Bruno Tesch & Karl Weinbacher, merchants of death

[Dirk de Klein]

After the war, several employees of the companies that had supplied Zykon B to the SS in the concentration and extermination camps were brought before the court in a number of criminal trials. The first trial, of employees of the Hamburg distributorship Tesch & Stabenow (TESTA), was held before a British military court in Hamburg from March 1 to 8, 1946. The owner of the firm, Bruno Tesch, and his coworkers Joachim Hans Drosihn and Karl Weinbacher were charged with having wittingly supplied the Zyklon Bused in the German concentration camps to murder citizens of the Allied countries. The defendant Joachim Hans Drosihn was acquitted in the proceedings because he was given no insight into corporate policy. Weinbacher and Tesch, on the other hand, were found guilty of knowingly supplying Zyklon B to murder human beings and were condemned to death.

https://dirkdeklein.wordpress.com/2016/ ... -of-death/

[allenstein]

Hello Dirk,

I'm sorry but the picture of the "young" Bruno Tesch" is actually a German communist with the same name. He was executed August 1st 1933 for involvment in alleged murders in the Altonaer Blutsonntag on May 17th 1932.

/Bengt

[michael mills]

The conviction of Tesch and Weinbacher was in all likelihood a miscarriage of justice, since there was no hard evidence that they had any knowledge that a very small amount of the Zyklon-B sold to the Waffen-SS (estimated at less than 10% by Pressac) was being used for homicidal purposes rather than its normal insecticidal purpose.

It was a bit like convicting the distributors of rat poison for murder simply because a person to whom they had sold the product used it on his own initiative to kill a human rather than rats.

The British prosecutors most probably did not realise that the amount of Zyklon-B needed to kill a large number of human beings was far less than the amount required to carry out an extensive delousing program, humans being easier to kill with cyanide than insects, and hence that it was quite easy for the concentration camp staff to divert to homicidal purposes a small proportion of the Zyklon-B supplied to them for normal pest control, without that diversion being noticed by the suppliers. Hence, the British concluded that the very large amount of Zyklon-B being supplied to the Waffen-SS by the firm of Tesch & Stabenow must have made the managers of that company realise that it was being used for a nefarious purpose other than its normal hygienic one.

From the site linked by Dirk de Klein (my emphasis):

Tesch was first interrogated in Hamburg by British Captain and chemist Walter Freud. Freud was accompanied by Emil Sehm, a former Testa bookkeeper. Sehm claimed to have seen a memorandum concerning correspondence between Tesch and a Wehrmacht officer about the use of Zyklon B to gas humans. Tesch was arrested by the British occupation authorities on September 3, 1945, and released on October 1, 1945, only to be re-arrested a few days later on October 6.

The sentence emphasised by me contains the nub of the issue; there was no documentary evidence that Tesch had been informed of the homicidal purpose to which a proportion of the Zyklon-B he had supplied to the Waffen-SS was being put, only a claim by Sehm that he had seen such a document.

What is not stated on the linked site is that Sehm was subsequently appointed by the British as the new manager of Tesch & Stabenow. Thus, Sehm derived a substantial material benefit from giving evidence against his former employers, which gives rise to the suspicion that he was offered an inducement by the British prosecutors to give evidence that may well have been entirely false.

Another item of evidence adduced by the prosecution was that Tesch had given Waffen-SS personnel training in the use of Zyklon-B in which he had given details of the amount of the product required to kill humans. That evidence was used to assert that Tesch knew that the purpose of the training he was giving was to enable a program of homicidal gassing to be carried out.

However, that was a false and prejudicial interpretation. All users of Zyklon-B for its normal insecticidal purpose were given training in how to use it safely, precisely because the amount needed to carry out a thorough delousing of buildings would invariably be fatal to humans, and could harm the handlers if not used properly. Thus, it is most probably true that Tesch did in the course of his training sessions inform the Waffen-SS trainees of the amount of Zyklon-B that would produce a concentration of hydrogen-cyanide gas fatal to humans within a given space, essentially for the purpose of emphasising to them the absolute necessity to follow the correct procedures for the safe employment of the insecticide for its normal delousing purpose. The mere fact that he gave that information does not prove that he knew that the personnel that he was training would later use for an abnormal homicidal purpose the information he had given them as part of the normal training given to all users of Zyklon-B.

