Author Description

Nowhere have top-level science, business, and politics intersected more strikingly for over a 100 years than Germany's great chemical industries. This study looks at the success of Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF, West Germany's Big Three chemical corporations. The story is integrated into the context of Allied occupation policy and the mainsprings of West German economic recovery. The author explains how, in spite of an initially severe US policy against the chemical giant, sympathetic American and British officers with industrial connections and French determination to maximize production for their own use increasingly permitted German administrators and old I.G. Farben managers to reassert control of the industry and lead their companies to new successes in a world of expanding trade.