[Beery1]

Just spotted this - classic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjo4bZApIFg

Not sure, but the flash thingy doesn't seem to be working - I've tried messing around with the BBCode, editing and re-editing, but to no avail. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, or maybe it just doesn't work with Youtube.

[ROCKMAN]

Thanks beery. Well worth 2 minutes of my life. No one here should skip it.

[steam_cannon]

Great video! I love the Howard Kunstler reference.

The video says "what if" but I don't think this is a "what if" as the German war machine was quite aware of oil's scarcity, at least in Germany. As it's been argued before that Germany's expansionism was driven greatly by their limited oil resources and definitely their excursions against the Soviets. The same is true of Japan's motives, it is arguable that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor is the result of the US cutting off oil supplies to Japan which was our response to Japan's excursions into China. Instead of bringing them to the table, they entered into the war.

During the war, Germany tried extensive alternative energy solutions, wood gas, goal to oil. But these solutions were not as impressive or tempting as the gushing oil wells they didn't have. So at the end of the day one could argue WW2 was caused by greed for oil as much as it was caused by bad philosophy masking that greed.

"The German need to obtain Soviet oil was deemed the primary reason for the attack. Since the Soviet deliveries were insufficient to satisfy German needs for bringing the war [in the west] to a conclusion, the only recourse appeared to be the seizure and exploitation by the Germans of the oil resources of the Soviet Union." - Hans Kolbe, a U.S. spy

"The war was decided by engines and octane." – Joseph Stalin

"Above all, petrol governed every movement." – Winston Churchill

"We knew that our moves would be decided more by the petrol gauge than by tactical requirements." - Rommel

Link: Why Germany really lost World War II

Link: The Role of Synthetic Fuel In World War II Germany - implications for today?

[Guthrum]

Hilarious! "Der kreig ist verloren. Get me a bike!"

[ROCKMAN]

s_c: And some historians credit the discovery of the giant East Texas Oil Field in the 1930's as being a major factor in the allies winning the war. As a tanker would tell you: an Abrams with an empty fuel tank is just a coffin waiting for someone to light up. It's difficult to imagine future energy scarcity would lead to similar conflicts. OTOH they did call WWI the "war to end all wars". Turns out they were wrong.

[dorlomin]

The video says "what if" but I don't think this is a "what if" as the German war machine was quite aware of oil's scarcity, at least in Germany. As it's been argued before that Germany's expansionism was driven greatly by their limited oil resources and definitely their excursions against the Soviets.

Hitler had set out a return to the traditional German "drang nach osten" as a policy back when he was serving time writing Mien Kampf. German history is littered, from before the Teutonic Knights the Germans had seen a sort of 'manifest destiny' East. Oil played a limited role in the imagination of the Nazi regime, their execution of many war plans also display oil as a tag on not a driver. They were never more than 50% motorised in terms of land lift capacity. Heavily reliant on horse. They were extremely slow to recognise the importance of tanker tonnage in the battle of the Atlantic and instead focused on a tonnage war of all hulls. Their 'push' into North Africa was a rescue mission for the Italians that was never properly resourced and distant day dreams of the oil wells of Persia and Mosul were so far out of the question its insane.

Barbarossa was a poorly executed operation using 3 army groups along 3 axis of advance. But Army Group South was tasked with taking huge chunks of South USSR including the oil fields, not driving ruthlessly and singularly towards them. In fact in a doctrinaly suicidal move they split Army Group South into A and B army groups with only one of those targeted at the oil. 1\6th of the Germany maneuver in the field does not sound like a priority to me.

Two army groups, focused entirely in getting round the Black Sea and turning it into their own Mare Nostrum by 1942 with the caucuses looks to me like a oil war. Waffling around the swamps of Leningrad, the suburbs of Moscow and getting sucked into Stalingrad looks more like a giant land grab that over extended.

By the time the Nazis were cancelling operations and flying because of lack of fuel, circa mid to late 43, they were running out of steel, men and even coal. Oil was only was of a list of everything that they were running out of.

Americans turned up to North Africa with no proper staff work on the maths of fuel consumption. But on the plus side they leant quick and came close to rarely having fuel problems, became the best QMs in the world history, (the speed of advance after the Normandy breakout being the exception). The Russians just kept shooting incompetent staff officer till the remaining learnt competence PDQ. The British understood oil limitations from very early on so just turned Iraq and Iran into bits of Empire (we are talking pre 1914 understanding that oil was power). The Germans invented staff planning, were brilliant at tactical staff planning but were woeful at strategic level resourcing. Marne 1914, Operation Micheal 1918, Barbarossa 41, everything East of Germany post 41 and the Bulge 45 all collapsed because of lack of resources. Brilliant at drawing up war plans. Bit shakey on making sure the food and fuel are able to keep up.

[Lore]

There must have been several dozen parodies based on the same movie clip. There was a big stink about portraying living personages as Hitler. Anthony Watts of WUWT was one of them and went ballistic and had the YouTube video of him pulled down. It was a scream...! I had posted it here some months ago.

[Beery1]

Of all memes, the Hitler meme from Der Untergang is by far my favourite. Glad to see the peak oil one is a good one. They're not always so good.

