in June of 1932, Adolf Hitler, wanted to meet with two men from I.G.

Farben, the huge German chemical

combine. Hİtler had not yet come to power as Chanceller of Germany, but he was the leader of the
national socialist party.

the Nazis saw the company as a means of exploitation.

The Nazis also criticized it for its expensive project to manufacture liquid fuels from coal(known as
synthetic fuels) and for the tariff protection it had obtained for the project from the government.

According to the company a synthetic fuels industry would cut Germany's dependence on foreign oil.

and the two men hoped to transform hitler to their point of view. And Hitler approved the synthetic fuels
effort. and he promised he would support the tariff protection. And the company promised to deliver
what the nazis wanted: campaing contribution.

He proved that the synthetic fuels program was so important for GErmany.

The biggest obstacle for the success of the project was Germany's import of imported raw materials,
especially oil.

Germany s ecomonic growth based on coal before 1930,s, and it was enough for germany,s energy
demand. but in 1932. Hitler was planning the future and oil would be essential to his ambitions.

he became chancellor in 1933, and He launching a motorcar campaign, according to him it was turning
point for germany motor traffics

and in 1934 he began planning for a new type of vehicle. it was called the peoples car the volkswagen.

these were pieces of his grand plan which was to subordinate all of europe to nazi Reich. he quickly
began to regiment the economy, harness big business to the state, and build the Nazi war machine. so,
synthetic fuels were so important.

THE CHEMİCAL SOLUTİON ,

germany became world's leader in chemistry because germany had started work on the extraction of
synthetic fuels on coal before ww1.

I.G. Farben became interested in synthetic fuels in the 1920s. and the company was seeking potential
partners in other counteries and after negotiations with a British chemical group, I.G Farben found a
potential partner , standart oil of new jersey.

Frank Howard, the head of research at Standard, was so impressed I.G works. according to him ' this
means the interdependence of europe in the matter of gasoline supply.

ıt was risk for standart and Standard could hardly afford not to become involved
An initial agreement was therefore reached with I. G. Farben, which allowed Standard to build a
hydrogénation plant in Louisiana. . But by this time, the world oil shortage was beginning to turn into a
surplus, and the American company's interest shifted.

the companies could not make profit.

The only real hope for keeping the synthetic fuels project alive, in the midst of the Great Depression, was
with some kind of state support or bail-out.

I. G. Farben won support from the Air Force, the Luftwaffe, by proving that it could develop a high-quality
aviation gasoline.

Girding For War

Two further developments demonstrated to Hitler and his entourage both the dangers of depending
upon foreign oil and the concurrent need to develop Germany's own supply.

Fİrst In October 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia,

forthwith, the League of Nations condemned the invasion, imposed some economic sanctions, and
considered placing an embargo on oil exports to Italy.

but the oil embargo was neber tested, because it was never applied.

Hitler took the lesson of dependence most seriously.

second lesson

The Nazi regime was committed to "recovering" the domestic German market from Standard Oil, Shell,
and the other foreign companies.

Bolsheviks owned a large chain of gasoline stations through which they sold the oil products they
provided Germany. The Nazi government pushed a German gasoline marketeer to acquire the Soviet
chain, which it did in 1935. the Soviets continued to supply the amount of oil previously sold through its
distribution system. But then, in February 1936 they abruptly stopped deliveries.The deliveries did not
resume. And that, too, was a warning to Hitler about the dangers of dependence.

in 1936 the annual German motor show in Berlin was opened by Hitler.Hitler took announce that
Germany "had solved the problem of producing synthetic gasoline." This achievement, possessed
political significance.

in 1936 hitler wanted to prepare the German state for war by the target date of 1940.

according to him german fuel production must now developed with the utmost speed.

after that Germany did build up a very substantial synthetic fuel industry. the synthetic fuels were even
more significant when viewed in terms of military needs.
son kısma bir daha bak

Russian Campaign: "My Generals Know Nothing About the Economic Aspects of War"

Many factors shaped Germany's decision to go to war with the Soviet Union. and there were also the
issue of oil.

the capture of Baku and the other Caucasian oil fields was central to Hitler's concept of his Russian
campaign.

one historian has written hitler,s obsession was oil.

To Hitler, it was the vital commodity of the industrial age and for economic power.

