The MAIN Reason Why Germany Lost WW2 - OIL

If Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, he would likely never have

got another chance.

People keep saying the Germans should have produced more panzers, they should have produced

more planes, or produced more submarines.

People can’t understand why Hitler allows the British to withdraw from Dunkirk?

Or why his generals call him mad for ordering his men to stand fast and fight to the death

when he has so little manpower - even though these were actually strategically sound decisions

given the circumstances.

Why did Germany have to invade the Soviet Union in 1941?

Why was their army marching on foot instead of riding in trucks?

Why are they reliant on horses?

It’s all related to the same question: Why did Germany - and the Axis powers - lose

world war 2?

And it can all be summed up with just one word -

OIL

Let’s find out why.

Few people seem to realize just how severe the oil crisis was for the Axis in WW2. WW2 has

been described by one academic historian as the First War for Oil. When you study WW2,

you should have the oil crisis in the back of your mind because that is how important it is,

and we’ll find out exactly why in this video.

Oil is not the only factor - but oil is the most important one and is what dooms the Axis

to defeat in World War 2.

That’s not to say that they didn’t have a chance of victory but oil is a massive problem

for Germany who’s relying on Blitzkrieg, or Bewegungskrieg (“war of movement”),

to win its wars.

It’s also the reason that after the war, Britain is no longer a super-power, and the

Soviet Union and the United States are - but that’s a topic for another day.

Below you will find a pinned comment with timestamps for parts of this video, so if

you want to skip ahead, you can do that. But I would not recommend skipping ahead in this case

because you’ll miss the context. But you’ll also find the sources I used down there as well.

Anyway, let’s just start from the beginning.

The 19th Century was the age of coal.

Britain was the leading coal producing country in the world, thanks to Welsh miners.

It powered its ships with coal, and thus dominated the waves. In fact, this was the reason it

had a big merchant fleet - it was the only nation really able to power it, thanks to

coal.

But in the early 1900s, it became obvious that oil was the emergent dominant energy

source, since oil would power ships more efficiently, and would be able to power planes, cars, trucks

and eventually tanks, as well as industry as a whole.