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A Troubled Chapter in German Industrial History

Reflections on the Founding of IG Farben 100 Years Ago

Aware of the partially incomplete state of research, BASF Corporate History sheds light on selected aspects of the history of the IG Farben sites in Ludwigshafen/Oppau on the 100th anniversary of the merger. It also addresses how BASF’s engagement with the IG Farben chapter has evolved: from silence and suppression to reassessment and the assumption of historical responsibility.

On December 2, 1925, the merger created by far the largest German chemical company, ranking among the five most important corporations in the industry worldwide: IG Farben. The company emerged from the union of BASF with Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Griesheim-Elektron, and Weiler-ter Meer. Many innovations—often originating from the former BASF sites in Ludwigshafen/Oppau—are considered scientific and technological milestones. Yet all of this is overshadowed by the company’s profound historical responsibility: Today, the name IG Farben is inseparably linked with the Nazi regime, Auschwitz, and the IG Farben trial. Driven by economic considerations, the company maneuvered itself into close cooperation with the Nazi regime starting in 1933. Through its substitute products, it supported the regime’s policies of autarky and rearmament, ultimately enabling its war of aggression and extermination.

From BASF to Upper Rhine Opperating Group

In April 1925, BASF celebrated its 60th anniversary with a special edition of the company newspaper. By the end of the year, however, BASF no longer existed as an independent entity. Instead, the sites of the founding companies of IG Farben were reorganized into groups known as ‘operating groups’ (in German: Betriebsgemeinschaften, abbreviated BG). The former sites in Ludwigshafen, Oppau, and Leuna now formed the Upper Rhein Operating Group (Betriebsgemeinschaft Oberrhein). The traditional name ‘Badische Anilin- & Soda-Fabrik’ was retained for heritage reasons.

Within the new corporation, Ludwigshafen, Oppau, and Leuna continued to serve as production centers for basic chemicals and high-pressure synthesis products such as nitrogen, methanol, and later fuel. Their initial relative autonomy began to diminish in 1929 when IG Farben was reorganized into divisions, each with its own sales and production structure. Oppau and Leuna were assigned to Division I (nitrogen, methanol, fuel, mining), while Ludwigshafen became part of Division II (organic/inorganic chemicals, dyes, rubber, pharmaceuticals, crop protection products).

Title of the company newspaper issue marking BASF’s 60th anniversary in April 1925

Birth of a Giant

The founding of IG Farben marks the culmination of long-standing tendencies toward concentration in the German chemical industry. Loose alliances had existed in the chemical industry since 1904, but the 1925 step was far more radical: the founding companies of IG Farben relinquished their legal independence. The goal was sweeping rationalization through streamlined production and distribution—and above all, greater competitiveness. During World War I, German chemical companies had lost their previously dominant position in the international market.

A key driving force behind the merger was BASF’s CEO Carl Bosch (1874–1940) [Link]. His ambitions extended beyond rationalizing the traditional dye business; he sought to secure the capital-intensive fuel synthesis project, BASF’s latest high-pressure initiative still under development. With 45 percent of total sales thanks to its fertilizer business and the sheer size of the Ludwigshafen/Oppau plants, the ‘old’ BASF was the largest single component of IG Farben in 1925. For this reason—and due to the scientific and technological expertise of his home company—Bosch claimed leadership of the new corporation. He served as CEO until 1935.

On one hand, Bosch’s strategic decisions transformed IG Farben into one of the world’s largest chemical companies with a broad product portfolio. On the other hand, he paved the way for cooperation with the Nazi regime, despite his personal rejection of its racist policies.

founding companies merged into IG Farben in 1925. The corporate logo featured the letters ‘I’ and ‘G’ inside a stylized flask.

Upper Rhine Operating Group: A Scientific and Technological Heavyweight
Its existing strengths made Upper Rhine Operating Group a heavyweight—especially when it comes to traditional BASF innovations and products in dye chemistry, intermediates, and basic chemicals. Added to this were new successes in the field of plastics. Particularly significant was high-pressure technology, which BASF introduced to the chemical industry in 1913 with ammonia synthesis. This gave Ludwigshafen/Oppau an internal monopoly on high-pressure synthesis technology within the group. The company’s unwavering commitment to the loss-making high-pressure process for fuel synthesis led IG Farben to seek state support, culminating in its cooperation with the Nazi regime in 1933.

Plastics experienced remarkable momentum in Ludwigshafen/Oppau. Large-scale syntheses began for polymeric acrylic compounds (1929), polystyrene (1930), polyvinyl chloride (1931), polyisobutylene (1931), polyvinyl ether (1934), and polyethylene (1937). These new materials (pictured: polyisobutylene, trade name Oppanol) found numerous applications and laid the foundation for the postwar plastics boom.

