cast ‘licy and deeds of horror ion the top Nazis, another kept werful group has fely in‘ the background as maneuy ers. fora ‘comeback. - In 1918 it-was-the Kaiser pss fled while ~the- ~ generals, layed. “This” “time “the? * danger | that. after the top Nazis are ‘me, by suicide, mutual mtr- on or execution, and even af- i= some of the generals and 3 admirals are removed, the nrectors and. managers of the | per-corporations may i at their old stands. stay | Every man, woman and child the United Nations has an ‘terest in seeing that this oody conflict does not end ‘ith the men whose dirty work. ie Nazis did, pulling a come- ick for another try. The pic- re is not complete, and many lings may change it, especial- - an aroused public opinion in ie victor nations. But here are few facts T have picked up an “my own “observations in ormany and from conversa-~ ms with “cther ts: correspond- ibe 1 y = 23 Freee = ® Tep men.._of.._German. ip “with big industry across che = channel and ev fsea eas. by means of eartel agreements, >0-ownership and interlock- | ng directorates — these men expect that in. the areas occu-_ “ied by Americans® “and Brit- ish they’ soon will be able to -esume production and profit aaking, more or less as usu- AL. This applies especially to the powerful chemical trust, i. G. Farben Industrie. @® Most of “these economic ords of Germany today are living in comfort. well-hous- 2d, well-fed, well served. They jare not too much worried about what “die Amerikan- > will do, although most of them were admittedly Nazi party-members and all of them were ameng those who benefitted most from Nazi policies and guided the Nazis in those: policies. As evidence of 7 Yheir go dwill towards ‘their, ‘recent enemies, they: are all. set. to turn over substantial accum- ulated dividends--from Ger-- man war industry-to Ameri- can and British stockholders. ¥or instance, the: lucky. hold- ‘erS of I. G. Farben stock can figure on receiving more than=40 percent accumulated | dividends:— very tempting— if the LG Farben directors | ndustry, notably «those! /tied ) oe ‘thorou gh Fritz Thyssen, German steel magnate, was one of the financial backers of Hitler and the Nazi party, without whom Nazism could not have flourished. can wangie permission to transfer funds they asserted- ly have long had ready for this purpose. This is a thinly disguised attempt to bribe. @ Spearheading the drive for restoration of German production and profits will be the heads of many big corperations whose plants have been damaged little or not at all, in spite of ‘the air There are many of them. Despite devastation of _many towns, probably two- thirds of the plants of the ~ biggest corporation — chemi- ical trust, automobile, coal, -assault on Germany. etc. — are in shape to oper- with a little fixing here there. ate, and British flyers, bombing most- ly at night, generally dumped _their bomb loads in the centers - plants were of towns—and in most German cities, the factories are around the outskirts. cision daylight bombing had as its principal target not com- plete destruction of all factor- ies, but earefully selected criti- cal or bottleneck plants. Des- truction of one such target might shut down a score of other plants that had been un- touched by bombs. American pre- Moreover, during years of air attacks, the general staff of German industry developed the -art of quick repairing. I visit- ed plants in Schweinfurt which had been bombed many times but each time re- crews had patched them up so they could go on opger- ating, scale. precision pair even if on a _ reduced Finally, many German planted .under- ground. AGE. 11 _— MAGAZINE. SECTION Two small I. G. Farben plants in the Frankfurt area were ‘damaged but not put out of operation. Two of the com- pany’s plants at. Ludwigshafen and Leuna were substantially ruined. The Ford works at Col- ogne suffered little damagre. serious But two tremendous I. G. Farben plants in the Frankfurt area—with. hundreds of build- ings, sheds and big yards — escaped injury almost entirely. The central offices of the cor- poration, a mile from the cen- ter of Frankfurt, were almost untouched, despite widespread destruction of the city. Here was the major. nerve center for the I. G. Farben international industrial empire — with its eartel links to Imperial Chemi- cals Standard Oil in the U.S. and other affiliates and subsidiaries in’ Latin and America else- where. The director left in charge when. the Americans entered the town complained bitterly about foreign slave workers