Double or Nothing

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.