They Asked Speer Why Germany Lost the War. He Named One Target.

In the autumn of 1945, American interrogators sat down with Albert Speer, Hitler's Minister of Armaments and War Production. They did not ask whether Germany had lost. That was obvious. They asked why. Speer did not point to the Eastern Front, the burned cities or the Allied armies crossing the Rhine. He named one target: "Oil." Germany could replace damaged equipment and disperse production underground, he said, but it could not replace fuel. But the production figures for 1943 and 1944 hide a gap between what Germany built and what it could actually use. The answer had a history. On 1 August 1943, American bombers attacked Ploiești in Operation Tidal Wave. Of 177 heavy bombers, 54 were lost, and the refineries kept operating. In August 1942, German forces reached Maikop and found the wells, pipelines and refineries destroyed. By December 1944, the Ardennes offensive was planned around captured fuel: "It was a race against the fuel gauge." The factories kept building. The armies stopped moving. Chapters: 0:00 Autumn 1945 0:44 One target 0:58 One shortage 1:39 Romanian oil, synthetic fuel 2:42 The panzer arithmetic 3:14 Caucasus and Maikop 3:54 Stalingrad 4:20 The armaments miracle 5:09 Operation Tidal Wave 6:00 Oil plants in 1944 7:47 Fuel counted in percentages 8:17 Normandy 8:49 The Ardennes fuel race 9:45 Winter 1945 10:35 April 1945 11:19 The answer Sources: Albert Speer, postwar interrogation by American interrogators, 1945 Albert Speer, testimony before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1946 Official records and histories of the Ploiești raid (Operation Tidal Wave), 1 August 1943 Official records of the Allied bombing campaign against German oil plants, 1944 Footage and photographs: archival film and photographs. Some scenes are illustrative. #WWII #WorldWar2 #WW2History #AlbertSpeer #Ploiesti #Nuremberg #OperationTidalWave #Luftwaffe #Interrogation #PrimarySources #MilitaryHistory