UPDATED 1st SEPT 2026
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a living documentary index and remains under construction. It brings together direct correspondence between the Donovans and Shell, Shell internal communications, correspondence involving lawyers acting for Shell, and relevant evidential emails. Thousands of pages of archival material, including the extensive ShellNews.net collection and the Sakhalin-2 files, remain under review. Further dated documents will be added as they are identified and verified. Inclusion records what a document says or alleges; it does not necessarily establish the truth of every allegation contained within it.
Standing invitation to Shell: corrections and contrary evidence
Shell Plc, its current or former officers, employees, advisers and lawyers are invited to identify any factual error in this documentary chronology or elsewhere in the Donovan/Shell archive.
Where an error is established, it will be corrected or removed as appropriate. Where the issue is genuinely disputed, Shell’s position will be recorded alongside the relevant evidence wherever practicable.
We particularly welcome original contemporaneous documents that contradict, qualify or provide additional context to material published here.
The Dark Side of Shell: Shell, Deterding, and Nazi Germany by John Donovan

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.

“You are not wrong to conclude that Shell has effectively sanitized its history on
“Do you think that Jewish people would invest in Shell or buy Shell products if they knew of its past close relationship with the Nazi regime responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, for which there has been no apology by Shell?”: “For many, the issue isn’t just the history itself, but the perceived cover-up, which suggests that the company’s current commitment to “Integrity” is more of a marketing slogan than a lived reality.”
John Donovan Discussion with ChatGPT 13 February 2026
Shell’s lack of apologies for its toxic history: A unanimous verdict by Bot buddies: Perplexity, Grok, ChatGPT, Copilot and Google AI























