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from there to Manhattan and went into action to undermine any prospective American war
effort. Despite the fact that he was an American citizen, enjoying all of the privileges of a
glamorous social life in New York, he had involved himself in espionage with Farben's N.W.7.
intelligence network. American I.G. owned the General Aniline and Film works and the huge
film corporation Agfa and Ansco. It also owned Ozalid, the multimillion-dollar blueprint
corporation. The General Aniline works supplied khaki or blue dyes for army, air force, or naval
uniforms, which gave Schmitz's army of salesmen spies access to every military, naval, and air
force base before and after Pearl Harbor. These "salesmen" talked the forces into using
Agfa/Ansco for their private instruction films and having their photographs of secret
installations developed in American I.G.'s laboratories. They also arranged to have every
Ozalid print of secret military and naval plans copied and filed at their headquarters in Berlin.
The person responsible for this remarkable espionage stunt was Hermann and Dietrich
Schmitz's nephew, plump, jolly Max Ilgner. Ilgner's motivation was to infiltrate at the top of
Farben and prove himself indispensable to the company. He allied N.W.7. with the A.O., the
Organization of Germans Abroad, an intelligence network which came directly under Walter
Schellenberg. He set up an army of five thousand secret agents headed by Nazi Consul Fritz
Wiedemann, operating through American I.G., which penetrated North and South America,
weaving through military, naval, and air force bases as staff to supplement the information
supplied by the I.G. salesmen. Between the two sets of spies Germany had a very clear
picture of American armaments before Pearl Harbor.
Like Hermann Schmitz, Max Ilgner sent his brother to carry out his purposes in the United
States. Rudolf Ilgner, an equally pushy, greedy, grasping opportunist, became a leading
executive under Dietrich Schmitz in New York. He set up Chemical Co. a "Statistical Branch"
of I.G. dedicated to espionage. He made contact with a famous priest, Father Bernard R.
Hubbard, known as the Glacier Priest because of his work as missionary and explorer in the
frozen wastes of Alaska. The friendship had a purpose. In 1939, just weeks after war broke out
in Europe, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson asked Hubbard as a special favor to
undertake a tour of strategic U.S. Army bases in Alaska. On the pretext of giving a lecture tour,
he was to make a complete movie and still photographic survey of the bases for use at military
headquarters at the War Department in Washington.
Innocently if recklessly, Father Hubbard told Rudolf Ilgner of his assignment. Ilgner told him
that in the goodness of its spirit, American I.G. (now known as General Aniline and Film) would
present him with free cameras and film from its finest Agfa color wholesale supplies. Naturally,
Ilgner pointed out, Hubbard would want to process the film in General Aniline and Film's
laboratories. Hubbard agreed. Apparently no one in military intelligence bothered to consult
FBI or State Department files that showed the GAF-Nazi connection. Hubbard undertook his
long and difficult expedition, through blizzards and rainstorms, returning with a priceless record
of the whole United States northwestern defense system. This, Rudolf Ilgner naturally
forwarded to his brother at N.W.7. in Berlin.
Simultaneously, the Army began to photograph the Panama Canal for defense purposes.
Rudolf Ilgner offered the Army Agfa film at a very low price. The films were processed and
shipped to Berlin. Ilgner had a sense of humor. He gave the American government copies of
the movies and still photographs and kept the originals, which were shipped via the Hamburg-
America steamship line in 1941. The president of this company was Julius P. Meyer, head of
the Board of Trade for German-American Commerce, whose chairman was Rudolf Ilgner.
In September 1939 the Schmitz brothers and the Ilgners realized that with the outbreak of war
in Europe, the name I.G. -- as in Farben -- might put off some of the scores of thousands of
American smaller shareholders who were unwittingly helping to finance Hitler.
Rudolf Ilgner burned all of his incriminating records. The directors instructed their publicity
team to layoff any further plugging of Nazi super-efficiency as a selling point. It was thus that
the company had become General Aniline and Film. The I.G. Farben subsidiary I.G. Chemie in
Switzerland, run by the Schmitzes' brother-in- law, owned 91.5 percent of the stock through --
need one add? -- the National City Bank of New York and the Chase National Bank. The board
still included William E. Weiss of Sterling Products and Edsel Ford; Teagle had resigned in
1938 following much unwelcome publicity. In his place James V. Forrestal was appointed to
the board. Forrestal was a partner in the part-Jewish banking company of Dillon, Read, which
had helped to finance Hitler in the earlier days. He was soon to become Under Secretary, and
later Secretary, of the Navy. Another on the board was former Attorney General Homer S.
Cummings. Cummings, who had done much to protect American I.G. when he was in his
official post, now became the leading defense lawyer for the corporation. Just how qualified he
was for the job may be judged by the fact that he slipped secret intelligence to Hans Thomsen,
Nazi charge d'affaires in Washington. In a telegram marked Top Secret sent to Germany on
June 11, 1940, Thomsen revealed that Cummings had supplied him with details of a private
conversation with Roosevelt. Cummings told Thomsen's special contact that the President
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