Financial History Issue 133 (Spring 2020) | Page 30
The Importance
of Oil in World War II
By Michael A. Martorelli
It may be an overstatement to assert
that World War II was all about oil. But
the historical record suggests that concerns
about supplying oil to mobile military
forces on land, on the sea and in the air
weighed heavy on the minds of senior
leaders of the war’s major combatants.
This examination of those efforts in Japan,
Germany and the United States focuses on
the raw material of oil rather than the hun-
dreds of distillates required to operate and
lubricate various types of trucks, tanks,
planes, ships and other machines of war.
Aerial view of bomb-damaged oil storage tanks
at the I.G. Faben industrial plant on the bank of
the Rhine River after an Allied air attack on the
devastated city, circa 1945.
Japan Faces a Continuous Challenge
In the mid-1930s, Japanese leaders began
laying plans for military and economic
dominance over what they would later
label the Greater East Asia Co-Prosper-
ity Sphere. They realized that creating
an “Asia for Asians” would require the
aggressive development of their country’s
limited natural resources and the “libera-
tion” of many nearby resource-rich lands
from their Western colonial powers. In
1937, army generals lusted after the min-
eral deposits in Manchuria, Inner Mongo-
lia and French Indochina. The admirals of
the Imperial Navy coveted the oil fields of
Borneo, Malaya and other islands in the
Dutch East Indies, i.e. the Southern Zone.
At that time, Japan was importing 80%
of its growing oil requirements from the
28 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring 2020 | www.MoAF.org
United States. So the government pushed
for more production from the country’s
own refining industry and re-established a
long dormant (and ultimately unsuccess-
ful) program trying to synthesize liquid
fuel from coal.
In July 1941, with its oil supplies steadily
diminishing, Japan launched its long-con-
templated invasion of southern Indochina.
That action prompted President Franklin D.
Roosevelt to freeze Japan’s financial assets in
the United States and impose what became
a de facto embargo on selling the country
any more oil. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,
the Commander in Chief of Japan’s Com-
bined Fleet, believed a pre-emptive attack
on the American Navy at Pearl Harbor was
a worthwhile military objective. He also
viewed the strike as both a way to provide
protection for the Japanese army’s flank as