The British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force meant that most of the oil and other supplies had to be landed in Tripolli and trucked east. The narrow roads and bridges created massive traffic jams which were poorly managed, thus consuming some of the precious fuel reserve. 75, No. To ensure Feisal’s rule (and protect Britain’s interest), the British patrolled the vast Iraqi desert and its Bedouin tribes by Royal Air Force (RAF) planes from above and Rolls-Royce armored cars on the desert floor. 217.] Schroeder, W.C. R. Holroyd, R.. ed. It was clear that something had to be done about Rashid Ali in Baghdad. But now the weather as changing and American air power came into play, wereking havoc with the Panzers abnd other vehicles. In this section you will find our range of Shovels, Bread Bags, A-Frames and more. 79.] NAZI goals in the East are clearly spelled out by Genealplan Ost. Also in April, the German Twelfth Army would overrun Greece in a lightning three-week campaign, forcing a wholesale evacuation of British forces to the island of Crete only to be ejected once again by a German airborne invasion. The Germans found small fields in the northwest, especially at Reitbrook and Heide-Meldorf. This was a major problem addressed by German researcherts and they gradually mananaged to increase octane levels. Soviet forces in the Caucauses managed to stop the German drive in the moutanous terraine short of Grozny. This initially was the principal objective of Case Blue. [Miller, pp. Production did not begin until after the War (1919). The major formation was Field Marshal Model's Army Group B in the Ruhr. And while the bombers were shifted primarilt to France to support the Normandy landings, attaks on the Reich continued and one of the principal targetswas tghe synthetic fuel plants as they were located. Ploiești was home to the majority of the oil fields in Romania during World War II, and it hence became a major target for Allied bombings. Britain declared wr (Septemnber3, 1939) abnd France followed suit. With the German invasion of Belgium, the British declred war and with French cooperation instituted a naval blockade of Germany. As oil became more importahnt, this development put Germany at a serious disadvantage, both economically and stratgically. Army Group South was ordered to attack into the Ukraine, capture Kiev, and then turn towards the oil fields of the Caucasus. Model had been one of the Wehrmacht's great mastersof mobility ob the Eastern Front. The Rhine crossing, aided by taking the Remagen Bridge, proved anti-climatic. When Hitler launched the Panzers across tge Polish frontier (September 1939), Germany had stockpiled 15 million barrels of fuel. [Return to Main World War II strategic materials oil page] When Barbarossa failed before Moscow (December 1941), Hitler designed the 1942 Summer offensive to seize the Soviet Caucasan oil fields. Hitler was determined to destroy what he described and the Jewish-Bolshevik Soviet regime. [Refugees] August 1946). And thee was the additional problem of bringing the refineries back on line. The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy (Washington, 1945). Oil played a key role in the destruction of the Afrika Korps in the Western Desert. On June 22, nine-tenths of the production of airplane fuel was knocked out." Oil was not yet as important as it would be in World war II, but is was increasingly important even in World war I. Friederich Bergius had developed the direct proces for converting coal to a synthetic fuel just before the War. He did not, however, expct the Allies to declare war over Poland. Thus the NAZIs well before the War gave considerable attention to developing a synthetic oil indutry. It was needed in war time when cost was not very important. Karl Goldschmidt offered to build an industrial plant aspart of his Th. His focus was firmly set on the East and he wanted no distractions or diversion of force. The Soviets forced Germans to dismantel the plant for shipment to the Soviet Union where it coukld be reassembled. And unwilling to surrenedr, but not willing to sacrifice his men in a useless fight ordered Army Group B to dissolve and then shot himself. And there was considerable pro-German feeling not only in Egypt, but Iraqand Iran as well. Gen. Jacob E. Smart, a four-star general who conceived the strategy for the daring World War II bombing raid on the oil refineries at Ploiesti, Romania, and went on to help shape the postwar Air Force, died Sunday in Ridgeland, S.C., in the house in which he was born.He was 97.The cause was congestive heart failure, his son, William, said. In addition the small German oil industry had only a small number of qualified men who were capable of redrilling the wells. And these were not just dreams. The Ardennes was hardly the perfect location for an armored offensive--especialy for the large German Panthers and Tigers. Germany had very limited oil resources. Given the liklihood of an Allied naval embargo, the NAZIs well before the War gave considerable attention to developing a synthetic oil indutry. Maikop alone would have given the Germans what they needed. The country had abundant coal resources, especially in the Ruhr. German planners for