Royal Dutch Shell Nazi Controversy

Shown right: Pre-World War 2 staff meeting of Rhenania-Ossag (Royal Dutch Shell) employees in Hamburg Curio-Haus, Nazi Germany. Management included at least one Nazi official who remained employed by Shell after the war.

Article by a former employee of Shell Oil USA

Extract: “You folks need to wake up and critically examine how RD Shell really operates. Royal Dutch Shell management is just as capable and willing to cause great mischief for the rest of the world, if it pays do so, as they were in the days of Deterding and Hitler.”

MISSED POINT

This is for Musaint, et al. (See his posting on Shell Blog)

You boys are supposedly bright folks, otherwise Shell probably would not have hired you. However, you have seemed to have somehow missed ‘the point’ of the recent revelations regarding RD Shell’s past ‘odious and questionable associations’.

You remind me of the German’s during the 1930’s. They were and are a very bright people and yet they willingly swallowed Hitler’s line of ‘bull’, just as you seem to swallow RD Shell’s line of corporate ‘bull’. I used to work for Shell, and it is indeed ‘bull’. Of course there were penalties for speaking out in Nazi Germany, as there are today within RD Shell. Do you boys get this point?

The obvious point you geniuses seemed to have missed is that it does matter who you do business with, and there can be unintended consequences with doing business with the wrong folks.

Back in the ‘bad old days’ of Hitler, et al, Deterding and Shell management really didn’t give a crap who they did business with as long as they made money at the enterprise. Supporting and doing ‘business’ with the Nazis was Shell’s way of helping to stop the feared ‘red tide’ of Communism. Germany was a basket case politically and economically back in the early 1920’s, if you will read your history, and I am certain that Deterding feared that if Germany went Communist, well maybe France and the Netherlands wouldn’t be far behind. If you remember your history Europe went through a ‘Great Depression’ in the 1930’s as well. People in large numbers seriously questioned whether ‘capitalism’ was a bankrupt philosophy. These were dark times.

If the Netherlands went communist then RD Shell (and Deterding) would obviously be history, or at least the Royal Dutch part of Shell would be history. Deterding had his own fears and axes to grind, and getting in bed with the fascists was one of the few ways to combat Bolshevism in Germany in those days. And Deterding wasn’t the only one to engage in such conduct. Bolshevism was a very appealing political philosophy in bankrupt Germany where a wheelbarrow full of Deutchmarks wouldn’t buy you a loaf of bread. I presume that Deterding, like most in his day, misunderstood what Hitler really had in mind. But by the time he realized what he had helped create it was too late. Hitler was in large measure Deterding’s Frankenstein Monster. Remember the old saying: ‘Be careful of what you wish for, you may get it.’ Deterding got his bulwark against Bolshevism, and in spades.

Today, Royal Dutch Shell management happily deals with any corporate/political scumbag entity that comes along if it pays to do so and fits their ‘strategic vision’, whatever that may be.

All this website is doing is pointing out the parallels in the ‘modus operendi’ (in rather stark terms) of Shell management today to those of ‘yester-year’. There is essentially little fundamental difference. If RD Shell was some small company nobody would really give a crap what they tried to do because legal authorities would hold them accountable. But RD Shell is HUGE and has incredible influence, and immense and corrupting financial resources at their disposal. Shell management throws their weight around whenever they feel the need. Shell has the resources to ‘buy’ all the influence it needs.

If a law or two gets broken in the process of doing business Shell management really doesn’t care. Laws are an inconvenience to doing their style of business. They pay the fines and go their merry way because the fines are generally puny in comparison to the profits to be made. Shell management just simply dares governmental law enforcement authorities to prove their contentions and take them to task through the legal system, all the while they are cuddling up with politicians and ‘greasing palms’ to shut the law enforcement folks down.

You folks need to wake up and critically examine how RD Shell really operates. Royal Dutch Shell management is just as capable and willing to cause great mischief for the rest of the world, if it pays do so, as they were in the days of Deterding and Hitler.

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