Talk:IG Farben/Archives/2018

IG Farben and the Third Reich
The article is unfortunately misleading on many important points concerning IG Farben's "entanglement" with the Nazis. Not mentioned: the Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 attended by four IG Farben executives; the amount and date of IG Farben's donation to the cash-strapped Nazi party, (at 400,000 RM the largest of any company, deposited in Nazi accounts on February 27, 1933); the importance of IG Farben in the Nazi war machine, the role of its executives in the  construction, evolution and operation of Auschwitz; the precise nature of the accusations against IG Farben executives at the IG Farben trial as well as the context in which those convicted of Crimes Against Humanity were released.

The use of the word "Jew" in the IG Farben article gives a particularly false impression. It's quantifiable. Five mentions total: FOUR in connection with Nazi criticism of IG Farben as a Jewish firm (a bit misleading given that all Jewish executives had been ousted by 1937) and one to specify that the inventor of Zyklon B was Jewish (while omitting the religion of those killed by Zyklon B).

In Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine, Diarmuid Jeffreys asks an important question: "How did IG fall so low?"

"What exactly had its leading executives done to merit the accusation of direct complicity in the crimes of the most inhumane dictatorship in history'?"

There are many books, scholarly papers and websites that detail IG Farben's role during the Nazi years with precise names, dates and quotes from official documents that could be used to make this article more accurate if they were cited. This article could be much improved, if edits to correct these shortcomings were allowed.

Xmastree75 (talk) 04:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for opening a discussion, Xmastree75. It sounds as if you've identified some legitimate shortcomings in the article. If you're prepared to cite reliable sources, I think you should go ahead and begin fixing them. Rivertorch FIREWATER  05:05, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I can see there's been some back-and-forth editing here, and concur with suggestion made by others that discussion may be appropriate. Certainly a serious topic. I don't have the expertise to get into adding and validating new facts on this topic, but I too perceive NPOV issues, and in particular highlight the lead. Following WP:WBA doesn't need sources.
 * My opinion as a layperson is that the lead reads well, but doesn't feel balanced. What I perceive to be a famous and highly notable the notable Zyklon B role in the Holocaust isn't mentioned: it could be included in the second paragraph highlighting notable inventions, or tied in the subsequent paragraph around Nazism (which is in some regards too detailed for the lead, making omission of Zyklon or Holocaust in the lead all the more glaring). Also concur with criticism raised by at least two others above regarding the selective use of religious identification of Jewish persons in the article, especially in the lead and around the inventor of Zyklon B. It's glaring in the way it's presented - even if both notable and factual, it stands out to me as general reader in terms of its tone as being leading. Quick review of what links to this page (and the content of this talk page) appears to validate notability of the Holocaust connection. Revr J (talk) 08:10, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This article, like many on topics directly or indirectly related to the Holocaust, is sometimes the target of Holocaust deniers, Nazi apologists, and the like. Sometimes their edits are blatantly wrong and are easy to spot, but other times they're subtle and can result in the gradual deterioration of an article. The best way to guard against the latter type of edit is to make the article as well-sourced and neutrally worded as possible. Anyway, I tend to agree with you. Please be bold and take a stab at fixing it. You might also want to read (and watchlist) Zyklon B while you're at it. Rivertorch FIREWATER  15:36, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I took a crack at it. Lead might be a bit long but I think it's more balanced now. Anyone interested in further improvements, ideas welcome. Revr J (talk) 05:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This seems to be an improvement. It eliminates a couple instances where the wording seemed vaguely exculpatory. (I've made a slight tweak to the lead sentence—no change in meaning or tone.) Rivertorch FIREWATER  17:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Reverted a few recent edits to the last version by User:Rivertorch, principally because they were in turn a removal of the lead addition highlighting the end of IG Farben - highly material "who were they and where did they go" in my opinion, but other views are welcome and will hopefully be discussed here before occurring. Revr J (talk) 05:00, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. You actually reverted only one edit; I reverted two more just now. One had modified "subsidiary" with "minority-owned", which is both ambiguous in meaning and irrelevant, as far as I can see. The other, which added "Already by the 1950s several of the successor companies were larger than IG Farben ever was" to the end of the lead section, was unsourced and appeared not to relate to any content in the body of the article. Rivertorch FIREWATER  05:50, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Recent edits
There have been some recent edits to the lead section which have introduced various inaccuracies. The addition of "that was split up during the denazification process following World War II" to the first sentence is inaccurate and misleading for several reasons: partly because the denazification programme was strictly speaking primarily a programme involving the vetting of individuals, and IG Farben was only "split up" in the 1950s after the programme had actually ended and after IG Farben had continued to operate for some six years after the war and very much become part of the postwar West German economy, in a much more complex process than the wording suggests, partly because it is doubtful whether "split up" is a very good description of what happened, especially without a more nuanced discussion/context (with IGF becoming four large companies with identical ownership which continued to cooperate), partly because this material is already covered in the lead, and partly because the company's fate in the early 50s is hardly the most important aspect of the company's entire history. Another inaccuracy is the description of the company that produced Zyklon B as IG Farben's "subsidiary". I guess it's possible to describe the company as a minority-owned subsidiary, but the unqualified word clearly implies full ownership in English ("a company controlled by a holding company"). If Pfizer owned 40% of the shares in Apple Inc., with the remaining 60% owned by others, Apple wouldn't be Pfizer's "subsidiary." --Matthew Douglas-Hamilton (talk) 05:45, 6 March 2018 (UTC)