V-E Day: A Commemoration

As May 8, 2006 draws to a close, we would do well to remember that today marked the 61st anniversary of V-E Day--the end of the second civil war within Western civilization and perhaps the most important moment of the 20th century. In the spirit of hypermodernity, let us celebrate not with excerpts of Churchill or Truman's victory speeches, but rather with a brief lesson about an old standard of historical paranoia: the German chemical conglomerate I.G. Farben. The Encylopedia Britannica entry....

http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9042050/IG-Farben

Hey, they used tens of thousands of Jews and other prisoners of the Nazis as slave labor; supplied the Nazis with Zyklon B, the insecticide used in the gas chambers; manufactured the vast majority of materials like rubber, synthetic oil, etc. necessary for the German war effort; and tested drugs on concentration camp prisoners, but let's not be too hasty--we don't really want to liquidate them, do we? Wouldn't that run contrary to the geist of the Marshall Plan?

(Incidentally, the blackguards at wikipedia have noted that L. Ron Hubbard reserved harsh words for IG Farben in his "Mission Earth" decalogy, for reasons that scientology-watchers won't find difficult to guess.)