In the years leading up to WW2, the Dutch founder of the Royal Dutch Shell Group, Sir Henri Deterding became an ardent Nazi. He financially backed the Third Reich and met directly with Hitler on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell.Gestapo
EXTRACTS FROM JOHN DONOVAN BOOK “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL”
In the years leading up to WW2, the Dutch founder of the Royal Dutch Shell Group, Sir Henri Deterding became an ardent Nazi. He financially backed the Third Reich and met directly with Hitler on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell.When Corporate History Is Challenged: Shell, Deterding, and the Record Itself
Why an exchange with Shell’s Company Secretary still matters in the AI era
In March 2011, an exchange took place between John Donovan and Michiel Brandjes, then Company Secretary and General Counsel of Royal Dutch Shell plc, concerning the contents and interpretation of A History of Royal Dutch Shell, the company’s four-volume, internally commissioned corporate history.
At the time, the dispute appeared narrow: whether Shell’s paid historians had accurately characterised Sir Henri Deterding’s relationship with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. With hindsight — and with the emergence of AI systems capable of cross-reading archives in seconds — the exchange now reads as something more consequential: an early, documented challenge to narrative authority over Shell’s own history.
Shell in Nigeria: Environmental Legacy, Legal Battles, and John Donovan’s Documented Critiques
copilot.microsoft.com answers, in its own words, the question: Who is John Donovan linked to Shell? (Initial Question)
09 November 2025
John Donovan is a long-time critic and activist who has waged a decades-long campaign against Royal Dutch Shell, exposing alleged corporate misconduct and ethical failures.
Here’s a deeper look at his connection to Shell:
🧑💼 Background and Role
- Founder of Don Marketing: Donovan ran a promotional marketing company that worked with Shell in the 1980s and 1990s. Disputes over intellectual property and contract issues led to a bitter fallout.
- Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group: He co-founded this group to hold Shell accountable for its business practices. It was later dissolved following a confidential agreement with Shell.
📣 Activism and Campaigns
- and Related Sites: Donovan operates several websites—including and shellnazihistory.com—dedicated to publishing internal Shell documents, whistleblower accounts, and investigative reports.
- Publications: He authored “John Donovan, Shell’s Nightmare”, detailing his feud with Shell and accusing the company of unethical behavior, including theft of intellectual property.
📰 Media Recognition
- Widely Quoted Expert: Donovan has been cited by major outlets like The New York Times, Financial Times, Reuters, and The Guardian for his insights into Shell’s internal affairs.
🔍 Notable Themes in His Work
- Corporate Ethics: He frequently highlights Shell’s alleged failures to uphold its own business principles.
- Historical Investigations: His work includes controversial claims about Shell’s historical ties, including Nazi affiliations through figures like Sir Henri Deterding
🕵️♂️ Key Themes in Donovan’s Historical Investigations
- Shell’s Alleged Nazi Connections: Donovan has published extensive material alleging that Shell, under the leadership of Sir Henri Deterding, had ties to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He claims Deterding admired Hitler and facilitated oil deals that supported the Nazi regime. These claims are detailed on his site , which includes archival documents and commentary.
- Sir Henri Deterding’s Role:
- Deterding was a powerful figure in Shell’s early history, serving as its chairman.
- Donovan argues that Deterding’s political sympathies and business dealings aligned with fascist interests, including support for anti-Bolshevik movements and German rearmament.
- Donovan has highlighted Shell’s operations in Nigeria and other regions, focusing on environmental degradation, human rights abuses, and complicity in political unrest.
- He often references Shell’s involvement in the Niger Delta and the execution of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa as emblematic of corporate negligence and exploitation.
- Donovan has published confidential Shell communications, whistleblower reports, and internal memos to support his claims.
- These documents often reveal internal debates about ethics, legal risks, and public relations strategies.
- He argues that Shell’s stated commitment to transparency and human rights is contradicted by its historical and ongoing actions.
- His work aims to hold Shell accountable for what he sees as a pattern of hypocrisy and moral failure.
📚 Publications and Online Archives
- Donovan’s websites serve as living archives, with thousands of pages of documents, commentary, and historical analysis.
- His work is not peer-reviewed but has attracted attention from journalists, academics, and activists.
Overview of Shell’s operations in Nigeria and John Donovan’s coverage
John Donovan has long documented and criticised Shell’s nearly century-long presence in Nigeria, focusing on oil spills, environmental damage, human rights abuses, corporate practices, and what he frames as a self-interested exit from onshore operations. His work combines archival documents, leaked internal material, commentary, and news-style posts hosted on sites he runs and manages.
