WI: More Reich Oil Imports

[marathag]

According to Wikipaedia the Aleppo to Tripoli branch of the Berlin-Baghdad railway was built between 1912 and the start of World War One.

IMHO that changes the feasibility of the Germans obtaining useful amounts of oil from Iraq. That is instead of being virtually impossible it's only very hard.

But its the Kirkuk to Turkey that's the first real bottleneck. The USA did Oil by rail with the U-Boat menace, but the USA had far, far better rail infrastructure , with thousands of 8 to 11,000 gallon tanks cars, and powerful locomotives to pull 100+ car consists

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

But its the Kirkuk to Turkey that's the first real bottleneck. The USA did Oil by rail with the U-Boat menace, but the USA had far, far better rail infrastructure , with thousands of 8 to 11,000 gallon tanks cars, and powerful locomotives to pull 100+ car consists

I don't disagree. That's why I said that it would be very hard to get useful amounts of oil to Germany even if they were able to send the oil from Kirkuk to Tripoli via the pipeline and then by rail from Tripoli to Aleppo.

 

[BELFAST]

I don't disagree. That's why I said that it would be very hard to get useful amounts of oil to Germany even if they were able to send the oil from Kirkuk to Tripoli via the pipeline and then by rail from Tripoli to Aleppo.

Even solving the oil problem leaves Germany with a major food shortage. So they still need to take the grain producing areas in Ukraine. That gets them into a war they do not have the logistics to win.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Even solving the oil problem leaves Germany with a major food shortage. So they still need to take the grain producing areas on Ukraine. That gets them into a war they do not have the logistics to win.

Hitler would still invade the USSR if Germany was self-sufficient in food, oil and raw materials. He wants to destroy communism and he wants Lebensraum.

 

[BELFAST]

Hitler would still invade the USSR if Germany was self-sufficient in food, oil and raw materials. He wants to destroy communism and he wants Lebensraum.

That might be so. if he has the food, oil and raw materials he can pick his time to invade and is not forced to invade in 1941 because of shortages. Lebensraum was in part about getting farmland to make Germany self-sufficient in food.
Also, he does not need to do a trade with the Soviets, so this slows down Soviets industrialisation and leaves the Soviet Union in a weaker position.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

According to Wikipaedia the Aleppo to Tripoli branch of the Berlin-Baghdad railway was built between 1912 and the start of World War One.

IMHO that changes the feasibility of the Germans obtaining useful amounts of oil from Iraq. That is instead of being virtually impossible it's only very hard.

It makes no difference whatever. All of the oil fields in Iraq were owned and operated by the Iraq Petroleum Company. IPC was owned by Royal Dutch/Shell, Compagnie Française des Pétroles, Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP), Near East Development Corp. (a consortium of five US oil companies), and Calouste Gulbenkian (his 5% made him one of the richest men in the world). All of the operations staff were British, French, or American, except unskilled laborers.

Iraqi government interference with IPC control was impossible, because British troops were stationed in Iraq to insure that the Iraqi government was pro-British.

So no oil produced in Iraq would ever be sold or shipped to any Axis country, unless Axis forces invaded Iraq and expelled the British.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

It makes no difference whatever. All of the oil fields in Iraq were owned and operated by the Iraq Petroleum Company. IPC was owned by Royal Dutch/Shell, Compagnie Française des Pétroles, Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP), Near East Development Corp. (a consortium of five US oil companies), and Calouste Gulbenkian (his 5% made him one of the richest men in the world). All of the operations staff were British, French, or American, except unskilled laborers.

Iraqi government interference with IPC control was impossible, because British troops were stationed in Iraq to insure that the Iraqi government was pro-British.

So no oil produced in Iraq would ever be sold or shipped to any Axis country, unless Axis forces invaded Iraq and expelled the British.

I don't disagree with a word of that. Especially the final sentence. They'd have to control Palestine, the Lebanon, Syria and preferably Egypt too.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

That might be so. If he has the food, oil and raw materials he can pick his time to invade and is not forced to invade in 1941 because of shortages. Lebensraum was in part about getting farmland to make Germany self-sufficient in food.

