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I know it's a fresh upload the CC button hasn't appeared yet, but in case you didn't autocaption it you should for the non-native speakers, even though it's clearly narrated some people are deaf and others are ESL
Though generalist your financial histories of the third reich are accurate and interesting and I would encourage you to particularly consider the Reichs 1. Taxation and 2. Finances (MeFo, OeffA bills) As the adage says "Gold is the sinews of war." Tik did MeFo but his analysis is a bit superficial as it doesn't consider their role in trade and countertrade and No One has looked at the Reichs taxation system -- it wasn't ALL plunder and expropriation.
@@QuizmasterLaw The caps are working now. I'm one of those hard of hearing people who needs them, and sometimes it takes a little while for them to get uploaded with the video. No biggie, they always show up eventually.
@@Raskolnikov70 great, thank you. can ask you to do us a favor? please go to the US state department's youtube videos and pester them on this exact point. i can't believe it but their videos are often inaccessible for the blind or hearing impaired, DOUBLE PAINBOW
And this is before we've even mentioned Germany's rubber shortage. No rubber equals no tyres for military vehicles like trucks and Kübelwagens, even if they do have all the fuel they need. Which they didn't.
Yes, but at what price, and would they have had the capacity to make enough of the stuff? The German's lack of resources was just chronic. Also, how the heck were they going to transport all of that oil west? By rail? With what trains, and on what railways? This was all a huge pipe dream.
@@hadtopicausername After the fall of Malaya and the Philippines the allies were able to very quickly build synthetic rubber plants. But with plentiful oil, money and expertise this is very doable. Had Germany managed to get enough oil flowing (which was not going to happen though) their rubber shortage would have quickly eased.
The exact same thing with Japan. We used to export it to them, then they were forced to go elsewhere. Japan, like Germany was struggling with obtaining raw materials.
Hey, thanks for your content. It's a good job the British were able to hold out in the Mediterranean wasn't it? Imagine if Germany and Italy were able to launch a joined naval/air-effort into the Caucasus from the Black sea or even the Middle East. I think it's amazing to think about how the Soviets simply packed up so much of their heavy industrial infrastructure and simply moved it further east. Have you done a video about how they actually did that?
Just wanted to make the point that I believe Indy misspoke at 5:13 as he says "thousand" when I believe he means "million". As 180 thousand tons annually for the US seems wrong, as he emphasizes that Romania was producing 300 thousand tons a month (and subsequently 73 thousand) right after that.
I think the really important question is whether Stalin intended to attack Germany at some point. If the answer to this question would happen to be yes, then German attack on the USSR was a "preemptive" war and as such was entirely legal, as the US and Britain clearly established in 2003 by attacking Iraq before Saddam bombed Coventry and Las Vegas. However, if Stalin never intended to attack Germany, then the German war on the USSR was an act of unprovoked aggression - just like the Operation Iraqi Freedom was - and all the Nazi war criminals rightly hanged in Nuremberg, just like Tony Blair and George Bush did - oh, wait! Well, never mind that. Are there any historical records suggesting that Stalin was preparing to attack Germany?
1 ton of crude oil may sound like a lot. But it is not. 1 ton of crude oil is something like 7,3 barrels (159 litres). 1 barrel crude oil will - nowadays - give about 74 litre of petrol. A Panzer 3 slurped up around 1,8 liters(official documents) of fuel - per kilometer. It took 300 liters of gasoline and would go for 165 kilometers before bone dry. You can bet that was not thru rough terrain or deep mud. 1 ton of crude oil would not fill up 2 empty Panzer 3. If you have 100 Panzer 3 that need to refuel every 2 days, that mean 30 000 liters every second day. That in turn means those 100 tanks will need over 55 tons crude oil to be refined every 2 days. Germany had a lot more tanks then just 100, and planes, trucks, ships, cars etcetera. And it all needed to be transported to where it was needed. To say that WW2 run on oil is almost an understatement. Without oil, there would not have been a WW2 like we know it.
German soldier 1: what, seriously? I'm going to a court martial for getting in a traffic jam? German soldier 2: well, it sure ain't my fault! I was just driving along this road like the orders I got this morning say too. Orders straight from Hitler too! German soldier 1: Ha! Orders from this morning, eh? My orders to drive down this road came fresh from Hitler just an hour ago! You better check your orders again. German soldier 2: Dammit!
