HOWARD WATSON AMBRUSTER TREASON'S PEACE GERMAN DYES & AMERICAN DUPES Contents Preface The Pattern of Farben vii I. Graft—and America Unarmed 1 II. 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 XII. Patent Medicines—and Freedom of the Press 228 XIII. 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 XVII. Alibis and Excuses 313 XVIII. No Sacrifice on the Altar of Moloch 325 XIX. Behind America's Iron Curtain 350 XX. Plans for Peace—In Time of War 378 XXL Another Farben Peace 395 Conclusion Democracy at Its Worst, and At Its Best 414 Appendix 417 Index PREFACE The Pattern of Farben 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 viii 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. PREFAC E 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. C H A P T E R I Graft—and America Unarmed ON A S T O R M Y 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 1 2 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 or Elberfeld) 3. Aktiengesellschaft fur Anihnfabrikation. (known as the Berlin Company) 4. Farbwerke vorm. Meister Lucius und Bruning. (known as the Hoechst Co.) 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.