The linked site concludes with this highly prejudicial statement:

Just because these men weren’t part of the army or any government did not absolve them from any guilt and best they were complacent and worst they were actually worse then the anyone in the army, because the SS or Wehrmacht could always say they were following orders, whereas these men solely did it for profit .

The statement is prejudicial because there is no good reason to believe that Tesch and Weinbacher had any certain knowledge that a small proportion of the Zyklon-B they were supplying to the Waffen-SS, somewhat less than 10%, was being used for a homicidal purpose. The fact that the amount of Zyklon-B so supplied was very large cannot be assumed to indicate guilty knowledge, since the amount supplied was consistent with the normal delousing requirements of the Waffen-SS, which included delousing a large number of concentration camps, some of very large size, as well the use of the product at the front and in transportation facilities. They were certainly making a profit from selling Zyklon-B to the Waffen-SS, but that profit was derived from sales of the product for its normal insecticidal purpose; the fact that the Waffen-SS then used a small proportion of the Zyklon-B purchased by them for a homicidal purpose was not the fault of Tesch and Weinbacher.

[Sejanus]

Mr Mills, I do not mean to be out of line but you sound like a defense attorney at the Nürnberg Trials.

If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

[michael mills]

If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Sejanus, do you have any useful information contribute to this topic, rather than trite comments?

[Sejanus]

If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Sejanus, do you have any useful information contribute to this topic, rather than trite comments?

With respect, I actually mentioned this for your benefit, not mine. And not to be trite. I have seen people lose themselves in TR subjects to the point of also losing their objectivity, and sadly much more. Whether this applies to you or not I do not know. But you are the one that insists on defending these people and their role in the Holocaust, much as a defense attorney would have at that time.

Isn't it amazing how nobody was really responsible? They were only following orders, or had no choice, or knew nothing. Why, only 10% of the Zyklon-B was used in homicidal gassings, you argue. Hardly enough to even matter, evidently. And I suppose that witnesses like Emil Sehm were lying, right?

EDIT: I was looking up some further information on Emil Sehm and came across this:

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... lon-b.html

The evidence concerning the supply of Zyklon-B for homicidal gassing continues to be distorted, not just by outright deniers, but also by self-appointed 'skeptics' who have simply misread the postwar trial testimony, or incorrectly inferred the grounds upon which judges reached their verdicts.

Interesting.

[Gorque]

It's a shame that the link to the "United Nations War Crimes Commission's Law-Report of the Zyklon-B Case" is broken on the blog as well as in the original posting on AHF.

EDIT: I believe this is the same, no?

http://www.phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uw ... yklonb.htm

EDIT:

A link to a pdf with additional details regarding the defendants evidence that is missing from the above web-site link.

www.blacktriangle.org/zyklonbcasesmall.pdf

[steve248]

Anyone can examine the trial records id the Tesch & Stabenow case - verbatim transcripts and exhibits - at UK National Archives.
The reference is WO 235/83.
You can purchase a digital copy for a minimal amount - certainly less than US NARA charges for microfilms or dvds.

Among the exhibits are original sales records cards of Zyklon B to KL Auschwitz, KL Sachsenhausen and FKL Ravenbrück along with certain other bits of unspecified hardware.

[Sejanus]

The assertion by Mr Mills that Tesch & Weinbacher were innocent is a form of Holocaust revisionism/denial, for they were found guilty and executed for their crimes.

While the main elements of the Holocaust are clearly visible to all but the willfully blind, some have turned their attention to aspects of the story for which they claim the evidence is incomplete, tainted or ambiguous.

The interesting thing about such revisionism/denial is that it focuses on individuals rather than the Holocaust as a whole. Perhaps making such arguments more palatable to some as they do not deny the Holocaust completely. And if enough of the guilty can be put into doubt like this (as Mr Mills tries to do here and evidently has been doing for many years), it undermines the history of what really happened.

[michael mills]

From the link to the trial documents supplied by Gorque (relevant sections emaphasised by me):

The prosecuting Counsel, in his opening address, stated that Dr. Bruno Tesch was by 1942 the sole owner of a firm known as Tesch and Stabenow, whose activities were divided into three main categories. In the first place, it distributed certain types of gas and gassing equipment for disinfecting various public buildings, including Wehrmacht barracks and S.S. concentration camps. Secondly, it provided, where required, expert technicians to carry out these gassing operations. Lastly, Dr. Tesch and Dr. Drosihn, the firm’s senior gassing technician, carried out instruction for the Wehrmacht and the S.S. in the use of the gas which the firm supplied. The predominant importance of these gassing operations in war-time lay in their value in the extermination of lice.

