-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- an excerpt from: Treason's Peace Howard Watson Armbruster©1947 A Crossroads Press Book Beechurst Press New York 438 pps. -- First/Only Edition -- Out-of Print --[6]-- 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 neutral who resides in a neutral country, enemy economic warfare measures are ineffectual; even an option in favor of I.G. win 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. "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 discussions 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 expectations.: 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. 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 bulldozing and slapstick with which Herman Metz displayed his Farben wares in the American marketplace. But both, in their respective fields, were of similar value to Farben. They were "Americans. My own contacts with Kuttroff, Pickhardt & Co., originated in the early 1920's through a request for advice regarding the production 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 considered it wiser to save up Germany's arsenic as a reserve for making 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 1 914, 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 possible and resorted to every possible subterfuge in the manipulation of books etc., to transfer those assets to our enemy a 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 successors 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 investigation 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 the Hoechst-Metz company as Alien Property Custodian, Metz claimed that he had already "bought" back the assets of the company in an absurd jack-in-the-box transaction by which not one cent of money was passed, and in which Metz signed an irrevocable 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 awarded the title of the Hoechst shares to Herman Metz. Judge Mayer predicated his decision upon several rather naive pronouncements: "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 desirable 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 missing, 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 bad 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 banded down, the HardingDaugherty 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 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 responsible for all loss or damage for having swiped brother Herman's property. Later, both of these men were to have important positions 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 bead 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. Seebohm, one of its German-born officers. Seebohm held this stock as trustee for three of the major stockholders of the German company, 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 & 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 afterward 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 nominall y Americanowned 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 interests' 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, sabotage and propaganda machine in the guise of an American manufacturing 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 concern 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 unnaturalized German citizens, and the entire capital stock was voluntarily reported as enemy property within two or three 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 payments, and royalties, resulted in uncovering and paying to the United States Treasury over $1,000,000 income taxes running 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 predecessors 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 concluded. The Sterling agreements have been described in Chapter III. 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 outbrazen 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 frequently barked back to his promise to the Alien Property Custodian, 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. 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 Company, 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 appeared 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 manufacturer of the medicinals it was getting from Farben and packaging 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 Laboratories were in Leverkusen, Germany, where most of its products 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 trademarks transferred to Winthrop in violation of the pledge. However, the I. G. people were persistent. During the negotiations 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: 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 Leverkusen and your firm of New York would be apparent to the outside 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 friendly 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 band 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 pro erty 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 I.G. 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 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 conferred 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 banquet 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 occasion, tactfully announced as d ie direktoren of the University of Cologne. Dr. Fritz ter Meer was present, also Walter Duisberg. Dr. Wilhelm 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 business 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 1. 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-medicine 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 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 glorious 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 promoting more cordial industrial and scientific relations between German and American pharmaceutical companies. Thereafter it was always "Doctor" Weiss. The pharmacist who had left his prescription 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 interest. On Nov. 19, 1928 I wrote him the following: Dear Senator Walsh: To further illustrate the point I made, when I saw you last week, about the power behind the National Republican Committeeman from Massachusetts, I enclose herewith a collection 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 national 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. Farben 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-ject, as regards any expression to me, or to the public, so far as I have beard. 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 Fatherland'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 political and governmental affairs were developing. In the early 30s 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 people 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—irrespective 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 America 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 behind 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 Europe, 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 important 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. But there is abundant evidence that the Nazis were financed by Farben, that Farben leaders occupied high places in the Nazi government from its beginning, and that Hitler's armies would have been helpless without the years of preparation and continued support 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 responsible 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 instructions 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 government 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 Sterling'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 Winthrop 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 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 actually 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 conference at Basle, Switzerland. Several of the highest Farben leaders, headed by Dr. Hermann Schmitz, attended, and Earl I. McClintock 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 different, ride. They told him that the German government had decreed 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 exclusively by Winthrop were of little use to Sterling except to protect 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 unless a re-transfer clause was included. At this time the possibility of war between the United States and Germany was definitely indicated in correspondence between Alba and Sterling officials, 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 assigned to an American firm, cannot be seized, say in the case Of international complications. The only kind of international complications which could possibly 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 agent's in South America. pps. 89-106 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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