The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

THE WRITING ON THE WALL 113manufacture aluminum, was surmounted by its developments in utilizingthe element magnesium.”Schmidt said Treasury investigations discovered Farben documentsthat showed the firm maintained an interest in more than 700 companiesaround the world. This number did not include Farben’s normal corporatestructure, which covered ninety-three countries, nor the 750 corporationscreated under Bormann’s flight capital program.I. G. Farben also was at the hub of money transfers out of Nazi Germany.Even before the end of the war, for example, “I. G. Latin Americanfirms all maintained, unrecorded, in their books, secret cash accounts inbanks in the names of their top officials,” wrote Manning. “These wereused to receive and to disburse confidential payments; firms dealing withFarben wanted this business but certainly did not wish it known to Britishand United States economic authorities.”“The great German combines were the spearheads of economic penetrationin the other American republics [South and Central Americannations],” stated U.S. Treasury official Schmidt. “In the field of drugs andpharmaceuticals the Bayer, Merck, and Schering companies enjoyed a virtualmonopoly. I. G. Farben subsidiaries had a firm hold on the dye andchemical market. German enterprises such as Tubos Mannesmann, Ferrostaal,AEG, and Siemens-Schuckert played a dominant role in the construction,electrical, and engineering fields. Shipping companies and, insome areas, German airlines, were well entrenched.” The foundation for amultinational German business empire was in place.AS I N T H E 1930s, the largest banking enterprises provided the underlyingfinancial foundation for the resurgence of National Socialism.The chairman of Deutsche Bank, Dr. Hermann Josef Abs, was particularlyimportant to the Nazi flight capital program. Abs was also a directorof I. G. Farben, Daimler-Benz, and Siemens. Martin Bormann maintaineda cordial relationship with the Berlin banker. Manning noted:“[Bormann] knew in 1943 . . . he had the means to ultimately take thereins of finance unto himself. . . . He could set a new Nazi state policy,when the time was ripe for the general transfer of capital, gold, stocks, and