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14 hours ago, Bozowans said:

For war production, oil would of course be very important, not just for gasoline for vehicles and tanks and planes, but for the production of the industrial infrastructure itself. For construction equipment, road building, for the production and maintaining of machines used for producing other machines, for machines for producing weapons, and for chemicals and explosives production and so on.

Now here's the thing: Although I can't quote exact figures, I'm pretty sure that most of the energy needs of German industry were supplied by coal, like with most other industrial powers. And Germany had coal in abundance, more than it could use. They had so much that they were even turning all they could into synthetic petroleum, not primarily to fuel industry but to try to train pilots for the Luftwaffe and for other tactical uses.

Michael

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14 hours ago, Bozowans said:

Petroleum is found in practically everything today.

But that did not become the case until well after the war. And in fact, coal is still an important industrial fuel, especially for those countries that cannot get enough oil to meet all their needs, such as China.

Michael

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On 3/3/2018 at 3:13 PM, Ivanov said:

@Bozowans everything you'd like to know about the Nazi war economy ( but you were afraid to ask ) can be found in a book "Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" by Adam Tooze. Achtung! There's no youtube, short version available. I'd recommend also Hitler's biography by Ian Kershaw. It's very good in showing the decision making proces and dynamism with the Nazi leadership. I'd recommend also "Why the Allies Won" by Richard Overy. it's a lighter book than the two previous ones, but Overy is a real historian.

I see that the internet personalities like Tik already do more harm than good. Well, the guy from Military History Visualised is more often right than wrong. He's just very boring and his accent makes it's hard to follow him. But he tends to see always more than one side of the coin and he seems to understand, that no easy answers are possible. I think he actually studied history and it shows in his critical and analytical way of thinking. My recommendation - start with some credible, mainstream historians. They will make you immune to the internet, then over the time, you may encounter something groundbreaking. But first you have to spent at least 20 years on reading. There's no workaround for it :(

You realize that TIK cited all of those books in the video you're arguing against right? They're right there in the bibliography. He's cited those books before too. Since you seem to be an expert on the subject with more than 20 years of experience, as you said, you might want to find the passages in those books that debunk the whole thing right? I mean, you could debunk TIK's whole video using his own sources. That would be pretty cool right?

 

16 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

Now here's the thing: Although I can't quote exact figures, I'm pretty sure that most of the energy needs of German industry were supplied by coal, like with most other industrial powers. And Germany had coal in abundance, more than it could use. They had so much that they were even turning all they could into synthetic petroleum, not primarily to fuel industry but to try to train pilots for the Luftwaffe and for other tactical uses.

Michael

This is true. Germany was reliant on coal, but then why could they never come close to matching the industrial output of either the Soviet Union or the USA? They couldn't even match either one, much less both, despite the Soviets being utterly devastated in 1941 and having to relocate a lot of their industry. Since the Germans were converting a great deal of their coal into synthetic oil, an expensive process, the oil would have, of course, been more valuable to them than the coal, otherwise they wouldn't go through that expensive process.

I haven't had a great deal of time lately, but I was reading a little bit about the Allies' Oil Campaign of WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_campaign_of_World_War_II

There is an interesting passage in there (emphasis mine):

"Despite its successes, by the spring of 1944 the Combined Bomber Offensive had failed to severely damage the German economy or significantly interrupt production of a vital item. The oil campaign was the first to accomplish these goals.[32] The US strategic bombing survey identified "catastrophic" damage.[20] Of itself, German industry was not significantly affected by attacks on oil targets as coal was its primary source of energy. And in its analysis of strategic bombing as a whole the USSBS identified the consequences of the breakdown of transportation resulting from attacks against transportation targets as "probably greater than any other single factor" in the final collapse of the German economy.[33]

Several prominent Germans, however, described the oil campaign as critical to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Adolf Galland, Inspector of Fighters of the Luftwaffe until relieved of command in January 1945, wrote in his book "the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany",[34] and the Luftwaffe's wartime leader, Hermann Göring, described it as "the utmost in deadliness".[19]:287 Albert Speer, writing in his memoir, said that "It meant the end of German armaments production."[4]:412–4 It has been stated to have been "effective immediately, and decisive within less than a year".[35] Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch, referring to the consequences of the oil campaign, claimed that "The British left us with deep and bleeding wounds, but the Americans stabbed us in the heart."[36]"

So it seems that even some of the Germans themselves thought that oil was the main reason they lost. Albert Speer suggested that their synthetic oil production was essentially the only reason the armaments industry could keep going. While the nation itself relied on coal for most of its energy (electricity and so on), the armaments industry is singled out as being critically dependent on oil. This pretty much backs up what I said earlier, and the points made by Anand Toprani and in TIK's video, that oil was what allowed the Germans to keep fighting the war, but the lack of oil is what stopped them from winning it.

