Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
rubber program: “probably the most widely acclaimed action on the domestic
front in the history of the war program.” The members of the committee were Dr.
James D. Conant, President of Harvard, Dr. Karl T. Compton, President of MIT,
and the financier and political leader Bernard M. Baruch, who served as Chairman.
The committee is normally referred to as the Baruch Committee. 120
These three men were chosen partially because they were not considered connected
with any specific interests in the conflict, and also because of their expertise.
The appointment of Baruch as chairman of such a technically oriented group
may seem peculiar at first, but this is not the case. Besides being a man of diverse
talents and important financial, industrial, and political connections, he had
chaired the War Industries Board during World War I. Moreover, for a period of
more than thirty years, he had been interested in industrial ventures involving
rubber and had independently inventoried, with war requirements in mind,
American rubber stocks in the spring of 1941. As a consequence, he had gotten
into fights with various people, mainly Jesse H. Jones. In addition, unlike the
usual chairman of a “name” Washington ad hoc committee, Baruch threw all his
energy into the work of the Committee. His assistant Sam Lubell also was put to
work on the Committee’s assignment. Even after the issuing of the final report,
Baruch maintained interest: Howard reports that Baruch later expressed a wish to
speak to the Standard people and that a meeting was accordingly held, at which
the major technical-economic problems were discussed. 121
The work of the Baruch Committee was completed with remarkable speed and
the final report was issued on September 10, 1942; the best explanation for this
speed would appear to be Baruch’s independent prior involvement in the problem.
We must attempt to see this problem as the Committee must have seen it in
1942. Primarily, it was a political problem requiring the reconciliation of the various
interests contending for the synthetic rubber business. Thus, the final report of
the Committee recommended the creation of a capacity to produce 100,000,000
gallons of additional grain alcohol per year. A second problem involved the lack
of practical American experience with the Buna processes. Technical specifications
were at hand, but there existed many questions on many details and quite a
few alternative versions of the processes.
Thus, in order to accelerate the American synthetic rubber program, the Baruch
Committee saw a need to learn as much as possible of the experiences of
others. It made a specific recommendation that an immediate effort be made to
learn the experiences of the Russians in the production of synthetic rubber and
make use of them in the American program (Jesse Jones had been charged with
overlooking this possibility). The effort was made but yielded no results of any
value. 122 Under such conditions it is necessary to assume that somebody in America
looked into new developments in Germany in as close detail as possible at the
time, and the new German development in rubber in 1942 was Auschwitz, the site
of the most advanced developments in Buna rubber at that time.
120
121
122
76
Naunton, 108; Howard, 210-213.
Howard, 221-222; Coit, 120-121, 162-222, 513-520.
Howard, 227-228; U.S. Special Committee, 13, 18, 50-51; Dunbrook, 40-46.