Polystyrene entered households, used for items such as buttons and combs. It also became a material for components in the optical and precision engineering industries. Until the mid-1930s, Ludwigshafen was the world’s only producer of polystyrene and remained so within IG Farben. By 1951, polystyrene became the base material for Styropor—the classic raw material in the construction and packaging industries and a BASF success story.

Igelit (polyvinyl chloride, or PVC) proved exceptionally versatile in application. Thanks to its resistance to chemicals and corrosion, it was used for pipes and served as insulation and sheathing for electrical wires and cables. Because it could be rolled into films of any thickness and easily colored, the clothing industry was also a major customer. Igelit was used to make rainwear, bags, pouches, and much more.

Palace of Technological and Rational Modernity
280,000 cubic meters of volume containing 4,600 tons of steel: these figures impressed the public when IG Farben’s new headquarters in Frankfurt am Main was inaugurated in 1931. Corporate management, sales organization, and accounting were centralized here. The sheer scale of what was then Europe’s largest and most modern office building showcased to the world the monumental dimensions of IG Farben. Its architecture was intended to project rationality, strength, productivity, and self-confidence.

This satirical postcard from the early 1930s critically contrasts the overwhelming size of IG Farben with the mass unemployment caused by the Great Depression.

1925-1933 1933-1939 1939-1945 1945 to Today

From Enemy Image to Cornerstone of Nazi Autarky

The notion that IG Farben helped the NSDAP or Hitler rise to power is a myth—both false and highly influential. During the Weimar Republic, the company faced hostility from various quarters, including the NSDAP. This included antisemitic attacks at both the Ludwigshafen site and the national level, portraying I Farben as the embodiment of an alleged ‘international Jewish financial conspiracy.’ This was fueled by the fact that many individuals on the company’s board of directors and supervisory board, as well as among its scientists, were Jewish or of Jewish descent.

Nevertheless, following the NSDAP’s electoral successes in late 1932, initial exploratory talks began regarding synthetic fuel production. In 1933, the company reached accommodation with the new rulers—out of calculation. For example, IG Farben’s chairman, Carl Bosch, was closely aligned with the democratic, liberal-civic DDP. He never joined the NSDAP. On the contrary, Bosch and other board members criticized the party’s antisemitism.

Even so, for business reasons, the company supported the Nazi autarky policy that Bosch had previously rejected publicly. Starting in 1933, strategic large-scale donations flowed to the NSDAP, with a smaller initial contribution in 1932 when the party first became the largest faction in the Reichstag. Personally, most of the company’s top managers initially kept their distance, with one exception (Wilhelm R. Mann). In 1933, three of the 17 regular board members belonged to the party. Additional memberships followed in 1937/38.

Board meeting break at IG Farben: Carl Bosch reviewing documents, around 1926 [Source: BASF Corporate History / Photographer: unknown]

A Fatal Partnership with the Nazi Regime

After the temporary dominance of nitrogen, the traditional sectors of dyes and pharmaceuticals remain the corporation’s main profit drivers. To secure its highly unprofitable fuel synthesis, IG Farben took advantage of the Nazi goal of autarky (economic self-sufficiency) in December 1933 with the so-called ‘Gasoline Agreement.’ Products from Upper Rhine Operating Group were also central to the Nazi regime’s rearmament plans. IG Farben and its Ludwigshafen/Oppau plants benefited significantly from this. The expansion of synthetic capacities for fuels and Buna (butadiene-sodium, a synthetic rubber substitute), accelerated by the ‘Four-Year Plan’ (1936), was only made possible through know-how and personnel from Ludwigshafen. These became among the corporation’s products that proved indispensable during World War II.

IG Sites Ludwigshafen/Oppau: Beneficiaries of Nazi Policy?

Even in the prewar years, IG Farben—and especially the Upper Rhine Operating Group—profited from Nazi economic policy. For example, overall sales trends for the company and its sister sites in Ludwigshafen/Oppau largely mirrored demand generated by the regime’s autarky and rearmament policies. However, the greatest profits were earned outside politically influenced sectors: in traditional dye and textile auxiliary products, where the Ludwigshafen plant maintained a strong position even after 1933.

Starting in 1936, as the Nazi economic bureaucracy began regulating and directing investments, funds flowed into the production of synthetic substitutes as well as armaments and, later, the war economy. Since IG Farben possessed essential know-how for these manufacturing processes, the company—and particularly the Upper Rhine sites—played a major role in these programs, financing most new production facilities from its own resources. IG Farben’s share in state investment plans was substantial, reflecting its dominant position within Germany’s chemical industry.