Oil Fİelds of Rumania was important source of petroeum for german and soviet might be treat for it.

.operation barbarossa

Operation blau

The operation was a continuation of operation barabrossa.

Berlin was making plans for great offensive in Russia. The oil of the Caucasus was its main objective, and
from there, on to the oil fields in Iran and Iraq and then on to India. Hİtlers knew that Germany could not
continue the war effort without acess to russian oil.

Deprived of fuel for its military units and for agriculture, Russia would not be able to stay in the war. It
means that Germany would exploitation Russian oil.

But In order to fight Russia, the German forces required petroleum resources on a grand scale, but they
far outran their supply lines and lost their advantages of speed and surprise. The irony of Operation Blau
was that the Germans ran short of oil in their quest for oil. By November 1942 the last German effort to
break through the mountain passes toward Grozny and Baku had definitively been repulsed.
Hitler's strategic plan was extremely ambitious. On the other hand, it has become more inexhaustible
both with its own interventions and its underestimation of the Red Army and its commanders. Operation
shows a significant similarity with the Operation Barbarossa. In the beginning, he managed to take over a
very large area, but his ultimate victory failed to seize Baku and Stalingrad. 6. The surrender of the Army
was often a severe psychological blow for Germany. Hitler was also a personal shock. The subsequent
Soviet counter-attacks not only led to the withdrawal of the Axis forces from the Caucasus;

Rommel and the Revenge of the Quartermaster

Small, silent, and cold, Rommel had established his reputation as a battlefield leader in the First World
War.

In February 1941 Rommel was dispatched to North Africa to shore up an Italian Army that was on the
brink of being defeated by British forces.

At first, Rommel won stunning victories in North Africa against British forces. But he knew Mobile
warfare was absolutely dependent on ample supplies of fuel.

Rommel renewed his offensive, and at the end of May 1942 launched a major assault against the British.

Rommel's goals were far more expansive: Cairo would only be a way station for a campaign through
Palestine, Iraq, and Iran whose final objective would be Baku and its oil fields.

he achieved great success in a short time.

In mid-August, Rommel gained a new and formidable adversary. General Bernard Montgomery.
Montgomery was also a methodical, pedagogic, and deeply analytical military strategist.

during that week-long battle, Rommel recorded how the Afrika Korps was hampered by its fuel shortage.

Most of the fuel due for delivery by ship had either been sunk or was still waiting to be loaded in Italy

Rommel's forces were not able to get past the tactically well-placed British artillery. By September 7,
1942, the battle of Alam Haifa was over. Rommel's latest offensive had been stopped dead in its tracks,
and a legend of invincibility was toppling.

rommel accused of trying to kill hits. And he killed secretly.

In Rommel's papers, collected after his death, he left a hard-earned epitaph for the role of supply, and in
particular of oil, in the age of mobile warfare.

"The bravest men can do nothing without guns, the guns nothing without plenty of ammunition, and
neither guns nor ammunition are of much use in mobile warfare unless there are vehicles with sufficient
petrol to haul them around.
Autarchy and catastrophe

By mid-1943, the Axis had been defeated both in Russia and in North Africa, and the dream of German
armies converging at Baku or on the oil fields of the Middle East had been relegated to the realm of
fantasy. So Germany had to turn back to its own resources.

..

The Primary Strategic Aim

Following the haphazard and ineffectual Allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany, General
Carl Spaatz, the commander of the United States Strategic Air Force in Europe, decided that a change had
to be made.

On May 12, 1944, a combat wing involving 935 bombers, plus the fighter escorts, bombed a number of
synthetic fuels factories, including the giant I. G. Farben plant at Leuna. After that Spaatz said that "On
that day the technological war was decided. He knew that the enemy has struck their weakest poınts. İf
enemies persist at it this time, they will soon no longer have any fuel production worth mentioning.

Just before Allied invaders forced Italy out of the war, the German military had seized its oil stocks,
adding substantially to its own reserves

And feverish activity at the damaged fuel plants returned synthetic fuel production to its former levels
within a couple of weeks.

