[A slightly delayed thread on the visit of the Indian Rana to Germany after the completion of the Copenhavn summit.]
May 12, 1929 – Berlin and beyond
The arrival of the Indian Rana’s private train in Berlin has set off a flurry of activity. Met at the train by an honor guard of soldiers and the Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresseman, she and her entourage was conveyed in a convoy of motor-cars through the streets to the Reichstag, where she was greeted with all honors by Chancellor Cuno and President Braun. Additionally, she was presented with a Bill passed by the Reichstag earlier in the day thanking her for her efforts on behalf of Germany in the recent Copenhavn talks.
President Braun spoke for the nation, in saying “Germany gives our thanks to our Indian friends for all of their help in recent years, and we must particularly give the Rana,” he bowed to her before continuing, “for her most recent aid to our nation in the Copenhavn talks. Germany holds itself indebted to India for her aid and assistance in recent years. Our old friends have more than repaid any aid or assistance that we gave them in the years before the Great War.”
The President, Chancellor, and Foreign Minister all spent time over the next few days closeted in closed-door talks with the Rana. It is presumed by observers that at least a part of these talks discussed future relations with India, ways in which the two countries could benefit one another, and the business of statecraft. It is also expected that at least some discussions were directed towards the recent announcements in London.
A trip away from Berlin to the Ruhr was made to see the coal liquefaction plants that had been built with, in part, Indian funds to investigate the possibility of converting coal, which both Germany and India have in abundance, to oil-based fuels, which Germany has none of and India only a small amount within its territories. The team, led by Franz Fischer and colleagues both German and Indian, reported their findings
“The synthetic oil team worked with both the Fischer-Tropsh process to create gasoline or diesel fuel from coal and with the Bergius process to create heavy oil from coal. Our mission was to determine whether what worked in the laboratory actually worked outside the lab, and how well it worked.”
“The team oversaw the building of 4 different production lines, two for each process, to get an idea of how the processes scaled from the laboratory to a production plant. That data is covered in the briefing papers, which can be read at leisure. One interesting fact is that, for these processes, even poor quality coal such as lignite can be used. Certainly better quality coal gives higher results, but poor quality coal is common and might be better used for this and the better grade reserved for other uses.”
“At the present time, given the price of oil, it is not economically profitable to convert coal to oil, gasoline, or diesel. The processes exist, we’ve built prototype plants for both processes, and they both work quite well. But the price of oil is low enough that it is cheaper to import it than to convert the coal to these fuels.”
“That said, there may be other, non-economic reasons for investing in such plants. Those reasons, for those of us who have been blockaded in the past, are obvious, but non-blockade reasons for a rise in the price of oil are certainly visible in the world today.”