‘Gasoline Agreement’ of 1933 and Coal Hydrogenation

On December 14, 1933, the “Gasoline Agreement” was signed: IG Farben committed to expanding capacity at Leuna. In return, the company received a government guarantee on price and purchase volumes. What had previously been a money pit now began to generate profits. Additional agreements followed, such as for the production of synthetic rubber (Buna). Through these deals, the company moved ever closer to the new rulers.

License Business and In-House Production

I.G. Farben primarily focused on licensing its coal hydrogenation technology, building only three additional plants under its own management: in Ludwigshafen, Heydebreck, and Auschwitz (the latter never became operational before the war ended). However, the other 13 hydrogenation plants built by various companies up to 1945 also operated using I.G. Farben’s Bergius-Pier process, producing mainly gasoline and kerosene (for aircraft). Blueprints and technical drawings for these plants were created in Ludwigshafen, as was much of their equipment. Personnel for construction and operation also came from the Oberrhein group. Their role in expanding the synthetic fuel industry was therefore greater than their own production share. Technological dominance, however, did not equal monopoly as in synthetic rubber production, and I.G. Farben’s process faced competition.

Buna: Synthetic Rubber

Due to the collapse in natural rubber prices during the Great Depression, the material had been abandoned—but Nazi autarky policy created new opportunities for synthetic rubber (Buna). Natural rubber was entirely import-dependent. The elastic material was essential for vehicle tires and thus for Germany’s motorization and, above all, the Wehrmacht—until IG Farben developed Buna as a synthetic alternative.

Unlike coal hydrogenation, IG Farben initially lacked both processes and production capacity for Buna at the start of the Nazi regime. The company therefore delayed building synthetic rubber plants. Technology and expertise came not only from the Upper Rhine Operating Group but also from IG sites in Leverkusen and Hoechst. Nevertheless, Ludwigshafen and Leuna played major roles in research and development, and especially in planning, construction, and operation of the four Buna plants built under contracts with the regime.

Buna was used not only for tires but also for conveyor belts, seals, and hoses. Employees from Ludwigshafen were key to establishing Germany’s rubber industry—including at the fourth Buna plant in Auschwitz, where concentration camp inmates were forced to work under inhumane conditions. An estimated 25,000 people died as a result—on the construction site or, once deemed “unfit for work,” in Auschwitz’s gas chambers. Planning, construction, and operational management were primarily directed from Ludwigshafen (and Leuna). On-site implementation was largely handled by staff from the main site.

Plastics – New Materials from Ludwigshafen

With developments in plastics—including Buna—Ludwigshafen and Oppau gained major importance within the company. By 1938, nearly three-quarters of IG Farben’s plastic sales came from the Upper Rhine Operating Group, and its share remained significant throughout the IG era. Although plastics initially represented only a small portion of Upper Rhine group’s business in absolute terms, demand grew for specialized applications, such as in the electrical industry, driving production and sales upward.

Nazification of Everyday Life

Far more than among workers, the NSDAP gained a foothold among white-collar employees. Staff members—and especially academics—at IG Farben in Ludwigshafen/Oppau held considerable influence in local party groups. The first NSDAP district leader in Ludwigshafen, appointed in 1932, was Dr. Wilhelm Wittwer, an engineer in Oppau. By contrast, the leadership of the Ludwigshafen/Oppau sites in the early 1930s consisted of middle-class, politically moderate conservatives. Only from 1938 onward are NSDAP members to be found in the site management: Carl Wurster and Otto Ambros, both of whom had entered the party in 1937.

From 1933 onward, Nazi ideology permeated everyday work life—through mandatory company assemblies, swastika flags, and the introduction of the authoritarian ‘Führer principle’ at the plant level. Employees were now classified as ‘followers’ and ‘plant leaders’ (Nazi terminology). Even the company newspaper (Von Werk zu Werk; in English: From Site to Site) abandoned its deliberately apolitical stance and became an ideological tool. The so-called Nazi ‘Council of Trust’ replaced the freely elected works council.