At 1:16, Indy says that German troops skirmished with Ottoman forces that June. Does anyone have any sources for that? I've never heard of that and I want to learn more about it, thanks!
It was the Vorontsovka incident, which is mentioned at the wikipedia page of the German Caucasus Expedition en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Caucasus_expedition
Personally I believe that if the Germans captured the Caucasus, it would've meant the end of the Soviet warmachine. Even if they destroyed the Baku oilfields, they themselves would've lost it too. Plus the allies' supply line through Persia would've been also cut.
Yes, the Soviet war effort would be crippled, even so the Germans would still need to continue the war against Britain and the USA. Victory would still be uncertain for the Axis.
@@dragosstanciu9866 Stalin after fall of Baku...signs another treaty of brest-litovsk..and this time Europe is no 1918...even after disaster of fall blau it take entire 2 Year's for Normandy... imagine how dangerous Atlantic wall will be..with 200 Wehrmacht Divisions, Britan would'be forced to Sign Peace after fall of Suez.
How would they ever get to Baku, fighting in a mountain war against soviet armies and local militias that know the region better than them. Impossible to conquer those mountains. If they reached Baku, it would've been a long slog and the soviets would have plenty of time to prepare,storages,food, munitions. Something that the Germans only could get from a long supply line, which obviously would be harassed by partisans. Also the approach to Baku along the Caspian coast is historically known to be difficult, the Khazars and other Russian steppe people already used that as choke point against muslim armies. I simply don't see how they could get there, or conquer Baku.
@@maxgrozema1093 Germans did reached caucasus oil fields ( Maikop & Grozny) but prize was on Baku, the most underestimated point of campaign is Baku was more critical to Soviets instead of Germans all Wehrmacht has to do is to either force Soviets to lose them or get them destroyed like Maikop/Gronzy...also the best possible way to win Blau was to secure Volga (Stlaingard) Which Stops Oil passage anyway. Hitler blunder was not Stalingrad but splitting AGS before Stalingrad.
“There has been too much violence, too much pain. None here are without sin. But I have an honorable compromise: just walk away. Give me the pump, the oil, the gasoline, and the whole compound, and I’ll spare your lives. Just walk away; I will give you safe passage in the wasteland. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.” - Hermann Goering, 1942.
Too bad that you are not mentioning the implications of the Soviets LOSING these Oilfields. UK and France expected to doom Soviet mechanized agriculture with a hypothetical "Operation Pike" that was meant to destroy the caucasus oil fields with bombers in 1939-1940.
Oil is the only reason for Hitler's insane stand and fight tactics for the massive losses of the Wehrmacht. You can have the greatest fighting force in the world. But if you can't get you're vehicles moving it is game over.
The Germans going after the Caucasus oil was a grave mistake. If Germany focused their forces on just capturing Soviet oil depots and stockpiles, and vehicles using breakthough and exploitation tactics, those captured fuel supplies were ample enough to carry their military forces as far as they could realistically go using military force on the eastern front. The Moscow industrial zone was still the big prize, and really needed to be taken for the Germans to have any chance of victory against the Soviets. The Soviets could get all the oil they needed not to mention other military equipment from the United States and Great Britain via the Murmansk route, so losing the Caucasus oil and lend lease routes was of little importance for the Soviet war machine.
Don't Forget that thé Axis did not have Enough tankers. If Italians had discovered the gigantic oilfield in lubie, it would have been a chalkengebto shop it with not Enough tankers.
VIETNAM WAR IN REAL TIME PLEASE. Well there is yet time because the veterans are still with us to share their real time and real life stories. Just a creative idea for you or your audience. Don't let Ken Burns get all of the ideas first. And I am aware he did one of his own on Vietnam but of course that was not real time day by day or battle by battle. And brief the witnesses are still alive so let's get them involved.
Off topic question: I understand the other flags (Soviet, USA, British, Free French and what looks like it maybe another representing the British Empire) but why does Indy have a Brazilian flag behind him? I mean I know there was some involvement of Brazil in WW2 but wasn’t it very small ?
