Free Auschwitz by Laurence Rees Page B

own lack of planning and foresight, or because their enemy is stronger than their own inflated sense of themselves ever acknowledged.
    At I.G. Farben, expansion plans that had been shelved because of the expected
imminent end of the war were hurriedly dusted off and implemented. Although not a nationalized company, I.G. Farben was nonetheless hugely sympathetic to the needs and desires of the Nazi leadership. The Nazis’ Four Year Plan had called for a Buna—synthetic rubber—plant to be built in the East and now, after much discussion, I.G. Farben agreed to site one in Silesia. 44
    Synthetic rubber was produced by taking coal and subjecting it to a process called hydrogenation, which involved passing hydrogen gas over coal at high temperature. Without lime, water and, crucially, coal no Buna plant could function. A necessary precondition of any site, therefore, was ready access to these essential raw materials. Additionally, I.G. Farben insisted on there being a developed transport and housing infrastructure in the area surrounding any proposed plant.
    After poring over maps and plans Otto Ambros believed he had hit upon a suitable site for I.G. Farben’s new Buna plant about five kilometers east of the Auschwitz camp. But the proximity of the concentration camp was not a major factor in the initial decision to locate the Buna factory in the Auschwitz area. I.G. Farben was more interested in using the incoming ethnic Germans as workers than in relying solely upon slave labor.
    Himmler’s attitude to the news that I.G. Farben was interested in coming to Auschwitz can best be described as schizophrenic. As Reichsführer SS, Himmler had doubts about the move. Up to that point, Himmler had ensured that prisoners in the concentration camp system worked only for SS-run enterprises. The precedent of prisoners working for private industry—with the money for their labor eventually routed to the Nazi state rather than kept entirely in the hands of the SS—was not one Himmler was keen to encourage. Even though the SS would make money selling gravel to I.G. Farben, Himmler clearly had more elaborate ambitions for his own SS-RUN concerns which this arrangement prevented.
    In his capacity as Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, however, Himmler was a good deal less discouraging. He knew about I.G. Farben’s need for ethnic Germans, and was happy to try to provide them. Finding accommodation for the incoming workforce would not be a problem. The Auschwitz authorities were happy to “turn out” 45 the Jews and Poles who lived in the town to make room. In the end, the final
decision was taken by Goering in his capacity as head of the Economic Four Year Plan—I.G. Farben would build its factory near the Auschwitz concentration camp and Himmler and the SS were expected to cooperate. 46
    This interest from I.G. Farben transformed Auschwitz from a minor camp within the SS system into potentially one of its most important components. Symptomatic of this change in the camp’s status was Himmler’s decision to make his first visit to the camp on March 1, 1941. In his memoirs and during his interrogation after the war, Höss supplied a detailed account of the visit, during which Himmler gave free rein to his megalomaniacal tendencies.
    If Himmler’s vision of Auschwitz as an agricultural research station had been ambitious in November, his dream in March was positively gargantuan. With his initial doubts about the wisdom of I.G. Farben’s presence now firmly set to one side, Himmler breezily announced that the camp would no longer contain 10,000 inmates but be expanded to hold 30,000. The Gauleiter (regional leader) of Upper Silesia, Fritz Bracht, who was accompanying Himmler, raised objections to such a rapid expansion, and another local official chimed in with the received wisdom that the drainage problems of the site remained unresolved. Himmler merely told