But then, on May 28-29, the Allies hit the oil facilities in Germany again. Other Allied bombers attacked
the oil installations at Ploesti in Rumania. On June 6, D-Day, the Allies staged the long-awaited invasion of
Western Europe, gaining a precarious foothold on the beaches of Normandy. . Ancak 28-29 Mayıs
tarihlerinde, Müttefikler Almanya'daki petrol tesislerine tekrar çarptılar. Diğer Müttefik bombardıman
uçakları, Romanya'daki Ploesti'deki petrol tesislerine saldırdı. 6 Haziran günü, D-Day, Müttefikler, Batı
Avrupa’nın uzun zamandır beklenen işgalini düzenledi ve Normandiya sahillerinde güvencesiz bir yer
edindi.
In response, Speer ordered that synthetic fuels plants and other oil facilities be rebuilt quickly, or
dispersed where possible into smaller, better-protected, and hidden sites

Even breweries were converted to making fuel. Bira fabrikları bile

The output of German planes was still at peak level. But they sat on the ground; they were of little use
without fuel.

the strategic bombing campaign, with its attack on the synthetic fuels industry, was paralyzing major
parts of the German war machine. But the battle was not yet over

The Battle of the Bulge : europes biggest gas station

By the fall of 1944, the D-Day invasion of Normandy had widened, in slow and costly stages, to drive the
Germans out of France. At the same time, Soviet forces were pushing in on Germany from the east. But
to Hitler, the war could not be coming to an end. His Reich could not fail. On December 16, he launched
counteroffensive in the hilly, in the east of Belgium and Luxembourg.

known as the Battle of the Bulge, it was Germany's last great concentrated attack, the final blitzkrieg
( yıldırım savaşı)

In their 1940 blitzkrieg in this same area, the Germans' fuel deficiency had mattered little; they had
captured more gasoline than they had expended. Now, four and a half years later, they had no such luck.
But they did come perilously close. For the area around Stavelot in eastern Belgium was the Allies' largest
fuel dump and, indeed, the biggest filling station in Europe.

On the morning of December 17, the second day of the German offensive, a panzer unit, led by a
butcherous colonel named Jochem Peiper, overran a small fuel dump nearby. Peiper forced fifty captured
American soldiers to fill his vehicles and then coldly ordered them killed.

Ironically, Peiper's unit soon ran out of fuel; his tanks got only half a mile to the gallon. Resupply efforts
by the Luftwaffe failed, and the unit was captured.

Twilight of the Gods tanrılarla devlerin savaşı

More fuel would have bought the Germans more time. With the failure of the Ardennes offensive,
Germany's war effort, from a strategic point of view, was over. In February 1945 German production of
aviation gasoline amounted to just a thousand tons. Still, the months of bloody fighting went on, on both
the western and eastern fronts, as Hitler and his immediate entourage retreated ever more into fantasy,
with the Fiihrer himself calling for a scorched earth policy and issuing (in the words of one of his generals)
"the last crazy orders." Even as the end approached, he remained in the grip of his insane, violent visions,
for which at least 35 million people paid with their lives. He listened to Wagner's Gotterdammerung
—"Twilight of the Gods"—on the gramophone, waiting for some magical deliverance, and avidly read
horoscopes that promised a sudden improvement in his fortunes. Only when Russian soldiers were
almost directly above his underground bunker, on the doorstep of the now-ruined Chancellery that Speer
had designed for him, did Hitler commit suicide. He left orders that his body be doused in gasoline and
burned so that it would not fall into the hands of the hated Slavs. There was enough gasoline at hand to
carry out that final order. But to many around Hitler, the impending disaster resulting from the Nazi
fantasies and savagery had been apparent for months. On a night journey to the struggling remnants of
Germany's Tenth Army in Italy, Albert Speer had seen before him a clear vision of one of the primary
reasons why the Reich that was to last for a thousand years had, in fact, only weeks to go. For on that
trip, he had encountered 150 German Army trucks. To each were hitched four oxen, which were dragging
the trucks forward. It was the only way the vehicles could move. They had no fuel

JAPAN’S ACHILLES’ HEEL

December 1941, an American naval squadron was on a courtesy call in the huge, splendid harbor at
Balikpapan, in Borneo, in the British East Indies. At the turn of the century, at that then unknown spot on
the map, Marcus Samuel had ordered his nephew to carve a refinery complex out of the jungle. Over the
four decades that followed, what had seemed Samuel's foolish and reckless dream had not only turned
into a great oil-refining center for the island's production, but had also become one of the grand jewels of
the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and a major landmark in the world oil industry.

