Suppliers of Zyklon B Were as Guilty as its Users

Legally, the one who supplies the killer with the weapon, is considered an accomplice (accessory to murder) and is punished not as severely as the murderer proper. However, with the crime so monstrous as the Holocaust, suppliers of Zyklon B (used to kill Jews in Auschwitz and Majdanek) are as guilty as those who used it to kill over a million human beings. Guilty as sin. Literally deadly sin.

Hence, in my not-so-humble-opinion, when Bruno Tesch (who invented and supplied Zyklon B to Nazi serial mass murderers), and his deputy Karl Weinbacher were sentenced to death by the British and executed, justice was properly served.

Hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration, was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s. Research at Degesch of Germany led to the development of Zyklon (later known as Zyklon A), a pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to water and heat. It was banned after World War I, when Germany (not very successfully as it proved to be unstable) used gaseous hydrogen cyanide as a chemical weapon.

In 1922, Degesch was purchased by Degussa – another German chemical company. Their team of chemists, which included Walter Heerdt and Bruno Tesch, devised a method of packaging hydrogen cyanide in sealed canisters along with a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth.

The new product (in the form of pellets) was also named Zyklon, but it became known as Zyklon B to distinguish it from the earlier version. It was widely used for delousing clothing and fumigating ships, warehouses, and trains as insecticide. Beginning in the 1920s, Zyklon B was used at U.S. Customs facilities along the Mexican border to fumigate the clothing of border crossers.

The Nazis started using Zyklon B in Auschwitz in early 1942 to murder prisoners during the Holocaust. Tesch and his deputy executive, Karl Weinbacher, were executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS for use on humans.

Hydrogen cyanide is now rarely used as a pesticide but still has industrial applications. Firms in several countries continue to produce Zyklon B under alternative brand names, including Detia-Degesch, the successor to Degesch, who renamed the product Cyanosil in 1974.

In 1930, Degussa ceded 42.5% ownership of Degesch to IG Farben (no surprise here) and 15% to Th. Goldschmidt AG, in exchange for the right to market pesticide products of those two companies through Degesch. Degussa retained managerial control, though.

The finished product produced by Degussa were sent to Degesch, who forwarded the product to two companies that acted as distributors: Heerdt-Linger GmbH (Heli) of Frankfurt and Tesch & Stabenow (Testa) of Hamburg.

Distributor Heli supplied Zyklon B to Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald (as an insecticide), and Testa supplied it to Auschwitz and Majdanek (ditto initially); camps also occasionally bought it directly from the manufacturers.

Use of Zyklon B for serial mass murder in gas chambers was a no-brainer: after the decision to kill all Jews under German control in Europe was made (by Himmler and Heydrich) and approved (by G;ring and Hitler) sometime in August of 1941, it was obvious that it could be done only with poison gas. Mass shootings of that magnitude were impossible both operationally and politically.

Zyklon B was a natural choice because it was readily available and camp personnel had extensive experience using it (prior to the first experimental gassing at Auschwitz it was in use as an insecticide for months).

However, Aktion T4 personnel transferred to Chelmno and Operation Reinhard death camps had no such experience so they stuck to familiar (to them) method of “Holocaust by Gas”: carbon monoxide generated by exhaust fumes of internal combustion engine (petrol in gas vans and diesel in stationary gas chambers).

Some 56 tons of the 729 tons of Zyklon B (7.7%) sold in Germany in 1942-44 were sold to SS concentration camps. Auschwitz received almost half, of which six tons were used for fumigation.

The remainder was used in the gas chambers or lost to spoilage (the product had a stated shelf life of only three months). In April 1941, the German agriculture and interior ministries designated the SS as an authorized applier of the chemical, so they were able to use it without any further training or governmental oversight.

The first (experimental) gassing at Auschwitz with Zyklon B took place in late August 1941 in the basement of Block 11 in the main camp. The experiment was repeated in September, with H;ss watching.

However, Block 11 proved unsuitable, as the basement was difficult to air out afterwards and the crematorium (Crematorium I, which operated until July 1942) was some distance away.

So further gassings took place in makeshift gas chamber in Crematorium I, where more than 700 victims could be murdered at once. By the middle of 1942, the operation was moved to Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a nearby satellite camp that had been under construction since October 1941 specifically as a killing center.

Auschwitz II–Birkenau had two gas chambers with a capacity of 800 and 1,200 victims. These structures were in use for mass-murder until early 1943. At that point, the SS decided to greatly increase the gassing capacity of Birkenau.

Crematorium II was originally designed as a mortuary with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators; the SS converted it into a death factory by installing gas-tight doors, vents for the Zyklon B to be dropped into the chamber, and ventilation equipment to remove the gas afterwards.

Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the beginning as gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943, all four crematoria were operational. Most of the victims of Auschwitz were murdered using these four structures.

A special SS bureau known as the Hygienic Institute delivered the Zyklon B to the crematoria by ambulance. The actual delivery of the gas to the victims (i.e., mass murder) was always handled by the SS, on the order of the supervising SS doctor.

After World War II ended in 1945, Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher of Tesch & Stabenow were tried in a British military court and executed for knowingly providing Zyklon B to the SS for use on humans.

Gerhard Peters, who served as Chief Operating Officer of Degesch and Heli and also held posts in the Nazi government, served two years and eight months in prison as an accessory before being released due to amendments to the penal code.