In the US, gasoline is more than $2 per gallon in some areas & will be there soon in others. In Germany, gas costs about 6 Marks per liter. A liter is a little more than a quart; a Mark is equal to about 50 cents, making gas in Germany equal to about $10/gal. Who is responsible? Obviously, the big oil companies are trying to maximize their profits -- but this is not the first time. Who can remember the so-called `Arab Oil Embargo' of 1973? I remember it well, because I was Inventory Control Director at the corporate level of a major petrochemical company and I can assure you, there was no shortage of feedstock or petroleum at all. This contrived shortage allowed the company to raise their prices by 500% per cent on both their industrial chemicals and the consumer products, including a nationally known brand of automotive anti-freeze. These products all use feedstock coming from petroleum and it was never in short supply.
Who gave us WW II? The quick answer is Hitler, but that just is not the case. We won't even go into the history of the huge number of ethnic Germans massacred in Poland prior to the German invasion in September 1939. Even so, that was still a regional conflict and Germany never intended a world war. Hitler wanted peace with England, and his U-boat Skippers were under strict orders never to engage any US Navy or American-flagged vessel under any circumstances at all. If it was not Germany or Hitler who escalated this war, who did? It was the `Seven Sisters" in large part. The `Seven Sisters' were the world's petroleum companies, of which Standard Oil was the largest. The Chief Executive Officer of Shell Oil was so pro-Nazi that the British Government had to force him out in order to get fuel for their own military. In an interview in LIFE Magazine in 1940, the Chief Executive Officer of Texaco (Thorkold Reiber) stated that if any German U-boat Skipper saw a Texaco tanker helping the Allies, he had Reiber's permission to sink the Texaco tanker. But perhaps the one that made the most profit out of these world events was Standard Oil, today known as Exxon. When the German LuftwafFe bombed England during the Battle of Britain, they got fuel from Standard Oil. When the RAF went up to protect their homeland, they got their fuel from Standard. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they had fuel from Standard Oil in their tanks.
CHARLES HIGHAM (35-1984) put all this in his book Trading with the Enemy but there is more - and it is in the records of the United States Senate! What you read in this piece comes directly from the testimony of Hearings before a Special Committee investigating the National Defense Program during the 77th Congress, pursuant to Senate Resolution #71 in 1942. This is from the report dated Tuesday, 31 March 1942.
The Committee met at 10:38am pursuant to adjournment on Friday, March 27 in Room 318, Senate Office Building with Senator James Mead presiding.
William Stamps Farish, President of Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey) continues his testimony before the Senate Special Committee:
"I preface my discussion by saying that any charges that the Standard Oil Co. or any of its' officers has been in the slightest respect disloyal to the United States is unwarranted and untrue. I repel all such insinuations with all the vigor at my command. I do so with indignation and resentment. Moreover, I wish to assert with conviction that whether the several contracts made with the I. G. did or did not fall within the borders set by the patent statutes or the Sherman Act, they did inure greatly to the advance of American industry and more than any other one thing have made possible our present war activities in aviation gasoline, toluol and explosives, and in synthetic rubber itself"
EDITOR NOTE - If you are old enough to remember, high-test gasoline was called 'ethel' because it had tetraethyl added to increase the octane rating and therefore, its power. The Ethyl Corporation was a subsidiary of Standard Oil that made this additive and as written by HIGHAM, all the warring powers had to buy their fuel.
And of course, toluol was one ingredient of TNT or tri-nitro-toluene.
"In our following statement to stockholders for the year 1940, we made the following statement:
- `Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey), as an American corporation, owes its first duty to the United States. It has kept the Department of State fully informed and has cooperated closely with the Department in all matters of foreign policy. So long as this country maintains normal relations with the rest of the world, the company must also carry on its operations in a normal manner. The company cannot constitute itself judge of the rights and wrongs of international problems. It cannot impose embargoes nor break them, these being the functions of government, not of industry.'
Our foreign subsidiaries are also corporations chartered under the laws of the countries in which they operate. They must obey the laws of those countries. Would you please keep this in mind in considering the activities of my country in its foreign trade and in considering the Assistant Attorney General's criticism and my reply to that criticism on various instances discussed.
Senator Ball: "Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?"
Acting Chairman Mead: "Yes, you may."
Senator Ball: "I am interested in that memorandum to your stockholders in 1940, and I would like to know just what you did, ', what you informed the State Department of."
Mr. Farish: "Senator, if you will bear with me and give me a chance to present in an orderly way my case, if you please, I think you will find that question answered in detail."
