15. Where did Germany get its fuel for its war machine?
Oil was a critical factor of the Second World War, in many ways the most critical, since the military of all the combatants needed it to operate. Cutting off Germany’s supply of oil was a major part of Allied strategy. But the Germans continued to possess adequate supplies up to the last days of the war, in part because they created synthetic fuels from coal, which the Germans possessed in abundance. The Germans operated 25 synthetic fuel plants by 1944, which produced the majority of their highest grade aviation fuel used for jet engines, lower grade aviation gasoline, and production grade gasoline, as well as diesel fuel. The Germans were at their peak level of production manufacturing nearly 125,000 barrels of synthetic fuels from coal per day, despite the Allied bombing of plants and coal mines, as well as the railroads which connected them.
Following the war the technology to produce gasoline from coal was brought to the United States from Germany, and several experimental plants were established. A plant in Louisiana was established in 1950 and produced about 7,000 barrels per day before it was shut down in 1955. The massive oil finds in the Middle East made the cost of crude oil cheaper than the manufacturing of fuels from coal, and American oil companies chose to discard the coal conversion process. The German creation of liquid fuels from coal was not their only source of fuel, the oil fields of the Caucasus were critical as well, but even prior to the war the majority of the fuel produced for their military, especially the Luftwaffe, was coming from converted coal.