Petroleum has been the main fuse of the world's major power games and even military conflicts in recent years. The famous American saying "we fight for oil", but because the dollar is linked to oil, including myself, I have corrected it in the previous content, the United States is not fighting for oil, but for the dollar, and oil is only the support of the dollar point.
However, when I collected a lot of information and started to understand oil from the day it was born, I found that it was wrong. America is not fighting for the dollar, it is fighting for oil. Oil determines the change of world order.
Therefore, Lao Mo carefully launched a series to reorganize the world and take a look, at what mysterious forces determine the direction of the world order? How do oil giants affect the political and economic structure of the world? What are the underlying reasons behind the two oil crises, the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War? We want to restore the real oil history in all directions and from multiple angles, which will definitely subvert the conventional cognition of many people.
Because there are too many materials, it is very troublesome to study, so we stopped updating for a while, but in the future, we will update one episode every day. Everyone must remember to click to follow, this series, the editor strongly recommends it to everyone.
In the last episode, we had an in-depth chat about how the American Standard Oil Company unscrupulously supported Nazi Germany.
In this video, we continue to chat according to the timeline to see how oil has profoundly changed the fate of the three major axis countries of Germany, Japan, and Italy. And for every war we are familiar with, what is the secret behind it?
Friends who like it, please like and support it, thank you, everyone.
Next, we start the feature film.
World War I resulted in the deaths of about 18 million soldiers and civilians. And World War II suffered four times as many casualties as World War I, not just because the belligerents were brutal or because the fighting lasted longer. Rather, it was because the powerful forces that drove the armies of the belligerent countries from 1939 to 1945 not only enhanced combat lethality but also expanded the scope of operations.
The bombing of the Spanish village of Guernica by the German Condor Legion in April 1937 marked the outbreak of full-scale war. In the first few months of the war, the Germans, Italians, and Japanese went wherever they could to increase their oil supplies. Companies representing interests in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo scrambled to court the king of Saudi Arabia, where oil was first discovered by the Americans in February 1938. That same year, Japan attempted to secure a concession from the Mexican government and floated the idea of building an oil pipeline to the Pacific coast.
The three aggressor powers of World War II all had one major flaw: they had few sources of crude oil on their own territory, so access to oil played a key role in all the major strategic choices of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
The United States is just the opposite. In 1939, the United States controlled 60% of the world's oil production, 3.5 million barrels per day, while the global oil production at that time was 5.7 million barrels per day, equivalent to one-sixteenth of today's production.
Oil is, first of all, an American affair, and secondly, a British affair. Outside the Soviet Union, the world's second-largest oil producer, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Royal Dutch Shell Group, and other British oil giants control 80% of the world's oil market. After 80 years of industrialization, other companies have been hard to come by. . Together with the United States and Venezuela, an oil kingdom ruled by Anglo-Saxon oil giants, the oil production in the American continent alone accounts for 70% of the world's oil production. Throughout World War II, the continuous increase in crude oil production on the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean, the production of petroleum refined products, and the production of products produced by petrochemical plants that sprung up in the United States were the most decisive material factors for the victory of the war.
In the early days of the war, the German army was invincible by using lightning tactics, and the key point was to concentrate all offensive forces as much as possible. This is to obtain the highest possible ratio of tactical benefits to energy and material inputs required for warfare. The increased combat effectiveness of tanks and aircraft made German tactics formidable lethality: Armored units were wedged deep into weak spots in enemy fronts, passed over enemy strongholds, and then encircled enemy forces in "encirclement warfare." As defined in 1935 in the German military journal Military Technology, blitzkrieg is clearly a response of raw material-starved states to resource constraints: they must "in order to end the war as quickly as possible, and thus try from the outset to gain an advantage." When Hitler launched the Nazi German forces to attack Poland on September 1, 1939, Germany's reserves of gasoline, diesel, and other fuel oils were no more than 6 months old, and the Nazi Legion could either win quickly or end the war with a lack of fuel.
