years  ago 
gives  me  the  right  and  the  duty  to  insist  that  the  Senate  must 
act  now  to  destroy  this  lobby  as  a  vicious  and  dangerous 
branch  of  the  Hitler  fifth  column.  Should  any  member  of 
the  Senate  oppose  such  action  now,  ask  him  what  he  is  try- 
ing to  cover  up. 

Senator  Barkley  thanked  me  profusely,  promised  to  give  my 
request  his  consideration— and  then  retired  to  a  hospital  to  re- 
cuperate. 

In  agreement  with  me  that  the  Farben  lobby  at  Washington 
constituted  the  spearhead  of  Farben's  subversive  activities  and 
of  immunity  for  its  allies,  the  Anti-Nazi  League  then  joined  in 
the  attack,  and  began  its  own  systematic  effort  to  induce  action. 


308  TREASON'S    PEACE 

The  Justice  Department,  Secretary  of  State  Hull,  and  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  Morgenthau  were  among  those  appealed  to  by 
the  League,  unsuccessfully. 

One  letter  from  the  League,  in  July  1941,  went  to  the  Hon. 
Walter  F.  George  of  Georgia,  then  Chairman  of  the  Senate  For- 
eign Relations  Committee.  It  referred  to  the  activities  of  Farben 
affiliates  in  the  United  States  and  Latin  America,  and  to  the  well- 
organized  lobby  at  Washington  by  which  "Congress  is  being  im- 
properly influenced/'  Therefore,  wrote  the  League: 

For  the  sake  of  the  integrity  of  American  industry,  and 
for  the  sake  of  national  defense  during  the  present  critical 
time,  we  respectfully  urge  you  to  investigate  this  lobby. 

About  that  same  time  I  also  sent  a  letter  to  Senator  George 
asking  for  an  investigation  of  the  Farben  Lobby.  The  Senator's 
replies  to  these  two  separate  requests  for  similar  action  were 
somewhat  odd.  He  told  the  League  that  he  thought  the  Judiciary 
Committee  or  the  Justice  Department  should  make  any  investiga- 
tion of  that  character,  and  that  he  understood  the  latter  was  so 
doing.  He  told  me  that  he  was  referring  my  request  to  the  Dies 
Committee.  Thus  the  Senator  covered  up  on  our  lobby  investiga- 
tions demands,  but  he  played  fair,  he  called  his  shots  and  gave 
each  peanut  shell  a  name:  Dies,  Judiciary,  and  Justice.  He  must 
have  forgotten  there  was  a  dead  letter  office.  The  latter  would 
have  served  equally  well. 

The  League  continued,  as  I  did,  to  hammer  away  for  investiga- 
tion of  the  Farben  lobby  but  it  was  no  use.  The  lobby  did  not 
choose  to  be  investigated,  and  even  after  war  was  declared  on 
the  United  States,  all  such  appeals  fell  upon  deaf  ears. 

While  world  war  II  was  under  way  there  appeared  on  the  na- 
tional scene  a  new  organization  which  was  called,  aptly  enough, 
"The  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  World  War  III."  Many  well 
known  public  figures  were  identified  with  this  group  and  it  has 
done  yeoman  work  in  publicizing  the  menace  that  is  Farben,  and 
in  denouncing  the  plot  to  revive  this  threat  to  future  world  peace. 

In  October  1941,  on  the  theory  that  my  1931  diagrammatic  chart 
had  by  then  been  sufficiently  confirmed  as  to  Farben's  control 


TREASON'S   PEACE  309 

of  our  national-defense  industries,  I  sent  a  reprint  of  the  chart 
to  each  member  of  the  Senate  and  House  with  another  urgent 
demand  that  my  long-standing  appeal  for  investigation  of  the 
lobby  be  granted.  In  that  letter  I  said,  in  part: 

I  suggest  also  that  no  one  of  you  hazard  the  opinion  that 
I  merely  guessed  at  the  facts  on  my  1931  chart.  Obviously 
I  had, to  know  such  facts  to  state  them  and  not  be  jailed  for 
criminal  libel. 

Moreover  that  1931  chart  is  now,  in  1941,  the  irrefutable 
proof  which  Messrs.  William  E.  Weiss,  Earl  I.  McClintock, 
et  al.  cannot  meet  when  they  plead  that  they  did  not  even 
suspect,  years  ago,  just  what  were  the  subversive  activities 
which  their  German  associates  were  directing  them  to  con- 
duct. If  I  knew  these  facts  in  1931  then  they  knew  them  even 
before  1931.  They  are  not  that  dumb. 

Again,  silence  in  the  halls  of  Congress. 

Later,  I  submitted  to  the  Justice  Department  and  to  the  Truman 
and  Bone  Committees  of  the  Senate  another  appeal  entitled  "Ten- 
der of  Proof"  which  outlined  some  of  the  evidence  that  supported 
the  allegations  on  the  chart.  I  again  informed  the  Justice  Depart- 
ment and  the  Senators  that  the  significance  of  this  chart  was  the 
obvious  fact  that  its  circulation,  a  decade  previously,  constituted 
irrefutable  proof  that  those  same  facts  must  have  been  suspected 
or  known  by  the  American  industrial  and  financial  leaders  who 
negotiated  with  Farben. 

In  September  1941,  Senator  Connally,  of  Texas,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded Senator  George  as  Chairman  of  the  Senate  Foreign  Rela- 
tions Committee,  advised  me  that  the  Department  of  Justice  was 
already  investigating  the  lobby,  so  there  was  no  need  for  his 
committee  to  do  so.  Then  began  one  of  the  finest  examples  of  the 
runaround  that  I  have  observed  in  a  long  experience  with  offi- 
cials who  are  afraid  to  say  "yes"  and  hate  to  say  "no." 

Accepting  Senator  Connally 's  information  as  authoritative,  I 
wrote  Attorney  General  Biddle  how  happy  I  was  to  learn  that 
he  was  at  last  investigating  the  Farben  lobby,  and  would  he  please 
let  me  help.  This  was  in  the  period  when  Tom  Stokes  and  a  few 


TREASON'S    PEACE 

others  were  panning  the  daylights  out  of  the  Corcoran-Biddle 
weasel-worded  consent  decrees.  Mr.  Biddle,  after  due  considera- 
tion, referred  my  letter  to  his  subordinate,  Mr.  Arnold.  Mr.  Arnold, 
with  his  tongue  in  his  cheek,  referred  me  to  his  subordinate  Mr. 
Sam  S.  Isseks,  Harvard  classmate  of  Mr.  Corcoran,  who  had  done 
the  spade  work  at  the  funeral  of  the  Sterling  investigation.  Mr. 
Isseks,  after  a  brief  interview,  referred  me  to  his  subordinate  Mr. 
Robert  Wohlforth,  ace  investigator  of  the  Antitrust  Division,  and 
former  chief  sleuth  for  several  Senate  Committees. 

Mr.  Wohlforth,  whom  I  had  never  previously  encountered,  as 
he  had  not  been  in  on  the  current  Farben  mess,  happily  turned 
out  to  be  too  straightforward  and  forthright  to  play  clown,  no 
matter  who  ran  the  circus.  After  checking  up  to  get  his  facts 
straight,  Wohlforth  gave  me  the  first  definite  and  clean-cut  state- 
ment I  had  received  from  any  public  official  in  fifteen  years  of 
effort  to  get  action  on  the  lobby.  Wohlforth's  reply,  condensed, 
was  a  courteous  but  firm  "No."  There  was  no  lobby  investigation 
in  progress  and  there  could  be  no  lobby  investigation  started  with- 
out orders.  So  that  was  that. 

To  complete  the  record  I  sent  out  some  letters  headed  Re: 
Lobby  Employed  by  German  I.G.  Farben-Sterling  Products,  et  al. 
These  letters  were  as  follows: 

Dear  Mr.  Wohlforth: 

Referring  to  conference  with  you  on  the  23rd  instant  re- 
garding the  above  subject,  to  discuss  which  I  was  referred 
to  you  by  Mr.  S.  S.  Isseks,  I  regretted  very  much  your  in- 
structions that  no  investigation  would  be  made  of  the  lobby 
employed  by  the  German  I.G.  Farben-Sterling  group. 

Under  these  conditions  it  would  have  been  useless  for 
you  to  have  considered  the  information  which  I  was  pre- 
pared to  present  relating  to  this  lobby  but  I  do  feel  obliged 
to  express  to  you  my  deep  appreciation  for  your  courtesy 
and  forthright  attitude. 

Dear  Mr.  Isseks: 

Referring  to  conference  had  with  you  on  the  3rd.  inst. 
.regarding  the  above  subject  I  regret  to  inform  you  that  Mr. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  311 

Robert  Wohlforth  of  your  staff,  with  whom  you  instructed 
me  to  discuss  this  matter  has  informed  me  that  no  investiga- 
tion would  be  made  of  the  lobby  employed  by  the  German 
I.G.  Farben-Sterling  group. 

Dear  Mr.  Arnold: 

Referring  to  your  letter  to  me  dated  the  26th  ultimo,  re- 
garding the  above  subject  I  regret  to  inform  you  that  Mr. 
S.  S.  Isseks  of  the  New  York  staff,  with  whom  you  instructed 
me  to  discuss  this  matter  has  caused  me  to  be  informed  that 
no  investigation  would  be  made  of  the  lobby  employed  by 
the  German  I.G.  Farben-Sterling  group. 

Dear  Mr.  Diddle: 

Referring  to  my  letter  to  you  dated  the  15th  ultimo,  re- 
garding the  above  subject  I  regret  to  inform  you  that  Hon. 
Thurman  Arnold,  Assistant  Attorney  General,  to  whom  you 
referred  my  letter  has  caused  me  to  be  informed  that  no 
investigation  would  be  made  of  the  lobby  employed  by  the 
German  I.G.  Farben-Sterling  group. 

Dear  Mr.  Chairman  Connally: 

Referring  to  letter  dated  the  4th  ultimo,  regarding  the  above 
subject,  in  which  I  was  advised  that  you  considered  action 
by  the  committee  unwise  because  the  Department  of  Justice 
was  making  an  investigation  of  this  matter.  I  regret  to  advise 
you  that  Hon.  Francis  Biddle,  Attorney  General,  has  caused 
me  to  be  informed  that  no  investigation  would  be  made  of 
the  lobby  employed  by  the  German  I.G.  Farben-Sterling 
group. 

The  Dies  Committee  also  has  indicated  to  me  that  it  has 
no  intention  of  making  such  an  investigation  so  it  would 
appear  that  some  one  deliberately  misinformed  you  on  this 
subject. 

In  view  of  the  above  I  again  request  that  you  bring  to  the 
attention  of  your  committee  my  letter  to  yourself  of  August 
12  and  the  copy  of  my  letter  of  July  18  to  your  predecessor 


$12  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Senator  George,  also  my  open  letter  to  the  Congress  dated 
October  6,  all  reauesting  investigation  of  this  lobby. 
Respectfully, 

H.  W.  Ambruster 

The  pressure  of  events,  or  something,  deterred  the  Senator  from 
replying. 


CHAPTER      XVII 


Alibis  and  Excuses 


FRANK    A.    HOWARD, 

who  conducted  so  many  of  the  negotiations  with  Farben,  wrote 
his  Standard  Oil  colleague  E.  J.  Sadler,  on  February  6,  1940,  that 
Germany's  policy  for  fifteen  years  had  been  the  exporting  of 
patent  rights,  "resulting  from  their  learning  that,  if  they  did  not 
.  .  .x.  .  secure  their  exploitation  abroad  by  appropriate  deals,  un- 
licensed competition  would  pirate  the  new  processes,  leaving 
the  originators  neither  an  export  market  nor  anything  to  sell  in 
the  way  of  patent  rights  or  technique." 

This  comment  illustrates  the  absurdity  of  the  alibi  that  our 
industrialists  entered  into  illegal  agreements  with  Farben  because 
they  were  f arsighted  and,  had  they  not  done  so,  the  United  States 
would  not  have  derived  the  great  benefits  from  the  Farben  patents 
covering  dyes,  drugs,  explosives,  magnesium  alloys,  rayon,  syn- 
thetic rubber,  plastics,  etc. 

These  disingenuous  sophistries  have  been  broadcast  most  as- 
siduously by  Farben's  American  cohorts  since  the  exposure  of 
the  character  of  their  agreements,  and  the  resulting  injury  to  our 
national  defense. 

Possibly  the  most  widely  publicized  of  these  excuses  was  the 

313 


314  TREASON'S    PEACE 

so-called  official  press  release  already  discussed  in  Chapter  ix 
which  was  prepared  by  Tommy  Corcoran  and  issued  over  the 
signature  of  Attorney  General  Biddle.  This  remarkable  apology 
for  a  convicted  corporation  contains  these  words: 

Under  this  agreement  (with  Farben)  many  new  and  im- 
portant discoveries  in  the  pharmaceutical  field  were  disclosed 
to  Winthrop  Chemical,  thus  making  them  available  to  the 
United  States. 

Another  bit  of  excuse  propaganda  is  found  in  one  of  the  pam- 
phlets distributed  in  1942  by  Standard  Oil,  quoting  allegations 
made  by  its  president,  W.  S.  Parish: 

whether  (or  not)  the  several  contracts  made  with 

I.G.  did  or  did  not  fall  within  the  borders  set  by  the  patent 
statutes  or  the  Sherman  Act,  they  did  inure  greatly  to  the 
advance  of  American  industry  and,  more  than  any  one  thing, 
have  made  possible  our  present  war  activities  in  aviation  gaso- 
line, toluol  and  explosives,  and  in  synthetic  rubber  itself. 

However,  it  is  apparent  that  Farben's  United  States  patents 
would  have  been  valueless  to  the  Germans  had  not  agreements 
for  their  use— legal  or  illegal— been  made  with  our  industrialists. 
Otherwise,  the  patents  could  only  have  served  as  a  means  of  pre- 
venting manufacture;  and  as  such  they  would  have  constituted 
so  glaring  a  repetition  of  German  cartel  practices  prior  to  World 
War  I  that  the  inevitable  result  would  have  been  a  change  in 
our  patent  laws. 

On  the  other  hand,  should  Farben  have  refrained  from  taking 
out  patents  in  this  country,  its  new  processes  would  have  been 
available  to  our  industries  here  as  rapidly  as  they  were  revealed— 
when  the  patents  Were  issued  in  Germany,  and  published. 

Farben's  leaders  knew  all  this,  their  American  partners  knew 
it,  and  the  Government  knew  it.  Nevertheless,  the  illegal  unions 
were  made  and  consummated.  The  Justice  Department  and  the 
Congress  twiddled  its  thumbs,  and  when  our  so-innocent  indus- 
trialists asked  for  the  know-how  on  some  of  the  more  important 
German  patents  they  were  told  that  it  was  "withheld  for  military 
reasons." 


TREASON'S    PEACE  315 

One  appeal  to  public  opinion  issued  by  duPont  on  January  6, 
1944,  in  part,  was  as  follows: 

Surely  it  cannot  be  the  policy  of  the  Department  of  Justice 

to  attempt  to  prevent  the  continuance of  such  immensely 

beneficial  arrangements  which  have  been  a  common  practice 
in  American  industry. 

This  plea  referred  to  the  announcement  that  another  antitrust 
action  had  been  filed  involving  duPont;  in  this  instance  with  the 
British  Imperial  Chemical  Industries  and  the  duPont  subsidiary, 
Remington  Arms,  also  named  as  defendants. 

This  statement  was  cleverly  phrased;  it  contained  allegations 
that  the  agreements  had  never  been  concealed  and  that 

copies  have  been  in  the  possession  of  Governmental 

agencies  for  approximately  10  years. 

All  this  was  unquestionably  true.  The  same  statement  was  re- 
peated in  duPont's  next  annual  report,  but  what  may  appear  to 
have  been  an  unfortunate  omission,  in  each  instance,  was  any 
mention  of  the  fact  that  some  of  the  restrictive  agreements  referred 
to  in  this  antitrust  action  involved  not  only  the  British  I.  C.  I. 
but  also  included  tie-ups  and  financial  partnerships  with  I.G. 
Farben  subsidiaries  making  and  distributing  both  commercial  and 
military  explosives. 

It  was  by  repetitious  publicity  of  this  character  that  duPont 
escaped  much  of  the  press  criticism  that  was  heaped  upon  some 
of  the  others  who  were  not  involved  in  as  many  court  actions  for 
conspiring  with  Farben  as  was  this  oldest  and  largest  of  American 
munition  makers. 

DuPont's  public  relations,  since  1936,  were  handled  by  Herbert 
Hoover's  former  White  House  Secretary,  the  late  Theodore  G. 
Joslin,  until  he  died  in  April  1944.  Mr.  Joslin  knew  his  way  around 
Washington  and  Newspaper  Row.  His  public  relations  depart- 
ment contributed  numerous  terse  press  handouts,  and,  along  with 
duPont's  elaborate  radio  program,  "Cavalcade  of  America"  con- 
tributed effectively  to  the  appeasement  of  public  opinion. 

This  publicity  featured  denials  that  duPont  "ever  has  been  a 
party  to  any  cartel  arrangement,  using  the  term  in  its  usually  ao- 


316  TREASON'S    PEACE 

cepted  sense,"  or  that  the  company  ever  had  "any  connection  with 
the  German  company  (Farben)  of  a  nature  detrimental  to  the 
United  States."  These  denials  may  be  considered  merely  as  ex- 
pressions of  opinion— with  the  duPont  definitions  of  the  words 
cartel  and  detrimental  still  at  issue. 

However  one  of  the  duPont  radio  pleas  incurred  an  official 
rebuke  from  the  Federal  Communications  Commission,  which, 
in  a  report  issued  in  March  1946,  criticized  that  company  as  using 
"its  commercial  advertising  period"  to  "explain  one  side  of  a  con- 
troversial issue." 

The  comments  which  were  thus  criticized  were  sandwiched  in 
with  interesting  references  to  "Better  Things  for  Better  Living 
Through  Chemistry"  in  a  broadcast  in  January,  1944,  during  a 
period  in  which  some  hostile  press  comments  were  appearing  re- 
lating to  court  actions  which  involved  Farben's  ties  with  duPont. 
The  broadcast  was  a  vigorous  protest  that  the  duPont  agreements 
with  I.  C.  I.  had  been  of  great  benefit  to  the  American  people 
and  to  the  war  effort. 

Also  naming  numerous  products  which,  it  was  admitted,  duPont 
chemists  had  improved  but  which  "came  originally  from  abroad." 

Again  Farben  was  not  named  although  vague  references  were 
made  to  continental  European  companies,  and  mention  of  syn- 
thetic nitrogen  and  ammonia,  plastics,  rayon,  dyes  and  cellophane 
may  have  caused  listeners  to  believe  that  many  vital  products 
which  in  reality  had  been  made  in  this  country  since  the  days  of 
the  first  world  war  were  actually  the  result  of  the  benevolences 
which  I.  C.  I.  and  the  unnamed  European  companies  had  contrib- 
uted to  America  during  the  recent  pre-war  period. 

There  was  a  defiant  note  of  challenge  in  these  duPont  state- 
ments which  ignored  any  suggestion  that  the  benefits  thus  alleged 
could  have  been  secured  equally  well  without  any  questionable 
tie-ups  with  I.G.  Farben.  And  little  was  said  about  those  instances 
where,  as  will  be  revealed  in  the  next  chapter,  the  duPont  com- 
pany pleaded  nolo  contendere,  or  agreed  to  a  consent  decree 
in  cases  involving  Farben  tie-ups. 

From  across  the  Atlantic,  Lord  Harry  McGowan,  chairman  of 
I.  C.  I.  made  several  contributions  to  a  friendly  duPont  press,  with 
statements  cabled  through  the  press  associations  which  termed 


TREASON'S    PEACE  317 

such  charges  against  his  company  "iniquitous."  The  noble  lord 
declared  that  the  cooperation  between  I.  C.  I.  and  duPont  had 
been  beneficial  to  both  the  United  States  and  Britain,  and  formed 
a  good  pattern  for  post-war  international  agreements. 

In  debate  in  the  English  House  of  Lords,  both  Lord  McGowan, 
and  Lord  Melchett,  another  I.  C.  I.  director,  on  occasion  shouted 
defiance  at  the  United  States  Department  of  Justice  regarding 
the  numerous  instances  in  which  I.  C.  I.  was  accused  with  duPont 
of  tie-ups  with  Farben.  Lord  McGowan  ridiculed  as  innuendo 
the  news  items  which  had  appeared  in  the  American  press  indicat- 
ing improprieties  in  any  such  relationships.  He  boasted  that  I.  C.  I. 
"is  not  indicted"  for  any  breach  of  American  law  (which  was 
hardly  accurate )  and  had  not  "done  anything  to  be  ashamed  of," 
( which,  being  a  lord,  may  have  been  true ) .  Finally  he  announced 
that  it  would  be  time  enough  for  the  House  of  Lords  to  ponder 
the  matter  of  Farben  when  and  if  Parliament  should  enact  legis- 
lation against  such  relations. 

Undoubtedly  the  news  and  editorial  comment  in  the  American 
press  which  stressed  duPont's  relations  with  our  British  allies, 
the  I.  C.  I.,  rather  than  the  tie-ups  with  the  German  enemy,  I.G. 
Farben,  tended  to  soften  public  opinion  towards  duPont.  That 
company's  greatest  triumph  in  public  relations  belongs  in  the 
next  chapter. 

In  1941,  when  Sterling  began  getting  hostile  criticism  in  the 
press,  a  public-relations  firm  with  special  training  to  correct  just 
such  unfortunate  situations  was  engaged. 

Baldwin,  Beech,  &  Mermey,  of  New  York  City,  was  given  the 
task— a  happy  choice,  as  this  was  the  outfit  which  had  been  sell- 
ing the  public  the  idea  that  a  rejuvenated  McKesson  &  Bobbins, 
under  many  of  the  same  old  directors,  was  rid  of  all  taint  and 
odor  of  the  fraud  and  criminal  activities  of  its  erstwhile  guiding 
spirit,  Donald  (Musica)  Coster. 

A  glance  at  the  earlier  record  of  the  firm  of  Baldwin,  Beech,  & 
Mermey  indicates  that  its  qualifications  for  the  job  were  also 
well  founded  on  experience  which  Mr.  William  Baldwin  and  Mr. 
Maurice  Mermey  had  when  they  were  retained  in  the  late  20's 
to  sweeten  publicity  in  favor  of  a  low  tariff  on  sugar  imports  from 
Cuba.  In  this  case  the  sweetening  came  from  die  Hershey  Co., 


318  TREASON'S    PEACE 

the  Coca  Cola  Co.,  and  an  organization  known  as  the  American 
Bottlers  Association. 

According  to  testimony  given  by  Messrs.  Baldwin  and  Mermey 
before  the  Caraway  Lobby  Committee  in  1930,  some  rather  weird 
methods  were  utilized  in  order  to  induce  favorable  publicity, 
called  "legitimate  news,"  some  of  which  might  indicate  animosity 
in  Cuba  towards  the  United  States.  Commenting  on  the  evidence, 

Senator  Robinson  accused  Baldwin  and  Mermey  of: 

^ 
Arranging  to  have  cartoons  published  in  these  Latin  - 

American  newspapers,  inflaming  the  sentiment  against  the 
United  States.  (Farben  would  have  liked  that  as  much  as 
the  sugar  people.) 

So  on  the  record,  Baldwin,  Beech  &  Mermey  was  well  quali- 
fied to  inject  some  sweetness  and  light  into  the  sourness  of  the 
Sterling  reputation.  Its  task  was  not  an  easy  one,  and,  unhappily, 
news  items  continued  to  come  out  of  Washington  which  were 
reminders  of  the  close  personal  relations  between  the  Sterling 
executives  and  the  leaders  of  Farben. 

However,  the  agile  press  agents  got  to  work  and  Sterling  soon 
got  some  publicity  which  paid  unqualified  tribute  to  its  reforma- 
tion and  to  its  executive  personnel,  especially  Messrs.  McClintock, 
Rogers,  and  James  Hill,  Jr.,  who  represented  the  old  regime  as 
well  as  the  new. 

Two  New  York  publications  which  gave  space  to  favorable 
mention  of  Sterling  (in  February  1942)  were  The  American  Busi- 
ness Survey,  a  sheet  devoted  to  articles  praising  various  com- 
panies and  individuals,  and  Printers  Ink,  long  established  organ 
of  the  advertising  and  publishing  business. 

The  articles  in  both  of  these  publications  praised  the  new  Ster- 
ling set  up.  Printers  Ink  also  praised  its  past  and,  rather  oddly, 
appeared  to  credit  Sterling  with  having  secured  for  the  medical 
profession  such  remedies  as  Salvarsan,  Novocain  and  Luminal, 
all  of  which,  it  may  be  recalled,  were  introduced  in  the  United 
States  long  before  Sterling  supposedly  had  any  tie-ups  with  the 
Germans.  American  Business  Survey  talked  about  the  "Monroe 
Doctrine  puissant"  and  "cultural  coordination"  between  the  United 


TREASON'S   PEACE  319 

States  and  Latin  Americans  induced  by  Sterling's  anti-German 
drug  drive.  It  was  pretty  bad. 

Reprints  from  both  of  these  publications  were  distributed  gratis, 
and  with  apparent  liberality,  but  as  none  of  the  dodgers  were 
handed  to  me,  I  called  at  the  office  of  The  American  Business 
Survey  to  secure  a  copy.  Only  one  individual  was  visible  in  the 
office— a  zealous  gent  who  wanted  to  quote  me  prices  on  lots  of 
a  hundred  or  more.  I  got  my  copy,  thanked  him,  and  left.  A  few 
weeks  later  the  Federal  Trade  Commission  lit  on  the  interesting 
"Survey"  publication  as  a  fake. 

Another  disingenuous  publicity  stunt  by  which  Sterling  at- 
tempted to  live  down  its  Farben  relations  was  the  free  distribu- 
tion through  druggists  and  doctors  of  thousands  of  copies  of  a 
booklet  entitled  "Footprints  of  the  Trojan  Horse,"  which  was 
originally  published  as  a  warning  against  fifth-column  activities 
in  the  United  States.  This  time  it  was  handed  out  in  the  name 
of  "The  Bayer  Company,  Inc.,  makers  of  Bayer  Aspirin/'  It  was 
a  strange  book  for  Sterling  to  circulate  in  the  year  1942. 

When  the  adverse  publicity  of  1941  got  under  way,  the  trade 
and  industrial  press  did  everything  in  its  power  to  convince  the 
public  that  Sterling,  Standard  Oil,  and  other  Farben  affiliates  had 
done  nothing  wrong  in  making  tie-ups  with  the  Germans,  and 
that  in  any  event  the  results  had  been  beneficial  to  the  United 
States.  This  was  merely  following  the  line  of  indirect  apology  that 
for  many  years  had  been  held  to  in  such  journals  as  Chemical  and 
Metallurgical  Engineering,  the  McGraw  Hill  publication  long 
accepted  as  authoritative  in  the  industries. 

For  example,  back  in  May  1929,  this  publication  had  lauded 
the  formation  of  the  American  I.G.  Chemical  Corp.,  and  belittled 
its  critics  as  hysterical.  Again,  in  April  1942  its  editorial  made 
the  preposterous  accusation  that  it  was  Thurman  Arnold's  prose- 
cution of  Farben  affiliates  that  had  obstructed  our  national  de- 
fense supplies  of  magnesium,  Buna  rubber,  and  other  strategic 
materials. 

In  normal  news  channels  Sterling  fared  a  bit  better  than  Stand- 
ard Oil,  possibly  because  it  escaped  the  Truman  and  Bone  Com- 
mittee inquiries.  These  inquiries  went  sufficiently  deep  into  Stand- 


320  TREASON'S    PEACE 

ard's  relations  with  Farben  to  cause  its  president,  at  that  time, 
the  late  W.  S.  Parish,  to  attempt  a  public  defense  before  both 
committees.  Much  of  Mr.  Parish's  testimony  was  devoted  to  de- 
nials of  the  accusations  that  Standard  had  delayed  synthetic  rub- 
ber production  in  this  country.  This  allegation,  he  stated  before 
the  Truman  Committee,  "has  not  a  shadow  of  foundation/'  How- 
ever, Mr.  Parish  appeared  unable  to  explain,  even  to  his  own 
satisfaction,  the  long  delay  in  getting  the  Buna  program  started. 
"I  don't  know  what  has  caused  the  delay"  he  said  at  one  point. 

In  the  ensuing  discussion  of  the  delayed  rubber  program,  Sen- 
ator Connally,  old  Texas  colleague  of  Mr.  Parish,  contributed  this 
gem  of  official  explanation  and  foresight: 

We  were  hopeful  that  we  wouldn't  lose  the  Dutch  East 
Indies  and  hopeful  that  we  wouldn't  lose  Malaya Who- 
ever, if  any  one,  did  it  ( caused  the  delay )  was  probably  act- 
ing through  motives  they  thought  were  wise  and  good  mo- 
tives. 

Before  the  Bone  Committee,  Mr.  Parish  assumed  an  aggressive 
attitude  and  denounced  the  case  which  had  been  presented  against 
Standard  as  "one  sided."  Senator  Bone  retorted  hotly  that  he  was 
fed  up  with  that  kind  of  defense  from  big  outfits  like  Standard. 

When  Mr.  Parish  alleged  that  Standard's  relationship  with  Far- 
ben was  severed  by  the  so-called  Hague  agreement  in  1939,  he  was 
forced  to  admit  that  there  was  still  in  existence  a  carry-over  under- 
standing subject  to  later  adjustment  ( which  means,  of  course,  after 
the  war ) .  Mr.  Parish  then  started  to  enlarge  upon  the  thesis  that 
"All  of  you  know  now  of  the  enormous  advantages  to  the  public 
of  our  contracts  with  I.G.  Farben." 

Challenged  on  this  one  by  Mr.  Creekmore  Path,  Mr.  Parish  re- 
plied plaintively,  "We  are  human  beings.  In  1927  we  could  not 
foresee  1942." 

So  it  was  made  to  appear  that  the  master  minds  running  the 
world's  largest  industrial  organization,  with  agents  in  every  coun- 
try, never  even  suspected  that  a  war  was  in  the  making. 

As  examples  of  die  enormous  advantages  to  America  that  had 
been  brought  about  by  the  Farben  partnership  agreements,  Mr. 
Parish  listed  the  original  process  for  producing  100  percent  octane 


TREASON'SPEACE  321 

gasoline;  the  method  of  making  synthetic  toluol,  the  basic  ingredi- 
ent of  TNT;  and  Paratone,  an  improvement  in  lubricating  oils  for 
planes,  tanks  and  ships. 

These  generous  tokens  of  Farben's  esteem  sounded  good  to 
some  of  the  Senators— until  three  of  Mr.  Parish's  assistants  gave 
their  testimony.  It  then  appeared  that  the  products  named  by 
Standard's  president  had  been  perfected  not  by  Farben,  but  by 
Standard  Oil's  own  research  men. 

An  item  of  rather  unfavorable  publicity  also  developed  when 
Professor  Hunter,  of  the  Justice  Department,  told  the  Bone  Com- 
mittee that  five  Standard  officials  had  made  deliberate  misstate- 
ments.  Some  of  the  discussion  that  followed  was  so  heated  that 
it  was  expunged  from  the  record. 

Standard's  efforts  before  the  Senate  Committees  to  excuse  or 
vindicate  its  relations  with  Farben  were  supplemented  with 
numerous  press  releases  and  circulars— the  latter  distributed 
from  filling  stations  and  at  employes'  meetings.  Informal  talks 
before  gatherings  of  all  kinds  were  also  in  order. 

Robert  Haslam,  elected  vice-president  of  Standard  Oil  and  in 
charge  of  public  relations,  contributed  vigorous  articles  and  let- 
ters to  the  press  defending  his  company's  relations  with  Farben 
against  what  he  termed  sensational,  unsubstantiated  charges 
which  painted  a  false  and  distorted  picture. 

One  Haslam  article,  which  appeared  in  the  Petroleum  Times 
of  London,  England,  on  December  25,  1943,  struck  fire  in  an 
unexpected  quarter— no  other  than  the  headquarters  of  Farben 
at  Frankfurt,  Germany  ( although  this  effect  was  not  known  in  the 
United  States  until  the  war  ended).  Mr.  Haslam  alleged  in  this 
article  that  secrets  brought  to  America  from  Germany  had  turned 
into  mighty  weapons  against  Germany.  He  then  mentioned  the 
same  three  developments  which  had  been  cited  by  Mr.  Farish 
before  the  Bone  Committee;  high  octane  gasoline;  toluol;  and 
Paratone  as  having  been  secured  from  Farben.  Apparently  he 
did  not  remember  that  he  was  one  of  the  three  Standard  scientists 
who,  to  the  Senate  Committee,  had  indicated  opinions  that  Stand- 
ard, rather  than  Farben,  had  actually  developed  these  processes. 

Mr.  Haslam's  article  likewise  indicated  that  America  got  Buna 
rubber  from  Farben. 


322  TREASON'S    PEACE 

It  did  not  take  long  for  the  Haslam  alibi  to  get  through  to 
Germany,  whereupon  Farben's  chief  counsel,  Dr.  August  von 
Knieriem,  put  his  own  experts  to  work  picking  flaws  in  the  Haslam 
thesis— with  counter-claims  that  it  was  Farben  and  not  Standard, 
that  had  all  the  best  of  it  in  the  pre-war  horse  trading. 

Many  valuable  contributions,  said  the  Farben  boys,  were  re- 
ceived as  result  of  their  contracts  with  the  Americans— including 
lead-tetra-ethyl  (gasoline);  polymerization;  improved  lubricants; 
and  finally,  that  it  was  through  friendly  relations  with  Standard 
that  Farben  had  purchased  large  reserve  stocks  of  aviation  gasoline 
and  lubricating  oils  for  the  German  government  just  before  the  war. 

As  for  Iso-octane,  said  the  Farben  experts,  Standards  research 
men  had  recognized  that  long  before  they  had  any  knowledge 
of  the  Farben  process— and  it  was  Farben  that  got  the  best  of 
the  exchange  of  ideas  on  that  item.  And  regarding  toluol,  the  re- 
port went  on,  Mr.  Haslam's  talk  of  a  miracle  was  all  bunk.  Ac- 
cording to  the  Frankfurt  technicians,  Standard  did  not  use  Far- 
ben's  process  as  it  already  had  all  the  toluol  methods  it  needed. 

On  Oppanol,  or  Paratone,  again  it  was  Standard's  improvements 
that  helped  Farben.  The  retort  on  Buna  rubber  was  emphatic— 
Farben  didn't  give  Standard  anything  important  to  war  economy, 
and  whatever  maytiave  been  revealed  in  the  patents  America 
could  have  procured  without  any  agreements— as  enemy  patents 
in  war  time. 

Altogether,  the  Farben  boys  appeared  to  have  shot  Mr.  Haslam's 
alibi  and  that  of  Mr.  Farish  full  of  holes.  It  will  be  recalled,  too, 
that  in  Chapter  xrv,  Farben's  Dr.  Loehr  admitted  that  his  com- 
pany had  undermined  the  military  potential  of  the  United  States 
through  its  connections  with  Standard. 

However,  the  Haslam-Farish  versions  had  wide  circulation  in 
the  United  States,  and  the  Farben  retorts  did  not.  The  result 
of  Standard's  publicity  was  a  lessening  of  criticism. 

Other  things,  however,  may  have  contributed.  It  was  stated 
by  Walter  Winchell  that  in  May  1942  a  news  broadcaster  for  CBS 
had  been  effectively  silenced  on  the  Truman  and  Bone  Committees 
exposes.  This  man  had  included  in  the  script  of  his  broadcast 
mention  of  the  accusations  that  Standard  intended  to  resume  ties 
with  Farben  when  the  war  ended.  The  CBS  censor  killed  the  item 


TREASON'S    PEACE  323 

and,  it  was  reported,  told  the  radio  newsmen  to  "go  easy  on 
Standard,  you  know  we  carry  plenty  of  their  business." 

Harry  S  Truman,  while  still  a  Senator,  paralleled  that  revealing 
incident  with  a  public  accusation  that  Standard,  with  huge  gov- 
ernment contracts,  was  advertising  at  taxpayer's  expense  to  coun- 
teract the  fact  that  its  tie-ups  with  Farben  had  materially  retarded 
the  development  of  synthetic  rubber  in  America. 

The  1942  and  1943  stockholder's  meetings  of  Standard  at  Flem- 
ington,  N.  J.,  were  the  occasions  of  spirited  defense  speeches  by  its 
executives.  At  both  of  these  meetings  a  committee  of  minority 
stockholders,  ably  led  by  one  William  Floyd,  II,  and  his  attorney, 
Amos  S.  Basel,  proposed  queries  and  resolutions  which  appeared 
to  embarrass  mightily  the  Standard  defenders. 

At  the  1942  meeting  Messrs.  Floyd  and  Basel  attempted  in  vain 
to  put  through  a  resolution  requiring  the  Standard  executives  to 
answer  "fully  and  adequately"  the  Senate  Committee  accusations. 
At  the  1943  and  1944  meetings  they  tried  again,  unsuccessfully, 
to  get  Standard  on  record  that  it  would  not  resume  cartel  relations 
with  I.G.  Farben  after  the  war,  unless  the  Government  should 
desire  it  to  do  so. 

At  the  1943  meeting  President  Ralph  Gallagher,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded to  that  office  at  the  death  of  Mr.  Farish,  made  the  fantastic 
assertion  that  Standard  "never  had  any  cartel  agreement  with  I.G. 
Farben."  He  then  declined  to  reply  to  a  question  as  to  whether 
or  not  the  Farben  contracts  would  come  into  existence  again  when 
the  war  was  over. 

Senator  Kilgore,  on  the  morning  of  the  1944  meeting,  issued  a 
statement  at  Washington  calling  attention  to  Standard's  reluctance 
to  make  any  commitment  on  post-war  cartels.  At  the  meeting  Mr. 
Basel,  raising  his  voice  above  the  uproar  which  arose  whenever  he 
pressed  the  Standard-Farben  issue,  quoted  the  substance  of  the 
Kilgore  remarks.  Whereupon  Mr.  Haslam,  his  ire  aroused,  de- 
manded that  Mr.  Basel  read  the  entire  statement.  "I  will,"  replied 
the  speaker,  "if  these  people  will  keep  quiet."  The  claque,  for 
once,  subsided. 

James  Gerard,  Ambassador  to  Germany  in  the  first  World  War 
and  financier  of  the  Democratic  National  Committee,  defended 
Standard's  leaders  at  all  of  these  meetings.  In  1942  Gerard  quoted 


324  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Leviticus  about  the  priest  and  the  goat.  In  1943  Mr.  Gerard's 
contribution  was  of  more  serious  import.  Said  he: 

I  can  assure  you  that  some  of  us  who  are  thinking  over 
what  is  to  happen  after  the  war  are  contemplating  universal 
cartels,  and  it  may  be  that  our  own  government  will  tell  or 
even  order  our  management  to  join  some  international  cartel. 
At  the  1943  Standard  Oil  meeting,  approval  was  voted  to  a 
proposal  of  the  directors  to  transfer  permanently  to  the  United 
States  all  of  the  Buna  rubber  patents.  There  were,  of  course,  cer- 
tain provisions,  but  it  was  good  publicity,  only  a  comparatively 
few  people  knew  that  under  the  terms  of  the  1942  consent  decrees 
Standard  had  already  been  forced  to  throw  open  its  Buna  patents, 
and  that  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  had  already  seized  title  to 
all  of  the  Farben  United  States  patents  which  allegedly  had  been 
transferred  to  Standard— after  the  war  started. 

While  I  did  not  attend  the  1943  meeting,  I  did  go  to  the  one  in 
1942— as  proxy  for  a  stockholder,  and  asked  just  one  question: 

Mr.  Parish,  would  you  or  the  other  officers  of  the  company 
desire  to  state  to  this  meeting  the  date  when  you  first  became 
convinced  or  suspicious  that  the  activities  of  the  German  I.G. 
Farben  in  its  relationship  to  Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey 
were  hostile  to  the  national  security  of  the  United  States? 

Mr.  Farish,  after  some  quibbling,  declined  to  reply.  "I  don't  think 
the  question  is  proper,"  he  said. 

So  this  challenge,  which  must  go  pretty  close  to  the  root  of  the 
matter,  remains  unanswered  by  Standard.  Neither  does  it  appear 
that  the  executives  of  duPont,  Alcoa,  Sterling,  or  any  of  the  other 
Farben  affiliates  have  ever  stated  the  date  when  they  first  sus- 
pected that  Farben's  intentions  might  be  hostile  to  the  national 
security  of  their  country.  And  yet  this  might  seem  to  be  a  fair 
question— one  which  any  man  would  desire  to  answer. 


CHAPTER        XVIII 


No  Sacrifice  on  the  Altar 
of  Moloch 


DON'T   THINK   THAT 

you  need  prove  how  great  the  United  States  is  by  throwing 
it  sacrifices.  That  was  all  right  for  the  hideous  God  Moloch, 

but  it  would  be  intolerable  if  you  or  any (group) 

thought  that  they  could  add  to  the  majesty  and  dignity  of  the 
United  States  by  proving  its  power  through  an  injustice. 

This  moving  appeal  came  near  the  close  of  a  solemn  address 
which,  on  June  20,  1945,  in  impressive  surroundings  at  Newark, 
New  Jersey,  was  listened  to  in  respectful  silence  by  a  group  of 
representative  citizens,  flanked  by  men  high  in  official,  industrial, 
and  other  circles  important  in  the  affairs  of  this  nation. 

Leading  up  to  his  magniloquence  about  the  Old  Testament's 
God  of  War  and  Vice,  the  speaker  had  said: 

It  would  be  a  hideous,  a  monstrous,  an  unconscionable 
thing,  if  any  of  the  rights  of  these  defendants  which  I  have 
outlined  to  you  were  neglected  by  you,  or  if  any  one  of  them 
should  be  sacrificed  to  the  might  and  power  of  the  Govern- 

325 


326  TREASON'S   PEACE 

ment  just  to  prove  the  Government's  right  and  power.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  asks  no  sacrifice  of  anybody 
to  prove  its  might  and  greatness.  The  United  States  of  America 
proceeds  with  majestic  instancy  towards  that  goal  which  has 
been  marked  for  it  by  God  Almighty,  and  it  does  not  require 
any  fictitious  or  factitious  accretions  to  its  greatness.  It  pro- 
ceeds along  the  path  of  justice  and  will  not  deviate  from 
that  path  so  long  as  it  fulfills  the  will  and  intent  of  the  Divine 
Creator  who  brought  this  country  into  being  for  its  own  un- 
measurably  wise  purpose. 

Thus  did  this  modern  Solomon  picture  to  six  men  and  six  women 
in  a  jury  box,  the  sacrificial  blood  of  innocent  victims  staining  the 
altar  of  that  wicked  God  of  the  Ammonites,  as  a  warning  of  the 
abomination  that  might  be  their  verdict,  should  it  be  induced, 
mistakenly,  by  too  great  love  for  their  native  land— or  grief  for  the 
blood  of  their  own  sons  and  daughters  sacrificed  on  a  less  high 
altar,  erected  by  one  of  those  named  in  the  conspiracy  to  be  judged 
by  that  jury,  I.G.  Farben,  of  Frankfurt-am-Main. 

Having  been  instructed  also  that  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  was  entitled  to  a  just  verdict,  the  jury  retired  and  ten  hours 
later  brought  in  a  verdict  of  NOT  GUILTY  for  the  two  corpora- 
tions and  six  individuals  whose  fate,  for  those  ten  hours,  had  been 
in  their  hands. 

I.G.  Farben  was  not  technically  on  trial  in  that  case,  having 
been  accused  merely  as  a  co-conspirator,  of  conspiring  with  duPont 
and  Rohm  &  Haas  of  Philadelphia,  with  eight  of  their  officers,  as 
defendants;  along  with  two  other  co-conspirators,  Imperial  Chemi- 
cal Industries  of  England  and  Rohm  &  Haas  of  Darmstadt, 
Germany. 

As  discussed  heretofore  in  Chapter  vi  those  named  were  accused 
of  having  entered  into  agreements  to  fix  prices  and  restrain  pro- 
duction and  distribution  of  acrylic,  or  plastic,  glass-like  products, 
in  violation  of  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law. 

One  mystifying  aspect  of  the  trial  was  the  dismissal  of  Counts 
2  and  3  of  the  indictment  on  motion  of  Walter  R.  Hutchinson, 
Special  Assistant  to  Attorney  General  Francis  Biddle,  who  repre- 
sented the  Government.  This  left  only  Count  1  of  the  indictment 


TREASON'S    PEACE  327 

at  issue  and  confined  the  case  to  charges  of  violation  of  Section  1 
of  the  Sherman  Act,  forbidding  conspiracies  in  restraint  of  trade. 
Whereas  Counts  2  and  3  alleged  also  violations  of  Section  2  of 
the  Sherman  Act  which  forbids  monopoly  or  attempt  to  monopo- 
lize. (It  might  be  noted  here  that  no  explanation  has  been  forth- 
coming of  this  apparent  free  gift  to  the  defendants  of  immunity 
without  trial  under  the  specific  charges  in  Counts  2  and  3.  How- 
ever it  is  known  that  Mr.  Hutchinson,  who  had  just  returned  to  the 
Justice  Department  from  army  duty  overseas,  was  ill,  and  in  no 
condition  to  have  tried  this  case.) 

