My Patreon, ned hulton, has asked -
Hi TIK, what do you think of this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7GZzu7XHs4 The guy basically says that the Nazis should
have invaded the Soviet Union through Turkey because 80% of their oil came from the Caucuses
region very close to the the Turkish border.
Good question! And you’re also not the only person to have asked this.
I need to start my answer by explaining to anyone who’s new to the topic or this channel
that Nazi Germany was suffering under an epic oil and fuel crisis during the Second World
War, and they needed to get to the Caucasus oil fields in order to solve this problem.
I’ve covered this in several videos which I’ll link to in the description. But despite
all the evidence I’ve presented in the past, I still get messages from people claiming
that there wasn’t a fuel crisis, or if there was, it wasn’t as important as I’ve made
it out to be, or that it wasn’t the main factor as to why Germany lost the war. And
I actually have another Patreon who has doubts about the narrative of the oil problem, specifically
because of something Göring said, and I’ll be answering him soon. But in a nutshell,
the narrative that I subscribe to is that the Germans ran out of oil (and therefore
fuel) in the autumn of 1941. This is a big reason as to why Operation Barbarossa failed,
and why they launched it in 1941 instead of waiting a year or more, and why they went
for the Caucasus in 1942 during Fall Blau, which I’ve also covered in detail in videos
I’ll link to in the description.
So, as ned has said, if the oil problem was perhaps the reason the Germans lost the war,
why not just go through Turkey to get the oil? This also makes sense because taking
Turkey would have allowed them to march into Iraq, where there was even more oil. And Turkey
was also the fourth largest producer in the world of chromite ore, with chromite being
a major element in steel production as well as other things, and the only other source
of chromite ore for the Axis was in the Balkans. So why not take Turkey? It sounds good, right?
Unfortunately the video that ned posted is no longer available, so I can’t hear the
full argument that was presented in favour of an invasion of Turkey. But I can list a
bunch of factors that would explain why the Germans wouldn’t want to go through Turkey
to get the Caucasus oil.
First, in Mein Kampf and elsewhere, Hitler made it clear that he was going East for the
resources there - specifically the food. He doesn’t actually mention oil at this stage,
just the ‘soil’, and therefore dismisses a ‘western’ or ‘southern’ conquest
because only the East could solve Germany’s ‘soil crisis’. This is directly related
to the Shrinking Markets idea, by the way.
And what we must remember is that there was a food crisis going on in Germany and Europe
at the time, and this was a major reason for why the Germans had to go East when they did.
This wasn’t the main reason they lost the war, as such. But if they’d gone into Turkey,
it’s unlikely that they could have fed themselves as well as they had done in 1941, and that
could have caused an even bigger food shortage at home and the rest of Europe, massively
impacting morale (at best) and causing unrest or even collapse (at worst). As I said, oil
is probably the main reason for why Germany lost the war, but it isn’t the only reason.
Even if it was the most important factor, we can’t just ignore the other factors as
well. And I’m not saying ‘it’s oil or nothing’. I’m saying ‘oil was the main
reason’, not the only reason. So the food crisis was very important too, even if they
managed to ‘solve’ it (sort of) by stealing food from the rest of Europe. Had they not
invaded the Soviet Union, but gone through Turkey instead, it’s doubtful that they
could have ‘solved’ the food crisis, and this would have become a disaster.
What’s also important is that Turkey itself doesn’t have any oil, whereas the western
parts of the Soviet Union do have some oil. So even if an invasion of the Soviet Union
doesn’t succeed in 1941, the Germans would be in a slightly better position than if they’d
failed to get to the Caucasus via Turkey. There was shale oil in Estonia, which is a
major reason why the Germans sent units into the north of Russia in 1941, and there was
a small amount of oil near Kiev. Estonian shale oil provided the Germans with a whopping
3.22 million tons of oil during the occupation. So this is a major consideration. There were
other resources in the Ukraine like coal and iron and so on that the Germans seized, including
slaves. The Don Basin in the Ukraine actually supplied more than half of the Soviet Union’s
coal, at around 80 million tons. So none of this would have been taken had they gone through
Turkey, and is another important factor in their reasoning to favour a strike against
the Soviet Union and not Turkey.
