From Crisis to Opportunity

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.