More than 50 years after the end of World War II, in 1998, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder started a serious attempt to compensate former slave laborers. Shortly after winning the election, he arranged a meeting of Germany's leading companies (such as Degussa, Daimler-Benz, Bayer and Hoechst).
	Where did this sudden interest of the industry in the matters of compensation come from? The companies in Germany were afraid of lawsuits to be filed in the USA by former slave laborers. Gerhard Schröder's role should be to guide the discussion among these firms. The discussion dealt with the companies' possible reaction to the lawsuits, respectively with the possibilities to avoid these lawsuits.
	The German government suggested to create a fund for compensations. The money should be contributed by both the government and the industry. At first, the suggestion did not seem acceptable to the industries. They argued that they had already paid considerable amounts to former slave laborers and thought that they had been generous enough. One has to add, though, that these payments were to the biggest part only paid to Jewish slave laborers. However, the majority of the former slave laborers had not yet received any compensation.
	Although they did not like the idea, the businesses finally agreed on the concept of the fund. The reason for their sudden change of opinion was the fear of the verdicts on the compensation suits. The leading companies reckoned to be obliged to voluntarily pay less to the fund than they would have to contribute when they showed no sign of cooperation. They were afraid to be sentenced to pay enormous sums.