Discrimination, exclusion, and persecution of regime opponents and victims of Nazi racial ideology did not stop at the company gates. Yet, as late as 1935, Richard Merton—a man considered a ‘full Jew’ under Nazi ideology—still sat on the supervisory board. But by 1938, the board had been ‘purged’ in line with Nazi principles. At the plant level, there were also cases of discrimination and dismissals. Those affected included Jews and individuals classified as such by the regime, as well as Sinti and Roma and political opponents. Among them was Dr. Agate Carst (1896–1975, pictured). The perfidious consequence: In 1938, IG Farben received official certification as a ‘German company’ under Nazi standards, enabling it to continue securing state contracts. [Imager Source: BASF Corporate History / Photographer: unknown]

More about the fates of Agathe Carst and other Nazi-persecuted employees of the IG Farben sites Ludwigshafen/Oppau

Four Faces of the IG Farben sites Ludwigshafen/Oppau

All of them made key career moves at the Ludwigshafen/Oppau plants or at the Leuna site in Merseburg. And all of them later became members of IG Farben’s board. Carl Bosch was succeeded as chairman in 1935 by Hermann Schmitz (1881–1960), and in 1940 as chairman of the supervisory board by Carl Krauch (1887–1968). Otto Ambros (1901–1990), by contrast, gained prominence through his central role in the Buna program.

The growing influence of the Upper Rhine Operating Group within the company was based on the importance of its high-pressure technology for Nazi autarky and rearmament. At the time of IG Farben’s founding in 1925, 27 percent of its board members (22 out of 83) came from the ‘old’ BASF; by 1945, that share had risen to 44 percent (10 out of 23 seats). For comparison: the two next-largest founding companies together accounted for 32 percent in 1945.

Carl Bosch, chairman of BASF since 1919, became the first chairman of IG Farben in 1925, holding the position until 1935 when he moved to chair the supervisory board. In 1931, Bosch received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Friedrich Bergius for the invention and development of chemical high-pressure processes—after the world’s first high-pressure process for ammonia synthesis was put into operation at the Oppau plant in 1913, making a vital contribution to global food supply. Bosch’s insistence on continuing fuel synthesis—also a high-pressure process—was a decisive factor in IG Farben’s collaboration with the Nazi regime. Yet Bosch personally rejected the regime’s ideology and politics.

More about Carl Bosch

Trained businessman Hermann Schmitz met Carl Bosch during World War I while serving as an economic advisor in the Prussian War Ministry. In 1919, Schmitz joined BASF as chief financial officer and head of the foreign department. He became a member of IG Farben’s board in 1925 and succeeded Bosch as chairman in 1935. A financial expert, Schmitz played a key role in expanding the company’s international network. Considered more reserved and cautious than his predecessor, Schmitz served as a nonpartisan member of the Reichstag from 1933 and joined the NSDAP in 1938. In the IG Farben Trial of 1948, Schmitz was sentenced to four years in prison (released in 1949). [Image Source: BASF Corporate History / Photographer: unknown]

Carl Krauch began his career at BASF in 1912 and became technical director in Oppau in 1920. From 1929, he headed Division I at IG Farben, responsible for high-pressure technology, and became a full board member in 1934. From 1935, he oversaw the ‘W (Wehrmacht) Liaison Office’ (Wehrmacht = German Armed Forces). Krauch joined the NSDAP in 1937. From the late 1930s, Krauch held a dual role: on the one hand for IG Farben, becoming chairman of its supervisory board in 1940; on the other hand in a key position within the Nazi economic bureaucracy. Krauch personified the interlinking of the Nazi state and IG Farben. His ‘short line’ to the top of the Nazi economic administration facilitated lobbying for the company—leading to the disastrous collaboration with the SS in connection with the Buna plant at Auschwitz. Krauch was sentenced to six years in prison in the IG Farben Trial (released in 1950). [Image Source: BASF Corporate History / Photographer: unknown]

Otto Ambros joined the Oppau plant in 1926. In 1936, he became technical plant manager for organic operations in Ludwigshafen, and in 1938 a member of IG Farben’s board. His responsibilities soon extended far beyond Ludwigshafen. As a Buna expert, Ambros took charge of planning, construction, and management of the four Buna plants from 1936 onward—including the one built near Auschwitz starting in 1941. Ambros joined the NSDAP in 1937. He was not only instrumental in building the company’s chemical warfare production but, from 1942, also played a leading role in coordinating Germany’s accelerated chemical weapons program. Ambros was sentenced to eight years in prison in the IG Farben Trial (released in 1951). [Image Source: BASF Corporate History / Photographer: unknown]

Read more on I.G. plant Auschwitz

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Pillar of Nazi War Policy

Without Leuna gasoline and Buna, the war would have ended quickly: These and other products from IG Farben were indispensable for the Nazis’ war of conquest and extermination. The Wehrmacht met its entire need for synthetic rubber for vehicle tires from the company’s Buna production. While IG Farben’s contribution to fuel supply was smaller, aviation fuel for the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) could only be produced synthetically using their process. The company also produced basic chemicals for further processing in various military applications, as well as chemical weapons, explosives, and their precursors.