[sparky]

.
Certainly Oil was a strategic necessity
Hitler had Romanian supply some fields in Hungary , southern Poland and Alsace
( I'm not sure about the Netherlander as supplier )
they exploited the bituminous shale in Estonia and made intensive use of the Fischer–Tropsch process
The civilian population had to do with wood distilate stove mounted on the vehicle
it was deadly dangerous , grossly inefficient and slow to start
all the forest were being used up at a fast rate

Britain had an oil field , very secret , they trashed it to get as much oil as they could
it produced the equivalent of a dozen of tankers a year of very fine oil

[steam_cannon]

.
Certainly Oil was a strategic necessity
Hitler had Romanian supply some fields in Hungary , southern Poland and Alsace
( I'm not sure about the Netherlander as supplier )
they exploited the bituminous shale in Estonia and made intensive use of the Fischer–Tropsch process
The civilian population had to do with wood distillate stove mounted on the vehicle
it was deadly dangerous , grossly inefficient and slow to start
all the forest were being used up at a fast rate

Britain had an oil field , very secret , they trashed it to get as much oil as they could
it produced the equivalent of a dozen of tankers a year of very fine oil

All true and also the US was a major world supplier of oil at the time, long before we hit the US peak in 1970-72 or so.

There must have been several dozen parodies based on the same movie clip. There was a big stink about portraying living personages as Hitler...

There are thousands of videos based on this clip. Many funny videos and reaction videos. It is odd, but I say why not, they lost and it's great historical irony that instead of being feared, Hitler is just a joke in a video now.

[sparky]

.
On the importance of oil ,
early summer of 1942 , Stalin give an engineer his orders
" Hitler has said "if I don't get the Caucasian oil fields , we have lost the war "
if we loose the oilfields we loose the war ,
If the German take the fields intact , You will be shot
if the Germans don't take the fields and they are destroyed , you get shot
- But comrade , I get shot anyway
- no , keep the oil flowing for us as long as you can , not for the Nazis
use your head , go to Grozny , see Budienny ( the commander in chief of the front ) you have full powers

The Germans launched a commando raid on Maikop with the Brandenburgers special units disguised as Soviet commissars
the wells heads were exploded with railroad rails dumped into the bores
The Grozny fields were not reached and kept producing
the engineer got a medal and promoted

[Beery1]

...it's great historical irony that instead of being feared, Hitler is just a joke in a video now.

I think it's interesting that this one video clip, because of how it plays out, can cover so many topics. It's basically the essence of the Kübler-Ross model, commonly referred to as the "five stages of grief". Hitler goes through all 5 classic stages of grief in the space of 4 minutes: denial ("Can someone bring me dinner"), anger ("You promised that fracking would work!"), depression ("Our industrial economy is finished"), bargaining ("Tell everybody to keep drilling") and acceptance ("Wind and solar power will not save you").

[ROCKMAN]

sparky - "The Grozny fields were not reached and kept producing the engineer got a medal and promoted". Thanks. Now we know what BP based their management training programs on.

[westexas]

FYI, I sent the link to JHK (who had not seen it).

I told Jim that he probably didn't know that Hitler was a fan. Jim said that, with Hitler as a fan, there goes his political career.

[vision-master]

Hitler was right.

[Beery1]

FYI, I sent the link to JHK (who had not seen it).

I told Jim that he probably didn't know that Hitler was a fan. Jim said that, with Hitler as a fan, there goes his political career.

Well, I guess JHK can take comfort in the fact that Hitler only became a fan when he accepted the truth that it was all over for him. Before that, he was hoping for a Happy Meal.

[Plantagenet]

Someone should remind Peak Oil Hitler about synthetic oil production, i.e. turning coal and oil shale into diesel gasoline through the Bergius process.

Thats how Germany fueled itself through the later parts of WWII.

The Bergius process plants were Nazi Germany's primary source of high-grade aviation gasoline, synthetic oil, synthetic rubber, synthetic methanol, synthetic ammonia, and nitric acid. Nearly one third of the Bergius production was produced by plants in Pölitz (Polish: Police) and Leuna, with 1/3 more in five other plants (Ludwigshafen had a much smaller Bergius plant[16] which improved "gasoline quality by dehydrogenation" using the DHD process).[14]
Synthetic fuel grades included "T.L. [jet] fuel ", "first quality aviation gasoline", "aviation base gasoline", and "gasoline - middle oil";[14] and "producer gas" and diesel were synthesized for fuel as well (e.g., converted armored tanks used producer gas).[13]:4,s2 By early 1944, German synthetic fuel production had reached more than 124,000 barrels per day (19,700 m3/d) from 25 plants,[17][verification needed] including 10 in the Ruhr Area.[18]:239 In 1937, the four central Germany lignite coal plants at Böhlen, Leuna, Magdeburg/Rothensee, and Zeitz, along with the Ruhr Area bituminous coal plant at Scholven/Buer, had produced 4.8 million barrels (760×103 m3) of fuel. Four new hydrogenation plants (German: Hydrierwerke) were subsequently erected at Bottrop-Welheim (which used "Bituminous coal tar pitch"),[14] Gelsenkirchen (Nordstern), Pölitz, and, at 200,000 tons/yr[14] Wesseling.[19] Nordstern and Pölitz/Stettin used bituminous coal, as did the new Blechhammer plants.[14] Heydebreck synthesized food oil, which was tested on concentration camp prisoners.[20] The Geilenberg Special Staff was using 350,000 mostly foreign forced laborers to reconstruct the bombed synthetic oil plants,[18]:210,224 and, in an emergency decentralization program, to build 7 underground hydrogenation plants for bombing protection (none were completed). (Planners had rejected an earlier such proposal because the war was to be won before the bunkers would be completed.)[16] In July 1944, the 'Cuckoo' project underground synthetic oil plant (800,000 m2) was being "carved out of the Himmelsburg" North of the Mittelwerk, but the plant was unfinished at the end of WWII.[13]

--Wikipedia

[TheDude]

Ha, that was great. Only thing he didn't rant about was hydrogen. Just about every greeny out there would believe we could all tool around powered by Mickey D's fryer oil, too...between this and HorseCent's presentation I'm good to go video-wise.