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.
Plot
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.
Cast
Paul Bildt as privy councilor Mauch
Eva Pflug as Mabel Lawson
Laya Raki as dancer
Fritz Tillmann as Dr. Hans Scholz
Willy A. Kleinau as Mr. Lawson
Hans-Georg Rudolph as Tilgner
Albert Garbe as uncle Karl
Helmuth Hinzelmann as Schirrwind
Inge Keller as Edith Scholz
Yvonne Merin as Claudia Mauch
Käthe Scharf as Mrs. Scholz
Herwart Grosse as von Decken
Theodor Vogeler as Dr. Hüttenrauch
Arthur Wiesner as Scholz's father
Karl-Heinz Deickert as Dieter Scholz
Agnes Windeck as Mrs. Mauch
Helene Riechers as Scholz's mother
Production
Friedrich Wolf and his Soviet co-author, Phillipp 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 Sasuly's book IG Farben. Another event which influenced their work was the explosion that destroyed 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.
The characters in Wolf's story were modeled on the real directors of IG Farben, and even their names sounded much alike: the film's arch-villain, privy councillor Mauch, was based on Carl Krauch. Wolf sought a director to create the film himself, and eventually chose Kurt Maetzig. The author's son, Konrad Wolf, served as an assistant-director. The work on The Council of the Gods lasted for two years. Maetzig later claimed that the film was made as a "documentary feature film": while the characters were basically fictional, it was based on real events. He maintained that he viewed the IG Farben trial, that was run only by the US, as the beginning of the rift between the wartime Allies and to an extent - even of the Cold War, and tried to depict it as such in the film.