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On 3/2/2018 at 4:56 AM, Bulletpoint said:

Funny how hindsight is so clear. The early Russian losses were enormous, and the task of relocating all their industry to the other side of the country must have been huge. If Germany had knocked out Russia quickly, like they did in France, they would have taken over vast resources and production capacity, while closing down the eastern front that ended up wearing them out. The Allies would have met a whole different Wehmacht in Normandy. Maybe the war could have gone differently.

I think this is really the key point of the whole thing. Both Hitler and Stalin knew that they were going to have to fight each other eventually. While "allies," the Soviets showed Hitler some of their new factories to scare him into staying "friends." It had the opposite effect. Hitler decided that the time to strike was before the Soviets could finish their buildup and recover from the loss of leadership due to Stalin's purges. Given the preceding German successes, their estimation of Soviet strength (WAY low) and the entire history of human warfare, Hitler's decision is quite understandable.

The fact is that no state has ever survived the kind of punishment that the Germans gave the Soviets and remained intact. They have either surrendered or disintegrated. Even with the poor German intelligence thrown in (according to Glantz, even later, at Kursk, the Germans were unaware of FIFTY PERCENT of the Soviet strength there), the Soviets did something unprecedented in history -- and by an unheard of order of magnitude.

But what if Stalin had been a weaker man or killed early on? When he went into seclusion after the early defeats, before the turnaround at Moscow, what if his men had killed him and sued for peace instead of redevoting themselves to his leadershop and begging him to lead? What if he had been killed in a car crash?  If that had happened, and no leader of equal strength had emerged (and probably wouldn't have), then the Germans might have won, despite the unexpected Soviet reserves and industrial capacity. Remember, France lost primarily due to weak leadership and low popular morale, not weakness of arms. Stalin was an evil SOB, but he lived up to his name and was a more capable leader than Hitler in the strategic realm -- and, though it took awhile, a better leader militarily, since he became more willing to listen to his generals and micromanage less as the war went on, while Hitler did the opposite.

When looked at objectively in the context of military history prior to his decision, with the information actually available to Hitler, he had a good shot and the timing was probably right. The key misjudgement was in the human element. Nazi ideology and hubris blinded Hitler to the potential resiliency of the Soviet people, system and leadership. As some German military leaders understood, the key was to turn the invasion into a civil war of liberation. Had they treated the people well and used them as a weapon against the Soviet system, I think they could have won. After all, even with their horrific treatment of the populace and POWs, the Germans had a lot of "former Russians" join them to fight against Stalin (wasn't it something like 50,000 at Stalingrad alone?)

Had Hitler just waited to unleash his "orc elements" until a military victory had been won, he might have had it in the bag, despite everything else. However, we can be thankful for his blindness. Germany was never going to defeat the US and Royal Navy and a Germany victorious in the East and still rising was very likely to be wiped off the Earth completely by Allied atomic weapons later on. And THAT would truly have been the end of Germany.

 

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On 3-3-2018 at 1:53 AM, Bozowans said:

Go ahead and make that video, I'll watch it. :D I'm having trouble buying this. You're saying that a lack of reserves, essentially lack of manpower, was as equally important as oil? Why? The German army outnumbered the Soviet army in 1941 -- the most critical year of the war. And I don't believe superior numbers in raw manpower are anywhere near as important as the ability to field large numbers of armored and motorized divisions. Not in a war like WW2.

I'd like to read that "The First War for Oil" article myself, but it seems to be locked away in one of those scholarly journal databases you have to pay a subscription for. Maybe I can get access to it from my university.

It's an interesting discussion but I'm having a hard time buying a lot of the arguments in this thread. Like "decisions win or lose wars, not oil." Really? Okay, well the decisions one makes depends on the economics of the situation. The reason Britain was able to maintain such a huge empire in the 19th century was because of coal. They were like the Saudi Arabia of coal at the time. They were the only country capable of powering such a huge fleet. They didn't just decide to be a big empire all of a sudden. WW2 was the age of oil.

You might ask, "If oil is so important then why did the Germans not go straight for the Caucasus from the very beginning? Why advance on a broad front and go to Moscow?" As someone else mentioned in this thread, Hitler believed that if you kicked in the door the whole rotten structure would come crashing down. They weren't planning on a long war and having to make a specific thrust toward the Caucasus like they did. They didn't plan that far ahead, but they still needed oil to win the war, and it would have been impossible to win a massive, years-long industrialized war of annihilation without it. Again, as Hitler himself said, “Either I get the oil of Maikop and Grozny, or I must put an end to this war.”