In addition, Hitler thought that the Soviet Union was an easy kill. Even as early as Mein
Kampf in 1923, Hitler says -
“This colossal Empire in the East is ripe for dissolution.”
And, more famously, Hitler also said -
“We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing
down.”
So Hitler genuinely believed that the Soviet Union was an easy kill and would collapse
in a matter of weeks. Therefore, why bother going indirectly through Turkey if you could
just take the soil and oil you need anyway?
“If… you really get to grips with this colossus, it will break apart far more quickly
than the whole world realises.”
We also have to consider that the Balkan campaign was supposed to have caused a delay with Barbarossa.
This is certainly debatable, and I would argue against it as well, but some still stand by
this assessment. Okay well, regardless of whether the Balkans did cause a delay or not,
there can be no doubt though that if they had attacked Turkey after the Balkans in 1941,
then they definitely would have had to delay Barbarossa until later in 1941 (which probably
would have been too late) or even 1942. If they had decided to not delay but to attack
both countries at the same time in June 1941, this would have diluted their strength in
both conflicts, and neither attack would have succeeded. So this was out of the question.
But then you might say, well why not just attack Turkey first, then go for the Soviet
Union? Well, an invasion of Turkey first would have indicated to Stalin what Hitler’s intentions
were. Turkey is vitally important to Russia and/or the Soviet Union because the Black
Sea fleet needs to go through it to get to the Mediterranean. The Bosphorus is a strategically
important choke-point for the Russian and Soviet navies. If Germany takes this, Stalin
would not be pleased, which would heighten tensions between him and Hitler, and he may
have reacted by preparing his armies for conflict.
When Barbarossa happened, Stalin was taken by surprise. There’s plenty of evidence
to suggest that he simply dismissed the copious warning signs and information that was being
passed to him (I need to do a video on this at some point). But the point is that a German
invasion of Turkey would have been a massive indication to Stalin that Hitler intended
to not only corner the Soviet Black Sea fleet, but also that Hitler was heading towards the
Caucasus. The element of surprise would have been lost, and Stalin would have been better
prepared for a subsequent German attack. Barbarossa would therefore not have been as ‘successful’
as it was. I know it ultimately failed, but did destroy a lot of Soviet divisions, and
a significant reason for that was due to the fact that the Soviets were taken by surprise.
Once Hitler was committed to the Soviet Union, they really couldn’t spare the troops for
an invasion of another country. They struggled to find the troops to invade Sweden - the
so-called Schell Plan - and certainly couldn’t invade Turkey. (Again, I’ve discussed the
Schell Plan in another video.) So I really think that Hitler thought the Soviet Union
would collapse quickly, they’d get all the resources they’d need, and live happily
ever after. But once they committed to that invasion, and the invasion broke down, it
was too late to pull troops out of the east to send them to invade Turkey. The only option
at that point would be to get the Turks on their side, which was actually a possibility,
although ultimately it didn’t happen.
We must remember that the Germans failed to take the entire Caucasus in either 1941 or
1942, and I would also argue that it was equally as unrealistic for them to have gone through
Turkey anyway. The Turkish army would have offered resistance, and even if they had failed,
they could have kept on fighting like the Yugoslavian Partisans or the Polish resistance
and so on. Worse, unlike the others, they could have been directly assisted by either
the British (who had an entire army in northern Iraq), or the Soviets (who could have come
in to assist, either directly, or by attacking the Germans head-on). They could have even
been assisted by both at the same time, although I don’t think the Soviets would have directly
cooperated with the British or the Turks. Turkey is also a hot and hilly country, which
would have further bogged down the Germans and made resistance more effective. Let’s
not forget that the Russian steppe was largely flat and open, making it great for panzer
operations. Turkey isn’t like that at all, so there’s more chance for stoppages.
