Plant Management of I.G. Auschwitz
“Our plant is a bastion of Germanness, a part of the economy of our Reich, and an especially important element for the structure of the Volk in the reclaimed East.”[1]
With the decision to build I.G. Farben’s fourth Buna plant at the Auschwitz location, the personnel decisions for the new factory, too, were made inside I.G. Farben. Otto Ambros and Heinrich Bütefisch, members of the managing board, were made responsible for the construction project, which had resources of 400 million reichsmark. As a result, the managing board was always kept informed of decisions.
“The overall planning of the Auschwitz plant as a hybrid facility was initially assigned to [Walther] Dürrfeld, [Camill] Santo (Construction Department), and [Erich] Mach (Design/Engineering Office) at Ludwigshafen.”[2] Periodic, day-long construction planning meetings took place among the executives, first every two weeks in Ludwigshafen, and later every two months on site in Auschwitz. The regular participants also included Karl Braus, as head of the synthesis component, and Kurt Eisfeld (Buna Manufacturing Department). Otto Ambros, the official plant manager, named Senior Engineer Max Faust as his deputy at the start of construction; however, Walther Dürrfeld, the engineer in charge of the Buna portion of the new plant, developed “over the course of the period 1942–1943 […] in practice […into the…] plant manager of IG Auschwitz”[3] and also was officially appointed to the position of deputy plant manager in 1942. The two men were not on good terms, especially with regard to the use of prisoners: Faust refused (though for purely economic reasons) to employ prisoners, but Dürrfeld could not be dissuaded from that course of action. While confronted with the difficulties of the wartime economy (shortages of manpower and materials, transportation problems), the differing interests of several government offices (such as Göring’s Office of the Four-Year Plan, the WVHA, the SS), and the on-site conditions (for example, the clayey soil proved to be unstable, and the structures needed the support of heavy piles), the plant management had to press ahead with the construction work, keeping to the schedule as far as possible. Here, the good contacts with Carl Krauch, the General Plenipotentiary for Special Questions of Chemical Production and the chairman of I.G. Farben’s managing board, came in handy for the plant management and also proved useful for the SS on site.
The work rules of I.G. Auschwitz came into effect on January 1, 1942, representing an exemplary realization of Nazi ideology, clearly formulated: In addition to implementing the “leader principle,” the Führerprinzip (liaison men supported the “plant leader” in an advisory role, and at the same time the “plant steward” represented the partisan interests of the NSDAP), the rules defined “plant personnel” and “retainers” on the basis of racial criteria: they had to be “respectable, of Aryan origin, members of the German Labor Front, and qualified in terms of health in the opinion of the plant physician.”[4] Plant employees, as well as “foreign workers,” could count on being punished by the I.G.’s own factory security force or by the Gestapo office on the plant grounds; prisoners were handed over to the SS, as they too were housed in the corporate concentration camp of Buna/Monowitz as of fall 1942, living in terrible conditions. Not until late in 1944 did the manpower shortage result in a loosening of the ideological and national security-related provisions of the plant management, and then prisoners were also used in administrative work.
Even as the Red Army continued its inexorable approach, the plant management remained unwilling until the last minute to vacate the plant: In Dürrfeld’s mind, “the National Socialist ideology of total war had become so deeply etched that [he] was unswervingly bent on holding out to the end […].”[5] On January 23, 1945, Dürrfeld and Ambros also left Auschwitz, heading west.
(SP; transl. KL)