Targeting Hitler's Oil

The German war machine— its screaming dive-bombers, its thundering tanks, its prowling U-boats— needed oil to fuel its rampage across Europe and in the Atlantic. But lacking its own natural supplies, Germany had to look elsewhere. It seized the oil fields and refineries of Romania and hungrily eyed the Caucasus and Middle East. Meanwhile, the Allies began a secret campaign of sabotage to deny the Third Reich these precious oil resources. Full of larger-than-life characters and episodes as heart-pounding as a spy thriller, Targeting Hitlers Oil is the inside story of this clandestine war to stop the Third Reich in its tracks.

Romania was ground zero in this secret battle for oil. Within the war’s first year— while Romania was still neutral— German agents roamed the country’s vast oil facilities to protect them from the Allied operatives who were already quietly gathering intelligence and planning their sabotage campaign. After Romania joined the Axis and Germany took over its oil, the Allies sprang into action in earnest, beginning a dangerous game of Allied move and German countermove that unfolded in the streets of Bucharest, in the shadows of the giant refineries of Ploesti, amidst the derricks of central Romania, among the piers of Black Sea ports. Until Allied bombers could reach southeastern Europe starting in 1943, disrupting Germany’s fuel supplies would depend on these secret operations targeting oil fields, storage facilities, refineries, railways, and ports. Would Allied saboteurs get the job done and slow the supply of oil to the Third Reich’s war machine?