Otto Ambros (chemist)

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Otto Ambros during the Nuremberg Trials

Otto Ambros (born May 19, 1901 in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate ; † July 23, 1990 in Mannheim ) was a German chemist , convicted war criminal and military manager . The latter characterizes his decisive role in the cooperation between the Nazi state and IG Farben .

Life

Ambros, son of a professor, finished his school career with the Abitur in Munich. From 1919 he was a volunteer at the time a volunteer corps . From 1920 he studied chemistry and agricultural science at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . In 1921 he became a member of the Corps Suevia Munich . With a doctoral thesis with Nobel Prize winner Richard Willstätter , he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD . From 1926 he worked for BASF in the Oppau plant . In 1930 he spent a year studying in the Far East.

From 1934 Ambros was an authorized signatory at IG Farben, from 1935 managing director of the Buna factory in Schkopau and from 1936 in Ludwigshafen in the main committee “Powder and Explosives”. He was a poison gas and Buna expert at IG Farben in the “Special Committee C” for the development of chemical warfare agents . He played a leading role in the large-scale production of the chemical warfare agents sarin and tabun discovered by Gerhard Schrader . In 1937 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 6.099.289) and from 1938 until the end of the war in 1945 he was a member of the board of the technical and chemical committee of IG Farben. Ambros advised Carl Krauch from 1940 on drawing up the four-year plan as head of the research and development department. As Wehrwirtschaftsführer for "Chemical weapons" explained Ambros mid-May 1943 at Hitler's headquarters Adolf Hitler personally the effects of nerve agents sarin and tabun. He was the manager of the Dyhernfurth factory , which produced sarin and soman, and the Gendorf factory , which produced the chemical warfare agent mustard gas ( mustard ) , which is harmful to the skin . Ambros, who advocated the “labor deployment” of concentration camp prisoners, visited Auschwitz III Monowitz several times after 1941 . He also headed the textile auxiliaries department and the plastics special committee in the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition . In 1944 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross.

After the war ended, Ambros was arrested by the US Army in 1946 . Ambros was briefly employed by BASF in Ludwigshafen before he was again taken into custody for the IG Farben trial . In the IG Farben trial, Walter Dürrfeld and Ambros were considered to be primarily responsible for the Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp and the use of forced labor there. Both were sentenced to eight years in prison. Ambros was released early from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison in 1952 after three years in prison . Afterwards he held numerous positions on the supervisory board: Chemie Grünenthal , Julius Pintsch AG , Knoll , Feldmühle , Telefunken . He was also an advisor to Konrad Adenauer , Friedrich Flick and the American corporation WR Grace and Company, which was involved in an asbestos scandal .

According to Martin Johnson, director of the Thalidomide Trust and author of the book The Last Nazi War Crime , the situation indicates that Ambros at Grünenthal was involved in the development of the active ingredient thalidomide , which is available as a drug under the name Contergan as an over-the-counter sedative and sleeping aid from 1957 to 1961 was distributed in many European countries. Ingestion by pregnant women led to an accumulation of severe malformations or even the absence of limbs and organs in the fetuses. As a result, a total of around 5,000-10,000 damaged children were born worldwide. There was also an unknown number of stillbirths. Johnson claims that thalidomide was developed in the Third Reich as an antidote against neurotoxins such as sarin, among others by Ambros (the "A" in sarin stands for Ambros) and was then further developed by Ambros at Grünenthal.

Other documents that the Argentine author Carlos de Napoli had already unearthed in the late 1970s prove that IG Farben also experimented with thalidomide in the concentration camps.

In 1981 an American journalist had the opportunity to conduct a personal interview with Ambros in his Mannheim apartment. When asked about his activities during the Second World War, Ambros replied: “That was so long ago. It had to do with Jews. We don't think about it anymore. "

After his death, he was honored in an obituary notice from BASF / Knoll AG: "An expressive entrepreneur with great charisma."

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich. 1998, p. 22.
  2. ↑ a b c Wollheim Memorial - Biography Otto Ambros
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 159/1975
  4. ↑ Dissertation: On the uniformity or complex nature of plant proteases. About the proteolytic effect of pumpkin juice (Cucurbita Pepo) .
  5. ↑ Bernd Boll: Case 6: The IG Farben Trial. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär : The allied trials against war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , pp. 139f.
  6. ^ "Nazis developed Thalidomide and tested it on concentration camp prisoners, author claims" by Andrew Levy. The Daily Mail, Feb 8, 2009.
  7. ^ Ben Leach, Thalidomide 'was developed by the Nazis' . 7 Feb 2009.
  8. ^ Raul Hilberg: Die Vernichtung der Europäische Juden, Volume 3 Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 1163./Footnote: Article from the San Francisco Chronicle of March 6, 1982, p. 12.
  9. ↑ quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Ambros, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist, convicted war criminal and military economic leader
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Willows in the Upper Palatinate
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1990
Place of death Mannheim