Dr. Schrader sent a sample of this lethal new fumigant to Farben’s director of industrial hygiene, a man named Professor Eberhard Gross (not to be confused with Dr. Karl Gross, the Waffen-SS bacteriologist connected with the Geraberg discovery). Gross tested the substance on apes and was duly shocked by the results. After a healthy ape was injected with a tiny amount of Preparation 9/91—just 1/10th of a milligram per kilo of body weight—the ape died in less than an hour. Next, Gross tested the substance on an ape inside an inhalation chamber. He watched this healthy ape die in sixteen minutes. Professor Gross told Dr. Schrader that his Preparation 9/91 was being sent to Berlin and that he should wait for further instruction on what action to take next.
At Dustbin, Schrader told Major Tilley that when he learned his compound could kill a healthy ape through airborne contact in minutes, he became upset. His discovery was never going to be used as an insecticide, Schrader lamented. It was simply too dangerous for any warm-blooded animal or human to come into contact with. Schrader said his goal was to save money for the Reich. With the news of how powerful Preparation 9/91 was, Schrader felt he’d failed at his job. He got back to work, searching for a fumigant better suited for the task of killing weevils and leaf lice.
Meanwhile, Professor Gross brought the substance to his superiors. Starting in 1935, a Reich ordinance required all new discoveries with potential military application to be reported to the War Office. The Reich’s Chemical Weapons Department began to evaluate Schrader’s Preparation 9/91 for its potential use in chemical warfare. In May 1937 Schrader was invited to Berlin to demonstrate how he’d synthesized Preparation 9/91. “Everyone was astounded,” Schrader told Tilley. This was the most promising chemical killer since the Germans invented mustard gas. Preparation 9/91 was classified Top Secret and given a code name: tabun gas. It came from the English word “taboo,” something prohibited or forbidden.
Dr. Schrader was told to produce one kilogram for the German army, which would take over tabun production on a massive scale. Schrader got a bonus of 50,000 reichsmarks (the average German worker during this time period earned 3,100 reichsmarks a year) and was told to get back to work. Farben still needed him to develop a lice-killing insecticide.
With their new nerve agent tabun, Farben executives saw all kinds of business opportunities. Karl Krauch, the head of Farben’s board of directors, began working with Hermann G?ring on a longer-range plan to arm Germany with chemical weapons, ones that could eventually be dropped on the enemy from airplanes. In his report to G?ring, Krauch called tabun “the weapon of superior intelligence and superior scientific-technological thinking.” The beauty in the nerve agent, Krauch told G?ring, was that it could be “used against the enemy’s hinterland.” G?ring agreed, adding that what he liked most about chemical weapons was that they terrified people. He responded to Krauch in writing, noting that the deadly effects of nerve agents like tabun gas could wreak “psychological havoc on civilian populations, driving them crazy with fear.”
On August 22, 1938, G?ring named Karl Krauch his Plenipotentiary for Special Questions of Chemical Production. Farben was now positioned to build the Reich’s chemical weapons industry from the ground up. The Treaty of Versailles had forced Germany to destroy all its chemical weapons factories after World War I, which meant factories had to be secretly built. This was an enormous undertaking, now an official part of the Nazis’ secret Four Year Plan, and through Krauch IG Farben was made privy to the Reich’s war plan before war was declared.
At the Dustbin interrogation center, Major Tilley asked Schrader about full-scale production. Based on the Allies’ discovery of thousands of tons of tabun bombs in the forests outside Raubkammer, Farben must have had an enormous secret production facility somewhere. Dr. Schrader said that he was not involved in full-scale production. That was the job of his colleague, Dr. Otto Ambros.
Major Tilley asked Schrader to tell him more about Ambros. Schrader said that most of what Ambros did was classified but that if Major Tilley wanted to know more about what he actually did for Farben, Tilley should talk to individuals who sat on Farben’s board of directors with Ambros, either Dr. Karl Krauch or Baron Georg von Schnitzler. Both men were interned here at Dustbin.
“Who is Mr. Ambros?” Major Tilley asked Baron Georg von Schnitzler, in an interview that would later be presented as evidence in a Nuremberg war crimes trial.
“He is one of our first, younger technicians,” von Schnitzler said. “He was in charge of Dyhernfurt [sic] as well as Auschwitz and Gendorg [sic].”
Where was Ambros now? Tilley asked von Schnitzler. The baron told Major Tilley to talk to Karl Krauch.