This day (June 11) in 1948, corporate Germany got a slap on the wrist for the Holocaust.
The Nuremberg tribunal delivered its verdict on 24 top executives of I.G. Farben — the chemical conglomerate that turned industrialized mass murder into a profitable business.
I.G. Farben didn’t just profit from the Holocaust. They built it.
- They manufactured Zyklon B, the cyanide pellets used to gas more than 1 million Jews, mostly at Auschwitz.
- They constructed and operated Auschwitz III-Monowitz (Buna), a slave labor camp where tens of thousands of Jews were literally worked to death producing synthetic rubber and chemicals for the Reich.
- They “rented” more than 100,000 concentration camp prisoners from the SS across their empire, paying pennies a day. Those too weak to work were shipped back to Birkenau for extermination.
- They looted factories and resources across occupied Europe with ruthless efficiency.
The charges: planning aggressive war, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and participation in the SS.
The punishment?
13 executives were convicted.
10 were fully acquitted.
Sentences ranged from 18 months to just 8 years — with generous credit for time already served. Most were free within a few years.
Take Fritz ter Meer, one of the most senior executives and a key figure behind the Auschwitz plant. Sentenced to 7 years. Released early in 1950. By 1956, he was Chairman of Bayer’s supervisory board — one of the companies I.G. Farben was broken into.
Today, you still use products from the corporate successors of I.G. Farben: Bayer (aspirin, pharmaceuticals), BASF (chemicals, plastics), and Sanofi (from Hoechst).
The men who helped make the Holocaust logistically possible didn’t just walk free — their companies thrived.
While low-level SS guards were sometimes hanged, the businessmen who designed the factories of death, counted the profits, and shook hands with the SS mostly went home to comfortable lives.
This was justice in 1948: hang a few sadists, slap the industrial machine on the wrist, and let the money keep flowing.
The Holocaust wasn’t carried out only by fanatics in black uniforms.
It was enabled by men in suits with briefcases and balance sheets.