the operation concluded that even under the most optimistic projections there was only enough fuel for 60 days of full … General Hasso von Manteuffel recommended to Hitler's Military Adjutant a halt to the offensive and a withdrawal back to the protection of the West Wall. This was particulrly aroblem or the Luftwaffe which needed high octane aviation fuel. Third, the German synthetic fuel indutry produced about 9 million brrels. Autarkiepolitik im Dritten Reich: Der nationalsozialistische Vierjahresplan (Stuttgart, 1968), pp. Nearly 32 million barrels were imported or over 70 percent. A factor here was that fuel shortages made it impossible for the Luftwaffe to adequately train new pilots. De Chair described this colorful and barbaric cavalcade: “We were a motley crowd. Lawrence helped Winston Churchill broker the British settlement of the Middle East, Emir Feisal, Lawrence’s leader in the famed Arab Revolt, was installed in Baghdad as king. The Germans did what they could to maximize output from their domestic oil fields. [Economics] A-Frames & Y-Straps. Beck, 2003, pp. Bags & Rucksacks. [Resistance] Hitler finally agreed to withdraw from the Ardennes, including the SS Panzer Divisions now defanged with te loss of their armor (January 7, 1945). Thus a key element in the German battle pln was to seize their dumps, conveniently located on the way to Antwerp. By this time the Luftwaffe defenses had been largely depleted. Thisworked, but it did not provide the energy needed firhigh performance. The Bergius process was later enhanced by Matthias Pier. But, this is a question about ifs) who knows where it would have led? [Karlsch and Stokes, pp. Possssion of the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasuses would permanently solve Germany's petroleum and these were supplies that could not be interdicted by the Royal Navy. The Germans resisted, but without mobility and over powered it was a fruitless effor as they fell back to the Rhine. The German Bulge had separated The British in the North and the Americans in the south by about 40 km. Ther was an alternative to Barbarossa to the extent tht oil was the main objective. The Germans were to deliver the indutrial goods on aongr time frame, but fell behind on even this schedule. Given the reatively small British force in Egypt, this could ve ccomplished with a modest force. One prong headed south for the oil. At the time, total German oil imports from the USSR were 912,000 tons, [clarification needed] with German stockpiles [citation needed] at 1,350,000 tons. He ordered the nationalization of the industry and the search for new fields in the Reich. These companies controlled approximately 85 percent of the global oil reserves. Unlike the Jews, not all the Slavs were to be killed. The Germans had only begun this process when the Soviet launched Operation Uranus, surrounding the 6th Army in Stalingrad (November 1942). The Bergius process plants were Germany's primary source of high-grade aviation gasoline and synthetic oil as well as synthetic rubber, synthetic methanol, synthetic ammonia, and nitric acid. The French, however, stopped the Germans at the Marne. Hitler was aware that when war broke out that the Allies would again blockade Germany. The British identified oil as a weakpoint in the H\German war industry even before the War, but until the United States entered the War, had no way a getting at German production as it required daylight precession bombing. OKW analists calculated that with monthly military requirements of 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German oil stocks would be exhausted by August 1941. More has been written about the German U-boats than the Allied naval blockade, but the U-boats failed and the Allied blockade suceeded. Rather than consuming their stockpile, the Germans actually increased it by seizing the stockpiles of the defeated nations: Denmark and Norway (April 1940) and then the Netherlands, Belgium, and France May 1940). And getting water tothe troops mean huge quantities of fuel also had to be expended. He then proceeded to chase the routed enemy some 1500 miles across the desert. Iraq’s pro-British government was toppled in a coup in March by the very pro-German Rashid Ali al-Gailani. Just as these events were unfolding, a worse blow fell. After the War cost became important and neither of the two main processes were competitive with imported oil. This would have permaneltly sloved the German oil problem. Significant oil and gas containing stratigraphic units of the North-West German Basin The North-West German Basin as part of the North German Basin belongs to the great north-west European epicontinental basin, which is located south-western of the Fennoscandian Massif. In his crisp, soldierly prose, the Desert Fox spelled out his campaign plans in a note to himself to be used for post-war memoirs: “We could have defeated and destroyed the British Field Army, and that would have opened the road to the Suez Canal.