Both Japan and Germany in WW2: If we take the resources several hundred kilometers away, they just appear back home, right? This is HoI4, not real life after all.
As I understand it. Pre 1940 about half of Japans' shipping was leased from nations that would fall to Germany in 1940. That shipping was used by Germany or Britain to the end of the war.
By the way Hitler micromanages stuff happening on the front lines, it does seem he's treating this whole thing like hoi4. And he's not good at the game...
Resources were a part of the supply system in HOI3 but it was a huge pain in the a**. I once concurred california as Japan in MP and the massive amounts of oil used up all my convoy reserves making my army starve to death right in the US.
Should it? WWI was definitely always on the minds of the officers on both sides of this war. It's pretty cool to watch episodes from this series interspersed with Indy's WWI videos.
This is an under-rated episode. I've always heard the argument "if Germany made it to the caucuses" but never thought or heard of the steps ahead that they would have had to undertake to make any use of the oil!
If they had made this say their primary objective at the start of the Soviet war they might have had a shot at winning the war . Good thing they didn’t 😅
@@bsgvlog5640 No. You can't just pluck it out the ground and its good to go. It has to be drilled, packaged, shiped, refined, packaged and shipped again. Not to mention all that travel it tales to get there. Who is to say that that the Soviets won't scorched earth that too. Remember the oil fires of Desert Storm. It took months to put those out with the latest tech in 1991.
Astrakhan was a pipe dream. Stalingrad was a bridge too far as was the entire eastern front. The Wehrmacht was not in a position to operate a broad front war in the east. Hitler wanted to bully Stalin to the negotiation table.
yeah, it seems the main value from attacking this area wasn't to take the oil, but to prevent the soviets from using it. it wouldn't have required a major offensive to do that.
Also the British developed a plan to bomb the Caucasus oil fields from Iraq should Germany capture them. Their assessment was that the oil fields were poorly managed, with lots of oil leaks, and that a few bombs would have caused a level of destruction that would have rendered the fields worthless for a very long time.
In North Africa, the British and the Germans accused each other of poisoning the water wells. They didn't realize that petroleum was gushing up beneath their feet.
It’s one of those strange what ifs. What if Italy had discovered oil in Libya before the war. Money for Italy and resources for the axis could have been a game changer.
In the film "The Brest Fortress", Soviet troops under siege at the start of Barbarossa are digging for water, as the Germans have cut their normal water supply. Some liquid is discovered but the soldier who tastes it spits it out as there is oil in it. So undrinkable.
@@stevekaczynski3793 I lived in South Texas and a neighbor in the Terlingua Ranch Valley drilled a well and hit water that had light petroleum fumes, it was okay for bathing but I never drank it. They used it to water goats and witnessed severe reproductive problems until they stopped, but they were drinking the goat milk. There were six of them, only two are alive today.
Ironic that in the North Sea - right off of the north coast of Germany - was one of the largest reserves of the best crude oil in the world. North Sea crude is the highest grade stuff on the planet and they were practically sitting on a never ending supply of it. A good thing nobody knew about it until 30 years after the war ended.
Even if they did, the know-how and the ability to drill that deep didn't come about till the mid to late 1960s. Besides, you can't run an offshore oil field without Helicopters and those machines didn't show up till the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s. The best crude you can get today is from shale oil fields it's as pure as you can get out of the ground. North Sea Crude is very very good and very valuable as we know. In the 1940s offshore drilling was in its infancy. I use to work in the Gulf of Mexico in offshore Oil production support. What I did was flying crews around to oil production platforms in a helicopter! It's moving back to shore with the Shale Oil Production. And with prices for crude at around 70, a barrel people are happy about it. Me on the other hand well I retired in March.
@@angeledduirbonesu1989 That might have been the better option too, as far as logistics and infrastructure go - building up an entire oil extraction industry vs. cleaning up the one destroyed by the Soviets as they fled Maikop and Grozny. They would have had to quit pussyfooting around with Malta and drive the Brits out of the Mediterranean, but it would have been do-able.
It took 11 tonnes of coal to make 1 tonne of synthetic fuel. On the eastern front 10 litres of petrol was required to get 1 litre to the front. It was expensive and required a huge labor force. The productions plants were huge and couldn't be hidden. POW's who walked past a destroyed plant in Poland described it as resembling black spaghetti.
