At the beginning of the war the Germans decided there were six major oil fields in the Caucasus that they had to have to win the war. The Germans were always fuel-short and were never more than 6 weeks from running out of fuel completely. Their major oil production came from Ploesti in Rumania and it crippled them when those refineries were targeted by the American air force, though they still managed to maintain production there throughout the war despite Allied bombardment. In addition the Germans got 50 percent of their fuel from coal converted to gasoline in the Ruhr. However, synthetic fuels required complex equipment that was easily damaged by bombing and was low octane. As a result, the Luftwaffe always suffered from shortages of high octane gasoline. German aircraft design was hampered by lack of high octane fuel. Stalingrad was an important assembly point for Soviet forces and needed to be crushed to allow the Germans to capture those six critical oil fields. Unfortunately, Stalingrad became a resource sink that wiped out the German Sixth Army, crippled the 4th Panzer Armee, cost over 5 squadrons of aircraft, over 500 planes, including skilled pilots that were difficult to replace and 270,000 men in the German army and probably 500,000 more in the Romanian and Italian armies. And the necessary oil …show more content…
In the West we are taught that the "Battle of the Bulge" or Ardennes Offensive was the last major offensive of the war but this is not true at all, not even close. The Battle of Budapest was a major battle on the scale of Stalingrad and Kursk combined the second biggest armor battle of the war behind Kursk and involved an emplaced civilian population - most civilians had been evacuated from Stalingrad. Three German Army groups were involved in the