My 'decisions win wars' comment was a little tongue in cheek (as denoted by the smiley), although with a touch of seriousness. The problem I perceive in TIKs movies is mainly in reasoning. I'm a bit of allergic to his type of reasoning, because I see it a lot these days. In my opinion his videos are compromised with root cause attribution errors. I will try to explain why:

The most easy way of going about this, is by reversing the statement or removing the factor from the equation:

So, would having 'enough' oil have won the war for Germany? The answer to this is not obvious yes (possibly even a simple 'no'), from which I conclude that oil is not 'the' reason Germany lost the war. It's a gross oversimplification, like Ivanov has very meticulously explained in his posts.

So, another tongue in cheek: I call TIK's oil and raise it with aircraft carriers: Germany lost the war because they didn't have aircraft carrier strike groups. :)

Edited by Lethaface
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29 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

 

So, another tongue in cheek: I call TIK's oil and raise it with aircraft carriers: Germany lost the war because they didn't have aircraft carrier strike groups. :)

Nuclear aircraft carriers maybe, because conventional carriers require fuel oil which kind of reinforces TIK's hypothesis.

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18 minutes ago, Mord said:

How do I get a hold of this dude? I don't do Twitter or Facebook or any of that crap.

 

Mord.

You could try sending him a direct message on youtube. Not sure exactly how to do it, but I know its possible. He might also have a contact email posted somewhere on his channel, or some other means of contacting him. Others here may have a better suggestion, but that would be a good place to start. 

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4 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

If it isn't too private, what did you want to tell him? Just curious...

Michael

 

Was trying to let him know I had the division symbols he was missing.

 

Mord.

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Germany lost the war because of a combination of factors, but in my view the most important was the poor quality of its political leadership, starting with Hitler himself. The German leadership operated on assumptions that had no basis in what was the real strategic situation of the nation they were leading. There were plenty of leaders in high positions who were aware of some or all of the discrepancies between what efforts the nation could be asked to produce and what it would eventually find itself having to produce to cope with the situation brought about by the leadership's choices, but they were not high enough to matter and the key decisions were made by a small coterie whose blind ambitions and instincts for gambling with their people's futures knew no bounds. They were a bunch of chancers, blinded by initial good fortune.

The Soviet Union had an appalling beginning of hostilities in 1941, and its experience only began to turn around at the end of 1942, but its general strategic situation was always better than Germany's so they could afford to take losses that would have crippled Germany many times over. I include support from the UK and the US in that strategic situation, as well as Japan's decision not to attack the Soviet Union (they recognised that they had their hands full having to cope with an enraged US). 1941 was a close run thing, but close run is good enough. The Soviet Union, and Stalin, also enjoyed better luck.

With all of his faults, Stalin was a better leader than Hitler, and better suited to the peoples he was leading.

The German people have enormous potential, but their strategic situation is poor, stuck as they are in the middle of a continental mass with borders that are hard to defend. Twice in the past century, it has been proved that no matter how superior their land forces may be in like for like combat power compared to their adversaries, this vulnerability puts them in a bad place to start and win a war that they can't finish quickly.

The lack of oil, which by the way affected Japan, too, was just one given at the beginning that should have featured more in the leadership's calculations. Their strategy should have been very different from the outset, in 1933, when they seized power. Hitler, alas, was a man in a hurry. He wanted to finish the whole project while he still enjoyed vitality. He bent the whole nation's timetable to his own. He was not of sufficient stature to understand that what he wanted to accomplish might be achieved only if he was prepared to allow more time than what he had left to live to be taken, and built a political machine instead which would have stood a chance to continue to the objective long after he was gone.

The USA have done a better job of achieving and maintaining a dominant position globally than the Third Reich or the Soviet Union, at least so far. We are now witnessing China attempting something similar. So much for the "end of history".

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TIK hit the nail. Without sufficient oil the German military just became a foot soldier dominant , Mauser heavy force facing waves of Sherman's and T-34's . Being out-produced is second to not having sufficient fuel to power what it is you are not producing.

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14 hours ago, usgubgub said:

With all of his faults, Stalin was a better leader than Hitler, and better suited to the peoples he was leading.

Interesting and controversial viewpoint. But Germany was different in 1930.

There are two ways to view Hitler:

Either he was some unique historic individual with almost supernatural powers of manipulation, sufficient to bend an entire peace-loving and highly cultured nation to his will and convert it into one of the most evil and barbaric regimes the world has ever seen...

Or

Hitler was just a consequence of the inherent anger of the German population after WW1. If it hadn't been him, it could have been someone else.

I think your argument is based mostly on the first interpretation. Hitler gained power, but was ultimately a bad match for the nation he took control over. I see things more in line with the second interpretation. German anger boiled over and took the form of Hitler.

They lost the war so bad that modern day Germans are very different - most I meet are very soft-spoken.

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7 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I see things more in line with the second interpretation. German anger boiled over and took the form of Hitler.

