Fred Chase Koch was an American chemical engineer and entrepreneur who founded the oil refinery firm that later became Koch Industries, a privately held company which, under the principal ownership
leadership of Koch’s sons Charles and David, was listed by Forbes in 2015 as the second-largest privately held company in the United States.
Fred C Koch was an American chemical engineer and entrepreneur who built what is now known as ‘Koch Industries,’ a business empire that was described by ‘Forbes’ as “the world’s largest private company.” With a desire and ambition for power and money, this small-town genius developed an oil-extraction technology, which positioned him at the helm of the oil industry at a time when economic development was synonymous with oil reserves. During the Great Depression, when the American people had lost everything, ‘Koch-Winkler’ was one of those companies that made millions from their oil contracts with Russia. In fact, when people were starving and queuing up for bread in the dead of winter, Koch commissioned the construction of his mansion in Wichita, Kansas. In a book titled ‘Dark Money’ (2016), writer Jane Mayer revealed how Koch built his empire with the money that came from two of history’s most infamous dictators, Stalin and Hitler. Koch aided both the regimes by building oil refineries based on a more efficient technology developed by him. He built the third-largest refinery for Hitler’s regime, which helped in refueling warplanes. Currently, ‘Koch Industries’ is worth $100 billion.
Fred C. Koch was born in Quanah, Texas, the son of Mattie B. (née Mixson) and Harry Koch, a Dutch immigrant. Harry began working as a printer’s apprentice in Workum, Netherlands. He worked over a year at printers’ shops in The Hague and in Germany before coming to the U.S. in 1888, where he bought the Tribune-Chief newspaper. Fred attended Rice Institute in Houston from 1917 to 1919 and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1922, where he obtained a degree in chemical engineering practice

Koch started his career with the Texas Company in Port Arthur, Texas, and later became chief engineer with the Medway Oil & Storage Company on the Isle of Grain in Kent, England. In 1925 he joined a fellow MIT classmate, P.C. Keith, at Keith-Winkler Engineering in Wichita, Kansas. Following the departure of Keith in 1925, the firm became Winkler-Koch Engineering Company.
In 1927, Koch developed a more efficient thermal cracking process for turning crude oil into gasoline which allowed smaller players in the industry to better compete with the oil majors. Meanwhile the oil giants of America collectively attacked the company with 44 lawsuits which were overturned, but took a severalyears. In 1927, Koch developed a more efficient thermal cracking process for turning crude oil into gasoline which allowed smaller players in the industry to better compete with the oil majors.
However, Koch knew his technology had an international appeal. While fighting several lawsuits at home, ‘Winkler-Koch’ took their business to the Soviet Union. Between 1929 and 1932 Winkler-Koch supported the Kremlin and “trained Bolshevik engineers to help Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries” in the Soviet Union during its first Five Year Plan. “Over time, however, Stalin brutally purged several of Koch’s Soviet colleagues. Koch was deeply affected by the experience, and regretted his collaboration.” The company also built installations in countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia. ] In 1934, Koch had partnered with William Rhodes Davis to build the Hamburg Oil Refinery, the third-largest oil refinery serving the Third Reich, a project which was personally approved by Adolf Hitler; contemporary critics claim this showed a direct tie between fascism and the modern conservative movement, notwithstanding Koch’s much greater involvement in the Soviet Union. In response, Koch President and COO David L. Robertson acknowledged that Winkler-Koch provided the cracking unit for the 1934 Hamburg refinery, but said that it was but one of many “iconic” American companies doing business in Germany at the time. Robertson provided archival documents showing that from 1928 to 1934, Koch’s company helped build 39 cracking units for heavy oil refineries, including ones located in England and France.
Having succeeded in securing the family fortune, Koch joined new partners in 1940 to create the Wood River Oil and Refining Company, which later became known as Koch Industries. In 1946, the firm acquired the Rock Island refinery and crude oil gathering system near Duncan, Oklahoma. Wood River was later renamed the Rock Island Oil and Refining Company.[20] In 1966, he turned over day-to-day management of the company to his son, Charles Koch.[21][22]