The only real hope for keeping the synthetic fuels project alive, in the midst of the Great Depression, was with some kind of state support or bail-out. The tariff protection from the pre-Hitler Brüning government was not enough. The new Nazi regime was willing to go much further and guarantee prices and markets to I. G. Farben—so long as the company promised to increase substantially its production of synthetic fuels. Even that was not enough, for hydrogenation was still an infant technology. It needed both further development and additional political patronage in the Third Reich. I. G.
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