The  Court,  in  its  charge  to  the  jury  made  certain  the  omission 
was  understood  and  that: 

The    second    section,    relating   to    monopoly,    has    been 

abandoned  by  the  Government so  that  there  remains 

for  your  consideration  only  the  first  count  which  is  violation 
of  Section  1  of  the  Sherman  Act. 

The  Court  then  made  this  astounding  misstatement  of  the  lan- 
guage and  scope  of  Section  1  of  the  Sherman  Act,  as  follows: 

Performance  of  an  overt  act  to  effectuate  the  object  of  the 
conspiracy  is  necessary  to  bring  the  combination  within  the 
ambit  of  the  statute,  because  a  conspiracy  of  itself,  a  combina- 
tion of  itself,  is  not  denounced  by  the  statute  unless  there  be 
something  done  to  effectuate  its  purpose. 

This  weird  dictum  being  absolutely  incorrect  we  may  wonder 
how  and  why  the  Judge  came  to  so  inform  the  jury. 

The  Court  also  appeared  anxious  that  the  jury  be  not  led  astray 
regarding  the  significance  of  a  letter  introduced  by  the  Govern- 
ment and  quoted  a  small  part  of  this  letter,  which  was  from  Mr. 
Haas  of  Philadelphia,  U.  S.  A.,  to  Dr.  Rohm  of  Darmstadt,  Ger- 
many, in  1936,  about  consultation  on  prices,  as  follows: 

A  matter  like  this  cannot  be  put  into  the  contract  because 
it  would  be  against  the  law. 

Strangely,  the  Court  did  not  feel  called  upon  to  quote  the  next 
sentence  of  that  same  letter,  which  was  as  follows: 


328  TREASON'S    PEACE 

We  have  to  rely  on  our  verbal  assurance  and  our  experi- 
ences with  duPont  during  the  last  fifteen  years  has  proven 
that  they  can  be  relied  upon  to  live  up  to  an  arrangement 
of  this  kind. 

Noticeable  in  the  trial  were  the  harmonious  relations  which 
prevailed  between  opposing  counsel  during  the  six  weeks  which 
were  required  to  present  the  voluminous  evidence  to  the  jury. 
This  love  fest,  so  different  from  the  cat  and  dog  courtroom  fights 
which  frequently  occur  among  counsel  in  a  case  of  this  type, 
caused  the  Judge  to  pay  tribute  to  the  "eminent  fairness  which 
has  been  exhibited  by  counsel  for  the  defense  and  counsel  for 
the  Government/'  Said  the  Court: 

111  pay  my  tribute  to  counsel  because  it  has  made  the  work 
of  the  Court  so  much  easier 

One  of  the  distinguished  members  of  the  bar  whose  nice  court- 
room manners  were  thus  complimented  by  the  Judge,  was  the 
well-known  attorney,  Bruce  Bromley,  whose  forensic  snarls  and 
sneers  are  famous. 

The  Philadelphia  Rohm  &  Haas,  with  its  admittedly  close  ties 
to  the  Darmstadt  firm  and  to  I.G.  Farben,  was  represented  by 
Mr.  Bromley,  whose  New  York  and  Washington  law  firm  of 
Cravath,  Swaine  and  Moore  (formerly  Cravath,  de  Gersdorff, 
Swaine  and  Wood ) ,  had  also  represented  Farbwerke  Hoechst  of 
Farben  in  several  peculiar  cases  in  the  New  York  District  Court 
against  one  of  Herman  Metz's  companies,  during  the  same  period 
when  Farben  ( as  discussed  in  Chapter  n )  was  paying  Metz  other 
large  sums  of  money  to  turn  over  his  drug  and  dye  interests  in 
this  country  to  Sterling  and  General  Aniline. 

It  also  may  be  of  interest  here  to  note  that  a  few  weeks  later, 
on  September  11, 1945,  Hoyt  A.  Moore,  Esq.,  of  this  same  Cravath 
firm,  was  indicted  by  a  Federal  Grand  Jury  at  Scranton,  Pennsyl- 
vania, with  former  Federal  Judge  Albert  W.  Johnson  and  others 
on  charges  of  conspiring  to  obstruct  justice  and  defraud  the 
United  States  Government.  Judge  Johnson  resigned  to  avoid  im- 
peachment and  the  House  Judiciary  Committee  in  February  1946 


TREASON'S    PEACE  329 

turned  in  a  report  castigating  the  "corrupt  connivance"  of  Mr. 
Moore  and  pointed  out  that  the  Cravath  firm  had  charged  over 
$125,000  for  its  services. 

Later  the  indictment  of  Hoyt  Moore  was  dismissed  by  the  Court 
on  his  plea  at  the  Bar  based  upon  the  statute  of  limitations,  be- 
cause the  acts  of  which  he  was  accused  were  all  performed  "more 
than  three  years  prior  to  the  date  said  indictment  was  found/* 

The  Judge  who  tried  the  duPont— Rohm  &  Haas  case  in  1945 
was  the  same  jurist  who  had  sealed  the  original  indictment  in 
August  1942,  from  public  knowledge,  during  the  period  when 
five  members  of  Senator  Bone's  Patents  Committee  were  voting  to 
forbid  further  investigations  and  hearings  on  the  Farben  tie-ups. 
This  jurist  was  none  other  than  Hon.  Thomas  F.  Meaney,  whose 
nomination  for  the  bench  in  1942  provoked  a  bitter  fight  in  the 
United  States  Senate.  During  the  final  debate  in  the  Senate  it  was 
the  late  W.  Warren  Barbpur  of  New  Jersey  who  stated  the  issue  as : 

Like  Caesar's  wife  a  Federal  judge  should  be  above 

suspicion Mr.  Meaney  cannot  escape  always  being 

viewed  as  a  pawn  of  Mayor  Hague. 

And,  the  aged  Senator  George  W.  Norris,  in  one  of  his  last  im- 
passioned appeals  denounced  the  Hague  organization  as  a  con- 
temptible, crooked,  bipartisan  machine,  and  the  nominee  as  "one 
of  his  tools,"  whom  Hague  "is  trying  to  put  on  the  bench."  Said 
the  Senator  "The  confirmation  of  Meaney  would  be  like  putting 
Hague  on  the  bench/' 

When  the  six  men  and  six  women  brought  in  their  verdict  of 
not  guilty  in  the  trial  of  the  duPont-Rohm  &  Haas-Farben  tie-ups 
there  came  to  an  end  the  first,  and  as  this  is  being  written,  the 
only  case,  in  which  American  corporations  and  some  of  their 
officers,  have  been  tried  before  a  jury  for  alleged  criminal  con- 
spiracy with  I.G.  Farben.  And,  under  our  system  of  American 
jurisprudence,  the  record  of  acquittal  stands— that  these  corpora- 
tions and  these  men  were  not  guilty  of  any  unlawful  act  in  having 
made  the  agreements  with  Farben  and  with  each  other,  or  in 
doing  any  of  the  acts  alleged  as  unlawful  by  the  Government. 

Nothing  can  better  illustrate  than  this  trial  the  failure  of  the 


330  TREASON'S    PEACE 

enforcement  of  the  antitrust  laws  to  impose  either  punishment 
for  past  associations  with  Farben  or  warning  against  future  re- 
newals of  such  affiliations. 

When  the  duPont-Rohm  &  Haas-Farben  trial  ended  in  so  com- 
plete a  fiasco  for  the  Government  and  established  so  complete  a 
vindication  for  Farben's  partners,  press  statements  appeared  im- 
mediately credited  to  representatives  of  duPont  in  which  the  Gov- 
ernment's accusations  were  belittled  with  the  allegation  that 
"when  the  time  came  to  produce  supporting  evidence  in  court, 
the  prosecution  was  unable  to  do  so." 

Thus  a  battle  was  fought,  or  staged,  and  lost  in  a  New  Jersey 
courtroom,  against  Farben,  in  those  hectic  weeks  of  May  and 
June  1945,  immediately  after  the  armies  and  government  of  Ger- 
many lost  their  last  battle,  to  surrender  ignominiously  and  un- 
conditionally—and simultaneously  the  plot  to  revive  Farben's  Car- 
tel structure  emerged,  as  announced  in  Washington  by  Senator 
Kilgore  on  June  21st,  the  day  after  the  jury  in  Judge  Meaney's 
court  officially  recorded  the  lawfulness  of  the  duPont-Rohm  & 
Haas-Farben  alliance. 

In  this  case  the  result  was  at  least  a  clear  cut  acquittal  of  the 
defendants.  In  some  of  the  cases  to  follow  the  results,  where  there 
have  been  any  and  the  lack  of  results  in  others,  are  so  vague  and 
indefinite  that  sabotage  of  government  may  not  seem  an  unfit 
term  to  apply. 

We  must  go  back  to  the  direction  of  the  Anti-Trust  Division 
by  Robert  H.  Jackson,  for  the  initiation  of  the  first  Anti-Trust 
case  in  which  was  involved  a  tie-up  with  I.G.  Farben,  or  rather 
with  one  of  its  international  cartel  alliances.  This  case  was  filed 
in  1937,  against  the  Aluminum  Company  of  America  (Alcoa),  its 
disowned  Canadian  offspring  or  counterpart,  Aluminium  Limited, 
and  twenty-three  subsidiaries,  along  with  thirty-nine  individual 
officers  and  others  accused  of  unlawful  monopoly  in  the  produc- 
tion and  distribution  of  aluminum. 

In  this  case  Aluminium  Ltd.  was  accused  of  direct  participa- 
tion in  the  international  aluminum  cartel  with  Vereinigte  Alumin- 
ium Werke  of  Bitterfeld,  Germany,  one  of  the  I.G.  Farben  affiliates. 

The  lower  court  in  1940  having  found  no  unlawful  monopoly 
existed,  this  judgment  was  reversed  on  March  13,  1945,  by  the 


TREASON'S    PEACE  331 

Court  of  Appeals  which  ruled  that  Alcoa  was  in  fact  a  monopoly— 
and  then  returned  the  case  to  the  lower  court  for  further  pro- 
ceedings. 

The  participation  of  Farben's  German  affiliate  in  the  interna- 
tional cartel  received  little  attention  in  this  celebrated  case,  but 
it  is  timely  here  to  reveal  that  in  aluminum,  as  in  so  many  of  our 
other  important  war  materials,  Farben  had  succeeded  in  a  par- 
ticipation in  restrictive  cartel  tie-ups  reaching  into  this  continent. 

The  initial  action  involving  Farben  brought  by  the  Anti-Trust 
Division  under  Mr.  Arnold  was  that  against  Rudolph  Ilgner  for 
destroying  Chemnyco  records  which  was  described  in  Chapter  v. 
The  Chemnyco  records  sought  and  destroyed  had  been  demanded 
by  a  grand  jury  for  the  antitrust  investigation  of  nitrogen  and 
ammonia  fertilizer  materials  which  resulted  in  five  blanket  indict- 
ments; two  of  these  named  as  defendants  Farben's  Synthetic 
Nitrogen  Products  Corporation,  and  its  executives,  including  one 
Carl  B.  Peters  as  vice-president,  along  with  numerous  other  Far- 
ben affiliates  in  the  United  States,  Europe  and  South  America;  the 
affiliates  as  either  defendants  or  co-conspirators.  Mr.  Peters  is 
given  special  mention  here  because  he  makes  a  dramatic  re- 
appearance in  a  later  chapter. 

The  American  I.G.,  also  Farben,  and  the  International  Nitrogen 
Cartel  of  London,  which  Farben  organized  to  control  and  restrict 
the  world's  nitrogen  production,  were  among  those  listed  as  co- 
conspirators. 

The  several  conspiracies  which  the  Antitrust  Division  thus 
attempted  to  attack  and  which  included  the  misuse  of  patent 
licenses,  were  those  by  which  P'arben,  careful  not  to  appear 
reaching  for  control  of  nitrogen  and  ammonia  as  military  products, 
attained  its  purpose  by  restricting  world  production  of  these  vital 
materials  through  tie-ups  in  the  fertilizer  industries. 

However,  these  indictments,  mysteriously  sealed  by  the  Court 
and  hidden  from  the  public  for  months  after  the  grand  jury  acted, 
then  all  petered  out.  In  June  1941,  about  the  time  when  Attorney 
General  Robert  Jackson  was  kicked  upstairs  to  the  Supreme  Court, 
Mr.  Arnold  backed  down—or  was  sat  upon— and  his  assistants 
began  filing,  in  batches  of  a  dozen  or  more,  Nolle  Prosequi  entries 
which  dismissed  over  one  hundred  charges  against  defendants  in 


332  TREASON'S    PEACE 

these  cases.  Thus  were  wiped  out  all  criminal  cases  on  the  Far- 
ben  conspiracy  to  fix  prices  and  restrict  production  of  synthetic 
nitrogen  and  ammonia. 

The  public  heard  little  of  these  cases,  and  in  1941  and  1942 
while  the  war  was  well  under  way,  three  civil  complaints  and 
consent  decrees  were  filed  covering  these  fertilizer  materials.  In 
these  the  Farben  subsidiary,  Synthetic  Nitrogen  Products,  also 
Imperial  Chemical  Industries,  duPont  and  Allied  Chemical  and 
Dye,  with  their  leading  officers,  promised  in  profound  legal  lan- 
guage to  refrain  from  doing  in  the  future  those  acts  of  conspiracy 
which,  in  the  same  breath,  they  denied  having  done  in  the  past. 
No  trial,  no  publicity,  no  penalties;  as  the  war-time  answer  to 
a  Farben  conspiracy  which  had  restricted  production  of  those 
keystones  of  chemical  munitions  in  the  pre-war  era,  nitrogen  and 
ammonia.  Carl  B.  Peters  was  also  named  in  one  complaint  and 
decree  involving  Synthetic  Nitrogen  Products,  which  concern  was 
listed  among  the  co-conspirators  in  the  other  two  civil  cases. 

Mr.  Arnold's  next  indictments  against  Farben  conspirators  were 
three  filed  on  January  30,  1941,  covering  conspiracy  in  restricting 
production  of  magnesium  metal  and  alloys  through  patent  and 
process  finagling,  as  described  in  Chapter  rv.  These  knocked 
around  until  April  15,  1942,  while  a  softening-up  process  was 
going  on  inside  the  Justice  Department.  Then  all  of  the  defendants 
except  Farben  and  its  two  German  directors,  pleaded  nolo  con- 
tender e  (which  means  "Oh,  well,  what  if  we  did?)  and  paid  fines 
of  $25,000  each,  for  Alcoa,  Dow  and  American  Magnesium; 
$20,000  for  Magnesium  Development  (half  owned  by  Farben); 
$15,000  for  General  Aniline  (also  owned  by  Farben);  and  $5,000 
each  for  six  of  the  corporation  officials  who  were  indicted.  Of  the 
latter  Farben's  Karl  Hochswender,  president  of  Magnesium  De- 
velopment and  of  Chemnyco,  had  his  fine  graciously  returned. 

Meanwhile  Farben,  with  Hermann  Schmitz,  its  president,  and 
Gustav  Pistor,  one  of  its  directors,  have  never  been  tried  and  un- 
doubtedly consider  this  whole  affair  a  joke.  Messrs.  Schmitz  and 
Pistor  were  busy  in  Berlin  or  Frankfurt  a/Main  making  Farben's 
munitions  and  directing  Farben's  war  against  the  United  States. 
How  they  must  have  sneered  when  they  heard  the  bargain  price 
of  $140,000,  less  the  $5,000  discount,  that  was  charged  by  the 


TREASON'S    PEACE  333 

Yankee  Court  as  total  penalties  for  the  injury  to  national  defense 
caused  by  a  woefully  insufficient  magnesium  production  when 
war  broke  out. 

Next  antitrust  cases  relating  to  Farben  were  the  nominal  fines 
and  consent  decrees  involving  Sterling  and  its  affiliates  which 
have  already  been  described  in  Chapter  vm  and  elsewhere.  It 
will  be  recalled  that  the  fines  in  these  cases  totaled  $26,000.  How- 
ever if  the  attorney's  fees  were  over  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars, 
as  it  was  rumored  in  the  Justice  Department,  then  it  might  seem 
that  the  bargain  between  the  parties  on  which  the  consent  decrees 
were  based  included  pre-arranged  penalties  for  Sterling  of  around 
$300,000-of  which  the  United  States  Treasury  was  to  receive 
$26,000,  and  some  one  else  was  to  get  the  balance. 

Even  though  these  consent  decrees  may  have  cost  Sterling  sev- 
eral hundred  thousand  dollars  in  huge  fees  exacted  by  Mr.  Cor- 
coran plus  not  so  huge  fines  exacted  by  the  Court,  yet  this  whole 
transaction  may  be  said  to  have  shown  a  nice  net  profit  for  Sterling. 
Because  when  the  decrees  were  arranged  it  appears  that  there 
was  due  to  Farben,  from  Sterling-Bayer  under  the  profit-sharing 
agreements,  the  tidy  sum  of  $544,000,  which  amount  Sterling  was 
permitted  to  retain  in  its  own  pockets. 

As  events  proceeded  it  may  appear  that  as  a  result  of  the  al- 
leged abrogation  of  the  Farben  agreements  Sterling's  profits  were 
increased  by  a  sum  of  well  on  to  $1,000,000  annually,  this  being 
the  share  of  the  booty  which  prior  to  the  consent  decrees  had 
gone  to  I.G.  Farben.  The  United  States  Treasury  appears  as  the 
real  loser  of  these  millions  because  the  Treasury  had  already 
frozen  all  Farben  funds,  and  after  the  Alien  Property  Custodian 
began  seizing  Farben's  belongings  ( some  of  them )  in  1942,  these 
Sterling  profits  due  Farben  would  have  gone  to  the  Custodian's 
bank  account.  If  it  were  not  for  those  consent  decrees  which  Mr. 
Corcoran  induced  his  Sterling  clients  and  his  friend  Mr.  Biddle— 
to  consent  to. 

That  Sterling  appreciated  the  advantage  of  this  war  opportunity 
to  retain  these  profits  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  this  company 
actually  went  into  the  Canadian  courts  in  1944  with  a  plea  to 
set  aside  contracts  in  the  Dominion  between  its  subsidiary,  the 
Bayer  Company  Limited,  and  Farben's  Bayer.  However,  the 


334  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Canadian  High  Court  ruled  that  the  monies  owed  by  Sterling's 
Canadian  Bayer  to  Farben's  German  Bayer  must  continue  to  be 
paid  to  the  Canadian  Alien  Property  Custodian. 

Another  peculiar  feature  of  these  Sterling-Bayer-Winthrop- 
Farben  criminal  actions  and  civil  consent  decrees  of  1941,  is  that 
although  all  agreements  between  Sterling  and  Farben  were  sup- 
posed to  have  been  abrogated,  this  does  not  appear  to  be  true. 
We  need  only  to  examine  the  records  of  the  Securities  and  Ex- 
change Commission  to  discover  two  other  agreements  with  Farben 
entered  into  by  Sterling's  British  subsidiary,  Bayer  Products  Com- 
pany Ltd.,  and  its  Canadian  subsidiary  Bayer  Company  Ltd.  It 
was  the  latter  of  these  two  agreements  which  Sterling  attempted 
to  cancel  in  1944  so  as  not  to  keep  on  paying  the  Canadian  Alien 
Property  Custodian. 

These  two  British  and  Canadian  agreements  were,  as  late  as 
May  1945,  officially  hidden  from  public  inspection  by  the  Secu- 
rities and  Exchange  Commission  where  they  were  on  file.  In  a 
letter  dated  January  31,  1945,  the  Securities  and  Exchange  Com- 
mission denied  inspection  of  these  agreements  on  the  allegation 
that  they  had  been  filed  with  the  Commission  by  Sterling  in  1936 
with  a  stock  registration  along  with  two  other  Farben  contracts, 
with  request  from  some  unidentified  person  that  they  all  should  be 
kept  secret.  The  Commission  also  refused  to  exhibit  the  request 
for  this  secrecy. 

However,  on  May  17,  1945,  I  was  notified  to  appear  to  testify 
before  a  Senate  Committee  on  a  bill  to  require  that  all  restrictive 
foreign  trade  agreements  be  registered  before  some  Federal 
Agency;  and  by  a  strange  coincidence  the  Securities  and  Exchange 
Commission  decided  on  the  same  day  that  the  still  secret  Sterling- 
Farben  agreements  could  properly  be  made  public  "without  objec- 
tion by  the  Sterling  Company,"  said  the  letter. 

When  we  recall  how  painfully  shocked  and  surprised  so  many 
public  officials  appeared  to  be  after  the  Justice  Department  of- 
ficially discovered  illegal  agreements  made  years  before  with  Far- 
ben—and  we  then  discover  that  at  least  some  of  them  had  been 
filed  with  an  important  official  agency  but  on  a  pledge  to  hide 
them  as  trade  secrets,  we  begin  to  wonder  what  kind  of  hocus 
pocus  our  Government  really  is. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  335 

And  when  one  department  of  Government  publicly  brands  an 
entire  group  of  these  Farben  tie-ups  as  illegal  from  the  days  when 
they  were  entered  into,  and  a  court  so  decrees  in  both  criminal 
and  civil  actions,  while  another  branch  of  the  Government  still 
keeps  some  of  them  hidden  as  lawful  trade  secrets,  then  it  be- 
comes a  burlesque  of  government.  And  by  the  same  token  we 
may  accept  this  as  a  typical  illustration  of  the  pattern  of  I.G. 
Farben's  activities  within  the  fabric  of  this  nation  before  the  war, 
during  the  war,  and  as  now  revealed  after  the  combat  war  has 
ended. 

Another  antitrust  action  involving  cartel  tie-ups  between  Ster- 
h'ng-Winthrop  and  I.G.  Farben,  as  set  forth  in  Chapter  III  may 
be  mentioned  here  to  refute  the  idea  that  the  1941  consent  decrees 
constituted  a  complete  divorce  between  Sterling  and  Farben. 

In  February  1944,  the  Anti-Trust  Division  intervened  in  a  pat- 
ent infringement  case  in  Illinois  in  which  the  Wisconsin  Alumni 
Research  Foundation  was  prosecuting  another  company  for  al- 
legedly violating  the  Vitamin  D  patents.  The  Government  brought 
counter-charges  of  violation  of  the  Sherman  Act  against  Wiscon- 
sin Alumni  and  some  sixteen  of  its  licensees  which  were  marketing 
Vitamin  D  in  medicinal  or  food  products.  These  included  Win- 
throp;  duPont;  The  Quaker  Oats  Company;  Standard  Brands  Inc.; 
The  Borden  Co.;  Parke  Davis  &  Co.;  E.  R.  Squibb  &  Sons;  Abbott 
Laboratories  and  others.  The  intervention  by  the  Government 
caused  the  court  to  enjoin  Wisconsin  Alumni  from  further  restric- 
tive activities  and  the  Vitamin  D  patents  were  thrown  open  to  the 
public.  However,  the  injunctive  decree  did  not  mention  the  1928 
cartel  agreement  with  Farben  covering  these  patents. 

War  had  been  declared  only  a  few  days  before  the  next  batch 
of  Farben  cases  was  ground  out  by  the  anti-trust  boys  with  the 
able  assistance  of  Joe  O'Connell's  Treasury  raiders;  this  crop  being 
three  multiple  indictments  against  General  Aniline  and  Film,  Gen- 
eral Dyestuff  and  I.G.  Farben,  along  with  numerous  individual 
members  of  Farben's  royal  families  and  exiled  employes.  These 
cases  have  already  been  well  discussed  in  earlier  chapters. 

However  there  are  several  mysterious  aspects  of  these  three 
cases,  which  are  still  as  this  is  written,  postponed  and  untried  and 
also  disparaged  as  unnecessary  in  certain  official  circles. 


TREASON'S    PEACE 

It  may  be  recalled  that  I.G.  Farben  itself  as  well  as  its  stooges, 
false  fronts  and  errand  boys,  is  a  defendant  in  two  of  these  cases. 
In  the  other  it  is  merely  called  a  co-conspirator.  Farben  did  not 
answer  "here,"  or  "not  guilty,"  in  January  1944  when  the  others 
appeared  to  plead.  Nobody  would  admit  knowing  who  was  Far- 
ben's  official  or  legal  representative  in  this  country.  So  the  summons 
was  marked  "Unable  to  Find."  Then  after  an  unsuccessful  attempt 
to  pin  that  honor  on  Mr.  Hochswender  of  Chemnyco,  the  court  on 
February  28,  1942,  announced  the  appointment  of  William  M. 
Wherry,  Esq.,  as  Special  Master  to  determine  the  identity  of  Far- 
ben's  agent  in  the  United  States. 

Unfortunately,  the  court  appears  still  uninformed.  More  than 
four  years  later,  as  of  May  16,  1946,  Mr.  Wherry  had  never  had 
a  copy  of  the  order  served  on  him,  so  he  never  was  officially  started 
on  this  ardous  task.  What  became  of  the  order  the  records  do  not 
show. 

After  reading  some  of  the  chapters  of  this  book  the  court  and 
the  Justice  Department  might  be  able  to  make  several  good 
guesses  as  to  the  identity  of  Farben's  representatives  in  this 
country,  especially  as  appearances  for  I.G.  Farben  were  finally 
entered  on  the  records  of  the  Magnesium  indictments  by  a  well 
known  New  York  law  firm  which  came  forward  as  Farben's  legal 
representative  in  those  cases. 

The  local  address  of  the  chief  villain  still  being  an  official  mys- 
tery, and  the  General  Aniline-General  Dyestuff  properties  firmly 
in  the  custody  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  after  being  alleg- 
edly deloused  of  all  Farben  taint,  a  strange  conflict  inside  the 
Government  got  under  way  with  reports  of  urgent  pleas  from  the 
Custodian's  office  that  the  cases  be  abandoned.  (In  which  event 
the  basic  contracts  with  I.G.  Farben  would  remain  in  effect,  and 
a  resumption  of  those  ties  after  the  war  would  be  expedited. ) 

In  one  of  these  cases  a  demurrer  was  filed  in  the  names  of  Farben 
itself  and  its  two  subsidiaries  and  several  officers,  including  the 
celebrated  overseas  Schmitz  brother  team,  Hermann  and  Dietrich. 
This  demurrer  presented  the  topsy-turvy  spectacle  of  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian  of  the  United  States,  who  now  controlled 
General  Aniline,  asking  the  Court  to  throw  out  as  false,  prepos- 
terous and  unwarranted,  indictments  which  had  been  handed 


TREASON'S    PEACE  337 

down  by  a  Grand  Jury  at  the  request  of  the  Attorney  General 
of  the  United  States. 

Claims  were  made  that  the  relationship  of  Farben  and  General 
Aniline  being  that  of  parent  and  offspring,  it  was  silly  to  allege 
that  they  conspired  by  merely  being  nice  to  each  other.  One  of 
those  who  filed  this  demurrer  was  the  same  Dietrich  A.  Schmitz, 
who  back  in  1938  gave  his  solemn  oath  before  the  Securities  and 
Exchange  Commission  that  he  did  not  know  who  owned  General 
Aniline  (then  American  I.G.).  Evidently  Dietrich,  by  1944,  had 
discovered  the  surprising  fact  that  its  parent  was  big  brother 
Harmann's  I.G.  Farben. 

The  attorneys  representing  the  Alien  Property  Custodian's  man- 
agement of  General  Aniline  and  Dietrich  Schmitz  had  still  an- 
other reason  why  the  case  should  be  tossed  into  the  wastebasket, 
arguing  that  it  could  not  be  against  public  policy  for  Farben  to 
keep  foreign  chemicals  out  of  the  United  States  by  private  ar- 
rangement, because  Congress  did  the  same  thing  with  the  Tariff 
Act. 

These  arguments  were  successfully  met  by  Herbert  A.  Berman, 
Chief  of  the  Patents  and  Cartel  Section  of  the  Anti-Trust  Division, 
whose  brilliant  handling  of  such  work  was  recognized  as  one  of 
the  bright  spots  in  the  Justice  Department,  until  he  finally  resigned 
in  disgust  early  in  1946.  The  Court  threw  out  this  demurrer  on 
November  6,  1944,  and  a  few  days  later  in  another  branch  of 
the  same  court  all  three  of  the  indictments  against  D.  A.  Schmitz 
were  dismissed.  (As  already  discussed  in  Chapter  v. ) 

So  these  three  cases,  in  some  respects  the  most  important  in- 
volving Farben  and  its  huge  American  false  fronts,  remained  un- 
tried while  the  war  went  on— so  as  not  to  interfere  with  its  conduct 
and,  a  year  after  the  war  was  over,  were  still  untried— because  one 
branch  of  the  Government  did  not  want  another  branch  to  en- 
force the  law.  If  Farben's  Schmitz,  looking  ahead  before  the  war 
had  planned  it  this  way,  could  he  have  done  it  better? 

Another  indictment  accusing  General  Aniline  and  General  Dye- 
stuff  of  conspiracy  in  the  dye  industry  was  filed  in  the  New  Jersey 
District  Court  on  May  14, 1942;  but  in  this  instance  Farben  (local 
address  still, unknown )  was  named  only  as  a  co-conspirator.  Those 
indicted  included  duPont;  Allied  Chemical  and  Dye;  and  Ameri- 


338  TREASON'S   PEACE 

can  Cyanamid;  also  Farben  affiliates  the  American  Ciba,  Sandoz 
and  Geigy.  Some  twenty  officers  of  the  corporate  defendants, 
including  Ernest  K.  Halbach  and  two  of  his  Farben  pals  were 
also  indicted  in  this  case. 

The  alleged  conspiracy  included  world-wide  restrictions  in  the 
manufacture,  distribution,  import  and  export  of  dyestuffs,  stem- 
ming out  of  the  international  cartel  set-up  in  1928  in  which  co- 
conspirator  Farben  was  the  dominant  influence.  A  long  list  of 
other  co-conspirators  included  the  Swiss  Ciba,  Sandoz,  and  Geigy 
companies  with  Cincinnati  Chemical  Works,  their  jointly  owned 
American  concern;  Imperial  Chemical  Industries  and  its  Canadian 
subsidiary;  the  French  Kuhlmann;  Japan's  Mitsui;  and  duPont- 
I.  C.  I.  branches  in  Brazil  and  the  Argentine.  In  this  case  antitrust 
spread  its  largest  net  and  landed  speckled  fish  of  many  varieties 
and  many  nations.  All  had  been  gathered  in  Farben's  net  of  the 
world's  dye  industry. 

When  Secretary  of  War  Stimson  and  Attorney  General  Biddle 
agreed  to  postpone  the  trial  until  it  would  not  interfere  with  war 
production,  one  Justice  Department  official  was  quoted  as  saying 
sourly,  "First  they  hurt  the  war  effort  by  their  restrictive  prac- 
tices, and  then  if  caught  they  use  the  war  effort  as  an  excuse  to 
avoid  prosecution."  A  tug  of  war  went  on  under  cover  whether 
to  compromise,  dismiss  or  forget  this  case.  Finally  compromise 
won.  In  April  1946,  after  Tom  Clark  had  become  Attorney  Gen- 
eral, the  indictments  were  completely  dismissed  as  to  eleven  of 
the  defendants,  including  General  DyestufFs  celebrated  Halbach, 
and  were  partially  dismissed  as  to  four  of  the  corporations  and 
eight  of  the  other  individuals  named.  At  the  same  time  pleas  of 
nolo  contender e  (which  is  equivalent  to  guilty)  were  entered  and 
the  Justice  Department  notified  the  court  that  under  these  cir- 
cumstances it  would  not  be  in  the  public  interest  to  stage  a  trial. 
No  decree  was  entered  by  the  court,  so  the  contracts  were  not 
officially  abrogated. 

The  fines  totaled  $111,000  including  four  of  $15,000  to  duPont, 
Allied  Chemical  and  Dye,  General  Aniline,  and  General  Dyestuff. 
For  the  last  two  the  procedure  required  the  transfer  of  a  fictitious 
bookkeeping  item  of  $30,000  from  one  of  Uncle  Sam's  pockets 
which  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  used  to  another  where  the 


TREASON'S   PEACE  339 

Attorney  General's  winnings  are  deposited.  And  Farben's  agents 
who  ran  General  Aniline  and  General  Dyestuff  went  scot  free, 
save  for  the  American-born  Rudolf  Lenz,  General  Dyestuff  vice- 
president,  who  was  clipped  for  $5,000  fine  on  two  counts.  However 
Mr.  Lenz  ( as  revealed  in  Chapter  v )  was  one  of  those  paid  off  for 
his  title  to  General  Dyestuff  stock  in  1945.  He  got  $47,200  for  his 
share,  so  perhaps  this  fine  did  not  make  him  feel  too  badly. 

We  come  now  to  the  long  delayed  action  against  Standard  Oil 
(N.  J.)  regarding  which  numerous  threats  of  indictments  had 
been  heard  prior  to  March  25,  1942,  when  a  criminal  information, 
a  civil  complaint  in  equity,  and  a  consent  decree  were  all  filed 
on  the  same  day  involving  Standard,  six  of  its  subsidiaries  (in  sev- 
eral of  which  Farben  had  an  interest)  and,  in  both  criminal  and 
civil  actions,  three  of  its  executives,  Messrs.  Teagle,  Parish  and 
Howard.  Four  of  Standard's  lesser  officers  were  also  named  in  the 
civil  action. 

The  accusation  in  both  the  criminal  and  civil  complaints  was 
conspiracy  by  Standard,  its  subsidiaries  and  its  officers,  with  I.G. 
Farben  and  others,  in  entering  into  and  consummating  restrictive 
partnership  agreements,  as  were  outlined  in  Chapter  rv.  For  ap- 
pearances' sake  Farben  was  named  as  a  co-conspirator  in  both 
actions.  Not  being  a  defendant  Farben  need  not  consider  itself 
bound  by  these  Court  actions.  For  each  of  the  ten  defendants  in 
the  criminal  actions  there  were  pleas  of  nolo  contendere  and 
a  modest  fine  of  $5,000.  Thus  the  total  payoff  for  the  ten  defendants 
was  a  mere  $50,000  and,  without  admitting  that  the  criminal  acts 
had  been  done  for  which  the  fines  were  paid,  another  nice  set  of 
promises  not  to  so  act  in  the  future  were  listed  in  the  final  judge- 
ment. 

If  the  reader  thinks  that  these  $5,000  bargain-day  penalties  were 
not  commensurate  with  the  offense  charged,  it  may  be  stated  here 
that  just  such  an  opinion  was  held  very  emphatically  by  some 
members  of  the  Justice  Department  who  had  been  sweating  it 
out  in  preparation  of  this  case.  Some  of  them  had  demanded  that 
multiple  criminal  indictments  should  be  sought  with  fines  totaling 
$1,000,000. 

It  was  claimed  as  justification  for  the  Jack  of  punitive  features 
in  the  outcome  of  this  case  that  all  of  the  patents  in  which  Farben 


34O  TREASON'S    PEACE 

was  involved,  including  those  concerning  Buna  rubber,  would  be 
released  by  the  consent  decree  royalty  free  to  all  comers  for  the 
duration  of  the  war  and  six  months  afterward. 

However  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  also  signed  the  consent 
decree,  having  a  few  hours  previously  asserted  the.  Government 
claim  to  all  of  the  Farben  patents,  to  which  Standard  alleged  they 
had  acquired  title  through  various  Farben  contracts,  including 
the  so-called  Hague  agreement.  All  these  agreements  now  were 
declared  by  the  court  to  have  been  unlawful  when  entered  into. 
What  the  Judge's  injunction  did  not  say  was  that  the  decree  was 
an  attempt  to  lock  the  stable  door  long  after  the  horses,  and  the 
harness  and  the  hay,  were  gone. 

Among  the  many  subsections  of  this  consent  decree  were  pro- 
visions regarding  undiminished  rights  of  Standard  to  patents, 
trademarks,  and  shares  of  stock,  which  inhibitions  may  appear 
strangely  gentle  when  it  is  considered  that  the  decree  was  pred- 
icated upon  charges  and  tacit  admissions,  of  criminal  acts  by  the 
defendants. 

Later  the  purposes  or  results  of  some  of  the  ambiguities  in- 
serted in  this  decree  were  to  become  apparent.  The  court  pro- 
ceedings may  appear  to  have  been  neither  punishment,  parole, 
nor  pardon.  Rather  they  resembled  absolution,  or  a  rain  check 
for  a  repeat  performance— after  the  stormy  weather  of  war  should 
end. 

As  an  aftermath  of  this  case,  and  of  the  seizure  by  the  Custodian 
of  some  2,500  Farben  patents  and  Farben  or  jointly-owned  shares 
of  stock,  Standard  began  an  intensive  campaign  of  propaganda 
and  excuses  as  described  elsewhere,  leading  up  to  a  court  action 
in  July  1944,  which  denounced  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  for 
seizing  patents  and  other  property  involved  in  the  Farben  agree- 
ments. 

Taking  advantage  of  the  ambiguities  in  the  consent  decrees 
and  relying  upon  the  transfer  of  title  by  the  so-called  Hague  mem- 
orandum which  Standard's  Dr.  Howard  and  Farben's  Dr.  Ringer 
negotiated  after  the  war  began,  Standard  asserted  that  the  Cus- 
todian was  actually  obligated  to  disgorge  all  the  seized  patents 
and  property. 

This  came  to  trial  without  a  jury  on  May  21,  1945,  in  New  York 


TREASON'S    PEACE  341 

Federal  Court  before  Judge  Charles  E.  Wyzanski,  Jr.,  a  bitterly 
fought  contest  between  aged  John  W.  Davis,  former  presidential 
candidate,  as  attorney  for  Standard,  and  a  very  able  Assistant  to 
the  Attorney  General,  Philip  W.  Amram,  for  the  Government. 

Judge  Wyzanski  dealt  an  almost  fatal  blow  to  the  Custodian's 
defense  at  the  start  of  the  trial  by  holding  in  effect  that  it  did 
not  make  a  mite  of  difference  whether  the  Farben  patent  titles 
had  passed  to  Standard  by  unlawful  contracts.  This  decision,  with 
which  some  may  not  agree,  was  hailed  with  great  relish  by  the 
Standard  officials  and  lawyers  grouped  around  Mr.  Davis. 

However,  Standard  was  not  to  have  things  all  its  own  way. 
Frank  Howard,  by  his  evasive,  forgetful,  and  contradictory  testi- 
mony made  what  appeared  to  be  most  important  contribution  to 
proving  Mr.  Amram's  contention  that  the  so-called  Hague  agree- 
ment was  a  fake  and  a  fraud. 

A  surprise  witness  for  the  Government  added  a  dramatic  touch 
to  the  trial  when  Farben's  director  and  Chief  Counsel,  Dr.  August 
von  Knieriem,  was  flown  overseas  in  custody  in  an  Army  bomber. 
This  Farben  star  witness  on  June  23rd  testified  in  precise  stilted 
English— after  clicking  his  heels,  bowing  to  the  Court,  and  ex- 
plaining that  he  needed  no  translator.  His  testimony  was  in  con- 
flict with  that  of  Standard's  Mr.  Howard. 

Among  the  interesting  documents  identified  by  von  Knieriem 
were  original  letters  taken  from  Farben's  files  at  Frankfurt,  prov- 
ing conclusively  that  Farben  officials  had  been  in  continuous  con- 
tact with  the  Oberkommando  der  Wehrmacht  and  high  officials 
of  the  Nazi  Government  before  and  during  the  signing  of  the 
Hague  agreement.  It  was  evident  from  some  of  this  correspond- 
ence that  the  transfer  of  title  to  Standard,  after  the  war  began, 
was  purely  a  matter  of  expediency  for  the  purpose  of  preventing 
if  possible,  their  seizure  as  enemy  property  when  the  United 
States  became  involved  in  the  war. 

Said  one  letter  written  by  Farben  to  Nazi  Defense  Headquarters 
on  September  16,  1939: 

German  interests  would  not  be  jeopardized  by  the  trans- 
fer   Moreover  we  would  be  able  to  resume  at  any  time 

without  hindrance  the  relationship  existing  now. 


342  TREASON'SPEACE 

Said  another  dated  October  5th. 

By  this  transfer the  patents  in  .German  possession 

will  be  removed  from  possible  enemy  seizure. 

We  consider  it  right  to  transfer  the  patents  to  an  American 
holder  who  is  in  friendly  relations  to  us  and  of  whom  we 
know  that  in  the  future,  as  well,  he  will  cooperate  with  us 
on  a  friendly  basis. 

The  Nazi  Generals  and  Ministers  replied  O.  K.  to  these  naive 
proclamations  of  Farben's  intentions  to  pull  another  fast  one  on 
the  stupid  Yankee  Government— with  the  friendly  cooperation  of 
Standard's  Dr.  Howard  and  his  associates.  "I  do  not  raise  objec- 
tions" wrote  one.  More  careful,  another  Nazi  official  instructed 
Farben  not  to  give  Standard  "inventions  and  experience  data  des- 
ignated as  'secret'  by  the  Wehrmacht."  Such  letters  were  marked 
at  the  top  "Secret"  "To  be  kept under  lock  and  key." 

But  General  Dwight  D.  Eisenhower's  boys  had  rudely  busted 
all  the  locks  and  brought  both  the  letters  and  their  custodian  over 
the  ocean  to  a  Yankee  court  room. 

After  studying  the  voluminous  testimony  and  exhibits,  Judge 
Wyzanski  on  November  7, 1945,  handed  down  a  lengthy  "Findings 
of  Fact  and  Conclusions  of  Law,"  along  with  an  opinion  which, 
so  to  speak,  split  the  Farben  patent  hairs  into  two  groups,  giving 
back  to  Standard  everything  which  they  had  prior  to  the  attack 
upon  Poland  in  1939,  and  permitting  the  Custodian  to  keep  all 
those  which  Standard  had  pretended  to  acquire  at  or  after  the 
Hague  conference  in  September  1939. 

The  so-called  Hague  memo  was  false  and  incomplete. 
Said  the  Court,  "The  falsity  was  of  a  type  to  mislead  public 
authorities." 

Again  he  said: 

The  so-called  Hague  Memorandum  was  neither  an  accu- 
rate summary  of  the  past  dealing nor  a  complete  or 

faithful  representation  of  the  agreements  made  at  the  Hague. 

scrutiny  of  many  documents  and  of  the  oral  testi- 
mony of  Mr.  Howard reveals  that  the  real  agreement 


TREASON'S    PEACE  343 

was subject  however  to  an  obligation  to  reconvey  at 

the  end  of  World  War  II  or  on  demand  of  I.G. 

These  findings  of  the  Court  were  in  decided  conflict  with  Mr. 
Howard's  testimony  that  there  was  no  understanding  "implied 
or  expressed  that  these  patents  would  be  returned  to  Farben  after 
the  war." 

Judge  Wyzanski  in  a  series  of  judicial  reprobations  directed  at 
the  fabrications  in  the  testimony  of  Standard's  star  witness  left 
no  doubt  as  to  what  he  termed  "the  general  impression  as  to  his 
credibility  which  Mr.  Howard  made  upon  the  court." 

Among  the  features  of  Mr.  Howard's  allegations  under  oath  of 
which  the  court  indicated  disapproval  were  the  latter's  findings 
that  the  witness  had  failed  to  keep  copies  of  various  important  let- 
ters, and  notes  of  all  that  was  said  at  the  Hague  conference,  also 
that  Mr.  Howard's  recollection  was  faulty  on  matters  which  the 
Court  believed  he  should  have  recalled  readily. 

This  part  of  the  Findings  of  Fact  may  appear  as  a  painfully 
polite  (it  might  be  termed  Courtly)  way  to  record  the  fact  that 
the  Judge  did  not  believe  Frank  Howard  spoke  the  truth  when 
under  oath. 

Regardless  of  Standard's  motives  in  slipping  its  neck  into  Far- 
ben's  noose  during  the  pre-war  period,  the  record  now  stands 
in  this  decision  that  after  the  war  began  Standard  made  a  fake 
agreement  with  Farben  for  the  safe  keeping  of  Farben's  patents 
and  other  rights,  with  the  purpose  of  returning  said  property  to 
Farben  and  resuming  the  partnership  when  the  war  ended. 

The  decision  evidently  gave  complete  satisfaction  to  neither 
Standard  nor  the  Government,  and  rumors  of  contemplated  ap- 
peals by  both  sides  were  heard,  while  additional  proceedings  were 
required  in  order  to  decide  which  of  the  2,500  patents  should  go 
to  which  party  under  the  decision.  When  legal  hairs  are  split  into 
2,500  pieces,  the  job  of  sorting  them  out  becomes  tedious. 

