Feder-Bosch Agreement

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The Feder-Bosch Agreement ( also: gasoline agreement ) was a contract between IG Farben and the German Reich on December 14, 1933 on subsidizing the production of synthetic gasoline . IG Farben undertook to deliver 300,000–350,000 tons of synthetic gasoline by the end of 1935, and in return, IG Farben was guaranteed a price of 18.5 pfennigs per liter.

The contract

The production of synthetic gasoline was part of the self-sufficiency efforts of the Third Reich. The world market price for petrol had collapsed during the global economic crisis and was at 9 pfennigs per liter at the time, so that the IG Farben synthesis project had become unprofitable. After Adolf Hitler personally took the position in a meeting with Leuna director Heinrich Bütefisch and the head of the IG Farben press office Heinrich Gattineau at the end of June 1932 that mineral oil synthesis was absolutely necessary for a politically independent Germany, the IG Farben leadership decided in July 1932 to temporarily maintain the deficit production of synthetic gasoline. In accordance with Hitler's promise, the petrol contract was negotiated after the seizure of power and signed in December 1933.

The contract provided for the cost price to be reviewed annually, and the state was given the right to inspect the IG Farben bookkeeping. If the cost price was over 18.5 pfennigs, the state would pay the difference; if the price was below 18.5 pfennigs, IG Farben had to pay the difference to the state. A profit rate of 5% was agreed. Finance Minister Count Schwerin von Krosigk and State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Gottfried Feder , signed for the Reich . As a representative of IG Farben, CEO Carl Bosch and his designated successor Hermann Schmitz , whom Hitler had accepted into the NSDAP parliamentary group in the Reichstag, signed the gasoline contract , which relieved IG Farben of all worries.

The contract came into force on July 1, 1934. By the end of 1935, this contract cost the Reich 4.8 million Reichsmarks , after which the state received 90 million Reichsmarks from IG Farben until the expiry of the contract, as the prime costs had fallen below the sales proceeds due to improved production and the rise in world market prices. The amount of 350,000 tons was only a small step towards self-sufficiency.

Interpretation in Research

Wolfgang Birkenfeld sees this contract as part of the job creation measures . The historian Lotte Zumpe, on the other hand, sees the purpose of the contract in the assumption of the risk by the state for a strategic product for warfare whose profit prospects were uncertain.

literature

  • Titus Kockel: German Oil Policy 1928–1938 . Berlin 2005, p. 100.
  • Adam Tooze : Economics of Destruction. The history of the economy under National Socialism , Munich 2007, p. 146 ff.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Köhler: Hitler left - they stayed. KVV specifically, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-930786-04-4 , p. 20
  2. ↑ Lotte Zumpe: Economy & State in Germany 1933 to 1945 . Berlin 1980, p. 189.