It was an industrial cartel firm closely supervised by the Nazi regime; while it operated, it produced commodities vital to the German military forces before and during World War II.
[1] Brabag, sometimes called 'BRABAG', is a portmanteau acronym (German: Braunkohlen Benzin AG) denoting the firm's chief inputs and outputs: brown coal (lignite) and gasoline ('benzine').
Upon the ramp-up of the Nazi program of industrial autarky that marked the approach of war, Berlin saw that one of its weakest points was the almost complete absence of crude oil production within German borders; this insight coincided with the emergence in both Hitler's Chancellery and the General Staff of a belief in a blitzkrieg war-fighting strategy that centered on Panzer warfare, buttressed by warplanes carrying out tactical air support.
The new firm was ordered to distill gasoline and other synthetic petroleum products, of which Germany had very little, from lignite, of which the Germans had an ample supply.
Like other strategic firms under the Nazi regime, Brabag was assigned a significant quota of forced labor of conscripts from the occupied nations.