This piece began in KTB #153.

In the US, gasoline had been more than $2 per gallon in some areas. In Germany, gas had cost about 2 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 $4/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% 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 WWII? It was the 'Seven Sisters" in 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.

Committee

Senator Connolly has reminded the two executives of Standard Oil that the Government could have just taken the process for making Toluol for explosives (TNT) from Standard after Mr. Howard has said that Standard was taking financial risk to make this chemical available to the United States Army and Navy. He goes on:

Mr. Howard: “I don’t know, Senator; we weren’t interested. We always did what the Government asked us to, without regards to rights.”

Senator Connolly: “I am not intimating that you acted under any duress or fear that the Government would take it, but what I mean is that you did what later on the Government sanctioned in its law providing that the Government may take patents or property or anything to win this war. Is that right?”

Mr. Howard: “Yes, sir. I have always assumed that the law was that the Government might do anything it pleased concerning any patent it pleased, and that the only recourse to the patent owner was a suit in the Court of Claims.”

Senator Connolly: “All right.”

Mr. Fulton: “When did you decide to violate this agreement and give it to the Government, what year and month?”

Mr. Howard: “You mean when did we begin?”

Mr. Fulton: “Yes; when did you begin to build this toluol plant which would be in violation of your agreement?”

Mr. Howard: “In 1940. The plant was finished in ’41. It was started in 1940, in the summer of 1940.”

Senator Herring: “You did all your toluol investigation experiments with the cooperation of General Harris of the Ordnance Department didn’t you?”

Mr. Farish: “Yes, sir.”

Senator Herring: “And he knew everything you were doing?”

Mr. Farish: “We were doing it at his request.”

Senator Herring: “How much did the invention of toluol mean to the production of TNT in this country right now?”

Mr. Farish: “The one plant that is finished Senator, the ordnance plant at Baytown, Texas, doubled production of toluol in this country.”

Senator Herring: “General Harris made the statement to me that without toluol, we would make 20 percent of the TNT we are now making.”

Mr. Farish: “That is correct. You mean without synthetic toluol.”

Senator Herring: “Yes. He worked with you all the time on this, did he not?”

Mr. Farish: “Yes, sir. We acted on his instructions and at his request.”

Mr. Fulton: “Now, with respect to the license that you granted to the other companies, Mr. Farish, to make this synthetic toluol, is license so restricted that in order to justify producing toluol, they must also get a license for the extraction of toluol under another German-held process, the Edeleanu process?”

Mr. Farish: “I can’t answer that.”

Mr. Howard: “We use the Edeleanu process, which originated in Germany, which was the first process suitable for the purpose that we knew of. As a matter of fact, the other people now making synthetic toluol are using, I think, three different processes of American origin.”

Mr. Fulton: “Are they entitled under the terms of the license that you granted them to operate without a license under the Edeleanu process?”

Mr. Howard: “Yes, sir. Our license had nothing to do with the extraction step.”

Mr. Fulton: “Your license does not license the extraction, does it?”

Mr. Howard: “No. We offer to everyone our extraction technique, but as far as I know, the licensees have all chose to take different extraction techniques of their own origin.”

Mr. Fulton: “If they had accepted the one you offered, it would have meant they would have obtained or would have to obtain this license under the Edeleanu process.”

Mr. Howard: “The patents on that process had expired, I believe, at some time before that. We never have paid any royalty on the operation in question. I don’t know whether others would have needed a license or had to pay royalty or not.”

Mr. Fulton: “Then why don’t you give them a license to extract as well as a license to produce?”

Mr. Howard: “We don’t own any extraction process.”

Mr. Fulton: “If it were common property, you owned the technic or know-how which you had developed.”

Mr. Howard: “We gave them the know-how.”

Mr. Fulton: “And your license could have been broad enough to cover the other field, could it not?”

Mr. Howard: “We couldn’t license a process on which we had no proprietary right. We have all the information on the process to anyone who wished to know about it. If he chose to use it, that was his right & his responsibility. We had nothing to say about it.”

Mr. Fulton: “Did you inform them that they would have to obtain a license or that they should negotiate for a license?”

Mr. Howard: “So far as I know, the question was never raised. The Edeleanu process in question is well known in the industry. Every refiner knows of it and knows its origin and who has control of it and the engineers who built it and everything else. It is a common process in the oil industry.”

TNT and Dupont

In KTB #159 next month, we’ll learn that Standard Oil of New Jersey admittedly lied to some explosives manufacturers and told them that no toluol was available - so that all the production of TNT would go to DuPont.

To DuPont? Oops……DuPont owned a large part of General Motors at this time and we reported some time ago that General Motors (through their top executives) strongly backed the Hitler Government not only with huge financial investments in German industry, but before the war they bought the Adam Opal auto manufacturing plant which soon began making tanks and armored vehicles for the German military when the war broke out. General Motors had no knowledge of that………..well, that’s what they said but in fact, the General Manager of the Opal Plant, an American and a US Navy Commander (Reserve) accepted a medal from the German Government for his (and Opal’s) contribution to the German war effort - prior to the American entry into the war.

There will be more on this interesting but hidden chapter of World War II. Perhaps not all the battles were won or lost on the battlefield. Maybe the biggest battles were won in corporate boardrooms & the men on the battlefield were merely chess pieces.

In later issues, we will read who owned the oil fields at Ploesti, Rumania which were destroyed during those famous air raids. We’ll also examine why the bombers somehow were sent to wrong locations a couple times, before getting the correct target data. Did a lot of guys die for nothing? You’ll make your own decision.