Daniel Yergin

World War II was not an oil war, but there was an oil war within World War II.

When Hitler invaded Russia, he was not only going for Moscow, he was also going for the oil fields of Baku.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, as Admiral Nimitz, who was the naval commander, said if they'd come back a third time and hit the oil tanks, World War II in the Pacific would have taken another two years.

General Rommel in North Africa runs out of oil.

He says...

He writes his wife, shortage of oil is enough to make one weep.

General Patton's lunch in 1944 for Germany is held back by oil.

And the U.S.

is going after the oil lines that are supplying the Japanese oil.

attacking them to basically drain the oil out of the Japanese war machine.

And one of the things that was a real eye opener for me, you know, people have heard of the kamikaze pilots who would fly their planes into the aircraft carrier.

One big reason they were doing that was to save fuel so they wouldn't have to fly back.

Yeah, the U.S.

put an embargo on them.

And one of the Japanese admirals said, you know, without the oil, our fleet will become scarecrows.

Well, I think after World War I, it clearly was on the agenda in a way that it hadn't been before.

And you had governments much more engaged in supporting, you know, U.S.

companies.

There was also this vision that the U.S., which, by the way, the U.S.,

was so dominant as a producer.