Plus, their logistics would have been massively strained. If you think about it, the only
way to supply German forces in Turkey via land would have been through the Bosphorus.
Even assuming they captured Istanbul and the bridges there, this would have been a very
easy place to interdict German supplies. The Soviets could have sailed their fleet to the
area to blast the bridges apart. The British could have done something similar, or even
bombed the bridges. The Germans didn’t have the fuel to really supply their troops by
sea. And even if this route was secure, that’s a lot of trucks and trains coming through
what is essentially a massive bottleneck. So this would have limited their supplies,
and ultimately the number of divisions, that they could have sent through Turkey.
Some have suggested that the Germans were receiving chromite ore supplies from the Turks,
and that Turkish chromite ore was vital to the German economy. This reason is used as
another excuse not to invade Turkey in 1941. And while it is true that chromite ore, once
turned into chromium, was essential in steel production (especially high-quality steel
and alloys for weapons and engineering), the problem with that narrative is that, according
to the US State Department, Germany had a large enough stockpile of chromite ore to
last them in the years 1941 and 1942. It was only in 1943 that they got short of chromite
ore, which was why Turkey only started shipping chromite ore to Germany from January 1943
onwards, even though they had signed a deal in 1941. So, on the one hand, capturing Turkish
chromite ore mines wouldn’t be a major concern for the Germans in 1941, who would be assuming
that they’d take out the Soviet Union by then anyway. But on the other hand, the fact
that Turkey could cut off supplies of chromite ore or destroy their mines in the event of
an invasion, can’t be used as an excuse for why the Germans didn’t go through Turkey
to the Caucasus, because the Turks weren’t sending them chromite ore during this period
anyway. So I would suggest that the chromite ore problem only became an issue from 1943
onwards, and that this wasn’t a factor either way for the German decision not go through
Turkey.
This then points us to the conclusion that Hitler genuinely thought that the Soviet Union
would collapse anyway, so there would be no reason to go through Turkey, and that it wasn’t
a logistically or militarily sound strategy anyway. But when they got bogged down in the
Soviet Union, they then couldn’t spare the troops to invade Turkey.
That said, there was talk of invading Turkey later, after Barbarossa, or, at least, getting
her on the side of the Axis. Führer Directive Number 32 lays out what Hitler was planning
in the future.
“After the destruction of the Soviet Armed Forces, Germany and Italy will be military
masters of the European Continent—with the temporary exception of the Iberian Peninsula.
No serious threat to Europe by land will then remain.”
Further along he says -
“The possibility of exerting strong pressure on Turkey and Iran improves the prospect of
making direct or indirect use of these countries in the struggle against England.”
He explains that about 60 divisions would need to be stationed in the Soviet Union,
but that -
“The struggle against the British positions in the Mediterranean and in Western Asia will
be continued by converging attacks launched from Libya through Egypt, from Bulgaria through
Turkey, and in certain circumstances also from Transcaucasia through Iran.”
Later he says -
“In view of the expected British reinforcement of the Near and Middle East, especially for
the defence of the Suez Canal, a German operation from Bulgaria through Turkey will be planned,
with the aim of attacking the British position on the Suez Canal from the East also. To this
end plans must be made to assemble in Bulgaria as soon as possible sufficient forces to render
Turkey politically amenable or to overpower her resistance.”
All this would only happen after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And this was assuming
they could spare the troops from the occupation of the Russian lands. But the point is that
Hitler specifically stated that he wasn’t considering an invasion of Turkey until after
Barbarossa had been successful. And it all goes back to this idea that the Soviet Union
would be a push-over. We know that was a mistaken assumption. But Hitler and the Germans overestimated
their own superiority, and underestimated the Soviet Union’s determination to continue
the fight regardless of the loss. Let me know what you guys think. Thanks for watching,
bye for now.