Hitler's 1940 fear

Recently I watched a documentry called...The Hitler Tape...eleven minutes of a private conversation between Hitler & Marshall Mannheim in 1942. The main thing that I found intersting was Hitler feared the Soviet Union in 1940 invadding Romania or more to the point...oil refineries at Ploiesti while Hitler was busy with Case Yellow. Hitler said he believed if the Soviet Union had taken the oil feilds his war would have been over.

Was Hitler correct on what he said?

 

I don't know if the Soviet Union was truly interested in the oil fields and refineries in Romania, but yes. Hitler received a very large percentage of his oil from the Romanians. I will have to check my notes and double check which source, but IIRC somewhere around 98% or German aviation fuel (108 octane???) came from the refineries in and around Ploesti. I will double check everything and get back to you within the next 6 hours.

 

mikebatzel

Cheers...looking forward.

 

Nobody knew such details better than Hitler himself. He once told his doctor that he had nightmares of the oil fields at Ploesti "on fire from end to end".

The Russians had sent one or two relatively weak air raids against Ploesti, to little effect. The Americans also sent one raid in 1942, again to little effect. But the famous American B-24 raid on Ploesti, called Operation Tidalwave, happened in August 1943- and it was a disaster for the Americans. Hitler had ordered Ploesti very strongly defended, because it supplied about 1/3 of total German oil supplies.

The bomber force encountered a defense of flak and fighters of a ferocity heretofore never encountered by them. Of 177 bombers sent, 54 were lost to German defenses while the American strike force achieved destruction of about 42% of Ploesti's refining capacity. Perhaps due to the heavy losses no follow up strike was sent, and the Germans and Rumanians quickly repaired the damage.

Once the Russians overran Ploesti for good in autumn 1944, even Hitler must have known the end was not far. After that the Germans had to rely on their own synthetic oil plants (which made gas from coal), which were also subject to frequent bombing.

 

Hitler was indeed paranoid about losing the Ploesti oilfields so that does not surprise me.

 

I also remember reading that hitler (in his fantasy world state) even took time to plan out the recapture of the oil fields in romania while in his bunker during the last days of the battle of berlin. Even during the last few days of his life and the life of the riech he understood how important those fields were...if not a little deranged.

Also, let's not forget how he desperatly wanted to take southern russian in hopes of gaining more natural oil fields.

 

Richard, I have from Fortress Ploesti by Jay A. Stout that Operation Tidal Wave hoped to reduce Germany's refining capacity by 30 percent, and high-octane aviation fuel by 95 percent, pg 30.

Additionally, I have notes from the Air Force Historical study no. 103 that the Credential Minier refinery was the only one capable of refining 100 octane fuel. The link I had for that is now broken, so I'm not entirely sure if that is for Romania, or the Axis as a whole.

 

He sure did! Almost solely because of his desire to capture the Caucasus oil fields, and the need to distance Ploesti from Soviet air attack, Hitler ordered the diversion of German forces from the drive on Moscow in 1941.

Saying derisively , "My Generals know nothing of the economic aspects of war", Hitler ordered the German forces south, and only when it was too late in the year did he finally allow his Generals to drive on Moscow, called Operation Typhoon. The result was a disaster for German forces. It was caused in part by Stalin's recall of thousands of Red army reserves from Manchuria, but mostly by "General Winter", as much of the unprepared and poorly equipped German forces froze where they stood - some advance units within sight of the spires of the Kremlin.

Even in 1942 Hitler did not renew the drive on Moscow but instead insisted on attacking in the south once more, at first to the same success as in 1941 but finally leading to the defeat at Stalingrad, in January 1943.

 

I'm not to sure about this statement. While the threat of Soviet air attacks on the oil field, storage tanks, and refineries in the Ploesti area were very real, the reality is that the Soviets seemed decidedly uninterested. Off the top of my head only two strikes were made in the area by the Soviets prior to 1944. Neither included more than six planes. While a significant amount of damage was caused by the attacks, it was not until after the HALPRO mission that the defense of the area was given high priority. Even the intent of the Soviet attacks were not to destroy the oil fields, or refineries, but to draw the overwhelming LW forces away from other sectors. Requests were made to the Soviet Gov. to allow the HALPRO raiders the use of Soviet airfields to refuel and re-arm so they could hit the target again on the way back to base. This request was either ignored or denied. Similarly, the Soviet's were requested to follow up on Operation Tidal Wave with Soviet air strikes to both ensure the destruction of the refineries, and to drive home Soviet-American co-operation to the German's. This request was also ignored.

 

are you sure about this one mate

 

Thanks for the info, i didnt know that before - the soviets, like the Germans, lacked any real strategic bombing capability during world war 2. (In the book Citadel by Robin Cross, the author says the Soviets 1941-45, devoted only 5% of their total airpower to strategic bombing.) The British and Americans saw bombing as both a strategic and tactical weapon.
The Germans and Russians, at least at first, saw it as purely tactical. And so neither of them had any, or many, heavy bombers ready to go at the start of the war, or even by 1944-45. The closest the Germans came was the HE-177, which was a trouble-prone nightmare with a predilection for engine fires. Although a few did make it into combat service, the HE-177 was never made right in time to be used in any quantities during the war.
By the time Russia decided they needed a heavy bomber, the war was already won, anyway - and their first heavy bomber was simply a carbon copy of an American B-29 that had landed in Soviet territory (damaged during a mission). The crew was returned, Stalin kept the plane, knowing the Americans would not strain wartime Soviet relations over one plane - and Stalin was right.

The Russians never expressed any interest in hitting Ploesti because Hitler kept them out of aircraft range as long as he could. By the time they were within range of air attack (1944), soviet ground forces were moving west rapidly, anyway.