The chief gas involved was Zyklon B, a highly dangerous poison gas, 99 per cent. of which was prussic acid. The gas was manufactured by another firm. Tesch and Stabenow had the exclusive agency for the supply of the gas east of the River Elbe, but the Zyklon B itself went directly from the manufacturers to the customer.

The contention for the Prosecution was that from 1941 to 1945 Zyklon B was being supplied as a direct result of orders accepted by the accused’s firm, Tesch and Stabenow. On that basis, the Zyklon B was going in vast quantities to the largest concentration camps in Germany east of the Elbe. In these same camps the S.S. Totenkopfverbande were, from 1942 to 1945, systematically exterminating human beings to an estimated total of six million, of whom four and a half million were exterminated by the use of Zyklon B in one camp alone, known as Auschwitz/Birkenau. In these concentration camps were a vast number of people from the occupied territories of Europe, including Czechs, Russians, Poles, French, Dutch and Belgians, and people from neutral countries and from the United States. The Prosecutor also claimed that over a period of time the three accused got to know of this wholesale extermination of human beings in the eastern concentration camps by the S.S. using Zyklon B gas, and that, having acquired this knowledge, they continued to arrange supplies of the gas to these customers in the S.S. in ever-increasing quantities, until in the early months of 1944 the consignment per month to Auschwitz concentration camp was nearly two tons.

The above passage contains the nub of the issue. It makes a number of true statements about the activities of Tesch & Stabenow, namely that it supplied gas for the disinfecting of public buildings including SS concentration camps, and the predominant purpose of the gassing operations was the extermination of lice.

However, it also contains the false claim, first propagated by the Soviet Government, that 4.5 million persons were exterminated with Zyklon-B at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It also makes the contentious claim that Tesch, Weinbacher and Drosihn had knowledge that the Zyklon-B they were supplying to Auschwitz-Birkenau was being used for the purpose of killing those 4.5 million victims.

The Prosecution case, which obviously was accepted by the judges, obviously rested on the combination of two elements, one true and one false. The true element was that the firm of Tesch & Stabenow had supplied very large quantities of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz-Birkenau, sufficient to kill million of humans if used for a homicidal purpose; that element was proved by the records of shipments to that destination. The false element was that 4.5 million persons had been killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau by gassing with Zyklon-B.

It appears that the Prosecution reasoned that the killing of 4.5 million people would have required a very large amount of Zyklon-B, and that that was the purpose for which such a large quantity of the product had been sold by Tesch & Stabenow to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Prosecution also appears to have concluded that Tesch and Weinbacher must have been able to deduce from the size of the deliveries to Auschwitz that the Zyklon-B they were supplying to that destination was not all being used for the normal delousing purpose, but in fact was being used to kill large numbers of human beings.

The fault in the Prosecution's reasoning is that it failed to take account of the fact that the amount of Zyklon-B required to kill insects such as lice is far greater than the amount required to kill warm-blooded creatures such as humans, and that therefore the regular delousing of a very large complex such as Auschwitz-Birkenau required the use of the large amounts of Zyklon-B delivered by Tesch & Stabenow. Accordingly, the quantities of Zyklon-B being ordered for Auschwitz-Birkenau were not abnormally high in relation to its legitimate use for delousing, and hence would not in themselves have aroused the suspicion of Tesch and Weinbacher that their product was being used for a homicidal purpose.

Post-war testimony by Hoess and other former camp staff showed that the decision to use some of the Zyklon-B supplied to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the purpose of killing selected prisoners, initially Soviet POWs and sick inmates, then the Jews being sent to the camp, was made by the camp staff themselves, based on their experience of a number of near-fatal accidents to members of the camp staff while using Zyklon-B in normal delousing operations. It is likely therefore that the diversion to a homicidal use of some of the Zyklon-B delivered to Auschwitz (under 10% according to Pressac) was carried out in secret, without the knowledge of Tesch and Weinbacher.

There is further the fact that in 1943, Kurt Gerstein, the Waffen-SS officer responsible for securing supplies of Zyklon-B, reached an agreement with Gerhard Peters of DEGESCH, the holder of the patent for that product, for a direct "under-the-counter" supply of the variant of Zyklon-B without the warning agent, bypassing the normal commercial channel through Tesch & Stabenow. The bypassing of Tesch & Stabenow suggests that the principals of that firm would not aware that their product was being used homicidally, and that the SS wanted to distance them so that they would not gain that knowledge.

