THE EUROPEANISCHE PETROLEUM UNION:
A German Trust for the Control of European Oil, which Foundered in the Great World Conflict
The adoption of oil for general use coincided with the half-century of prosperity which preceded the great catastrophe, the great world War. Between 1865 and 1914, mazut, kerosene, petrol, vaseline and paraffin made their appearance, and spread throughout Europe.
And yet Europe consumed foreign oil almost exclusively. For a long time, this oil came entirely from the United States. It was the golden age of the Standard Oil in Europe. Its influence ruled over British distributing companies and French refiners, over the governments of Germany, Italy, Rumania and Spain.
But the appearance of oil from the Caucasus and Eastern Europe rapidly broke up the Standard's monopoly. The Rothschilds and the Nobels, the Deutsche Bank and the Disconto Gesellschaft; the banks of Lille and Roubaix, exploiting the oil in Galicia; the cartel of French refiners founding the Polish company, Limanowa and the Aquila Franco-Romana in Rumania, and lastly, the Royal Dutch through the Astra Romana and the Black Sea Company—all multiplied their efforts between 1900 and 1914 to create various independent oil concerns on both sides of the Caucasus and the Carpathians.
Parallel with these private efforts of manufacturers and bankers, the governments of Europe were engaged in safeguarding the independence of their States in this complex question of oil. In 1903, the French Chamber voted for the principle of monopoly in oil. From 1908 onwards, the British Government, through the d'Arcy group, encouraged the formation of the Anglo-Persian. And, while appearing to fear the remarkable growth of the Shell, it surreptitiously assisted it, and tried to guarantee supplies from Mexico through Pearson, from India through the Burmah Oil, and from Mesopotamia through the Turkish Petroleum in agreement with Germany.
In 1911 the Reichstag was on the point of adopting the same course as the French Chamber. Under the influence of the Kaiser, important companies such as the Deutsche Erdol Aktien Gesellschaft and the Deutsche Petroleum Verkaufs Gesellschaft were formed to gain control of Austrian, Rumanian and Caucasian oil. The powerful Steaua Romana, with a capital of 100 million francs, owed its existence to the latter, which had succeeded in acquiring a monopoly of the whole output of the Galician companies, Schodnika, David Fanto, and Galizische Karpathen, and had also obtained an interest in the Danube Navigation Company, Bayerischer Lloyd. In Rumania, the Deutsche Erdol controlled the Konzern group, which included the Vega, Concordia, and Credit Petrolifer. The oil of Pechelbronn in Alsace was also in its hands.
In 1906 the Deutsche Bank and the Disconto Gesellschaft took under their control the great company of Nobel Brothers, in Russia. They founded, at Bremen, the Europeanische Petroleum Union, a trust which amalgamated the principal European oil interests, and was to give Germany the certainty of European preponderance. They absorbed the Akverdoff company at Grosny, created the Spies Petroleum, and undertook the conquest of the oil industry in the Caucasus and in Apsheron. From 1911 to 1914, German capital and German interest predominated in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, in Scandinavia, and even in Turkey, for the Deutsche Bank became an associate of Great Britain in the Turkish Petroleum, the sole concessionnaire of the Sultan for the oil of Mosul and Bagdad. This was the time when Sir Ernest Cassel, a little Frankfurt Jew, who became one of the lords of British finance and whose grand-daughter and heiress married a cousin of the King of England in July 1922, was striving to avert the impending world War by bringing French, British and German interests into association wherever possible. An agreement was arrived at. The capital of the Turkish Petroleum was provided by the Royal Dutch, the Anglo-Persian Oil, and the Deutsche Bank.
But for the catastrophe of 1914, Germany would have ended by dominating European oil. Probably the United States and Great Britain would not to-day share between them the lordship over oil.