{"title":"The Reality of Dependence","authors":"A. Toprani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter and the one that follows demonstrate how and why Britain’s strategy of energy independence failed. The initial threat came from anticolonial nationalism, initially in Iran and then in Mexico. Britain weathered both crises but emerged with a false sense of security. The second and most challenging threat came from the fascist states, particularly Italy following the Abyssinian crisis of 1935–6. Although Italian hostility would jeopardize Britain’s plan to achieve energy independence by exploiting the Middle East, British officials paid little or no attention to the Italian threat to their energy lifelines when considering whether to support League of Nations sanctions against Italy for its aggression against Abyssinia. Compounding the Italian problem was U.S. isolationism via the Neutrality Acts, which complicated British logistics by forcing Britain to import oil from the United States on British tankers and pay for it using scarce foreign exchange.","PeriodicalId":173249,"journal":{"name":"Oil and the Great Powers","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128295595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Price of Failure","authors":"A. Toprani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter provides critical assessment of Britain’s post-World War I oil strategy and details the strategic consequences of its failure during the early years of World War II. It reveals the irreconcilable dilemma that doomed Britain’s attempts to satisfy its energy needs independently in wartime: a shortage of tankers and foreign exchange. Reducing the foreign exchange burden meant increasing imports from the Middle East, which stretched Britain’s supply of tankers to the breaking point, since there were not enough to redirect imports around the Cape of Good Hope after Italian hostility threatened access through the Mediterranean. Drawing oil from the Western Hemisphere required fewer tankers but also cost foreign exchange. Ultimately, Britain’s survival after 1940—as after 1917—depended upon the assistance of the United States.","PeriodicalId":173249,"journal":{"name":"Oil and the Great Powers","volume":"149 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131317144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Double or Nothing","authors":"A. Toprani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter places oil at the center of the Third Reich’s plans for the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union. It begins by reviewing Germany’s preoccupation with the Caucasian oilfields during World War I. The chapter then considers the strategic context behind Germany’s decision to launch Operation Barbarossa in 1941. It moves on to review technical details of seizing and rehabilitating the Soviet oilfields. Time was running out for the Germans, however—their supply position was already tenuous by the spring of 1941, and by the autumn Germany had burned through its entire operational reserve even as the German war plan against the Soviet Union began to stall. The failure of Operation Barbarossa ultimately doomed the German war effort, since the Third Reich lacked the means to destroy the Soviet Union before the entry of the United States into the war tipped the scales irrevocably against Germany.","PeriodicalId":173249,"journal":{"name":"Oil and the Great Powers","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133660241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Years of Complacency","authors":"A. Toprani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter begins with a discussion of Britain’s efforts to monopolize the development of imperial oil reserves and stockpile naval oil reserves. It then shifts to Iraq, which (along with Iran) was one of the centerpieces of Britain’s oil strategy in the Middle East, before examining the failure of British efforts to bring Shell under the control of British nationals. It also discusses the formation of the Oil Board of the Committee of Imperial Defence, which was responsible for assessing Britain’s wartime oil position. The Oil Board identified the key obstacle confronting Britain—a shortage of tankers to move oil from the Middle East. Finally, it contrasts Britain’s ambiguous record in the Middle East with that of Venezuela, which by the early 1930s was becoming Britain’s most important oil supplier.","PeriodicalId":173249,"journal":{"name":"Oil and the Great Powers","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114968141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Crisis to Opportunity","authors":"A. Toprani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter offers a reassessment of Germany’s oil strategy during World War II. Fuel consumption during Germany’s early campaigns (1939–40) was lower than expected, but the swift victory over France left the Third Reich in a quandary. Before the war, Europe had imported two-thirds of its petroleum consumption. Germany’s prewar efforts had only aimed to make it self-sufficient—the Third Reich could not hope, however, to replace the supplies other European nations had imported from overseas. German planners concluded that unless Germany took control of the oil resources of either the Soviet Union or the Middle East, fuel shortages would soon derail the entire war effort. This looming energy crisis in Europe strengthened Hitler’s ideological and strategic conviction that Germany should risk a two-front war in 1941 by attacking the Soviet Union before the United States could intervene.","PeriodicalId":173249,"journal":{"name":"Oil and the Great Powers","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121081768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Allure of Independence","authors":"A. Toprani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the origins of Britain’s postwar oil strategy, which aimed at making Britain independent of imports from other great powers, especially the United States. It begins by reviewing Whitehall’s increasing preoccupation with oil as a matter of national security before 1914, including the Royal Navy’s shift to oil and the government’s purchase of a majority of shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It then examines the British experience during and immediately after World War I, when officials began pursuing two of the key objectives of British strategy—securing British majority ownership of Shell and the oilfields of Mesopotamia. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how oil influenced Britain’s war aims in the Middle East and Anglo-American competition over the region’s oil.","PeriodicalId":173249,"journal":{"name":"Oil and the Great Powers","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121373854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fueling the War to Come","authors":"A. Toprani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198834601.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter sketches out the progress of the Four-Year Plan of 1936 to achieve economic self-sufficiency. It stresses that Germany never sought self-sufficiency as an end in and of itself—the aim was always to provide the German armed forces and war economy with sufficient resources to wage a war of conquest. By 1939, progress toward even this narrower objective was faltering due to shortages of steel, coal, capital, and labor. The Third Reich’s bellicosity after 1937 also limited the amount of time Germany would have to remedy its economic vulnerabilities before war began. Following the Sudeten crisis of 1938, the regime moved to rebuild relations with Romania to guarantee at least one reliable source of imports in wartime. By the time war broke out the following year, German officials were cautiously optimistic that Romanian exports, along with synthetics and existing stockpiles, were sufficient to meet Germany’s immediate wartime requirements.","PeriodicalId":173249,"journal":{"name":"Oil and the Great Powers","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121859733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：