I am inclined to agree with you, although I think a little of the first interpretation was in play as well. For sure, Hitler could have done nothing if the German people had simply ignored him. He touched a lingering resentment and megalomania in them and fanned the flames to action, pointing them to war. Enough Germans agreed with him to sweep the rest along.

Michael

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A phrase like "an entire peace-loving and highly cultured nation" ignores the fact that a large number of students rejected the teachings of their "enlightened" professors. What we would now regard as reactionary, was then considered revolutionary. 

We also, have to bear in mind that Mad Addy, the Fat Junkie, and the Poisoned Dwarf turned their back on their own party's roots and turned it into a something for "Something for Everyone" party, happy to be funded by toffs. And sadly, with the left's two most eloquent leaders murdered in 1919 any opposition from that quarter was never going to be effective.

Which leaves the big question. How could the Germans ever vote for a bloke who never got his round in? Has the front to walk into a bier hall and says "Mines a mineral water."? And still has unpaid bills for broken krugs?  

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3 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:

A phrase like "an entire peace-loving and highly cultured nation" ignores the fact that a large number of students rejected the teachings of their "enlightened" professors. What we would now regard as reactionary, was then considered revolutionary... 

Yeah, most people these days haven't a clue that during their rise to power, the Nazi party was seen as the young, dynamic, forward-thinking party of new ideas!

Any other comments in that area would get too much into subjective politics, so I'll stick to TIK and military what ifs. I'm quite enjoying his channel!

Very interesting info in the oil vid. It seems that we are potentially entering a new era of more objective analysis, rising from the grassroots. Recent decades have seen an appalling 2D (1D?) view of history presented by academics and documentary makers. The works prior to that, despite the distortion caused by using such German-heavy sources, seemed more objective, even though the people who lived through it were still around and even the ones making the stuff.

As with the oil vid from TIK, Hitler's decisions, when looked at objectively and with adequate information, often move from "crazy" to undestandable, to the best chance out of nothing but bad options.

However, to refer back to my earlier post, Hitler's decision to initiate barbarian nazi social policy immediately upon invading the Soviet union was a true unforced error and may have been the key mistake that cost him the war. As per TIK, he had to invade then and had only a few months to win the war. Had he used the kind of political skills he had demonstrated in his rise to power to woo the people in the Soviet territories into seeing the Germans as liberators and joining the fight against the Soviets, a collapse of the Red Army may have been possible in that first few months. Then, once that had happened, he could have gradually tightened the screws.

And then, assuming a nuclear confrontation between the remaining Allies and the Reich could be avoided later, we might well be looking at Hitler being the globally-acknowledged greatest leader in world history right now.

And, on the Allied side with a what-if, had Gavin taken his primary objective, the Nijmegen bridge, right away during Operation Market Garden, rather than spending time worrying about his defensive zone, then...wait for it...

Monty might be the globally-acknowledged greatest western Allied general of WWII!

In War and Peace, Tolstoy makes the argument that great military leaders are really just the most noticable parts of the giant, clock-work of human fate, and that neither success nor failure is really due to them, but rather to the sum total of decisions made by the great mass of individual humans making up the "machinery" of humanity.

Up to a point, maybe, but only up to a point. Sometimes, it really does boil down to the decision of one man.

 

Edited by Macisle
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11 hours ago, Macisle said:

However, to refer back to my earlier post, Hitler's decision to initiate barbarian nazi social policy immediately upon invading the Soviet union was a true unforced error and may have been the key mistake that cost him the war. As per TIK, he had to invade then and had only a few months to win the war. Had he used the kind of political skills he had demonstrated in his rise to power to woo the people in the Soviet territories into seeing the Germans as liberators and joining the fight against the Soviets, a collapse of the Red Army may have been possible in that first few months. 

I get what you are saying but I think that it was a decision he was incapable of making. His extreme prejudice and arrogance that went along with his ideas of eugenics meant he was likely not able to see the world in the way he would have needed to.

11 hours ago, Macisle said:

In War and Peace, Tolstoy makes the argument that great military leaders are really just the most noticable parts of the giant, clock-work of human fate, and that neither success nor failure is really due to them, but rather to the sum total of decisions made by the great mass of individual humans making up the "machinery" of humanity.

Indeed.

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We're talking like it was obvious that Hitler was not quite the gentleman he pretended to be and that it was obvious to everyone. 

We have to remember that Hitler and the Nazis had significant support in the US and UK (or Great Britain as it was called when I grew up).  The royal family and many aristocrats were sympathizers (most of Europe's royal houses had very recently been destroyed) as well as US wealthy at a time when they were all terrified of USSR Bolshie type revolution sweeping across Europe and infecting the US. 

It was not at all clear the vast majority of people that Hitler was indeed not on the right track at that time.  To many the Nazi philosophy was the coming tide that would sweep the world.  Obviously with benefit of hindsight we now know better.  2020 vision is always better after the event.

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