TABLE OF CONTENTS The growth of the German synthetic fuel industry remains inseparably linked to events taking place there in the 1930s and 1940s. A special relation existed between the industry and Nazi government, and without it Germany's emerging synthetic fuel industry might have collapsed. The small German oil industry had remained reasonably free from government interference and had benefited from a tariff increase in April 1930 that raised the duty on imported oil from RM 77.40 per metric ton (8.5 per US gallon) to RM 129 per metric ton (14.3 per US gallon).
Government policy began to change with the German banking crisis that followed the failure of the Kredit Anstalt on 3 May 1931 and the Darmstaedter National Bank on 15 July 1931 and led the Weimar government to impose a number of controls and regulations which the Nazi government expanded and intensified beginning in 1933. The Weimar government established Supervisory Boards to allocate raw materials and placed these boards under control of the Reichswirtschaftsministerium (Ministry of Economics) which in 1939 renamed them Reichsstellen (Reich Offices). The Reichsstelle fur Mineral (Office of Mineral Oil) regulated the oil industry, additional regulations came from the Reichsstelle fur Rohstoffamt (Office of Raw Materials) and its subdivision Wirtschaftsgruppe Kraftstoffindustrie (Economic Group for Liquid Fuels). All liquid fuel producers reported their production and import figures and any new Plant and refinery construction to the oil regulatory boards. In addition to regulatory boards, the government established four industry associations that had responsibility for...