Another  item,  the  metal  molybdenum,  important  as  an  alloy 
for  steel,  was  brought  into  the  cartel  picture  by  antitrust  blood- 
hounds in  August  1942  with  a  complaint  and  consent  decree  which 
named  the  sales  subsidiaries  of  the  Anaconda  and  Kennecott  Cop- 
per Companies,  Greene  Cananea  Copper,  the  Climax  Molybden- 


344  TREASON'S   PEACE 

um  Co.,  and  Molybdenum  Corp.  of  America,  as  having  conspired 
among  themselves  and  with  others  unnamed  in  foreign  countries, 
to  divide  up  world  markets,  fix  prices  and  quotas  for  this  metal 
or  its  concentrates. 

Among  those  with  whom  the  American  molybdenum  companies 
and  Greene  Cananea  had  international  contracts  were  I.G.  Farben 
and  other  European  concerns,  but  Farben  and  the  others  were 
not  named  in  the  complaint,  nor  in  the  consent  decree  filed  a  few 
days  later.  The  uproar  about  Farben  was  then  at  its  height;  in 
the  Senate  the  Truman  Committee  had  quietly  diverted  its  atten- 
tion to  other  matters,  and  the  squelching  of  Senator  Bone's  investi- 
gation was  being  consummated.  Behind  the  scenes  every  particle 
of  influence  and  pressure  the  Farben  lobby  possessed  was  being 
applied  to  hush  the  talk.  So  it  may  be  that  it  was  feared  that  de- 
fendants might  refuse  to  consent  to  a  consent  decree  without  a 
court  fight  unless  the  name  of  Farben  was  omitted  from  the  rec- 
ord. In  the  decree  the  usual  "we  never  done  it— and  we  will  not 
do  it  again"  was  duly  entered  and  the  curtain  was  rung  down  on 
this  particular  scene  of  the  Farben  comedy  with  only  a  hint  that 
one  of  the  blind  alleys  shown  led  to  the  Big  House  at  Frankfurt. 

During  the  latter  part  of  1942,  unseen  hands  firmly  forced  down 
the  lid  on  further  attacks  on  Farben's  partners.  Senator  Bone  by 
now  had  been  forced  to  call  off  his  fight.  Thurman  Arnold  was 
about  to  quit,  and  the  rapid  succession  of  Farben  indictments  and 
complaints  ceased  for  almost  a  year. 

Then  in  June  1943  antitrust  again  went  into  action  against 
Farben  with  a  lengthy  indictment  of  National  Lead  Company, 
Titan  Company  and  duPont,  along  with  four  of  their  officers,  for 
having  engaged  in  a  world-wide  cartel  conspiracy  with  I.G.  Far- 
ben and  some  twenty  other  foreign  companies  to  restrain  the  pro- 
duction and  distribution  of  titanium  and  titanium  compounds. 
These  pigments  for  the  manufacture  of  paints,  rubber,  glass,  paper 
and  other  articles  are  important  in  peace  and  are  strategic  war 
materials.  National  Lead  and  a  co-conspirator,  Titan  Co.  A/S  of 
Norway,  were  accused  of  having  started  the  conspiracy  as  far 
back  as  1920,  and  the  others  of  joining  in  it  from  time  to  time 
since  that  year.  I.G.  Farben  entered  the  cartel  in  1927,  with  con- 
trol of  most  of  Europe,  also  of  Japan  and  China.  Imperial  Chem- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  545 

ical  Industries,  and  Canadian  Industries,  the  latter  jointly  owned 
by  I.  C.  I.  and  duPont,  were  among  the  co-conspirators. 

Trial  of  this  indictment  being  postponed  for  the  duration  (and 
not  having  occurred  as  this  is  written),  a  civil  complaint,  which 
called  for  neither  fine  nor  imprisonment  was  filed,  on  June  24, 1944, 
covering  the  same  titanium  cartel  conspiracy  and  the  same  de- 
fendants and  co-conspirators  that  were  listed  in  the  criminal  case, 
including  Farben. 

After  trial  of  this  civil  complaint  without  a  jury,  Judge  Simon 
H.  Rifkind's  decision  found  National  Lead  and  duPont  guilty 
of  conspiracy  with  I.G.  Farben  and  others.  However,  the  final 
decree  in  this  case  was  criticized  rather  caustically  by  the  Anti- 
trust Division  in  an  appeal  to  the  higher  court.  In  effect,  the  appeal 
complained  that  even  though  Judge  Rifkind  found  the  defendants 
guilty,  the  punishment  or  remedy  as  proposed  was  insufficient. 
The  defendants  also  appealed. ' 

One  of  the  law  firm  of  Cravath,  Swaine  and  Moore  representing 
duPont  proposed  to  Judge  Rifkind  that  it  could  not  be  a  lawful 
function  of  the  courts  to  rule  that  an  American  company  should 
renounce  the  advantages  which  had  been  gained  by  its  competi- 
tors through  membership  in  an  international  cartel.  The  Court 
squelched  this  impudent  suggestion  that  duPont  should  not  be 
penalized,  with  the  comment  that  "perhaps  the  answer  is  that 
duPont  having  discovered  the  conspiracy  should  have  asked  the 
Attorney  General  to  break  it  up." 

Thus  Judge  Rifkind  gave  an  apt  answer  to  the  alibi  that  so 
many  poor  innocent  American  industrial  leaders  were  really  com- 
pelled to  join  Farben's  cartels— and  thus  help  Farben  hamstring 
our  war  industries. 

Another  cartel  civil  complaint  on  January  6,  1944,  involved 
duPont,  Imperial  Chemical  Industries  of  England  and  New  York, 
and  duPont-controlled  Remington  Arms,  as  defendants,  along 
with  five  of  their  executives.  Named  as  co-conspirators  were  two 
German  makers  of  explosives  controlled  by  Farben,  and  other 
companies  jointly  owned  by  duPont  and  I.  C.  I.  in  Canada  and 
Latin  America.  Farben  also  had  an  interest  in  some  of  the  latter. 

While  this  complaint  was  mainly  directed  at  cartel  agreements 
covering  explosives,  as  described  in  Chapter  rv,  it  also  covered 


346  TREASON'S    PEACE 

the  widest  range  of  chemical  products  of  any  of  the  preceding 
anti-trust  actions  in  a  series  of  comprehensive  tie-ups  between 
duPont  and  I.  C.  I.  In  substance  the  complaint  alleged  that  the 
program  of  I.  C.  I.  and  duPont  enabled  the  former  to  enter  into 
numerous  agreements  with  European  chemical  manufacturers 
for  world  cartelization  of  the  chemical  industry.  Thus  it  was 
charged  that  a  gigantic  Anglo-American  pool  had  been  formed 
of  the  most  important  chemical  products  for  peace  and  for  war, 
from  acids  to  alkalis,  from  solvents  to  synthetics  and  were 
tied  together— with  other  lines  stretching  out  from  I.  C.  I.  or 
duPont  to  Farben.  As  this  is  written  the  case  is  still  untried.  Per- 
haps it  never  will  be— or  perhaps  another  consent  decree  will  result. 

Next  to  feel  the  threat  of  court  restraint  for  being  in  a  tie-up 
involving  Farben  were  a  group  of  thirteen  of  the  leading  alkali 
manufacturers  of  the  United  States,  two  export  associations  and 
the  I.  C.  I.  of  England,  also  the  latter's  New  York  subsidiary.  These 
were  named  as  defendants  in  a  civil  action  filed  in  New  York  in 
March  1944  for  allegedly  misusing  the  Webb  Pomerene  Export 
Trade  Act  to  take  part  in  foreign  cartel  alliances.  The  conspiracy, 
it  was  alleged,  unlawfully  divided  up  the  world  markets  for  alka- 
lis. Farben  was  named  as  co-conspirator  (as  usual)  along  with 
Solvay  Process  ( owned  by  Allied  Chemical  and  Dye ) ,  its  Belgium 
namesake  Solvay  et  Cie,"and  the  German-owned  American  Potash 
&  Chemical  Co.,  which  had  been  in  the  hands  of  the  Alien  Prop- 
erty Custodian  since  1942.  This  was  the  first  such  suit  involving 
the  export  act,  'and  the  defendants  made  an  unsuccessful  appeal 
to  the  Supreme  Court  to  have  the  case  dismissed  without  trial. 
Having  failed  to  secure  relief  they  waited  trial.  They  are  still 
waiting. 

Another  civil  complaint  filed  on  May  1,  1944  against  the  Dia- 
mond Match  Company,  six  other  American  match  makers,  and 
three  British,  two  Swedish  and  one  Canadian  companies  who 
were  accused  of  world-wide  cartel  conspiracy  to  restrict  competi- 
tion in  matches.  This  stemmed  out  of  the  original  American  match 
trust  of  1880  and  included  after  World  War  I  a  peace  treaty  with 
Sweden's  notorious  international  swindler  and  suicide,  Ivar  Krue- 


ger. 


International  Match,  a  holding  company,  Krueger's  bankrupt 


TREASON'S    PEACE  347 

company,  Krueger  &  Toll,  and  Krueger  himself,  although  dead 
were  named  as  co-conspirators.  In  this  case  the  dead  were  to 
tell  tales— if  they  would  kindly  wake  up. 

Farben  came  into  this  picture  through  an  arrangement  made  by 
one  of  its  predecessor  companies  for  the  restriction  of  production 
in  the  United  States  of  chlorate  of  potash,  a  very  important  in- 
gredient in  match  making,  and  in  war  munitions. 

American  production  of  this  war  material  had  been  discontinued 
and  the  plants  scrapped  when  World  War  II  began.  This  experi- 
ence precisely  duplicated  the  fix  this  country  was  in  when  German 
imports  of  chlorate  of  potash  were  cut  off  during  World  War  I. 

On  April  9,  1946,  co-conspirator  Ivar  Krueger  not  being  pres- 
ent, a  consent  decree  dissolved  the  cartel  and  also  forbade  sup- 
pression of  what  is  known  as  the  everlasting  match  which  can  be 
struck  thousands  of  times— so  they  say. 

A  year  was  to  pass  before  another  alleged  Farben  anti-trust 
plot  was  hauled  into  Court,  after  mysterious  delays  inside  the 
Government.  On  May  16, 1946,  the  International  Nickel  Company 
of  Canada  and  its  wholly-owned  namesake,  both  located  in  New 
York,  with  three  of  their  officers,  were  named  as  defendants  in  a 
civil  action  accusing  them  of  cartel  price  fixing  alliance  with  Far- 
ben, and  illegitimate  aid  to  German  re-armament. 

Why  action  on  this  alleged  conspiracy  with  Farben  had  been 
delayed  has  not  been  explained  as  a  tight  situation  on  nickel  had 
long  been  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  and  consideration  in- 
side the  Justice  Department.  Perhaps  the  delay  may  have  been 
influenced  by  the  fact  that  among  the  directors  of  International 
Nickel  was  none  other  than  that  celebrated  Republican  statesman 
and  adviser  of  high  Democratic  officials,  John  Foster  Dulles,  of 
the  law  firm  of  Sullivan  and. Cromwell.  This  is  not  to  suggest  that 
Mr.  Dulles  would  have  interceded  for  one  of  his  companies  with 
the  Justice  Department;  rather  it  is  possible  that  someone  inside 
the  Government  may  have  believed  that  it  would  be  poor  taste 
publicly  to  hold  up  to  scorn  a  company  of  which  Mr.  Dulles  was 
a  director— and  I.G.  Farben  a  partner.  It  will  be  interesting  to 
follow  this  case  to  its  conclusion— should  there  ever  be  one. 

The  sixteen  groups  of  prosecutions  summarized  above,  which 
include  thirty  separate  court  cases,  do  not  comprise  all  such  ac- 


348  TREASON'S    PEACE 

tions  which  involve  some  tie  to  Farben.  But  they  are  sufficient 
to  reveal  the  utter  lack  of  appropriate  punishment  which  has  re- 
sulted in  the  belated  efforts  of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  to  utilize  our  anti-trust  laws  for  chastising  Farben  and  its 
associates  for  injuries  done  to  our  national  security. 

Statistics  may  be  unreliable  in  appraising  matters  of  this  kind 
but  it  is  of  interest  that  in  the  fifteen  cases  which  were  based  on 
criminal  indictments  the  penalties  provided  by  statute,  which 
might  have  been  inflicted  on  the  corporate  and  individual  de- 
fendants should  they  have  been  found  guilty,  would  total  almost 
four  million  dollars  in  fines  and,  for  the  corporation  executives 
indicted,  over  four  hundred  years  in  jail. 

What  actually  resulted  were  fines  totaling  $323,000  and  no  jail 
terms  whatever. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  more  fair  to  omit  the  one  criminal  case 
which  resulted  in  acquittal  of  the  defendants;  even  then  the  ^ 
possible  penalties  in  the  other  fourteen  would  be  over  three  and 
one-half  million  dollars  along  with  almost  four  hundred  years  in 
jail. 

In  the  fifteen  civil  actions,  four  were  consent  decrees  which 
followed  fines  imposed  in  criminal  actions;  and  in  eight  others  the 
Government  also  won  complete  or  partial  victories.  But  in  the 
civil  actions  no  penalties  were  possible  under  the  law. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  more  than  half  of  the  criminal  indict- 
ments have  never  been  tried.  And  the  fact  that  so  many  of  them 
have  been  dismissed  without  trial  leads  to  an  inescapable  conclu- 
sion that  either  those  indictments  should  not  have  been  sought 
in  the  first  place— or  else  each  of  them  should  have  been  submitted 
to  a  jury  long  before  this. 

I.G.  Farben,  indicted  five  times,  and  with  its  German  subsidi- 
aries, named  twenty  four  times  as  co-conspirators,  has  never  yet 
been  tried.  However  its  American  subsidiaries  General  Aniline 
and  Film,  and  General  Dyestuff  have  each  pleaded  Nolo  Conten- 
dere,  or  Guilty,  in  at  least  one  criminal  case,  as  have  each  of 
Farben's  leading  American  associates,  including  Allied  Chemical 
&  Dye;  Aluminum  Company  of  America;  American  Cyanamid 
Co.;  duPont;  Standard  Oil;  and  Sterling-Winthrop-Bayer.  The 


TREASON'S   PEACE  349 

fact  remains  that  the  only  criminal  anti-trust  action  involving 
Farben  to  reach  a  jury  resulted  in  a  verdict  of  not  guilty. 

This  much  must  be  said  for  the  small  band  of  junior  attorneys 
in  the  Anti-trust  Division  who  under  the  leadership  of  Herbert 
Berman,  dug  out  the  facts  and  prepared  most  of  these  cases  in- 
volving Farben. 

The  existence  of  most  of  these  Farben  tie-ups  was  not  a  secret, 
as  has  been  shown  elsewhere  in  this  story,  but  it  required  this 
belated  official  recognition  of  their  illegality  and  menace  to  our 
national  defense,  to  awaken  public  indignation  and  provide  the 
facts  on  which  three  Senate  Committees  could  act. 

These  committees,  headed  by  Senators  Truman,  Bone  and  Kil- 
gore,  which  began  their  hearings  in  1941,  1942,  1943,  could  have 
made  very  little  headway  without  the  great  mass  of  evidential 
documents  provided  by  anti-trust,  some  portions  of  which  were 
thus  made  public  before  the  committees  were  choked  off. 

Public  access  to  this  data  appears  as  the  only  tangible  result 
from  the  drag  hunt  so  bravely  started  by  antitrust  when  the  war 
in  Europe  was  getting  under  way. 


CHAPTER        XIX 


Behind  America's  Iron  Curtain 


"CONFIDENTIALLY, 

it  stinks,"  said  Senator  LaFollette.  It  was  April  24,  1942,  more 
than  four  months  after  Pearl  Harbor.  The  Wisconsin  Senator  was< 
expressing  his  opinion  before  the  Senate  Patents  Committee  of 
the  failure  of  the  Justice  Department  to  punish  the  affiliates  of 
I.G.  Farben  who  conspired  to  obstruct  production  of  defense 
materials,  and  its  neglect  to  require  full  disclosures  of  the  know- 
how  of  the  patented  processes  thus  obstructed. 

Thurman  Arnold,  Assistant  Attorney  General,  had  been  making 
a  half-hearted  defense  of  the  consent  decrees  in  the  Standard  and 
Alcoa-Dow  cases,  as  having  been  the  best  which  the  department 
could  obtain  under  the  circumstances. 

However,  it  was  apparent  from  Mr.  Arnold's  testimony  on  this 
occasion,  and  previously  before  the  Truman  Committee,  that  he 
did  not  wish  to  make  public  exactly  what  circumstances,  or  whose 
intercession  had  caused  the  Justice  Department  to  give  in  to  the 
offenders  after  ample  evidence  had  been  uncovered  for  criminal 
prosecution  for  conspiracy  and  interference  with  the  war  effort. 
Mr.  Arnold  admitted  that  he  had  been  faced  with  a  "take  it  or 
35° 


TREASON'SPEACE  35 1 

leave  it"  attitude  in  dealing  with  the  Farben  affiliates  and  that 
when  he  "took  it"  he  agreed  to  fines,  which  he  considered  inade- 
quate punishment,  and  to  terms  in  civil  consent  decrees  which 
he  conceded  did  not  properly  supply  the  know-how  on  the  pat- 
ents which  had  served  as  pass  keys  in  the  illegal  tie-ups  with 
Farben. 

While  Mr.  Arnold  was  before  the  Patents  Committee  he  had 
ample  opportunity  to  reveal  to  the  Senate  and  the  public  the  rea- 
sons, and  the  influence  which  caused  him  to  consent  to  what 
amounted  substantially  to  immunity  for  those  who  had  conspired 
with  Farben  to  obstruct  our  preparations  for  war.  Mr.  Arnold, 
however,  chose  not  to  volunteer  such  information,  and  the  Sena- 
tors who  were  questioning  him  chose  not  to  press  the  questions 
that  would  have  compelled  him  to  do  so.  Senator  LaFollette  con- 
tented himself  with  his  jibe  at  the  odor  of  the  situation,  and  Sen- 
ator Bone  with  comments  that  anyone  who  had  withheld  tech- 
nical knowledge  and  vital  necessities  from  his  country  at  such  a 
time  "was  not  decent"  and  "has  no  business  in  this  country/' 

Mr.  Arnold,  in  testifying  later  before  the  Bone  Committee  and 
elsewhere  made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  he  was  not  in  accord 
with  the  postponement  of  the  other  prosecutions  which  he  had 
instituted  against  Farben  affiliates  in  plastics  and  other  munitions 
industries.  Nevertheless  he  had  meekly  consented  to  them  on  the 
ground  that  it  would  interfere  with  the  pursuance  of  the  war  to 
prosecute  those  accused  of  conspiring  to  obstruct  our  prepara- 
tions for  the  war. 

It  was  not  mere  rumor  in  Washington  that  Thurman  Arnold 
resigned  as  anti-trust  chief  in  March  1943  because  of  dissatisfac- 
tion (honest  rage  might  better  describe  it)  with  what  seems  to 
have  been  pseudo-legal  sabotage  of  his  efforts  to  eradicate  Far- 
ben's  industrial  sabotage  of  this  nation. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  when  the  appointment  was  tendered  him, 
the  chunky  frame  of  the  Assistant  Attorney  General  bounced  un- 
gracefully down  the  steps  of  the  Justice  building,  and  found  dig- 
nified repose  a  few  blocks  away  in  the  U.  S.  Court  of  Appeals 
of  the  District  of  Columbia— where,  as  Mr.  Justice  Arnold,  he 
could  at  least  write  his  own  decisions.  No  obstructions  were  placed 
upon  Mr.  Arnold's  departure.  The  Senate  held  no  hearing  on  the 


352  TREASON'S    PEACE 

confirmation  of  his  appointment.  "My  friends  didn't  require  a 
hearing/'  he  told  me  at  the  time,  "and  my  enemies  were  only  too 
anxious  to  get  me  out  of  the  Justice  Department/' 

Mr.  Arnold  is  honored  for  the  things  that  he  started  out  to  do, 
rather  than  criticized  for  the  things  he  did  not  do;  and  his  ad- 
mirers regret  that  he  did  not  state  in  public  the  conclusions  which 
he  expressed  so  fluently  in  private  about  why  his  efforts  had  failed 
so  dismally  to  put  the  fear  of  God  into  Farben,  and  its  American 
accomplices  behind  bars. 

As  the  reader  may  by  now  have  concluded,  always  it  has  been 
largely  this  official  policy  of  "hush  hush"  that  has  made  Farben's 
subversive  activities  possible.  After  the  war  began  and  revelations 
of  those  activities  began  to  come  out,  it  then  helped  provide  im- 
munity for  the  individuals  involved. 

On  Feb.  11,  1942,  when  these  very  facts  were  tumbling  out, 
when  public  indignation  was  mounting  and  Washington  was 
seething  with  rumor  about  efforts  being  made  to  protect  certain 
individuals  who  were  involved  with  Farben,  the  following  letter 
was  received  by  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives: 

Office  of  the  Attorney  General 

Washington,  D.  C. 
Honorable  Sam  Rayburn, 
The  Speaker, 
House  of  Representatives, 
Washington,  D.  C. 
My  dear  Mr.  Speaker: 

I  desire  to  call  your  attention  to  the  advisability  of  a  law 
to  protect  the  contents  of  secret  or  confidential  Government 
records  and  documents  from  unlawful  disclosure. 

Under  existing  law,  it  is  an  offense  unlawfully  to  conceal, 
remove  or  destroy  any  record,  paper,  or  document  deposited 
with  any  public  officer  of  the  United  States  (U.  S.  Code,  Title 
18,  Sec.  254 ) .  It  is  likewise  an  offense  for  any  person  who  has 
custody  of  any  record  or  document  to  conceal,  remove  or  de- 
stroy it  (U.  S.  Code,  Title  18,  Sec.  235).  There  is  no  prohibi- 
tion, however,  against  furnishing  copies  of  or  divulging  the 
contents  of  secret  or  confidential  files  or  documents.  It  would 


TREASON'S    PEACE  353 

be  advisable  in  the  best  interest  of  the  public  business,  and 
particularly  in  the  interest  of  national  defense  and  internal 
security,  to  make  it  a  criminal  offense  to  disclose  confidential 
Government  information  without  authority  to  do  so. 

Accordingly,  I  recommend  that  enactment  of  legislation 
to  make  it  a  criminal  offense  for  anyone  without  authority 
to  divulge  the  contents  of  secret  or  confidential  Government 
documents. 

A  proposed  bill  to  effectuate  this  purpose  is  enclosed  here- 
with. 

.1  have  been  informed  by  the  Director  of  the  Bureau  of 
the  Budget  that  there  is  no  objection  to  the  presentation  of 
this  proposed  legislation  to  the  Congress. 
Sincerely  yours, 

Francis  Biddle, 

Attorney  General 

Provisions  in  the  proposed  bill  which  Mr.  Biddle's  letter  trans- 
mitted caused  the  Chairman  of  the  Senate  Judiciary  Committee 

to  state  that,  "It  is  more  or  less  a  censorship  bill We  will 

have  hearings." 

Attorney  General  Biddle  appeared  before  a  sub-committee  of 
the  Senate  Committee  on  February  24,  and  denied  that  the  bill 
would  be  a  curb  on  the  freedom  of  the  press,  but  he  conceded 
that  its  censorship  powers  might  be  utilized  by  officials  who  de- 
sired to  escape  criticism  for  their  acts. 

Kenneth  G.  Crawford,  then  Washington  bureau  chief  of  the 
newspaper  PM  and  chairman  of  the  censorship  committee  of 
the  Washington  Newspaper  Guild,  testified  that  the  bill,  if  enacted, 
would  empower  a  bureaucrat  to  stamp  as  "confidential"  docu- 
ments relating  to  a  scandal  in  his  department  and  thus  prevent  all 
publicity. 

On  February  28, 1942, 1  addressed  to  the  Chairman  of  both  the 
Senate  and  House  Judiciary  Committees  a  protest  on  the  bill's 
provisions  and  requested  that  I  be  permitted  to  testify  against  it. 
My  letter  said  in  part: 

There  is  something  very  fishy  about  the  way  this  so-called 
official  war  secrets  bill  has  been  trotted  out  just  at  this  time, 


354  TREASON'S    PEACE 

when  it  is  no  secret  in  Washington  that  those  influences  which 
were  spending  time  and  money  without  limit  to  retard  our 
entrance  into  combat  war  prior  to  Dec.  9,  have  since  then 
merely  gone  underground  with  their  treasonable  efforts  to 
hamstring  our  war  effort  and  to  protect  their  spokesmen  from 
punishment. 

I  suggest  that  your  committee  should  plumb  to  its  muddy 
depths  the  origin  of  this  bill.  When  you  find  out  who  actually 
conceived  the  infant,  and  uncover  who  induced  its  adoption 
by  the  amiable  Mr.  Biddle,  I  suggest  that  you  may  also  un- 
cover certain  subversive  individuals  or  groups  who  still  ap- 
pear able  to  obtain  a  mysterious  immunity  from  investigation 
and  prosecution,  an  immunity  which  constitutes  a  distinct 
menace  to  our  national  unity  and  to  our  national  defense. 

This  bill is  not  merely  an  attack  upon  the  freedom 

of  the  press,  it  is  also  an  attack  upon  the  freedom  of  any 
American  citizen  who  may  hereafter  join  in  a  demand  that 
our  long-delayed  effort  to  preserve  our  future  liberties  must 
be  purged  of  individuals  whose  past  records  prove  them 
unworthy  of  trust  in  this  crisis. 

This  bill,  if  passed,  would  make  it  a  criminal  offense  for 
me  to  offer  to  state  to  your  committee,  under  oath,  my  knowl- 
edge of  corrupt  protection  of  subversive  agencies  from  inside 
government  departments.  This  bill  would  make  it  a  crime 
punishable  by  jail  for  me  to  reveal  the  fact  that  members 
of  Mr.  Biddle's  own  staff  have  already  threatened  to  resign 
because  they  have  been  ordered  to  discontinue  investigation 
of  influential  subversive  individuals,  and  that  some  of  these 
men  have  been  threatened  with  reprisals  because  of  having 
revealed  these  protests. 

It  would  also  attempt  to  make  it  a  crime  for  any  public 
official  to  resign,  and  publicly  protest  because  of  protection 
and  immunity  which  criminal  or  subversive  individuals  may 
be  receiving  while  we  are  engaged  in  war. 

I  trust  that  your  committee  will  permit  me  to  testify  be- 
fore it  to  support  the  above  with  greater  detail.  It  may  be 
obvious  that  the  writer,  a  private  citizen  who  possesses  neither 
political  nor  any  other  kind  of  influence,  may  not  make  such 


TREASON'S    PEACE  355 

statements  as  above  unless  he  is  either  prepared  to  prove 
them  or  to  go  to  jail.  Mr.  Biddle  would  very  properly  order 
me  locked  up  tomorrow  if  what  I  have  said  here  is  either 
untrue  or  unjustified,  or  is  impelled  by  unpatriotic  motives. 

The  chairman  did  not  reply,  but  able  and  upright  Senator 
Warren  R.  Austin  advised  me  that  he  had  added  my  name  to 
the  list  of  witnesses  to  be  called.  In  acknowledging  receipt  of  the 
Senator's  letter  on  March  9,  1943,  I  outlined  the  testimony  I  in- 
tended to  present  if  called  before  the  committee  as: 

A  summary  of  the  numerous  alleged  official  secrets  which  I 

have  encountered  in  recent  years regarding  each  of 

which  I  have  already  demanded  investigation  and  action. 
And  in  each  instance  there  has  been  indicated  a  secret  power 
and  influence  to  provide  official  secrecy  and  immunity. 

Although  many  of  these  cases  involve  what  might  be  termed 
ordinary  crimes  and  criminals,  there  are  certain  of  them  which 
also  involve  subversive  and  fifth-column  activities,  and  in 
nearly  every  instance  the  secret  immunity  granted  is  related 
directly  or  indirectly  to  the  activities  of  individuals  acting  as 
agents,  representatives,  or  attorneys  receiving  compensation 
from,  or  under  direction  of,  either  a  foreign  political  organiza- 
tion or  a  domestic  organization  subsidized  by  a  foreign  cor- 
poration or  government. 

I  suggest  that  there  is  no  use  whatsoever  in  passing  any 
more  laws  about  protecting  official  secrets  for  national  de- 
fense as  long  as  every  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry  who  has  a  friend 
or  an  accomplice  planted  in  some  government  department 
can  walk  in  and  see  what  he  wants,  or  can  phone  and  have 
it  brought  to  his  side  door. 

I  think  that  it  is  a  matter  of  plain  common  sense,  for  our 
urgent  self-protection  in  this  crisis,  that  the  first  thing  the 
Congress  should  do  is  to  identify  and  demand  prosecution  of 
these  official-secret  fixers,  including  the  author  of  the  original 
bill  as  presented.  The  least  that  should  be  done  is  to  run  these 
rats  out  of  the  nation's  capitol,  and  keep  them  out  until  the 
war  is  won. 


356  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Chairman  Hatton  Sumners  of  the  House  Judiciary  Committee 
wrote  me  that  if  hearings  on  the  bill  were  held  I  would  be  advised. 
That  was  the  last  I  heard  about  that  official-secrets  bill;  it  died 
in  Committee  when  the  77th  Congress  ended,  and  was  not  rein- 
troduced  in  the  78th. 

However  its  significance  appears  in  the  source  and  time  of  its 
inception.  The  failure  of  this  bill,  with  its  threat  to  officials  who 
might  talk,  did  not,  however,  end  the  profound  silence  by  Gov- 
ernment officials  on  matters  relating  to  Farben  and  its  affiliates— 
a  silence  which  extended  to  matters  of  public  record. 

In  March  1943,  I  sent  to  the  office  of  Earl  G.  Harrison,  then 
Justice  Department  Commissioner  of  Immigration  and  Naturaliza- 
tion, a  lengthy  list  of  individuals  involved  in  the  activities  of  I.G. 
Farben.  This  list  included  executives  and  employes  of  Sterling, 
Winthrop,  Bayer,  and  Alba,  who  had  been  removed  as  undesirable; 
and  other  American  citizens  who  had  been  indicted  or  kicked  out 
of  General  Aniline,  General  Dyestuff,  Agfa  Ansco,  Magnesium  De- 
velopment, Synthetic  Nitrogen,  Chemnyco  and  other  of  Farben's 
ersatz  American  fronts.  My  request  for  information  about  the  in- 
ternment, de-naturalization  or  deportation  of  these  Farben  stooges 
was  met  with  the  response  that  the  Immigration  and  Naturaliza- 
tion office  was  forbidden  to  discuss  the  subject.  Also,  that  no  copy 
of  the  regulations  on  which  that  refusal  was  based  could  be 
supplied. 

Addressing  Assistant  Attorney  General  Wendell  Berge,  then  in 
charge  of  the  Criminal  Division,  I  requested: 

Which  if  any  of  the  53  individuals  named  on  my  list  have 
ne-naturalization  or  other  court  proceedings  pending,  wlu'ch 
involve  the  revoking  of  their  citizenship? 

Which  if  any  of  those  named  has  been  interned? 

Which  if  any  has  had  any  other  type  of  criminal  pro- 
ceedings instituted  against  them? 

If  no  such  proceedings  are  now  completed  or  pending, 
what  is  the  reason  why  people  who  have  been  engaged  in 
subversive  and  other  criminal  activities  are  not  being  prose- 
cuted? 

Receiving  no  reply  I  wrote  again  asking  why  those  individuals 


TREASON'S   PEACE  357 

on  my  list  who  had  been  involved  in  activities  inimical  to  our 
national  defense  had  not  been  indicted  and  prosecuted  under 
the  conspiracy  statute  for  interfering  with  the  functions  of  the 
government.  My  letter  continued,  in  part,  as  follows: 

I  have  asked  this  question  of  the  Justice  Department  more 
than  once  in  the  past  and  I  have  been  advised  more  than 
once  in  conversations  with  members  of  the  staff  (who  had 
sought  my  assistance  in  this  Farben  mess )  that  they  agreed 
with  me  that  such  prosecutions— for  conspiracy  to  obstruct 
the  functions  of  the  government— offered  the  most  effective 
way  to  proceed  against  certain  individuals  because  it  obvi- 
ated the  necessity  of  utilizing  any  of  the  statutes  relating 
directly  to  subversive  acts 

Why  are  men  of  this  stripe  immune?  Is  it  because  of  their 
political  influence? 

The  only  reply  to  either  of  these  letters  was  advice  that  the 
Assistant  Attorney  General  was  not  permitted  to  reply  to  my 
queries.  The  reasons  for  not  prosecuting  Farben  criminals  were 
"deemed  confidential/' 

The  lack  of  action  under  the  conspiracy  statute  against  two 
decades  of  pre-war  plotting  could  have  been  justified  if  the  anti- 
trust actions  against  Farben's  accomplices  had  resulted  in  heavy 
penalties  of  fine  and  imprisonment.  But  not  one  of  these  offenders 
has  gone  to  jail,  and  many  of  the  most  conspicuous  among  them 
have  been  immunized  from  prosecution  with  the  official  excuse 
that  to  try  them  would  interfere  with  the  prosecution  of  the  war. 

We  may  ponder  how  it  could  have  interfered  with  the  prosecu- 
tion of  the  war  to  lock  up  these  indicted  gentlemen  from  Germany, 
at  least  for  the  duration?  Or  why  such  matters  have  been  none  of 
the  public's  business?  Or  why  not  try  them  after  the  war? 

It  should  be  noted  that  in  numerous  other  cases  naturalized 
German  nationals  of  little  or  no  importance  have  been  rightfully 
stripped  of  citizenship  on  the  circumstantial  evidence  that  they 
must  have  had  mental  reservations  when  they  took  the  oath  of 
allegiance  to  the  United  States— and  then  joined  a  German-Ameri- 
can Bund.  As  compared  with  the  subversive  activities  in  which 
some  of  these  immunized  Farben  gentry  have  taken  part  as  mem- 


358  TREASON'S    PEACE 

bers  of  our*  higher  cartels,  membership  in  some  guttersnipe  Bund 
is  indeed  small  potatoes. 

A  special  War  Policies  Unit  of  the  Justice  Department  took 
over  enforcement  of  the  statute  requiring  the  registration  of 
foreign  agents  when  this  was  transferred  from  the  State  Depart- 
ment in  1942.  Publication  of  lists  of  all  those  registered  as  alien 
agents  was  then  discontinued. 

My  request  for  information  as  to  what  prosecutions  had  been 
instituted  against  agents  of  Farben  or  of  Farben's  affiliates  for 
failing  to  register  brought  the  response  that  no  such  proceedings 
had  ever  been  instituted  against  any  such  Farben  agents. 

I  then  supplied  the  War  Policies  Unit  with  a  list  of  individuals, 
lobbyists,  lawyers  and  law  firms,  which  included  some  of  Farben's 
most  important  agents,  and  requested  advice  as  to  whether  any 
or  all  of  those  named  were  registered  as  agents  of  foreign  princi- 
pals. The  response  indicated  that  the  only  one  of  those  listed  had 
ever  been  registered  as  an  agent  of  I.G.  Farben.  He  was  our  friend 
Rudolf  Ilgner,  the  Farben  employe  who,  as  told  elsewhere,  pleaded 
guilty  in  1941  to  destroying  files  and  records  of  Chemnyco,  Inc., 
and  got  off  with  a  token  fine  of  $1,000  instead  of  a  jail  sentence. 

The  official  reason  given  by  the  Justice  Department  as  to  why 
none  of  the  others  listed  by  me  were  required  to  register  was 
that  their  activities  were  regarded  as  "non-political"  and  confined 
to  "bona  fide  trade  and  commerce."  This  seems  a  rather  strange 
reason  for  not  requiring  the  registration  of  individuals  who  are 
known  to  have  been  involved  in  criminal  conspiracies,  and  in 
subversive  activities  here  and  in  Latin  America— activities  which 
in  some  instances  at  least  the  courts  have  held  did  not  constitute 
bona  fide  trade  and  commerce. 

According  to  House  Majority  Leader,  John  W.  McCormack, 
the  Foreign  Agents  Registration  Act  was  the  most  important 
legislation  of  its  kind  to  pass  in  the  last  fifty  years,  and  was  en- 
acted as  result  of  efforts  of  the  1934  Committee  of  which  Mr. 
McCormack  was  chairman.  This  was  the  committee  that  publicly 
exposed  some  of  the  Farben-Nazi  propaganda  of  super  press  agent 
Ivy  Lee  and  others,  but  locked  and  sealed  other  evidence  secured. 

When,  in  July  1945,  Tom  C.  Clark  succeeded  Francis  Biddle 
as  Attorney  General  it  was  stated  that  the  latter's  antitrust 


TREASON'S    PEACE  359 

policies  would  be  continued  ( which  might  have  meant  more  than 
was  intended).  Later  Mr.  Clark  announced  publicly  that  there 

would  be  "strict  enforcement but  no  witch  hunting,"  and 

following  this  the  new  Attorney  General  was  quoted  as  stating 
that  civil  actions  were  sufficient  in  cases  where  "a  certain  industry 
practice,  operated  openly  for  years,  is  a  violation  of  Sherman  Act 

it  does  not  seem  fair  under  such  circumstances  to  institute 

criminal  prosecutions." 

On  the  basis  of  the  long-standing  history  of  the  Farben  tie-ups 
in  this  country,  and  the  fact  once  denied,  but  now  proven,  that 
most  of  these  illegal  partnerships  were  common  knowledge,  this 
pronouncement  from  the  new  head  of  the  Department  of  Justice 
did  not  offer  much  encouragement  to  those  of  the  staff  who  really 
wanted  to  put  some  of  Farben's  criminal  associates  behind  bars. 
Subsequent  to  these  indications  of  a  soft  post-war  enforcement 
policy,  several  Anti-Trust  resignations,  long  deferred  under  the 
Biddle  regime,  were  handed  in.  What  was  aptly  described  by 
Mr.  Clark  himself  as  a  "political  anti-trust  system"  was  now  in 
order. 

The  hush-hush  policy  on  Farben  and  its  affiliates  has  not  been 
confined  to  the  Justice  Department.  Ominous  when  considered  in 
their  relation  to  events  to  come  are  some  of  the  matters  involving 
the  office  of  The  Alien  Property  Custodian. 

Leo  T.  Crowley,  shortly  after  he  qualified  as  Custodian  in 
March  1942,  informed  the  Senate  Patents  Committee  of  his  inten- 
tion to  seize  all  enemy-owned  patents  which  had  been  assigned  to 
American  holders  when  such  patents  had  placed  restrictions  upon 
American  industries,  and  particularly  those  which  might  impede 
war  production. 

Despite  this  gratifying  declaration,  it  was  not  long  before  mem- 
bers of  the  Custodian's  staff  were  at  loggerheads  with  officials  of 
other  departments  because  of  the  gentle  treatment  of  the  Farben- 
Sterling-General  Aniline- Winthrop-owned  patents.  The  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  announced  his  right  to  define  as  a  foreign  national 
any  person,  even  an  American  citizen,  who  was  found  by  the 
Treasury  to  have  been  acting  directly  or  indirectly  for  the  benefit 
of,  or  under  the  direction  of,  an  enemy  country. 

From  these  two  pronouncements  it  would  appear  that  it  had 


360  TREASON'S    PEACE 

been  the  intention  of  both  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  and  the 
Custodian  to  seize  the  Farben  patents  held  by  such  companies 
as  Sterling,  whose  agreements  were  illegal  conspiracies.  Such  pat- 
ents would  be  seized  under  the  precise  language  of  the  1926 
Supreme  Court  decision  (referred  to  in  Chapter  xvi). 

On  the  basis  of  fact  and  of  law  the  only  explanation  for  the 
refusal  to  seize  the  property  and  patents  of  the  Sterling- Winthrop- 
Bayer-Alba  group  may  well  be  found  in  the  reports  that  certain 
of  Mr.  Crowley's  staff  failed  to  agree  with  their  chief's  policies, 
and  got  away  with  it  while  he  was  otherwise  engaged. 

It  so  happens  that  the  same  member  of  the  Custodian's  staff 
who  first  advised  me  that  there  was  no  intention  to  break  the 
Winthrop-Atabrine  monopoly  also  pronounced  the  fantastic  con- 
clusion that  there  was  no  intention  to  seize  any  property  which 
had  German  ties  or  control  in  cases  where  the  possibility  existed 
that  the  former  owners  might  recover  the  property  by  court 
action  after  the  war  ended. 

Another  member  of  the  Custodian's  staff  when  asked  what 
pledge  of  continued  American  ownership  was  being  exacted  from 
those  to  whom  seized  properties  were  sold,  replied  by  asking  what 
was  the  use  of  such  a  pledge  in  view  of  the  fact  that  after  the 
war  was  over  the  Germans  could  come  over  again  and  buy  back 
any  property  they  had  a  mind  to.  (Just  as  they  did  after  World 
War  I.) 

Later  it  developed  that  the  Custodian's  office  had  not  adopted 
the  rules  for  the  sale  of  seized  properties  that  were  in  effect  in 
the  first  World  War,  and  which  required  a  very  real  pledge  of 
permanent  American  control  with  penalties  for  violation.  So  it 
seemed  that  in  this  war,  properties  controlled  by  Farben  or  by 
Farben's  allies  need  not  always  be  seized,  and  if  seized  and  later 
sold,  all  such  foolishness  as  pledges  of  permanent  American  control 
might  be  dispensed  with. 

The  rules  finally  adopted  when  sales  of  seized  property  got 
under  way,  required  the  purchaser  to  state  that  he  was  an  Ameri- 
can citizen  or  a  foreign  national  who  had  complied  with  all  regu- 
lations; also  that  no  one  ever  connected  with  the  office  of  Alien 
Property  Custodian  had  any  interest  in  the  bid,  and  that  no 
agreement  with  respect  to  the  purchase  had  been  made  with  an 


TREASON'S    PEACE  361 

undisclosed  principal  or  with  anyone  on  the  Government's 
blacklist. 

On  April,  1945,  these  regulations  were  apparently  waived  when 
the  Alien  Property  Custodian  sold  the  Farben-General  Aniline- 
owned  50  percent  of  Winthrop  Chemical  for  some  $9,500,000  to 
Sterling,  of  which  company  Earl  McCHntock,  a  former  attorney 
in  the  office  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  in  the  first  World 
War,  was  a  director  and  vice-president. 

Sterling  was  required  to  deposit  the  purchased  Winthrop  stock 
with  the  Custodian  in  a  ten-year  voting  trust  to  ensure  that  until 
1955  it  would  not  get  back  into  Farben's  clutches,  as  the  Bayer 
Company  did  after  World  War  I  despite  Sterling's  promise  not  to 
permit  this.  Unless  of  course  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  should 
decide  to  release  the  voting  trust— or  Farben's  Swiss  I.G.  Chemie 
should  upset  the  whole  apple  cart  by  getting  back  title  to  General 
Aniline  through  a  phony  act  of  Congress  or  a  phony  judicial 
decision. 

Great  uncertainty  has  been  manifest  as  to  the  administration 
and  ultimate  disposition  by  the  Custodian's  office  of  the  General 
Aniline  and  Film  Corp.  after  that  very  valuable  property  was 
taken  over  from  the  Treasury  by  Mr.  Crowley  in  March,  1942. 

Little  official  information  was  forthcoming  about  the  affairs 
of  the  company  save  that  the  Custodian's  office  was  operating  it 
as  trustee  for  the  foreign-held  (Farben)  shares,  to  which  the 
Custodian  had  taken  title. 

However,  early  in  1943  reports  appeared  in  the  press  that  an- 
other new  board  of  directors  for  General  Aniline  was  to  be  ap- 
pointed, several  of  them  being  directors  or  business  affiliates  of 
Standard  Gas  &  Electric  Co.,  of  which  Mr.  Crowley,  in  his  spare 
time,  was  the  $50,000  (or  was  it  $75,000?)  a  year  president  and 
chairman.  Then  came  an  announcement  that  the  Custodian  pro- 
posed to  sell  at  public  auction  some  of  the  more  important  prop- 
erties seized,  including  General  Aniline.  This  was  followed  by  a 
statement  that  the  announcement  had  been  an  unfortunate  error. 

Finally  a  new  board  for  General  Aniline  was  appointed,  mainly 
of  men  having  no  experience  in  the  dyestuff,  photographic,  or  other 
chemical  industries. 

Tom  Stokes,  in  the  Scripps-Howard  newspapers,  took  his  usual 


362  TREASON'S   PEACE 

jab  at  the  situation  with  the  remark  that  Mr.  Crowley  was  a  triple- 
job  man  with  two  government  titles  and  one  in  private  industry. 
Stokes  then  added— a  hasty  reminder  of  what  happened  during  the 
Harding  Administration: 

The  office  of  Alien  Property  Custodian  is  considered  here 
to  be  extremely  important.  This  same  office  was  investigated 
after  the  first  World  War  with  some  unpleasant  results. 

