david f,

Surely you knew that the leading nations of the world, at that time, were well aware that without oil their cavalry units could not function?

The importance of oil for keeping their primary motive power, the horse, going cannot be stressed to much.

Horses far outnumbered other motive power throughout WWI and were used extensively in WWII, in fact General Otto Skorzeny dismounted a Bavarian Cavalry unit to fight as infantry in the last ditch defence of Berlin.

"Oil for Horses" was a well known British Parliamentary rallying cry in 1918.

Mise,

The British War machine didn't require 70% of the Worlds Oil reserves to run their trucks and ships. The large Oil Reserves within the failing Ottoman empire was the subject of the war in the first place. Besides, the Americans supplied most of the oil required by the allies during the war.

Reading the following newspaper articles may enlighten you:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/71058315?searchTerm=the%20troubles%252

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/48007696?searchTerm=more%20secret%20histcry&searchLimits=l-textSearchScope=*ignore*%7C*ignore*|||l-title=25|||l-word=*ignore*%7C*ignore*

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/109985435?searchTerm=oil%20supremacy%20british%20coup&searchLimits

Dear Is Mise,

The horse was important not only for transport but for food. My father was in the Russian army that invaded Prussia at the beginning of WW1. Horse was cooked in a big pot, and the soldiers shared it. The Russian army had poor communication, but the German farmers had been alerted to the possibility of a Russian invasion. They phoned the German army when they saw the Russians pass by their houses. My father said that all of a sudden they were hit by German artillery as the Germans knew just where they were. He was crouching in a shell hole when he saw another Russian soldier with a big smile on his face. my father asked what he was smiling about. The soldier said he just finished off the commanding officer. That was a rough, tough army with many soldiers feeling that their officers were the enemy.

War in itself is an event, neither good nor evil. However, intruding armed into a country that is not attacking any other country is the capital crime of aggression. No matter who commits it.

Fighting in defence of a country, especially one’s own, against aggression is honourable. Launching aggression or taking part in it is dishonourable. The Allied fighters in both world wars deserve commemoration for ever for their sacrifice not because they were brave but because of what they were sacrificing themselves for – freedom from aggression. This is something conveniently forgotten by many in the “Lest we forget” brigade in the annual Anzac Day ballyhoo. Yes they were invading Turkey, but the Turks were engaged in a criminal world war of aggression. The honour of those wonderful soldiers was not tarnished by the careerist motives of the brasshats who ordered them “over the top”.

All sorts of excuses are made for the German aggression in 1914 [1] and 1939[2], that launched two world wars, but the bottom line is they attacked countries not themselves committing aggression and that was a despicable crime not only by the ringleaders but also by all those who took part. “It voss orders” was rightly rejected by the postwar Nuremberg tribunal. The validity of this rejection is timeless.

Germany was a criminal nation in 1914, and was able to be again in 1939-45 because the victors at Versailles failed to cripple it. Pursuing aggression at any level of service, from high command to grunt, is worthy only of contempt.

[1] The nature of the German aggression against Belgium that launched WW1 is amply described at http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/civilian-atrocities-german-1914

[2] The nature of the German aggression against Poland that launched WW2 is amply described by Richard C. Lukas in “Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939-1944” (Kindle Edition).

Dear Emperor Julian,

You speak about German aggression.

Stalin admired Hitler, and initially, the two worked
hand in hand. Just prior to World War II, Stalin forced his
beleaguered people to strip the natural resources of
Soviet occupied territories in preparation for war against
the Western democracies and to provide Hitler's Germany
with raw materials for the Nazi war machine.

"Russia was to supply a third of Germany's total needs of oil,
large quantities of iron-ore, cotton, phosphates, chromium,
manganese, rubber supplies from the Far East and a million
tons of food grain." (Eric Koch, Stalin's Pact With Hitler).

In the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty of 1939, Stalin and Hitler went
further, agreeing to a secret pact to divide Eastern Europe and
allow the advances of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army for the
purpose of dividing the hapless Balts, Poles, and others,
which led to the World War.

History is clear that in 1939, Stalin and Hitler were allies.
They were both, by then, accomplished killers, even though
Stalin led the score in victims tortured, starved, and massacred.
Each created panic and chaos throughout Europe. Each produced
millions of refugees and homeless. Each was expanding and
building concentration camps in which millions of innocent
victims would perish. Both despised and mistrusted democracies.
Both were set on their conquests. The two dictators used
the same methods to deal with their domestic opposition - terror.

While half of these criminals, the Nazis, have been pursued
all over the world for their crimes, the other half the
communist criminals, were allowed to go free - and even sit
as judges at Nuremberg. They were, in effect, given tacit
permission to continue the operation of their concentration
camps, to expand their draconian systems to include psychiatric
wards, thereby raising torture, suppression, and murder to
a science. The fact that this process persisted was vividly
disclosed by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in his book -
"The Gulag Archipelago."

Re Foxy:
Wars are launched by aggression. Aggression is armed invasion of a country not engaged in aggression.. The rest of the propaganda from apologists is a welter of mealy-mouthed excuses, including the "whataboutism" of pointing to crimes (other than aggression) committed by others.

That the German aggression in Poland was part of a plan for conquest of the rest of Europe (for starters) not in any way involving Russian participation is borne out, not by the pitiful excuses made by Hitler in his Reichstag speech on 01.09.39 [1] but by the later-revealed earlier meeting of top Krauts in Berlin on 23.05.39[2] setting out their criminal intention to seek world conquest. Mein Kampf is full of assumptions that the master-race had the natural right to invade other countries for Lebensraum.

As for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Russian explanation (or excuse, depending on what the rest of the facts were) was that they made persistent efforts to secure a collective security pact with the democracies and were fobbed off (Chamberlain not Churchill led Britain, and France was ruled by scum like Petain who turned out to be traitors). In desperation (according to the Russian story) the Russians made a pact to stave off the Krauts while feverishly preparing to defend itself. Stalin was a scoundrel but he did make one good suggestion, towards the end of the war, that all Nazi soldiers be executed [3]. Roosevelt didn't say yea or nay, but Churchill recoiled in horror at loyal murderers being actually punished).

The Nuremberg tribunal's remit was to punish (1)aggression, (2) the Holocaust and (3) other deadly breaches of accepted international law. It couldn't and didn't go beyond that. Nobody had any power to make the Russians close the gulags but Germany, having committed aggression and been brought to heel, was forced to accept trial of those guilty of it and of genocide.

It’s History 101 and has survived all revisionist apologetics from those soft on Nazi criminals.

[1] http://www.germanvictims.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1939_09_01-HitlerPoland_returning-fireAE.pdf
[2] http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/donovan/pdf/Batch_2_pdfs/Vol_IV_8_04.pdf
[3] http://listverse.com/2012/08/24/15-nazis-that-should-have-been-executed/