13 Facts About Otto Ambros

Otto Ambros was a German chemist and Nazi war criminal.

Otto Ambros is known for his wartime work on synthetic rubber and nerve agents.

The son of a university professor, Ambros attended school and passed his Abitur exam in Munich.

The name sarin is an acronym of the initials of the discoverers, with Otto Ambros being the "a".

Otto Ambros then managed the IG Farben factories at Dyhernfurth, which produced tabun, and at Gendorf, which produced mustard gas.

At IG Farben, Otto Ambros helped research how to produce polybutadiene rubber, which they gave the trade name "Buna rubber" because it is made using butadiene and sodium.

In 1941 Otto Ambros selected the site for the Monowitz concentration camp and the Buna Werke factory, which produced Buna rubber using slave labor from the Auschwitz camp, and he then spent the rest of the war serving as plant manager of Buna-Werk IV and managing director of the synthetic fuel production facility at IG Auschwitz.

In 1944 Otto Ambros was awarded the Knight's Cross of War Merit Cross.

Otto Ambros was found guilty on the slave-labor count only, for his role overseeing the IG Buna Werke rubber plant at Monowitz, and sentenced to eight years' confinement.

Otto Ambros argued that they had not spent large amounts of money building barracks for prisoners unfit to work.

Otto Ambros was released from prison in 1951 due to good behaviour.

Otto Ambros became an adviser to chemical companies such as W R Grace, Dow Chemical, as well as the US Army Chemical Corps, and Konrad Adenauer.

Otto Ambros was advising Chemie Grunenthal in the development of thalidomide.