From cooperation to complicity

The Degussa corporation played a pivotal role in the processing of plundered precious metals in Nazi-occupied Europe and controlled the production and distribution of Zyklon B, the infamous pesticide used to gas the inmates of Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps, during the Third Reich. Peter Hayes traces the extent of the corporation's involvement in these and other Nazi war crimes, including the Aryanization of Jewish-owned property and the exploitation of forced labor, and delineates the motivations for such conduct.