Also, he does not need to do a trade with the Soviets, so this slows down Soviets industrialisation and leaves the Soviet Union in a weaker position.

I don't disagree with any of that either. However, based on what is known with hindsight and AIUI what the Germans believed at the time, the summer of 1941 was a good time to invade because the Red Army was still recovering from the purges and the Soviet Armed Forces were still re-equipping. Also, German rearmament was retarded by a shortage of raw materials. Therefore, the Wehrmacht of 1941 in this ASB world would have been better prepared for an invasion of the USSR. Fortunately, Alien Space Bats don't exist and if they did I hope they'd have helped the Allies and not the Axis.

 

[BELFAST]

I don't disagree with any of that either. However, based on what is known with hindsight and AIUI what the Germans believed at the time, the summer of 1941 was a good time to invade because the Red Army was still recovering from the purges and the Soviet Armed Forces were still re-equipping. Also, German rearmament was retarded by a shortage of raw materials. Therefore, the Wehrmacht of 1941 in this ASB world would have been better prepared for an invasion of the USSR. Fortunately, Alien Space Bats don't exist and if they did I hope they'd have helped the Allies and not the Axis.

The other problem the Germans had was very poor intel on the Soviet Union.
They did not know how large the Soviet military was or how large Soviets industrial capacity was.

 

[Asp]

You omitted the oil in West Germany. Its production exceeded 7½ million tons a year from 1964 to 1969. That's more than the peak annual production of Austria and The Netherlands in the period 1931-69 put together.

IOTL German and Austria's combined crude petroleum production rose from 900,000 tons in 1939 to 2 million tons in 1944.

IOTL Austria's peak production was between 2½ million and 3½ million between 1952 and 1957. As already noted, West Germany's peak production was 7½ million a year 1964-69.

Therefore, my nightmare scenario would be for Germany to produce 7½ million tons of crude petroleum a year over the period 1939-44 and for Austria to produce 3 million tons a year at the same time for a combined total of 10½ tons a year. That would increase the Third Reich's domestic oil supply by 8½ to 9½ million tons a year. That is, as long as Germany didn't decrease its production of synthetic oil and/or reduce imports from Romania proportionately.

I omitted that because most of it is at Mittelplatte (contains 65% of Germany's proven exports) and I doubt the Nazis could have discovered and exploited it with the technology and resources they had.

Yeah, that would be really bad. They would actually increase imports from Romania IOTL because they'd need a lot less coal for the synthetic program and could meet their trading obligations in full. Being able to downsize the synthetic oil program a bit would free up a huge amount of industrial capacity. WWII would have been A LOT harder in that scenario.

Even solving the oil problem leaves Germany with a major food shortage. So they still need to take the grain producing areas in Ukraine. That gets them into a war they do not have the logistics to win.

It might help them if the Balkans stayed quiet. If Mussolini doesn't invade Greece and the Yugoslavia Coup is butterflied for a while, it would really have helped the German war effort and allowed them to keep exporting grain from Yugoslavia. They got a lot IIRC before the invasion but it all fell apart afterwards because the country was basically in a civil war and production flatlined.

 

[BELFAST]

It might help them if the Balkans stayed quiet. If Mussolini doesn't invade Greece and the Yugoslavia Coup is butterflied for a while, it would really have helped the German war effort and allowed them to keep exporting grain from Yugoslavia. They got a lot IIRC before the invasion but it all fell apart afterwards because the country was basically in a civil war and production flatlined.

Indeed.
Still not enough food to feed Germany and the rest of Europe they occupied at the time.
The real mistake the Germans made was trying to cut Germany off from world trade and produce every they needed themselves.
The only way they could do this was a war of conquest and that meant fighting too many enemies and trying to control an area larger than the Germany military could hope to control.
Post-war the much smaller West Germany became rich by doing the opposite and trading for what they needed worldwide.
That would mean needing to keep on Good term with the French and British who could cut Germany off from world trade when every they wanted by a naval blockade.
By the 1960s Germany was so dependant on imported oil that it could only keep the economy and military going at the pleasure of the British and French.
I wonder how much better Germany with the borders it had in January 1939 could have done with a sane economic strategy.

The National Socialists were too racist and anti-semitic to do anything that sensible.