I mis-read your comment as saying "this fantasy channel" and I was going to play along as if this was some alternate history stuff and the "real" WW2 played out very differently. But I'm pretending to be mature today, so I won't...
Their opponents, British and American but even Soviet fliers, noticed that many German pilots later in the war were basically novices. The mega-aces attract far more attention but by 1944 many Germans went operational while barely knowing how to fly their planes. And this was mainly due to fuel shortages.
Thanks for the Brazilian flag! This week marks the first battle of Força Expedicionária Brasileira (Brazilian Expeditionary Force) in Italy! Great work!
The series is still in 1942, the FEB only went to Italy in 1944, but maybe they will say something about U-Boats sinking brazilian ships and the pressure for Brazil to declare War on the Axis.
There's an excellent book by Daniel Yergin (The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power) that covers much of this. It's informative and well-written.
You my friend have a talent. A talent to give me a lot of facts and numbers and still make it interesting. You and your kind of people are the spirit of education.
One point that seems to have been overlooked: even if the Germans took years to restore the oil fields, they would immediately deprive the Soviets of them. The Germans would still face shortages, but the situation on the Soviet side would be even worse. Certainly the allies would do what they could to supply the Soviets with oil, but they would have the capacity or transport to make up that kind of loss.
The Soviets could get all the the oil and equipment they needed from the United States and Great Britain via Murmansk, so no big deal for the Soviets. No significant transport problems. The war would have lasted longer perhaps if the Germans where able to take the whole Caucasus region assuming Axis casualties weren't horrendous in the process of taking it balancing out the gains and losses.
They weren't concerned with defeating the Soviets. That was going to be quick and easy, so attrition and economics weren't relevant. But they needed the oil ASAP to fight England.
@@ArmyJames Baku sucess is only ensured if Stalingrad is Won.. Persian corridor wouldn't make any sense as those supplies need to go from Volga only. Wehrmacht won't stop ideally at Stlaingard they have a double road to Astrakhan...even fall of Volga is enough to for Stalemate which Stalin admited in Order 227
It also revealed Hitler's profound failure to understand logistics, and a deeper unwillingness to listen to those people who did understand. Ignorance and arrogance is a dangerous combination.
@@markrobinson9956 Except Hitler did understand logistics and his generals did not. Hence Halder's insane ideas of concentrating on Moscow and the general attitude of prioritising army group centre over south.
@@davitdavid7165 of course, that is why I posed the question. But I kept it more focused on a particular resource, one that is of specific focus today. That way more people could have a grasp of the issue. It may have even worked for you....
After all, Germany's poor supply of oil led to the man on the Moon some 25 years later. As the oil shortage became serious, they started to push less oil dependant technologies, like rocketry. A V2's fuel was basically 40 tonne of potato.
You said the USA was #1 in global oil production with 183,000 tons annually and then said Romania produced 361,600 tons monthly and that Germany produced 1,050,000 tons per year domestically. These figures don’t add up. Perhaps you confused barrels with tons?
I was also confused and was looking for a clarification; it looks like Indy misspoke and said “thousand” instead of “million”. The US produced 182.7 _million_ metric tonnes of oil annually in 1940, followed by the USSR at 29.7 _million,_ and Venezuela at 27.4 _million._ Then comes Iran with 10.4 million tonnes, the Netherlands East Indies with 7.9 million tonnes, Mexico with 6.7 million tonnes, and Romania with 5.7 million tonnes (with the Ploiesti fields producing about 4.5 million tonnes of that per year).
Well, it strongly increases the CO2 output, but otherwise the process can be rather clean, since waste gass processing is possible at the conversion plant. My farther was employed in building such a plant in South Africa. This way the Government of South Africa could avoid the oil embargo.
@@yoinkhaha Because almost all of the black coal is gone now. (Iron as well.) And brown coal is horribly dirty and quite inefficient. Germany had those resources during the War; extracting what's left isn't economically feasible any more.
I'm so excited that someone has finally mentioned the German synthetic oil industry. Your numbers for the oil industry were very enlightening. I have heard from a few sources in the past that German synthetic oil was purer and had better octane numbers than conventionally drilled oil. This provided the luftwaffe with a small fuel advantage until around late 1943-1944 when American oil additives finally got their octane numbers to similar levels. Did you happen to notice anything like this in your research? Thanks again, great work as always!