Continuing the Blitz on the Western Front required more hydrocarbon fuel. As the war progressed, in order to save gasoline, Germany installed gas generators on the back of cars and on the roof of buses, which can recycle carbon monoxide produced by incomplete combustion of wood or coal. Berlin made various efforts to increase crude oil resources. Since the end of September, according to the "Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact" secretly signed a month ago, the Soviet Union began to manage the best part of the Galician oil fields and promised to send 7,500 barrels of oil to Germany every day. This was an insignificant amount for the Soviet Union, where most of its oil wells were located in Baku, which produced more than 500,000 barrels per day.
In addition, oil installations in Romania, which were guarded by a special team of the German secret military intelligence agency Abwehr, were the main source of control of the Wehrmacht.
Thus, on May 10, 1940, when the German army began a large-scale blitzkrieg on the Western Front, the German army had ample fuel. More than a month later, on June 14, Germany began its invasion of Paris. On 18 June, via the BBC, General de Gaulle concluded: "Today we are defeated by mechanical power; in the future, we will be able to triumph with more advanced mechanical power, and this is the fate of the world."
The Battle of Britain was the first defeat suffered by Nazi Germany in the war. In July 1940, Goering launched the Wehrmacht Air Force across the English Channel in an attempt to destroy the British aviation and port infrastructure in preparation for the invasion of Britain. Berlin had around 2,500 aircraft in the fight, the RAF had fewer than 2,000. The Luftwaffe has many battle-tested pilots, but the Luftwaffe's losses are much higher than those of the Royal Air Force. The reason is that among the decisive factors for British pilots to defend the airspace, the high-quality gasoline on which the aircraft depends is the most important. In the 1930s, Royal Dutch Shell was the first major company to introduce 100-octane petroleum products to the United States. This kind of gasoline has high combustion efficiency and has very good anti-knock properties. The U.S. Air Force began to use this gasoline shortly before the war.
In July 1940, an emergency import program got the RAF ready in time for the largest air battle in history. Until then, the RAF's old Hurricanes and new Spitfires used exactly the same 87-octane gasoline as the German Messerschmitts; The fighter jet successfully switched to gasoline with an octane rating of 100, and the horsepower of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine suddenly increased from 1030 horsepower to 1310 horsepower. So, with the new fuel, British fighter jets could fly faster and longer. The Spitfire became more agile and pulled up at altitude more easily than the German Messerschmitts, even though the Messerschmitts were lighter.
Although Germany has a large-scale hydrocracking plant, it cannot match the refineries of the United States, especially the abundance of black gold in the United States. A lot of oil is consumed during gasoline refining, and the higher the octane produced, the more oil is needed initially. The Wehrmacht Air Force consumed more than 300 tons of gasoline per month in the early days of the war and was constantly threatened by gasoline shortages. In 1941, IG Farben urgently produced a limited number of gasoline with an octane rating of 95 to 97, but the engines of German fighter jets were not suitable. Hermann Göring once asked a top Wehrmacht pilot what he needed to better protect his bombers, and he replied, "Better engines and 100-octane gasoline." Göring recorded, Say "there will be". But in reality, his promises exceed the resources Germany possesses.
Let's look at Japan again. Most of Japan's underground is volcanic, and it is poor in fossil fuels. In a period of rapid industrial development, the Japanese soon found themselves doomed to look elsewhere for the energy necessary to realize Japan's imperial ambitions. The crux of the war between Tokyo and Washington was the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which had long been linked to Japan's access to oil.
In 1930, the Nationalist government of China was on the brink of chaos, and in the face of increasingly pressing economic and military plots by Japan, the Nationalist government decided to raise tariffs on northeast coal by 400%. And this is the reason for the war that the Japanese imperial government has been waiting for. Not only is the Japanese industry very much in need of coal in the vast land of Northeast China, but Japan also hopes to extract shale oil from here, and even find black gold directly here if possible.
