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IG Farben consisted of the following major companies:
and several smaller ones.IG Farben committed so many war crimes during World War II that the allies considered confiscating and putting all of IG Farben out of business. However, in 1951, the company was split up into the original former companies. The four largest quickly bought the smaller ones, and today only Agfa, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst remain. The parent company remained in existence as a trust, holding a few real estate assets, until it was declared bankrupt on November 10, 2003.
During the planning of the invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia, IG Farben cooperated closely with the Nazi officials, and directed which chemical plants should be secured and delivered to IG Farben.
IG Farben built a factory for producing synthetic oil and rubber (from coal) in Auschwitz, which was the beginning of SS activity and camps in this location during the holocaust. The gas Zyklon B, for which IG Farben held the patent and which was used in the gas chambers for mass murder, was manufactured by Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung), a company owned by IG Farben.
Several of the company officials were sentenced to prison during the Nuremberg Trials.
IG Farben plays a major part in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow.\n
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