Hey Indy I'm confused about the oil production numbers you threw around. At 4:11 you said the oil fields in the Caucuses produced 25 million tons of crude oil in 1940, but at 5:20 you said the USSR produced 29,000 total tons of oil in 1940 and the numbers for the US and Venezuela were also thousands. Did you mean to say millions here?
Germany did in fact have two large undiscovered oil fields right on its doorstep Matzen in Austria and Schoonebeek in the Netherlands - together these fields held over 1.5 Billion barrels of oil + Hungary too had a fair bit of oil as yet undiscovered Algyő (84 million tonnes) and Nagylengyel (45 million tonnes). In my opinion this is the ultimate what if, and really the only way germany could have won or at least got some kind of negotiated peace. I should also add that this more or less solves germany's rubber crisis (yes rubber too was in great demand and after oil the second most sought after resource) - giant resources needed for synthetic oil would be freed up and used for the production of synthetic rubber, thus solving that problem as well.
@@brenokrug7775 Schoonebeek was originally discovered in 1943 by the Dutch, but kept secret from the Germans, Matzen was discovered in 1949 and reached its peak production in 1955. I forgot to mention that Germany also had undiscovered oil fields ( mostly in Lower Saxony) here is a list: Ruhle -Founded 1949, Production reached 4.5 million in 1955, with depth being 850 meters. Georgsdorf-Founded 1944, yet not redrilled until 1946/47, Production reached 1.7 million in 1955, with depth being 800 meters. Emlichheim - Founded 1944, yet not redrilled until 1946/47, Production reached 1.1 million in 1955. Scheerhorn - Founded 1949, Production reached 1.1 million in 1959 with depth of 1150 meters. Barenburg - Founded 1953, Production reached 1.3 million in 1961(294k tonnes - 151k tonnes for 179 tonnes 1961), with deepest being 740 meters.There are a few more but these are the most important in my opinion, now if discovered in between 1933-1937, they would have caused a oil boom in Lower Saxony and likely motivated the Dutch to also start drilling -thus discovering Schoonebeek (almost all of the aforementioned fields are right on the Dutch border).
I’ve been wondering about this for years. The whole drive on the caucuses seems predicated on the idea that securing the oil fields is effectively the same as having the oil immediately available for productive use in Germany. This always struck me as sort of a pipe dream without the pipe lines, so to speak.
@@crazydiamondrequiem4236 Simply false. Those oil fields the lifeblood that kept Red Army alive. Most people forget that you also carry foods machine parts soldiers with trucks (that use fuel obviously). And also Germans would cut the lend lease route and even maybe strike towards middle east even. Also Turkey and Japan planned to attack USSR had Caucasus was taken. Even Stalin told his oil minister, Baibakov, that if scortched earth policy on our own refineries causes our tanks to run short on fuel, you will be shot.
@@koj2698 But it’s also true that the Soviets had shorter supply lines and non petrol powered rail lines to fall back on if the caucuses fell. They had eastern oil fields to bring online. With both sides still short on oil we wouldn’t see a Soviet drive on Germany but the war in the east could turn into a prolonged quagmire. I am not sure that taking the caucuses would be immediately war winning for Germany, given any difficulties quickly extracting and distributing the resources there.
@@striatic the Germans were bleeding men and resources just advancing in the south, and really opened the wound when they tried to take Stalingrad. The economics back home and the logistics to keep an advance going were not there. Even before Paulus entered Stalingrad he was daily requesting more men and supplies, and they were not arriving in the numbers needed.
Fewer issues with rear-area partisans as well. They'd still be a problem but there are far fewer places for them to hide and the Germans would have had an easier time dealing with them.
In the Stalingrad fighting the Soviet troops received an issue of quilted winter jackets as the weather turned cold, but often not the matching quilted trousers. But they could do without the latter. In Moscow and even more in Leningrad anything less than the full winter issue made it impossible to fight.
Winter is tolerable with proper supplies, fuel, oil, food, etc., and a logistics system to keep the troops supplied. The winter itself did not hinder the war effort, it was the inability to deal with the harshness of winter conditions.