Japan effortlessly exploited a fabricated event to invade Northeast China in late 1931 and forcibly establish the puppet regime of Manchukuo the following year. In the next ten years, all the coal in Northeast China was owned by Japan, but the search for oil was still in vain. In spite of Japan's industrial ambitions, the imperialist plans were severely impacted by the inability to develop artificial fuels or shale oil on a large scale. From 1931 to 1939, oil consumption in the Japanese archipelago doubled to 100,000 barrels per day, 80 percent of which was imported from California.
In August 1937, the war of aggression against China not only increased the consumption of crude oil in the Empire of Japan but also increased its dependence on American oil.
In 1938, American public opinion expressed shock at the Japanese bombing of Chinese civilians in Canton and imposed a "moral" embargo on the sale of its aircraft, but not on oil. In Washington, American strategists were well aware that stopping oil sales could easily stifle Japanese imperialist ambitions.
Early in the war in Europe, Berlin had been pressing Tokyo to seize oil wells in the Dutch East Indies. However, Japan desperately needed oil from the United States and Britain, and the Japanese government was unwilling to break this link. At this time, Japan was still more moderate.
Over the next few months, the United States moved the main part of the Pacific Fleet from Los Angeles to Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. At the same time, Japanese purchases of US aviation gasoline tripled. Some members of the U.S. government tried to persuade Roosevelt to impose a total embargo, but Roosevelt still let the critical juncture of the war go. On July 22, 1940, he issued a decree to regulate the sale of aviation fuel, but still did not impose an embargo on crude oil to Japan. As a result, Japan increased its oil imports from the United States.
On September 26, when Japan had just invaded the French colony in northern Vietnam and was preparing to sign a tripartite agreement with Germany and Italy, Washington raised restrictions on iron and steel exports but still did not impose an oil embargo. Franklin D. Roosevelt summed up his concerns in a private letter to his wife on November 13, when he said that "if we banned oil exports to Japan, Japan would increase its purchases of Mexican oil and would necessarily be forced to violently attack the Netherlands. of the East Indies. As I write this we both agree that the oil embargo will spur the expansion of the war into East Asia."
In fact, in the autumn and winter seasons, while Japan accelerated its armed deployment, it did intensify its pressure on the Netherlands, demanding complete control of the Dutch East Indies economy.
In early 1941, a U.S. War Department report described only two remaining options. Option 1: Japan quickly declares war on the United States and Great Britain. In 3 years, it will face severe fuel shortages. The second option: Japan continues its hegemonic policy in Asia while trying to avoid war with the Anglo-Saxon countries, which will inevitably strengthen the embargo. U.S. strategists expect that under such circumstances, Japan's natural resources will be greatly reduced, especially the shortage of liquid fuels, which will deal a fatal blow to the country. The report's authors concluded that the best option for Imperial Japan was to attack early. In fact, at this time, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Yamamoto Fifty-Six, had already begun to prepare for the plan to attack Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese General Staff were fully aware of the limitations posed by the lack of oil, knowing that Japan had only one year to act before the United States built a super-large fleet and Japan ran out of fuel. Yamamoto Isoroku himself, however, was deeply skeptical throughout 1941 of the outcome of the conflict with the United States. Because he lived in the United States for many years, he claimed that "anyone who has seen a Detroit auto factory or a Texas oil field knows that Japan lacks the national strength to compete in a naval competition with the United States".
On June 24, after confirming that Japan was preparing to invade French Indochina, Washington finally decided to freeze Japanese assets in the United States, but there was still no official embargo on oil.
On October 18, Fumma Konoe, the prime minister of Japan who had tried until the last moment to avoid war with the United States, was replaced by Hideki Tojo. Hideki Tojo immediately gave the green light to the attack on Pearl Harbor, refusing to allow his country to become a "third-rate country." At dawn on December 7, 1941, Japan launched a raid on the U.S. Naval Base in Hawaii, 3,500 nautical miles from Tokyo. Oil fields and rubber tree plantations. Therefore, the purpose of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was to win the necessary time to monopolize the decisive energy that is extremely important to it.
