Ivy Lee worked with Standard Oil and the Rockefellers to establish the American Petroleum Institute in 1919, as well as a petrochemicals partnership with German chemical giant IG Farben. That job took Lee to Germany, to meet with Goebbels and Hitler and advise them on dealing with the American press. He was under investigation by Congress for his role in Nazi propaganda at the time of his death. Lee's work building the API was one of his most important contributions to fossil fuel propaganda—it's the foundation on which the next 100 years was built.

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