They Asked Speer Which Raid Hurt Germany Most. The Crews Called It Mersbloodyburg

On May 12, 1944, 886 American heavy bombers flew deep into Germany to hit the plants where Hitler's Reich turned coal into gasoline. Forty-six never came back. The next morning Albert Speer walked through the ruins of Leuna, and he later wrote that on that day the technological war was decided. So why did Germany keep fighting for almost another year? This is the full story of the oil war: the US Strategic Bombing Survey questioning Speer in a castle near Flensburg in May 1945, how Germany made aviation fuel from coal, the low-level B-24 raid on Ploesti and its five Medals of Honor, the Schweinfurt disasters and the arrival of the P-51 Mustang, Carl Spaatz's fight for the Oil Plan, Speer's warning to Hitler on the Obersalzberg, the Ultra intercepts, the 350,000 workers of the Geilenberg program, "Flak Hell" over Merseburg, and the Panzers and Me 262 jets left without fuel in the Ardennes and beyond. We also answer what viewers keep asking: why the Allies did not hit oil sooner, why the war went on until May 1945, and how much of Speer's own story was true. Sources: US Strategic Bombing Survey reports, USAAF mission records of the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, Albert Speer's memoirs and wartime reports to Hitler, Speer's correspondence with Hélène Jeanty, works of historians of the air war. 0:00 Intro 2:57 The Minister in the Castle 7:29 Gasoline From Coal 12:00 Tidal Wave: Ploesti, 1943 16:44 The Long Way to Germany 21:52 Spaatz's Gamble 24:44 The Twelfth of May 27:42 "I Shall Never Forget the Date" 31:19 Listening to the Enemy 34:17 Three Hundred Fifty Thousand Men 36:29 Flak Hell Leuna 40:51 An Army Without Gasoline 45:57 Why It Took So Long 48:12 The Storyteller 52:31 The Answer