Standard Oil-IG Farben Cartel Exposed, Senator Truman Calls It Treason

Senate hearings expose Standard Oil of New Jersey’s secret cartel agreements with IG Farben, the German chemical conglomerate that produces Zyklon B for Nazi concentration camps and uses slave labor from Auschwitz. Senator Harry Truman’s investigative committee reveals that Standard Oil withheld synthetic rubber technology from the U.S. military while sharing it with Nazi Germany, directly hampering American war preparedness.

The cartel agreements, dating to 1929, divided world markets and exchanged patents between Standard Oil and IG Farben. Under these arrangements, Standard Oil acquired IG Farben’s hydrogenation patents for the Western Hemisphere while agreeing not to develop synthetic rubber that might compete with German interests. When war came, America found itself dependent on natural rubber from Japanese-controlled Southeast Asia, with Standard Oil’s suppressed synthetic rubber patents leaving the nation critically short of this essential war material.

Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, head of the Antitrust Division, brings criminal charges against Standard Oil for restraint of trade and conspiring with the enemy. However, Secretary of War Henry Stimson intervenes, arguing that criminal prosecution would disrupt oil production essential to the war effort. The Justice Department settles for nominal $50,000 fines, a fraction of Standard Oil’s profits from the cartel arrangement.

Senator Truman declares the arrangements “approaching treason,” adding that Standard Oil’s executives had “weights and measures… identical to those of the Nazis.” Standard Oil Chairman Walter Teagle, a close business associate of IG Farben Chairman Carl Krauch, escapes personal liability despite the exposure.

The episode reveals the limits of wartime accountability for corporate misconduct. Despite documented collaboration with Nazi Germany that materially harmed American war preparation, no Standard Oil executive faces prison time. The precedent established, corporate indispensability to the war effort immunizes corporate leadership from meaningful consequences, becomes a template for future corporate impunity in national security matters.