Page 197 - The Chief Culprit

158 y e Chief Culprit

A question arises: are we not giving too much importance to the role played by Romanian
oil? Did not Germany establish her own production of synthetic fuel? Such an industry did
indeed exist, but the problem of fuel was still not resolved. First of all, it is important to keep
in mind that synthetic fuel can never compete in quality with fuel made from petroleum. e
use of synthetic fuel significantly lowers the tactical and technical characteristics of weaponry,
most of all airplanes, tanks, and ships. Your designers can create a wonderful aircraft, your
factories can have the best technological capabilities in the world, your workers and engineers
can put into the building process of the plane all their talent and effort, but with low-quality
fuel the plane will still be slow, weak, and clumsy.
On top of all this, synthetic fuel is also expensive. With timber, if there was a shortage,
Hitler’s Germany used potato stalks. Even though they were lower in quality than wood,
at least they were cheap. But the production of synthetic fuel costs seven to twelve times as
much as the production of fuel from petroleum. Hitler’s decision to use synthetic fuel was
not born out of good fortunes. Very few would be willing to repeat his experiences. e fol-
lowing facts enable us to judge the quality and costs of synthetic fuel. In the second half of
the twentieth century the world suffered from an oil crisis more than once. At the beginning
of the new millennium, the global chemical industry is far more powerful than the chemical
industry of Germany in 1941. And still, for some reason there is no rush to produce synthetic
fuels today.
Now, let us talk about quantity. Germany’s minimum requirements for oil in 1941
were estimated at around 20 million tons. Hitler had allies who had armies, navies, and
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air forces, but they too did not have petroleum. ey too had to be supplied by German
fuel. Germany in 1941 was producing 4.1 million tons of synthetic fuel—one-fifth of the
bare minimum. If one keeps in mind the allies, with whom Germany had to share, then the
percentage of synthetic fuel in the overall balance of 1941 is completely insignificant. Aside
from synthetic fuel, real petroleum came to Germany from Austria, Czechoslovakia, France,
Hungary, and Poland. Altogether, in 1941 that made 1.3 million tons. So for 1941 Germany
made synthetic fuel and received real petroleum from occupied countries—together, this
makes 5.4 million tons of fuel. Without the Romanian oil, with the remaining amount of
fuel the German armies, navies, air forces, transport, and industry would have been able to
fight for only three months out of the year and would have had to spend the remaining nine
months shivering—until the next year.
Hitler thought that if the Red Army defeated Romania in 1940 or 1941, without
Romanian oil Germany could hold on until the spring of 1942. is optimism cannot hold
up when checked with arithmetic. Without Romanian oil only a quarter of the needs of the
German economy and armed forces would have been met, and with poor and very expensive
fuel at that. A taking of Romania by the Red Army in 1940 or 1941 would have turned into
a catastrophe for Germany within two to three months.
How much oil was coming from Romania? In 1941, 5 million tons came in. is was
not enough. But without it living and fighting were made impossible. While receiving oil
from Romania, Germany could balance on a tightrope, somehow making do with an amount
about half of its minimum needs. e petroleum situation in the invading army (which,
clearly, was in a privileged position relative to all other consumers) on the eve of the war
against the Soviet Union was the following: aircraft fuel was more or less in good supply; car
and diesel fuel, on the other hand, was predicted to be at a 10 percent deficit even in July, and