Pearl harbor attack stated in december 1941. The war for which americans had been waiting and
preparing had, at last, begun.

The oil men didnt know anything about what would be americans do?, when would the japanese come
to balikpapan?

In mid-January 1942, with the Japanese closing in, crews in the outlying oil fields began to destroy the
wells, as was being done elsewhere in the Indies.

Meanwhile, the first steps toward demolishing the Balikpapan refinery complex were underway.

all refineries detonated. 40 years of industrial creation was destroyed in less than a day.

However Seventy-five people were left stranded by the bay at Balikpapan, still awaiting rescue. It was too
late; the Japanese had landed on the south side of the bay. A few hours after midnight on January 24,
four blacked-out American destroyers slipped up on a dozen Japanese troop transports, starkly
silhouetted against the red fires of the still-burning refinery complex. In what became known as the
Battle of Balikpapan, the Americans sank four of the transports, plus a patrol boat. But, owing to faulty
torpedoes, they did not sink more. It was the first American sea battle with the Japanese, indeed, the
first time the United States Navy had been involved in surface action since Admiral Dewey's victory at
Manil It hardly slowed the Japanese landing at Balikpapan at all. The stranded oil men had no choice but
to retreat into the jungle. They broke up into small groups for what proved to be a desperate effort to
find some route of evacuation through the jungle. It was a terrible ordeal.. Of the seventy-five people left
behind, only thirty-five survived the jungle, the Japanese firing squads, and the Japanese prisonsa in
1898.

"Victory Drunk"

Preemptive destruction of oil facilities, similar to that at Balikpapan, was carried out elsewhere in the
East Indies. this meant that Japan had, in just three months, won possession of all the rich resources of
Southeast Asia—and the oil, in particular, for which it had gone to war. In Tokyo, Premier Tojo bragged
that Hong Kong had fallen in eighteen days, Manila in twenty-six, and Singapore in seventy. A "victory
fever" gripped the country; the stunning military successes spawned such a runaway stock market boom
in the first part of 1942 that the government had to intervene to dampen it down. Some said the country
had become "victory drunk." Only a few warned of the inevitable morning after.

The Japanese elation was more than matched by American shock and despair. Corpses were still floating
to the surface. That grim scene in Hawaii was only part of the larger, dismal outlook facing the United
States—war in both hemispheres, a truly global conflict. Pearl Harbor was, almost certainly, the worst
humiliation in American history. Fear and panic gripped the nation. Yet the war, so long feared and so
long half-expected, was finally here, and the country quickly rallied for the long, arduous struggle with
Germany and Japan.

The divided command did much more, however, than provide a contrast in styles of military leadership; it
also led to bitter and wasteful battles over scarce resources and, worse, poor coordination in key military
operations in the far-flung battle zones. The distances American forces would have to cover in their
ultimate convergence on the Japanese Home Islands were simply enormous. From the beginning, Nimitz
had no question in his own mind as to what his strategy would be. He and Admiral Ernest King, Chief of
Naval Operations, agreed, in the words of Nimitz's biographer, "that the primary objectives of the Allied
armed forces were to safeguard their own supply lines and then drive westward in order to capture bases
from which Japan's indispensable 'oil line' might be blocked.

"The Adults' Hour"

While, in the early months of 1942, the Americans belatedly mobilized for the conflict, the Japanese,
glorying in their astonishing string of victories, pondered their next moves. So self-confident had they
become that the country's military leaders considered thrusting westward through the Indian Ocean to
link with German forces in the Middle East or Russia and help sever the Allies' supply of oil from Baku and
Iran. In April 1942, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, wrote to his
favorite geisha: "The 'first stage of operations' has been a kind of children's hour, and will soon be over;
now comes the adults' hour, so perhaps I'd better stop dozing and bestir myself." Yamamoto continued to
share with other Japanese naval leaders the deep belief in and commitment to the "decisive battle,"
which would knock the enemy out of the war. A quick victory was essential, he knew from his years in the
United States, because of America's oil and other resources and its industrial might. Thus, the Japanese
decided to mount a major attack on Midway Island. And if the American fleet were drawn out, so much
the better, for the Japanese could make this the decisive battle and finish the job they had started at
Pearl Harbor, obliterating the U.S. Navy in the Pacific.

