Full Description:
During the Spanish Civil War, the American oil company Texaco (under president Torkild Rieber) secretly supplied Franco’s Nationalists with vast quantities of oil on credit—despite the U.S. Neutrality Act and the Non-Intervention Agreement. By contrast, the Republic struggled to purchase fuel on world markets. Texaco’s supply line, which included chartering tankers to circumvent embargoes, was critical to Franco’s mechanized war effort.

Critical Perspective:
The oil war was as decisive as any battle. Franco’s army ran on Texaco gasoline; the Republic’s tanks and trucks starved for fuel. This was not neutrality but corporate complicity—a private company tilting the war in favor of fascism for profit. After the war, Texaco was never prosecuted or even publicly shamed. The oil embargo against the Republic, enforced by Western democracies while companies like Texaco and Standard Oil fed Franco, remains one of the great unreckoned scandals of the 1930s.