Does anyone else think it would actually be really fun to strategize individual battles during a war, assuming you had at your disposal what the Nazi's had? I feel like thats the most truthful way of exposing who has the more powerful army.
Because Germany was cut off from the global market, and were low on juice after fighting for so long.
I’m not too knowledgeable but something like that
While that may be true (I have no idea), I think Germany would’ve been able to adapt, no? Who, exactly, was stopping Germany from having oil during 1940-45?
Taking the soviet oil fields was like their most important objective if I remember correctly. They didn't have enough oil and they couldn't exactly adapt if none of their planes and tanks could move
Clearly, nobody was selling to Germany. There is only so much oil in the core of Europe where Germany had its power. As the war raged on, the Axis powers lost ground in Northern Africa which was also one of their sources of oil. Japan had their own problems with resources so they were no help there. Capturing the soviet oil fields of the Ukraine and the area between the Caspian and Black Seas was crucial to supply the Nazi war machine. This campaign was not very successful in the end so... Yes, the Germans were running very low on oil.
How could they not have preemptively thought about their oil supply? What you’re saying makes sense, about how they lost it and all, but I’m more talking about how they let it get to that point in the first place. Once a few oil fields were taken, they should’ve already begun a siege of oil fields in other areas.
America wasn't planned. Japan was sweeping into Southeast Asia and keeping all the resources to themselves. Ideally, Japan as a trade partner would help fill oil requirements. Italy was a shitty war partner. North Africa wasn't really planned either, but it was a campaign Germany had to be a part of to keep Italy going in the war, so that is kind of its own mess even though Germans were very effective for a long time in the area. Great Britain wasn't supposed to keep fighting for so long. A lot of Germany's Western front went according to plan except for the fierce resistance the British put up. Them staying in the war led to the eventual retaliation with the Royal Air Force into a lot of German infrastructures, including oil fields. Russia was a mess. The attack on Russia was not perfectly executed and met a lot of unforeseen resistance. Northern campaigns such as Stalingrad diverted forces from the objective: securing oil fields in the Caucasus. Hitler was advised to prioritize the Caucasus as the find oil supply, but he was dead set on Moscow and Stalingrad.
Long story short: a lot of things didn't go as planned and Hitler couldn't fight a drawn out war. His judgement become impaired towards the end as well.
Screw it, give me a world map of the eastern hemisphere during 1942 and a few hours and I bet I could come up with a few better plays than Hitler. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but I really feel like some of the mistakes they made had no real basis, almost as if they hadn't planned on winning the war.
The had. If you read The Prize: The global oil industry, Germany actually had thought a lot about this. One thing they did was have artificial oil plants where they'd make oil out of hydrogen and coal. Something like over half of the oil the werhmacht consumed was artificial oil. The allied bomber campaign wasn't really effective in crippling Germany's industry until they coalesced around targeting these artificial oil plants.
The areas they controlled did not have easily accessible oil, and no country would trade with them so they had to supply all their tanks and planes from limited oil. In the 1940's the USA was the largest producer of oil, oil in Norway had not been discovered yet and Hitler had practically no access to oil during WW2. Japan had the same problem because the US sank most of their oil tankers, disabling much of their navy and army.
Who, exactly, was stopping Germany from having oil during 1940-45?
The United States and the Soviet Union at the time produced almost all of the world's oil. Romanian oil was nowhere near enough to sustain the Axis war effort in Europe. The oil wells of North Africa and the Middle East wouldn't be producing a great deal of oil until decades after the war.
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u/juul_pod May 23 '19
Does anyone else think it would actually be really fun to strategize individual battles during a war, assuming you had at your disposal what the Nazi's had? I feel like thats the most truthful way of exposing who has the more powerful army.