by MonteQuest » Fri 18 May 2007, 23:23:20
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gazzatrone', ' ')Well you forgot about 1914 but thats OK, only the second largest military conflict humanity has known. Which incidentally can be considered the first real resource war. And what fighting the sentiments of a socially affected nutjob like Hitler have to do with the origins of Peak Oil you'll have to expand on. I'm pretty sure Hitler's principal concern was the development of the prominence of the German race as master over all. Not for black gold. The Third Reich (as I was reminded recently) did pretty well on supporting itself with oil from coal. Plus it started in 1939 as well.
And you can tell WWII was nothing to do with resources. If my memory serves, the Yanks wanted nothing to do with it. Until 1941 that is.
No? You forget about the Battle of Stalingrad for the oil in the Caucasus?
Or Pearl Harbor?
Nothing to do with resources?
From my book:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Montequest', 'A')fter Hitler invaded the U.S.S.R. in late June 1941, and Japan occupied the rest of Indochina, FDR froze all Japanese assets, thus cutting off trade, including oil. Without oil, Japan could not long continue the war against China; without oil, the Japanese Empire would wither and die. Japan made numerous efforts to negotiate using diplomatic measures to avoid war, but the U.S. rejected their offers. Six days before he cut the oil lifeline, he was warned in a memo from the navy chief of war plans that “doing so would lead promptly to Japanese action against the Philippines, which would involve us in a Pacific War.”
An oil embargo was an “economic war” against an oil-starved nation, and FDR had a moral duty to inform the nation that he had pushed Japan into a corner where Tokyo must yield to America’s demand─or attack. But FDR did not do so. In an August poll, Americans, by 76 percent to 24 percent, said stay out of war with Japan.
On October 30, 1941, in a campaign speech in Boston, FDR made this amazing statement: “And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I will give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”
As FDR was delivering this soothing message to the voters, the American and British military staffs were meeting secretly in Washington D.C., working out the details of a joint strategy. It was incorporated into a Navy war plan and given the code name Rainbow Number Five. We now have a great deal of information on this plan although, at the time, it was highly secret. The key for getting into the war was to maneuver the Axis powers to strike first to make it look like the U.S. was an innocent victim. Their first hope was that Germany would attack. If that didn’t work, the fallback plan was to involve Japan. While no one can deny or excuse Japan's belligerence in those days, it is also true that our government provoked that country in various ways.
On November 25, 1941, Secretary of War and CFR member, Henry L. Stimson wrote in his diary: “In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that, in order to have the full support of the American people, it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who were the aggressors… The question was, how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much damage to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.”
The next day, America demanded that Japan relinquish all conquests since 1937, withdraw all her troops from both China and Indochina—and in effect abrogate her Tripartite Treaty with Germany and Italy—as the price of lifting the embargo. To Tokyo, this was an ultimatum.
Thus the day of reckoning came for the Empire of the Sun; diplomatic surrender and humiliating retreat from China, and the end of their reign as a great power—or a desperate lunge south to seize the vital resources for which Japan was starving. But first, they had to neutralize the one force that could prevent them from doing so: the U.S. battle fleet riding at anchor at Pearl Harbor. During the two-hour raid, Japanese warplanes sunk or seriously damaged 16 major U.S. naval vessels, including six battleships, and killed 2,400 American servicemen.