TABLE OF CONTENTS Germany had the first technologically successful synthetic fuel industry producing eighteen million metric tons (130 million barrels) from coal and tar hydrogenation and another three million metric tons from the F-T synthesis in the period 1939 1945. After the war ended German industry did not continue synthetic fuel production because the Potsdam (Babelsberg) Conference of 16 July 1945 prohibited it [44]. The Allies maintained that Germany's Nazi government had created the industry for strategic reasons under its policy of autarchy and that in postwar Germany there were, economically, better uses for its coal than synthetic fuel production. Four years later on 14 April 1949, the Frankfurt Agreement ordered dismantling of the four coal hydrogenation plants in the western zones, all of which were in the British zone [45].
Shortly after the formal establishment of the West German government in September 1949, a new agreement, the Petersberg (Bonn) Agreement of 22 November 1949, quickly halted the dismantling process in an effort to provide employment for several thousand workers. [46] The West German government completely removed the ban on coal hydrogenation in 1951, although by this time Ruhr l GmbH (Mathias Stinnes) had deactivated the Welheim plant, and the plants in Scholven, Gelsenberg, and Wesseling, after design modifications, were hydrogenating and refining crude oil rather than hydrogenating coal.
The Soviets (Russians) dismantled the Magdeberg plant located in their zone and the three plants in Poland at P litz, Blechhammer, and Auschwitz. They used parts from the Magdeberg and Auschwitz plants to reconstruct a...
