Synthetic fuels were produced using the Fischer-Tropsch process, invented and commercialised in Germany. The technology supplied by Standard Oil (against US State Department advice) was tetra-ethyl lead, essential for making high-octane fuel. Standard Oil was at the time part of a patent sharing agreement with various German companies (IIRC the relevant one here was IG Farben).
What about ‘Fanta’ then?
& is it true that the ‘Tang’ sucked down by the Astronauts…
…was like-wise originally a Nazi-science [synthetic] development?
Tang? They had powered drinks in their c-rats during WWII…
Regarding “Tang” - me no understand. Regarding artificial petroleum - One major problem with this was that, at the time, the technology available to convert available carbon inputs into oil was highly inefficient. It was a bit like the “oxen problem” faced by commanders in the pre-motorised age. You need oxen or horses to drag your essential supplies across hostile territory; but the oxen/horses eat hay. Otherwise they die. So - in areas like those encountered by Wellington in India, or by Chelmsford in South Africa, where the target territory was short on fodder - you are faced with the problem of deciding how much cost (in terms of hay loaded on ox carts) could you bear in order to ensure that the oxen were fed, before the whole operation became counter-productive and self-defeating. In the 1940s, the option of employing artificial fuels was a very costly one, compared with that of acquiring access to natural oilfields. This was made worse by the vulnerability of artificial fuel plants to aerial bombardment - something that became more and more of a problem as the war dragged on. If Hitler - or Speer - thought that artificial petroleum could be the solution to their fuel problems in the medium to long term, they were seriously deluded. Best regards, JR.
If it’s the same stuff we had here in my 1950s / 1960s childhood, it was an orange flavoured powder added to water to make a soft drink.
Possibly too technically advanced to have been sold in Ireland at the time. 
Actually, I remember encountering a locally-branded product conforming to this description in my extreme youth - but only on visits to Northern Ireland. Well, we must have been really backward. Especially if we felt that Northern Ireland was advanced by comparison. Kidding (I think), JR.:rolleyes:
The oxen problem was a significant one for the Germans as they relied much more on horse drawn transport than the British Commonwealth and Americans, not least because Germany didn’t have the petroleum resources of the latter forces.
Which in part determined Germany strategy in striking into oilfields, in the same way that it determined Japanese strategy to a much greater and more urgent degree in propelling Japan to war.
Possibly not available in the true Ireland because of some sort of trade restraint; not a market worth pursuing; or because NI got it as a spill over from England / Scotland / Wales as a major market.
Agree absolutely. One point to remember, I suppose, is that in Western Europe, fodder was relatively easily available (albeit by “requisitioning” the produce of local farmers), which would have made the “oxen problem” more manageable. In Russia, the situation would have required a deal more management, given the Winter conditions that obtain there. I suspect that many German horses (not to mention French, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian … horses) ended up as boiled horse stew as a second-best option … Best regards, JR.
Possibly.
But the consequence on even a moderate scale would be that taking fodder from farmers reduces their ability to produce whatever they produce with their horses, oxen etc and to transport it to market etc.
This in turn reduces the produce available to requisition to feed German troops.
It also increases the natural hostility of farmers to invaders extorting them, and encourages concealment of produce or just not bothering to produce it or selling on a black market.
Ultimately it is probably counterproductive in economic terms, at least in an occupied country like France where farmers didn’t have a German gun to their head to produce.
Like the ‘Red Ball Express’ (all the logistics) in France in 1944 and in the Western Desert from 1940 to 1943 (depending on who was winning at the time) - They were using more and more fuel to deliver the distances so reducing the amount of supplies to the front.
@Rising Sun* - again, I fully agree. However, there it is surely probable that the Germans did exactly that, certainly when crossing France and the Low Countries in the first place, in order to meet immediate fodder needs. They certainly do not seem to have been reluctant to requisition other agricultural materiél. An interesting perspective is that of Irene Némirovsky - the Russo-Jewish novelist who spent a period of the early war in rural France, prior to her fatal “resettlement” in the East. Her unfinished novel/trilogy, “Suite Francaise” features the requisitioning of horses by the German Army, most probably in the 1941/'42 period (Nemirovsky is a bit vague on the point). Horses were an essential asset in French agriculture in this period - as much as they were essential as draught animals in the German Army. The Germans seem to have had no hesitation whatsoever in requisitioning large numbers of horses for the Eastern campaign, even though this would have had a severe impact on the ability of the French agricultural polulation to produce food, either for themselves or for the German war effort. Quite early on, it would appear that the more immediate imperatives took precedence over even slightly longer term, if notheless vital, priorities. Best regards, JR.
It cuts both ways.
The aggressor does well until he outruns his lines of communication.
The defender does poorly until his lines of communication shorten.
The Kokoda campaign in 1942 is one of the best examples of this at the simplest level, with soldiers and native carriers on both sides having to carry their own supplies as well as their cargo. By the time the more or less victorious Japanese were in sight of their objective at Port Moresby, they were sick, underfed and undersupplied. Meanwhile the Australians, who had been sick, underfed and undersupplied at the other end of the campaign, were close to their base and had reversed those issues.
I can’t recall the ratios, but even the local natives who were well acclimatised to the conditions carried less and less cargo as the force they were supplying advanced, to the extent that quite a few natives were required just to support the load of the one who got through.
Perhaps this just reflects a plunder mentality in the Germans in pursuit of Hitler’s eastern Lebensraum policy rather than any balanced assessment of the overall economic effects on the occupied territories and Germany of such short-sighted actions.
Pretty much the same way that most modern corporations, run by variations of Hitler, conduct their businesses.
French agricultural production crashed during the war - fuel to get perishable goods (milk, etc.) to market wasn’t available, and IIRC nitrogenous fertilizers were either in short supply or unobtainable (nitrates were used for explosives instead). Similar story with most French production - lack of capital expenditure and even food for the workers meant a rapid decline in production and that the Germans didn’t get much value out of their conquests.
In a nutshell, it gives away another part of the succes of the German western campaign of 1940: quick, short fronts. The resources were drawn away much slower than the front evolved.
Or, the other way around: gained resources of the annexed lands were very easy brought to the industrial centre. One cannot overestimate the fact that the Germans won in may-june 1940 “just” as much land (3 countries) as is spread over the Ukraine alone. And this land was industrialized, dense and full of (rail)roads. It makes you think the Germans had all the “quality lebensraum” they wanted without invading Russia. 
Of course, they didn’t realize yet the existence of all the oil and gas that was waiting there near the Netherlands and Norway
Add in the disadvantage to Britain of fighting and supplying across the Channel, which after the defensive / retreat phase leading to Dunkirk turned into an advantage frustrating a German invasion.
It never ceases to amaze me just how little mechanized the German army really was. Contrary to the popular image of Blitzkrieg as a machine-driven army, the Germans relied on massive numbers of horses. These western creatures didn’t fare too well in a Russian winter. This, as compared to the British and American armies which basically used no horses.
yes, … however, France was not an enemy AND was industrialized. The French army was considered (not saying it was fit) the strongest (at least on land) by shear numbers alone. By the time the Germans invade the low countries, the mainland of France was not yet hit, leaving all logistics to breathe freely. The UK had time from september 1939 to may 1940 to organize.
And the fact is, it is NOT that the germans were not capable of thinking about mechanized warfare, nor were they disgusted by it.
They simply needed their scarce resources (including fuel) for the battle units first. I guess the Luftwaffe needed the most. Made sense. We all know what would have happened without the Luftwaffe. We all would not be talking about the “myth of the strong blitzkrieg panzers” for starters