A shocking, suppressed chapter in Koch family history was brought to light last week: Charles and David’s father, Fred Koch, helped build the “third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine” — a facility that Adolf Hitler personally approved.

As first reported by the New York Times, previewing revelations from Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money,” the Koch Industries founder’s ties to Nazi Germany are notably absent from the company’s otherwise-exhaustive official history. As details surrounding Koch’s German joint-project with Nazi-sympathizer William Rhodes Davis have continued to emerge, the omission has become increasingly understandable.

These are the four takeaways:

The Koch family fortune was in-part “built with contracts from the authoritarian regimes of Nazi Germany and the USSR.” 

Koch patriarch Fred C. Koch, himself involved in the founding of the far right-wing John Birch Society, collaborated with Nazi-sympathizer William Rhodes Davis to build a Hitler-approved […]

After the shocking revelation that the Kochs’ fortune has its origins in a refinery their father, Fred Koch, built for the Nazis, the Koch brothers have tried to diminish their family’s involvement with the regime. But declassified military files may have just made that impossible.

According to the files, unlike the Kochs have claimed, Koch construction contributed a substantial amount to the facility, building a a “cracking unit” that had “a capacity of 360,000 tons of oil per year… the [German company] Borsig unit was rated at just half that amount.”

Today, Bridge Project is introducing a digital ad campaign featuring the declassified files and the Kochs. The ads will run in Wichita, KS area, and target Koch network allies and political influencers.

“The Kochs have a long history of deceiving the public about their policies and motives, but this deception shows the depths of their shamelessness,” said American Bridge Vice President Eddie Vale. “Koch Industries needs […]

A Washington Post review of Jane Mayer’s new book on the Koch brothers includes even more new, bombastic details on the Kochs’ family history and political network:

A major source of Mayer’s book is a “confidential history” commissioned by Bill Koch on “Charles Koch’s effort to shape American politics.”
Fred Koch and Charles Koch were raised by a Nazi governess (don’t miss those details below).
“Mayer’s book is so deeply researched and studded with detail that it seems destined to rattle the Koch executive offices in Wichita.”
“A 1982 sealed deposition from Bill Koch, for example, describes how Charles and David attempted to blackmail their brother Frederick by threatening to reveal to their father his alleged homosexual preferences unless Frederick turned over his shares in the family business.”
“Two former prosecutors and an FBI agent told Mayer they suspected they were targets of Koch Industries’ private espionage efforts while they were investigating the company for alleged misdeeds.”
The […]