The Battle of Midway, in early June 1942, turned out to be decisive, but not in the way most Japanese
expected. Instead, it was the "adults' hour" that Yamamoto had feared. Having made a remarkable
recovery from the devastation at Pearl Harbor, and with the additional advantage of being able to read
the enemy's code Midway was the true turning point in the Pacific War, the end of the Japanese
offensive. Thereafter, the balance would shift, as the relentless weight of American manpower, resources,
technology, organizational ability, and sheer determination began to push the Japanese back across the
Pacific in one bloody battle after another. The counterattack began two months after Midway. Six months
of brutal fighting followed, but finally the United States captured the island in what was called the first
American offensive of the war. The aura of invincibility that surrounded the Japanese Army had been
pierced. But it was only one small and costly step in the long struggle to exhaust the resources, if not the
will, of an implacable enemy.

The initial attempts to deny Japan the oil of the Indies did not prove much of an impediment. The
Japanese had anticipated the demolition but they found, despite Shell's efforts at Balikpapan and
Stanvac's on Sumatra, that the destruction was neither as severe nor as widespread as they had
expected. The Japanese immediately set about rehabilitating the oil industry of the Indies. The result was
astonishing. Before the outbreak of war, the Japanese military had planned on getting sufficient oil within
two years from the Indies— what was called the Southern Zone—to make up for shortfalls. That goal was
exceeded. As they had planned, the Japanese were able to use the captured East Indies to replenish
their stocks of petroleum.

The Battle of the Marus: The War of Attrition

In devising their military strategy, the Japanese had assumed that the rich resources of the Southern
Zone could be welded securely to the economy and needs of the barren Home Islands, thus giving Japan
the staying power to erect and maintain a "Pacific wall." The Japanese could then take on the Americans
and the British, wearing down their resolve until they wearied and made peace, leaving Asia and the
Pacific to the Japanese empire. That strategy was a gamble, the success of which depended not only on
weakening the opponents' resolve, but also, and absolutely, on the integrity of Japan's own snipping
system. Japan had entered the war with oil inventories sufficient to last two years. Beyond that time,
Japan would have to call upon the oil of the East Indies. And this dependence, in the words of the United
States Strategic Bombing Survey, "proved to be a fatal weakness." Or, as one history of Japanese military
operations put it, "The shortage of liquid fuel was Japan's Achilles' heel.

The specific weakness was the vulnerability of Japanese shipping to submarines.America's submarines
were the best in the war. The long, drawn-out confrontation became known as the Battle of the Marus,
after the term the Japanese used to describe all merchantmen. But only in late 1943 did the Japanese
begin to give serious attention to the protection of shipping against submarines, including the
establishment of convoys. Their efforts were inadequate and incomplete. the war was later described by
a group of Japanese economists as "a death blow to the war economy of Japan.

Oil tankers were among the favorite targets of the submariners, and tanker sinkings rose very sharply
from 1943 on. By the first quarter of 1945, imports had disappeared altogether. As their oil situation
worsened, the Japanese tried many expedients and improvisations. Oil was put into drums of many sizes,
and even into fiber containers that were loaded onto the decks of freighters. The Japanese filled large
rubber bags with three hundred to five hundred barrels of oil that tugs were to tow to Japan. As
ingenious as this was, the concept failed for a number of reasons: The gasoline attacked the rubber, the
filling and emptying of the bags was difficult, and the bags reduced the maneuverability of the tugs,
making them better targets for air attack. In desperation, the Japanese even tried to transport oil in their
own submarines. At home, as imports dried up, the Japanese squeezed and squeezed. Civilian gasoline
consumption in 1944 was down to just 257,000 barrels. Civilian stocks of potatoes, sugar, and rice wine
—even bottles of sake from the shelves of retail stores— were requisitioned for conversion to alcohol, to
be used as fuel.

In 1937, the Japanese had made an ambitious and determined commitment to synthetic fuels, and in the
months before Pearl Harbor, some in Tokyo had championed synthetic fuels as an alternative to war. But
the actual wartime effort failed. Moreover, over half of the capacity was in Manchuria, where it was
rendered useless in late 1944 and 1945 by blockade. Synthetic fuels were expensive failure because of
their drain on resources.