In  July,  1943,  when  Mr.  Crowley  received  a  fourth  job  as  head 
of  the  Office  of  Economic  Warfare,  replacing  Vice-President  Wal- 
lace, it  was  reported  that  he  would  take  a  leave  of  absence  from 
his  public-utility  presidency,  but  for  the  time  being  would  retain 
his  other  government  titles.  However,  he  still  held  on  to  his 
Standard  Gas  jobs  and  salary. 

It  appears  a  proper  comment  to  make  that  in  the  Custodian's 
office,  as  in  other  agencies  dealing  with  Farben  and  its  affiliates, 
there  existed  a  vaguely  defined  line-up— of  those  who  wanted  to  be 
gentle  with  Farben  and  with  Farben's  friends  as  opposed  to  those 
who  wanted  to  turn  on  the  heat.  And  between  those  two  extremes 
the  play-safe  brigade  moved  whichever  way  the  wind  blew. 

Regardless  of  the  power  of  the  lobby  in  peacetime,  it  is  almost 
unbelievable  that  such  a  condition  could  exist  when  the  United 
States  was  actually  at  war.  On  the  record,  however,  nothing  re- 
lating to  Farben  is  unbelievable. 

In  March  1944,  when  Mr.  Crowley  stepped  out  as  Alien  Property 
Custodian  to  devote  more  time  to  his  expanding  duties  as  the 
President's  Foreign  Economic  Administrator,  and  his  assistant,  one 
James  E.  Markham,  who  was  also  a  salaried  director  of  Standard 
Gas  &  Electric,  stepped  in  to  succeed  him  as  Custodian,  it  was 
reported  on  reliable  authority  that  another  man  who  was  recog- 
nized as  much  better  qualified  through  long  experience  had  actu- 
ally been  decided  upon  to  succeed  Mr.  Crowley  until  outside 
intervention  at  the  White  House  caused  the  appointment  of 
Mr.  Markham. 

The  situation  regarding  General  Aniline  and  General  DyestuflFs 
continued  with  conflicting  reports  that  they  would  or  would  not 
be  sold,  and  with  no  change  in  what  might  be  termed  the  strange 


TREASON'S    PEACE  363 

clemency  toward  former  important  employes  under  the  Farben 
regime. 

Not  only  Mr.  Halbach,  as  previously  mentioned,  remained  on 
the  payroll  of  General  Dyestuffs  at  a  very  fancy  annual  stipend, 
but  two  of  the  others  who  recovered  sizable  sums  for  their  stock 
in  General  Dyestuffs  were  still  listed  in  the  Directory  of  Direc- 
tors for  1944  as  executives:  R.  Lenz,  as  Vice-President,  and  A.  T. 
Wingender,  as  Treasurer. 

These  were  all  among  the  group  described  by  Mr.  Markham 
in  his  December,  1944,  affidavit  before  the  General  Dyestuff  stock 
suits  were  compromised,  as  having  acted  "in  behalf  and  for  the 
benefit  of  I.G.  Farbenindustrie,  a  national  of  an  enemy  country, 
Germany,"  and  as  having  held  that  stock  as  part  of  the  "compli- 
cated  threads  of  a  conspiracy  extending  over  many  years  and 
involving  persons  in  many  different  countries." 

The  Alien  Property  Custodian  seized  more  than  44,000  foreign 
patents,  some  32,000  enemy  owned,  mostly  German.  Licenses, 
free  save  for  a  $15  fee,  were  granted  to  all  comers  on  several  thou- 
sand of  these  patents  but  a  difficulty  about  the  free  grants  was  a 
reservation  by  the  Custodian  of  a  right  to  revoke  any  license— 
which  provision  hardly  encouraged  heavy  investment  to  operate 
under  such  patents. 

However,  the  numerous  General  Aniline  patents,  also  enemy 
owned,  were  not  included  in  the  $15  free  license  offer,  despite 
the  recommendations  of  the  President's  Committee  on  Foreign 
Economic  Policy,  which  was  approved  by  him,  that  these  General 
Aniline  patents  should  be  licensed  like  the  others,  free  to  all  comers. 

Request  made  to  the  Custodian  long  after  the  war  ended  for 
information  about  these  licenses  was  referred  to  General  Aniline; 
whereupon  Mr.  George  W.  Burpee,  its  president  by  designation 
of  the  Custodian,  was  emphatic  in  declining  to  consider  granting 
any  free  licenses  and  his  company  patent  counsel  advised  that 
the  title  to  all  of  these  Farben  patents  might  still  be  clouded  by 
the  claims  of  I.G.  Chemie,  Farben's  Swiss  hideout,  to  ownership 
of  General  Aniline  itself. 

Meanwhile  the  distinguished  patent  attorney,  William  H.  Davis, 
under  retainer  from  General  Aniline,  protested  publicly  that  it 


364  TREASON'S    PEACE 

y 

would  be  most  unwise  to  open  up  these  patents  to  all  comers  be- 
cause that  "futile  method"  had  failed  after  the  last  war  whereas: 

the  situation  would  have  been  quite  different  if  the 

American  patents  had  held  by  a  strong  competitive  organiza- 
tion in  this  country,  able  and  willing  to  enforce  the  German 
patents  against  them. 

This  illogical  thesis  of  Mr.  Davis  disregards  the  historical  fact 
that  after  the  last  war  the  thousands  of  seized  German  dye  trust 
patents  which  were  turned  over  to  Francis  Garvan's  Chemical 
Foundation  for  licensing  to  American  firms  did  not  get  back  into 
German  control,  whereas  those  which  were  sold  to  what  Mr. 
Davis  might  describe  as  "two  strong  competitive  organizations," 
Sterling  and  Grasselli,  and  which  appeared  "able  and  willing  to 
enforce  the  German  patents  against  them,"  did  exactly  the  oppo- 
site. 

As  will  be  recalled,  some  of  these  drug  patents  and  all  of  the 
dye  patents  were  later  handed  over  to  the  partial  or  complete 
ownership  of  General  Aniline-Farben- American  I.G. 

Mr.  Davis  must  have  been  hard  pressed  for  an  argument  when 
he  made  his  plea  for  exclusive  retention  of  the  Farben  patents 
by  General  Aniline,  the  management  of  which  apparently  still 
fears,  or  believes,  that  Farben's  fake  Swiss  title  may  some  day 
restore  Farben's  control  of  this  enemy  property.  In  the  words  of 
the  poet,  whatever  there  is  concealed  in  this  patents  woodpile, 
the  odor  is  suspiciously  like  some  of  those  of  the  1920's  when 
Frank  Garvan  was  being  called  names  for  not  turning  all  of  the 
dye  trust  patents  over  to  one  or  two  strong  organizations— like 
General  Aniline. 

Perhaps  nothing  could  better  illustrate  the  peculiar  attitude 
of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian's  office  than  an  incident  in  1945 
when  request  was  made  to  inspect  some  thirty-seven  claims  which 
had  been  filed  with  the  Custodian  demanding  return  of  various 
items  which  had  been  seized.  These  claims  had  been  listed  merely 
by  number  and  name  of  claimant  in  the  annual  reports  of  the 
Custodian,  and  it  was  stated  in  the  1944  report  that  full  publicity 
was  given  to  all  activities  of  the  "Vested  Property  Claims  Com- 
mittee" by  which  the  justice  of  all  such  claims  was  decided,  and 


TREASON'S   PEACE  365 

that  "the  records  of  the  committee  are  also  open  to  the  public." 

Despite  this,  the  official  secretary  of  the  office  of  the  Custodian 
refused  to  permit  inspection  of  these  records  until  after  vigorous 
protest,  and  even  then  inspection  of  only  one  out  of  the  thirty- 
seven  was  reluctantly  permitted.  The  balance  was  kept  under  lock 
and  key  on  the  mumbo-jumbo  explanation  that  the  attorney  for 
the  Custodian  still  had  them  and  therefore  they  were  not  public 
records. 

The  real  point  of  this  incident  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
substantially  all  of  these  particular  claims  had  been  filed  by  in- 
dividuals or  corporations  who  had  been  either  accused,  convicted 
of  or  who  had  pleaded  guilty  to  violating  the  laws  of  this  country 
in  their  relations  with  I.G.  Farben.  Several  were  convicted  crim- 
inals. 

Press  criticism  of  Mr.  Crowley's  conduct  of  his  various  positions, 
especially  that  of  Alien  Property  Custodian,  appeared  from  time 
to  time.  These  were  usually  based  on  the  conclusion  that  he  held 
too  many  titles,  official  and  private,  and  had  too  many  duties  to 
do  justice  to  all  of  them,  or  that  his  relations  with  Victor  Emanuel 
( to  whom  he  owed  his  large  salary  from  Standard  Gas  and  Elec- 
tric) were  incompatible  with  his  official  duties. 

Perhaps  the  best  way  to  permit  the  reader  to  consider  the  fair- 
ness of  these  criticisms,  and  without  any  reflection  upon  the  good 
faith  and  patriotism  of  Mr.  Crowley,  or  of  Mr.  Emanuel,  would 
be  to  refer  directly  to  the  records  of  the  Securities  and  Exchange 
Commission  of  January  19,  1943  when  that  official  agency  issued 
its  Findings  and  Opinion  that  certain  private  banking  firms  were 
affiliates  of  Standard  Power  and  its  affiliate  Standard  Gas  and 
Electric,  and  therefore  there  could  not  be  the  "arms  length"  trad- 
ing between  them  that  the  Public  Utility  Holding  Company  Act 
required  in  certain  transactions. 

Among  the  firms  involved  in  this  opinion  were  Schroder,  Rocke- 
feller &  Co.,  Inc.,  an  affiliate  of  the  J.  Henry  Schroder  bank  of 
New  York  and  London;  and  Emanuel  &  Co.,  of  New  York,  in 
which  Mr.  Victor  Emanuel  was  a  partner. 

In  a  voluminous  statement  of  the  ramifications  of  control  of 
the  Standard  Companies,  and  of  the  reorganizations  of  Standard 
Gas  under  the  Bankruptcy  Act,  the  Commission  discussed  the— 


366  TREASON'S    PEACE 

" close  relationship  between  Emanuel  and  the  Schroder 

interests"  and  concluded  that  "The  Schroder  interests  in  Lon- 
don and  New  York  have  worked  with  Emanuel  in  acquiring 
and  maintaining  a  dominant  position  in  Standard  affairs." 

The  findings  also  showed  that  Leo  T.  Growley  replaced  Emanuel 
as  Chairman  of  the  Board  of  Standard  Gas  in  1939  when  Emanuel 
became  Chairman  of  its  finance  committee,  also  that  James  G. 
Markham  was  then  elected  a  director  of  Standard  Gas. 

Just  for  good  measure  it  might  be  added  here  that  the  cele- 
brated Cravath  law  firm  appeared  in  the  Securities  and  Exchange 
Commission  case  referred  to  as  counsel  for  one  of  the  banking 
firms  who  were  found  to  be  too  close  for  "arms  length"  dealings 
with  Mr.  Emanuel's  Standard  Gas  and  Electric. 

That  Mr.  Crowley  should  be  obligated  to  Mr.  Emanuel  and 
the  J.  Henry  Schroder  bank  for  the  high  salary  he  received  dur- 
ing his  tenure  of  public  office  (for  which  he  is  said  to  have  refused 
compensation)  may  appear  unusual  and,  insofar  as  is  recalled 
such  a  situation  had  been  seldom,  if  ever,  duplicated  at  Washing- 
ton. 

An  aspect  of  this  which  has  provoked  comment  is  the  fact  that 
the  J.  Henry  Schroder  bank  acted  as  financial  agent  for  the  Nazi 
Government  just  prior  to  the  start  of  the  war  and  also  was  re- 
ported to  be  a  financial  backer  for  one  of  the  firms  in  Farben's 
international  nitrogen  cartel:  also  the  London  Schroder  had  close 
business  and  family  ties  with  the  notorious  General  Kurt  von 
Schroeder,  of  the  Stein  Bank  of  Cologne,  Germany,  that  particular 
member  of  the  Schroeder  clan  having  been  one  of  the  strongest 
financial  links  between  Hitler  and  his  Farben  industrial  backers. 

By  another  coincidence,  Sullivan  &  Cromwell,  the  law  firm  of 
John  Foster  Dulles  (advisor  to  Mr.  Crowley  as  Custodian  and 
Counsel  for  General  Dyestuffs  stock  claimants),  is  also  reported 
to  be  counsel  for  the  Schroder  bank;  and  Allen  W.  Dulles,  brother 
of  John  Foster  and  a  member  of  that  law  firm,  likewise  is  one 
of  the  directors  of  the  J.  Henry  Schroder  bank. 

It  may  be  stated  possibly  in  extenuation  of  Mr.  Crowley's  too 
numerous  duties,  that  he  has  not  been  the  only  man  holding  high 
place  in  official  Washington  who  appears  to  be  under  rather  def- 


PEACE  $67 

inite  obligations  to  Mr.  Victor  Emanuel— while  at  the  same  time 
wielding  very  considerable  official  powers. 

Among  others  reputed  to  be  indebted  to  Mr.  Emanuel  for  vari- 
ous private  directorships  is  the  former  hotel  manager  George 
Edward  Allen  who,  while  drawing  approximately  $50,000  a  year 
from  numerous  corporations  and  acting  as  a  "public  relations 
man"  for  private  interests  had  been  holding  down  various  Gov- 
ernment jobs  including  a  desk  in  the  White  House. 

Mr.  Allen  was  appointed  by  President  Truman  to  be  a  Director 
of  the  Reconstruction  Finance  Corporation  with  the  chairmanship 
in  prospect.  He  was  confirmed  by  the  Senate  on  February  18, 
1946,  after  a  bitter  debate  in  which  Mr.  Allen  was  accused  of 
knowing  nothing  about  banking  by  his  own  testimony,  and  of 
having  been  made  a  director  of  numerous  corporations  through 
his  friend  Victor  Emanuel  and  the  latter's  friend,  Alien  Property 
Custodian  James  Markham. 

These  directorships  included  the  General  Aniline  and  Film 
Corporation  and  the  Hugo  Stinnes  Corporation,  both  controlled 
by  the  Custodian.  Unfavorable  newspaper  criticism  of  some  of 
Mr.  Allen's  activities,  by  PM's  omniscient  I.  F.  Stone,  which  were 
read  into  the  Senate  record  caused  Senator  Bilbo  to  praise  Mr. 
Allen's  family  as  Mississippi's  best,  and  Senator  Scott  Lucas  to 
defend  Mr.  Allen  vigorously.  This  Illinois  statesman  in  1942,  as 
member  of  the  Senate  Patents  committee,  had  voted  to  halt  Sena- 
tor Bone's  investigation  of  the  I.G.  Farben  tie-ups,  and  in  1946  he 
was  chairman  of  the  committee  on  contingent  expenses  which 
voted  to  cut  off  the  funds  for  Senator  Kilgore's  investigations  of 
the  conspiracy  to  revive  of  I.G.  Farben. 

Said  Senator  Lucas  in  denouncing  the  critics  of  Mr.  Allen: 

Who  is  going  to  pay  any  attention  to speculation 

as  to  the  influence  which  George  Allen  might  have  upon  some 
one  in  Washington  with  respect  to  I.G.  Farbenindustrie. 

So  Mr.  Allen  then  became  director  of  the  Government's  multi- 
billion  dollar  lending  agency. 

This  is  not  to  imply  that  Victor  Emanuel  or  the  Schroders 
wielded  improper  influence  upon  any  Government  official. 

Unhappily,  many  leading  financiers  and  industrialists  in  this 


368  TREASON'S    PEACE 

country,  patriotic  and  wise  according  to  their  lights,  who  have  not 
been  directly  involved  with  Farben,  have  seen  no  wrong  in  the 
part  played  by  Farben  before  and  during  the  war,  or  in  a  revival 
of  Farben's  world  cartel  system  after  the  war.  These  beliefs  and 
this  policy  not  being  the  officially  announced  creed  of  the  United 
States,  it  may  be  regarded  merely  as  a  matter  of  judgment  (sim- 
ilar to  the  issue  raised  by  Justice  Jackson  against  Justice  Black), 
as  to  whether  the  two  men  who,  as  Alien  Property  Custodian, 
have  had  the  direction  of  General  Aniline,  General  Dyestuffs,  and 
other  Farben  properties,  should  be  so  friendly  to  Mr.  Emanuel 
and  the  Schroder  banking  influences.  And  it  may  be  of  no  sig- 
nificance that  Mr.  Emanuel  and  several  of  his  associates  have  been 
appointed  by  them  to  the  Board  of  Directors  of  these  seized  enemy 
properties,  which,  vastly  increased  in  size  and  financial  strength, 
are  still  holding  intact  the  patents  received  from  Farben  and  refuse 
to  throw  them  open  to  all  comers  with  the  excuse  that  the  legal 
ownership  of  General  Aniline  &  Film  is  still  claimed  by  Farben's 
Swiss  I.G.  Chemie.  The  latter  now  disguised  under  the  so  innocent 
name  "Society  of  International  Industrial  and  Commerce  Partici- 
pation." 

Investigation  of  the  conduct  of  the  office  of  the  Alien  Property 
Custodian  under  Mr.  Crowley,  and  under  Mr.  Markham,  has  been 
threatened  more  than  once,  and  in  one  instance  actually  started. 

The  Federal  Deposit  Insurance  Corporation  under  Mr.  Crowley 
also  has  been  criticized  severely,  once  back  in  1942,  when  a  reso- 
lution was  proposed  in  the  House  of  Representatives  to  investigate 
the  F.  D.  I.  C.  because  of  heavy  advances  made  to  bankrupt  banks 
in  Jersey  City,  the  baliwick  of  New  Jersey's  Democratic  Boss. 
Mayor  Hague.  Other  complaints  have  been  registered  because 
Mr.  Crowley's  F.  D.  I.  C.  attempted  to  collect  huge  sums  for 
alleged  liquidating  expenses  from  officers  of  banks  which  had 
paid  off  100  percent  of  the  bank's  obligations  after  having  been 
ordered  closed  for  unexplained  reasons. 

Finally,  in  July  1945,  a  Senatorial  investigation  was  begun  after 
severe  criticism  of  the  handling  of  the  American  Bosch  Company 
by  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  (this  being  a  repetition  of  the 
seizure  of  the  predecessor  of  this  company  during  World  War  I ) . 


TREASON'S    PEACE  369 

A  Senate  sub-committee  conducted  a  fact-finding  expedition  into 
Alien  Property  Custodian  affairs  but  refused  to  make  public  its 
findings  when  request  was  made  to  the  committee  for  same. 

One  important  key  to  the  situation  in  the  Custodian's  office  was 
supplied  in  an  interview  with  members  of  the  staff  in  October 
1942,  when  I  had  been  officially  requested  to  supply  certain  in- 
formation relating  to  Farben.  In  the  hectic  conference  which  fol- 
lowed, I  finally  mentioned  with  some  skepticism  that  part  which 
Mr.  Corcoran  was  reported  to  be  taking  in  the  affairs  of  the  Alien 
Property  Custodian.  This  comment  met  with  an  immediate  chal- 
lenge. However,  other  members  of  the  staff  were  anything  but 
enthusiastic  about  Mr.  Corcoran's  cooperation. 

Meanwhile  the  nearest  approach  to  investigating  the  Farben 
lobby  or  Mr.  Corcoran  developed  late  in  1941,  when  Senator  Carl 
A.  Hatch  introduced  a  bill  to  restrain  former  government  employes 
from  receiving  fees  for  such  lobbying  activities  for  two  years  after 
leaving  office.  This  bill  caused  some  talk— and  died  in  committee. 
The  lobby  did  not  approve. 

Then  came  the  Truman  Committee  lobby  hearings  in  Decem- 
ber 1941  (Chapter  ix)  at  which  Mr.  Corcoran  declined  to  talk 
about  his  Sterling-Farben  activities  and  fees,  and  was  informed 
that  he  would  be  recalled  later  to  tell  the  committee  all  about  it. 
Mr.  Corcoran  was  not  recalled  and  he  did  not  return.  After  a 
number  of  unsuccessful  efforts  to  induce  this  committee  to  permit 
me  to  testify  before  it,  I  sent  its  chief  counsel,  Hugh  A.  Fulton,  in 
April  1943,  a  reminder  of  the  committee's  intention  to  recall  Mr. 
Corcoran,  and  asked  whether  the  reappearance  of  the  Sterling 
consent-decree  expert  had  been  required. 

Mr.  Fulton's  reply  was  a  bit  childish;  he  requested  a  memoran- 
dum on  the  subject  ( I  had  already  sent  the  committee  a  dozen  or 
more  memoranda  and  letters  relating  to  Mr.  Corcoran),  and  also 
made  the  strange  allegation  that: 

The  Committee  does  not  have  the  facilities  for  complying 
with  private  requests,  such  as  yours,  for  analysis  of  material 
in  the  committee  files. 

Conceding  freely  the  great  value  of  work  which  the  Truman 


370  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Committee  and  its  counsel  Mr.  Fulton  may  have  done  on  many 
other  matters  relating  to  the  war,  this  Committee  apparently  lost 
interest  in  the  Farben  tie-ups  in  the  United  States  after  its  par- 
tial expose  of  the  Standard  Oil  arrangements  on  Buna  rubber  and 
other  products.  It  was  Senator  Bone's  Patents  Committee  that 
later  did  attempt  to  explore  all  of  the  Farben  tie-ups— until  halted, 
allegedly  through  the  efforts  of  Mr.  Corcoran. 

In  view  of  Mr.  Fulton's  effort  to  twist  the  plain  meaning  of 
my  letter  and  his  refusal  to  explain  why  Mr.  Corcoran  had  not 
been  required  to  reveal  his  activities  relating  to  the  Farben-Ster- 
ling  drug  tie-ups,  it  may  be  proper  for  me  to  recall  that  Mr.  Ful- 
ton's legal  experience  prior  to  entering  government  service  was 
gained  as  a  junior  attorney  with  the  New  York  and  Washington 
law  firm  of  Cravath,  de  Gersdorff,  Swaine  and  Wood,  now  Cravath, 
Swaine  &  Moore,  which  firm,  and  its  predecessors,  as  discussed 
in  Chapter  xvin  for  many  years  had  been  the  legal  representative 
of  Farben's  German  Hoechst  and  Farben  affiliates  in  America. 

Mr.  Fulton  may  also  recall  that  in  1939,  after  he  had  become 
executive  assistant  to  John  Cahill,  United  States  Attorney  of  New 
York  (who  was  later  attorney  for  Sterling),  when  I  called  upon 
him  to  discover  if  possible  what  his  official  attitude  might  be  with 
regard  to  the  investigation  of  the  drug  industry,  he  made  a  vitu- 
perative attack  upon  a  visitor  whose  assistance  in  those  matters 
had  already  been  solicited  and  acknowledged  by  the  Justice 
Department. 

This  attack  came  after  Mr.  Fulton  had  stated  to  me  that  be- 
cause of  his  former  connection  with  the  Cravath  law  firm  in  cases 
involving  the  drug  industry,  he  would  take  no  part  in  the  official 
investigation  of  that  industry  then  getting  under  way. 

However  the  controversy  about  Tommy  Corcoran's  influence 
with  Mr.  Biddle  and  others  in  the  Justice  Department  was  not 
to  die  completely  because  of  the  refusal  of  the  Truman  Commit- 
tee's counsel  to  act  on  its  Chairman's  earlier  announcement  that 
Mr.  Corcoran  was  to  return  and  explain  things.  The  entire  humili- 
ating record  was  revived  and  considerable  new  light  was  thrown 
upon  it  when  Assistant  Attorney  General  Norman  M.  Littell  began 
airing  his  side  of  his  row  with  Mr.  Biddle  in  December  1944  about 


TREASON'S -PEACE  571 

the  Corcoran  influence.  And  after  Mr.  Biddle  attempted  to  reply 
to  the  Littell  charges,  the  latter  let  loose  a  blast  which  was  so 
strong  that  the  Senate  Committee  on  National  Defense  ( of  which 
Mr.  Fulton  had  been  counsel)  now  headed  by  Senator  James  M. 
Mead,  of  New  York,  refused  to  make  it  public. 

But  on  January  22,  1944,  Republican  Representative  Lawrence 
H.  Smith,  of  Wisconsin,  to  his  everlasting  credit,  courageously 
rose  to  the  occasion  by  inserting  the  Littell  statement  in  the  Con- 
gressional Record,  along  with  his  own  accusations  and  a  resolution 
demanding  an  investigation  of  the  conduct  of  Biddle  as  Attorney 
General  with  special  reference  to  the  influence  exerted  by  Mr. 
Corcoran  in  the  Sterling  case. 

The  Littell  statement  started  with  the  indictment  that  the  set- 
tlement of  the  Sterling  case  "marks  the  lowest  point  in  the  history 
of  the  Department  of  Justice  since  the  Harding  Administration/' 

After  summarizing  the  history  of  Sterling  and  its  subservience 
to  Farben  and  the  Nazi  Government,  also  Sterling's  subversive 
activities  in  Latin  America  (as  discussed  in  Chapter  xm),  Mr. 
Littell  turned  his  guns  on  the  record  of  the  Sterling  case  when 
Mr.  Biddle  became  Acting  Attorney  General  and  traced,  step  by 
step,  the  actions  of  Thomas  Corcoran  in  "defeating  the  indictment 
of  the  companies  and  individuals  involved." 

"Corcoran/*  said  Littell,  "was  engaged  in  a  race  with  time 
to  (1)  stop  the  investigation  before  it  reached  such  a  con- 
clusive stage  and  (2)  get  the  cases  filed  on  a  civil  basis  with 
consent  decrees  merely  restraining  further  violation  of  the 
Anti-Trust  Laws,  and  above  all  things  ( 3 )  prevent  the  pres- 
entation of  the  evidence  to  a  grand  jury/' 

Mr.  Littell  also  stated  that  the  anti-trust  staff  working  on  the 
Sterling  case  were  apprehensive  because  Corcoran  was  in  and 
out  of  the  Justice  Department  and  it  was  also  known  that  he  was 
working  hard  to  secure  Mr.  Biddle's  appointment  as  Attorney 
General  and  "Biddle  was  then  to  urge  Tommy's  appointment  as 
Solicitor  General,  which  he  later  did  but  without  success." 

In  a  time  table  of  events  leading  up  to  its  final  disposition  Mr. 
Littell,  with  his  prestige  and  knowledge  as  recently  one  of  the 


372  TREASON'S    PEACE 

highest  officers  of  the  Justice  Department,  confirmed  in  substance 
and  in  fact  the  statements  and  reports  heard  back  in  1941  ( as  told 
in  Chapter  rx)  about  how  Tommy  Corcoran  rode  rough-shod 
through  the  Department  with  Mr.  Biddle's  approval. 

This  Littell  blast  also  placed  new  light  on  certain  aspects  of 
the  matter,  including  the  hiring  by  Earl  McClintock  and  William 
E.  Weiss,  of  David  Corcoran,  brother  of  Tommy,  to  be  an  execu- 
tive of  Sterling's  subsidiaries  which  handled  Latin- American  busi- 
ness in  the  Farben  partnership.  This  engagement  of  a  brother  of 
the  court  favorite  took  place  in  the  early  1930's  when  Tommy  Cor- 
coran was  the  White  House  piano  player  and  legislative  deviser. 

Other  aspects  of  the  case  which  Mr.  Littell  revealed  were:  that 
Sam  S.  Isseks,  friend  and  classmate  of  Tommy  Corcoran,  was 
moved  mysteriously  into  charge  of  the  Sterling  case  over  the  heads 
of  those  handling  the  investigations,  that  anti-trust  violations 
had  been  clear,  but  far  more  sinister  facts  appeared  on  the  record 
because  Sterling  in  its  subservience  to  Farben  had  in  fact  become 
an  agent  of  Nazi  Germany,  carrying  out  policies  aimed  at  the 
security  of  the  United  States;  that  some  of  the  Justice  staff  be- 
lieved not  only  anti-trust  indictments  were  justified  but  also  in- 
dictments for  criminal  conspiracy  (against  the  Government  of 
the  United  States)  under  Section  88,  Title  18,  providing  fines  of 
$10,000  and  two  years  imprisonment;  that  while  the  battle  was 
going  on  inside  the  Justice  Department  Mr.  Biddle  was  merely 
Acting  Attorney  General,  until  August  24, 1941,  when  his  nomina- 
tion for  the  office  was  announced,  events  then  moving  rapidly  as 
it  thus  became  clear  he  would  have  authority  to  act.  So  on  Sep- 
tember 4th  the  Senate  confirmed  the  appointment  and  the  next 
day  the  notorious  consent  decrees  and  nominal  fines  were  an- 
nounced. And  finally  the  fact  that  in  the  meantime  the  new  At- 
torney General  had  ordered  the  Justice  Department  staff  to  stop 
the  Sterling  investigation  and  mark  the  case  closed  (with  no  in- 
dictments), after  some  thirty  thousand  documents  had  been  as- 
sembled revealing  as  conclusively  as  any  case  in  the  history  of 
the  Justice  Department  the  means  employed  by  Farben,  in  World 
War  II  as  in  World  WTar  I,  to  serve  the  purposes  of  the  German 
Government  in  the  Western  Hemisphere. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  373 

Following  his  timetable,  Mr.  Littell  attacked  Mr.  Biddle's  crude 
attempt  to  defend  his  conduct  at  another  Senate  Committee  meet- 
ing. He  denounced  as  false  several  of  the  Attorney  General's  state- 
ments, especially  an  assertion  that  the  only  conference  Biddle 
had  had  with  Corcoran  was  in  October  1941,  after  the  consent 
decrees  were  filed.  This,  commented  Mr.  Littell,  was  obviously 
untrue,  as  the  pressure  prior  to  September  5,  1941,  because  of  the 
interference  of  Tommy  Corcoran  was  so  great  that  resignations 
were  threatened  within  the  staff  of  the  department. 

As  one  commentator  put  it,  Tommy  Corcoran  hung  his  hat 
in  the  Attorney  General's  office  during  this  period. 

Other  allegations  by  Mr.  Biddle  which  drew  the  fire  of  his 
former  assistant  were  that  Biddle  had  asked  for  maximum  fines 
in  the  Sterling  case  and  that  jail  sentences  were  never  imposed  in 
any  anti-trust  actions. 

The  "maximum  fines"  said  Mr.  Littell,  were  assessed  not  after 
action  of  a  grand  jury  but  upon  an  information  which  "by  no 
means  includes  all  of  the  acts  or  refers  to  all  of  the  evidence  in 
the  Department  of  Justice." 

"And,  furthermore,"  Mr.  Littell  declared,  "Mr.  Biddle's  state- 
ment ( regarding  prison  sentences )  is  untrue"  as  in  some  184  other 
anti-trust  criminal  cases  tried,  786  months  of  prison  had  been 
imposed. 

Mr.  Littell  also  expressed  his  own  opinion,  as  a  prosecutor,  that 
many  other  laws  might  have  been  invoked  against  the  Sterling 
conspirators,  including  those  Federal  Statutes  dealing  with  trad- 
ing with  the  enemy,  espionage,  and  interference  with  our  foreign 
relations,  also  that  actions  under  the  law  requiring  registration 
of  agents  of  foreign  principals  might  have  been  invoked  because 
that  law  affects  any: 

attorney  for.  or  any  other  person,  who  receives  com- 
pensation from,  or  is  under  the  direction  of a  foreign 

business,  a  foreign  political  organization,  or  a  domestic  organ- 
ization subsidized  directly  or  indirectly  in  whole  or  in  part 
by  any  of  the  above. 


374  TREASON'S    PEACE 

A  grand  jury,  said  Mr.  Littell,  might  well  have  reached  the 
conclusion  that  Tommy  Corcoran  as  well  as  executives  of  Sterling 
fitted  into  the  above  definitions  of  terms  prescribed  by  the  Attorney 
General  as  foreign  agents. 

Finally,  Mr.  Littell  dismissed  as  unfounded  allegations  by  the 
Attorney  General  that  the  action  by  the  Justice  Department  had 
purged  Sterling  of  German  influence. 

Taken  all  in  all,  Mr.  Littell's  accusations  were  so  specific  and 
so  forcefully  presented  that  immediate  challenge  and  reply  might 
have  been  expected  from  Mr.  Biddle,  Mr.  Corcoran,  and  Sterling. 
But  no  reply  in  public  was  forthcoming.  Nor  was  reply  ever  made 
to  the  charges  of  Representative  Smith,  which  included  statements 
that  Sterling  supplied  the  Nazi  Government  with  funds  in  1938; 
that  Sterling  had  had  fake  offices  and  secret  hideouts  in  New  York 
and  New  Jersey  where  funds  could  be  diverted  to  pay  for  German 
propaganda  and  Gestapo  agents,  and  that  the  Sterling  officials 
"were  concerned  not  with  the  protection  of  American  interests, 
but  with  advancing  the  interests  of  our  common  enemy/' 

Along  with  the  resolution  introduced  by  Representative  Smith 
was  a  second  demand  along  the  same  lines  which  was  proposed 
by  Representative  Jerry  Voorhis  of  California.  The  latter,  who 
has  earned  a  name  for  himself  similar  to  that  of  the  late  Senator 
Norris  for  sincere,  forthright  action  regardless  of  who  may  be 
involved,  also  introduced  a  resolution  demanding  investigation 
of  the  allegations  of  undue  or  improper  influence  upon  officials 
of  the  Justice  Department  and  the  truth  or  falsity  of  the  charges 
made  by  Mr.  Littell. 

Coming  from  Representative  Voorhis,  who  was  a  strong  sup- 
porter of  the  Roosevelt  Administration,  his  resolution,  to  some, 
appeared  of  even  greater  significance  than  that  of  Republican 
Representative  Smith.  And  Mr.  Voorhis  had  already  paid  tribute 
to  Mr.  Littell  on  November  30,  1944,  and  had  demanded  an  in- 
vestigation of  the  situation  in  an  earlier  speech  in  the  House  at 
the  time  when  Biddle  had  induced  the  President  to  remove  Mr. 
Littell  for  alleged  insubordination,  but  before  the  latter's  counter- 
accusations  had  been  made  public. 

Both  the  Smith  and  the  Voorhis  resolutions  were  referred  to 


TREASON'S    PEACE  375 

the  Rules  Committee,  which  promptly  sat  upon  them,  and,  almost 
a  year  and  a  half  later  was  still  withholding  action  which  would 
permit  the  Congress  to  take  a  vote  on  whether  to  investigate  Mr. 
Riddle,  or  Mr.  Corcoran,  or  the  Sterling  case  settlement. 

One  voice  was  raised  in  public,  feebly,  to  defend  Corcoran  and 
Sterling.  Thurman  Arnold  from  his  dignified  retreat  in  the  Court 
of  Appeals  was  reported  to  have  indicated  publicly  that  his  opin- 
ion as  expressed  in  September  1941,  after  the  Sterling  decrees 
had  been  filed,  remained  unchanged.  This  reference  to  the  weird 
press  release  issued  from  Mr.  Riddle's  office  in  the  name  of  Mr. 
Arnold  on  September  25,  1941,  may  not  appear  to  be  much  of 
a  reply  to  the  Littell  charges,  in  view  of  the  inaccuracies  (noted 
in  Chapter  ix)  in  this  earlier  makeshift  exoneration  issued  over 
the  Arnold  name. 

Aside  from  its  startling  revelations,  the  greater  significance  of 
the  battle  between  Riddle  and  Littell  appears  to  be  in  the  familiar 
pattern;  that  charges  of  so  specific  a  character  could  have  been 
made  during  war-time  on  the  floor  of  the  House  against  one  of 
the  highest  officials  of  the  Government,  involving  collusive  im- 
munity for  those  accused  of  collaboration  with  I.G.  Farben  and 
the  Nazis— and  thereafter,  while  the  war  went  on  into  peace,  the 
charges  remained  hushed,  and  the  immunity  continued. 

During  my  war-period  efforts  to  bring  about  an  investigation 
of  matters  relating  to  I.G.  Farben,  Dr.  J.  R.  Matthews,  celebrated 
researcher  for  the  Dies  Committee  explained  to  me  in  August, 
1942,  that  such  an  undertaking  would  be  difficult  because  the  com- 
mittee had  no  investigators  competent  to  make  such  an  inquiry. 
Furthermore,  Dr.  Matthews,  with  asides  from  R.  E.  Stripling,  the 
Dies  chief  investigator,  lectured  me  on  the  thesis  that  I  should  dis- 
tinguish between  the  commercial  and  political  significance  of  in- 
ternational agreements,  such  as  Standard  Oil  had  with  Farben. 
This  argument  may  well  indicate  the  competency  of  the  Dies  in- 
vestigational  staff. 

Another  example  of  Congressional  war-time  silence  on  matters 
relating  to  Farben  was  the  squelching  in  October  1942,  of  one 
of  the  most  robust  two-fisted  members  of  the  lower  house,  Rep- 
resentative John  M.  Coffee.  Mr.  Coffee,  in  a  fiery  speech,  did  not 


376  TREASON'S    PEACE 

mince  words  in  describing  an  attempted  sabotage  of  the  war  ef- 
fort by  Farben  allies,  but  his  resolution  to  explore  the  matter  was 
then  buried  in  the  trash  basket  of  the  House  Rules  Committee. 

Other  incidents  of  hush  and  immunity  will  be  related,  but  those 
mentioned  should  suffice  to  show  how  soon  the  pattern  of  hidden 
protection  for  Farben's  allies  which  prevailed  during  the  long 
pre-war  years  had  actually  begun  to  reappear,  after  the  brief 
period  of  partial  expose  and  abortive  prosecutions  which  followed 
Pearl  Harbor. 

Perhaps  the  most  disturbing  aspect  of  this  renewed  defiance  of 
the  integrity  of  a  Nation's  war-time  mobilization  was  in  the  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States,  where  no  member  of  either  house,  with 
ample  knowledge  of  these  facts,  was  permitted  to  stand  up  and 
hold  the  floor  in  protest  until  his  colleagues  and  the  Nation  should 
have  been  compelled  to  listen,  and  to  act. 

Even  in  the  Senate,  with  its  unlimited  debate  and  its  high 
powers,  no  such  voice  was  raised. 

This  aspect  of  the  Farben  pattern  has  never  been  described  more 
concisely  than  it  was  in  a  public  address  delivered  by  Supreme 
Court  Justice  Robert  H.  Jackson,  in  June  1941,  shortly  before  he 
retired  as  Attorney  General  of  the  United  States.  Mr.  Jackson 
appealed  for  assistance  to  defeat  what  he  defined  as  the 

pattern  of  a  premilitary  and  nonmilitary  invasion 

of   business,   finance,   labor,  public   opinion   and   political 

organizations alien-directed  and  financed  propaganda 

against  the  policy  of  our  Government at  Congressional 

hearings in  court against  investigational  officials 

and  agencies,  prosecution  policies,  and  law  enforcement  itself. 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  pressure  was  being  brought  to  bear 
upon  members  of  the  Attorney  General's  staff  to  relax  their  ef- 
forts in  several  investigations  and  prosecutions  which  Mr.  Jackson 
had  ordered  into  Farben's  long-standing  illegal  tie-ups  and  sub- 
versive activities  in  the  United  States.  As  Attorney  General,  Mr. 
Jackson  had  given  Thurman  Arnold  the  green  light  to  get  tough 
and  clean  out  the  Farben  framework.  In  view  of  what  occurred 


TREASON'S    PEACE  377 

thereafter,  it  is  unfortunate  that  Mr.  Justice  Jackson  did  not  re- 
main as  Attorney  General  until  the  last  vestige  of  the  Farben  pat- 
tern should  have  been  rooted  out  and  eradicated  in  this  country, 
in  anticipation  of  a  similar  clean-up  by  America's  Prosecutor  Jack- 
son in  Europe. 


CHAPTER        XX 


Plans  for  Peace — In  Time  of  War 


I  .       G  .       F  A  R  B  E  N  , 

unlike  the  governments  and  the  armies  of  Germany,  never  sur- 
renders and  never  dies.  Win,  lose,  or  draw,  the  pattern  of  Farben 
goes  on.  When  the  first  World  War  ended,  Farben  turned  abruptly 
from  the  production  of  munitions  no  longer  needed  by  a  defeated 
army  to  rebuilding  its  international  framework  in  preparation  for 
the  next  attempt  at  world  conquest.  Again,  this  tenacity  of  purpose 
and  flexibility  of  pattern  are  clearly  discernible  in  the  events  which 
developed  so  speedily  in  those  hectic  weeks  following  the  sur- 
render of  Germany  on  May  6,  1945. 

An  important  phase  of  this  pattern  of  eternal  life  and  perpetual 
war  is  found  in  numerous  carry-over  agreements  or  understand- 
ings already  referred  to  between  Farben  and  certain  of  its  affiliates 
in  the  United  States,  all  of  which  provided  for,  or  promised,  re- 
sumption of  pre-war  arrangements  when  the  war  should  end. 

Aside  from  written  agreements  are  the  verbal  understandings 
such  as  that  described  in  Chapter  II  in  the  1914  letter  from  the 
German  Hoechst  to  Herman  Metz: 

Our  entire  relationship  is  really  a  confidential  relationship 

378 


TREASON'S  PEACE  379 

and  it  will  be  and  must,  without  agreements,  so  continue  in 
the  future  as  in  the  past. 

A  similar  relationship  may  be  observed  in  a  report  of  the  duPont 
Foreign  Relations  Department,  dated  February  9, 1940,  in  which 
reference  was  made  to  various  current  agreements  with  Farben 
relating  to  nylon  and  plastics,  and  to  an  arrangement  made  to 
return  to  Farben  certain  funds  advanced  to  purchase  shares  in 
Duperial,  the  duPont-I.  C.  I.  dye  subsidiary  in  South  America. 
The  British  I.  C.  I.  had  objected  to  Farben's  purchase  of  the  shares, 
so  duPont  was  arranging  to  repay  the  money.  The  report  went  on 
to  say: 

The  duPont  Company  informed  I.G..  that  they  intended 
to  use  their  good  offices  after  the  war  to  have  the  I.G.  par- 
ticipation (in  Duperial)  restored. 

Senator  Bone  was  indignant  at  this  and  other  evidence  of  an 
intended  resumption  of  "business  as  usual"  with  Farben  after  the 
war.  Said  the  Senator: 

Everything  that  has  been  revealed  so  far on  the 

relationship  between  these  big  private  outfits  indicates  clear- 
ly that  as  soon  as  this  bloody  war  is  over  the  gentlemen  are 
going  to  get  their  feet  under  the  table  and  restore  their  ante- 
bellum status  as  soon  as  that  can  be  accomplished I  am 

wondering  if  the  high  officials  of  this  government  are  aware 
of  the  fact  that  these  gentlemen,  who  have  parcelled  out  this 
world,  have  intended  to  make  such  adjustments  of  this  prop- 
erty after  the  war.  That  is  a  picture  which  should  be  very 
clearly  presented  to  Congress,  and  Congress  should  have 
something  to  say  about  it.  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  it  will. 

Senator  Bone  was  mistaken.  Congress  had  nothing  to  say  about 
it. 

On  one  other  occasion  before  his  Committee  closed  up  shop, 
Senator  Bone  warned  of  the  future,  saying: 

You  recall  how  we  were  caught  up  after  the  last  war? 
We  took  over  a  lot  of  German  patents  in  the  pharmaceutical 


580  TREASON'S    PEACE 

and  chemical  fields  and  our  business  entrepreneurs  proceeded 

to  fix  things  so  that  they  were  given  back  to  the  Germans 

through  finagling  devices After  this  war,  unless  we  are 

wiser  or  smarter  than  I  think  we  may  be,  we  will  probably 
find  that  the  block  of  patents  that  the  Alien  Property  Custo- 
dian has  will  ultimately  find  their  way  back  into  the  hands 
of  smooth  German  operators,  and  we  will  go  through  this 
same  wretched  process  again,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there 
may  be  a  million  of  our  boys  who  have  paid  the  price  with 
their  blood  and  broken  bodies. 

As  the  events  of  the  war  progressed  favorably,  confusion  in- 
creased at  home  and  a  new  voice  was  raised  in  opposition  to  a 
future  renewal  of  international  cartels  in  general  and  that  of 
Standard  Oil-Farben  in  particular. 

On  July  26,  1943,  Vice-President  Henry  A.  Wallace,  smarting 
at  having  been  removed  as  head  of  the  Board  of  Economic  War- 
fare, delivered  a  political  comeback  speech  in  Detroit  in  which 
he  took  a  slap  at  cartels;  a  few  weeks  later,  in  Chicago,  on  Sep- 
tember 11,  he  became  more  specific,  referring  to  the  "creators  of 
secret  supergovernments." 

