In 1906 the _Deutsche Bank_ and the _Disconto Gesellschaft_ took under their control the great company of _Nobel Brothers_, in Russia. They founded, at Bremen, the _Europeanische Petroleum Union_, a trust which amalgamated the principal European oil interests, and was to give Germany the certainty of European preponderance. They absorbed the _Akverdoff_ company at Grosny, created the _Spies Petroleum_, and undertook the conquest of the oil industry in the Caucasus and in Apsheron. From 1911 to 1914, German capital and German interest predominated in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, in Scandinavia, and even in Turkey, for the _Deutsche Bank_ became an associate of Great Britain in the _Turkish Petroleum_, the sole concessionnaire of the Sultan for the oil of Mosul and Bagdad. This was the time when Sir Ernest Cassel, a little Frankfurt Jew, who became one of the lords of British finance and whose grand-daughter and heiress married a cousin of the King of England in July 1922, was striving to avert the impending world War by bringing French, British and German interests into association wherever possible. An agreement was arrived at. The capital of the _Turkish Petroleum_ was provided by the _Royal Dutch_, the _Anglo-Persian Oil_, and the _Deutsche Bank_. But for the catastrophe of 1914, Germany would have ended by dominating European oil. Probably the United States and Great Britain would not to-day share between them the lordship over oil. CHAPTER VIII THE WAR AND OIL The War which has just ravaged the world, proved that the country which controls oil will one day control the earth. It is just as Elliot Alves predicted: "Armies, navies, money, even entire populations, will count as nothing against the lack of oil." That the Allies have won this War is in great part due to the two greatest trusts, the _Standard Oil_ and the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, which placed themselves at the service of the Entente. Germany, hemmed in on all sides, saw her last resources disappear when the Eastern front broke up.