Nazis and Science

Yes, but perlimary science went into discovering those technologies. Technology is ultimatley the product of science and scientific research goes into that technology.

The advances of german science and technology are inextricably tied to slave labor and the suffering of thousands of human beings. Germany would not have been able to wage war at all without IG Farben, the huge chemical conglomerate that developed synthetic gasoline and rubber for tires. By 1938 IG Farben had become thoroughly Nazified replacing its head, Carl Bosch who had attempted to retain Jewish scientists in their positions, with the unscrupulous yet brilliant businessman Hermann Schmitz.  When the war started wherever the Wehrmact went, IG followed plundering the resources of all the occupied countries from Russia to France. Along the political Third Reich, a chemical Third Reich was set up with its capital at Monowitz (also known as Auschwitz III or "IG Auschwitz"), just outside the Auschwitz complexes. There, approximately 30,000 laborers were worked to death the ones unable to work any longer (verbraucht was the German term, literally "used up") being conveniently shipped for termination to nearby Birkenau (Auschwitz II). The gas by which most of them died, Zyklon B, was a patent of IG Farben and was manufactured in Hamburg by  German Company for Pest Control  (Degesch for short) 42.5 % of which was owned by IG.  Monowitz was IG's property but was set up according to Nazi standards: barbed wire surrounded the vast complex, special cells were constructed that did not allow a human being to either sit, lay down, kneel, or stand up and the row of 45 gallows was seldom empty; the only difference was that instead of SS uniforms, one would see mostly men in white lab coats and civilian German employees.
After the war 24 IG Farben execs were put on trial including Hermann Schmitz, Georg von Schnitzler, and Carl Krauch, chairman of IG's supervisory board. Krauch had once recommended to his officials when they complained of labor shortage at IG's plant at Heydebreck that "...Heydebreck must establish a large concentration camp as quickly as possible following the example of Auschwitz. " By the time the trial opened in 1947 the new realities of the Cold War and West's need for an articulate Germany as a barrier to Red expansion in Europe won over moral issues and very light sentences were imposed, Schnitzler receiving five years and Krauch six regardless of the fact that he was found guilty of slavery and mass murder at the trial.
IG Farben broke up into its former conglomerates Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF. Former IG execs found employment in the new companies as in the case of Friedrich Jaehne (convicted at Nuremberg of plunder and sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison) who was elected president of Hoechst's supervisory board in 1955. In 1956 Fritz ter Meer, convicted in Nuremberg for slavery and mass murder and sentenced to seven years, was elected chairman of Bayer. Von braun worked for the US missile program and Claus Barbie, the "butcher of Lyons" found employment with the US counter-intelligence services. The list is unfortunately rather long.
Totalitarian regimes with no regards for human rights are proven havens for scientific research and 'progress". Please keep that in mind when you're discussing Germany's technological "miracle" in WW II.


Most of the information was derived from Adam Le Bor and Roger Boyes' "Seduced by Hitler: The Choices of a Nation and the Ethics of Survival" Barnes and Noble NY, NY 2000.