Chapter Eight - The Breakup and the Cover-Up

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Breakup and the Cover-Up

ON PAPER, IG Farben was dissolved.

In 1951, the Allied authorities officially broke up the company into three smaller corporations: BASF, Hoechst, and Bayer. These were the original firms that had merged to form IG Farben in the first place. Now they were being restored, as if the war had never happened.

It wasn’t a reckoning.
It was a rebrand.

Each company got a slice of the empire. Assets were divided. Patents were returned. Managers were shuffled. Most of the executives who had been convicted at Nuremberg were back in boardrooms within a few years.

Bayer got its name back. Its logo. Its factories. Its market share.

No reparations were paid to the slave laborers who had worked and died at Monowitz. At the time, no public apology was issued. The company’s role in the Holocaust was scrubbed from brochures, reports, and speeches.

The brand moved forward.

By the late 1950s, Bayer was once again a leading name in German industry. Its headquarters in Leverkusen expanded. Its stock recovered. Its products returned to shelves across Europe and beyond.

The past wasn’t erased, just ignored.

Within a generation, Bayer was known once again for pain relief, not war crimes. For innovation, not atrocity. Most people had no idea what the name had once meant.

And Bayer had no reason to remind them.