An Elk River Boy made good

The original "war for oil"

Wars have been about oil or a similar fuel for more than 100 years. After the Spanish American War of 1898, the United States demanded and received nearly all of Spain's remaining colonies, such as Guam and the Phillipines. We wanted these far-flung islands so we could refuel our ships.

World War II was the original war for oil. The key reason for U.S. involvement, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was oil-related and virtually every facet of the war had something to do with oil.

The major difference was we had the oil. The other guys didn't. That's what brought us into the war in the first place and a major reason we won it.

In 1940, the United States was a key oil exporter and perhaps nobody was more reliant upon U.S. oil than the Empire of Japan. After France surrendered to Germany in 1940, Japan took part of the former French Indo-China colony (Vietnam). When Japan took the entire colony a year later, the U.S. embargoed all oil shipments to Japan.

Japan had to look elsewhere for oil and the only place it could find it was in was in British and Dutch possessions in the Southwest Pacific. For the empire, Pearl Harbor was a strike to keep the American Pacific fleet from hampering their attack on oil sources, as well as other expansions of the empire.

During the war in the Pacific, we managed to cripple Japan by cutting off its oil as well as supplies of other raw materials by attacks on merchant shipping that were far more successful, but less well-known than the attacks of the German U-Boats on Allied shipping.

Lack of fuel kept much of the Japanese Navy impotent during the war, much of the fleet was stuck in home port for lack of fuel. Even during the critical battle of Leyte Gulf, much of the Japanese Navy was station to protect the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies.

Yet, most of that oil shipped from Japanese possessions in the East Indies never arrived, thanks to the U.S. Submariners. Early in the war, Japan was importing 1.75 million barrels of oil per month. By August, 1943, that had fallen to 360,000 barrels per month, after that ratio of oil shipping that actually reached Japan was never higher than 28 percent. By the end of the war, that figure was closer to nine percent.

While Japan was scrounging for petroleum to fight the war, the United States military could launch assaults without worrying if they could fill up their gas tanks when personnel returned.

While Japan had virtually no natural resources for raw materials besides what it could take and hold by force, Germany had no oil, but a vast reserve of coal.

German scientists had pioneered producing liquid fuel from coal and other sources in the 1920s. As the war cut off Germany from the global oil market, synthetic fuel production went into high gear and production stood at over 125,000 barrels per day in 1944.

Even so, it wasn't enough. What aircraft the Luftwaffe hadn't squandered during the battle of Britain was left on the ground for most of the war because of a lack of fuel.

There is not a major World War II campaign where fuel wasn't a factor. The Afrika Korps defeat in Tunisia was prefaced by a British blockade preventing petroleum and other supplies from reaching the army. The Italian Navy should have played some role, but it had no fuel to leave port. The Italian Navy required at least 200,000 tons of fuel each month for operations. By early 1942, supplies were limited to the amount aboard ship and the Italian Navy never left port after that summer.

When most people think about the reasons Hitler invaded Russia, they think of Lebensraum and this notion of an expanded German empire. That's part of it, Hitler really wanted and needed Russian oil. The irony is, Germany was able to pump very little oil from Russian oil fields, thanks to Stalin's scorched-earth policy.

We won World War II largely because we had plenty of oil. Germany and Japan lost the war because they didn't. Oil is a vital part of national security. It's even more true today than it was in the 1940s.