trespassing cent offices. in these magnifi- His underling re- fused to open doors until Yank soldiers threatened to blow off the locks; refused to open safes until American dynamite was brought in. Even in Nazi de- feat, Farben influence was strong in Frankfurt. What Farben directors wanted was done easily, what they didn’t “want done the American mili- tary men had trouble getting done. But the payoff is the true story._of a card game in the comfortable bomb-proof base- ment of the I. G. Farben office building. The players were four directors of Farben. Three of them were fluent in English Many German war plants are in ruins, in England, duPont and _ Nazi Industrialists Plot Escape By Herbert Klein = OT Alfred Krupp, scion of the Krupp family, seems uncon- cerned as he sits beside a machine gun, under British arrest. and in their ideas of the shape ‘of things to” Cor e for ‘them. The future didn’t * look gloomy to them, they told a correspondent » :.. who found them there.’ “Whate; “was ahead, the products of the Farben factories needed... And .those factories were ready - to start. -producing again. Yes, sir. They still had the 75 percent of ‘their form- er working force who were German and they could man- age without the 25 percent who had been foreign forced laborers. jwould be All that was necesary to get Farben chimneys ‘smoking mer- rily again was some coal, which the Americans could supply. They had some. coal - stored away still, but not enough. In the meantime the American army, when it pulled out, could just leave behind its trucks to provide highway transport for the Farben supplies and_prod- ucts. That would be the. most efficient way to handle things. The main thing, they. empha- like this Krupp armament werks at Essen, but F.P. War Cor- respondent Herbert A. Klein says German,,monopoly industries still have enough of their plants intact to make tempting nations. proposals to their colleagues in other “been promised. . ate Seen = i production quickly. After all, thousands of Farben workers in Frankfurt had to work or they ecouldn’t eat. Tee correspondent asked how they sized up their postwar prospects. Good, very good in- deed, they told him. There was a great future in plastics. The world would. have tremendous markets ready to absorb. Far- ben plastic products. Take In- dia, for instance.’ That would be a good market. Of course, they pointed out, they were assuming that the Americans and English were really going to restore order and justice to Germany, as had And the one who acted most often as spokesman said that the Nazis had never dictated to them in policy matters. It was always they who had told the Nazis what was wanted and what tbo do. There was really much to be thankful for, much to - build for in the future, if only there was a sensible co- operative attitude, they said. It could have been so much | “Now if it had been worse. : the Russians who came in, there would have been no hope here,” one of them said, lighting a cigar. “We've got to stick together now, work- ing te save the world from the bolshevist horde.” The same song was sung for American édrs-in--Cologne by Herr Robert Hans Schmidt, manager of the Ford plant:. He had received. part of his .pro- duction training in, Detroit; He knew -American methods™ and thought he knew Americans. With a few additional tools and a few days time the plant could be at work producing as many as 50 finished cars a day —it was that little damaged— What a lucky break for Herr Schmidt and the owners ...- M* contact with civilian con- quered Germany suggests strongly that ‘the absence of any sense of guilt is most marked among the upper class- es—the professionals, officials, merchants, managers, owners and proprietors of the Reich. They are the ones who speak English and who are usually in a position to make contact with the incoming military government officers. : And among them all the most unrepentent, unregen- erative and audaciously inso- lent—in a cultivated way— are the mouthpieces for big industry. They are indeed receptive to orders. The kind of orders they expect soon to be receiving from India and elsewhere. Or- ders for the products of their spared or restored factories in which, they fondly expect, dis- ciplined workers will once again be laboring lke eager beavers, while Allied military government supplies the forces to “keep order,” silence, agi- tators for higher wages and generally maintain justice, with an I. G. Farben label. SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 1945.