Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 3: Washington and New York
Early in 1942 it became realized that, if there was to be any American war effort,
a gigantic synthetic rubber industry would have to be created in record time. The
apparently dismal prospects for such an achievement were the cause of some
amount of panic, and naturally, scapegoats were sought. Jesse Jones was a favorite
target, and his claim that 300,000 tons of synthetic rubber would be produced
in 1943 and 600,000 tons in 1944 was jeered at (U.S. rubber consumption in 1940
was 648,500 tons). Standard Oil also came in for outrageously unfair abuse by
people who interpreted the Farben-Standard agreements as a conspiracy to retard
synthetic rubber development in the U.S. Harry S. Truman, chairman of a Senate
committee, which investigated war production problems, first became prominent
in connection with the rubber crisis of 1942.
The crisis also set off internal political conflicts. The big oil interests had a
long lead in the production of Buna-S, but the farm bloc was dominant in Congress.
Now, Buna can be made not only from coal and oil, but also from alcohol,
an agricultural product. Foreseeing the birth of a major new industry, the farm interests
started arguing in favor of making Buna from alcohol (the most expensive
method). They cited the fact that the Russians, also long active in the synthetic
rubber field, started from alcohol. They also produced a Polish refugee who was
supposed to have made some revolutionary invention in connection with making
Buna from alcohol.
There was another political bloc tied up with South American interests, which
proposed subsidies for plantations. There was also a small farm bloc which
pressed for more extensive planting of the guayule plant in the southwest. The effect
of these internal political battles was to generate massive confusion and retard
the progress of the existing U.S. Buna program.
The rubber crisis filled the press in 1942 and was, in fact, the major crisis the
U.S. faced in connection with the war. There was constant lamenting that Germany
was well ahead of the U.S. and that the U.S. lacked the vital experience
with the processes that the Germans possessed. Methods being used in Germany
were cited in connection with discussing the prospects of the U.S. program. 119
The farm bloc’s battle against what it called the “oily interests” achieved a
temporary major success in July 1942, when the Congress passed the weird “Rubber
Supply Act of 1942.” The Act would have established a new agency for rubber
production, entirely under the control of Congress and outside the domain of
the War Production Board, the Army, the Navy, or any executive agency of the
Government. Of course, the Act also specified that the rubber was to be made
from grain alcohol. President Roosevelt vetoed this bill on August 6 and announced
the appointment of a committee to study the rubber problem and make
some recommendations in regard to the organization of an American synthetic
119
As stated, the rubber crisis “filled the press,” but the following stories seem to summarize the crisis
adequately: Business Week (Jan. 31, 1942), 22+; (Mar. 14, 1942), 15+; (May 30, 1942), 15+;
(Jun. 20, 1942), 15+; (Aug. 15, 1942), 15+; (Sep. 19, 1942), 15+; (Dec. 19, 1942), 28+; Newsweek
(Apr. 6, 1942), 46+; (Apr. 13, 1942), 56+; (June 1, 1942), 46+; (Sep. 21, 1942), 58+; New
York Times (Jan. 11, 1942), sec. 7, 6+; (Jul. 26, 1942), sec. 7, 3+; Fortune (June 1942), 92+; Nature
Magazine (May 1942), 233+; Harper’s (Dec. 1942), 66+.
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