What kept synthetic fuels and gasifiers from coming to the shores of US After WW2?
There was considerable development in this technology during that time. Many examples of tractors, trucks, cars, running on wood. Why haven't US company's like "John Deer" and dozens more, made even one woodgas powered anything here? Would investment funding dry up if they had ever dared, or just truly no demand. Could it be fact that gasoline has been inexpensive for so long that now seventy years later, practically nobody has ever heard of powering engines on wood!
At the wars end, all gasifier production factories were blown up by the allied forced or just shut down, and engineers designing gasification systems for the past decade were disbanded and put onto new projects. German Scientist working on Nazi Syn-Fuels systems (along with other advanced technologies), were secretly ushered into the United States under operation Paperclip!
Has this all been some kind of evil plot by the oil producing world powers to keep this German knowledge suppressed, long enough for all of their populations to completely forget there is a option B, and become completely dependent on oil?
I understand the historically low energy cost factor, massive quantities, ease of use and reliability of petrol products. Without this resource, our current comfort here at home wouldn't be what is now.
But to believe that a market for gasifiers and syn-fuels is so small in the USA, that not one major company has profited by selling these unique machines (besides chemical, pharmaceutical, industrial) but to the individual in any way since World War 2, just doesn't sound very American.
This is about Control.
A great article, cut and cherry picked a little but full article is worth reading.
"In 1929, [Du Pont-controlled] GM acquired the largest automobile company in Germany, Adam Opel, A.G. "'GM's participation in Germany's preparation for war began in 1935. That year its Opel subsidiary cooperated with the Reich in locating a new heavy truck facility at Brandenburg, which military officials advised would be less vulnerable to enemy air attacks. During the succeeding years, GM supplied the Wehrmact with Opel "Blitz" trucks from the Brandenburg complex.
((These trucks were commonly outfitted with Holtz gas generators.))
The Du Pont-GM Nazi collaboration, also included the participation of Standard Oil of New Jersey [now Exxon] in one, very important arrangement. GM and Standard Oil of New Jersey formed a joint subsidiary with the giant Nazi chemical cartel, I.G. Farben, named Ethyl G.m.b.H. [now Ethyl, Inc.] provided the mechanized German armies with synthetic tetraethyl fuel [leaded gas].Without lead-tetraethyl the present method of warfare would be unthinkable.'" (7)
((The Germans simply expanded tetra-ethyl lead production and added it to syn-fuel to increase the octane levels))
"Exxon and its principal officers for made arrangements, starting in the late 1920s with I.G. Farben involving patent sharing and division of world markets. Jersey Standard agreed not to develop processes for the manufacture of synthetic rubber and technical knowledge; in exchange, Farben agreed not to compete in the American petroleum market. Farben kept its patents to itself, under strict instructions from the Nazi government."
One aspect of this Standard - I.G. Farben relationship, revealed in testimony during the Patents Committee hearings, chaired by Senator Homer T. Bone in May 1942, is of interest to those who seek direct evidence of a conspiracy by big oil companies to suppress development of synthetic substitutes to petrochemical products such as industrial chemicals, aircraft lubricants and fuel, all of which can be made from hemp:
Standard had also, in league with Farben, restricted production of methanol in the US, a wood alcohol that was sometimes used as motor fuel." The restriction against methanol production apparently did not apply to the Nazis, however. "As late as April 1943," Higham reveals, "General Motors in Stockholm [Sweden] was reported as trading with the enemy. . . . Further documents show that, as with Ford, repairs on German army trucks and conversion from gasoline to wood-gasoline production were being handled by GM in Switzerland."
The Nazis obviously considered hemp a vital war material that could be used to produce methanol, or "wood gas," at the same time, in 1943, that Du Pont-controlled General Motors in Switzerland was "converting from gasoline to wood-gasoline production." This, taken into consideration along with the earlier statement that Standard Oil-I.G. Farben had "restricted production of methanol" and the GM-Standard Oil-I.G. Farben joint venture, Ethyl, Inc., whose profitability depended on the production of lead-tetraethyl for oil-based petrochemical gasoline - in direct competition with the alternative methanol, or "wood gas," certainly opens new avenues of investigation into the existence of a conspiracy against hemp as an alternative, and competing, industrial raw material, by these very same corporations which sold America out to the Nazis for profit and control of world resources and markets."
As late as 1940, Ford Motor Company "refused to build aircraft engines for England and instead built supplies of the 5-ton military trucks that were the backbone of German army transportation." (20) The Ford Motor Company was also aware of the potential of hemp as an alternative industrial resource, devoting many years research to the subject.
In a 1989 ABC Radio broadcast, Hugh Downs reported that in the 1930s, "the Ford Motor Company also saw a future in biomass fuels. Ford operated a successful biomass conversion plant that included hemp at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl acetate, and creosote - all fundamental ingredients for modern industry, and now supplied by oil-related industries. . . . Henry Ford's experiments with methanol promised cheap, readily-available fuel."
Read Article in its entirety at http://www.iahushua.com/WOI/us_nazis.htm
Nope, you can't have one.
Thanks, Chris