Prior  to  the  Chicago  address  the  Vice-President  had  received 
a  mass  of  data  on  the  subject  from  William  Floyd  II,  Chairman 
of  the  Standard  Oil  Minority  Stockholders  Committee.  His  attack 
was  so  specific  that  the  following  day  Standard's  president,  R.  W. 
Gallagher,  replied  defending  his  company's  tie-up  with  Farben 
and  bitterly  criticizing  the  Vice-President  for  the  attack.  In  passing 
Mr.  Gallagher  mentioned  his  own  opposition  to  cartels  and  a  few 
days  later,  Standard's  pugnacious  public  relations  pacifier,  Robert 
T.  Haslam.  permitted  Sylvia  Porter  to  quote  him  in  the  New  York 
Post  that  the  dispute  between  Mr.  Wallace  and  Mr.  Gallagher 
was  all  an  unfortunate  mistake  because  Standard  was  already 
in  agreement  with  the  Vice-President. 

Next,  Assistant  Attorney  General  Wendell  Berge,  now  returned 
to  anti-trust  as  its  chief,  called  Messrs.  Gallagher  and  Wallace 
into  conference  and  it  appeared  that  a  semblance  of  harmony 
was  restored;  both  parties  seemed  to  oppose  international  cartel 
agreements  (with  Farben)  unless  such  agreements  were  to  be 


TREASON'S   PEACE  381 

registered  with  the  State  or  Justice  Department.  This  quaint  res- 
ervation hardly  indicated  much  hope  of  action  which  would  do 
away  with  cartels  as  such  in  the  future,  or  to  eradicate  I.G.  Farben 
and  its  pattern  for  all  time  as  the  primary  essential  for  an  enduring 
peace  in  the  post-war  era.  A  week  later  Mr.  Berge  published  an 
article  in  the  New  York  Times  Magazine  entitled  "Can  We  End 
Monopoly,"  in  which  he  first  admitted  that  for  the  last  forty  years, 
"emotional  promises  to  enforce  the  Sherman  Act"  by  both  political 
parties  resulted  in  elected  officials  who  "with  equal  consistency 
did  nothing  about  it." 

Despite  this  painful  admission,  Mr.  Berge  also  naively  asserted 
that  during  the  present  war  "the  spirit  of  the  anti-trust  laws  has 
not  only  been  preserved,  but  much  of  the  effect  as  well."  Perhaps 
the  new  anti-trust  enforcement  official  was  thinking  of  the  adage, 
"the  spirit  is  willing  but  the  flesh  is  weak." 

Mr.  Berge  also  paid  unconscious  tribute  to  the  official  Farben 
policies  of  hush-hush  and  immunity  by  saying  that: 

The  full  story  of  our  unintentional  industrial  contribution 
to  the  German  war  effort has  not  been  told 

He  finally  concluded  that 

enforcement  of  the  anti-trust  laws is  being  pressed 

as  vigorously  now  as  available  manpower  permits. 

It  was  hardly  an  optimistic  forecast. 

It  may  appear  that  the  outspoken  opposition  of  Henry  Wallace 
to  cartels  in  general  and  to  Farben  in  particular  was  not  the  least 
important  of  the  reasons  which  cost  him  the  renomination  as  Vice- 
President.  The  truth  regarding  President  Roosevelt's  health  was 
even  then  known,  or  at  least  suspected,  by  the  inner  councils  of 
his  party  leaders.  They  chose  his  successor. 

The  foregoing  brings  this  story,  for  a  brief  space,  to  France  and 
North  Africa,  through  which,  when  the  Nazi  doom  became  visible, 
the  leaders  of  I.G.  Farben  established  a  bridgehead  of  escape  to 
a  financial  bomb  shelter  in  Algiers.  It  was  then  reported  that  cer- 
tain Vichy  French  financial  collaborators,  hoping  to  salvage  some 
of  the  Nazi  loot  by  aiding  in  its  concealment,  had  joined  hands 
with  Farben  in  a  'scheme  to  transfer  the  huge  funds  Farben  had 


382  TREASON'S    PEACE 

accumulated  by  absorbing  four  of  the  largest  chemical  and  dye 
industries  in  France,  to  North  African  banks,  where  they  might 
remain  safe  regardless  of  who  won  final  victory  in  Europe. 

The  United  States  appeared  in  this  picture  with  the  landing  of 
its  troops  in  North  Africa  in  October  1942.  Then,  while  thousands 
of  American  youths  were  dying— to  end  what  Farben  had  started 
—there  came  the  disquieting  rumor  that  the  on-the-spot  repre- 
sentative of  the  State  Department  of  the  United  States  was  in 
accord  with  the  obviously  German-inspired  proposal  to  freeze  the 
financial  status  quo  in  North  Africa. 

Here  the  same  old  pattern  reappeared,  hazily  perhaps,  but 
nonetheless  the  outline  of  a  modus  operandi  of  survival— a  bridge- 
head out  of  the  war  zone  of  beaten  Germany  by  which  Farben 
could  emerge  as  a  going  concern,  financially  strong  and  ready  to 
resume  business. 

Meanwhile  there  appeared  on  the  stage  the  obscure  figure  of 
Fritz  Thyssen,  whose  steel  trust  had  been  tied  in  with  Farben 
since  1927.  Thyssen,  in  a  true-confession  story,  "I  Paid  Hitler," 
whined,  repented  his  error,  and  proclaimed  that  the  one  way  to 
insure  the  next  peace  would  be  for  "men  of  good  will"  to  reestab- 
lish the  new  Germany  as  a  corporate  state. 

So  Thyssen  emerged  at  a  propitious  moment  as  a  leader  who 
might  induce  the  thoughtful  citizens  of  the  Fatherland  to  throw 
out  the  vile  Hitler  and  join  hands  with  the  Allies  in  a  plan  which 
would  save  Germany's  industries  and  industrialists,  and  create  a 
reformed  Reich  and  #  peaceful  world. 

After  the  landing  of  the  Allies  in  France  and  as  the  war  speeded 
toward  its  inevitable  end,  discussions  of  how  best  to  handle  a  de- 
feated Germany  centered  around  German 'industry  in  general— 
and  I.G.  Farben  in  particular. 

So  the  struggle  beneath  the  surface  of  official  Washington  con- 
tinued, between  those  who  favored  Farben  survival  and  those 
who  did  not. 

While  the  late  Commander-in-Chief  was  under  stern  compul- 
sion to  devote  time  and  energy  to  global  war,  the  greatest  of  all 
time,  he  was  forced  to  rely  upon  subordinates  and  upon  Congress 
to  defeat  and  destroy  the  pattern  of  Farben.  And  it  may  appear 
that  already  certain  of  those  underlings  and  their  legislative  col- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  383 

leagues  fell  in  step  one  by  one,  and  blindly  took  places  assigned 
to  them  in  the  nooks  and  crannies  of  a  new  Farben  framework  as 
it  was  to  be  revised  to  fit  the  new  peace. 

Let  it  be  said  here,  again,  that  there  is  no  force  which  can  re- 
strain or  turn  such  men  from  folly  save  only  the  lash  of  public  in- 
dignation aroused  by  revelation  of  facts  now  hushed. 

They  are  not  stupid  men  who  reach  through  all  the  barriers  of 
war  or  peace  to  seduce  other  men  who  are  stupid  to  new  betrayals 
—with  specious  arguments  of  a  better,  normal  world,  or  potent 
draughts  of  suggestion,  of  power  to  come.  The  dispute  raged— 
should  professors,  politicians  or  plutocratic  leaders  of  industry 
direct  the  war  and  build  the  peace.  As  to  which  of  these  Farben 
does  not  care.  Its  pattern  has  always  found  places  for  all  three 
and  can  do  so  again. 

For  one  more  moment  go  back— go  back— to  Bayer's  Schweitzer 
telling  Ambassador  von  Bernstorff  in  1916  not  to  worry  about  the 
future  as  it  would  be  easy  to  choose  a  President  with  the  "right 
politics"  to  respond  favorably  to  a  post-war  comeback  of  I.G. 
Dyes  in  the  United  States.  So  does  history  repeat. 

Or  go  back  again,  not  so  far,  to  the  aged  Gerard  still  politically 
powerful,  in  June  1943,  defending  Standard  refusal  to  abolish 
all  ties  with  Farben  because: 

Some  of  those  who  are  thinking  what  is  to  happen  after  the 
war,  are  contemplating  universal  cartels. 

Officially  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  President  Roosevelt  fa- 
vored a  hard  peace  for  Germany  and  the  most  vigorous  handling 
of  Farben.  On  September  8,  1944,  Mr.  Roosevelt  made  this  clear 
in  a  letter  to  Secretary  of  State  Hull,  which  he  made  public  and 
in  which  he  said: 

The  history  of  the  use  of  the  I.G.  Farben  trust  by  the 
Nazi  reads  like  a  detective  story.  Defeat  of  the  Nazi  armies 
will  have  to  be  followed  by  the  eradication  of  those  weapons 
of  economic  warfare 

Prior  to  this  blast  by  the  President  it  was  reported  that  the  soft- 
peace  sentiments  of  certain  members  of  the  European  Advisory 
Commission  had  produced  a  proposed  handbook  of  directions 


384  TREASON'S    PEACE 

for  officers  of  the  Allied  Military  Government  (A.  M.  G.) 
which  so  favored  a  survival  of  the  I.G.  Farben  set-up  that  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury  Henry  Morgenthau,  Jr.  hit  the  ceiling,  pro- 
tested to  the  President  and,  as  a  result,  was  summoned  to  the 
second  Quebec  conference  which  was  held  by  the  President  and 
Prime  Minister  Churchill  in  September  1944. 

The  so-called  Morgenthau  Plan  was  then  revealed,  calling  for 
the  elimination  of  German  chemical  and  metallurgical  industries 
and  the  conversion  of  that  nation  largely  to  an  agricultural  econ- 
omy with  no  peacetime  industries  save  those  which  could  not 
contribute  to  a  future  war. 

Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Churchill  initialed  and  approved  a  mem- 
orandum which  outlined  this  plan  and  which  concluded  with: 

The  program  for  eliminating  the  war-making  industries  in 
the  Ruhr  and  the  Saar  is  looking  forward  to  converting  Ger- 
many into  a  country  primarily  agricultural  and  pastoral  in 
character.  The  Prime  Minister  and  The  President  were  in 
agreement  upon  this  program. 

When  the  Morgenthau  Plan  was  made  public  the  storm  broke 
over  his  head,  and  the  same  barrage  of  epithets  was  aimed  in  his 
direction  that  had  previously  been  hurled  at  England's  leading 
advocate  of  a  hard  peace,  Lord  Vansittart. 

President  Roosevelt  thereupon,  in  December  1944,  through 
United  States  Ambassador  John  G.  Winant  in  London,  outlined  to 
the  Allies  his  demand  for  a  complete  and  ruthless  abolition  of 
German  war  industries,  but  as  this  outline  allowed  for  some  sm> 
vival  of  chemical  industries  for  civilian  requirements,  it  appeared 
less  severe  than  the  Morgenthau  plan. 

At  Yalta,  in  February,  1945,  Mr.  Roosevelt,  with  Churchill  and 
Stalin,  stepped  back  a  bit  more  from  a  program  of  total  elimina- 
tion of  Farben  by  declaring  merely  an  "inflexible  purpose"  to 
"eliminate  or  control  all  German  industry  that  could  be  used  for 
military  production/' 

This  was  to  be  the  last  official  pronouncement  of  policy  on  this 
subject  by  President  Roosevelt.  Those  who  were  closest  to  him 
believed  that  he  never  wavered  from  his  determination  that 


TREASON'S   PEACE  385 

As  for  Germany,  that  tragic  nation we  and  our  Allies 

are  entirely  agreed  that we  shall  not  leave  them  a  single 

element  of  military  power  or  potential  military  power. 

However  in  April,  after  Harry  S.  Truman  became  President, 
there  was  issued  and  then  withheld  from  public  knowledge,  a 
Joint  Chief s-of-StafT  order  (J.  C.  S.  1067)  instructing  General 
Eisenhower  for  the  governing  of  occupied  Germany.  This  order 
required  basic  objectives  "to  the  full  extent  necessary  to  achieve 
the  industrial  disarmament  of  Germany."  It  prohibited  all  re- 
search laboratories  save  those  necessary  to  the  protection  of  the 
public  health,  and  stipulated  abolition  of  all  'laboratories  and 
related  institutions  whose  work  has  been  connected  with  the  build- 
ing of  the  German  War  Machine."  Also  it  forbade  all  research 
that  would  in  any  way  contribute  to  Germany's  future  war  poten- 
tial. 

These  vigorous  directives  were  softened  however  by  a  later 
reference  to  the  "pending  final  Allied  agreement  on  reparation, 
and  on  control  or  elimination  of  German  industries  that  can  be 
used  for  war  production " 

The  Potsdam  Agreement,  arrived  at  in  July  and  August  by 
Prime  Minister  Attlee  of  England,  Marshal  Stalin  of  Russia,  and 
President  Truman,  followed  closely  the  earlier  directives  "to  elim- 
inate Germany's  war  potential"  by  control  and  restriction  of  indus- 
try "to  Germany's  approved  postwar  peacetime  needs"  and  or- 
dered that: 

In  organizing  the  German  economy  primary  emphasis  shall 
be  given  to  the  development  of  agriculture  and  peaceful  do- 
mestic industries. 

On  July  5,  1945,  under  instructions  contained  in  J.  C.  S.  1067, 
the  U.S.  Military  Government  in  Germany  (O.M.G.U.S.)  pro- 
mulgated General  Order  No.  2,  which  directed  seizure  of  Farben 
for  the  purpose  of  making  its  plants  available  for  reparations,  and 
for  destruction  of  all  Farben  arms  or  munitions  of  war  or  of  any 
ingredients  for  same,  which  are  not  generally  used  in  industries 
permitted  in  Germany. 


386  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Special  Order  No.  1,  of  the  same  date,  appointed  a  control  officer 
for  Farben  to  prevent  the  production  by  and  rehabilitation  of 
these  plants  except  as  might  be  specifically  determined  in  accord- 
ance with  objectives  of  United  States. 

However,  within  a  few  weeks  of  the  promulgation  of  this  order 
Brigadier  General  William  H.  Draper,  formerly  of  the  New  York 
banking  house  of  Dillon,  Read  &  Co.  (which  floated  the  thirty 
million  dollar  bond  issue  of  Vereinigte  Stahlwerke,  Fritz  Thyssen's 
Steel  Trust,  in  the  United  States )  was  reported  in  a  published  dis- 
patch from  Berlin  to  have  declared  that  a  considerable  portion 
of  Germany's  pre-war  industry  must  remain  if  Germany  was  to 
survive.  'General  Draper  was  chief  adviser  to  General  Eisenhower 
on  German  industry. 

This  apparent  defiance  of  official  military  orders  appeared 
strange,  but  no  more  so  than  the  address  delivered  by  the  Hon- 
orable John  J.  McCloy  before  the  Academy  of  Political  Science 
in  New  York  City  on  November  8th.  Mr.  McCloy,  who  had  just 
resigned  as  Assistant  Secretary  of  War,  argued  that  Germany 
could  never  be  made  into  an  exclusively  agricultural  or  pastoral 
society.  He  belittled  the  capacity  of  the  enemy's  remaining  in- 
dustrial plants  and  indicated  that  their  plants  should  be  put  to 
work  as  soon  as  possible  to  pay  for  food  that  was  to  be  imported. 
Concluded  Mr.  McCloy,  "For  a  long  time  to  come  there  is  no  justi- 
fiable fear  that  Germany's  war  potential  is  being  rebuilt." 

The  Assistant  Secretary  of  War,  until  1940,  was  a  member  of 
the  law  firm  of  Cravath,  de  Gersdorff,  Swaine  &  Wood,  which  firm 
as  mentioned  in  earlier  Chapters  had  been  representing  I.G.  Far- 
ben or  its  affiliates  in  the  United  States.  It  may  appear  to  be  a 
coincidence  that  Mr.  McCloy  should  have  turned  up  in  the  War 
Department  in  1941,  in  a  position  in  which  he  could  speak  with 
authority  on  such  matters  as  handling  the  destruction  of  that 
mainstay  of  Germany's  war  potential— I.G.  Farben.  The  coinci- 
dence may  also  be  recorded  here  that  other  members  of  the  Crav- 
ath law  firm  also  held  responsible  places  in  the  War  Department, 
including  Alfred  McCormack,  and  Howard  C.  Peterson,  as  assist- 
ants to  the  Secretary.  Another  former  member  of  this  firm,  Col. 
Richard  A.  Wilmer,  was  commissioned  after  the  war  began  and 
had  to  do  with  such  problems. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  387 

One  fact  is  apparent— General  Dwight  D.  Eisenhower  was  def- 
initely not  in  accord  with  those  who  favored  softness.  While  on  a 
visit  to  Washington  on  October  20,  1945,  the  General  publicly 
demanded  the  complete  dissolution  of  I.G.  Farben  in  order  to 
assure  future  world  peace.  That  this  was  his  intention  may  not 
be  doubted.  But  the  General  of  the  Armies  in  Europe,  with  all 
his  powers  as  a  combat  soldier,  did  not  make  policy  and  did  not 
select  many  of  the  men  who  were  sent  to  Germany  by  the  State 
and  War  Departments  and  the  F.  E.  A. 

The  retreat  from  the  official  policy  of  eliminating  I.G.  Farben 
continued  with  a  statement  by  Secretary  of  State  James  F.  Byrnes, 
in  December  1945,  in  which  he  announced  that  German  adminis- 
trative agencies  should  be  set  up  to  control  foreign  trade  and 
industry,  and  that  German  industrial  production  should  be  per- 
mitted to  increase,  and  German  exports  permitted  to  finance  neces- 
sary imports. 

In  August  of  that  same  year  President  Truman  had  been  per- 
suaded to  send  the  well-meaning  former  war  censor,  Byron  Price, 
to  Germany  to  survey  conditions.  Mr.  Price's  report,  while  highly 
informative,  ignored  completely  the  lessons  of  Farben's  quick 
emergency  after  the  first  World  War  by  stating  that 

There  certainly  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  Germany 
can  become,  within  the  f orseeable  future,  sufficiently  strong  to 
permit  diversions  of  production  for  German  war  purposes. 

In  the  Halls  of  Congress,  Senators  and  Representatives  were 
bombarded  by  the  forgive-and-forget  brigade  and  the  advocates 
of  immmediate  restoration  of  German  industry— so  that  the  dear 
little  baby  Nazis  would  not  starve. 

Some  of  this  special  pleading  was  sincere  idealism,  and  some 
of  it  arrant  hypocrisy  all  too  similiar  to  the  brazen  demands  for 
the  restoration  of  the  German  dye  trust  after  the  first  World  War. 
History  repeats. 

One  very  informative  speech,  which  indicated  the  under  cover 
struggle  in  official  circles  on  the  future  of  I.G.  Farben,  was  de- 
livered in  the  Senate  on  January  29,  1946  by  Nebraska's  distin- 
guished funeral  director,  Republican  Senator  Kenneth  S.  Wherry. 
This  mortician-turned-statesman  referred  to  the 


388  TREASON'S   PEACE 

Bitter  rivalry  between  Mr.  Morgenthau's  henchmen  in  the 
Treasury  Department  and  representatives  in  the  War  and 
State  Department as  far  back  as  1942; 

and  stated  that: 

Mr.  Morgenthau  finally  won  his  battle and  forced  the 

incorporation  of  his  plan  into  the  new  infamous  document 

J.  C.  S.  1067  despite  the  repeated  warnings of  Mr. 

Stimson  and  of  many  high  officials  in  the  State  Department. 

Unfortunately,  the  speech  was  received  with  acclaim  by  all  too 
many  members  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States. 

As  illustrative  of  the  non-partisan  pattern  of  all  such  legislative 
propaganda,  Senator  James  Oliver  Eastland,  Democrat  colleague 
of  Bilbo  from  Mississippi,  contributed  a  fine  appeal  to  passion  and 
illogic  on  December  4, 1945,  in  a  lengthy  diatribe  against  Secretary 
Morgenthau  for  wanting  to  eliminate  German  war  industry— and 
at  Russian  soldiers  for,  allegedly,  raping  German  maidens. 

In  associating  these  two  varieties  of  injury  to  the  German  people 
as  a  single  great  humanitarian  issue,  the  Senator  propounded  this 
disingenious  query: 

Why  blur  the  easily  defined  distinction  between  peacetime 

industry  and  wartime  industry? to  de-industrialize 

German  is  not  necessary  to  render  Germans  powerless  again 
to  Wage  war.  We  are  concerned  instead  with  the  great  issue 
of  humanitarianism. 

However,  it  remained  for  that  great  Republican  statesman  from 
Indiana,  the  Honorable  Homer  E.  Capehart,  to  win  the  Senatorial 
humanitarianism  sweepstakes  with  an  outburst  on  February  5, 
1946,  in  which  he  denounced  Mr.  Morgenthau  and  the  advocates 
of  his  plan,  rather  than  the  Nazis,  as  responsible  for  mass  starva- 
tion of  the  German  people  and  the  deliberate  destruction  of  the 
German  state.  Accusing  them  of  "burning  with  an  all-consuming 
determination  to  wreak  their  vengeance,"  the  Senator  stormed  at 
his  colleagues  that  their  "technique  of  hate"  had  earned  for  Mr. 
Morgenthau,  and  Colonel  Bernard  Bernstein,  the  titles  of  "Ameri- 
can Himmlers." 


TREASON'S    PEACE  389 

The  thesis  that  the  eradication  of  Farben's  war  potential  was 
all  wrong  because  people  were  starving  in  Germany  was  also 
found  in  a  November  1945  report  of  a  House  of  Representatives 
Committee  on  post-war  planning,  of  which  another  Mississippi 
statesman,  William  M.  Colmer,  was  chairman.  This  report  stressed 
the  pre-war  dependence  of  other  European  countries  (Farben's 
victims)  on  Germany's  industry.  Ignoring  the  obvious  fact  that 
chemical  and  metallurgical  industries  could  operate  just  as  effi- 
ciently for  peace  if  moved  out  of  Germany  into  adjoining  countries 
where  the  lust  for  world  conquest  does  not  exist,  Representative 
Colmer's  report  naively  proclaimed  that  to  strip  Germany  of  its 
ordinary  industries  would  injure  industrial  production  in  other 
countries  (those  ravaged  by  Germany)  and  also  would  impose 
a  heavy  burden  on  the  United  States  or  widespread  starvation 
and  dangerous  conditions  all  over  Europe. 

Over  the  air  and  in  the  press  the  pleas  to  save  Farben  were 
heard  in  a  great  variety  of  argument.  Among  the  gems  of  radio 
propaganda  against  the  Morgenthau  plan  was  the  conclusion  ex- 
pressed by  Saul  K.  Padover,  biographer  of  emperors  and  former 
college  professor,  who  is  credited  with  effective  work  in  the  Army's 
Psychological  Warfare  Division.  Professor  Padover  in  a  World 
Peaceways  broadcast  on  December  16,  1945,  ended  his  plea  that 
we  must  re-make  the  German  mind  (he  admitted  that  this  would 
take  decades )  with  a  caution  that  there  was  an  element  of  danger 
should  we  punish  I.G.  Farben  or  destroy  its  plants.  "Destroying 
factories  will  achieve  nothing"  concluded  the  Professor. 

Then  he  left  in  a  hurry  to  return  to  his  official  duties  in  Germany. 
Months  later,  after  Professor  Padover  had  re-examined  the 
stealthy  resuscitation  of  the  German  industrial  war  potential  in  the 
guise  of  a  peace-time  economy,  he  changed  his  views.  On  Septem- 
ber 9, 1946  in  the  newspaper  PM  the  Professor  expounded  ably  on 
the  necessity  to  deprive  the  Reich  of  its  industrial  might  in  order, 
as  he  said,  to  turn  it  into  "a  giant  without  weapons,  and  conse- 
quently not  to  be  feared." 

However,  as  will  appear  later,  the  Professor's  recognition  of  the 
menace  of  the  Farben  war  potential  did  not  appear  until  after  our 
Secretary  of  State  had  taken  one  more  step  away  from  the  Roose- 


390  TREASON'S  PEACE 

velt  program  of  destruction  for  all  time  of  the  real  menace  to 
future  peace. 

Meanwhile  Raymond  Moley,  the  kiss-and-tell  hero  of  early  New 
Deal  days  who  had  openly  advocated  a  new  era  of  German  indus- 
trial cartelization  to  be  directed  by  Americans,  broadcast  his  con- 
clusion that  already  the  Morgenthau  plan  was  gone,  and  that  Far- 
ben,  "one  of  the  most  unusual  and  important  organizations  in  the 
world,"  need  not  be  destroyed  as  it  could  be  properly  controlled, 
now  that  Americans  had  taken  over. 

Among  the  columnists,  Dorothy  Thompson,  strangely  changed 
from  her  earlier  attitude,  was  probably  the  most  vociferous  and 
certainly  the  most  hysterical  opponent  of  Franklin  Roosevelt's  an- 
nounced determination  to  eradicate  the  industrial  war  potential 
of  I.G.  Farben. 

As  justifying  her  attacks  on  "de-industrialism,"  as  she  called  it, 
Miss  Thompson  made  the  point  that  "Only  a  limited  number  of 
industrialists  helped  Hitler  in  any  way  to  come  to  power,"  and 
stated  that  her  criticisms  were  based  upon: 

Unswerving  allegiance  to  the  principles  of  democracy,  the 
rarely  practiced  ethics  of  Christendom,  the  long  range  inter- 
ests of  America,  and  an  unflagging  defense  of  humanism. 

Sylvia  Porter,  brilliant  rival  of  Miss  Thompson,  replied  in  her 
column  in  the  New  Yorfc  Post  that  the  fundamental  issue  was  to 
so  direct  Germany's  post-war  economy  that  she  would  never  again 
be  able  to  threaten  world  peace.  Summed  up  Miss  Porter  on  Au- 
gust 6,  1945: 

The  Nazi  party  didn't  make  Hitler.  Germany's  industrial- 
ists made  him  and  made  his  invasion  possible. 

And  Farben's  friends  did  not  have  it  all  their  own  way  in  the 
United  States  Senate.  In  June  1945  a  few  weeks  after  the  sur- 
render, Democratic  Senator  Harley  M.  Kilgore  returned  from  an 
early  postwar  trip  to  occupied  Germany  with  the  announcement 
that  he  had  uncovered  proof  of  the  plot  to  revive  I.G.  Farben  and 
other  German  war  industries,  and  that  German  industrial  leaders 
were  already  preparing  for  the  next  world  war. 

Senator  Kilgore,  made  Chairman  of  the  Sub-Committee  on  War 


TREASON'S    PEACE  391 

Mobilization  of  the  Senate  Military  Affairs  Committee  in  1943, 
had  done  excellent  work  in  uncovering  and  recording  evidence 
of  Farben's  prewar  criminal  conspiracies  in  the  country  and  had 
also  explored  some  aspects  of  the  cartel  problem  in  general. 

In  fact,  Senator  Kilgore  became  the  first  member  of  the  Con- 
gress to  express  written  approval  of  my  own  earlier  efforts  to 
expose  the  influences  which  were  protecting  the  Farben  prewar 
conspiracy  when  he  wrote  me  in  February  1944  that: 

If  Congress  had  only  investigated  this  (Farben)  lobby  in 
1931  as  you  recommended,  we  should  have  had  a  more 
healthy  realism  about  Germany  and  cartels  rather  than  the 
realism  of  war. 

On  June  22, 1945  Senator  Kilgore  called  the  Honorable  Bernard 
M.  Baruch  as  a  witness,  and  the  latter,  to  his  everlasting  credit 
and  to  the  dismay  of  many  of  his  Wall  Street  friends,  delivered  a 
most  devastating  blast  at  Germany's  industrial  war  potential  which, 
he  demanded,  must  be  smashed  for  all  time.  Bluntly  he  described 
Farben's  industrialists: 

War  is  their  chief  business and  always  has  been 

Her  war-making  potential  must  be  eliminated;  many 

of  her  plants  shifted  east  and  west  to  friendly  countries;  all 
other  heavy  industry  destroyed 

The  elder  statesman's  testimony  constituted  a  substantial  ap- 
proval of  Secretary  Morgenthau's  proposals  and  as  such  went  fur- 
ther than  the  Yalta  agreement  of  the  three  heads  of  state.  Over 
and  over  Mr.  Baruch  denounced  the  German  industrial  leaders  as 
equally  guilty  of  murder  as  were  the  Nazis. 

"German  industry  is  a  war  industry,"  he  said.  "You  cannot 
industrialize  Germany  and  keep  her  from  being  a  war  agency." 

Other  witnesses  who  followed  Mr.  Baruch  before  the  Kilgore 
Committee  included  Assistant  Secretary  of  State  William  L.  Clay- 
ton, who  testified  regarding  evidence  uncovered  in  Germany  of 
the  grandiose  plot  engaged  in  by  I.G.  Farben  and  other  war  in- 


392  TREASON'S    PEACE 

dustries  in  concealing  their  capital  assets  and  technicians  in 
"safe  havens,"  as  he  termed  them,  in  foreign  countries  in  order 
to  prepare  for  the  next  war. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  testimony  presented  to  the  commit- 
tee, in  its  significance  as  regards  the  postwar  administrative  policy 
on  I.G.  Farben,  was  a  lengthy  program  outlined  by  Leo  T.  Crow- 
ley  who,  at  the  time,  was  still  wielding  his  great  powers  and  influ- 
ence behind  the  scenes  as  Foreign  Economic  Administrator.  In 
the  outline  of  his  program  of  economic  and  industrial  disarma- 
ment Mr.  Crowley  indulged  in  a  series  of  contradictory  allegations 
and  proposals  which,  facing  both  ways,  would  appear  to  be  merely 
aimless  double-talk  if  it  were  not  for  its  more  serious  aspects.  Mr. 
Crowley's  thesis  at  the  start  very  ably  pointed  out  that: 

It  was  not  the  amount  of  military  material  which  Germany 
was  able  to  save  from  destruction  by  the  Allies  nor  the  hand- 
ful of  military  material  which  Germany  was  able  to  manufac- 
ture   during  the  years  which  immediately  followed  the 

defeat  of  1918 Rather  it  was  the  fact  that  Germany  re- 
tained intact  a  vast  aggregate  of  economic  and  industrial  war 
potential  and  was  able  to  continue  to  experiment,  plan  and 
prosecute  its  development  in  terms  of  future  war  production 

that  was  important "  and  "that  later  enabled  the  German 

nation  to  organize  itself  completely  and  entirely  for  war 

The  above  appears  to  be  an  extremely  well  expressed  recogni- 
tion by  Mr.  Crowley  of  German's  real  war  potential.  However,  in 
concluding,  Mr.  Crowley  openly  advocated  another  era  of  control 
instead  of  eradication,  saying  that  "economic  security  from  future 
German  aggression  must,"  among  other  things,  "recognize  the  dif- 
ferences between  a  powerful  war  economy  and  a  healthy  peace- 
time economy"  and  "be  achieved  by affirmative  industrial 

and  economic  controls  as  a  first  step." 

Among  the  gems  in  this  list  of  "musts"  relating  to  the  control  but 
not  the  elimination  of  Germany's  war  potential  were  requirements 
that  the  control  " be  possessed  of  a  maximum  of  administra- 
tive feasibility  and  simplicity.  Complicated  and  detailed  controls 

may  be  practical  during  the  period  of  occupation Be  simple 

and  understandable  for  the  common  people  of  the  world " 


TREASON'S    PEACE  393 

With  gibberish  of  this  sort  emanating  from  one  of  the  highest 
ranking  administrators  in  Washington,  is  it  any  wonder  that  minor 
O.  M.  G.  officials  who  wanted  to  do  a  job  were  discouraged  and 
ineffective. 

It  is  appropriate  to  recite  here  statements  of  necessity  for  the 
disarmament  of  Germany  which  are  set  forth  in  the  summary  of 
the  final  program  prepared  under  Mr.  Crowley's  direction  and 
made  public  some  months  after  his  statement  before  the  Kilgore 
Committee. 

One  of  these  necessities  is  stated  to  be  that  "The  achievement 
of  security  from  future  German  aggression  should  be  the  primary 
and  controlling  element  in  our  foreign  policy  toward  Germany." 

Another  admits  the  inadequacy  of  any  program  which  merely 
stops  the  direct  production  of  arms  and  munitions  and  states: 

Military  potential  in  a  total  war  is  a  combination  of  mod- 
ern industrial,  scientific,  and  institutional  components  of  such 
a  nature  as  to  make  them  equally  useful  for  war  or  civilian 
productions. 

Having  thus  ably  stated  the  necessity  to  eliminate  completely 
I.G.  Farben  and  its  allied  metallurgical  industries,  the  Crowley 
program  and  its  appendix  in  some  660  closely  printed  pages  of 
figures  and  discussion  then  recommends  the  continued  operations 
of  these  same  industries  with  the  trained  management  and  scien- 
tific research  which  must  accompany  them— all  this  to  be  "con- 
trolled" for  an  indefinite  period.  In  other  words  a  substantial  repeti- 
tion, step  by  step,  of  the  control  of  German  industry  instituted  by 
the  Allies  after  the  first  World  War  which  fumbled  and  foozled 
until  it  was  abandoned,  while  the  men  of  Farben  went  right  along 
with  their  plans  for  the  next  war. 

With  respect  to  Mr.  Crowley's  contradictory  recommendations 
on  German  industry  it  is  only  fair  to  state  that  Henry  H.  Fowler, 
Director  of  the  Enemy  Branch  of  the  F.  E.  A.,  who  did  much  of 
the  work  on  the  problems,  also  presented  numerous  exhibits  to 
the  Kilgore  Committee  on  June  26,  1945  which  were  notable  con- 
tributions to  the  unmasking  of  Farben's  war  potential. 

Having  contributed  his  final  compendium  of  governmental  pol- 
icy which  related  to  the  survival  of  I.G.  Farben,  Mr.  Crowley  re- 


394  TREASON'S   PEACE 

tired  from  his  numerous  and  onerous  government  jobs  to  his  duties 
as  president  and  chairman  of  the  Standard  Gas  &  Electric  Com- 
pany and  other  public  utilities  in  which  he  held  office.  However, 
criticism  of  Mr.  Crowley  did  not  cease  with  the  end  of  his  govern- 
mental duties,  as  the  Federal  Power  Commission  on  June  18, 1946, 
issued  an  order  forbidding  him  to  continue  as  chairman  of  one 
electric  light  company  and  director  in  two  other  utilities,  giving 
neglect  of  his  duties  as  the  reason  for  thus  ousting  him. 


CHAPTER        XXI 


Another  Far  ben  Peace 


SENATOR     KILGORE 

in  October,  1945,  publicly  expressed  his  concern  at  reports  that 
high  officials  were  planning  a  revival  of  I.G.  Farben's  export 
trade  instead  of  dismantling  its  facilities. 

In  December,  after  his  committee  had  assembled  and  made 
public  voluminous  records  extracted  from  the  I.G.  Farben  files  in 
Germany  which  proved  its  war  guilt  beyond  question,  the  Senator 
called  as  a  witness  Col.  Bernard  Bernstein,  formerly  Treasury 
Counsel,  who,  as  Director  of  the  Division  of  Investigation  of  Car- 
tels and  External  Assets  in  the  O.  M.  G.,  had  recently  returned  to 
the  United  States,  having  been  sent  back,  according  to  report,  be- 
cause he  was  too  insistent  in  his  efforts  to  uncover  the  part  Farben 
played  in  the  war  and  in  searching  for  the  accomplices  through 
whom  its  assets  were  still  hidden. 

Colonel  Bernstein,  in  a  lengthy  statement  prepared  from  original 
documents  with  meticulous  care,  brought  out  the  startling  fact 
that  87  percent  of  Farben's  industrial  war  machine  was  ready  to 
operate,  and  instead  of  being  destroyed  as  required  by  the  Yalta 
and  Potsdam  Agreements,  was  actually  being  put  back  into  op- 
eration. His  testimony  showed  conclusively  that  the  German  war 

395 


396 

machine  could  not  have  functioned  without  Farben,  and  that  Dr. 
Carl  Krauch,  pre-war  Nazi  Chief  of  Germany's  entire  chemical 
industry,  and  chairman  of  Farben's  board  of  directors,  along  with 
the  other  Farben  leaders,  had  long  known  of  the  Nazi  plan  of 
aggression.  The  witness  expressed  the  hope  that  the  criminal  role 
played  by  Farben's  officials  would  result  in  their  indictment  and 
conviction  as  war  criminals.  Vain  Hope. 

Shortly  after  this,  Col.  Bernstein  resigned  from  the  Government 
service.  His  successor  in  the  O.  M.  G.  set-up  in  Germany,  Russell 
A.  Nixon,  a  former  member  of  the  Harvard  faculty,  let  loose  a  blast 
in  Berlin,  saying  that  Farben's  high  officials  who  had  been  arrested 
were  being  released,  their  plants  were  not  being  destroyed,  and 
the  uncovering  of  their  hidden  assets  abroad  was  being  hindered 
by  State  Department  officials. 

So  Mr.  Nixon  was  also  returned  to  the  United  States  and  he. 
too,  gave  his  testimony  before  the  Kilgore  Committee. 

Mr.  Nixon  was  now  out  of  the  Government  service  and  was  free 
of  official  restraints.  He  minced  no  words  in  stating  that  O.  M.  G. 
officials  directly  engaged  in  carrying  out  Order  No.  2  of  July  5. 
1945,  were  deliberately  violating  it,  and  that  the  I.G.  Farben  war 
potential  was  being  actually  rebuilt  and  reintegrated  instead  of 
being  destroyed.  Among  high  points  of  Mr.  Nixon's  testimony 
were  detailed  charges  that:  no  I.G.  Farben  plants  had  been  de- 
stroyed, those  widely  heralded  as  having  been  blown  up  were  in 
reality  government-owned  plants.  No  law  to  destroy  cartels  in 
Germany  had  been  promulgated  and  no  policy  existed  in  this 
respect.  Farben  officials  and  employes  who  had  been  arrested 
had  then  been  released  from  custody— in  some  cases  were  actually 
assisting  in  the  activities  of  the  O.  M.  G.  The  instructions  for  a 
complete  mobilization  of  Farben's  external  assets  had  not  been 
carried  out. 

Farben's  stock  had  gone  up  and  up  on  the  Munich  and  Frank- 
furt Stock  Exchanges  (from  68  to  142%)  because  the  German 
people  on  the  spot  knew  what  was  going  on. 

The  State  Department  and  the  British  Foreign  Office  had  acted 
together  in  preventing  the  seizure  of  Farben's  foreign  assets. 

Possibly  the  most  significant  item  in  Mr.  Nixon's  story  was  his 
statement  that  Farben's  re-growth  followed  closely  the  expecta- 


TREASON'S    PEACE  397 

tions  which  had  been  expressed  by  the  notorious  Max  Ilgner,  in 
a  letter  discovered  by  the  O.  M.  G.,  which  Ilgner  wrote  in  1944  to 
several  of  his  associates  and  in  which  this  Farben  foreign-espionage 
head  confidently  advised  his  pals  to  stick  together  because  he, 
Ilgner,  could  assure  them  that  the  American  authorities  would 
eventually  came  to  their  rescue  and  permit  I.G.  Farben  to  resume 
business  as  usual. 

Mr.  Nixon  not  only  minced  no  words  in  denouncing  the  official 
malpractice  by  which  every  order  to  destroy  Farben  was  being 
aborted,  but  named  some  of  those  individuals  in  the  O.  M.  G.  set-up 
in  Germany  whom  he  believed  to  be  responsible  for  this  ghastly 
repetition  of  the  sabotage  of  Allied  control  of  this  same  German 
dye  trust  in  the  years  following  World  War  I. 

Among  those  Mr.  Nixon  indicated  had  taken  the  attitude  that 
the  Morgenthau  plan  was  hysterical  or  impracticable  were  Am- 
bassador Robert  D.  Murphy,  representing  the  State  Department; 
General  William  H.  Draper,  Director  of  the  Economics  Division; 
Col.  E.  G.  Pillsbury,  control  officer;  Major  Petroff,  former  attor- 
ney for  General  Motors;  Laird  Bell,  Chicago  attorney  who  had 
been  outspoken  in  his  disagreement  with  Potsdam  and  J.  C.  S. 
1067;  and  Col.  Joe  Starnes,  former  member  of  the  noxious  Dies 
Committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives  who,  when  defeated 
for  reelection,  was  rewarded  with  a  commission  in  the  Army  and 
as  a  member  of  the  O.  M.  G.  urged  that  the  de-Nazification  order 
should  be  ignored  and  German  industry  should  be  started. 

Mr.  Nixon  went  into  some  detail  regarding  the  peculiar  actions 
of  Col.  Carl  B.  Peters,  former  president  of  Synthetic  Nitrogen 
Products,  director  of  Chemnyco,  and  an  official  of  the  Advance 
Solvents  Corporation,  all  Farben  subsidiaries,  who  was  quietly  re- 
moved from  Germany  for  engaging  in  numerous  relations  with 
high  I.G.  Farben  officials. 

Col.  Peters,  Swiss-born  American  citizen  and  a  Major  in  ord- 
nance during  World  War  I,  was  active  in  the  chemical  industry 
and  took  a  leading  part  in  Farben's  false  front  set-ups  in  the  United 
States.  Then  in  1939  he  was  indicted  in  two  of  the  synthetic  nitro- 
gen ammonia  cases  which  were  kept  secret  from  the  public  and 
later  were  mysteriously  nolle  pressed.  And  on  September  5,  1941 
he  was  defendant  in  the  civil  complaint  and  consent  decree  involv- 


398  TREASON'S    PEACE 

ing  the  same  conspiracy  with  Farben  to  restrain  synthetic  nitro- 
gen production.  Colonel  Peters  reentered  the  Army  and  was  sent 
to  Germany  originally  by  Mr.  Crowley's  Foreign  Economic  Admin- 
istration, coming  to  grief  as  Mr.  Nixon  stated,  when  United  States 
Counter-intelligence  decided  that  his  relations  with  Farben  per- 
sonages were  improper  and  indicated  that  he  looked  forward  to 
renewed  inter  connections  between  Farben  and  American  interests. 

Readers  may  ponder  at  this  typical  example  of  the  familiar  pat- 
tern, of  the  way  a  man  who  served  Farben  purposes  during  the 
pre-war  period  in  its  American  fronts  and  was  thus  personally  in- 
volved in  court  actions  for  conspiracy  against  this  country,  should 
then  have  been  commissioned  in  the  Army  and  sent  by  Mr.  Crow- 
ley  to  help  carry  out  the  destruction— or  control— of  I.G.  Farben's 
war  machine  in  Germany. 

While  Senator  Kilgore  was  making  a  direct  attack  upon  the  Far- 
ben conspiracy,  one  other  robust  member  of  the  Senate,  the  Hon. 
Joseph  O'Mahoney,  Wyoming  Democrat,  had  been  approaching 
some  aspects  of  the  Farben  mess  by  indirection  with  an  insistent 
demand  that  the  Government  of  the  United  States  take  a  forthright 
position  on  the  total  abolishment  of  all  international  cartels— par- 
ticularly those  by  which  Farben  had  disarmed  this  nation  and  its 
other  victims. 

In  May,  1945,  Senator  O'Mahoney  held  public  hearings  before 
Senate  Committees  which  were  considering  cartel  legislation,  and 
his  first  two  witnesses,  Attorney  General  Francis  Biddle  and  As- 
sistant Attorney  General  Wendell  Berge,  distinguished  themselves 
by  expressing  conclusions  that  executives  of  the  corporations  who 
signed  and  carried  out  the  illegal  tie-ups  with  Farben  were  inno- 
cent of  any  attempt  to  injure  the  national  security  and  did  not 
present  any  moral  problem  in  so  doing. 

This  gratuitous  effort  to  apply  a  coat  of  official  whitewash  to 
men  whose  acts  had  contributed  to  obstructing  the  national  de- 
fense, was  more  remarkable  in  view  of  Mr.  Biddle's  admission 
that  some  of  those  same  individuals  were  parties  to  carry-over 
agreements  through  which  the  illegal  agreements  were  already 
being  resumed.  And  Mr.  Berge's  friends  and  admirers  were  cha- 
grined when  he  ignored  official  records  to  the  contrary,  and  ex- 
pressed the  absurd  opinion  that  the  United  States  Government 


TREASON'S   PEACE  399 

had  "no  knowledge"  of  Standard  Oil's  partnership  agreements 
with  Farben  during  the  thirteen-year  pre-war  period.  Out  of  my 
own  high  admiration  for  Wendell  Berge  let  it  be  said  that  who- 
ever induced  him  to  put  such  statements  into  a  public  record  was 
not  a  real  friend  of  this  kindly  gentleman. 

Leaders  of  the  oil  industry  also  appeared,  including  Orville 
Harden,  vice-president  of  Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey,  and  other 
executives  of  that  company— each  to  express,  quaintly,  their  bitter 
opposition  to  cartels.  They  each  appeared  at  first  to  hate  these 
infamous  arrangements.  Then  the  words  nevertheless,  however, 
and  but  would  creep  in,  in  a  way  which  indicated  that  just  pos- 
sibly the  speakers  were  afraid  that  perhaps  we  could  not  afford 
to  be  too  harsh  in  future  about  such  tie-ups  with  foreign  com- 
panies. The  oil  magnates  put  on  a  good  show. 

