By John Donovan
On 28 April 1945, Lieutenant-Colonel Werner Baumbach (right), “General of the Bombers” – the top post in German bomber command, arrived at a country house located at Krakow, near Güstrow in Mecklenburg, for a meeting with Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS.
As overseer of the concentration camps and extermination camps, Himmler coordinated the murder of around 10 million people. (See Wikipedia).
It soon became apparent to Baumbach, after two portraits in silver frames were drawn to his attention, that the country house in which the SS was located, was formally the home of the oil baron, Sir Henri Deterding, the world renowned director of Royal Dutch Shell. Sir Henri, the man most responsible for the growth of Shell into a global oil giant, was an ardent Nazi and friend and financial supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.
The first portrait, signed by Hitler, contained the following inscription:
Sir Henry Deterding – in the name of the German people, for your noble donation of a million reichs-marks.
Adolf Hitler
The second photograph was of Reichsmarschall Herman Göring, Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe.
The inscription said:
To my dear Deterding, in gratitude for your noble gift of Rominten Hunting Lodge.
Your Hermann Göring
The above information comes from pages 235 and 236 of a book by Werner Baumbach entitled: “The Life and Death of the Luftwaffe“, first published in 1949 and translated into English in 1960. Although just a passing reference consisting of a few paragraphs from a book devoted to telling “the story of an officer who served his country with distinction and risked reprisals to speak his mind“, it provides historically important evidence confirming Deterding’s financial support for the Nazis.
Göring’s hunting lodge at Rominten in East Prussia was known as “The Reichsjägerhof.”
Baumbach “spent nearly six months in an English interrogation camp. He was told that he would be charged as a war criminal on the ground that he had fired on shipwrecked people. After unending cross-examination and investigation Baumbach was able to prove conclusively that throughout the war neither he nor any unit under his command had committed any violations of the Hague Convention.” (Source of this extract)
In 1939, Göring sent a wreath to the Nazi funeral of Sir Henri.
It contained the personal message:
In the name and on the instructions of the Fuhrer, I greet thee, Heinrich Deterding, the great friend of the Germans.
Royal Dutch Shell continued its financial relationship with the Nazis after the resignation of Sir Henri as Director General of the company and even after his subsequent death.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
MORE DETAILS:
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
