The Oil Industry in Nazi Germany, 1936–1945

The oil industry in Nazi Germany provides an excellent focus for studying the interplay between economics, politics, and government policy in the Third Reich. In this article, Mr. Stokes brings to this subject a comparative approach, making comparisons both within the oil industry and with the industry's major industrial counterparts. He concludes that a variety of factors—including the degree of shared interest between individual firms and the government, the size and concentration of a firm's production facilities, and the political position of key firm personnel—explain the success as well as the eventual collapse of a given industrial sector.