Senator Ball: "Well, specifically, for instance, when in 1935, according to the documents that Mr. Arnold introduced here, it became obvious to the Standard Oil that the Hitter government was having a considerable say-so in the I. G. Farben policies, did you make any move at this time to inform our Government, our State Department or any other department, of what was going on there?"
Mr. Farish: "I think the record will show that the Government was fully informed of everything we did, and I ask, please, that you permit me to present the record, and then I will be pleased to answer any questions the committee has to ask."
Acting Chairman Mead: "Proceed; but as chairman, I want to recognize the rights of the committee to refer to the record at any time, so far as I am concerned. This is quite an elaborate statement, and thoughts that are in our mind at the very beginning of the statement might not be there 24 pages afterward."
Mr. Farish: "All right, Senator. I only ask reasonable consideration to present my case without having to back-track and duplicate and waste time."
Acting Chairman Mead: "I am sure the time won't be wasted "
Mr. Farish: "The Japanese situation; the newspapers found material for sensational headlines in a cable dated September 11, 1939, read under the impression that this was a message from the Standard Oil management to a representative in Yokahama. This message was not sent from New York City. This cable was sent by an American, the local manager in Yokahama, in an effort to advise the directors that immediate steps could be taken to maintain some parts of our American oil business in Japan against a rising tide of nationalistic spirit. Our State Department and the American Ambassador in Tokyo over a number of years past had been kept fully advised of this development."
Mr. Fulton: "Do you mean that they received a copy of that cable?"
Mr. Farish: "I couldn't answer whether they received a copy of that cable or not, but they had been kept fully advised of the problems that we were up against in maintaining business in Japan."
Mr. Fulton: "Were they informed of the substance of that cable?"
Mr. Farish: "I don't know. I can't answer that. Nothing came of the proposal made in the cable, because the directors in New York turned down the suggestion. With Japan our enemy, it is important that the committee understand the Japanese never obtained a license for 100 octane gasoline by the hydrogenation process. Before the outbreak of war in 1939, LG. negotiated with them a license agreement involving $2,000,000 in royalties. This involved our consent, which we withheld after placing the proposal before our State Department."
Senator Ball: "Did that stop the project?"
Mr. Farish: "Yes, sir. Next, deliveries of aviation gasoline in Brazil: in his testimony Friday, the Assistant Attorney General quoted from documents relating to deliveries of aviation gasoline to an Italian airline in Brazil in 1941. Deliveries to this air line were discussed with the State Department and with the American Embassy at Rio de Janeiro. No delivery was made except in conformity with the policy of the State Department."
EDITOR NOTE - It was around 1940 or 1941 that a law was passed in the USA forbidding any American flag vessel from trading with any of the countries involved in the war. Standard Oil quickly re-registered their tankers in Panama, thus escaping this law in a round-about way.
The Italian air line mentioned was LATI and the Director then in Rio was Count Edmundo di Robelant. He and his new wife enjoyed their honeymoon cruising down the Atlantic aboard SOUTHERN CROSS, the yacht of Axel Wenner-Gren whose mistress was the companion of Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and this young lady later became the mistress of young US Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy. Di Robelant was later arrested on the charge of sending Allied ship movements by radio to Berlin.
Mr. Fulton: "Does that mean that the State Department knew that your Brazilian subsidiary was furnishing aviation gasoline to the Italians?"
Mr. Farish: "Yes, sir; and the State Department approved of every delivery that was made."
Mr. Fulton: "Who in the State Department approved of that?"
Mr. Farish: "Well, the file -- I will give you the file, Mr. Fulton, but it is my judgment that the file is confidential and is for the committee's use but it should not be made public."
Mr. Fulton: "The committee would like to know the name of the State Department official who was told that your subsidiary in Brazil was furnishing gasoline. That at least would not be confidential."
Mr. Farish: "I think several members here and the American Ambassador in Brazil, in Rio. You must realize that at that time our Government was attempting to get a coordinated political program in South America and particularly in Brazil, and we were acting under their instructions."
Mr. Fulton: "What was the reason then for stopping deliveries from Aruba if the same thing was going to be done in another manner?"
This story will continue in KTB #155 next month. CHARLES HIGHAM (35-1984) sent us a copy of an Army Intelligence memo that stated tat six Standard Oil tankers were making fast runs from their Lago refinery on Aruba off the coast of Venezuela, to the Canary Islands where they transferred fuel to German supply ships. The memo also stated that German U-boats were seen in the area.
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© Copyright 2001 by Harry Cooper, Sharkhunters International, Inc.
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