IG Farben profited from the war economy and, especially, from the crimes of the Nazi regime. Across Germany and in occupied territories, the company participated in ‘Aryanizations’ (the expropriation of Jewish property).

Involvement in Crimes

The Nazis misused Zyklon B, originally developed as a pesticide, for industrial mass murder. Today, historical research indicates that the company’s top management was aware of this. The same applies to the ruthless exploitation of concentration camp inmates for the construction of the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz-Monowitz, where a company-owned concentration camp (Buna/Monowitz) was established in 1942 in cooperation with the SS. An estimated 25,000 inmates died as a result of forced labor for IG Farben. Forced laborers were also used at the Ludwigshafen/Oppau plants, with over 30,000 prisoners of war and civilian foreign workers from 34 nations—though not concentration camp inmates. These crimes were part of the IG Farben trial in 1947/48. The historical responsibility was denied by the accused and convicted for a long time.

IG Farben products for the war, including tires made from Buna and Leuna gasoline (excerpt from the company newspaper, December 1939)

High-Level visit to a war-critical IG Farben plant: Albert Speer, Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, 1944 in Ludwigshafen (from left to right: Willy Liebel (Mayor of Nuremberg), Carl Wurster, Hermann Schmitz, Speer, Carl Krauch) [Source: BASF Corporate History / Photographer: unknown]

Zyklon B

From September 1941, Zyklon B was used in gas chambers at concentration camps for the systematic murder of well over a million people, most of whom were Jews—the largest victim group of Nazi racial ideology and extermination policy.

Originally, the hydrogen cyanide-based gas was a pesticide sold by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH (Degesch), in which IG Farben held a 42.5% stake since 1930. Ludwigshafen’s ‘plant manager’ Carl Wurster was a member of the Degesch supervisory board from 1940.

In the IG Farben trial of 1947/48, the question was raised whether those responsible knew about the misuse of Zyklon B. No clear verdict was reached: Wurster was acquitted. Today, research suggests that rumors about the gas chambers reached employees at the Auschwitz IG Farben plant early on. Some company employees reportedly spoke about it and used the threat of gassing as leverage for higher work performance among concentration camp inmates. Due to close personnel exchanges with the Auschwitz-Monowitz plant, rumors about the gassings also reached Ludwigshafen/Oppau. Although no company executives were directly confronted with the machinery of death—since visits to Auschwitz-Monowitz did not include the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau—historical research now assumes that IG Farben’s top managers were generally informed by 1943.

Chemical Weapons and Precursors

The central planning of the production of gunpowder, explosives, and chemical weapons, as well as their precursors, was largely the responsibility of Carl Krauch in his role at the relevant Reich agencies. IG Farben produced the blister agent Lost (mustard gas) in Gendorf (Upper Bavaria) and the nerve agent Tabun in Dyhernfurth (Silesia), not in company-owned facilities but in so-called army-owned plants, with the subsidiary Anorgana GmbH in Ludwigshafen as the operating company. One of its managing directors from 1941 was Otto Ambros, IG Farben’s expert on Buna and poison gas, who played a leading role in the large-scale production of Tabun and Lost. Facilities for producing Sarin, another nerve agent discovered by IG Farben chemist Gerhard Schrader, were under construction at Dyhernfurth and Falkenhagen (near Berlin) at the end of the war but never went into operation. Foreign civilian workers, prisoners of war, and concentration camp inmates were also forced to work in these plants.

At the founding companies’ plants, IG Farben did not produce explosives or chemical weapons but did produce their precursors. The same was true in Ludwigshafen, where previously civilian intermediates (mainly for dye production) were increasingly supplied to the Wehrmacht for military use (so-called ‘dual-use goods’). These were used in the final production of bombs and shells. The exception was phosgene, which was produced in Ludwigshafen and other IG Farben plants and could be used as a chemical weapon without further processing.

The quantity and quality of food for forced laborers were determined by regulations based on racist Nazi ideology. Those from Poland and the Soviet Union were particularly disadvantaged, including at the Ludwigshafen/Oppau plants. What appeared to be good provision was pure propaganda. In reality, hunger was a constant companion, and their undernourishment was obvious.

From 1942, more and more so-called “Eastern workers” (civilian laborers from the German-occupied Soviet Union) were forced to work at the IG Farben plants in Ludwigshafen/Oppau. One of them was Lidia Stepania W., who later recalled in an oral history project how the photo—possibly showing her—came about.

