Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony C. Sutton

machine was repeated in the case of synthetic rubber. There is no question that the ability of the German Wehrmacht to fight World War II depended on synthetic rubber — as well as on synthetic petroleum — because Germany has no natural rubber, and war would have been impossible without Farben's synthetic rubber production. Farben had a virtual monopoly of this field and the program to produce the large quantities necessary was financed by the Reich: The volume of planned production in this field was far beyond the needs of peacetime economy. The huge costs involved were consistent only with military considerations in which the need for self-sufficiency without regard to cost was decisive. 16
    As in the ethyl technology transfers, Standard Oil of New Jersey was intimately associated with I.G. Farben's synthetic rubber. A series of joint cartel agreements were made in the late http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_04.htm (6 of 8) [8/4/2001 9:44:14 PM]
    CHAPTER FOUR: Standard Oil Fuels World War II
    1920s aimed at a joint world monopoly of synthetic rubber. Hitler's Four Year Plan went into effect in 1937 and in 1938 Standard provided I.G. Farben with its new butyl rubber process. On the other hand Standard kept the German buna process secret within the United States and it was not until June 1940 that Firestone and U.S. Rubber were allowed to participate in testing butyl and granted the buna manufacturing licenses. Even then Standard tried to get the U.S. Government to finance a large-scale buna program — reserving its own
    funds for the more promising butyl process.17
    Consequently, Standard assistance in Nazi Germany was not limited to oil from coal, although this was the most important transfer. Not only was the process for tetraethyl transferred to I.G. Farben and a plant built in Germany owned jointly by I.G., General Motors, and Standard subsidiaries; but as late as 1939 Standard's German subsidiary designed a German plant for aviation gas. Tetraethyl was shipped on an emergency basis for the Wehrmacht and major assistance was given in production of butyl rubber, while holding secret in the U.S. the Farben process for buna. In other words, Standard Oil of New Jersey (first under president W.C. Teagle and then under W..S. Farish) consistently aided the Nazi war machine while refusing to aid the United States.
    This sequence of events was not an accident. President W.S. Farish argued that not to have granted such technical assistance to the Wehrmacht "... would have been unwarranted."18
    The assistance was knowledgeable, ranged over more than a decade, and was so substantive that without it the Wehrmacht could not have gone to war in 1939.
    The Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. (DAPAG)
    The Standard Oil subsidiary in Germany, Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G.
    (DAPAG), was 94-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey. DAPAG had branches throughout Germany, a refinery at Bremen, and a head office in Hamburg. Through DAPAG, Standard Oil of New Jersey was represented in the inner circles of Naziism — the Keppler Circle and Himmler's Circle of Friends. A director of DAPAG was Karl Lindemann, also chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce in Germany, as well as director of several banks, including the Dresdner Bank, the Deutsche Reichsbank, and the private Nazi-oriented bank of C. Melchior & Company, and numerous corporations including the HAPAG (Hamburg-Amerika Line). Lindemann was a member of Keppler's Circle of Friends as late as 1944 and so gave Standard Oil of New Jersey a representative at the very core of Naziism. Another member of the board of DAPAG was Emil Helfrich, who was an original member of the Keppler Circle.
    In sum, Standard Oil of New Jersey had two members of the Keppler Circle as directors of its German wholly owned subsidiary. Payments to the Circle from the Standard Oil subsidiary company, and from Lindemann and Helffrich as individual directors,