On  the  last  day  of  these  hearings  Senator  O'Mahoney  called  on 
me,  as  an  authority  on  cartels  and  I.G.  Farben,  and  thus  made  it 
possible  to  put  into  a  Senate  record  a  few  of  the  pertinent  facts 
(which  now  may  be  found  in  this  book)  about  the  vicious  political 
influence  by  which  I.G.  Farben  during  the  pre-war  era  had  so 
profoundly  molded  opinion  and  policy  inside  Germany  and  also 
in  other  countries,  including  the  United  States. 

I  utilized  this  opportunity  to  refute  the  earlier  allegations  of 
Messrs.  Biddle  and  Berge  that  none  of  their  so-called  innocent 
American  industrial  cartelists  knew  that  the  national  security  was 
involved  in  their  partnerships  with  Farben,  and  that  the  United 
States  Government  was  not  informed  about  these  illegal  agree- 
ments until  after  Germany  began  the  war.  The  documentary  proofs 
which  I  cited  to  disprove  the  Biddle-Berge  allegations  were  re- 
ceived in  painful  silence,  especially  those  which  clearly  indicated 
that  the  political  influence  of  I.G.  Farben  might  have  been  re- 
sponsible for  the  innocuous  results  of  flabby  Anti-Trust  Law  en- 
forcement against  those  whose  tie-ups  with  Farben  did  weaken 
our  national  security. 

It  was  merely  a  coincidence,  but  surely  a  pleasant  one,  that  Mr. 
Biddle  resigned  from  his  position  as  Attorney  General  the  day 
after  my  testimony  recorded  some  of  the  weird  results  of  his  tenure 
of  that  office.  However,  rumor  had  it  that  he  had  been  slated  to  go 
ever  since  former  Assistant  Attorney  General  Norman  Littell 


400  TREASON'S   PEACE 

forced  into  the  record  some  of  the  proofs  relating  to  Mr.  Biddle's 
relations  with  Thomas  Corcoran. 

How  and  why  Francis  Biddle  under  these  circumstances  later 
wound  up  as  the  United  States  member  of  the  Nuremberg  Court 
by  appointment  of  President  Truman  remains  a  mystery  on  which 
the  readers  of  this  record  may  well  ponder. 

As  the  aftermath  of  having  thus  placed  on  a  record  of  the  Senate 
for  the  first  time  evidence  that  the  political  influence  of  I.G.  Far- 
ben  had  been  reaching  inside  the  Government  of  the  United 
States,  the  printing  of  the  record  of  these  hearings  was  held  up 
for  months,  while  parts  of  my  testimony  were  suppressed. 

However,  it  developed  that  the  Wyoming  Senator  was  unwilling 
that  political  influence  of  I.G.  Farben  should  prevent  his  col- 
leagues in  the  Senate,  and  the  public,  from  reading  testimony  on 
that  same  political  influence  of  I.G.  Farben  which  had  been  re- 
corded before  his  Committee.  Thus,  in  the  final  printing  of  these 
hearings,  there  appeared  a-  reproduction  of  my  1931  Chart  or 
Flow  Sheet  (described  in  Chapter  vn)  showing  I.G.  Farben's 
control  in  that  early  pre-war  era,  of  our  munitions  industries,  its 
influence  on  our  press  and  our  government.  Thanks  to  the  courage 
of  Joe  O'Mahoney,  this  proof  that  it  was  then  known  what  Farben 
had  planned  for  ten  years  later,  became  a  public  record  fourteen 
years  after  it  had  been  sent  to  members  of  the  Congress. 

On  December  12,  1945,  after  Colonel  Bernstein's  public  testi- 
mony, Senator  Kilgore,  in  an  off-the-record  conversation  with  me, 
expressed  his  indignation  at  incidents  which  I  related  as  illustra- 
tions of  Farben's  influence  in  security  immunity  for  some  of  its 
Amercan  stooges.  I  was  then  advised  that  I  would  be  called  back  to 
Washington  as  a  witness  before  the  Kilgore  Committee.  Instead, 
a  letter  from  the  Senator  advised  me  that  the  public  hearings  were 
discontinued  and  would  I  kindly  send  him  a  written  statement 
to  be  printed  with  the  Committee's  other  testimony? 

On  December  21,  1945,  a  few  days  after  our  private  conversa- 
tion on  Farben's  political  influence,  Senator  Kilgore  issued  a  ring- 
ing public  statement  dealing  with  this  same  subject  of  influence. 
And  in  restrained  but  unmistakably  critical  language  the  Senator 
discussed  the  conduct  of  affairs  in  occupied  Germany  with  this 
query: 


TREASON'S    PEACE  401 

For  what  private  and  selfish  ends  are  our  national  security 
and  the  security  of  our  allies  placed  in  jeopardy? 

He  became  more  specific  as  he  continued: 

The  attitude  of  these  military  government  officials  is  an  out- 
growth of  their  connections  with  industrial  and  financial  en- 
terprises whcih  had  close  pre-war  ties  with  the  Nazis. 

His  statement  also  named  some  of  the  same  O.  M.  G.  officials 
mentioned  in  the  Nixon  testimony,  but  unfortunately  Senator  Kil- 
gore  did  not  bring  out  clearly  the  basic  issue  of  Farben's  continued 
political  influence  inside  government  at  Washington,  where  obvi- 
ously the  real  resonsibility  lay  for  putting  into  the  O.  M.  G.  men 
who  would  deliberately  sabotage  the  orders  issued  by  General 
Eisenhower  to  smash  I.G.  Farben.  These  men  did  not  appoint 
themselves  to  office. 

As  one  way  to  remedy  the  silence  on  this  issue  I  included  in  the 
statement  which  the  Senator  had  requested  for  his  Committee's 
hearings  some  of  the  ample  proofs  available  that  the  most  dan- 
gerous aspect  of  the  German  war  potential  was  the  political  in- 
fluence of  Farben  inside  the  Government  of  the  United  States.  In- 
cidents, a  few  of  the  many  in  this  book,  were  recited. 

My  medicine  was  too  strong  for  Senator  Kilgore— the  heat  was 
on  for  what  he  had  already  put  into  the  record.  My  statement 
was  returned  with  advice  that  it  could  not  be  published  because: 
"It  is  not  the  policy  of  the  Sub-Committee  to  make  charges  against 

individuals "  ( which  was  a  rather  peculiar  allegation  in  view 

of  the  charges  against  members  of  the  O.  M.  G.,  and  many  others 
made  in  the  Kilgore  Committee  Hearings ) .  Tactfully,  the  Senator's 
letter  added: 

"I  am  not  questioning  your  veracity." 

Friends  of  the  Senator  then  complained  to  me  that  I  was  caus- 
ing him  embarrassment.  Be  that  as  it  may,  his  probe  of  I.G.  Far- 
ben had  already  caused  such  dismay  and  resentment  that  no  ap- 
peasement policy  would  suffice  and  the  Kilgore  Committee's  in- 
vestigations were  marked  for  the  same  end  as  those  of  the  Bone 
Committee. 

Following  Mr.  Nixon's  testimony  in  February,  it  was  announced 


4O2  TREASON'S    PEACE 

that  witnesses  from  the  State  Department  would  appear  before 
the  Kilgore  Committee  to  refute  the  Nixon  charges.  But  no  such 
witnesses  appeared.  Instead,  the  Audit  and  Contingent  Expenses 
of  the  Senate  reached  out  to  strangle  Senator  Kilgore's  brave  effort 
to  defeat  the  Farben  revival  plot,  by  cutting  the  appropriation  for 
his  Sub-Committee  to  a  fraction  of  the  sum  required. 

This  is  not  to  imply  that  this  action,  by  the  Senators  involved, 
was  not  motivated  by  a  desire  for  economy  or  was  influenced  by 
the  I.G.  Farben  lobby. 

While  the  tug-of-war  was  going  on  in  the  United  States  Senate 
between  the  save-Farben  and  smash-Farben  teams,  important  con- 
tributions were  made  by  those  two  valiant  battlers,  Representatives 
Voorhis  of  California  and  Coffee  of  Washington.  Among  the  sev- 
eral forceful  speeches  by  Mr.  Voorhis  touching  on  the  I.G.  Farben 
tie-ups  in  the  United  States  was  that  delivered  on  May  21, 1945,  in 
support  of  his  House  Concurrent  Resolution  55,  which  demanded 
that  the  Government  prevent  the  economic  financial  or  technical 
resources  of  Germany  from  rebuilding  the  future  war  potential 
of  the  enemy  in  any  other  nation,  and  to  prevent  any  citizens  or 
corporations  of  the  United  States  taking  any  action  "through  cartel 
agreements  or  otherwise"  which  would  contribute  to  the  rebuild- 
ing of  that  future  war  potential. 

Again  on  July  20,  1945,  Mr.  Voorhis  complained  bitterly  that: 

Some  of  the  very  people  who  hold  top  positions  in  the  Ameri- 
can Control  Commission  in  Germany  are  men  who  either  in 
the  past  or  at  this  very  moment  are  officials  of  American  com- 
panies who  had connections  with  some  of  the  very  Ger- 
man companies  which  the  Senate  (Kilgore)  Committee  has 
warned  about 

Mr.  Voorhis  also  put  his  finger  on  the  issue  by  saying  that: 

To  select  men  with  connections  of  this  sort  and  to  pass  over 
the  thousands  of  other  American  businessmen  whose  com- 
panies never  had  any  such  connections  is,  to  put  the  matter 
very  mildly  indeed,  a  mistake  which  may  have  the  most  seri- 
ous consequences  for  the  future  peace  of  the  world. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  405 

Representative  Coffee  also  has  a  long  and  notable  record  of 
well-documented  and  forthright  attacks  upon  the  cartel  as  an  in- 
stitution and  I.G.  Farben  tie-ups  in  particular.  On  October  4, 
1945,  while  Colonel  Bernstein's  battle  against  the  sabotage  of  the 
directives  to  destroy  Farben  was  at  its  height  in  Germany,  Mr. 
Coffee  delivered  in  the  House  a  blasting  attack  upon  I.G.  Farben 
political  influence  in  which  he  paid  me  the  honor  of  referring  to  my 
own  efforts,  citing  among  other  things  my  expose  of  the  way  the 
Geneva  Economic  Conference  in  1927  was  influenced  by  Farben's 
Dr.  Lammers.*  Mr.  Coffee  then  put  into  the  record  his  own  views 
on  the  way  Farben  influenced  both  international  and  our  own 
domestic  affairs,  including  the  following: 

We  have  all,  I  think,  felt  the  impact  of  such  influence  here 
at  Washington,  at  times  like  these,  when  investigation  and 
legislation  which  may  affect  any  cartel  activities  is  under  dis- 
cussion, or  pending.  Then  it  is  that  some  visitor— in  plain  lan- 
guage some  lobbyist— attempts  his  persuasions  with  quaint 
sophistries,  or  more  subtle  argument.  Now  what  essential  dif- 
ference can  anyone  point  out  between  the  lobbyist— or  fixer- 
exerting  pressure  here  at  Washington  or  in  Europe  in  our  re- 
construction set-up,  in  1945,  for  cartel  survival;  and  Farben's 
Dr.  Lammers  at  Geneva  in  1927  successfully  persuading  that 
international  assembly  not  to  act  against  the  cartel. 

In  the  light  of  events  since  then,  which  are  known  to  all  of 
us,  it  may  be  admitted  that  should  the  Geneva  Economic  Con- 
ference in  1927  have  protested  at  the  evils  of  the  cartel,  and 
had  it  even  raised  the  lid  a  fraction  of  an  inch  to  peer  within 
the  Pandora's  Box  of  I.G.  Farben.  then  those  beastly,  tragic 
human  ills,  which  later  were  loosed  from  that  casket  of  evil 
and  death,  might  not  have  brought  us,  now,  to  a  war  and  a 
victory  so  dearly  won  with  the  blood  of  American  youth.  In 
1927  I.G.  Farben's  leaders  had  to  prevent  action  by  the 
League,  so  Farben's  distinguished  Dr.  Lammers  was  on  the 
spot  to  do  so. 

Who  shall  dare  to  say  that  some  other  Dr.  Lammers,  dis- 

*  In  monograph,  The  Cartel,  published  in  the  Encyclopedia  Americana, 
1945. 


404  TREASON'S    PEACE 

guised  in  sheep's  clothing  as  a  learned  technical  adviser,  or  in 
the  raiment  of  an  apostle  of  democracy  and  peace,  has  not 
been  around  Washington  to  advise  anyone  so  credulous  as 
to  listen  to  him;  or  is  not  among  those  who  at  this  very  time 
are  in  Europe  to  help  decide  on  the  spot  what  to  do  about 
saving  German  industries,  or  what  punishment,  if  any,  shall 
be  meted  out  to  guilty  German  industrialists. 

The  eloquent  Representative  summed  up  his  conclusions  with: 

the  one  great  national  and  international  issue  which 

the  cartel  presents  to  us  at  this  time,  and  which  we  must  face 
before  it  is  too  late,  is  that  of  the  cartel's  political  influence, 
as  we  see  it  now  revealed  in  preparation  for  this  war,  and  as 
it  must  be  met  if  its  impact  upon  the  next  peace  is  to  be  im- 
munized. We  have  won  the  war  in  Europe  and  in  Asia,  but  are 
we  doing  those  things  which  must  be  done  if  we  are  to  win 
the  peace,  while  the  friends  and  allies  of  I.G.  also  plan  and 
connive  in  secret  to  reconstruct  their  private  cartel  super- 
state? Remember,  too,  that  much  of  the  propaganda  which 
clandestinely  attempts  to  foment  discord  among  the  Allies  in 
this  war  and  in  this  peace  has  its  origin  and  its  motivation 
among  the  adherents  of  another  era  of  world  cartelization. 

These  references  to  the  influence  which  might  effect  what  pun- 
ishment, if  any,  shall  be  meted  out  to  guilty  German  industrialists 
are  a  reminder  that  up  to  the  time  this  is  written  there  appears  no 
record  of  the  indictment  or  the  punishment  of  any  officer  or  em- 
ploye of  I.G.  Farben,  in  Europe,  save  for  the  gentle  protective 
custody  in  which  some  of  them  have  been  held,  until  they  were 
released  by  influences  exerted  upon  subordinate  officials  in  the 
O.  M.  G.  ' 

As  one  of  the  few  columnists  who  wield  an  objective  pen  and  cite 
names  and  facts  on  the  I.  G.  Farben  problem,  Tom  Stokes  followed 
up  Jerry  Voorhis'  expose  in  the  House  with  a  series  on  the  same 
subject,  of  the  official  folly  of  putting  men  in  the  O.  M.  G.  in  Ger- 
many to  eradicate  Farben  who  were  officers  of  American  -Com- 
panies tied  in  with  I.G.  Farben  and  in  some  instances  under  in- 
dictment for  such  offenses. 


TREASON'S    PEACE  405 

One  of  those  identified  by  Stokes  in  his  column  of  May  26, 1945, 
was  Col.  Frederick  Pope,  who  had  been  with  the  Office  of  War 
Mobilization  before  being  selected  as  Chairman  of  the  F.  E.  A. 
Committee  on  Chemicals  which  prepared  that  section  of  Mr. 
Crowley's  Program  for  German  and  Industrial  Disarmament  (al- 
ready mentioned). 

Without  questioning  Mr.  Pope's  high  standing  as  an  industrial 
engineer,  or  the  good  faith  of  his  recommendations  relating  to  the 
peacetime  control  rather  than  the  destruction  of  Farben's  produc- 
tion of  war  chemicals,  Mr.  Stokes  pointed  out  that  Mr.  Pope  was 
a  director  or  official  of  more  than  one  of  I.G.  Farben's  American 
affiliates. 

These  have  included  Mr.  Pope's  directorship  of  the  American 
Cyanamid  Company  (fined  $10,000  in  April,  1946,  for  conspiring 
with  I.  G.  Farben )  and  of  the  Southern  Alkali  Co.  ( defendant  in 
action  filed  in  1944  for  conspiracy  with  Farben  in  the  alkali  in- 
dustry) and  prior  to  1939  Mr.  Pope  was  also  closely  associated 
with  the  Farben  subsidiary  Synthetic  Nitrogen  Products  Co.,  along 
with  Col.  Carl  Peters,  which  company's  record  has  also  been 
presented. 

The  press  in  general,  as  has  been  mentioned  in  earlier  chapters, 
continued  its  customary  reluctance  to  publish  all  of  the  real  truth 
which  came  out  of  Germany. 

As  the  struggle  inside  of  the  O.  M.  G.  proceeded,  between  those 
like  Bernstein  and  Nixon  who  wanted  to  be  harsh,  as  ordered, 
with  Farben,  and  those  opposed,  there  were  increasing  protests 
from  news  correspondents  stationed  in  our  occupied  zone  in  Ger- 
many that  either  direct  censorship  or  indirect  pressure  was  mak- 
ing it  difficult  to  send  back  home  the  real  facts  on  what  was  going 
on  behind  the  scenes.  Correspondents  of  even  the  conservative 
New  York  Times  joining  in  these  protests  justify  a  belief  that  they 
were  well  grounded.  It  remains  fortunate  that  Messrs.  Bernstein 
and  Nixon,  when  they  returned  to  the  United  States,  resisted  such 
efforts  to  silence  them  as  we  may  be  quite  sure  were  made. 

This  may  be  the  appropriate  place  to  cite  that  dramatic  incident 
which  took  place  in  the  courtroom  in  New  York  on  June  6,  1945, 
when,  as  told  in  Chapter  xvm,  Farben's  chief  Counsel,  Dr.  August 
von  Knieriem,  flown  from  Frankfurt,  in  custody  in  a  military  plane, 


406  TREASON'S    PEACE 

was  produced  as  a  surprise  witness  by  Philip  Amram,  Assistant 
Attorney  General,  and  testified  regarding  the  celebrated  fake 
agreement  made  by  Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey  with  Farben  at 
The  Hague  in  September,  1939,  after  Germany  had  invaded 
Poland. 

Dr.  von  Knieriem  produced  from  the  Farben  files  a  signed  copy 
of  the  so-called  Hague  agreement  which  he  identified  as  his  own 
original,  and  on  its  margin  in  his  own  handwriting  there  were 
numerous  notations  made  at  the  time  to  explain  the  various  clauses 
in  the  agreemerit.  One  of  these  conclusions  recorded  by  Farben's 
chief  legal  adviser  in  1939,  when  the  Farben  leaders'  vision  of 
world  conquest  held  no  possibility  of  the  tragic  revelations  in  1945, 
was  a  short  pungent  phrase  in  German  which,  translated,  shouted 
out  the  fraud  and  the  confident  expectation  of  a  future  renewal  of 
the  mesalliance  between  Farben  and  Standard.  The  words  were 
"Post-War  Camouflage." 

We  may  well  ask  how  much  of  the  contemptible  double  talk 
and  worse  relating  to  Farben  which  has  been  uncovered  comes 
within  lawyer  von  Knieriem's  definition  of  camouflage  to  deceive 
the  Government  and  the  people  of  the  United  States. 

James  S.  Martin,  previously  mentioned  in  Chapter  xv,  suc- 
ceeded Mr.  Nixon  as  control  officer  for  I.G.  Farben  in  the  Ameri- 
can Military  Government  for  Germany.  After  he  had  appealed 
for  the  establishment  of  another  tribunal  to  try  the  guilty  indus- 
trialists, Mr.  Martin  was  permitted  to  organize  a  unit  to  be  de- 
voted specifically  to  the  de-cartelization  of  Farben  and  its  affiliates. 
However,  the  efforts  of  this  group  to  eliminate  Germany's  in- 
dustrial war  potential  appeared  to  be  restricted  to  surveillance 
and  control  of  the  so-called  peacetime  economy,  which,  since 
Potsdam,  the  higher  ups  had  found  so  conveniently  elastic  and 
expandable. 

Meanwhile,  as  the  trial  of  Nazi  leaders  at  Nuremberg  pro- 
ceeded, many  Americans  sought  in  vain  for  some  sign  that  punish- 
ment would  be  inflicted  upon  the  Farben  leaders  who  were  in  the 
custody  of  the  American  authorities.  The  criminal  acts  of  these 
men  had  again  been  established  by  countless  original  documents 
uncovered  in  their  own  files,  as  not  only  responsible  for  Hitler 
and  Hitler's  armed  might  and  the  weakening  of  Germany's  victim 


TREASON'S    PEACE  407 

countries,  but  also  as  directly  involved  in  some  of  the  most  beastly 
deeds  of  the  Nazi  regime. 

These  included  such  acts  of  criminal  depravity  as  direct  par- 
ticipation in  the  Nazi  slave  labor  practices  which  had  their  origin 
"in  the  blackest  periods  of  the  slave  trade,"  by  which  Farben  war 
plants  had  been  manned  with  forced  labor  of  hapless  captives;  in 
manufacturing  and  knowingly  supplying  the  deadly  poison  gases 
used  to  murder  millions  of  helpless  humans  in  the  death  chambers 
at  Auschwitz  ( Oswiecim ) ;  and,  after  these  mass  murders,  in  the 
conversion  into  fertilizer  of  the  ashes  remaining  from  the  crema- 
tion of  the  corpses. 

It  so  happens  that  ample  evidence  of  all  these  unbelievable 
practices  was  produced  at  the  trial  and  recorded  in  the  final 
judgment  of  the  Nuremberg  Tribunal. 

With  relation  to  this  evidence  of  depravity,  it  may  be  men- 
tioned that  Georg  von  Schnitzler,  called  by  some  the  No.  2  Farben 
criminal,  admitted  to  our  O.  M.  G.  officials  long  before  the  Nurem- 
berg trials  began  that  he,  and  other  Farben  directors,  had  known 
that  poison  gases  manufactured  in  a  Farben  plant  were  being 
used  to  murder  human  beings  in  the  Nazi  concentration  camps, 
and  did  nothing  about  it— save  to  continue  the  supply. 

However,  at  Nuremberg  all  this  evidence  was  not  related  to 
the  guilt  of  Farben's  leaders— they  were  not  on  trial.  The  senile 
Krupp  was  the  only  one  indicted  who  was  publicly  identified  as 
an  industrialist  (with  side-door  ties  to  Farben).  He  was  not  even 
tried. 

And,  as  the  trial  dragged  on,  the  slimy  Schacht,  close  associate 
of  Farben,  and  involved  in  Farben's  pre-Hitler  preparations  for 
war,  but  usually  referred  to  as  a  mere  financier,  boasted  com- 
placently that  he  would  not  be  convicted. 

To  some  it  may  have  seemed  strange  indeed  that  there  were  no 
Farben  figures  in  the  Nuremberg  dock,  especially  in  view  of 
earlier  insistence  of  United  States  Prosecutor  Robert  H.  Jackson 
that  some  of  them  should  be.  The  indictment,  where  it  dealt  with 
certain  vital  aspects  of  aggressive  war— for  which  Hermann  Schmitz 
and  his  associates  obviously  were  responsible— included  the  fol- 
lowing: 


408  TREASON'S    PEACE 

The  Nazi  conspirators,  and  in  particular  the  industrialists 
among  them,  embarked  upon  a  huge  rearmament  program 
and  set  out  to  produce  and  develop  huge  quantities  of  ma- 
terials of  war,  and  to  create  a  powerful  military  potential 

Dr.  Schmitz,  indicted  in  the  United  States  in  1941,  remained 
untried  for  those  offenses;  and  at  Nuremberg  he  was  not  even 
indicted  with  other  and  lesser  criminals. 

In  view  of  the  record  thus  summarized  it  is  not  surprising  that 
on  May  1,  1946,  former  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  Henry  Morgen- 
thau,  Jr.,  broadcast  a  denunciation  of  the  State  Department  pol- 
icies on  elimination  of  Germany's  war  potential,  with  careful  anal- 
ysis which  included  this  positive  statement: 

We  have  failed  to  de-industrialize  Germany. 
The  speaker  then  reflected  the  views  of  many  others  by  saying: 

It  is  still  not  clear  to  me  whether  Mr.  Byrnes  intends  to  scrap 

the  Allied  program  of  Quebec,  Yalta  and  Potsdam If 

it  is  Mr.  Byrnes'  intention  to  scrap  the  Potsdam  pact  and  allow 
Germany  to  remain  industrially  powerful,  then  I  prophesy 
that  we  are  simply  repeating  the  fatal  mistakes  of  Versailles, 
and  laying  the  foundation  for  World  War  III. 

Mr.  Morgenthau's  query  to  Secretary  Byrnes  was  a  voice  crying 
in  the  wilderness  of  synthetic  public  clamor  which  demanded 
the  survival  of  German  industry— of  Farben.  This  appeal  was  dis- 
guised in  a  confusion  of  many  voices,  of  hysterical  pleas  for  a 
starving  Germany  and  fears  of  a  Russian  menace. 

In  July  1946,  Russia's  Molotov  had  made  an  obvious  public 
bid  for  the  favor  of  an  unrepentant  Germany.  Then  late  in  August 
Lieutenant  General  Lucius  D.  Clay,  Deputy  Military  Governor 
of  the  American  Zone  in  Germany,  contributed  what  may  appear 
as  the  first  of  a  series  of  answers  to  Mr.  Morgenthau's  query.  As 
reported,  General  Clay's  statement  included  inaccurate  and  rather 
naive  allegations  that  Germany  no  longer  had  any  physical  war 
potential  of  her  own  and  could  only  be  a  threat  if  some  other 
power  with  the  industrial  wherewithal  used  her  as  a  mercenary. 


TREASON'S   PEACE  409 

A  week  later,  on  September  6,  1946,  Secretary  of  State  Byrnes 
made  his  counter-bid  for  the  friendship  of  the  prostrate  nation  in 
a  broadcast  at  Stuttgart,  in  which  he  threw  overboard  all  pretence 
of  implementation  of  the  plan  to  eliminate  Farben's  war  potential— 
which  the  Potsdam  conference  had  decreed. 

In  double  talk  decrying  the  oversight  that  no  allowance  had 
been  made  in  fixing  levels  o£  industry  for  reparations  and  a  self- 
supported  Germany,  Mr.  Byrnes  assured  his  listeners  of  a  balanced 
industrial  economy  to  be  controlled  by  trained  inspectors,  and  an 
export-import  program  out  of  which  reparations  ( and  industrial 
profits )  might  come. 

Described  in  the  press  as  America's  bidding  against  Russia  for 
German  favor,  columnist  Edgar  Ansel  Mowrer  aptly  called  it 
Byrnes'  plan  "to  fight  fire  with  fire,"  while  expressing  the  vain  hope 
that  "we  come  through  unharmed." 

And  Upton  Close  complacently  termed  it  "a  cardinal  principle 
of  democracy,"  and  "a  reminder  to  the  Reich  that  we  recognize  the 
right  of  every  nation  to  govern  itself." 

The  Secretary  of  State  then  returned  to  the  Paris  Peace  Con- 
ference and  his  bi-partisan  foreign  policy  which,  whatever  else 
it  may  or  may  not  be,  does  have  the  unqualified  approval  of  that 
good  friend  of  Standard  Oil's  late  Mr.  Parish,  Democratic  Senator 
Tom  Connally,  and  the  learned  legal  adviser  of  Farben's  Mr. 
Halbach,  Republican  statesman  John  Foster  Dulles. 

President  Truman,  nudged  rather  violently  on  foreign  relations 
by  the  man  he  had  displaced  as  Vice-President,  then  publicly 
indicated  his  full  support  of  the  policies  of  the  Secretary  of  State. 

With  another  swift  turn  of  the  wheel,  one  more  completed  de- 
sign in  the  pattern  of  things  to  come  was  unfolded  when,  on  Sep- 
tember 30, 1946,  the  Nuremberg  Tribunal  handed  down  its  verdict 
convicting  the  Nazi  riffraff  and  military  gangsters,  but  acquitting 
both  Franz  von  Papen  and  Hjalmar  Horace  Greeley  Schacht. 
Subsequently  mysterious  press  reports  intimated  that  Francis 
Biddle,  as  American  Judge,  had  voted  to  convict  Schacht.  How- 
ever, Mr.  Biddle  declined  to  say  how  he  voted.  The  Judgment 
states  "The  Tribunal  finds  Schacht  not  guilty  .  .  ."  Of  the  four 
Judges,  American,  British,  French  and  Russian,  only  the  last 
dissented. 


410  TREASON'S   PEACE 

The  dissent  of  Russia's  Judge  J.  I.  Nikitchenko  appears  as  an 
understatement  when  he  declared  that: 

Schacht's  leading  part  in  the  preparation  and  execution  of 
a  common  criminal  plan  is  proved. 

In  the  light  of  damning  facts,  showing  the  involvement  of 
Schacht,  which  were  recited  in  the  verdict  itself,  he  was  obviously 
guilty  on  Counts  1  and  2  of  the  indictment,  of: 

participation  in  a  common  plan  or  conspiracy  to  com- 
mit crimes  against  peace in  the  planning,  initiation  or 

waging  of  a  war  of  agression. 

But  after  reciting  the  evidence  of  Schacht's  guilt  the  judges  who 
wrote  the  weasel-worded  acquittal  then  accepted  the  Schacht  alibi 
that  he  "didn't  know"  that  the  rearmament  for  which  he  and  his 
Farben  associates  were  responsible  was  intended  for  aggressive 
war.  The  naive  judges  who  concocted  this  decision  attempted 
to  justify  the  Schacht  innocence  on  his  plea  that  "when  he 
discovered  the  Nazis  were  rearming  for  aggressive  purposes  he 
attempted  to  slow  down  the  speed  of  rearmaments." 

So  this  close  associate  of  Dr.  Hermann  Schmitz  and  other  direc- 
tors of  Farben  and  Vereinigte  Stahlwerke,  who  sat  with  him  on 
the  board  of  the  Reichsbank,  went  free  on  that  moth-eaten  alibi 
of  Farben's  allies:  "I  didn't  know,"  despite  a  showing  of  guilt 
which  included  substantially  each  of  the  various  offenses  that  can 
be  proved  against  Dr.  Schmitz  and  the  rest  of  the  Farben  brood— 
if  and  when  these  gentry  are  tried. 

So  out  of  Nuremberg  has  now  emerged  the  judicial  dictum  and 
high  precedent  behind  which  immunity  for  the  leaders  of  Farben 
may  be  made  secure. 

Disheartened,  Robert  Jackson  (who  five  years  earlier,  as  Attor- 
ney General,  had  complained  of  the  "pattern"  of  non-military 
invasion  which  interfered  with  "law  enforcement  itself),  was 
quoted  as  agreeing  fully  with  the  Russian  dissent.  "I'd  rather  see 
any  man  but  Schacht  get  off,"  said  the  American  prosecutor,  and 

"the  further  prosecutions  of  industrialists which  have  been 

planned,  will  have  to  be  studied  from  the  text  of  the  opinion." 

What  he  might  have  said  was  that  it  now  had  become  an  almost 


TREASON'S   PEACE  411 

futile  task  either  to  indict  or  to  try  the  Farben  criminals.  Unless 
an  outraged  public  opinion— when  the  truth  is  revealed— will  smash 
down  the  pattern  of  immunity  which  has  protected  war  criminals 
of  two  world  wars. 

With  his  acquittal,  many  of  Schacht's  close  friends  outside  Ger- 
many, industrialists,  financiers  and  politicians,  breathed  in  relief 
from  the  fear  that  had  been  haunting  them;  fear  that  the  vengeful 
tongue  of  a  Schacht,  if  convicted,  would  have  spilled  the  beans;  a 
fear  now  abated  because  stupid  men  on  a  high  bench  had  been 
persuaded  to  say  that  Schacht's  guilt  had  not  been  "established 
beyond  a  reasonable  doubt." 

A  verdict  so  bad  that  it  outraged  many  of  the  German  people 
themselves  may  give  rise  to  the  query  whether  the  Nuremberg 
trial  was  arranged  to  provide  a  jucticial  warning  of  the  hangman's 
noose  to  gangsters  who  may  plan  aggressive  war  in  future;  or  to 
provide  judicial  safe  havens  for  respectable  criminals  who  created 
the  gangsters  thus  condemned— a  crowning  example  of  the  un- 
written law  of  the  Farben  jungle. 

Following  quickly  on  the  heels  of  the  Schacht  fiasco  was  the 
announcement  of  an  official  economic  mission  to  study  the  possi- 
bility of  advancing  United  States  Government  funds  to  German 
industry  to  implement  its  controlled  peace-time  economy  by  a 
revival  of  the  German  import-export  trade.  This  mission  was 
headed  by  George  Allen,  as  director  of  the  Reconstruction 
Finance  Corporation,  and  Howard  C.  Peterson,  Jr.,  as  assistant 
Secretary  of  War. 

Time  will  reveal  whether  any  Farben  plants  or  Farben  affiliates 
now  in  dire  need  of  financial  aid  will  be  judged  as  deserving  it 
by  Mr.  Allen,  friend  of  Victor  Emanuel,  and  director  of  Farben's 
General  Aniline;  or  by  Mr.  Peterson,  former  member  of  the  Cravath 
law  firm  which  represented  Farben,  and  official  successor  of  that 
other  ex-Cravath  firm  lawyer,  John  J.  McCloy. 

Then  came  a  significant  resignation  at  Nuremberg.  Abraham 
Pomerantz,  distinguished  American  attorney  and  Prosecutor  of 
the  industrial  war  criminals  (who  had  asked  me  to  serve  as  his 
advisor  on  I.G.  Farbea)  quit  the  job  in  protest  at  the  calibre  of 
the  Judges  designated  to  try  these  cases. 


412  TREASON'S    PEACE 

Other  reports,  not  confirmed,  indicated  that  Dr.  Herman  Abs, 
one  of  the  most  powerful  of  Farben's  directors,  had  been  im- 
munized in  the  British  Zone,  where  he  was  acting  as  adviser  to 
the  English  officials;  and  that  Fritz  Thyssen,  safe  in  his  pleasant 
quarters  on  the  Island  of  Capri,  was  also  immune  from  prosecution. 

Meanwhile  Schacht  announced  that  he  had  a  plan  to  solve  "Ger- 
many's economic  problems."  Thyssen  had  already  produced  his 
plan  for  a  German  corporate  state  in  his  true-confessions  book. 
And  surely  the  Geheimrat  Hermann  Schmitz,  with  the  help  of 
nephew  Max  Ilgner  and  of  Georg  von  Schnitzler,  could  supply  a 
plan— if  not  convicted. 

Schacht-Thyssen-Schmitz— what  a  team  that  would  be  to  re- 
build German's  peace  time  economy,  and  direct  it  jointly  with  a 
select  group  of  Anglo-American  industrialists,  financed  with  Ameri- 
can taxpayer's  funds! 

The  foregoing  constitutes  a  small  part  of  the  record,  and  of  the 
proofs  available  that  the  conspiracy  to  save  the  Farben  war  crim- 
inals from  punishment,  to  revive  the  Farben  structure,  and  to 
renew  the  Farben  carry-over  tie-ups,  here  and  elsewhere,  is  pro- 
ceeding on  schedule. 

Just  as  Max  Ilgner  told  his  criminal  associates  in  1944  that  it 
would  be,  this  plot  is  proceeding  in  the  pattern  of  another  false 
peacetime  tragedy  which,  in  reality,  is  another  intermission  for 
rebuilding  of  a  superstate  and  another  era  of  secret  preparation 
for  World  War  III. 

N  That  the  same  influence  which  reaches  into  high  places  to  make 
a  treason's  peace  is  also  active  in  promoting  friction  among  the 
victorious  Allies  of  World  War  II  may  be  in  some  respects  the 
most  dangerous  manifestation  of  that  cancer  in  the  vital  organs  of 
government. 

That  Great  Britain  under  Attlee,  as  under  Churchill,  has  fa- 
vored a  soft  peace  for  Farben  and  has  changed  little  from  its  pre- 
war dependence  upon  cartel  trade  restrictions,  and  that  Moscow 
has  severely  criticized  the  Anglo-American  policy  of  hard  talk  and 
soft  action  regarding  Farben  has  been  apparent  in  many  news 
items  coming  from  London,  from  Berlin  and  from  Moscow. 

This  book  is  not  the  place  for  appraisal  of  the  post-war  relations 
between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  on  one  side  and  Rus- 


TREASON'S   PEACE  413 

sia  on  the  other,  nor  to  comment  on  the  manners  and  tactics  of 
Moscow  or  the  pin  prickings  and  vacillations  of  Washington. 

It  is,  however,  within  the  purposes  of  this  book  to  point  out  that 
ample  proofs  have  been  recorded  here  of  many  aspects  of  the  pat- 
tern of  I.G.  Farben  which  show  a  purpose  always  to  divide  and 
conquer,  and  that  this  pattern  very  definitely  traces  its  slimy 
threads  into  the  sabotage  of  the  eradication  of  I.G.  Farben's  war 
potential  by  the  same  influences  inside  the  Government  at  Wash- 
ington which  have  been  pressing  our  foreign  policies  and  our  stand 
in  the  United  Nations  away  from  a  possible  rapprochement  with 
Russia. 

The  arguments  heard  that  the  recrudescence  of  Germany's 
armed  might  by  a  revival  of  Farben's  industrial  war  potential  may 
be  desirable  to  provide  a  buffer,  or  a  threat,  to  Russian  expansion 
(call  it  imperialism,  or  demand  for  security  as  you  will)  appear 
as  cockeyed  and  as  vicious  as  would  be  a  demand  for  the  reor- 
ganization of  Max  Ilgner's  spy  ring  in  South  America  in  order  to 
help  us  protect  the  Panama  Canal. 

Readers  of  this  book  may  perceive  emerging  now  the  shadow 
of  the  Frankenstein's  monster  rebuilt— by  folly,  or  by  treason- 
no  less  alive  in  now  socialistic  Britain  than  in  capitalistic  United 
States.  This  creature  may  introduce  that  culmination  of  final  world 
conquest  for  which  Farben's  leaders  have  already  planned  and 
made  possible  two  World  Wars. 

Of  what  avail  a  victory  at  arms,  with  its  ghastly  sacrifice  of 
sweat,  and  blood,  and  tears;  of  youth  destroyed,  or  warped,  or 
wrecked— if  out  of  it  shall  come  another  peace  of  Farben's  pattern, 
a  peace  disguised  this  time  as  a  union  of  nations  to  rule  by  force, 
by  the  atomic  bomb,  if  you  will,  with  men  of  Farben's  choice  to 
make  up  that  super-state? 

If  that  shall  be  the  sacrifice  and  the  victory  and  the  profit,  then 
this  ghastly  price  will  have  been  paid  merely  to  yield  our  own 
destinies,  and  those  of  all  the  world,  to  the  tender  mercies  of  a 
supreme  corporate  state  guided  by  men  of  Farben's  choice;  a 
union  of  nations,  as  a  super-world-government,  which,  call  it  by 
what  name  you  will,  in  reality  will  be  the  consummation  of  the 
world  conquest  planned  by  faceless  Farben  figures  to  be  consum- 
mated by  Farben's  faithless  dupes. 


CONCLUSION 


Democracy  at  its  worst  —  and  at 
its  best 


THIS,  THEN,  IS  THE  PATTERN 
of  Farben,  as  it  has  appeared  and  re-appeared  before  and  during 
two  world  wars— and  as  that  same  pattern  has  already  re-appeared 
in  the  peace. 

This  story  has  been  cut  in  length  and  cut  again,  in  order  to 
bring  it  within  the  covers  of  this  book.  For  lack  of  space  many 
facts  which  should  be  told  have  been  omitted  here.  But  those 
which  are  presented  are  sufficient  to  show  that  the  people  of  this 
nation  must  clean  their  own  house  of  Farben  before  hoping  to 
instruct  other  peoples  of  the  world  how  to  eradicate  for  all  time 
this  obstacle  to  an  enduring  peace. 

The  accusation  of  muckraking  which  will  be  made  has  its  own 
reply  in  the  fact  that  those  who  claim  to  be  accused  by  this  story 
may  not  again  plead  ignorance  of  the  facts  presented  here,  facts 
which  bear  so  vital  a  relation  to  the  peace  which  is  to  come. 

There  will  be  those  who  will  allege  that  Pan-Germanism  and 
4*4 


TREASON'S   PEACE  415 

the  Teuton  lust  for  world  conquest  were  conceived  and  thrived 
many  centuries  before  the  era  of  modern  warfare  and  the  German 
dye  cartels.  I  reply  that  since  the  age  of  modern  war  began  all 
of  the  so-called  military  groups  of  Germany,  including  the  Prus- 
sians and  the  Junkers,  would  have  been  helpless  without  the  mu- 
nitions supplied  by  Farben;  nor  have  those  groups  ever  had  any 
important  influence  inside  the  United  States  save  that  created 
through  Farben  s  pattern  of  conspiracy— as  revealed  in  this  story. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  conclude  that  some  of  those  named  here 
were  knaves  and  some  were  fools,  nor  does  the  author  so  assert. 
And,  just  so,  it  must  not  be  assumed  that  any  individual,  merely 
because  his  name  appears  in  this  story,  is  accused  by  the  author 
of  guilty  acts  or  of  guilty  purposes. 

We  may  disregard  all  issues  of  intent,  and  on  the  sole  issue  of 
intelligence  the  reader  is  entitled  to  say  whether  leadership  by 
men  who  thus  did  Farben  s  bidding  must  be  rejected  now,  so  that 
the  pattern  of  Farben  may  be  uprooted.  Otherwise  we  will  again 
be  led  astray  by  Farben  s  guile— even  before  the  grass  grows  green 
or  the  tears  are  dry  upon  the  graves  of  those  who  have  died  and 
are  dying  now  for  the  blind  stupidity  of  those  who  would  reject 
the  lessons  of  World  War  I,  and  again  of  World  War  II. 

Grant  that  it  be  not  treason,  grant  that  it  be  not  greed,  it  re- 
mains that  unforgivable  folly  because  of  which  men  and  women 
of  America— who  hate  war  because  they  love  liberty— have  thrust 
the  bodies  of  sons  and  brothers,  of  husbands  and  fathers,  twice  in 
one  generation  before  the  war  machine  conceived  by  German 
science,  in  the  hands  of  Farben  outlaws,  while  Democracy's  lead- 
ers sat  shamelessly  silent  and  now  cry  out  "We  did  not  know." 
I  say  that  these  leaders  did  know.  I  say  that  the  facts  assembled 
in  this  story  should  prove  to  all  that  those  things  which  the  Ger- 
man dye  trust  planned  to  do,  and  then  did  with  the  assistance  of 
key  men  in  its  framework  in  the  United  States,  had  long  been 
revealed  as  in  an  open  book  to  those  in  high  places  who  cared  to 
listen  or  to  examine  the  record.  I  say  that  those  facts  have  been 
known  -from  the  days  of  the  dying  Wilson  Administration  by  lead- 


TREASON'S    PEACE 

ers  of  high  and  low  degree  of  all  three  branches  of  our  Federal 
Government  and  by  leaders  in  industry,  in  finance,  and  in  public 
opinion. 

Somehow,  the  public  has  been  kept  in  ignorance.  A  purpose  of 
this  book  is  to  rectify  that  wrong.  I  say  that  the  immunity  which 
these  men  of  Farbens  pattern  have  enjoyed— and  which  still  en- 
dures—shall not  prevail  unless  these  facts  remain  concealed.  These 
facts  must  be  made  known  now,  this  pattern  must  be  recognized 
NOW,  if  final  disaster  is  to  be  averted. 

To  those  who  may  protest  that  I  overdraw  my  canvas  I  say  that 
the  youth  of  this  generation  have  had  this  war  to  fight  because 
they  and  many  of  their  elders  were  not  permitted  to  learn  in  time 
the  facts  told  here.  Is  this  to  happen  again  while  they— those  who 
have  come  back— move  on  from  youth  and  their  sons  in  turn  shall 
liave  another  war  to  fight  because  the  spawn  of  LG.  Farben  again 
shall  make  a  mockery  of  those  two  keystones  of  human  liberty, 
free  speech  and  free  press? 

I  say  that  those  two  phrases  are  futile,  senseless  words  so  long 
as  they  are  subject  not  to  statute,  but  to  secret  fiat  or  corrupt  sub- 
servience. I  say  here  that  much  of  the  responsibility  for  the  tragic 
era  of  two  senseless,  wicked  wars  is  upon  those  who  for  any 
reason  have  refrained  from  revealing  such  facts  and  their  mean- 
ing to  the  people  of  this  nation.  Perhaps  that  era  came  to  a  close 
when  fortune  and  enduring  faith  at  the  end  of  a  long  and  dreary 
path  has  finally  resulted  in  this  publication  of  the  story  of  that 
pattern  which  survives  in  war  and  endures  in  peace. 

This  is  the  story  of  democracy  at  its  worst.  The  fact  of  its  tell- 
ing h&re  without  restraint  of  censor,  and  despite  opposition  from 
high  places— is  democracy  at  its  best. 

FINIS 


N       D 


X 


Those  names  listed  below  have  been  identified  from  official  sources  as 
companies  located  in  the  United  States  which,  at  some  time  during 
the  period  between  the  two  world  wars,  had  financial  relations,  patent 
agreements  or  other  alliances  involving  direct  or  indirect  ties  with  I.G. 
Farben. 