Over 30,000 Forced Laborers in Ludwigshafen/Oppau

As more German men were drafted into the Wehrmacht, the labor shortage grew. Conscripts, prisoners of war, foreign civilian workers, and especially concentration camp inmates were forced to fill the gap. Between 1939 and 1945, more than 20 million people were forced to work for the German Reich, over 30,000 of them in the IG Farben plants in Ludwigshafen/Oppau. There were no concentration camp inmates among them. The forced laborers came from all over Europe, mainly France, Italy, Poland, and the then Soviet Union. About one-third were women. The peak was reached around mid-1943, with over 13,000 affected—almost 35% of the total workforce. Forced labor was a public crime even in Ludwigshafen/Oppau. The large number of affected people was unmistakable and part of everyday working life for everyone employed there.

Especially Oppressed: Civilian Workers and Prisoners of War from Eastern Europe

Hard physical labor, undernourishment, catastrophic hygiene, humiliation, severe punishment: Civilian workers and prisoners of war from Poland and the German-occupied Soviet Union were subjected to the harshest conditions. Hidden solidarity and help from German employees were rare. To ‘discipline lazy foreigners,’ IG Farben established its own penal camp (Arbeitserziehungslager) on the Ludwigshafen site grounds in 1943. Over 400 people died during their forced labor at the Ludwigshafen/Oppau sites, most of them victims of air raids—due to lack of access to safe shelters.

Prisoners of war from Belgium (pictured, May 1940), France, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Italy (the latter as so-called military internees) were forced to work in the Palatinate IG Farben plants. [Image Source: BASF Corporate History / Photographer: unknown]

Cover trenches in the so-called communal camps—barracks camps for forced laborers—offered inadequate protection during air raids and even became death traps (site plan from 1944, marking and numbering of communal camps added later).

Late Reappraisal and Compensation

After 1945, forced laborers remained a forgotten victim group for a long time. Their utilization in the IG Farben plants in Ludwigshafen and Oppau was first publicly addressed by BASF in 1990. In 2002, forced labor finally became part of the scientifically researched company history ‘BASF: The History of a Company.’

In 1999, BASF became a founding member of the German Industry Foundation Initiative. A year later, together with the federal government, the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) was established, with BASF contributing around 70 million euros. Payments to former forced laborers were made from the foundation’s capital.

I.G. Auschwitz

About 25,000 people died in connection with the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz-Monowitz. The vast majority were Jewish concentration camp inmates. They perished due to inhumane living and working conditions on the construction site, in the infirmary, or during selections for the gas chamber. Auschwitz-Monowitz brutally demonstrates that forced labor was among the Nazi crimes against humanity. From October 1942, the company’s first concentration camp, Buna/Monowitz, existed on the IG Farben plant grounds in present-day Poland, under SS management. It became a model for satellite camps at major companies throughout the German Reich. The path to it began in 1941, when board member Otto Ambros selected the site for the fourth Buna plant near the Auschwitz concentration camp. He advocated for the use of inmates from the nearby camp. Ambros was responsible for the Buna complex of the new plant, while his board colleague Heinrich Bütefisch oversaw synthetic fuel production. Ambros was well-informed and visited the construction site eighteen times by 1944. Concentration camp inmates were also used at other IG Farben sites, such as Leuna.

Accomplices and Perpetrators

The entire I.G. Auschwitz complex was a place of dehumanization. Employees delegated from Ludwigshafen/Oppau became witnesses to the exploitation and physical destruction of concentration camp inmates—some even became perpetrators. The infamous selections of those deemed ‘unfit for work’ for gassing in Auschwitz-Birkenau were sometimes initiated or even carried out by IG Farben employees. In some cases, the threat of gassing was used as leverage for higher work performance.

Construction drawing made in Ludwigshafen in 1941 for the power plant of IG Auschwitz

Planned in Ludwigshafen

All technical construction and design drawings for the Auschwitz-Monowitz plant were created in Ludwigshafen by Camil Santo, Erich Mach, and their teams in the construction and engineering design departments. Walter Dürrfeld, chief engineer from Leuna, became the technical director for building the Auschwitz-Monowitz plant. From 1941 to 1945, at least 300 employees from Ludwigshafen and Oppau worked there as chemists, engineers, foremen, skilled workers, and also as commercial or office staff, including women. Many returned to their home plants in the Palatinate afterward, bringing with them knowledge of the I.G. Auschwitz plant and its concentration camp.

