British journalist Jeffreys (Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug
) pre-sents a compelling account of the comprehensive collaboration of Germany’s major chemical conglomerate with Adolf Hitler’s genocidal dictatorship. The fourth largest industrial concern in the world, IG Farben was a key element of German foreign policy. Its employees were well treated. Its scientists won Nobel prizes. Its administrators created an international network controlling the production and sale of everything from plastics to camera film—and poison gas. Jeffreys tells the story from the rise of Germany’s chemical industry in the 19th century to its support of the Nazis’ ascent to power starting in 1932. National Socialism was good for business. The increasingly lucrative contracts came with a price: first accommodation, then collaboration, as one compromise after another enmeshed the cartel ever deeper in the Nazi system. Eventually, from Farben’s perspective, Auschwitz was no more than a source of labor for producing the synthetic rubber and oil that kept the war machine operating. Ignominiously dissolved in the early ’50s, IG Farben remains a monument to willful and unapologetic moral blindness. (Aug. 1)