Many  of  those  named  here  are  not  mentioned  elsewhere  in  the  book. 
The  list  has  been  compiled  solely  to  illustrate  the  width  and  depth  of 
I.G.  Farben's  penetration  in  American  industry.  Identification  here,  as 
was  stated  at  the  end  of  Chapter  iv,  does  not  imply  impropriety  or 
illegality  in  relations  with  I.G.  Farben  by  the  company  thus  named. 

In  those  companies  marked  with  asterisk  ( * )  Farben  is  reported  to 
have  had  a  controlling  financial  interest,  or  relations  approximating 
control.  In  those  marked  with  dagger  (f)  Farben  is  reported  to  have 
had  a  limited  or  minority  financial  interest. 


Abbott  Laboratories 
Acetol  Products  Co. 

*  Advance   Solvents   &   Chemical 

Corp. 

*  Agfa  Ansco  Corp. 

*  Agfa  Photo  Products  Co. 

*  Agfa  Raw  Film  Co. 

*  Alba  Pharmaceutical  Co. 
Allied  Chemical  &  Dye  Corp. 
Aluminum  Company  of  America 
American  Active  Carbon  Co. 
American  Bemberg  Corporation 
American  Cyanamid  Co. 
American  Enka  Corporation 
American  Glanstoff  Corporation 


*  American   I.G.    Chemical   Cor- 

poration 

*  American  Magnesium  Corpora- 

tion 
American    Potash    &    Chemical 

Corporation 

American  Solvent  Recovery  Cor- 
poration 

American  Window  Glass  Com- 
pany 

American  Zirconium  Company 
Anaconda  Sales  Company 
Anglo  Chilean  Nitrate  Corpora- 
tion (N.  Y.) 

*  Ansco  Photo  Products,  Inc. 

417 


TREASON'S   PEACE 


*  Antidolor  Company 
Atlantic  Refining  Co. 

Ayerst,  McKenna  &  Harrison 
(U.  S.)  Ltd. 

Baker  &  Co. 
The  Barrett  Co. 
Bamsdall  Corporation 
Bayer  Company,  Inc. 
Bayer-Semesan  Co. 
BeU  and  Howcll  Co. 
Bernuthe  Lambecke  Co. 
Berst-Forster-Dixfield  Co. 

*  Board    of   Trade    for    German 

American  Commerce,  Inc. 
Bohn  Aluminum  &  Brass  Co. 
Borden  Company 
Bradley  &  Baker 
Bristol  Myers  Co. 

Calco  Chemical  Company 
California  Alkali  Export  Asso- 
ciation, Inc. 

Carbide    &    Carbon    Chemicals 
Corporation 
Carnation  Co. 
Carter  Oil  Co. 
Casein  Company  of  America 
L.  D.  Caulk  Company 

*  Central  Dyestuff  &  Chemical  Co. 
Central  Scientific  Company 

*  Chemical  Marketing  Co. 

*  Chemnyco,  Inc. 

Chilean  Nitrate  and  Iodine  Sales 

Corporation 

Chilean  Nitrate  Sales  Corpora- 
tion (N.  Y.) 

Chipman  Chemical  Engineer- 
ing Co. 

Church  &  Dwight  Co.,  Inc. 

Ciba  Company,  Inc. 


Cincinnati  Chemical  Works 
Cities  Service  Co. 
Climax  Molybdenum  Co. 
Columbia  Chemical  Co. 
Commercial  Pigments  Co. 

*  Consolidated  Color  &  Chemical 

Co. 

Continental  Oil  Company 
Cook-Waite  Laboratories 

R.  B.  Davis  Company 

Davis    Emergency    Equipment 

Company 

Diamond  Alkali  Company 
Diamond  Match  Company 
Dow  Chemical  Company 
Drug,  Inc. 
Dry  Milk  Company 
duPont  Cellophane  Company 
f  E.  I.  duPont  de  Nemours  Co. 

Eastman  Kodak  Company 
Ellis  Flotation  Corporation 
Ellis-Foster  Company 
Ethyl  Gasoline  Corporation 

Federal  Match  Co. 
Ferrocart  Corporation  of  Amer- 
ica 

*  Fezandie  &  Sperrle 
Firestone  Rubber  Company 
Fitchburg  Yarn  Company 
Fleischmann  Company 
Ford  Motor  Co. 

Freyn  Engineering  Company 

Gasoline  Products  Company 
Geigy  Company,  Inc. 

*  General  Aniline  &  Film  Corp. 

*  General  Aniline  Works,  Inc. 
General  Chemical  Company 


TREASONS     PEACE 


General  Drug  Co. 

*  General  Dyestuff  Corporation 
General  Electric  Company 
General  Mills,  Inc. 
General  Motors  Corporation 
General  Motors  Research  Cor- 
poration 

General  Tire  and  Rubber  Co. 
Glidden  Company 
Goodyear  Tire  and  Rubber  Co. 
William  Gordon  Corporation 
Grasselli  Chemical  Company 

*  Grasselli  Dyestuff  Corporation 
Greene  Cananea  Copper  Com- 
pany 

Gulf  Oil  Corporation  of  Penn. 

Gulf  Refining  Company 

Hercules  Powder  Co. 

Hoffmann-LaRoche,  Inc. 

Hooker  Electrochemical  Com- 
pany 

Household  Products,  Inc. 
0  Hutz  &  Joslin  (law  firm) 
f  Hydro    Carbon    Synthesis   Cor- 
poration 

Hydro  Engineering  and  Chem- 
ical Company 

Hydro  Patents  Co. 

Imperial  Chemical  Industries 
(N.  Y.)  Ltd. 

Indiana  Condensed  Milk  Com- 
pany 

Interchemical  Company 

International  Catalytic  Oil  Proc- 
esses Company 

International  Hydro  Patents 
Company 

International  Match  Company 

International  Nickel  Company 


419 

Interstate  Chemical  Company 
of  Rhode  Island 

*  Jasco,  Inc. 

M.  W.  Kellogg  Company 
Kennecott  Sales  Corporation 
Kerr      Dental      Manufacturing 

Company 
Koppers  Company 
Koppers  Construction  Company 
Krebs  Pigment  and  Color  Cor- 
poration 

'Kuttroff    Pickhardt    and    Com- 
pany 

Lautaro  Nitrate  Company,  Ltd. 

Lever  Bros. 

Life  Savers,  Inc. 

Louis  K.  Liggett  Company 

Lion  Match  Co. 

Loose- Wiles  Biscuit  Company 

*  Magnesium   Development   Cor- 

poration 

*  Marion  Company 
Mathieson  Alkali  Works  (Inc.) 
Mead  Johnson  &  Company , 
Wm.  S.  Merrell  Company 
Metal  &  Thermit  Co. 

*  H.  A.  Metz  Company 

*  Metz  Laboratories 

Mid  Continent  Petroleum  Cor- 
poration 

Molybdenum  Corporation  of 
America 

Monsanto  Chemical  Company 

National    Aniline    &    Chemical 

Company 
National  City  Company 


420 


TRE ASO  N*S     PEACE 


National  Distillers  Corporation 
National      Distillers      Products 

Company 

National  Lead  Company 
Nestles  Milk  Products  Company 
New  Jersey  Zinc  Company 
New  York  Match  Company,  Inc. 
Niagara  Alkali  Company 
North  American  Rayon  Corpor- 
ation 

Ohio  Match  Company 
Okonite  Company 
Oldbury  Electro-Chemical  Com- 
pany 
Owl  Drug  Co. 

*  Ozalid  Corporation 

*  Ozaphane  Corporation  of  Amer- 

ica 

Pacific  Alkali  Co. 
Parke  Davis  &  Company 
Penn-Chlor,  Inc. 
Pennsylvania   Salt  Manufactur- 
ing Company 
Pet  Milk  Company 
Phillips  Petroleum  Company 
Pittsburg  Plate  Glass  Company 

*  Plaskon  Company,  Inc. 
Polymerization    Processes    Cor- 
poration 

Proctor  and  Gamble  Company 
Pure  Oil  Company 

Remington  Arms  Company,  Inc. 
Richfield  Oil  Company  of  Cali- 
fornia 
Rohm  &  Haas  Company,  Inc. 

Sandoz  Chemical  Works,  Inc. 
Selden  Company 


Semet-Solvay  Company 
Shawinigan  Chemicals,  Ltd. 
Shell  Chemical  Co. 
Shell  Development  Corporation 
Shell  Union  Oil  Company 
Sinclair  Refining  Company 
Skelly  Oil  Company 
Socony- Vacuum  Oil  Company 
Solvay  Process  Company 
L.  Sonneborn  &  Sons,  Inc. 
Southern  Alkali  Corporation 
E.  R.  Squibb  &  Sons 
Standard  Alcohol  Company 
Standard  Brands,  Inc. 
Standard  Catalytic  Company 

t  Standard  I.  G.  Company 

f  Standard  Oil  of  California 
Standard  Oil  Development  Com- 
pany 

f  Standard  Oil  Co.  of  Indiana 
Standard  Oil  Co.  of  Louisiana 

f  Standard  Oil  Co.  (New  Jersey) 
Standard  Oil  Co.  of  New  Jersey 
Standard  Oil  Co.  of  New  York 
Standard  Oil  Co.  of  Ohio 
Standard  Oil  Co.  of  Texas 
Stauffer  Chemical  Company 

t  Sterling   Products,    Inc.     (Now 
Sterling  Drug,  Inc.) 

*  Synthetic  Nitrogen  Corp. 
Synthetic  Patents  Co.,  Inc. 

Texaco  Development  Corpora- 
tion 

Texas  Company 

Three-in-One  Oil  Company 

Titan  Company,  Inc. 

Titanium  Pigment  Company, 
Inc. 

Transamerican  Match  Company 


TREASON'S   PEACE 


421 


Uniform  Chemical  Products,  Inc. 

Union  Oil  Company  of  Cali- 
fornia 

Union  Carbide  and  Carbon  Cor- 
poration 

United  Drug  Company 

United  States  Alkali  Export  As- 
sociation, Inc. 

United  States  &  Transatlantic 
Service  Corporation 

United  States  Rubber  Company 

Universal  Match  Corporation 

Universal  Oil  Products  Com- 
pany 

Urbain  Corporation 

Vacuum  Oil  Company 
Vegex,  Inc. 


Vernon-Benshoff  Company 
Vernon-Morner  Company 
Vick  Chemical  Company 
Virginia  Chemical  Company 
Viscose  Company 
Visking  Corporation 
Vulcan  Match  Company 

West  End  Chemical  Company 
Westvaco     Chlorine     Products 

Corporation 

West  Virginia  Match  Corpora- 
tion 

Winthrop  Chemical  Corporation 
Wisconsin     Alumni      Research 

Foundation,  Inc. 
Wyandotte  Chemical  Company 


INDEX 

(Names  of  firms  listed  in  the  Appendix  which  do  not  appear  in  the 
text  are  not  included*  in  the  Index.) 


Abbott  Laboratories,  225,  335 
Abs,  Dr.  Herman  J.,  412 
Academy  of  Political  Science,  386 
Actien  Gesellschaft  fiir  Aniline  Fabri- 

kation,  see  Berlin  Company 
Advance  Solvents  &  Chemical  Co.,  56, 

63>  259,  397 
Agfa  Ansco  Corp.,  25,  28,  65,  79,  80, 

83,  108,  271,  356 

Agfa  Company,  German,  see  German 
Agfa  Photo  Products  Co.,  64 
Agfa  Raw  Film  Corp.,  64 
Aichelin,  Hans,  79 
Alba  Pharmaceutical  Co.,  43,  80,  105, 

106,  130,  172,  174,  228,  356,  360 
Albert,  Dr.  Heinrich,  16,  17,  19,  21, 

289 

Aldrich,  Nelson,  10 
Algiers,  381 
Aluminium  Ltd.,  330 
Aluminum     Company     of     America 

(Alcoa),   65-67,    324,   330-332,    348, 

350 

Allen,  George  Edward,  367,  411 
Allen,  James,  174,  307 
Allen    (Robert    M.),   see    Pearson    & 

Allen 

Allen,  Robert  McDowell,  43 
Allied  Chemcial  &  Dye  Corp.,  29,  36, 

46,  225,  332,  337-338,  346,  348 
Allied  Military  Government  for  Ger- 
many (A.M.G.),  384 
Allied  Reparations   Commission,  34, 

385 
Allies,  34,  71-72,  317,  382,  384-385,  392- 

393.  397»  404 

Ambruster,   Howard   Watson,   5,    11, 
26-27,    3*»   36-37»   42,   96,    100-102, 

117-118,    121-122,    138,    142,    156-158, 


160-165,  169,  179-180,  193,  203-206, 

213,   220-221,   223-224,   231-239,   306- 

312,  319,  324,  334,  352-358,  360,  369- 
37°'  375.  39 1»  399"4oi,  403 
Ambruster,  Ursula  (Mrs.  H.  W.),  204, 

239 
American  Bar  Association  Canons  of 

Professional  Ethics,  175 
American  Bemberg  Co.,  296 
American  Bosch  Co.,  368 
American  Bottlers  Association,  318 
American  Business  Survey  (Pub.),  318, 

3*9 

American  Car  &  Foundry  Co.,  10 
American  Chemical  Society,  59,  194 
American  Cyanamid  Co.,  338,  348,  405 
American  Dyes  Institute,  36 
American  Fellowship  Forum,  294,  295 
American  Foreign  Trade  Association, 

282 

American  Home  Products  Co.,  225 
American  I.  G.  Chemical  Corp.,  25, 
28,  29,  49,  67,  70,  75,  76,  79,  104, 
105,  107-124,  136,  146,  151,  196,  276, 
282,  319,  331,  337,  364 
American  Institute  of  Chemists,  305 
American  Magnesium  Corp.,  65,  83, 

130,  332 
American      Medical      Association 

(A.M.A.),  43,  181,  234,  238,  240 
American  Medical  Association  Coun- 
cil on  Foods  &  Nutrition,  43 
American  Medical  Association  Coun- 
cil on  Pharmacy  &  Chemistry,  210, 
211,  213,  216,  228,  229,  239,  240 
American    Medical   Association   divi- 
sion on  food  &  drugs,  213 
American  Medical  Association,  Journal 
of   (pub.),   205,   210,   215-216,   229, 
231-232,  239,  248 


482 


INDEX 


4*3 


American  Medical  Association  New  & 
Non-Official  Remedies  (pub.),  210, 
216-217 

American  Potash  &  Chemical  Co.,  346 

American  Retail  Federation,  127 

American  Surety  Corp.,  297 

American  Viscose  Co.,  144 

American  Zone  in  Germany,  405,  408, 
411 

Amram,  Philip  W.,  341,  406 

Anaconda  Copper  Co.,  343 

Andrews,  Harvey  T.,  152 

Anglo  Iranian  Oil  Co.,  53 

Anilinas  Alemanas  Co.,  258,  260,  263 

Ansco  Photo  Products  Co.,  64 

Antidolor  Company,  40 

Appelby,  Paul,  206 

Arbeitsfront,  178 

Argentina,  178,  243,  252,  258-260,  266, 

304 

Armistice,  33-34,  61,  79,  190 
Army  "E,"  215,  219 
Arnold,  Thurman  (Wesley),  44,  124, 

142,  144,  157,  170-174,  180,  187,  189. 

222-223,  261-262,  276,  307,  310-311, 

3i9>  331-332.  344.  350-35L  375-376 
Asia,  227,  404 
Association  of  National  Advertisers, 

246 

Atabrine,  3,  106,  217-221,  223-227,  360 
Atlantic  Monthly  (mag.),  223 
Attlee,     Prime     Minister     (Clement 

Richard),  385,  412 
Auhagen,  Friedrich  Ernst,  294-296 
Aul,  C.  A.,  99 
Auschwitz  (Germany),  407 
Austin,  Warren  R.,  355 
Austria,  54,  72 
Axis  countries  (powers),  106,  125-127, 

171,  221,  266-267,  270 

Badische    Anilin    und    Soda    Fabrik 

(Badische,  German),  2,   12,  17,  25, 

34.  36-37.  72.  84,  91 
Badische,  New  York,  81-82,  92,  259, 

276,  296 
Baldwin,  Beech  &  Mermey,  220,  317- 

3i8 

Baldwin,  William,  317-318 
Ball,  Joseph  H.,  167-168 
Bank  of  International  Settlement,  70 
Barbour,  W.  Warren,  192,  329 
Barkley,  Albein  W.,  208,  307 
Barnes,  Dr.  Harry  Elmer,  204 
Barney,  Dr.  L.  F.,  234 
Baruch,  Bernard  M.,  232,  391 


Basel,  Amos  S.,  323 

Basle,  Switzerland,  105 

Battle,  George  Gordon,  13 

Bayer  (name),  240 

Bayer  Aspirin,  38,  228-231,  233-237, 
239-241,  246,  255-257,  265,  267,  319 

Bayer  Aspirina,  257 

Bayer  Cafiaspirina,  257-258 

Bayer  Company,  American,  i,  8,  9, 
16,  18-19,  37-39,  43-45.  65,  71,  79, 
80,  94-97.  99.  126.  !53»  158-159.  J72, 
175,  215-216,  228,  259,  269-270,  289- 
290,  294,  297,  383 

Bayer  Company,  English  (British),  98, 

334 

Bayer  Company,  French,  98 
Bayer  Company,  German,  2,  7,  12,  20, 

38-39>  45.  79.  94-95.  98>  102,  216, 

254.  257.  262,  333-334 
Bayer  Company  Limited,  Canadian, 

Bayer  Company,  New  York,  95,  134, 
172,  178,  203,  216,  229-230,  232,  234- 
239,  241,  252,  257,  262,  319,  334,  348, 
356,  360-361. 

Bayer  Cross,  258 

Bayer  Semesan  Co.,  40 

Bayer,  Tonica,  257 

Behn,  Sosthenes,  297 

Behrens,  H.  F.,  99 

Belgium,  30-31,  194 

Bell,  Laird,  397 

Bennett,  John  J.,  237 

Berge,  Wendel,  356,  380-381,  398-399 

Berk,  C.  J.,  291-292 

Berle,  Adolph  A.,  260 

Berlin  Company,  2,  12 

Berlin,  Germany,  20-21,  29,  30,  no, 
119,  124,  140-141,  178,  271,  279, 
285,  299,  332,  396 

Berlin  University,  10,  137 

Berman,  Herbert  A.,  337,  349 

Bernstein,  Col.  Bernard,  388,  395-396, 
400,  403,  405 

Bernstorff,  Ambassador  von,  see  von 
Bernstorff 

Biddle,  Francis,  76,  88,  170,  172-179, 
256-257,  261,  267,  306-307,  309-311, 
314,  326,  333,  338,  353-355.  358-359. 
370-375.  398-400,  409 

Big  Six,  2,  4,  6-11,  14,  34,  36,  40,  44, 
46,  79,  82,  95,  216 

Bilbo,  Theodore  G.,  367,  388 

Bismarck  (Prince  Otto  Eduard  Leo- 
pold von),  29 

Black,  Hugo  L.,  199,  368 


424 


INDEX 


Blair,  Frank  A.,  44,  99,  139,  148, 
205,  208,  244 

"Bloody   International"   (book),   298 

Boal,  Frank  K.,  25 

Board  of  Trade  for  German  Ameri- 
can Commerce,  27-28,  77,  263,  281, 
284-291,  293-297,  300-301 

Board  of  Trade  for  German  Ameri- 
can Commerce,  Bulletin  of,  28, 
263,  284,  286,  287,  291,  296,  301-303 

Bone,  Homer  T.,  120,  186-187,  192^ 
221,  278,  297,  309,  319-322,  329,  344, 

349.  367.  379 

Book  Review  Digest  (mag.),  303 

Borden  Co.,  335 

Bosch,  Dr.  Carl  (Karl)  (Professor, 
Doctor),  17,  25,  34,  45,  48,  50-51,  59, 
69,  72,  107,  109-111,  113-115,  130, 
141,  146-147,  150,  194 

Bosch,  Carl  (Karl) ,  Jr.,  72 

Bosch  Magneto  Co.,  72,  145-153 

Bosch,  Robert,  72,  146-147,  150,  153, 
292 

Boyed,  Capt.,  148  ' 

Brazil,  30,  144,  257,  260,  266 

Breed,  Abbott  &  Morgan,  123 

Bremen  (SS),  293 

Brewster,  Ralph  (Owen),   166-167 

Bristol  family,  41 

Bristol,  Lee  H.,  246 

Bristol,  Myers  Co.,  41,  133,  241,  246 

British  Aluminium  Co.,  65 

British  Blacklist,  259,  294 

British  Empire,  57,  61,  201 

British  Foreign  Office,  396 

British  Government,  15,  22,  53,  61, 
98 

British  Intelligence,  283 

British  Ministry  of  Economic  War- 
fare, 125-126,  261 

British  Navy,  15,  23 

British  Order  of  Counsel,  22 

British  Zone  (in  Germany),  412 

Bromley,  Bruce,  328 

Brown  Brothers  &  Co.,  109 

Brugmann,  Charles,  128 

Brugmann,  Mrs.  Charles  (Mary  O. 
Wallace),  128 

Bryan,  William  Jennings,  21,  294 

Bued,  Dr.  (Julius),  141 

Buenos  Aires,  Argentine,  178 

Bullitt,  William  C.,  129 

Buna  rubber,  53-55,  58,  275,  278- 
279»  3!9>  321-322,  340,  370 

Burns  (William  J.),  148 

Burpee,  George  W.,  363 


Burritt,  Dr.  Norman  W.,  204,  207 
Butyl  rubber,  53 

Byrnes,  Jame^  F.,  199,  387,  408-409 
Byoir,  Carl  and  Associates,  292 

Cahill,  John  T.,  169-172,  370 
Caldwell  Company,  W.  B.,  245 
Campbell,  Walter  G.,  205,  208,  212- 

213,  242,  249-251 
Canadian  Alien  Property  Custodian, 

334 

Canadian  Courts,  333-334 

Canadian  Industries,  Ltd.,  338,  345 

Capehart,  Homer  E.,  388 

Capper's  Weekly  (pub.),  231 

Caraway,  Thaddeus,  135,  153.  191. 
318 

Carol,  King  of  Roumania,  30 

Carter,  Burnham,  195,  197 

Cascarets,  39,  242,  264 

Cassella  (Co.),  American,  294 

Cassella  (Leopold)  G.m.b.H.  in  Frank- 
furt (Cassella),  2,  12,  36,  102 

Cassina,  Count,  266 

Castoria,  Fletcher's,  41,  246,  248-252, 
264-265,  268 

Castoria,  Pitcher's,  250 

Centaur  Company,  44,  139 

Central  America,  134,  137,  265 

Chapman,  Virgil,  203-204 

Chemical  and  Metallurgical  Engineer- 
ing (pub.),  319 

Chemical  Exchange  Association,  16-17 

Chemical  Executive  Conference,  144 

Chemical  Foundation,  98-99,  149,  199, 
306,  364 

Chemical  Industry  Advisory  Com- 
mittee, 136,  138-140,  142-143 

Chemical    Marketing   Co.,    281,    283, 

295 

Chemicals  (pub.),  136,  138 
Chemists  Club  of  New  York,  16 
Chemnyco,  Inc.,  58,  75,  77,  81,  83, 

276-280,  284-285,  291,  296,  303,  331- 

332,  336,  356>  358,  397 
Chenery,  W.  L.,  237 
Cheyney,  Edward  L.,  66 
Chile,  34,  106,  266-267,  281 
China,  167,  344 
Choate,  Joseph  H.,  Jr.,  9 
Churchill,  Winston,  201,  259,  384,  412 
Ciba    Company    (American),    (Swiss), 

338 

Cincinnati  Chemical  Works,  338 
Clancy,  Howard,  239 
Clapper,  Raymond,  133,  179.  248 


INDEX 


425 


Clark,  Bennett,  Champ,  192,  193 
Clark,  Edward   Terry,    132-135,    156- 

Clark,  E.  M.,  53,  58,  111,  123 

Clark,  Tom  C.,  338,  358-359 

Clark,  Worth,  221 

Clay,  Lieut.  Col.  Lucius  D.,  408 

Clayton,  William  L.,  258,  391 

Climax  Molybdenum  Co.,  343 

Close,  Upton,  409 

Coca-Cola  Co.,  318 

Coffee,  John  M.,  375,  402-404 

Colliers  (pub.),  230,  237 

Colmer,  William  M.,  389 

Colombia,  178,  263,  265,  281 

Columbia  Broadcasting  System 
(C.B.S.),  322 

Columbia  University,  294 

Committee  for  Constitutional  Gov- 
ernment, 290 

Committee  on  Political  Economics, 
276 

Condor  Air  Line,  260 

Connally,   Tom,    186,   309,   311,   320, 

409 

Continental  Color  &  Chemical  Co.,  84 
Continental  Dye  Cartel  (Farben),  46 
Continental  Illinois  Co.,  109 
Cook  Laboratories,  40,  217,  228 
Coolidge,  Calvin,  42-43,  132,  134,  145 
Copeland,  Royal  S.,  181-183,  199,  202- 

209,  234-236 

Copeland  Service,  Inc.,  182,  207 
Copeland's  Health  Clinic,  235-236 
Corcoran,  David,  165,  171,  264,  372 
Corcoran,  Howard,  169 
Corcoran,   Thomas   G.   (Tommy    the 

Cork),    165-179,   213,   221-222,   226, 

262,   264,   267,   271,  310,  314,   333, 

369-375,  400 
Cosby,  Clarence  G.,  235 
Cosmopolitan,  Hearst's  (mag.),  230 
Coster,  Donald  (Musica),  41-42,   169- 

170,  317 

Cotton  &  Franklin,  169 
Cotton,  Joseph  P.,  166 
Cotton,  William  Henry,  80 
Courtaulds  (Ltd.,  Samuel),  144 
Coward  McCann,  Inc.,  303 
Coward,  Thomas  R.,  303 
Cravath,     de    Gersdorff,    Swaine    & 

Wood  (Cravath,  Swaine  &  Moore), 

328-329,  345,  366,  370,  386,  41 1 
Crawfc-d,  Kenneth  G.,  353 
Crim,  John,  see  Krim 
"Critica"  (newspaper),  252 


Crop  Protection  Institute,  91 

Crosley  station,  236 

Crowley,  Leo  T.,  85-86,  130,  155,  222, 

226,  359-362,  365-366.  368,  392-394. 

398,  405 
Cuba,  243,  317 

Cummings,  Homer  S.,  129,  155-158 
Curran,  Dr.  Edward  Lodge,  301 

Dalton,  Dr.  Hugh,  125,  126 

Danaher,  John  A.,  221 

Daugherty,  Harry,  145-146,  148,  150, 

156 

Daugherty,  William  T.,  140-141 
Davis,  Ewin  L.,  238,  239 
Davis,  John  W.,  341 
Davis,  William  H.,  363-364 
Dean,  Sidney  W.,  Sr.,  136,  138 
Degener,  Dr.  Albert,  28,  287,  293,  296 
deKruif,  Dr.  Paul,  219-220 
Delahanty,  Thomas  W.,  143 
Democratic   Party,   28,    153-154,    156- 

166,  186-187,  192,  243,  266,  323,  368 
Denmark,  29 
Deutsche    Gold-     und    Silberscheide 

Anstalt-A-G,  281 
Deutsche  Reichsbank,  70 
Deutscher  Verein,  291 
Deutscher  Weckruf   und    Beobachter 

(pub.),  302 

Deutschland  (submarine),  22-23 
Dewey,  Thomas  A.,  85,  287 
Diamond  Match  Co.,  346 
Dickinson,  John,  157-158 
Dickstein,  Samuel,  195,  198 
Diebold,  Albert  H.,  39,  44,  98-99,  172, 

225,  254,  258,  264,  296 
Dieckhoff,    Ambassador    Hans    Hein- 

rich,  296 
Dies,  Martin,  195,  272,  281,  295,  297, 

308,311,375,397 
Dillon,  Read  &  Co.,  386 
Dinkelacker,  Theodore,  296 
Dobson,  John  and  James,  6 
Doermer,  Justizrat  Otto,  97,  99,  100  . 
Domei,  Japanese  news  agency,  283 
Donovan,  Col.  William  J.,  134,  140- 

142,  144,  183 

Douglas,  William  O.,  117,  121 
Dow    Chemical    Co.,    65-67,    278-279, 

332.  35° 

Dow  (Dr.  Herbert  H.),  Sr.,  65 
Draper,  Brig.  Gen.  William  H.,  386, 

397 

Drug,  Inc.,  41-42,  100,  133,  136,  156- 
157,  225,  233,  235-236,  241,  246,  267 


426  INDEX 

Drug  Topics  (pub.),  176 

Drug  Trade  News  (pub.),  176,  211 

Drysalters  Club  of  New  England,  15- 

16,  19 
Duisberg,  Dr.  Karl  (Carl),  38,  69,  71- 

7.2.  76-77.  94-96,  98,  102 
Duisberg,  Karl  Ludwig,  72 
Duisberg,  Walter  H.,  66,  72, 77,  78,  83, 

86,  99,  102,  105,  115,  118,  263,  276 
Dulles,  Allen  W.,  366 
Dulles,  John  Foster,  85,  87,  299,  300, 

347,  366,  409 
Dunbar,  Dr.  Paul,  212 
Duperial    (S.A.)    (Argentine,    Brazil), 

379 
du  Pont  De  Nemours  &  Co.,  E.  I.,  29, 

36,  40,  45-46,  50-54,  59,  60,  62-64,  83, 

no,  130,  139,  184,  189,  193-194,  278, 

3i5-3l7.  324,  326,  328-330,  332,  335, 
J  337-338,  344-346,  348,  379 
du  Pont,  Irene,  54,  189 
du  Pont,  Lammot,  50,  54,  139,  193 
du  Pont,  Pierre,  54 
Durrett,  Dr.  J.  J.,  209,  211 
Dutch  East  Indies,  106,  217,  320 
Dutch  quinine  syndicate,  220 
Dutch  Shell  Co.,  56 
Dynamite,  A.  G.  (D.  A.  G.),  60 

Earle,  Admiral  Ralph,  190 
Eastland,  James  Oliver,  388 
Eastland  station  (broadcasting),  235 
Eckler,  Leopold,  80 
Editor  &  Publisher  (Pub.),  247 
Edison,  Thomas  A.,  16-17,  294 
Edmunds,  James  E.,  283-284 
Eisenhower,  General  Dwight  D.,  342, 

385-387 

Emanuel  &  Co.,  365 
Emanuel,  Victor,  365-368,  411 
Emerson,  Col.  Ed.,  296 
Empire  Ordinance  Co.,  168-169 
English  House  of  Commons,  201 
English  House  of  Lords,  317 
English  Parliament,  317 
Essary,  J.  Fred,  164 
Europa  (SS),  293 
Europe,   30,   49,   56-57,   74,   77,    103, 

122-123,  142,  183,  200-201,  215,  255, 

304.  33L  344,  382,  389,  403-404 
Export  Managers  Club,  244 

Facts  on  Review  (pub.),  292,  302 
Farben,  I.  G.   (German  I.  G.),  2,  3, 
10-11,  18-20,  25-35,  40,  42-94.  96-99, 
101-118,  Si2o-i27,   129-131,   133-134, 


137-iS9»  140-146,  150,  156-162,  170- 
174,  176,  178-180,  182-183,  185-189, 
191-195,  197-201,  203,  205,  208-209, 
213,  215-223,  225-227,  229-231,  239, 
241,  243,  246-248,  252-260,  262-264, 
267-268,  270-281,  284-285,  287-289, 
291-293,  296-301,  303,  306-311,  313- 
316,  318-324,  326,  329-352,  356-372, 
375-378,  380-387,  389-393,  395-413 

Farbenfabriken  vorm.  Friedr.  Bayer  & 
Co.  (Bayer)  (Elberfeld),  see  Bayer, 
German 

Farbewerke  vorm.  Meister  Lucius  und 
Bruning  (Hoechst),  see  Hoechst  Co. 

Farley,  James  A.,  156-157,  161,  163-166 

"Farma"  companies,  256-257 

Farish,  William  S.,  58,  186,  314,  320- 
321,324,339,409 

Fath,  Creekmore,  221,  274,  320 

"Fatherland,  The"  (pub.),  301 

Felder,  Thomas  B.,  146 

Ferdinand  Andreas,  Prince  of  Liech- 
tenstein, 296 

Fezandie  &  Sperrle,  259,  296 

Field,  Marshall,  176 

Filene,  Edward  A.,  127 

Fishbein,  Dr.  Morris,  43,  205,  210-211, 
213,  215-216,  219,  231,  234,  236,  238- 
240,  248 

Flender,  Ernest  W.,  128 

Fletcher,  Dr.   (Charles  H.)   (Samuel), 

249 

Floyd,  William  II,  323,  380 
Flynn,  Edward,  163 
Ford,  Edsel  B.,  67,  109,  113 
Ford  Motor  Co.,  66 
Fort,  Dr.  Arthur  S.,  234 
Foster,  Raymond,  99 
Fowler,  Henry  H.,  393 
France,  15,  36,  57-58,  98,  141,  144,  194, 

283,  381-382,  410 
Franco-German    dyestuff    agreement, 

142 
Frankfurt  (a/Main  Germany),  71-73, 

256,  277,  279,  283,  291,  321,  326,  332, 

344.  405 

Frankfurt  Stock  Exchange,  396 
Frantz,  Harry  W.,  251 
Freytag,  Heinrich,  293 
Frolick,  Dr.  Per  K.,  59 
Fulton,  Hugh  A.,  369-371 

Gabler,  Dr.  Werner  Karl,  127 
Gadow,  Albert,  70 
Gallagher,  Ralph,  323,  380 
Gannett,  Frank,  247,  ago 


INDEX 


4«7 


Gannett  Newspapers,  247 
Garvan,  Francis  Patrick,  11,  12,  31,  38, 
91-93,  95,  145-153,  158.  189-190,  199, 
201,  269-270,  273,  305-306,  364 

Gattineau,  H.,  71 

Gearhart,  Bertrand  W.,  222-223 

Geigy  .Company,  Inc.  (American) 
(Swiss),  338 

General  Aniline  &  Film  Corp.,  29,  46, 
56,  70.  75.  ?8,  79-  81,  83,  85,  109, 
122-130,  155,  259-260,  269-271,  276, 
296,  328,  332,  335-339.  348,  356.  359. 
361-364,  368,  411 

General  Aniline  Works,  28,  45,  78, 
80,  108,  122 

General  Drug  Co.,  28,  242,  246 

General  Dyestuff  Corp.,  25,  28,  45,  78, 
80-88,  91,  125-126,  130,  296,  307,  335- 
336,  338-339.  348,  356.  362-363,  366, 
368 

General  Motors  Co.,  50,  295-297,  397 

George,  Walter  F.,  192,  308-309,  312 

Georgia  State  Medical  Society,  234 

Gerard,  James  W.,  165,  323-324,  383 

German  Agfa  Company,  64 

German  Ambassador,  16,  18,  74,  282, 
296 

German  Banks  and  their  Concentra- 
tion in  Connection  with  the  Eco- 
nomic Development  of  Germany 
(pub.),  10 

German  Embassy,  75,  146,  148-149, 
257.  293 

German  Insurance  Pools  conspiracy, 
294 

German  Library  of  Information 
(pub.),  292,  300,  302 

German  Publishers  Society,  18 

German  Railroad  Information  Office, 
291,  293,  300 

German  Steel  Trust  (Vereinigte  Stahl- 
werke),  70,  102,  382,  386,  410 

German  University  League,  290 

German  War  Trade  Board,  95,  102 

Germany,  1-8,  10-12,  15-25,  28-29,  31. 
33-40,  43-48,  50,  51,  53-58,  60-62,  64- 
66,  70-76,  79,  81-84,  87,  91,  94-96,  98, 

100-104,  1°6>  109,  112,  118-119,  121- 
123,  125,  128-129,  134-»37.  139-141, 
143-146,  148-153,  156,  158-159,  166, 
172-173,  175,  177-178,  l8o-l8l,  183- 
184,  186-194,  197-198,  200-201,  215- 
2l6,  220,  222-223,  252-254,  256-258, 
26l,  263-264,  266,  268-274,  277,  279, 
282-283,  285-296,  298-301,  304-307, 
313-314.  317-319.  S22-323.  330.  34L 


345.  347.  357-358.  360,  364,  372,  374, 
378,  382-393,  395-399.  401-402,  404- 
406,  408-413 

Gestapo,  74,  85,  258,  266,  272-273,  374 

Gillette,  Guy  M.,  159 

Goebbels  (Dr.  Joseph),  196,  226 

Goff,  Guy  D.,  26-27 

Gold,  Mrs.,  150 

Goodrich  Rubber  Co.,  58 

Goodyear  Rubber  Co.,  278-279 

Grasselli  Chemical  Co.,  45,  138,  144, 

364 

Grasselli  Dyestuff  Co.,  45,  83 
Great  Britain  (England),  3,  15-17,  19, 

21-23,  28,  30,  48,  125,  201,  243,  254, 

259,  282,  284,  289,  294-295,  301,  317, 

410,  412-413 

Green  Cananea  Copper  Co.,  343-344 
Greif,  Dr.  Wilfrid,  108-109,  114,  276 
Greutert  &  Cie,  Edward,  in,  115-116 
Greutert,  Edward  W.,  116 
Grimmel,  Harry  W.,  80 
Gross,  Dr.  Herbert,  283,  296 
Grundy,  Joseph  R.,  27 
Grynszpan,  Herschel,  75 
Guyer,  U.  S.,  195 

Haas,  Otto,  62-63,  327 

Haber-Bosch  patents,  59 

Haber,  Dr.  Fritz,  34,  72 

Haeuser,  Dr.  Adolph,  12-13,  21,  30-31, 

93 
Hague     agreement      (memorandum) 

(conference),  57,  320,  340-343,  406 
Hague  convention,  17 
Hague,  Mayor  Frank,  161,  329,  368 
Haigh,  George  C.,  99,  175,  265  * 
Halback,  Elizabeth  S.  (Mrs.  E.  K.),  86 
Halback,   Ernest   K.,   81-88,   91,    126, 

259.  296,  338,  363,  409 
Ham  berg,  73 
Hamberg  American   (S.S.  Line),   107, 

147,  272,  289,  292-293 
Hamilton,  Dr.  Aubrey  H.,  218-219 
Harden,  Orville,  123,  399 
Harding,  Warren   G.,   28,   38-39,  93, 

142,  145,  152-153,  288,  362,  371 
Hardy,  Charles  J.,  10,  95 
Harold,  Dr.  F.  X.,  22 
Harris,  Forbes  &  Co.,  109 
Harrison,  Earl  G.,  356 
Harvard  University,  310,  396 
Haslam,  Robert  T.,  48,  54,  58.  321- 

322,  380 

Hatch,  Carl  A.,  369 
Hays,  Kaufman  and  Lindheim,  148 


428 


INDEX 


Healy,  Robert  E.,  122 

Hearst  (William  Randolph),  22,  150 

Heflin,  (J.)  Thomas,  282-283 

Heimenz,  William,  43,  80,  99,  174-175, 
203 

Heins,  Otto,  150 

Hemingway,  Frank,  36 

Herlein,  Professor  (Dr.  Heinrich  Hor- 
lein),  254 

Hershey  Co.,  317 

Herty,  Dr.  Charles  H.,  31,  194 

Hess,  Christian,  94 

Hey  den  Chemical  Co.,  294 

Hill,  H.,  141 

Hill,  James,  Jr.,  174,  265,  318 

Hilles,  Charles  D.,  134 

Hills,  G.  S.,  265 

Hilton,  Davis  &  Co.,  225 

Hindenburg  (Paul  von  IJeneckendorff 
imd  von),  102 

Hitler,  Adolph,  28,  33,  53-54.  56,  7°- 
71,  73-74,  76,  102-104,  111,  173,  193, 
196,  199,  200,  253,  255,  273,  291,  293, 
304,  306-307,  366,  382,  390,  406,  409 

Hobby  Shop,  132,  135 

Hobby,  William  P.,  186 

Hockswender,  Dr.  Karl,  81,  276,  296, 

332.  336 

Hoechst  Co.,  German,  2,  11-13,  28,  30- 
31,  73,  80,  93-94,  215-216,  328,  370, 

378 

Hoechst-Metz  Co.,  92-93 

Hoover,  Herbert,  42,  77,  99,  100,  134, 
136,  138-140,  142-144,  154,  156-157, 
159,  166,  170,  183,  187,  291,  303-304, 

315 

Howard,  Frank  A.,  48,  52,  54-55 »  57' 
58,  111,  114,  119-120,  124,  274-275, 

3»3>  339-343 
Howard,  Henry,  138 
Hudson  River  Aniline  Works,  94 
Hughes,  Charles  Evans,  170 
Hull,  Cordell.  28,  126,  268,  294,  308, 

383 

Humble  Oil  Co.,  58,  186 
Humphrey,  W.  E.,  238 
Hunter,  R.  M.,  278,  321 
Hutchinson,  Walter  R.,  326-327 
Hutz  and  Joslin,  78,  270 
Hutz,  Rudolph,  78-79,  126,  259,  270 
Hutz,  W.  H.,  78,  270 
"Hygeia"  (pub.),  43,  232 

Ickes,  Harold  L.,  247-248 
I.  G.  Dyes,  (German),  10,  34,  36-37,  40, 
64,  69,  71,  73,  80,  97-98,   145-146, 


154,     156,     188,     igi,    200,    2l6,    269, 
297,  314,  383 

I.  G.  Farbenindustrie,  see  Farben 
Ilgner,  Max,  71,  76,  196,  271,  276-279, 

285,  291,  397,  4»2-4i3 
Ilgner,  Rudolph  W.,  76-77,  276-277, 

279,  284-285,  289,  291,  296,  303,  331, 

358 
Imperial  Chemical  Industries  (I.C.I.) 

(of  England),  62,  in,  315'317>  326> 

332.  S38,  344-346»  379 
Imperial  Chemical  Industries  (of  New 

York),  346 
Independent    Voters    Committee    for 

Roosevelt  and  Wallace,  166 
Indiana  State  Board  of  Health,  237 
Interessen  Gemeinschaft  Farbenindus- 
trie Aktiengesellschaft,  see  Farben 
International  Aluminum  cartel,  330 
International  Manhattan  Co.,  109 
International  Match  Co.,  346 
International  Nickel  Co.  of  Canada, 

85»  347 
International  Nickel  Co.  of  New  York, 

347 
International     Nitrogen     Association 

(cartel),  60,  116,  331,  366 
International  Patent  Convention,  184 
International  Telephone  &  Telegraph 

Co.,  297 
Internationale  Gesellschaft  fur  Chem- 

ische  Unternehmunger  A.   G.,  see 

Swiss  I.  G. 