Inmate 116 927

He survives the Buna/Monowitz Concentration Camp: Albrecht Weinberg. In April 1943, he is deported to Auschwitz and forced to perform labor for IG Farben until the company-owned concentration camp is evacuated in January 1945. After so-called death marches and forced labor in the Mittelbau-Dora camp, Weinberg is liberated in April 1945 at Bergen-Belsen. At the end of his ordeal, the then 20-year-old is closer to death than to life. In 2024, he speaks at a BASF event about the horrors he endured at the IG Farben plant and its concentration camp. As a witness to history, he tirelessly fights against forgetting.

Eyewitness interview with Albrecht Weinberg

Albrecht Weinberg at the grave of his family in the Jewish cemetery in Leer (East Frisia), 2023

Air War and Occupation

In 1943, the air war reached the IG Farben plants in Ludwigshafen/Oppau. Because of their strategic importance, they were high-priority targets for Allied bombers, especially Oppau, where aviation fuel and lubricants were produced. Between 1943 and 1944, production dropped sharply, and by 1945, operations had practically ceased. Ludwigshafen was less important for the war effort but was also heavily bombed. In 1944, the production of formaldehyde and textile auxiliaries essentially came to a halt, and by February 1945, the production of intermediates and plastics stopped as well. The war ended for the sites with the occupation by U.S. troops on March 23/24, 1945. Germany’s surrender followed on May 8. A devastating and shameful chapter of German history came to an end.

1925-1933 1933-1939 1939-1945 1945 to Today

Dismantling and Liquidation

The Allies were aware of the symbolic power of the IG Farben building in Frankfurt am Main. After the war, it became the seat of the U.S. military government. At the Ludwigshafen and Oppau sites, rebuilding was the top priority and was accompanied by solidarity across hierarchies. The French forced administration and plans for dismantling were met with a sense of community. Everyday concerns focused on destroyed housing, insufficient food, and missing relatives. In Nuremberg, the management of IG Farben sat in the dock at the IG Farben trial from 1947 to 1948. In retrospect, the sentences were very mild. The company itself was dissolved by the military government. Its legal successor was IG Farbenindustrie AG in liquidation (i.L.), which existed until 2012.

Decades of Suppression

The longing for ‘normality’ in postwar German society initially prevented a reckoning with the recent past. BASF, newly founded in 1952, mirrored this widespread forgetting, suppression, and denial due to its lack of engagement with the Nazi history of the IG Farben sites Ludwigshafen/Oppau.Even in leading positions at the BASF Ludwigshafen site, people who had held responsibility at IG Farben until 1945 continued to work. Only with time and a generational shift did a new culture of remembrance gradually emerge at BASF and in society as a whole, starting in the 1980s.

File folder on the IG Farben Trial from the BASF Corporate History Collection

The five charges in the IG Farben Trial Before the U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg

On the Defendant’s Bench: United States vs. Carl Krauch et al.

Twenty-Three: That’s how many IG Farben executives stood before the U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg from 1947 to 1948. Although later viewed as very lenient given the weight of evidence, the 13 convictions sparked incomprehension and outrage among the German public. Another ten executives were acquitted for lack of evidence. The judges considered them followers and ordinary businessmen. The emerging Cold War also played a role in the verdicts: West German industry was needed again in the system conflict between East and West. The defendants felt unjustly accused. They suppressed, denied, and invoked ‘necessity of obedience,’ claiming they acted under duress. Convictions were handed down for looting and plunder in annexed and occupied countries (Charge II) or for slave labor and mass murder (Charge III). “To this day, I still don’t understand why I was convicted,” said Otto Ambros—found guilty under Charge III—as late as 1965.

A Plant in a City in a Country Without Perpetrators?

As elsewhere in the French occupation zone, denazification at BASF was probably neither rigorous nor complete and was sometimes openly lenient. Here too, neighbors, friends, and colleagues issued each other certificates of harmlessness (‘Persilscheine’). Of about 23,000 people who had to fill out a questionnaire about their political involvement, around 6,000 were summoned before the ‘Cleansing Commission BASF/IG Farben. ’ Later, responsibility for the proceedings passed to arbitration chambers. Although the data is incomplete, a clear trend emerges: Only six percent of all cases actually tried resulted in dismissals due to serious political involvement.

Denazification questionnaire of Carl Wurster

A Seemingly Harmless Greeting Card

In the first postwar decades, looking back at the IG Farben era revealed a divided memory: Scientific and technical achievements were claimed as part of the history of the newly founded BASF in 1952. However, the associated political and social circumstances—or even crimes—were ignored. This is exemplified by the hand-painted greeting card for Camil Santo’s retirement in 1955, who had led the Ludwigshafen construction department since 1932 and, even as a retiree, oversaw the completion of the BASF high-rise until 1957. In the proudly presented series of sites whose construction or expansion Santo oversaw, Auschwitz appears on the greeting card without further comment (highlighted in the adjacent illustration for clarity).

