Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery

[liberal N proud]

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families.

The book, “Dark Money,” by Jane Mayer, traces the rise of the modern conservative movement through the activism and money of a handful of rich donors: among them Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune, and Harry and Lynde Bradley, brothers who became wealthy in part from military contracts but poured millions into anti-government philanthropy.

But the book is largely focused on the Koch family, stretching back to its involvement in the far-right John Birch Society and the political and business activities of the father, Fred C. Koch, who found some of his earliest business success overseas in the years leading up to World War II. One venture was a partnership with the American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis, who, according to Ms. Mayer, hired Mr. Koch to help build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine.

The episode is not mentioned in an online history published by Koch Industries, the company that Mr. Koch later founded and passed on to his sons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/us/politics/father-of-koch-brothers-helped-build-nazi-oil-refinery-book-says.html?emc=edit_th_20160112&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45299538&_r=0

[EdwardBernays]

1. History

is a funny thing...

Like, in 2016 when we think "forced medical testing on prisoners" we think "Nazi concentration camps". That's CERTAINLY not some the Greatest Generation would ever do...

Except they did.

And frequently.

This lasted for 40 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

This started in 1946:

"In a 1946 to 1948 study in Guatemala, U.S. researchers used prostitutes to infect prison inmates, insane asylum patients, and Guatemalan soldiers with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, in order to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating the STDs. They later tried infecting people with "direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men's penises and on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded . . . or in a few cases through spinal punctures". Approximately 700 people were infected as part of the study (including orphan children). The study was sponsored by the Public Health Service, the National Institutes of Health and the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the World Health Organization's Pan American Health Organization) and the Guatemalan government. The team was led by John Charles Cutler, who later participated in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Cutler chose to do the study in Guatemala because he would not have been permitted to do it in the United States. In 2010 when the research was revealed, the US officially apologized to Guatemala for the studies. A lawsuit has been launched against Johns Hopkins University, Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Rockefeller Foundation for alleged involvement in the study."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment

And eugenics was ALL the rage for years and years as well. As part of that the US government sterilised many thousands of poor and minority women, often secretly but almost always against their will.

It's great political propaganda, that a Koch helped the Nazis, but... in the 1940s - heck throughout US history a LOT of Americans have done a LOT of evil for business reasons or personal gain.

[DustyJoe]

2. Must be a rich bunch habit

Seems some of the obscenely rich have bad habits in history.

Kochs building stuff for nazis and Soros helping nazis get personal belongings off the Jews they were sending off to gas.

Who says legacies aren't built on the backs of others ?

[gladium et scutum]

3. Koch

also built refineries for Joe Stalin