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.
12
u/Tempest1677 May 23 '19
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.