"No Sense in Saving the Fleet"

The growing shortage of oil increasingly constrained Japanese military capabilities and directly affected
the course of many battles. Following the victory at Midway, Allied forces were on the offensive, island-
hopping westward, in a combination of naval and land operations that steadily removed ever closer to
Japan. For both sides, every yard on every beach seemed to be measured in hundreds of lives. But the
Americans had put together a devastating package—amphibious warfare, carrier air power, and industrial
might. The Japanese could not match this enormous expenditure of resources. The Americans even
exacted their revenge for Pearl Harbor in April 1943, when cryptanalysts learned that Admiral Yamamoto,
who had planned the deadly attack, was due to make a visit to the island of Bougainville, near New
Guinea. American fighters, waiting in ambush, came out of the clouds and sent the admiral down in
flames to his death in the jungle below.

Yet it was not until the early months of 1944 that the submarine campaign finally began to make the
Imperial Navy feel the fuel shortage "very keenly,". Vanishing oil inventories also started to influence
strategic decisions, with increasingly devastating consequences. In the Marianas campaign in June 1944,
the Japanese battle fleet did not join the action because its fuel was low. Moreover, the carrier force
approached the Americans directly rather than circuitously, in order to conserve oil. The direct approach
was a costly one. With their victory in the Marianas, the Americans had finally penetrated the inner
Japanese defense ring. In the aftermath of that battle, it would have made good strategic sense for the
Japanese to base the two battle groups of the Imperial Fleet in home waters— either at Okinawa or in
the Home Islands themselves—ready to strike in any direction. But the sundering of the oil line to the
Home Islands and the rapidly disappearing stocks of fuel did not permit such disposition. Thus, part of
the fleet, with the carriers, was based in Japan, where it would await new aircraft and pilots, in the
process draining the last of the fuel oil inventories. The heavy battleships were stationed close to
Singapore, to be near the East Indies supply, but there, once committed to action, they could not refuel
and be ready for action again for about a month. The overall consequence of the oil shortage was to
divide naval strength when the Japanese needed a truly combined fleet, strong enough to repel Allied
advances.

Japanese air operations were also severely curtailed because of the fuel shortage. Aviation gasoline was
made from the only available source, wood turpentine, which was mixed with larger and larger
proportions of alcohol. The combination of inferior fuels, poorly trained pilots, and inadequately tested
planes was a deadly one. In order to stretch oil supplies, many Japanese ships burned unrefined Borneo
crude, which, as Marcus Samuel had claimed many years earlier, was indeed good for fuel. However, it
was also highly flammable, and thus a threat to the ships it powered. Under duress, the Japanese even
reversed the historic trend in naval propulsion and rebuilt ships in service to burn coal where available.
Ships under construction were converted to coal before launching. That achieved a relative security of
supply, but meant a loss in speed and flexibility.

It was the primacy of fuel that finally led the Imperial Navy to throw all its weight into the Battle of Leyte
Gulf, off the Philippines, in October 1944. To the Japanese, there seemed no choice but to put everything
they had into trying to prevent the Americans from recapturing the Philippines, which were within air
striking distance of the Home Islands and stood astride the sea lanes between Japan and its conquered
territories in Southeast Asia. But the shortage of fuel handicapped the Japanese again and again in the
battle for the Philippines.

The three-day battle of Leyte Gulf was a devastating defeat for the Japanese.

The Japanese had methodically calculated that, whereas eight bombers and sixteen fighters were
required to sink an American aircraft carrier or battleship, the same effect could be achieved by one to
three suicide planes.

The End of the Imperial Navy

The Japanese could do little or nothing to interrupt the ever more abundant flow of fuel and other
supplies to the American forces in the Pacific, no matter how distant their source.

The Japanese abandoned Balikpapan and the other chief oil port in the East Indies, and most of their
Home Islands refineries were out of oil. In March 1945, the last Japanese oil tanker convoy left Singapore.
It never got to Japan. It was sunk.
At home, oil had virtually disappeared from the domestic economy, in part of a larger pattern of
deprivation. Many Japanese took to burning their libraries for fuel. The fuel situation had become so
severe for the military that the Navy decided on a dramatic variant of the kamikaze raid—to sacrifice the
Yamato, the world's largest battleship and the pride of the Japanese fleet. It was to be the nucleus of a
Special Attack Force that would break through the American ships supporting the invasion of Okinawa, do
as much damage as possible, then beach itself and use its huge eighteen-inch guns in defense of the
island.

