Wilhelm Rudolf Mann

Wilhelm Rudolf Mann (4 April 1894 – 10 March 1992) was a German business executive for IG Farben and later with Bayer. He was a supporter and member of the Nazi Party, and was involved in financing the human medical experiments of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Following the end of the Second World War, Mann was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the IG Farben trial, but he was acquitted in 1948.

Early life Mann was the son of Rudolf Mann, a shipping agent who later became a board member at IG Farben and Bayer, and his wife Selma Herrenbrück.

Under the Nazis Mann joined the Nazi Party in 1931, two years before they came to power, and also joined the Sturmabteilung, the Party's paramilitary organization, achieving the rank of SA-Sturmführer in the brownshirts. Mann's membership had lapsed after a year although he quickly renewed his subscription as soon as Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Following the Nazi seizure of power, Mann penned a letter which he sent out to 75 of IG Farben's leading international sales representatives across the world. In the letter Mann told the executives that the Nazis had "won a victory against Bolshevism, the enemy of the entire world" and instructed them to tell their clients in their host countries that reports of Nazi repression contained "not a true word".

After the fall of France, Mann attempted to ensure that Bayer could take control of Rhône-Poulenc, the company's main rivals over the border, but his efforts were hampered by the fact that most of the company's bases were in Vichy France rather than the occupied territory. Mann therefore suggested to the directors that they formed a joint sales company, with terms that were much more beneficial to Bayer, but he was rebuffed in his attempt. However, Mann then threatened the company with military action leading to the deal being concluded. In 1944, he was decorated with the War Merit Cross First Class. He thus was also aware that the consumption rate at Auschwitz was ten times the level of other similar sized camps, but he claimed that he never considered any connection between this fact and the Holocaust before later still arguing that he had barely paid any attention to the company accounts in the first place. It was also Mann who personally agreed that IG Farben would finance the research work of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, which focused on genetics and involved several experiments on sets of identical twins held in the camps.

Post-war Mann was arrested by the U.S. Army in 1945 and two years later was indicted as part of the IG Farben trial. There he faced the charges of plundering, spoliation and mass murder, but he was acquitted in 1948.

However, the American Chemical Association notes that all IG Farben pharmaceuticals were marketed under the Bayer trademark. Throughout the Nazi era, Bayer was the control center for IG Farben human experiments. And on 17 February 1999, a lawsuit was filed in U.S. District on behalf of Eva Mozes Kor, one of 180 surviving twin children (out of 1,500) who had been subjected to medical experiments at Auschwitz. The suit charged Bayer of collaborating with Dr. Josef Mengele (the "Angel of Death") to commit medical atrocities for profit. Eventually the case was settled out of court.

Mann had been twice married, initially to his cousin Else Herrenbrück, who bore him two children before her death, and subsequently to Gerda Liefeldt.