31. How Vital Was the Middle East in WWII?
Another WWII “fact” that gets taken at face value has to do with Hitler’s grand designs on the Middle East. Supposedly, had the Axis won in North Africa and seized Egypt, they would have gone on to seize the rest of the Middle East and its oilfields. More importantly, they would have then gone on to outflank the Soviet Union and attack it from the south.
The concept looks good on a map, but it was unrealistic. Far from having ambitious plans for the Middle East, Hitler only got involved in North Africa in order to bail out Mussolini. In reality, the Germans kept their investment in that theater to a bare minimum, because they had greater objectives elsewhere, that had a higher claim on their resources.