He was lucky with the law. He started an armed putsch in 1923 in which several police and a number of his own followers were killed, and got just five years for it and only served about 20% of that. His luck would have run out if he had survived to Nuremberg, though.
This has been an excellent series and I wish to commend you for your efforts. Excellent research and presentation and deserves to be on TV. Best wishes
Even if they had oil, the Germans still lose. The Germans still needed a printer that would produce millions of trained pilots, infantry, etc. By 1945, they were out of men as well as oil.
They didn't have a lack of men to train, they had a lack of petrol to train pilots on, add to that the 109 tried to kill them on every landing... Then you need coal and high quality metals (for which you need coal and ore) and transport for which you need petrol or diesel and so on. Warm bodies were never that much of a problem - it was everything else that went with it...
That's why they (and Japan) had to strike and win quickly and made plans to do so. They knew their own weaknesses and knew they'd never win a war of attrition against the US + UK + USSR.
One of the major causes of increased casualties and manpower depletion was the immobilization of the armored divisions. Without armor to meet or blunt Soviet attacks, the infantry had to take it on the chin every single time. More oil would have meant more armor. More armor would have meant fewer casualties among the infantry. At least in theory.
Do you know the german casualties was 2.6 millions men before the 24th June of 44 Before the operation Bagration the soviet counter part of d day. Another 2.6 millions was killed until the end of war 9 months after.
There is no scenario where they win a war with the British fleet and American resources against them. The war was suicide. Hitler was a fool. Germany never had the resources to sustain a prolonged war. He bet everything on the hope that Russia would just fold. Instead they fought to the last man.
It’s fortunate that the Italians were more interested in using Libya as a stepping stone to making a new Roman Empire in Africa instead of actually developing the oil resources there. While getting the oil from Africa to Europe might have still been a problem as long as the British fleet existed and Malta held but it might have still made a difference.
I'm not sure about it. Italians were prospecting for Libyan oil in 30's but it would takes years before they could extract sufficient quantities of crude oil. Anyway this oil also had to be refined in Italy since there is no refinery in Lybia.
That's Interesting, entire Operations would've been different Malta & Spain will be invaded at any cost..Mediterranean is closed for Allys..makes Suez canal Useless and that lengths Britian access to Empire... even 1 extra division to Afrika Korps is enough to win Africa
Would love a special like this about rubber and the massive synthetic rubber projects, especially in the US and Germany. Much of the Auschwitz labor was to build a massive rubber plant, and us planners worried that unless they could start to create their own rubber (with japan having taken most of the world's rubber plantations before the war with the US), the war would be lost in months just due to how much rubber was being used.
Let's not forget Barbarossa was also Halder's baby as well. Franz Halder wrote the "clean Wehrmacht". He tried to rewrite history and say that no atrocities took place on the eastern front. He was the chief planner behind Barbarossa
In the years after WW2 there was still Stalin and Stalinism, who’s to say their atrocities didn’t get tumbled onto the Germans as well? Stalin is allegedly responsible for 30,000,000 so it’s not out of the ballpark for some to be blamed on the German Occupation. Not saying German atrocities didn’t happen, but they were historically more about forming collaborators than squashing resistance.
The Germans had problems with their propaganda, as they wanted German settlers to move to the east but their propaganda also depicted the Soviet Union as a backward place full of subhumans etc. They were going to have problems making Voronezh seem attractive to people from Verden.
Oil is by far the most significant reason for Axis defeat in WW2, but it is also the reason why they (especially Japan) went to war in the first place. Germany were after resources in the Soviet Union too but it was also an ideological war just as much as a resource war. It is amazing though how the Axis powers were able to fight so long whilst so starved of resources
It also highlights how futile the strive for autarky in terms of resources is for modern economies. North Korea or China would be other cases in point.
How much oil does Australia produce? Does it go to war to steal resources? Historically, democracies have negotiated for resources, instead of going to war over them.
@@perihelion7798 We all know that emus are hoarding oil, that's the reason Australia went to war with them isn't? But I do agree with you. Japan is an economic powerhouse today, trading with other countries for the resources needed to fuel their economy. had they done that in the 1930's it would have solved so many problems and saved so many millions of lives, not to mention they would not have tainted their reputation so bad that even today they are reviled in some places.
