The loss of Romania by the Axis powers was a foregone conclusion, and the Soviet Red Army won a brilliant victory on the Romanian battlefield, gaining control of the Romanian Ploiesti oil fields. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Despite this, the Soviet Red Army suffered more than 100,000 casualties in this battle, and all kinds of problems of the Soviet Red Army, including logistical, military discipline, and command problems, were exposed.

Even this did not stop the Soviet victory, and by the end of 1941, the Soviet Red Army, together with the Romanian army, had driven out the Germans in Romania and annihilated the 11th Army under the command of Manstein.

Since then, Germany has lost an entire army group, as well as an important ally (Romania is a country that can afford hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of troops).

What's more, they lost Romania's oil supply, making it difficult for them to maintain more than 600,000 trucks, thousands of tanks, thousands of planes, and even the operation of related industrial systems.

This was a huge loss for Germany, and indeed for the entire Axis camp.

If they were to keep the Axis war machine running, they would have to find a way to get enough oil. To get enough oil, they will have to acquire more oil fields or build more coal-to-liquid facilities.

At present, in order to acquire more oil fields, the Axis powers must acquire more land with oil resources by force.

But now they have the ability to seize not many large oil fields, and the closest to them, in addition to the Ploiesti oil fields in Romania, are the Caucasus oil fields, as well as the Middle East oil fields.

However, the Ploiesti oil fields had been seized by the Soviet Red Army, the Caucasus oil fields were firmly in the hands of the Soviet Union, most of the oil resources in the Middle East had not been discovered, Iran, the only Middle Eastern country that produced oil on a large scale, was occupied by the Soviet Red Army and the British army, and the Suez Canal leading to Iran was firmly controlled by the British.

If Germany were to acquire Iranian oil fields, their Afrika Korps would have to take Egypt, take control of the Suez Canal, and move closer to Iran.

However, their navy did not have naval supremacy in the Mediterranean, and the fleet supporting the logistics of the Afrika Korps was harassed by the British Navy from time to time, making it difficult for the Afrika Korps to obtain sufficient logistical supplies to support a new offensive.

In addition, the battlefield on the Eastern Front is now stalemate, and the Soviet army has more and more troops, and the German army has to deploy more and more troops on the Eastern Front to prevent the Soviet army from taking advantage of the situation to counterattack. If the German army opens up a new battlefield and invests a large number of troops, even if the German population can support it, I am afraid that their logistical supply and industrial production system will be on their knees.

Hitler did not anticipate the occupation of Romania by the Soviets, let alone the fact that the Romanian king and their army would side with the Soviet Red Army at such a critical moment.

If none of this had happened, perhaps the Germans would have been able to achieve their original plan.

According to the original plan, the German army originally planned to destroy the Soviet Union first, occupy the Caucasus, seize the Baku oil fields, and then move south from the Caucasus to join forces with the Afrika Korps in the Middle East.

However, at this time, the Germans, despite the dispatch of millions of troops and the heavy casualties, still failed to make a breakthrough on the battlefield of the Soviet Union, and instead lost their most important oil supply - Romania.

In this way, if Germany were to acquire more oil resources to support future wars, they would have no better way than to concentrate their forces and launch a counterattack against Romania to recapture the Ploiesti oil fields.

Of course, it is not impossible to develop Germany's domestic oil fields, in fact, in 1941 Germany produced 5.7 million tons of oil.

Historically, Germany's oil production during World War II has been increasing, reaching 7.6 million tons in 1943.

However, the millions of tons of oil produced could not support the operation of the huge war machine of the Third Reich, so they also obtained additional fuel oil and lubricants by making oil from coal.

The so-called coal-to-liquid is actually a method of converting coal into oil. Invented in 1913 by German scientist Friedrich Begius, this technology provided a way for oil-poor Germany to obtain fuel and lubricants.

He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931 for this invention, and it was this invention that provided Germany with a large supply of fuel and lubricants, and supported the operation of the war machine of the German Third Reich.

In 1941 alone, Germany produced 3.9 million tonnes of coal-to-liquids, and by 1943 it had risen to 5.53 million tonnes.

If oil production and coal-to-liquid production are added together, Germany produced 9.6 million tons of oil in 1941 alone, and 11.2 million tons in 1942.

This oil production of nearly 10 million tons is already a lot for an ordinary European country, but it is still a bit tight for the industrial power of the Third Reich.

Moreover, Germany was still at war, and their army had chosen the fuel-guzzling route of large-scale armoring and mechanization, which put a great burden on the fuel-starved German Third Reich. If the problem of oil supply is not solved as soon as possible, this war machine will come to a standstill, or even fall to the point of being slaughtered by others.

"Hey! My Führer! "A man in the uniform of a general of the Wehrmacht walked into Hitler's office, and he stood up straight, with his head held high, and he knew at a glance that he was a good German soldier.

"How's the preparation now? Was the plan for an attack on Romania drawn up? Hitler did not greet the soldier, who sat a little haggard at his desk, his left hand resting on his wrinkled forehead.

"Report to the Führer, this is a draft of the operation for the attack on Romania." The officer, Franz Halder, the chief of the German General Staff, respectfully presented the war documents in his hands.

Hitler was not in good spirits, as can be seen from his haggard expression and the feeble way he sits. Even so, he still mustered up his spirits, opened the document seriously, and read the whole plan word for word.

After half an hour, Hitler finally finished reading the document, and for half an hour, Halder stood up straight like a guard, and was really a good German soldier.

"Good!" Hitler picked up a pen and signed his name on the draft of the battle, "You go back at once and give the order to inform all the troops involved in the battle plan to assemble in the designated direction." ”