Part 3, Chapter 17 Summary

Top officials of I.G. Farben, a huge German chemical combine, paid a visit to Adolf Hitler in 1932, hoping to end the Nazis' press campaign against their company. Hitler spent a long time with them, speaking about his plans to motorize Germany and build new highways, while also listening to their promotion of synthetic fuels. German petroleum production was miniscule and most imports came from the Western hemisphere. When he became Chancellor in 1933, Hitler began his Autobahn and Volkswagen, but these projects paled in comparison to his ultimate goal of regimenting the economy to rebuild the war machine. Farben's synthetic oil could prove decisive in his planning. Germans pioneered the extraction of synthetic fuels from coal before World War I. Friedrich Bergius's "hydrogenation" beat out a rival process and Farben acquired the patent in 1926. Jersey Standard had explored alternative fuel sources...