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The modern US chemical industry emerged during World War I in response to shortages of essential organic chemicals previously available mainly from Germany. This stimulated the development of technologies based on complex aromatic chemistry. The outcome was an advanced science‐based industry that embarked on diversification during the 1920s. However, access to German innovations was still needed and the Germans wished to regain dye markets lost during the war. This led to a singularly important merging of American and German interests, the General Aniline Works, later known as General Aniline & Film. Under German ownership in the 1930s, a unique strategy for control of production and research was implemented at General Aniline. Under US government ownership from 1942, General Aniline engaged in diversification based on pre‐war German innovations. The cessation of dyestuff manufacture in the 1970s at what had become the GAF Corporation represented a break with the past that was also taking place elsewhere in the USA. A half a century after its foundation the classical organic chemical industry had become an anachronism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]