Douglas Neckers: Elections have consequences

As you probably know, we are headed to another election on Nov. 8 — something that happens every two years. Though the ones that don’t have a presidential race are often called “midterm” or “off-year” elections, this is a misnomer. Every member of the House must stand for election every other year, and a third of all the Senate seats are always up too.

Candidates always vary in quality and zaniness, but this year’s crew of potentials is offering an abundance of crazies in both houses of Congress. A candidate for Senate in Georgia seemingly can’t count how many children he has, and a U.S. Senate nominee from Pennsylvania lived and voted in New Jersey until after the last presidential election ... a possible case of “electile dysfunction.”

But while it is tempting to make fun of oddball candidates, something far more important to realize is that elections have consequences. Whoever we elect to the House or the Senate will gain power just by virtue of the office. A member of Congress’ mere comments carry weight, in many cases, well beyond their worth — sometimes for generations.

I was reminded of this when I got an email about a recent column in which I briefly mentioned the college professor who had inspired me to become interested in I.G. Farben, the German chemical cartel, whose products, research and development fueled — literally — much of the Nazi aggression during World War II. There were 13 trials of Nazi leadership in Nuremberg after the war, the best known being the International Military Tribunal held at Nuremberg from

Nov. 22, 1945, to Oct. 1, 1946. This international tribunal is usually known as the Nuremberg trial.

That was the one that convicted Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess and other surviving top Nazis. But there were many other Nuremberg trials as well, and some dealt with the industrialists and scientists who enabled Hitler’s Germany.

The sixth of these, the Farben trial, brought 22 members of the chemical leadership elite to the dock. After a trial in which all the evidence of their and their companies’ bad behavior were displayed, 11 were sentenced to prison.

The presidents of BASF, Bayer and many other major German companies served terms of up to eight years for aiding and abetting the Nazi war machine. Though Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the lead prosecutor in the first trial, those in the others were mostly young lawyers near the start of their careers. In fact, three women lawyers were among the prosecutors of the Farben leadership. The associate chief prosecutor was Josiah DuBois, a young lawyer with a degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Dubois, in a book he wrote after the trial, The Devil’s Chemists, said the judge’s sentences were “light enough to please a chicken thief.”

By that, he meant that he and his fellow prosecutors thought the sentences meted out to these men who enabled mass murders and those who committed crimes against humanity were no harsher than a chicken thief might have gotten.

And while it may be hard to believe, some of those running the chemical industry in the United States weren’t happy about trying their German counterparts. In specific cases, American companies had contractual relationships with their German counterparts during the Nazi era. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Corporation had sold tons of tetraethyl lead to the German Luftwaffe, enabling them to make 100 octane aviation fuel from coal. Because of that their planes could terrorize Rotterdam, and London.

Another such case involved Dow Chemical Co., which had a murky but troubling connection with Farben. And these corporations had friends in high places: George Dondero was a long-term Republican congressman from suburban Detroit, not too far from Dow Chemical’s headquarters in Midland. And he took on the Dow cause, becoming one of just two vigorous critics of the Farben trial — the other being U.S. Sen.Robert Taft of Ohio.

Dondero’s efforts, however, reached a new low during the reign of terror of Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who ruined the lives of many with his reckless accusations of Communism — though he never turned up a single case of an actual Communist in government.

Dondero, who was sympathetic to McCarthy, claimed that American liberals were "whitewashing" Communism. In 1947, when Republicans had a majority in Congress, Dondero tried to block the I.G. Farben trial by withholding funding for the prosecution team before indictments could be handed down.

He attacked U.S. Secretary of war Robert P. Patterson for failing to ferret out alleged communist infiltrators. He said Patterson was unable to "fathom the wiles of the international Communist conspiracy." Dondero also cited 10 government personnel in the War Department who had communist backgrounds or leanings — including Dubois.

DuBois died in 1983. But while his career deserves more study by skilled historians, it seems clear that his only ‘communist’ affiliation comes because he worked at treasury for secretary, Henry Morgenthau, who happened to be Jewish. Dondero is long since dead and mostly forgotten, but he did long standing damage to people who are authentic heroes.

Elections have consequences. Some candidates are honorable — and others have no honor whatsoever. Which means, citizens, make sure you know what you are voting for. You person just might get elected.

— Douglas Neckers is an organic chemist, the McMaster distinguished professor emeritus and the founder of the Center for Photochemical Sciences at Bowling Green State University, and a former chair of the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, N.Y.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Douglas Neckers: Elections have consequences