[Boby]

See also
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Tesch1.html

[Gorque]

A link to Jean-Claude Pressac's study "AUSCHWITZ: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers" can be found here:

http://www.phdn.org/archives/www.mazal. ... essac0.htm

[michael mills]

From the case for the defence of Weinbacher:

In connection with the large supplies of gas which were sent to Auschwitz, Counsel pointed out that Weinbacher had stated on oath that he had never had a summary of supplies to a single customer because this was left to the accountants. In any case, it had been shown that the quantity of Zyklon B needed for the killing of human beings was much smaller than that required for the killing of insects. The quantities of Zyklon B needed for killing half a million or even a million human beings stood in such small proportion to the quantities needed for the killing of insects that it would not have been noticed at all. Therefore, there had been no need for Weinbacher to have grown suspicious, since, claimed Counsel, he knew that Auschwitz was one of the biggest camps and a sort of transit camp. Counsel did not think, therefore, that it was correct to assume that the large quantity of Zyklon going to Auschwitz was any indication of the fact that human beings were being killed there. Supplies for Neuengamme were much lower than those for Auschwitz.

The section emphasised by me represents the objective truth of the matter, as any person familiar with the use of Zyklon-B for its normal insecticidal purpose and for its abnormal homicidal use, will clearly recognise. In order to carry out regular thorough delousing of an installation of the size of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a quantity of Zyklon-B would be required that would suffice to kill huge numbers of human beings, several millions, if diverted to that purpose.

Accordingly, as many as a million human beings could be killed by syphoning off only a small quantity of the Zyklon-B supplied for the normal insecticidal purpose, which means that the huge quantity of the product supplied to Auschwitz was not in itself indicative that it was being used a homicidal purpose in addition to the insecticidal one. There was therefore no cause for any supplier of Zyklon-B to the Waffen-SS to suspect that the product was being used for a homicidal purpose, if he did not have inside knowledge, since the amounts supplied were not greater than those required for a normal delousing purpose.

As stated, Pressac concluded that the homicidal gassings at Auschwitz would have required the utilisation of less than 10% of the total amount of Zyklon-B supplied to the camp, the greater part being used for normal delousing.

However, this is what the Judge Advocate said in his summary of the case to the judges, which was tantamount to advising them as to what their judgement should be:

The Judge Advocate, in summing up the evidence before the Court, pointed out that the latter must be sure of three facts, first, that Allied nationals had been gassed by means of Zyklon B ; secondly, that this gas had been supplied by Tesch and Stabenow ; and thirdly, that the accused knew that the gas was to be used for the purpose of killing human beings. On points of law he did not think that the Court needed any direction.

After summarising the evidence of the Prosecution witnesses, the Judge Advocate said : " To my mind, although it is entirely a question for you, the real strength of the Prosecution in this case rests rather upon the general proposition that, when you realise what kind of a man Dr. Tesch was, it inevitably follows that he must have known every little thing about his business. The Prosecution ask you to say that the accused and his second-in-command Weinbacher, both competent business men, were sensitive about admitting that they knew at the relevant time of the size of the deliveries of poison gas to Auschwitz. The Prosecution then ask : "Why is it that these competent business men are so sensitive about these particular deliveries ? Is it because they themselves knew that such large deliveries could not possibly be going there for the purpose of delousing clothing or for the purpose of disinfecting buildings ? ".

That shows that the Judge Advocate ignored the reality of the relative quantities of Zyklon-B required to carry out the delousing of clothing and buildings, relative to the quantities required to kill humans, possibly because he lacked the relevant knowledge of the lethality of hydrogen cyanide to different life-forms. It is obvious that he believed that the large quantities of Zyklon-B delivered to Auschwitz were far in excess of what was needed for delousing purposes, and hence the suppliers must have realised that the excess amounts were being used homicidally. As anyone familiar with the properties of hydrogen cyanide knows, that belief was quite mistaken.

[Gorque]

A previous thread from 2003 concerning the Tesch and Stabenow firm.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=35589

It is a shame that many of the links are dead.

[Gorque]

Hi Michael:

I found the below on page 15 of the Pressac study:

During the trials that were held after the war, the tons of Zyklon-B ordered by the camps were attributed to homicidal use without any verification. By far the greater part (over 95 percent) was destined for delousing (effects and buildings) while only a very small part (less than 5 percent) had been used for homicidal gassings.