Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Why did Synthetic OIL not solve the AXIS OIL Crisis?" video.

This is definitely not one of TIK's best efforts. I've wondered why Germany didn't ramp up coal to liquid conversion. So I watched this video. I still don't know why. Yes I understand the process is expensive, because it took 22 tonnes of coal to make 1 tonne of gasoline. But the Germans were throwing money around on lots of things. The reason why it is expensive is because the process needs a lot of energy. Energy came from coal-fired power stations - so build some more. It's no good TIK saying repeatedly it was too expensive - what were the actual technical/engineering/decision factors? So, the Nazis made only half the fuel they needed by coal conversion. An achievement that indicates mastery of the process. But why only half? What fraction of the total expenditure of funds preparing for war was the cost to make that half-requirement? Was that fraction significant? TIK doesn't address that. Were the conversion plants competing for resources for steel or restricted availability metals for catalysts or something? TIK doesn't address that. I don't know whether or not these two factors were important, but they are obvious things to follow up on. I suspect it was the same problem that caused Germany to develop no heavy bombers, jet fighters far too late, rockets too late, etc - bad planning / bad risk management. Hitler didn't like to commit funds and resources to big projects if they looked like taking more than a couple of years or so as he thought the war would be over within that time - he never planned on it lasting until 1945. Hitler did not understand risk management - that is, identify potential issues and their impact and have a strategy for dealing with them should they come to pass. He just gambled. Like a gambler playing pokie machines, he could win once or twice, but in the long haul gambling doesn't work. A lot of the big picture planning was done by Goering, who was a waste of space.
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