The proposed advance into the Caucuses, is yet another example of just how incompetent the German General Staff and Hitler were when it came to making strategic decisions. What was the basic plan, to invade the Caucuses and capture the oil fields thus eliminating the German shortage of oil, which all sounds good, but doesn’t make sense. No one in the German command structure had worked out either how to capture the oil fields in a working condition, or how if they were able to do so, how to get the oil back to Germany and refine it into usable products. Unlike the Americans and British, the Germans do not have massive number of workers skilled in working oil fields, production, transportation and refining oil. And the two companies with the most skills in this field, one is British BP, and the other Anglo Dutch, RDS, Germany has very few oil workers, and little to nothing of the vital equipment needed to exploit an oil field, or the transport assets to move the crude to refineries under its control. If it had been able to capture the oil fields intact, highly doubtful, it would then have the problem of transporting either petroleum products distilled in local refineries, manned by whom, or crude to existing refineries under German control. There are only two ways to transport the oil, overland or a combination of overland and via water. Given the major problems that the Germans were already experiencing with the rail network, and the shortage of rolling stock and engines, plus the high comparative cost of rail transport to water, this method is far from being a solution. To add to the already overloaded Soviet and German rail systems the number of trains required to make up for the shortages of oil that the Germans had is practically impossible. Nor given the lack of experience the Germans had, along with the lack of resources, would it be possible to construct a pipeline, which doesn’t just require the pipeline but also multiple pumping stations. To send the oil by water, requires its transport to a suitable port on the Black Sea, storage at the port and subsequent transfer onto tankers that the Germans don’t have, and convoying by escorts that they also don’t have. To either a port in Romania or Hungry, for refining and onward distribution. Or across the Black Sea, through the Dardanelles, under full observation by the British, and subsequently through the Mediterranean against a fleet of RN surface vessels and submarines, plus ITTL aircraft based in Crete, a recipe for disaster, as the Germans and Italians find out what it is to fight a convoy war in very restricted waters against one of the world’s two major Navies. The Germans who entered this war despite not having a secure virtually unlimited supply of two of the basic requirements of modern warfare, oil and rubber, and subsequently failed to remove their principal opponent preventing them access to these resources Britain. When they failed, having eliminated France from the equation, to either successfully invade the UK or gain a piece agreement, stand no chance of successfully exploiting the Soviet oilfields in the Caucuses even if they should capture them intact.
RR.