… With the entire Mediterranean coastline in our hands, supplies could have been shipped to North Africa unmolested. The Austrian Anscluss added more fields (1938). The allies still did not have functu\ional pors and were still landing supplies on the beaches. This included Romania which had fought with the Allies in World War I. Romania was critical because of the vital Ploesti oil fields. A wide variety of similar processes can be used to convert coal, biomass and other carbon intensive feedstocks into useable products such as diesel and jet fuel. First Germany invaded adcseized Norway, complicating the North Sea blockade because of Luftwaffe air bases there (1940). “In 1939,” he wrote, “Persia and Iraq together provided in all some 15 million tons of mineral oil, compared with Romania’s 6.5 million tons.” Romania was the site of the famed German-controlled oil fields of Ploesti, the target of heavy Allied bombing during the war. The Wehrmacht planners estimated they had the fuel for only about one-third to one-half of the distance to the main objective--Antwerp. Second, the Germans had some small domestic oil fields. But Rashid Ali al-Gailani’s March 1941 coup, led by the secret “Golden Square” society, had toppled this careful settlement. The country was targeted by the Soviet Union as part of its series of Eastern European agressions, part of the arrangements under the terms of the NAZI-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The Launching of ‘Kingcol’ and the Legendary Glubb Pasha. They faced a largely imobilized German Army. In the North, Montgomery staged a major set-piece offensive with a huge D-Day-like airborn drop (Operation Plunder). The process involved reacting the carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane obtained from coal. They used an indirect process, meaning the coal is gasified and then converted to liquid fuels. The problem continues to be the cost of the process. [Contributions] United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS). Case Blue (German: Fall Blau) was the German Armed Forces' name for its plan for the 1942 strategic summer offensive in southern Russia between 28 June and 24 November 1942, during World War II.. “We soon noticed how the stream of German armaments to Persia, by way of Turkey, had been increasing in recent months.… We examined closely the set-up of the German Fifth Column in Persia, where 4,000 Germans in commercial occupations were organized under Gauleiters [Nazi Party leaders] and could be mobilized on the telephone. These processes provided away for Germany to become energy independent. The American pilots thus faced a Luftwaffe fighter force now composed of many young, inexperienced pilots. The British did not, hoever, cooperate. Aerial mining of the Danube River caused further problems for the Germans. Hitler launched World war II without the resources needed to wage global war. Ploesti would be the only important oil fields that Germany would have access to during the War. [Bibliographies] Britain consumed 76 million barrels, the Soviet Union 183 million barrels, and the United States an incredible 1 billion barrels even with the Depression still in progress. This added added another 5 million barrels to the German reserves. Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa (June 1941). The Germans suceeded in capturing smallest of the Russian oil fields at Maikop (August 1942), but the Soviets disabled it o it was of no immdiate use. The Romanian oill fieklds, especially Ploesti, was Germany's principal source of oil during the War. Faktor �l: die Mineral�lwirtschaft in Deutschland 1859-1974 (C.H. Stalin and the Allies knew that once Hitler had access to those fields, there would be no stopping him, which was why the battle turned out to be so gory. I would think that Steel would be a pretty big one too - wooden planes just don't last as long, and pretty much everything ever made during WW2 had steel in it. Coal was a rare natural resource that the Reich had in abundance, Some 90 percent of Germany�s energy consumption was produced by coal. Capturing the Caucasus oil fields would require draining dry the accumulated German oil reserves. A ship was moored on the Oder River was used as another camp (Umschulungslager Bremerhaven). [Tools] Fuel was so short in Germany that some of the gasoline being stockpiled for the offenive had to be trasportd by horse and cart. Russia's Next Big Military Sale - To Mexico? As part of its foreign policy, Germany steadily increased its influence in Romania. As he did not expect the British and French to declare war, he did not thinkn oil would be a problem. In 1943 and 1944, British and American planes targeted the Ploesti oil fields in Romania, a German ally. When the Red army arrived, the plesti fields and refineries were left a total wreck. With Gibraltar in their hands, the Mediteranean would be essetially an Axis lake. It wall a matter of when. A large portion of the Italian supply convoys were destroyed through British air and submarine attacks, Here Malta played a key role. Of all the array led by the capable Kingstone, none was more exotic than the Arab Legion, nor more legendary than Sir John Bagot Glubb, Glubb Pasha [pasha is an old Turkish title loosely meaning “commander” or “leader”]. Now was his opportunity to seize it. The Germans managed to increase production from 3.8 million barrels in 1938 to nearly 12.0 million barrels in 1944. 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