Synthetics at Auschwitz!!??

[OdinsRageSS]

Apparently the Auschwitz prison camp from WWII was under constant surveillance from the early stages of the war. Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had close ties with IG Farben of Germany and they shared information, until the war. I got this info from a website.


Three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor the U.S. government banned the sale of new automobile tires for civilian purposes. General rationing of rubber followed quickly. Early in 1942 it became realized that, if there was to be any American war effort, a gigantic synthetic rubber industry would have to be created in record time. The only country in the world that had any success in manufacturing synthetic rubber was Germany.

Germany's IG Farben was the main producer of synthetic rubber and shared many patents with Standard Oil of New Jersey. Standard had the basic knowledge of the process but the Germans were constantly striving to improve on it and with the outbreak of war, were no longer sharing information with Standard.

This concerned Standard president Frank Howard, as he knew that synthetic rubber could bring millions in profits to the company and help the war effort as well. There was only two ways to determine if the Germans had changed the process significantly during the war…spies and aerial photography.

In Howards’ words….
"One other point was very much on our minds. We wanted to make sure, if possible, that the Germans had not, since the outbreak of the war in Europe, made any radical change in their Buna manufacturing processes or formulas. Direct questions were out of order, since the I. G. men could not discuss any phase of Germany's industrial war effort."


Is this the same as the buna-b seals we hear about all the time?

 

[Pablo]

Yes Buna rubber has been around for years.....but maybe I missed something...I am pretty sure Standard oil and a bunch of companies in the USA would have loved to tap in to the uberorganochemists in NAZI Germany, but what's the Auschwitz connection?

 

[k1xv]

I worked in a SONJ oil refinery in the late 1960s. The veteran workers there talked about a prototype hydrogenization unit that was there in the early 1940s. It created synthetic oil from carbon rich feedstock (typically coal) by subjecting it to high pressures and temperatures in the presence of excess hydrogen. Because it used hydrogen at high pressures and temperatures, part of the experimentation was to make the process reliable and less subject to equipment failure, including violent line ruptures and explosions.

The prototype units were surrounded by concrete walls. When I was there, the equipment was gone, but the walls and concrete pads were still around.

Sure sounds like a German style synthetic oil process.

Ironically, in 1970, they built an upsized hydrogenization unit there, one of the first in the country. They really didn't know how to run it properly, and the instrumentation was unreliable. The same veteran workers were terrified by it, and would go out of their way to avoid being near it if possible.

Those old workers were 100% correct. After running for about 7 months, the unit blew up in December 1970, creating tremendous damage and a big fire. The explosion was heard up to 50 miles away.

 

[rgl]

I too am puzzled by the reference to Auschwitz. Unless what you are alluding to is that a plant was to be built there. I do remember seeing an HO scale model of the ramp/crematorium area at the Imperial War Museum and it was huge. Then a photo under it showed that the model only represented about a fifth or so of the whole Auschwitz complex, which was apparently filled with slave labor war-related industries of all sorts.

 

[JohnnyO]

IIRC by the last few years of WWII the Germans were working on synthetic oil and rubber because getting crude oil was becoming too difficult for them.

 

[sub_zero]

Obersturmbannführer Odin:

What exactly are you on about? Is there a point to your subject post? Or is it just a contorted account on the history of nitrile rubber manufacture, where we the zionists are supposed to pay extreme homage to you the squarehead.

BTW that isn'a gonna happen.

 

[MAJA]

What I am gathering from the original post is that IG Farben, with ties to Standard, had a plant in Auschwitz?

quote:

---

The veteran workers there talked about a prototype hydrogenization unit that was there in the early 1940s. It created synthetic oil from carbon rich feedstock (typically coal)

---

I hope this is not a reference to any of the the atrocities committed there.

So I am also confused by the Auschwitz/synthetic rubber reference. What happened there is atrocious. My father was with the American Army that went through Buchenwald (?), and I think he was affected by it for the rest of his life.

 

[k1xv]

Maja:

I am talking about a plant in NJ, not Poland. I have no idea what the original poster's Auschwitz reference is, other than the fact that Auschwitz was a German camp/slave labor complex in WW2.

And synthetic oil was made from coal.