Fueling the Third Reich
ARNOLD KRAMMER
https://ia801008.us.archive.org/16/items/FuelingTheThirdReich/Fueling%20the%20Third%20Reich.pdf

"The Kingdom of Heaven runs on righteousness," declared Ernest Bevin during a heated argument in the British Parliament over a distasteful decision in the Middle East, "but the Kingdom of Earth runs on OIL!" If these words were a political reality to Britain in 1948, they would have been embraced with religious fervor by Germany during the period of the Third Reich. Without oil, and the fuel and lubricants which are produced from oil, every form of mechanized transportation, heating, and military defense is paralyzed. Any nation in that position becomes utterly dependent upon foreign sources for its life's blood and, in effect, surrenders its sovereignty. For Germany, between 1919 and 1945, the question of oil-its production, importation, synthesization, stockpiling, allocation, and consumption occupied a status which was second only to the survival of the political state. History proved that these priorities were not, in fact, in error, for with the destruction of the fuel industry, the collapse of the state was virtually assured. Germany's preoccupation with fuel, however, and its crucial relationship to the state, became a reality as a result of the First World War.

DR. KRAMMER is associate professor of history at Texas A&M University. He is the
author of numerous works on modern Germany and is a principal investigator of a
major project to reevaluate German technology on synthetic petrochemicals for potential current application.
1978 by the Society for the History of Technology. 0040-165X/78/1903-0003$02.25