One wing advanced towards Leningrad, another towards the Soviet capital at Moscow. On June 1941, a vast German army invaded the Soviet Union. While Britain took tremendous losses, particularly in the Spring of 19, eventually the Royal Navy was able to manage the U-Boat threat. Related: Building The World’s Largest Battery Oil tankers made easy targets for German U-boats, which waged their undersea war with the Royal Navy and the British merchant fleet. It depended on supplies from overseas, particularly oil from the United States and Venezuela. With a powerful navy and a sprawling international empire (two things Germany lacked), Britain was in a strong position to oppose Hitler, though its ability to intervene on the European continent was limited.īritain, like Germany, had no oil reserves. Thus, the war in Europe was often fought over petroleum, which Hitler needed to build and sustain the German empire.Īfter the fall of France in May 1940, Hitler’s only adversary was Great Britain. Hitler had two choices: either it get by on alternatives - such as producing synthetic oil from coal, which Germany had in abundance - or secure oil through conquest. In fact, in the 1930s oil production was dominated by a handful of countries-the United States, which accounted for 50% of global oil production, as well as the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Iran, Indonesia, and Romania.īut in order to fuel its industrial economy and power its growing war machine, Germany would need oil reserves - as German oil production was negligible. Furthermore, it lacked an empire - like the British - that would give it access to oil overseas. Germany would dominate Europe, and in so doing capture all the resources it would need to become a self-sustaining, self-sufficient economic power.ĭespite being one of the most powerful industrial nations on earth, Germany had no oil reserves. Amidst spiraling inflation and mass unemployment, Hitler preached a return to national greatness through conquest. German fuhrer Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression - a cataclysmic economic crisis that affected the entire world, but which hit Germany especially hard. It fueled the war effort of each major power, and battles over access and control of petroleum resources marked the war’s most important episodes-from the Battle of Stalingrad to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Without oil, modern mechanized warfare was impossible.
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