On January 24, 1942, the Japanese captured oil wells in Borneo. On February 14, more than 50 Hudson patrol planes of the British and Australian troops landed in Palembang, Sumatra's main oil port. Their flanks carried 400 paratroopers of the Japanese Navy. Dutch air defenses were hesitant, and despite heavy losses in the first wave of attacks, Japanese commandos managed to capture refineries and oil wells that the Netherlands had not had time to destroy.
With oil wells in the Dutch East Indies capable of supplying 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day, Japan experienced the ecstasy of a string of victories over the next few months.
Let us now turn our attention to the Soviet Union.
The "Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact" signed in August 1939 allowed the Soviet Union to grow itself calmly. However, Moscow could not escape confrontation with Nazi Germany for long. As early as July 1940, Hitler decided that it was necessary to seize the Soviet oil fields. In June 1941, Hitler declared: "The course of the war has shown that we have gone too far in our efforts towards self-sufficiency. It is impossible to produce everything we need by synthetic methods." Especially the Battle of Britain The failure of the German plant demonstrated the inadequacy of the German plant to generate synthetic fuel from carbon. Hitler showed Göring three strategic reasons why the invasion of the Soviet Union was imperative: first, Stalin would attack sooner or later; second, the Ukrainian harvest had to be seized; It is impossible to carry out large-scale air strikes against Britain and the United States.
When Operation Barbarossa was launched on June 22, 1941, Berlin estimated that the 144 divisions on the Eastern Front needed more than 150,000 barrels of oil per day, twice as much as the Western Front offensive had required a year earlier. An armored tank division consumes 2400 liters of fuel per kilometer, and an off-road division consumes 5000 liters. As the Germans penetrated and traversed thousands of kilometers of steppe in the Soviet Union, supply lines also lengthened along muddy roads, often impassable for trucks. In order to save fuel, the Wehrmacht increasingly used horses for logistical transport. Winter was approaching, and German General Heinz Guderian, who had lost most of his armored divisions near Moscow, wrote to his wife at the end of November: "Severe cold, lack of shelter, shortage of clothing, heavy loss of men and equipment, our fuel supply is pitifully low, and all this makes the commander's task very miserable." Guderian's report said that the fuel in the tank's fuel tank turned into black ice; the engine itself froze, or had to be Run around the clock to avoid freezing, but it burns up the already lacking fuel even more quickly. We preheated aircraft engines with alcohol that was used to sanitize the wounded, and the lubricating oil turned into tar.
Unable to take Moscow, the Nazi Legion concentrated its efforts on the Caucasus in 1942. On June 23, Hitler ordered the occupation of Stalingrad, more than 1,000 kilometers north of Baku, because the city is located on the banks of the Volga River, through which most of Baku's oil was transported to other parts of the Soviet Union. However, just a month later, the A and B armies sent to the south were already experiencing fuel shortages.
Commander of Army Group A, whose targets were the oil fields of Maykop and Grozny, Field Marshal von Kleist later said: "A certain amount of oil was brought in by air, but the total amount arrived was not enough to maintain the momentum of the advance, just when our chances seemed to be the best.” However, at this time, the Soviet Army also began to face a shortage of gasoline, so taking advantage of the weak resistance of the Soviet Army, the Germans succeeded in controlling the Black Army on August 15. Part of the oil fields around Maykop are by the sea. However, the Soviets filled the wells with concrete as they retreated. As for the black gold in Grozny and Baku, it is still under the protection of the Soviet Red Army, and the number of soldiers is more than five times that of the German soldiers, which means that this part of the black gold is completely inaccessible. Especially since the Wehrmacht committed its remaining forces to the Battle of Stalingrad, which turned into a nightmarish rout from the end of November, especially because of the lack of fuel for armored vehicles and aircraft.
