WWII Nazi/American corp. collaboration

[Doug Millison]

At 11:03 AM -0500 12/3/98, Malign at aol.com rehashed interesting, well-known
facts about IG Farben and the Sasuly book that's long been considered a
source for GR:

Was Sasuly's book widely read and discussed in the 1950s and 60s? My
impression has been that it was a little-known work, and that it has taken
some sleuthing by Pynchon scholars to dig it up, but of course I could be
wrong. I guess I'm still wondering if the general outlines of IF Farben's
activities and of the cartel with Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil of New
Jersey, and Imperial Chemical (ICI) in England were known primarily in a
limited, specialist realm, and if so can we credit Pynchon with bringing it
to light for a broader public?  A major point of Frank Rich's NYTimes piece
is to emphasize the degree to which Americans have remained ignorant of
American corporate collaboration with Nazi  Germany -- to dig out the sort
of connections Pynchon makes in exposing corporate complicity in the War
(WWII) as early as he did, at a time when voices within the counterculture
were delineating and attacking a similar sort of corporate complicity in
the Vietnam War, would seem to add to the iconic status of Pynchon's novel
for its role in threading that contemporary critique of capitalism and
corporate culture through a work of such artistic merit.

[snip gratuitous and predictable armchair quarterback pot-shot at Peter
Petto's fine VLVL(6) notes]

-Doug