I  Paid  Hitler  (book),  382 
Isseks,  Samuel  S.,  310-311,  372 
Italy,  194,  299 


Jackson,  Robert  H.,  81,  126,  170,  330- 

33L  368,  376-377>  407*  4»o 

Jacobs,  Joseph,  219 

Jadwin,  Stanley  P.,  99 

Japan,  106,  129,  200,  217,  299,  344 

Jasco,    Inc.    (Joint    American    Study 

Company),  52-58,  84 
enkins,  Thomas  A.,  195 
ohnson,  Judge  Albert  W.,  328 
ohnson,  Edwin  C.,  295 
ohnson,  Herbert  A.,  290-291 
ones,  Jesse,  226 
oslin,  H.  M.,  78,  270 
bslin,  Theodore  G.,  133,  315 

Kahle,  Mrs.  Dorothy  Pickhardt,  128 
Kahn,  Otto,  146,  151 
Kalle  &  Company,  2,  12,  64,  216 
Kalle,  Dr.  Wilhelm  Ferdinand,  296 


INDEX 


429 


Kansas  Medical  Society,  234 
Kemper,  James  S.,  286-288,  301,  304 
Kennecott  Copper  Co.,  343 
Kennedy,  Joseph  P.,  121 
Keppelmann,  Alfred  T.,  i,  7-9,  n 
Kertess,  Ferdinand  A.,  281-284,  294- 

296 
Kilgore,  Harley  M.,  258,  297,  323,  330, 

349.  367>  390-39i  >  393'  395'396»  398» 

400-402 

King,  John  T.,  145-146,  148,  151*  156 
King,  William  H.,  23-25,  28,  153,  181, 

189 

Klein,  Dr.  Julius,  143 
Klumpp,  Dr.  Theodore  G.,  211,  213- 

214,  220 

Knox,  Judge  John  C.,  126 
Kny,  Richard,  294 
Kohen,  Charles,  132,  134,  135 
Kohler,  Renata,  257 
Koch,  Richard,  295 
Kramer,  Charles,  195 
Krauch,  Dr.  Carl,  396 
Krebs,  Richard  (Jean  Valtin),  272-273 
Krim,,  John  (Grim),  146,  148-149 
Krueger  &  Toll  Co.,  347 
Krueger,  Ivar,  346-347 
Krupp    (von    Bohlen    und    Halbach, 

Gustave),  407 
Ku  Klux  (Klan),  100 
Kuhlmann  Co.  (French),  338 
Kuhn,  Fritz,  296 
Kuttroff,  Adolph,  84,  109 
Kuttroff,  Percy,  87 
Kuttroff,  Pickhardt  &  Co.,  25,  37,  81- 

83,  91-92,  141,  276 

La  Guardia,  Fiorella,  293 

La  Follette,  Robert  M.,  Jr.,  350 

La  Frentz,  F.  W.,  297 

Lammers,  Dr.  Clemens,  403 

"La  Razon"  (newspaper),  252 

Lati  Air  Line,  260 

Latin  America,  30,  63,  77,  86,  102, 
127,  165,  224-225,  246,  250,  252,  254- 
256,  261-266,  272,  319,  345,  358, 

371-372 
Latin  American  newspapers,  78,  178, 

253,  268, 318 
La  Varre,  William,  260 
Lea,  Clarence,  208 
League  of  Nations,  45,  143,  403 
Leake,  Lowell  L.,  120 
Lee  &  Co.,  J.  Ivy,  196,  297 
Lee  Higginson  &  Co.,  109 
Lee,  J.  Ivy,  195,  197-198,  200,  292,  358 


Leipzig  Trade  Fair,  291 

Leishman  family,  Nancy-Louise,  30 

Lenz,  Rudolph,  87,  339,  363 

Letts  (Ira  Lloyd),  152 

Leverkusen  (Germany),  97,  242 

Lewis,  Merton  E.,  146,  150,  152 

Liechtenstein,  Prince,  296 

Life  (mag.),  176 

Life  Savers,  Inc.,  41,  133 

Liggett,  Louis  K.,  41-42,  99,  101,  133, 

156-157 

Lilly  &  Co.,  Eli,  225 
Littell,  Norman  M.,  257,  370-375,  399 
Loehr,  Dr.  Oscar,  279,  322 
London  (England),  111,  114,  201 
Longworth,  Nicholas,  3 
Luce,  Henry,  176 
Lucas,  Scott  W.,  185,  221,  367 
Luedtke,  Willy,  296 
Lutz,  George,  64 
Lyons,  Leonard,  176 

Mack,  Judge  John  E.,  129,  155,  259 

Madrid,  Spain,  73 

Magnesium,  19-20,  65-67,  77,  278,  313, 

319.  332-333'  336 
Magnesium  Development  Co.,  66-67, 

81,  276,  296,  332,  356 
Maine  Medical  Association,  235 
Malaya,  320 
Mann,  Dr.  Rudolph,  38,  94,  96-99, 

103 

Mann,  Dr.  Wilhelm  R.,  254-255,  264 
Manss,  Harvey  M.,  241 
Markham,  James  E.,  86,  362-363,  366- 

368 

Martin,  H.  W.,  87 
Martin,  James  S.,  289,  297,  406 
Matheson,  William  J.,  36 
Matthews,  Dr.  J.  B.,  375 
Matthews,  T.  S.,  176 
Mayer,  Judge  Julius  M.,  92-93 
Mayer,  Julius  P.,  289,  290 
Maywood  Chemical  Co.,  281 
McCalls  (mag.),  231 
McClintock,  Earl  L,  38,  43-44,  96,  98- 

99,  121,  125,  158-166,  170,  174,  178, 

203,  243,  253,  255,  258,  261,  265-267, 

309,  318,  361,  372 
McCloy,  John  J.,  386,  411 
McCormack,  Alfred,  386 
McCormack,  John  W.,  195,  199,  293, 

358 

McFadden,  Louis  T.,  192 
McFarland,  Ernest  W.,'i6o 


430  INDEX 


McGowan,  Lord  Harry  (Duncan),  316- 

317 

McGraw  Hill  Co.,  319 

Mclntyre,  Rear  Admiral  Ross  T.,  224 

McKesson  8c  Robbins,  41-42,  122,  169 

McKittrick,  Thomas  H.,  70 

McNutt,  Paul  V.,  213 

Mead,  James  M.,  371 

Meaney,  Judge  Thomas  F.,  329-330 

Means,  Gaston  B.,  146,  148,  150 

Meili,  E.  H.,  296 

Melchett,  Lord  (Henry  Ludwig),  317 

Metz,  Col.  Herman  A.,  11-13,  15,  18, 
20-25,  27-32,  40,  46,  83,  91-94,  98, 
109-110,  144,  151,  153-154'  184-185, 
189,  200,  203,  215-216,  228,  284,  288- 
289,  291,  294,  296,  303,  328,  378 

Metz  Co.,  H.  A.,  11,  25,  27 

Metz  Fellowship,  29 

Metz,  Gustave  P.,  93 

Metz  Laboratories,  28,  31,  80,  217 

Metz,  Marie  Luise  (Mrs.  Richard),  29- 

3<> 

Metz,  Richard,  29,  30 
Meltzer,  Bernard,  268 
Merck  &  Co.,  224-225 
Mermey,  Maurice,  220,  317-318 
Merrell  &  Co.,  Wm.  S.,  225 
Mexico,  30,  265 
Meyer,  Eugene,  36,  192 
Michelson,  Charles,  156-157 
Midland,  Michigan,  65 
"Midol,"  242-244,  246 
Miller,  Thomas  W.,  145-146,  148-150 
"Mistol,"  245 

Mitchell,  Charles  E.,  109,  114-115 
Mitchell,  William  D.,  153,  157 
Mitsui  Company,  338 
Moley,  Ray,  390 
Moll,  Alfredo,  30,  259-260 
Molotov  (Vyacheslav  M.),  408 
Molybdenum  Corp.  of  America,  344 
Mooney,  James  D.,  295-297 
Moore,  A.  Harry,  206-207 
Moore,  Hoyt  A.,  328-329 
Morgenthau,  Henry  M.,  Jr.,  126-127, 

130,   269,   273,   284,   308,   384,  388, 

39 1.  4o8 

Morgenthau  Plan,  384,  390,  397 
Morrison,  A.  Cressy,  143 
Moscow,  Russia,  412-413 
Moses,  George  H.,  146,  148,  150-151, 

181 

Mowrer,  Edgar  Ansel,  409 
Mullaly,  A.  L.,  296 
Munich  (Germany),  IDS 


Munich  (Germany),  Stock  Exchange, 

396 

Murphy,  Robert  D.,  397 
Murray,  John  F.,  99 

National  Aniline  &  Chemical  Co.,  36, 

225 
National   Broadcasting   Co.   (N.B.C.), 

233-237 
National    City    Bank   of   New    York, 

107-109,  126,  136,  170 
National  Institute  of  Health,  218 
National  Lead  Co.,  344-345 
National  Research  Council,  91,  226 
Navy  E,  215,  219 
Nazi  Chemical  Chief,  396 
Nazi  Defense  Headquarters,  341 
Nazi  Ministers,  342 
Nazis,  46,  71,  73-74.  76,  103-105,  125, 
128,  135,  166,  174,  176,  178,  193-194, 
197-199,  201,  220,  252-253,  257-261, 
263,  266,  268,  272,  281,  288-289,  291- 
294»  297,  300-301,  341-342,  372,  374- 
375»  381,  383»  387-388,  390-391.  396- 
397,  401,  406-410 
Neuduck  Castle  (Germany),  102 
"Neues  Deutschland"  (pub.),  see  New 

Germany 

Neuralgyline  Company,  39 
New  Deal,  127-128,  159,  165-166,  177, 

179,  181,  390 

"New  Germany,"  The  (pub.),  293 
New  Jersey  Medical  Society,  204,  206- 

208,  239 

Newspaper  Guild,  Washington,  353 
New  York  American,  22 
New  York  Daily  News,  230,  301 
New  York  Evening  Mail,  18,  290 
New  York  Herald  Tribune,  134,  303 
New  York  Journal,  230 
New  York  Journal  of  Commerce,  139- 

140 

New  York  Post,  176,  380,  390 
New  York  Public  Library,  164 
New  York,  S.S.  (steamship),  107 
New  York  Staatz  Zeitung,  292 
New  York  Stock  Exchange,  41,   122, 

191 

New  York  Sun,  231 
New  York  Times,  49,  81,  126,  132-133, 

179,  230,  233-234,  303,  381,  405 
New  York  World  Telegram,  222,  247- 

248 

Nikitchenko,  Judge  J.  I.,  410 
Nixon,   Russel   A.,   396-398,  401-402, 

405 


INDEX  491 


Nobel  Prize,  7* 

Noble,  Edward  J.,  41,  $67 

Non-Sectarian  Anti  Nazi  League,  121, 

221,  306-308 
Non-Sectarian     Anti     Nazi     League 

Bulletin,  307 

Norris,  George  W.,  329,  374 
North  Africa,  381-382 
North  America,  72,  261,  268,  273 
North  German  Lloyd  (SS  line),  292- 

293 

Northwestern  University,  29 
"Novocain,"  216-217 
Nuremberg    Court    (Tribunal),    174, 

400,  406-411 

Nye,  Gerald  P.,  192,  194-195 
"Nylon,"  62,  64,  278,  379 

Ober    Kommando    der    Wehrmacht, 

34» 

O 'Goner,  Herbert  P.,  238 
O'Connell,  J.  J.,  Jr.,  129-130,  175,  277, 

335 

Ohio  State  University,  154 
O'Mahoney,  Joseph,  398-400 
"Order    of    Merit    of    the    German 

Eagle,"  295 
Oswiecim  (Ger.),  407 
Ozalid  Corporation,  75,  84 
Out  of  the  Night  (book),  272 

Padover,  Saul  K.,  389 

Palmer,  A.  Mitchell,  36,  145-146,  152- 

i53»  *75 

Panama,  178,  218,  263,  304 
Panama  Canal  (Zone) ,  263,  281,  413 
Pan-American  Airways,  283 
Paris,  France,  37,  58,  140 
Parke-Bernet  Galleries,  132,  134 
Parke  Davis  &  Co.,  335 
Patman,  Wright,  145 
Patterson,  Robert  P.,  222 
Peace  Conference,  Paris,  409 
Peace  Conference  (Versailles),  142 
Peace  Treaty  (Versailles),  96 
Pearl  Harbor,  129,  261,  265,  272,  299- 

300,  350,  376 

Pearson  (Drew)  and  Allen,  172 
Pecora,  Ferdinand,  122 
Pepper,  Claude,  221 
Perkin,  William  H.,  3,  217 
Peru,  30 
Peters,  Carl  B.,  276,  331-332,  397-398, 

405 

Peterson,  Howard  C.,  386,  411 
Petroff,  Major  (Igor),  397 


Petroleum  Times,  London.  England 
(pub.),  321 

Pharma  Chemical  Co.,  225 

Philadelphia,  Penna.,  Record  (news- 
paper), 247-248 

Phillips  Milk  of  Magnesia,  41,  235, 
241,  246,  264-265 

Philippines,  218 

Pickhardt  &  Kuttroff,  84 

Pickhardt,  William,  84 

Pickhardt,  William  Paul,  37,  83-84, 
276,  296 

Pickrell,  Dr.  Eugene  R.,  23-28,  151, 
284,  293-294,  296 

Pilot  Insurance  Co.,  294 

Pillsbury,  Col.  E.  G.,  397 

Pinchot,  Gifford,  237 

Pistor,  Gustave,  332 

Pittenger,  Dudley,  195 

Plainfield,  New  Jersey,  Courier  News 
(newspaper),  247 

Plaskon  Corp.,  84,  130 

PM  (newspaper),  120,  176,  353,  367, 

Poland,  33,  76,  291,  406 

Pole,  75 

Pollard,  John  G.  237 

Pomerantz,  Abraham,  411 

Pope,  James  P.,  192 

Pope,  Col.  Frederick,  405 

Porter,  Sylvia,  380,  390 

Potsdam  Conference  (agreement),  385, 

395.  397.  4o6,  408-409 
Poucher,  M.  R.,  36 
Power  Trust,  101 
Price,  Byron,  387 
Price  Waterhouse  &  Co.,  42 
Printers  and  Publishers  Association, 

18 

Printer's  Ink  (pub.),  318 
Proprietary  Association,  44,  205 
Proprietary    Association     Committee 

on  Advertising,  241 
Prussia,  Ger.,  29 
Public  Health  League  of  Washington, 

236 

Puetzer,  Dr.  Bruno,  80 
Pulitzer  Prize,  176 

Quaker  Oats  Co.,  335 
Quebec  Conference,  384,  408 
Quimica  Bayer  Co.,  258,  263 

Rayburn,  Sam,  352 
Reader's  Digest  (mag.),  220 
Reagan,  Daniel  J.,  140-141 


43* 


INDEX 


Reich,  90,  102,  382,  389,  409 

Reichsbank,  410 

Reichs-Landbund,  102 

Reichstag,  102 

Reiner,  Dr.  Robert,  294 

Remington  Arms  Co.,  50,  60,  315,  345 

Renoe,  John  A.,  238 

Rensselaer,  N.  Y.,  18,  80,  97,  106,  214, 

272 
Republican  (Party),  27-28,  42,  85,  99. 

101,  134,  142,  145-146,  153,  156,  159, 

161-163,  l8l»  l87'  192'  287-288,  301, 

303-304,  347,  388,  409 
Rexall-Liggett  Retail  Drug  Stores,  41 
Rheinisch  Stahlwerke,  102 
Richard  &  Co.,  C.  B.,  128 
Richardson  family,  41 
Ridder  family,  292 
Ridder,  Victor  F.,  297 
Riesser,  Professor  J.,  10 
Rifkin'd,  Judge  Simon  H.,  345 
Ringer,  Dr.  Fritz,  57-58,  340 
Ritchie,  Albert  C.,  238 
Robb,  Arthur  T.,  247 
Robinson,   Arthur   R.,   25,    110,    191, 

3i8 

Rogers,  Edward  S.,  44,  96,  174,  213, 
219,  257,  265,  318 

Rogers,  Hoge  &  Hills,  169 

Rohm,  Ernst,  73 

Rohm,  Dr.,  62,  327 

Rohm  &  Haas,  A.  G.,  Darmstadt,  62, 
326,  328 

Rohm  &  Haas  Company,  Inc.  (Phila- 
delphia), 62-63,  259,  284,  326,  328- 

33° 

Rome-Berlin  Axis  Intelligence  Serv- 
ice, 292 

Roosevelt,  Franklin  D.,  126,  129,  134, 
156-157,  166-167,  237,  284,  374,  381, 
383-384,  389-390 

Ross  Company,  Sidney,  165,  171,  264 

Rumely,  Edward  A.,  18,  43,  290 

Russell,  Samuel,  24 

Russia,  14,  73,  80,  388,  408-410,  413 

Sadler,  E.  J.,  313 
Sal  the,  Ole,  182,  203,  208-209,  212 
"Salvarsan,"  215,  318 
Sandoz  Chemical  Works,  Inc.  (Amer- 
ican), (Swiss),  338 
Sargent  (John  G.),  152 
Sato,  T.,  283 
Saturday   Evening  Post   (mag.),   220. 

23 1>  295 
Savannah  Shipyards,  168 


Schacht,  Dr.  Hjalmar  Horace  Gveelev, 

407,  409-412 
Scheele,  Dr.  Walter,  18 
Schenk,  Otto,  99 

Schenker,  David,  112-113,  115-118,  122 
Schleswig-Holstein  (Ger.),  29 
Schleswig-Holstein,  Duke  of,  30 
Schmitz,  Dietrich  A.,  75-76,  115.  116, 
118,  120,  129,  263,  276,  296,  336-337 
Schmitz,  Dr.   Hermann   (Geheimrat). 
(Justizrat),  28-29,  48.  69-71,  75-77, 
105,  107-111,  114,  116,  119-120,  124, 
130,  194,  254,  277,  332,  336-337,  407- 

408,  410,  412 
Schmitz,  Ernst,  291-292 
Schnellbach,  Wolfgang,  80,  272' 
Scholz,  Herbert,  73-74 

Scholz,     Mrs.     Herbert     (Lilo     von 

Schnitzler),  73-74 

Schrader,  Frederick  Franklyn,  301-302 
Schreiner,  Carl,  294 
Schroder   Banking   Corp.,   J.    Henrv, 

296,  365-366,  368 
Schroder,  Rockefeller  &  Co.,  365 
Schroeder,  J.,  291-292 
Schroeder,  Kurt  von   (Schroder),  see 

von  Schroeder 
Schwartz,  Ernest,  79 
Schweitzer,  Dr.  Carl  Hugo,  15-20,  23- 

24*  37.  43-44.  65.  71'  »53>  215>  269, 

289-290,  294,  383 

Schweitzer  Memorial  Committee,  20 
Scripps    Howard    (newspapers),    176, 

179,  247-248,361 
Seebohm,   Herman   C.  A.,  71-72,  94, 

290 

Seebohm,  Johanna  (Duisberg),  71 
"Shall  We  Send  Our  Youth  to  War" 

(book),  302 

Sharpless  Chemicals  Co.,  225 
Sheldon,  James  H.,  307 
Shell  Company,  52 
Shell  Oil  Co.,  56 
Sherndal,  Alfred  E.,  80,  93 
Simmons,  Dr.  George  H.,  216 
Simon,  George  W.,  294 
.Smith,  Dr.  Edgar  Fahs,  194 
Smith,  Jesse  W.,  145-146 
Smith,  Lawrence  H.,  371,  374 
"Society   of   International    Industrial 

and  Commerce  Participation,"  368 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  World 

War  III,  308 

Solvay  et  Cie.,  Belgium,  346 
Solvay  Process  Co.,  346 


INDEX 


433 


South  America,  38,  44,  49,  72,  77,  106, 
125,  134,  137,  143,  174,  177,  252, 
258,  260-261,  264-266,  268,  272,  281- 
282,  331,  379,  413 

Southern  Alkali  Co.,  405 

Spain,  73 

Spangler,  Harrison  E.,  163 

Spanknoebel,  Heinz,  293 

Sperrle,  Oscar  E.,  296 

Springorum,  H.  W.,  296 

Squibb  &  Sons,  E.  R.,  225,  335 

Stafford,  Franklin  H.,  86 

Stalin,  Marshal  Joseph,  384-385 

Standard  Brands,  Inc.,  335 

Standard  Gas  &  Electric  Co.,  361-362, 
365-366,  394 

Standard  Oil  Co.  of  California,  130 

Standard  Oil  Co.  of  Indiana,  130 

Standard  Oil  Co.  Minority  Stock- 
holders Committee,  323,  380 

Standard  Oil  Co.  (New  Jersey),  (SO), 
42,  47-59,  63,  106,  113-114,  118-120, 
123-124,  130,  139,  144-145,  182,  186, 
207,  245,  259-260,  274-275,  278-279, 
313-314.  319-324.  339-343.  348»  350, 
37°.  375.  383.  399.  4«6,  409 

Standard  Oil  Development  Co.,  48 

Standard  Power  Co.,  365 

Starnes,  Joseph  (Joe),  397 

Stearns  &  Co.,  Frederick,  225,  244 

Stein  Bank  of  Cologne,  Germany,  366 

Sterling-Bayer  Company,  40,  96,  144, 
272 

Sterling  Drug,  Inc.,  37 

Sterling  Export  Department,  78,  253 
262 

Sterling-Farben  Latin  American 
branches,  174 

Sterling  Products,  Inc.,  29,  32,  38-45, 
71,  78,  94,  96-99,  103-106,  121,  124- 
125,  130,  133-134,  139,  158-159,  164- 
165,  168-180,  182,  186,  202-203,  207- 
209,  211-213,  216,  219-223,  225-226, 
228-229,  231,  234,  237,  239-262,  264- 
268,  271,  296,  307,  310,  317-319,  324, 
328,  333-335.  348,  356,  359-36i,  364, 

369-375 

Sterling  Products  International,  44 
Stimson,  Henry  L.,  338,  388 
Stinnes  Corp.,  Hugo,  367 
Stinnes,  Hugo,  102 
Stock,  F.  J.,  225-226 
Stokes,    Thomas    Lunsford,    176-178, 

222,  248,  309,  361-362,  404-405 
Stone,  I.  F.,  367 
Stout,  Chauncey  F.,  347 


Stripling,  R.  E.,  375 
Sulfathiazol-Winthrop,   209-213,  216- 

217,  220,  228,148,278 
Sullivan  &  Cromwell,  85,  347,  366 
Sumners,  Hatton  (W.),  356 
Suter,  Dr.  Chester  M.,  29 
Swiss  I.  G.  Chemie,  70,  108-109,  111- 

112,  114-115,  127-128,  130,  361,  363, 

368 

Swiss  Minister,  128 
Switzer,  Mary,  226 
Switzerland,   70,    108,    no,    116,   123, 

130,  145,  199-200,  397 
Synthetic  Nitrogen  Corp.,  25,  83-84, 

276,  296,  331-332,  356,  397,  405 
Synthetic  Patents  Corp.,  37,  94 

Taft,  William  Howard,  30 
Tammany  leader,  153 
"Tarnung,"  89,  90,  288 
Tauscher,  Hans,  148-149 
Taylor,  J.  Will,  195 
Teagle,  Walter  C.,  48-51,  54,  58-60, 
109,  111-115,  118-120,  122,  139,  142, 

184.  339 

ter  Meer,  Dr.  Fritz,  63,  99 
Textile  Alliance,  Inc.,  7,  9,  37 
Thatcher,  Dr.  C.  J.,  190 
Thompson,  Dorothy,  390 
Thompson,  Dr.  William  O.,  154 
Thyssen,  Fritz,  70,  102,  382,  386,  412 
Time  (mag.),  127-128,  175-176 
Titan  Company,  344 
Titan  Company  A/S,  Norway,  344 
"Today's  Challenge"  (pub.),  294 
Towey,  Frank  W.  (Jr.),  207-208 
Transocean   News  Service,  272,  292, 

300 

Trojan  Horse,  174,  305 
Trojan  Horse,  Foot  Prints  of  (book), 

31.9 

Trojan  Powder  Co.,  275 
Truman,  Harry  S.,  27,  48,  120,  167, 

169,  186,  273,  297,  300-301,  303,  309, 

320,  322-323,  344,  349 
Tugwell,  Professor  Rexford  Guy,  203, 

205,  247 

Union  Carbide  &  Chemical  Co.,  143 
Union  Club  of  Cleveland,  66 
Union  of  Democratic  Control,  298 
United  Drug  Co.,  41-42 
United  Nations  (Security  Council),  71, 

220,  413 
United  States,  1,4,5,  10-11,  14-16,  18- 

22,  24-27,  29-31, 4»»  45.  47-48,  51,  57- 


434  INDEX 

59,  62,  64,  78-80,  92,  94,  98,  101-102, 
104-106,  109,  127,  137,  143,  149,  197- 
198,  214-215,  217,  219,  240,  254,  256, 
261-262,  264,  266,  270,  280,  300,  322, 

325.  33i.  4i3 

United  States  and  Transatlantic  Serv- 
ice Corp.,  276 

United  States  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
286-287 

United  States  Congress,  5,  11,  15,  18, 
23»  96»  H7»  120,  122,  134,  149,  151, 
177,  184-185,  189,  200,  267,  271-272, 
282-283,  288,  290,  308,  311,  314,  337, 
355-356,  375-376,  379,  382,  387,  400 
Conference  Committee  (Congres- 
sional Conference),  208 
Congressional  Committees,  27,  166, 

188,  205,  261,  289-290 
Congressional    Investigations,    117, 

222,  368 

Congressional  Hearings,  9,  12,  280, 

376 
Congressional  Record,  188,  257,  295, 

3°2,  371 

Congress,  Library  of,  132 
Congressmen— see  Representatives 
House  of  Representatives,  159,  188, 

192-193'   i99»  204-205,  207,  221- 

223,  282,  299,  309,  375 

House  of  Representatives  Commit- 
tee, 195,  203,  208 

House  of  Representatives,  Commit- 
tee on  Judiciary,  328,  353,  356 

House  of  Representatives,  Commit- 
tee on  Patents,  184 

House  of  Representatives,  Commit- 
tee on  Post  War  Planning,  389 

House  of  Representatives,  Commit- 
tee on  Radio,  238 

House  of  Representatives,  Commit- 
tee on  Rules,  375-376 

House  of  Representatives,  Commit- 
tee on  Un-American  Activities 
(McCormack),  195,  198,  288,  358 

House  of  Representatives,  Commit- 
tee on  Un-American  Activities 
(Dies),  272,  281,  295,  297,  308,  311, 

375'  397 

House  of  Representatives,  Majority 
Leader,  358 

House  of  Representatives,  Speaker 
of,  223,  352 

House  of  Representatives,  Resolu- 
tions, 402 

Representatives  (Congressmen),  20, 
24,  31,  145,  166,  185,  192,  198-199, 


203-204,  207-208,  222-223,  238, 
283,  308,  371,  374-375,  3»9>  397- 
402-404 

Senate,  26-27,  151»  159>  162,  172, 
183,  188,  192-193,  199,  203-204, 

206-207,    221,   223,    270,    274,    282, 

309. 329, 351, 367. 372, 376,  400, 

402 

Senate  Committee,  11,  20,  24-25,  30, 
146,  154,  194-195,  207,  209,  232, 
310,  321,  323,  369,  398 

Senate  Committee  Hearings,  23,  27, 
48,  233,  351,  368,  373 

Senate  Committee  on  Audit  &  Con- 
tingent Expenses,  367,  402 

Senate  Committee  on  Banking  & 
Currency,  122,  192 

Senate  Committee  on  Campaign 
Contributions,  159-162 

Senate  Committee  on  Finance,  189- 
191 

Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Rela- 
tions, 308-309 

Senate  Committee  on  Judiciary. 
168,  308,  353,  398-400 

Senate  Committee  on  Munitions 
Industry  (Nye) ,  187,  192-195,  199. 
298 

Senate  Committee  on  National  De- 
fense Program  (Mead),  371 

Senate  Committee  on  National  De- 
fense Program  (Truman),  120, 
167,  169,  186-187,  260,  297,  309. 
319-320,  322,  344,  349,  369-370 

Senate  Committee  on  Patents,  215 

Senate  Committee  on  Patents 
(Bone),  120,  185-187,  221,  223. 
252,  274,  278-279,  297,  309,  319- 

322,  329,  344,  349-351,  359,  367, 
379,  401 

Senate    Committee    on    Petroleum 

Resources,  398-400 
Senate  Document,  10 
Senate  Majority  Leader,  208,  307 
Senate  Sub  Committee  on  Lobby, 

25-26,  no,  153,  180,  191,  199,  318 
Senate    Sub    Committee    on    War 

Mobilization  (Kilgore),  258,  297, 

323.  349,  390-39i  >  393'  39&>  4<>o- 
402 

Senatorial   Investigations,    100,   192 
Senators,  23-25,   146,    148,    150-151, 
153'   157'    166-169,    181-182,    185- 
187,  189,  191,  194-195,  199,  202- 

203,    205-209,    222,    235,    295,    307, 

309,  311-312,  318,  320-321,  323, 


INDEX  435 


329-330.  35»'  355,  367,  369,  374, 
387-388,  390-391,  393,  395,  398- 
402,  409 

United  States  Courts,  28,  205,  333 
Court  Actions: 

Anti-Trust,    10-11,  77,  315,  325- 

339>  34.8-349*  373>  398,  408 
Conspiracy  Against  the  U.  S.,  328, 

33  i>  358 
Food  &  Drugs  Act,  206,  217,  242, 

245,  282 
Food,  Drug  &  Cosmetic  Act,  214- 

215,  244-245,  250 
Foreign  Agent  Registration  Act, 

266,  297 

Statute  of  Limitations,  329 
Trading  with  the  Enemy  Act,  281 
Court  of  Appeals  (Federal  Court  of 
Appeals),  (Circuit  Court),  93,  202- 

203,331.375 

Court  of  Appeals  decision,  212 
District     Court     (Federal     District 

Court)  ,  29,  336 
District  Court  decision,  92 
District  Court  of  New  Jersey,  86, 

325-328 
District  Court  of  New  York,  92,  172, 

2»4.  328,  333,  341-342,  345,  405 
District  Court  of  Boston,  145,  153 
District  of  Columbia  Court  of  Ap- 
peals, 351,  375 
Federal  Courts,  10-11 
Federal  Judre,  76,  126,  325-327,  329- 

330,  341-342,  345 
Grand  Jury,  77,  130,  149,  167,  171, 

177-178,  213,  262,  291,  328,  331, 

337»  37i,  373-374 
Supreme  Court,  199,  203,  346 
Supreme  Court  Decision,  297,  305, 

360 
Supreme   Court   Justice,    117,    170 

368.  376-377 

United  States  Government,  19,  20,  37- 
38,  54,  56,  83,  92,  95-97,  ,18,  122- 
124,  126,  128,  135,  139-140,  144,  148- 
149,  168,  171-172,  174,  187,  189,  205, 
211,  252,  256,  261,  266,  271,  274,  280, 
290,  300,  314-315,  323,  327,  329-330, 
336-337,  340,  356,  376,  379,  398-402. 
411,413 

Agriculture,  Department  of,  206 
Agriculture,  Secretary  of,  206 
Agriculture,  Assistant  Secretary  of 

205-206 
Alien  Property  Custodian  (A.P.C.), 

12,  36,  38,  43-44,  59,  6a,  72,  8«, 


84-88,  92-97,  126,  130,  145,  147- 
148,  150,  158,  175,  216,  222-224, 
226,  269,  277,  324,  333-334,  336, 

338,  340-342,  346,  359-366,  368-369 
Alien  Property  Custodian,  Office  of, 

260,  360,  362,  364-365,  369 

Alien  Property  (Custodian,  Vested 
Property  Committee  of,  284,  364 

American  Ambassador,  384 

American  Control  Commission  (in 
Germany),  402 

American  Military  Government  (in 
Germany),  see  Office  of  Military 
Government  for  Germany  (U.S.) 

American  Prosecutor  (at  Nurem- 
berg), 377 

Army,  20,  24,  67,  71-72,  79,  218,  223, 
225-226,  271,  398,  405 

Army  Counterintelligence,  398 

Army,  General  of  the.  342,  385-387, 
401 

Army,  Surgeon  General,  218 

Army  Officer,  31 

Army,  Psychological  Warfare  Di- 
vision, 389 

Attorney  General,  71,  126,  129,  140, 
145-146,  150,  152-153,  156-158, 
168,  170,  172-173,  177,  179,  185, 
189,  256-257,  261,  267,  306-307, 
309,  310,  311,  314,  326,  331,  337. 

339,  345,   352-353,  358-359,   370- 
374,  376-377,  398-399,  409-410 

Attorney  General,  Acting,  170-172 
Attorney    General,    Assistant,    134, 

257,  261,  307,  311,  341,  350,  357, 

370,  380,  398-399,  406 
Board      of      Economic      Warfare 

(B.E.W.),  124,  219.  226,  250,  266, 

362,  380 

Black  List,  127,  259-260 
Cabinet  Members,  199,  289 
Commerce     Department,     138-140, 

142,  144,  219,  260,  263 
Commerce  Department,  Bureau  of 

Foreign  &  Domestic,  143 
Commerce,  Secretary  of,   136,   138, 

140,  142-143 
Co-Ordinator     of     Inter-American 

Affairs,  251 

Ellis  Island,  79,  80,  272 
European     Advisory     Commission, 

383 
Federal    Bureau    of    Investigation 

(F.B.I.),   74,    205,    266.    272,   277, 

283,  296 


436 


INDEX 


United  States  Government—  (Con*.) 
Federal  Communications  Commis- 
sion, 267,  316 

Federal  Deposit  Insurance  Corpora- 
tion (F.D.I.C.),  130,  155,  368 
Federal  Power  Commission,  394 
Federal  Reserve  Board,  192 
Federal     Security     Administration, 

213,  226 

Federal  Trade  Commission,  32,  101 , 
122,  145,  215,  234,  238-241,  244- 

245'  3*9 
Food  &  Drug  Administration,  205- 

206,  209,  211-214,  230,  244-245 
Food  &   Drug  Commissioner,   208, 

211-212,  217,  249-250 
Foreign    Economic   Administration 

(F.E.A.),  362,  387*  392-393'  398- 

405 

Foreign     Economic     Policy     Com- 
mittee, President's,  363 
Freezing  Orders,  256 
Interdepartmental     Committee    of 

State,  Treasury  and  Justice,  170, 

257 

Interior,  Secretary  of,  247 
Internal  Revenue  Official,  44 
Joint  Chiefs  of  Staff  (J.C.S.),  385, 

388,  397 

Judge  (at  Nuremberg),  409-410 
Justice  Department,  42,  76,  81,  116, 
142,    144-146,    157,    167,    170-173, 
176,   178-179,  185,  213,  223,  252, 
258,  263,  271,  294,  307-309.  3H- 
315,   317,   321,   326-327,   332-334, 
336,  339'  347'  350,  352'  357-358. 
370-374.  381 
Justice  Department,  U.  S.  Attorney, 

169,  214,  370 

Justice  Department  Anti-Trust  Di- 
vision, 124,  158,  170,  174,  177, 
213,  221,  278,  310,  330-331'  335- 
343'  346,  349'  35 !.  359 
Justice  Department  Anti-Trust  Di- 
vision Patents  &  Cartel  Section, 

337 

Justice  Department  Criminal  Di- 
vision, 356 

Justice  Department  Immigration  & 
Naturalization  Bureau,  356 

Justice  Department,  Solicitor  Gen- 
eral, 170,  177,  371 

Justice  Department  War  Division, 
289,  297 

Justice  Department  War  Policies 
Unit,  358 


United  States  Government—  (Con/.) 
Lend  Lease,  55,  63,  167,  225,  263 
Navy,  67,  79,  218,  223,  225-226,  271, 

274'  295 

Navy,  Surgeon  General,  224 
Navy  Ordnance  Bureau,  190 
Office  of  Military  Government  for 
Germany   (O.M.G.U.S.),  30,  385, 
393.  395-397.  401,  404-406 
Patent  Commissioner,  184 
Post  Office  Department,  165 
President,  18,  38,  126,  129-130,  132- 
135,    144,    146-147,    153-154,    i*99' 
204,  284,  288,  290-291,  294,  299- 
301,  303,  362,  367,  381-385,  387, 
400,  409 

Presidential  Warrant,  126 
Presidential  Proclamation,  127 
Prosecutor  (at  Nuremberg),  407,  410 
Public  Health  Service,  226 
Reconstruction    Finance    Corpora- 
tion, 165-166,  176,  367,  411 
Security   &    Exchange   Commission 
(S.E.C.),  76,  111-112,  114-121,  123, 

334.  337'  365-366 

State  Department,  37,  84,  124,  184, 
250,  258-260,  263,  266-268,  287, 
289,  294,  303,  358,  381-382,  387- 
389.  396-397.  402,  408 

State  Department  Anti-Peron  Blue 
Book  (pub.),  258 

State  Department  Foreign  Funds 
Control,  268 

State  Department  National  Social- 
ism White  Book  (pub.),  268 

State  Department  Peace  &  War  Red 
Book  (pub.),  268 

State,' Secretary  of,  21,  28,  85,  126- 
127,  166,  173,  199,  268,  308,  383, 

387.  409 
State,  Assistant  Secretary  of,  258, 

260,  391 
Treasury  Department,  29,  75,  79-81, 

86,  88,  96,  124,  126,  128-131,  133. 

155.    *73.   250,   259-260.   262-263, 

266,  270,  276-277,  284,  289,  333, 

335.  359-36o,  388,  395 
Treasury  Department,  Customs  De- 
partment, 23,  28 

Treasury,  Secretary  of  the,  127,  269, 

271,  277,  308,  384,  408 
War  Department,  275,  387-388,  41 1 
War,  Assistant  Secretary  of  (Under 

Secretary),  222,  386,  411 
War,  Secretary  of,  338 
War  Censor,  387 


INDEX 


437 


United  States  Government— (Cent.) 
War  Information,  Office  of  (O.W.I.). 

174 

War  Mobilization,  Office  of,  405 
War    Production    Board    (W.P.B.), 

225-226 
War     Production     Administration 

(W.P.A.),  176 
White    House,    127,    135,    156-157, 

165,  315,  362,  367,  372 
United    States   Laws    (Statutes),    142, 
151,  170,  317 
An ti -Trust  Laws  (Sherman  Act),  10, 

68,  75,  91,  144-145.  157-158,  183- 

184,  187,  189,  275,  314,  326-327, 

330^48,  358,  371-372,3^1,399 

Bankruptcy  Act,  365 

Criminal  Statutes,  130,  133,  149,  204 

Conspiracy  Against  the  United 
States,  213,  357,  372 

Espionage  Statutes,  373 

Federal  Trade  Commission  Act 
(false  advertising),  217,  231,  239- 
241,  244-245 

Enemy  Property,  149,  181-182,  288 

Food  &  Drugs  Act  (Dr.  Harvey 
Wiley's  Law),  182,  202-206,  208- 
209,  217,  232,  242,  245,  282 

Food,  Drug  &  Cosmetic  Act  (Cope- 
land  Law),  202,  204,  206,  208-209, 
211-213,  245 

Foreign  Agents  Registration  Act, 
358,  373 

Holding  Company  Act,  365 

Interference  with  Foreign  Rela- 
tions, 373 

National  Defense  Statutes,  275 

Naturalization  Law,  79 

Patent  Laws,  184,  217,  223,  227 

Reciprocal  Trade  Agreement  Act, 
199,  200 

Security  Statutes,  285 

Statute  of  Limitations,  329 

Tariff  Laws,  18,  151,  337 

Trading  with  the  Enemy  Act,  58, 
82,  96,  305,  360,  373 

U.  S.  Code  Title  18,  Section  88,  372 

U.  S.  Code  Title  18,  Section  235, 
352 

U.  S.  Code  Title  18,  Section  254, 
352 

War  Regulations,  170 

Webb-Pomerene  Export  Trade  Act, 

346 
United  States  Pharmacopoeia  (U.S.P.), 

245 


United  States  Rubber  Co.,  50 
University  of  Cologne,  99,  137 
University  of  Heidelberg,  3,  137 
University     of     Michigan     Medical 

School,' 181 -182 

University  of  Pennsylvania,  194 
Untermeyer,  Samuel,  306 

Valerie-Marie,  Princess  (Arenberg),  30 
Valtin,    Jan     (Richard     Krebs),    see 

Krebs 

Vandenberg,  A.  N.,  192 
Vansittart,  Lord  (Robert  Gilbert),  384 
Vegex,  Inc.,  43 
Venezuela,  258 
Vereinigte     Aluminium     Werke     of 

Bitterfeld,  Germany,  330 
Vereinigte    Stahlwerke,   see    German 

Steel  Trust 
Verein  zur  Wahrung  der  Interressen 

der  Chemischen  Industrie  Deutch- 

lands,  21 
Verne,  Jules,  23 

"Vicar  of  Wakefield"  (book),  157 
Vichy  French  Financial  Collaborators, 

381 

Vick  Chemical  Co.,  41,  133,  225 
Vienna,  Austria,  54 
Viereck,   George  Sylvester,   292,   294, 

296-297,  302 
Vita  Ray  Co.,  245 
Vitamin  Food  Co.,  43 
Vogel,  H.,  81 
vom  Rath,  Ernst,  75 
vom  Rath,  Dr.  Walther,  73,  75 
vom  Rath,  William  H.  (Wilhelm),  74- 

75.  276 
von   Bernstorff,   Ambassador,    16,    18, 

21,  24,  91-92,  153,  282,  383 
von  Bock,  General  Fedor,  73 
von  Hoeffer,  Dr.  O.,  99 
von  Knieriem,  Dr.  August,  322,  341, 

405 

von  Kroop  Company,  Frank,  281 
von  Mach,  Dr.  Edmund,  290 
von  Meister,  Dr.  Wilhelm,  73 
von  Meister,  F.  Wilhelm,  74 
von  Neurath  (Count  Konstandn),  196 
von  Papen,  Franz,  196,  409 
von  Ribbentrop,  Joachim,  197 
von  Salis,  Dr.  E.,  99 
von  Schnitzler,  Georg,  63,  73-75,  254, 

407.  412 
von    Schnitzler,    Lilo    (Mrs.    Herbert 

Scholz),  see  Scholz 


438 


INDEX 


von       Schrocder,       General       Kurt 

(Schroder),  366 
Voorhis,  Jerry,  374,  402,  404 

Wallace,  Henry  A.,  124,  128,  166,  206, 
226,  362,  380-381,  409 

Wallace,  Mary  O.  (Mrs.  Charles  Brug- 
mann),  see  Brugmann 

Wall  Street,  84,  107,  112,  137,  391 

Walker,  Frank  C.,  163 

Walker,  Dr.  George,  215 

Walsh,  David  I.,  100-101 

Walsh,  James,  160-162 

Walsh,  Thomas  (J.),  157 

War,  Peace  &  Change  (book),  299 

Warburg,  Paul  M.,  109,  146,  151 

Warsaw,  Poland,  57 

Washington  (D.  C.),  31,  42,  44,  98, 
106,  111,  119-120,  123,  132-134,  138, 
140,  151,  156,  163,  165,  243,  354, 
366,  401,  403-404,  413 

Washington  Correspondents,  176 

Washington  Times  Herald,  171 

Watkins  Co.,  R.  L.,  244-245 

Weber,  Orlando  F.,  36 

Weideman,  Carl  M.,  195 

Weidemann,  Fritz,  77,  291,  303 

Weimar  Republic,  70,  102 

Weinberg,  Dr.  Karl,  102 

Weiss,  Fred  E.,  99 

Weiss,  Dr.  William  E.  (Herr  Wil- 
helm),  32,  38-41,  43-44,  49,  64,  97- 
100,  102-103,  105,  109,  125,  133,  159, 
170,  172,  174,  184,  203,  225,  229, 
243,  246,  253-256,  258,  261,  264,  309, 

372 

Weiss,  William  E.,  Jr.,  43,  174,  243 

Welland  Canal  (Canada),  148 

Wellman,  Mr.,  118 

West,  Charles,  169 

Wherry,  Kenneth  S.,  387 

Wherry,  William  M.,  336 

White,  Thomas  Earl,  7 

White,  Wallace  H.,  Jr.,  221 

"Why  Not  Enforce  the  Laws  We  Al- 
ready Have"  (book),  204 

Wiley,  Dr.  Harvey  (W.),  202,  204,  282 

Wiley,  Louis,  233-234 

Wilhelm,  Kaiser,  17,  30,  33-34,  69,  72, 
142,  184,  215,  282,  289 

Willkie,  Wendell,  287-288 


Williams  &  Crowell  Color  Co.,  94 

Williamson,  S.  Hugh,  105,  123 

Wilmer,  Col.  Richard  A.,  386 

Wilson,  Woodrow,  15,  146-147,  200, 
290,  294 

Winchell,  Walter,  322 

Winant,  John  C.,  384 

Windenger,  A.  T.,  87,  363 

Winthrop  Chemical  Co.,  28-29,  39-44, 
8°.  94,  97-98»  i04-!05,  124,  130,  134, 
172,  174,  180,  203,  209-217,  219-228, 
248,  250,  256,  272,  307,  314,  334- 
335.  348,  356,  S59-36 1 

Winthrop  Research  Laboratories,  97 

Wisconsin  Alumni  (Inc.)  Research 
Foundation,  42-43,  335 

Wisconsin  University,  42 

Wohlforth,  Robert,  310-311 

Wojahn,  Kurt,  78,  252 

Wojahn,  Max,  78,  243,  252,  262 

Wolff,  Dr.  E.,  178 

Wood,  General  Robert  E.,  301 

Wood,  Lee  B.,  248 

Worch,  J.  Rudolph,  80 

World  Peaceways,  Inc.,  298-299,  389 

World  Society  for  Preservation  of 
German  Business,  13 

World  War  I,  2,  11-12,  15,  18,  21, 
23-24,  31.  33-34,  38,  40,  44.  50,  55^ 
58,  60-62,  64,  69,  71-72,  75,  80,  82, 
86,  89,  91,  93,  126,  135,  137,  142, 
148-149,  172,  178,  181,  184-185,  189- 

191,  200,  216-217,  259,  269,  271-275, 
277,  289-290,  292-298,  301-302,  314, 

346,  360-362,  368,  372,  378,  387,  393, 
397,411,413 

World  War  II,  31,  38,  46,  49,  53,  62, 
68,  70,  72,  77,  106,  118-119,  134- 
165,  185,  188-189,  *95.  216-217,  270- 
273'  275,  278,  282-283,  286-287,  292- 
293.  296-298,  300,  302,  304,  306,  308, 
343'  347.  349.  362,  372,  380,  411-413 

World  War  III,  73,  408,  412 

Wyzanski,  Judge  Charles  E.,  Jr.,  341- 
343 

Yale  University,  29 

Yalta  Conference,  384,  391,  395,  408 

Ypres,  17 

Zapp,  Manfred  (Casanova),  272,  292