The Council of the Gods

Der Rat der Götter (The Council of the Gods) is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Kurt Maetzig. It was released in 1950.

In the early 1930s, Dr. Scholz is a chemist working for IG Farben. While he develops new types of rocket fuel and a gas which he believes to be a pesticide, his corporate superiors support Adolf Hitler in his quest to dominate Germany, and subsequently, the whole of Europe. Director General Mauch and his fellow managers, who jokingly call themselves 'the council of the gods', are cleverly using the Second World War to earn a fortune, by supplying the Third Reich and - through their cartel with Standard Oil - the Western Allies. Scholz, fearing to lose his position, turns a blind eye even as he realizes what the gas he developed is used for. Throughout the war, American bombers do not destroy IG Farben plants, as they are pressured by the company's associates in the United States to leave its infrastructure intact. After the war ends, the Americans acquit most of the directors from charges of crimes against humanity and secretly use their experience to produce chemical weapons, that would be deployed against the Soviet Union. After an explosion in a chemical factory kills hundreds, Scholz - who is now a communist - cannot remain silent. He publicizes the truth about IG Farben's wartime activity, warning that they plan yet another to make more money. An immense demonstration takes place outside the firm's headquarters. The American general supervising the managers proposes to disperse them with tanks, but Mauch refuses, fearing the crowd's reaction. The demonstration turns into a May Day rally.

Friedrich Wolf and his Soviet co-author, Phillip Gecht, began writing the script in the summer of 1948, shortly after the end of the IG Farben Trial. They used many original documents from the judicial process, but mainly relied of Richard Sasly's book IG Farben. Another event which influenced their work was the BASF's chemical plant in Ludwigshafen and caused 280 deaths at 28 July 1948, which was combined into the plot's ending. Wolf later told that the title, The Council of the Gods, was inspired by the divine assembly that closed the Odyssey: IG Farben's directors were the "gods" that run the affairs while the common mortals bled and died on the field, like in the Homerian myth. The author told that his work was to "reveal the 'gods' and the machinations behind the curtains". He was also determined to discredit Germany's old elites, both due to personal convictions and the ideological requirements of the Socialist Unity Party.