1. Max Ilgner was a member of the board of IG Farben and held the title Wehrwirtschaftsfuhrer or war economy leader under the Nazi regime.
18 Facts About Max Ilgner
1. 2.
Max Ilgner briefly served as a junior officer on the Western Front at the very end of the First World War.
3.
Max Ilgner then joined the Freikorps for a spell before being discharged from the new Reichswehr after its numbers were substantially reduced by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
4.
The demobbed Max Ilgner took a doctorate in political science at the Goethe University Frankfurt, having studied metallurgy and chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg.
5.
Max Ilgner briefly worked in Stockholm following completion of his studies and whilst there he met Werna Gudrun Hallstrom.
6.
In 1926, having worked for BASF for two years, Max Ilgner was given a new role working with Schmitz at a newly established central finance unit for IG Farben on Berlin's Unter den Linden.
7.
Max Ilgner led two important subsections of the central finance unit, namely the Department of Economic Research which was established in 1929 and dealt with overseas investment opportunities and the Department of Economic Policy which was set up in 1932, under Heinrich Gattineau and then Ilgner, to keep an eye on legal, foreign policy and taxation issues that might impact on the relationship between the company and the government.
8.
Max Ilgner's rapid rise, his naked ambition and the feeling that he was being pushed only because of his family connections made him unpopular with many of his fellow executives but Schmitz held too much power in the company for such objections to be raised publicly.
9.
Max Ilgner was offered membership of the Nazi Party in 1933 but refused on the grounds that he wished to retain his membership of Rotary International, an organisation that Joseph Goebbels had declared incompatible with Nazism.
10.
Nevertheless, Max Ilgner was happy to work closely with the fledgling Nazi regime and encouraged public support for Nazism by the company's factory workers.
11.
Max Ilgner worked with Goebbels in an attempt to get the Minister of Propaganda to tone down some of his rhetoric, which Ilgner believed was damaging Germany's reputation internationally, an initiative which initially enjoyed some success until Goebbels became angry at Ilgner telling him what to do and broke off communication.
12.
Max Ilgner's work was criticised by other Vorstand members, who felt that he was undertaking too much government propaganda and not enough work for IG Farben, but his initiatives won Hitler's approval and increasingly IG Farben's overseas offices became centres of Nazi Party propaganda.
13.
In return Max Ilgner was able to boost IG Farben's contracts with the government, notably their fading Leuna arm which was rejuvenated considerably when Max Ilgner was able to use contacts in the Reichswehr's Weapons Office to secure for this branch of the company the contract to produce fuel for the Luftwaffe, which was being covertly built up in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles but which would have been discovered had they been forced to import large quantities of aircraft fuel.
14.
Immediately after the outbreak of the Second World War Max Ilgner handed over the company's extensive collection of geological maps to the government, informing them of the locations across Europe where chemicals might be extracted.
15.
In fact Max Ilgner was simply trying to avoid falling into the hands of the Soviet Union and so moved westwards and whilst in Frankfurt ensured the disappearance of the incriminating documents he had taken with him.
16.
Max Ilgner was one of 24 executives of the company indicted for "spoliation and plunder" by the Americans on 4 May 1947 in what became known as the IG Farben Trial.
17.
Max Ilgner was one of nine defendants found guilty of "spoliation and plunder" in 1948, which was defined as the taking of property without the owner's full and non-coerced consent and was sentenced to three years in prison.
18.
Max Ilgner announced his conversion to Christianity in prison and vowed to follow a missionary path following his release.