@Robert Ortiz-Wilson Partly, but importantly true. However, Japan, in particular, needed the resources, and refused to negotiate for them. Both Germany and Japan had a national disease that made them feel superior to any other people on Earth, so they felt it was morally OK to just grab what they needed, instead of bargaining for it.
if germany had a much larger and better airforce in 1939-40......perhaps they could have developed successfull pland to destroy britains air force and navy prior to launching barberossa.then there would have been no d-day invasion of france,and no safely run atlantic convoys of ships to supply the soviets.u-boats could have ruled the atlantic and starved the brits and russians.checkmate.
@@r.ladaria135 nor did anyone else early in the conflict;however germany was ahead for a time in a-bomb research.perhaps they would have remained ahead if not fighting on two fronts,who knows?
@@danielslocum7169 nope. The rise to power of the NASDAP messed up the german phisics. They lost a half of their most valuable doctors btw 1933 and 1939. Italy lost Fermi. ...
Great video-just catching up on this. I was never taught HOW CRUCIAL oil was to the axis invasion or even why certain areas were attacked. So great job. I also enjoy how detailed you are in profiling the Axis powers’ personalities. The great lie of right-wing fascist/nationalism/white supremacy is that: “the fascists or anti-democratic parties are effective war machines who are only trying to promote security. Look at how well they are run! Plus they are very macho!” As this video says in the final minutes: Nazis are not realizing that the oil reserves aren’t under their control yet, that the invasion is hitting roadblocks, and that even if they get the oil-how can they bring that oil back to Germany? They are ALREADY dividing up the oil they already have amongst themselves and giving away whatever hypothetical control they have to their cronies. The nazis are cowards, greedy, short-sighted to actually winning the war. The only thing the nazis truly devoted time and resources to was to eradicate Jews.
The whole episode sounds like a regular meeting at work 😀. I work in the oil industry, procuring raw materials for production. Currently there is such a severe shortage on the market in everything, that it resembles war-time state. Half of the terms what Indy says I say on a daily basis 😀
They messed up from Minsk..Halder fooled Hitler about AGC position Hitiler wanted to head South even after Kiev..Halder wanted Moscow they didn't achieved either...had they strucked on anyone war could've ended on Stalemate for sure
Oil? Bullshit! It wasn't oil! It was all about the blitzkrieg! Yes oil was definitely not insignificant, but the major factor in Germany losing the war was simply procrastination! Operation barbarossa was a massive metaphorically speaking a smash and grab! But delay after delay through spring 1941 till June 22nd cost the Germans a huge disadvantage in terms of not taking Moscow before December amidst a particular harsh Russian winter. Thus along with the onset of winter the Russians just about got enough time to launch a huge counter offensive with stalins siberian divisions from the urals hence = Germany loses. Simple.
Just got recommended this video and I can already tell I’m going to watch a lot of this Chanel. I’ve been looking for in depth documentaries of ww2 like this for forever thank you for what you do 🙏
As a 78 year old man, born during the early part of WWII, and vaguely remembering our guys coming home in uniform, the facts that you bring out, I always find strikingly interesting. It never ceases to amaze me how out of reality the Nazis were. Or that Hitler was! It always seems strange to me that somehow, they did'nt consider, just the size(in miles) of the Soviet Union. And, the numbers of people(cannon fodder) that could be thrown at the German army. I'm fairly sure, the 'euphoria' of crushing a number of ill prepared and ill equipped countries, was to be another of the Nazi's Achilles heal. Thank you for your interesting videos.
It's because this traditional narrative blaming everyrhing on "madman Hitler" with the benefit of hindsight is stupid. Imagine you're the Germans in 1941. Your military career started with a VICTORIOUS war against Russia in WW1 (just 20 years ago). One year ago you saw the Soviet army get humiliated by a tiny Finnish force with basically no modern equipment. Why would this pathetic army not crumble under the attack of literally the most powerful army in human history (which, at that point in time, Wehrmacht was)? But no, Hitler was a stupid madman, not like the armchair generals commenting on the issue 80 years later
My friend I read this quote : if I do not get the oil I must end this war. He was obviously aware of this necessity and the resources regarding the oil productions in the east.