On January 18, 1943, when the order to evacuate from Maykop was issued, the "oil technical team" formed long ago by Göring was producing only 70 barrels of oil per day. On June 1, 1941, three weeks before Operation Barbarossa began, Hitler said somewhat presciently: "If I do not get oil from Maykop and Grozny, then I will have to end the war. "
On the other side, the Nazis have long been eyeing the oil fields in the Middle East. In April 1941, Rommel and the German African Army crossed the desert of Cyrenaica with the ultimate goal of capturing the Suez Canal. At the same time, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, the pioneer troops of the Axis powers in Greece reached Rhode Island. From the airport here, the oil fields of Iraq and Iran are within easy reach.
Therefore, Berlin sent a group of engineers and oil technicians hastily. On April 1, in Baghdad, some Iraqi generals seized power in a coup. They blocked the Kirkuk-Haifa oil pipeline in the "carotid artery of the British Empire" and soon asked for German aid. In Iran, the ruler, Shah Reza Shah, has long had a delicate relationship with the British, because Iran only received a meager profit from their country's black gold from the British, so he opened the door directly to Germany.
However, the Middle East was too far away for the Axis powers. The British Royal Navy imposed a blockade of the Lebanese coast. In early June, the British captured Mosul. On August 25, British and Soviet troops jointly entered Iran and quickly occupied the country with minimal losses. In less than a month, on September 16, Reza Khan was forced to abdicate, leaving the Peacock Throne to his then-16-year-old son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Taking advantage of far exceeding the existing logistical capabilities of the British army, the US military also began to enter Iran. In 1942, the U.S. military expanded the port, built roads, and built a bomber assembly plant in Abadan. Through this "Persian Corridor", Roosevelt delivered hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies to the Soviet Red Army, including airplanes, Steinbeck trucks, generators, steel and aluminum bars, toluene, and even a synthetic rubber plant as well as 6 ready-made refineries.
On the other hand, Rommel, after nearly half a year in vain in Cyrenaica, Rommel faced increasingly acute fuel supply problems in the second year. The supply of tank fuel and spare parts for Rommel's army depended on the perilous transport of freighters between Naples and Tripoli, a route constantly harassed by the British.
In June 1942, Rommel captured Tobruk, establishing a deep-water port near Egypt. But over the next month, the Royal Navy sank three-quarters of the ships that were feeding the German Afrika Korps. In August, Rommel estimated his oil needs at 255,000 barrels, but he only had 68,000 barrels. Rommel's panzer divisions were still advancing, turned vampires, their mobility increasingly dependent on their oil stocks and the British vehicles captured along the way. At the end of August, with the Battle of Alam Halfa, Rommel made another attempt to break the British line in Egypt. On August 27, the Marshal declared: "The outcome of the battle will depend on the timely delivery of fuel." On September 5, the battle was lost. "We were constantly short of fuel," Rommel wrote.
Two months later, Nazi Germany put its last hope in the Alamein Desert, 250 kilometers away from Cairo. As a result, in the first days of November, the British won the Battle of Alamein, which, along with the victory at Stalingrad in the early winter of 1942, was another turning point in the decline of Axis strategic power. Early in the battle, on October 26, a tanker and two freighters transporting a fuel convoy carrying a total of 37,000 barrels of oil and defended by four Italian destroyers were attacked twice by the RAF Successfully reached Tobruk. But unexpectedly, at dusk, a group of bombers from Cairo appeared from the darkness and successfully bombed two tankers. Along with the tankers, it was Rommel's last hope of victory. After the defeat at the Battle of Alamein, Junmel said: "Because of fuel shortages, we were unable to get our remaining armored and mobile units to do anything; every drop of petrol we got should have been used to get our troops back."
Therefore, it can be seen that the three major axis countries do not have the strength to rule the world in essence. So what changes will occur next, and what stories will happen? Let's keep talking tomorrow.
Alright, that's all for today, friends who like it, don't forget to like and follow, watch the full episode, we will see you tomorrow, thank you all.
