Oil and Grand Strategy: Great Britain and Germany, 1918--1941

[@haroldellis9721]

Brilliant lecture. I do wish there were photos of the maps.

[@MichaelDoerner]

If you have not done so, you need to write a book about this. I don't see it on Google books if you have done so. Very, very interesting.

[@SagaraUrz]

They went to listen or to eat?

[@johnburns4017]

Anand Toprani left a lot out on oil production clouding his analysis. The British refineries at Suez and Haifa and a pipeline all along the canal in case the canal is out of action by air bombing he was not aware of. The refineries at Suez and Haifa were small but could easily be expanded. Haifa was supplied by pipeline from Iran, but the RN insisted it have oil tanker facilities to cope if the pipeline is cut. These refineries gave the same sailing distance from the Caribbean. Also pre WW2, a coal fed UK, got its small needs of oil from Scottish shale oil and crude found in Derbyshire in 1919. Oil was discovered at Kelham Hills in Nottinghamshire in the 1920s. In 1939 oil was discovered Eakring in Sherwood Forest, also oil was found at Caunton. US oil men were brought over in secrecy setting up the equipment. The locals never knew what was happening. It produced a modest 700 barrels per day. By the end of 1942 demand for 100-octane fuel would grow to more than 150,000 barrels every day. By the end of WW2, 1.5 million barrels had been extracted from English oil fields. A fair amount. The oil was high quality and used in lubricants and plastic, etc. Refineries opened at Grangemouth in Scotland (1924), Fawley on the south coast (1921) and Stanlow near Liverpool (1924). The UK was not totally reliant on oil from the USA, as Toprani suggests. Venezuela was an independent country and today still has the greatest oil reserves in the world. If only being 100% energy independent gave great riches, then post WW2 Japan would have been one of the poorest countries in the world. Toprani did get it right in that the Royal Navy blockade was instrumental in determining the direction of WW2. He did get it right, as did Prof Adam Tooze in _Wages of Destruction,_ that the clear driver for Hitler's aggression being the rise of the USA very quickly into an economic super power. The USA had access to vast resources inside the USA, a land stolen from indigenous people and the Mexicans by moving west. Hitler took this precedence and looked east to emulate the USA, and match them economically. The Americans had few people in the land to the west of them, whereas the Germans had fully populated lands to their east. They had the Hunger Plan to de-populate and colonise the land with Germans. However this was long term. Hitler's immediate concerns from May 1940 were resources to build planes to fight the coming air war.

[@timobrienwells]

John, I thought I told you not to post your Adam Tooze rubbish on youtube anymore. Don't you remember? When you have read a second book, you can try again.