continued German-Soviet cooperation or Axis USSR

[Robert Rojas]

Greetings to both citizen ljadw and the community as a whole. Howdy ljadw! Well sir OR madam, in respect to your posting of Monday - July 30, 2018 - 3:04am, old yours truly is still more than a wee bit mystified where both National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy will continue to procure its petroleum if the existing oilfields in Romania are incrementally going dry. Unless I am missing something here, one would "THINK" that both Berlin and Rome would spare no expense to encourage Bucharest to aggressively engage in the exploration and development of hitherto untapped sources of Romanian petroleum. Since petroleum is the undisputed strategic life blood of both National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy, then what would motivate either Berlin or Rome to quibble over the costs of Romanian Oil at all? In short, the matter of cost should be NO OBJECT given that Romania is THE principal supplier of SECURE petroleum for both Berlin and Rome. Now, should it be conclusively proven that Romania's oil fields are in irrevocable decline and little or no hope of locating new sources of Romanian Oil then would this not be THE overwhelming motivation for both National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy to covet the petroleum wealth over in ever distant Soviet Azerbaijan? I also have inquiries about Hungarian Petroleum Industry and National Socialist Germany's synthetic oil programs, but I will leave those pointed, if not annoying, questions for another day. Finally, in light of Bucharest's legitimate historical concerns for both the safety and protection of its petroleum industry, was this not the motivation for National Socialist Germany's storming of both the Island of Crete in year 1941 and the Crimean Peninsula in year 1942? Well, that's my latest two cents or pfennigs worth on this expansive topic of interest - for now anyway. In any case, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day no matter where you just might happen to find yourself on Terra Firma!

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob

[ljadw]

1 Romania was not the biggest supplier of secure oil for Germany and Italy , this supplier was Germany itself : the German crude oil /synthetic oil production was ,during the war, always greater than the imports .
1940 : crude :22 %, synthetic 48% ,imports : 30 %
1941 : crude : 19 %, synthetic : 47 %, imports : 34 %
1942 : crude : 20% , synthetic : 52 %, imports :28 %
1943 : crude : 19 %, synthetic : 56 %, imports : 25 %
1944 : crude : 25 %, synthetic : 60 % , imports : 15 %

About the importance of the Soviet oil : in the short run,it was almost meaningless(the German expets had warned that it would take a lot of years to transport even ONE million ton of oil to Germany ),and Germany could win the war only in the short run, a short war .
Between January 1940 and June 1941, Germany received 1 million ton of oil from the SU, after June 22 , it no longer received any oil .
About Romania : its production would decrease in the long term ,but Germany was not interested in the long term ,the short term was important,as the war could be won only in the short term :if the war continued, Germany would be destroyed before 1950 . If there was peace, the decrease of the Romanian oil would be catched by the oil from the Caucasus AND by the Synthetic production . Thus, no problem .The Romanian oil was important only during the war .
I would like to add the following : people are mesmerized by the importance of oil in WWII,but this importance is very much exaggerated :
In 1940 Germany got 6,7 million ton of oil, in 1941 8,3 million, in 1942 8,6 million, in 1943 10,3 million, in 1944 6,4 million ;this means that more oil did not result in a better military situation ; for the SU it was the opposite : the Red Army conquered Berlin while the Soviets produced in 1945 only 60 % of the oil production of 1941 .
While oil was important for the military, the military consumed only a part of the oil, and the economy was essentially depending on coal, not on oil.
In 1940 the Soviet energy mix was oil 18,7 %, wood 20 %, coal 61 %, in 1945 it was oil 15 %, wood 50 % and coal 35 % .
And the SU and the US were the 2 countries in the world who used the most oil, because they had a lot of oil ,but even in the US coal was more important than oil during and after the war .

[thaddeus_c]

1 Romania was not the biggest supplier of secure oil for Germany and Italy , this supplier was Germany itself : the German crude oil /synthetic oil production was ,during the war, always greater than the imports .

About Romania : its production would decrease in the long term ,but Germany was not interested in the long term ,the short term was important,as the war could be won only in the short term :if the war continued, Germany would be destroyed before 1950 . If there was peace, the decrease of the Romanian oil would be catched by the oil from the Caucasus AND by the Synthetic production . Thus, no problem .The Romanian oil was important only during the war .

Germany was not able to complete enough synthetic plants to convert coal to liquid fuel prior to war thus their demands for natural sources of oil (and this is not simply a result of neglect, the synthetic plants required steel which competed with ... well every other need, army, navy, west wall defenses)

I would like to add the following : people are mesmerized by the importance of oil in WWII,but this importance is very much exaggerated :

While oil was important for the military, the military consumed only a part of the oil, and the economy was essentially depending on coal, not on oil.

coal which Germany was converting to liquid fuel on a very unfavorable exchange ratio, (approx.) 1 tonne of coal to barrel of (synthetic) "oil" whereas a 1 tonne of crude oil equals (approx.) 7 barrels.