Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Was the Afrika Korps worth it?" video.

  1.  @roberthansen5727  Iraq would supplement European output.
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  2. Geoff Halsey Circling the Med was no side show.
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  3.  @monkeydank7842  The British were in the way.
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  4. Saeronor Look up Churchill and the soft underbelly of Europe.
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  5.  @phoenixjz4782  Britain controlled the entrance to the Atlantic from the Med and also the eastern Med. At times the Royal Nay were freely sailing anywhere. The Italians mainly control around Italy. Britain had Malta right off Italy all through WW2 and managed to supply the island. Britain surrounded Germany imposing a blockade. They had the land from Turkey to Libya, much of the Med and the eastern Atlantic. Germany was being starved of resources. The U-Boat campaign was partially to distract the Royal Navy, to allow merchant blockade runners into Nazi Germany. They were short of everything. All of the Italian fleet at no time could put to sea as one because of a lack of oil, the British blockade was so effective.
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  6. @ @MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized  The British had refineries at Suez and Haifa with a pipeline all along the Suez Canal in case the canal is out of action by air bombing. The British armies in North Africa and the Middle East had no problems with fuel supplies. The refineries at Suez and Haifa were small but could easily be expanded. Haifa was supplied by pipeline from Iraq, however the Royal Navy insisted it have oil tanker facilities to cope if the pipeline is cut.
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  7. @Bill Carson Amazing. What time was this? I am totally unaware of this.
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  8.  @roberthansen5727  You don't say. :)
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  9.  @przemysawlib4309  Romania did not produce enough oil. Soviet oil fields were not in Germany's sphere. The Soviets destroyed them all. The British surrounded the Axis dictating where battles would be fought. The British controlled from Turkey to Libya, the Eastern Med', the access point of the Med' to the Atlantic and even a base at Malta off Italy all through WW2. They controlled the eastern Atlantic. If the Germans managed to get the Soviet oil wells operational they could send in bombers from the Middle East.
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  10.  @przemysawlib4309  You are confused. The British controlled the Middle East. The Germans were on their last legs when they entered the destroyed German oil fields.
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  11. If the Germans circled the Mediterranean, controlling the Suez Canal, they would have won. They aimed to meet up with the Japanese. There would be no barrier to that. BTW, over 30 U-Boats operated from the Japanese base in Penang, indicating this link up was serious. Look up the German Mesopotamia plan. Scarce oil would not be a problem to them once in the Middle East. The British deprived Germany and Italy of oil. In 1942 the Germans concentrated on the south of the USSR to get the oil. Prof Adam Tooze: "By February 1941, the Italian navy was threatening to halt its operations in the Mediterranean altogether unless Germany supplied at least 250,000 tons of fuel. And the problems were by no means confined to the Reich's satellites. Germany itself coped only by dint of extreme economy. In late May 1941, General Adolf von Schell, the man responsible for the motor vehicle industry, seriously suggested that in light of the chronic shortage of oil it would be advisable to carry out a partial 'demotorization' of the Wehrmacht." Prof Adam Tooze: "In fact, however, tank production by the end of the war comfortably exceeded the quantities specified in the army's Mesopotamian fantasy. And this increase in production was only possible because the army's post-Barbarossa planning did not remain on paper. In 1941 hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks were invested in the tank industry. In Kassel, Henschel & Sohn added almost a hundred thousand square metres of new floor space. A gigantic new plant, the Nibelungen works, was opened at Sankt Valentin, Austria, and two new factories - Vomag at Plauen and the Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen - were converted to tank production."
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