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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

The significance of fuel, and petroleum specifiically, to war operations is a significant part of Daniel Yergin's epic history of petroleum, The Prize.

It includes not only WWII, in which oil (much supplied by the US to both its own and allied forces, though with Russian and Romanian production also significant) was determinative, but WWI, in which the significance of oil, and its role in transforming infantry and cavalry to a mechanised army and nascent air forces was first realised.

Very strongly recommended.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/255903487

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I came here to say something along these lines. One statistic from that book I’ve always loved is that the Allies burned seven billion barrels of oil during WWII - and six billion of them were pumped from the United States.

The transformational force of oil, and the quantities involved, were indeed staggering.

I'd like to add: I don't share Yergin's sympathies and enthusiasm for the oil industry or petroleum itself. Despite that, his book really is a treasure, and is among the better histories of energy out there.

I'd include the more broadly-scoped works by Vaclav Smil (Energy and Civilization <https://www.worldcat.org/title/959698256> and Energy in World History <https://www.worldcat.org/title/30398523>) and Manfred Weissenbacher (Sources of Power <https://www.worldcat.org/title/416715097>).

Wiessenbacher in particular emphasizes the political and military implications of energy regimes.

Heh, the modern world would eat that much in about two months. 4? years compressed to 0.25 of a year? (basis ~90mn/day)

Yup. And a lot of that came from Texas

Yep, and lots from the Permian Basin in particular, which is of course still an extremely productive field to this day.

The resurgence of continental U.S. oil production is a fascinating story and a technological marvel. There are upsides and downsides to fossil fuel extraction at that scale, but like the original posted noted, the transformational impact cannot be understated.

Far and away the best book on the material and energy constraints that defined Germany's warpath in WW2 - including why it recklessly struck out to open the eastern front - is Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction

It's a dense book, but it's absolutely fascinating. I've been reading about the war for years, but this book upended my perspective.

More than that, the book begins in the mid 19th century, to explain the discovery of oil as a source of superior fuels for the modern industrial world, which then became heavily dependent on acquiring it to maintain economic dominance. That securing control of oil rich territories was the main strategic goal of both World Wars. At least that’s what I took from the book.

Right. It opens in 1854 discussing the prelude to what would be the first successful petroleum well in the U.S. at Oil Creek, near Titusville, PA, by Col. Edwin Drake, completed in 1869.

Europe had already been drilling and refining oil in Silesia for a decade or more by the time of Drake's well.

Of all the theories proposed as to why Nazi Germany attacked on the Soviet front, securing oil is the only one that ever made sense to me.

read that, can recommend also "The Taking of Getty Oil" for a more domestic, modern angle.

Thanks, new to me!

I will break protocol and say that it means something to me to have you say that !

I'm here much as many others are --- to share and to learn.

Hopefully (and most usually) far more of the latter than former.

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