Shell’s Dark Fuel: The Nazi Past the Oil Giant Couldn’t Bury
Part 1: The Oil That Powered the Reich
Shell likes to describe itself as “an energy company of the future.” But history, inconveniently, refuses to stay buried. Long before Shell courted wind farms and “net-zero” slogans, it courted Adolf Hitler.
In the 1930s, as Europe spiralled toward war, Royal Dutch Shell — the genteel Anglo-Dutch oil giant whose modern logo is now synonymous with sustainability brochures — was actively supplying the economic bloodstream of Nazi Germany. Its founder and spiritual patriarch, Sir Henri Deterding, wasn’t merely an admirer of Hitler’s regime; he was a willing participant in its rise.
Royal Air Force Attack on Gestapo HQ in Shell House Copenhagen
Shell House before the bombing. At the time of the bombing, it was painted in camouflage colours
Operation Carthage, on 21 March 1945, was a British air raid on Copenhagen, Denmark during the Second World War which caused significant collateral damage. The target of the raid was the Shellhus, used as Gestapo headquarters in the city centre. It was used for the storage of dossiers and the torture of Danish citizens during interrogations. The Danish Resistance had long asked the British to conduct a raid against the site. The building was destroyed, 18 prisoners were freed and anti-resistance Nazi activities were disrupted.
CHAPTER 23: Index of Shell leadership financial support for the Nazis
Dutch cartoons provide evidence of a perception in pre-WW2 years that Sir Henri Deterding was a major financier of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Identified by name in both cartoons, Deterding is depicted handing over a bag of money to the Nazis containing a large sum – 1000 000 00 – in unspecified currency: see enlargements 1 and 2. Overwhelming evidence confirms that the perception was well founded.
Extracts from relevant news reports and books, many authored before WW2, are listed in date order, providing compelling evidence of what transpired all those years ago.
Evidence confirms that Shell fuelled the Nazi war machine
Another hammer blow for Shell. Evidence confirms that Shell fuelled the Nazi war machine
By John Donovan: 31 May 2021 (updated JULY 2021)
A new book by James Marriott and Terry Macalister reveals the extent to which the oil company Royal Dutch Shell played a key role in Hitler’s war effort.James Marriott is a writer and activist with three decades of knowledge of the oil sector. Terry Macalister is a freelance journalist and former energy editor of the Guardian.
As the author of the Kindle book published in 2016 – Sir Henri Deterding and the Nazi History of Royal Dutch Shell – I welcome the fact that other parties have reached the same basic conclusions as I did after studying much of the same evidence.
Based on that evidence I lunched a petition several years ago demanding that Royal Dutch Shell should apologise for antisemitic conduct and Nazi support
Shell will find it more difficult to dismiss the independent findings in the new book, including from an award-winning journalist.
The following extracts are from a related article by opendemocracy.net headlined: Calls for Shell to apologise for ‘fuelling Nazi war machine’ EXTRACTS FROM THE RELATED ARTICLE BY Adam RamsayAccording to ‘Crude Britannia’, by James Marriott and Terry Macalister, at the outbreak of World War Two the Anglo-Dutch company “effectively divided into an Allied corporation and an Axis corporation”. The Nazi-supporting branch of Shell, called Rhenania-Ossag, “swung in behind the [German] government as the Nazi state began to invade other countries”.
Or as Shell’s official history states ‘Following Hilter’s annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, (Shell) Group managing directors sanctioned Rhenania-Ossag taking over Shell companies in those countries.’ The same process took place in Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece after Germany took control of those states.
Shell’s German subsidiary, Rhenania-Ossag, fired all the Jewish members on its board in May and June 1933. The appointments to replace them included a member of the Nazi party. The official history states, “the far reaching changes to the Rhenania-Ossag board could not have taken place without the full consent of [Shell Central Offices… No questions of principle or moral judgements about the Hitler regime appear to have arisen.” Shell’s historians were not able to establish what happened next to these Jewish staff members.
Seven years later, after Germany invaded Holland, the Swastika flew outside Shell’s HQ in The Hague.
EXTRACTS END
I was originally tipped off about Shell’s concern over its past toxic history by Shell internal communications never meant for my eyes.
Shell had advance sight of my book and my website ShellNaziHistory.com. Despite aggressive threats, bluster and a global spying operation, Shell took no legal action. No multinational giant would want to draw attention to its past association with Hitler and the Nazis.
NEW BOOK: Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation
Product details
-
ASIN: B095CND46T
-
Publisher: Pluto Press; 1st edition (20 May 2021)
Some of the information about Shell’s collaboration with the Nazis covered on pages 19, 20, 21, 22 of the main book, and pages 352, 353 and 354 from the Notes section of the book:
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