Carl Wurster: A Reassessment

Carl Wurster assumed leadership of BASF AG when it was reestablished in 1952 and remained at its helm until 1965. Colleagues and the broader public saw him as a doer, a charismatic yet approachable business leader. With increasing distance, a more complete and critical picture emerges. Wurster stands for reconstruction, the economic miracle years, and new successes, but also for the many personnel continuities from the Upper Rhine Operating Group to the new BASF. This intertwining suggests a new interpretation of Wurster: as someone who denied, minimized, and glossed over both his own responsibility and that of IG Farben during the Nazi era.

In 1948, he was acquitted in the IG Farben trial due to lack of evidence. The judges did not consider it proven that the intended use of Zyklon B for the mass gassing of people was apparent to the Degesch board of directors and thus to board member Wurster. Based on documents that were not available at the time, it is now considered certain that even the top leadership of IG Farben was aware of this use of Zyklon B in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Furthermore, the image constructed by Wurster and his attorneys for the defense, portraying the allegedly good treatment of forced laborers in Ludwigshafen/Oppau, does not withstand scrutiny today

After the end of the war, the American and then the French military government initially kept him in office as plant manager. As the only former member of the IG Farben Board, Carl Wurster advanced to the top of one of the IG successor companies after 1945. Following his arrest, thousands of workers staged a one-hour protest strike in 1947. None of his former board colleagues from the Upper Rhine Operating Group continued their careers at the ‘new’ BASF.

He stands for reconstruction—not only of the two sites in Ludwigshafen and Oppau, which were merging into a single site. At the helm of the ‘new’ BASF, Wurster drives the rebuilding of the sales organization and paves the way for the company’s return to the global market. Under his leadership, the fundamental shift from coal to petrochemicals begins. This phase of renewal and transformation, lasting into the 1960s, is marked by an unbroken climate of industrial peace.

Carl Wurster joined BASF in Ludwigshafen as a chemist in 1924. His membership in the Nazi Party dates to 1937. A year later, Wurster is appointed to the IG Farben Board of Directors. At the same time, he becomes “Betriebsführer” (plant leader, a Nazi term) of the Upper Rhine Operating Group and, together with Otto Ambros, shares responsibility for technical management in Ludwigshafen. In the final phase of the war, he refuses to carry out Hitler’s so-called Nero Decree to destroy infrastructure and facilities.

Changing Remembrance Work

Suppression

Alleged ignorance and professed innocence shaped the narratives at BASF until the 1980s. This was aided by the fact that the legal successor to IG Farben was IG Farbenindustrie AG in liquidation (i.L.), not BASF or any of the other successor companies. The company did not feel responsible and saw criticism of IG Farben and its successors as ‘agitation,’ in the words of one of Wurster’s defenders and later BASF chief legal counsel, Wolfgang Heintzeler. Nevertheless, the suppression was limited to incriminating aspects. BASF was proud of the technical achievements at I.G. Farben’s sites in Ludwigshafen/Oppau and included them in its self-presentation. There were no perpetrators in these stories, only victims—not of Nazi crimes, but of the bombing war. This is illustrated, for instance, in the 1965 anniversary publication shown above.

Remembrance

Against the backdrop of a generational change and changing social conditions, the darker aspects of the IG Farben era were first addressed at the 125th BASF anniversary in 1990. This began a process of confronting the troubled history of the company’s headquarters. By the end of the decade, internal discussions at BASF about the former I.G. Farben sites in Ludwigshafen and Oppau took on a new dimension, triggered by debates about compensation for former forced laborers.

Remember. Reflect. Rethink.

Since 2021, the local BASF initiative ‘Remember. Reflect. Rethink.’ has been sharing knowledge about the IG Farben sites in Ludwigshafen/Oppau during the Nazi era, especially about forced labor at the two IG sites and at Auschwitz-Monowitz, with today’s BASF Ludwigshafen site. In 2025, for the first time, a BASF CEO participated in the official memorial ceremony at the Auschwitz memorial, invited by the World Jewish Congress. On site, Markus Kamieth emphasized BASF’s special moral responsibility. This gesture also shows: BASF is confronting the historical legacy of IG Farben.

BASF Initiative ‘Remember. Reflect. Rethink.’

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Culture of Remembrance at BASF

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