From the Preface
If there is a man living who would dare say publicly that he is not for peace, I do not know where to find him. Yet, in spite of the unanimous professions for peace, when we get down to specific peace policies and programs, we are confronted with a Babel-like confusion. There are two reasons for this. First, we do not all want the same kind of peace some want a peace based upon international cooperation and some want a peace based upon invincibility of arms; some want a Pax Americana and some want a World State. Second, we do not agree on what are the real causes of war. To build a sound peace, we must be relentless in identifying and exposing the things that make for war. It is the merit of this book that it contributes to the necessary insight as regards the causes of the second world war. This book is a story of melodramatic industrial intrigue and espionage and cartel building, but very much more than that, it is a story of what lay behind the German drive to war. Let it be remembered that the Nazi war menace took shape slowly over a period of years. It took various forms of diplomatic, economic and military pressure. Yet all the while, one master combine, IG Farben, the German chemical trust, representative of the tight inner circle of German monopoly, operated behind the scenes to give a constant drive and purpose to the Nazi juggernaut. The German war maker, in a real sense, was not so much Adolph Hitler's brown-shirted, swaggering storm trooper, as it was the soberly-clad superficially honorable type - Hjalmar Schacht or Hermann Schmitz, president of IG Farben. This is the theme of the book, and I believe it is supported by the evidence. It was the particular function of the leaders of IG Farben and a handful of other German corporations to start preparations for another world war, just as soon as World War I was over. It was they who assured Hitler's victory in Germany in 1933. And it was they who set the pace in the looting of Europe during those first years of the war while the Wehrmacht was rolling over conquered countries. We are concerned here with something rather more important than the allocation of guilt for a war already past. The case of IG Farben cannot yet be laid away in the historian's file. IG Farben and the kind of cartel practice of which it was the most dynamic specimen are still very much with us. They still constitute a threat to the peace of a world which has not yet finished counting the dead of World War II. It seems to me that there is a tendency today to forget who were our enemies and who were our allies - to forget the causes of the last war, and, therefore, the potential causes of the next war. I do not maintain that every German is an enemy and will remain one for the rest of time. But I do maintain that IG Farbenism is an enemy and will remain one; and for the evidence of this, I refer you to this book. Here the evidence is freshly and convincingly set out. Mr. Sasuly was in a key position to study the nature and evidence of IG ramifications in the political as well as the economic field. He was chief of financial intelligence and liaison of the Finance Division of United States Military Government. He was one of the investigators who analyzed the files and prepared the case against IG. As you will see from this book, it is an overwhelming case.
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