Chapter 68

Among Germany’s raw material deficiencies, oil and rubber have been the two greatest. Within her own borders there is little, if any, oil, and no rubber. This fact has certainly been a consideration in the basis of our own as well as the French and British foreign policy. Hence, the discovery in 1926 that petroleum could be made from Germany’s plentiful coal was a political event of the first magnitude. That synthetic rubber became a reality in Germany shortly afterward served to magnify the shock. The petroleum in…