Oil is the blood of machine-age warfare. No modern state can wage war successfully without a sufficient and secure supply of petroleum products, both fuel and lubricants. Germany began the European war with a precarious fuel situation and within two years it was fighting an energy colossus. America had begun the transition from coal to oil early in the twentieth century and by 1939, oil accounted for half its total energy. In that year, the United States produced twenty times more oil than Germany would at the peak of its wartime production. California alone produced more oil than the Soviet
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