It was clearly a suicide mission; the Yamato carried only enough fuel for a one-way trip. The Japanese
fleet, which had prided itself on commanding the entire western Pacific, had now been driven even from
the immediate seas of the homeland.

A Fight to the Finish?

And still Japan's position worsened. Desperate for fuel, the Navy launched its fantastic pine root
campaign. The futility of the effort was revealed by the labor requirements.Indeed, by the time the war
ended, only three thousand barrels of gasoline intended for planes had been produced from pine root
oil, and there was no evidence that any of it had ever actually been tried in a plane.

The end was nearing for Japan. Under relentless American bombardment, the country's wooden cities
flamed into charred ruins, the economy ground ever more slowly, and the military's ability to mount any
counterattacks virtually vanished.

The Soviet Union renounced its neutrality pact with Japan on April 5,1945. Now senior officers in the
Japanese Navy conceived yet another idea, no less fantastic in its own way than the pine root campaign
—to approach the Soviet Union directly and ask it to mediate between Tokyo and Washington and
London, and to trade Soviet oil for resources from the Southern Zone. But the Japanese did not know
that, at Yalta the preceding February, Stalin had promised Roosevelt and Churchill to bring the Soviet
Union into the war against Japan some ninety days after the end of the war in Europe. The Soviet
ambassador thus dismissed all of Hirota's political proposals when they met in late June. As for exporting
oil to Japan, the ambassador added, that would be quite impossible, as the Soviet Union itself was much
too short of petroleum.

in midJune 1945 with a picture of a war economy that was almost immobilized because of lack of fuel
and the fury of the American aerial attacks. the Navy could not operate. The possibility of surrender was
far from accepted at the top of the Japanese government.

As if to demonstrate what they had in mind, Japanese resistance to the American invasion of Okinawa in
April of 1945 was fierce and fanatic and, in its organized form, did not end until June 21,1945. The
American leaders knew that Japan's fighting capability was crumbling, but they saw no sign that its
fighting spirit was fading.
Despite the ever-worsening position, the Japanese government remained ambiguous, indistinct, and
tentative in its signals about surrender, reflecting the fact that internally there was no consensus, and
that the war party still had the upper hand. Tokyo spitefully rejected the Allies' Potsdam Declaration,
which would have enabled Japan to quit the war on reasonable grounds, including the retention of the
Emperor. To the Allies, there was little indication of anything from Tokyo save a determination to fight to
the finish.13 The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. On August 8, the
Soviet Union declared war on Japan and sent its troops pouring into Manchuria, a week earlier than had
been planned, in order to ensure that the war did not end before it could get in. On August 9, the second
atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. Yet even as late as the Nagasaki explosion, the Army Chief of Staff insisted
on reminding senior officials that Japanese soldiers and sailors were not permitted to surrender under
any circumstances; suicide was the only acceptable way out. On August 13, four days after the explosion
of the Nagasaki bomb, Vice-Admiral Takijiro Onishi, the creator of the kamikaze missions, was still
advocating that the government reject surrender. Instead, he said, the Japanese people should fight to
the bitter end, and 20 million of them should sacrifice themselves in suicide attacks against the invading
troops.

Yet so appalling were Japan's circumstances and so great the shock of the atomic bombs, made worse by
the new Soviet threat, that those seeking to end the war finally prevailed over the intense opposition
from the military. their Emperor, calling on them to surrender. The war in the Pacific was over. Still, not
everyone was willing to heed the call. Earlier that same morning, War Minister Korechika Arami had
committed hara-kiri; and the next day, Admiral Onishi did the same. Moreover, there had been notable
preparations for Onishi's final kamikaze attacks. Some stores of the pine root gasoline—one of Japan's
last hopes for resistance— were also discovered after the surrender. It was tested in American military
jeeps. It turned out to be a terrible fuel, gumming up the engines beyond use.

Ambulance petrol sıkınıtsı yüzünden japonyayı amerikayla şavaşa sokan adamı Amerikalılar tutuklamaya
geliyor o da kalbinin altından vuruyor kendini, yakıt yok ambulans gelemiyor, bir Amerikalı doktor
buluyorlar, iyileşiyor ve şavaş suçlusu olark tutuklanıyor sonradan