Does anyone know the role of oil in our decision to go to war in WWII?

Question

I remember one of my Political Science professors in college saying that oil was one of the main reason we decided finally to go to war, but I can't remember why.

Answer 1

Recall that when Japan joined the Axis, the U.S. started its oil embargo of Japan, refusing to sell oil to that nation. That lead to anger and agression, namely the events of Pearl Harbor. Therefore, oil was the indirect cause of U.S. entry to WWII.

Answer 2

Your political science professor, IF he said that, was full of it. Roosevelt avoided war until Pearl Harbor because he and the whole world were more worried about the USSR than about Hitler. But he also got a copy of a German diplomatic cable message, intercepted and partially decoded by the British, who already had an early Polish "Enigma" machine. Germany was encouraging Mexico to declare war on America and retake the southwest. This was intercepted at the last British cable station at Land's End, before the AMERICAN transatlantic cable dipped into the sea. We had plenty of oil. Germany had very little oil. That's why they took the Romanian oilfields at Ploesti, why the Panzer tanks ran on diesel fuel made from low-grade German coal, and partly why German supply wagons were horse-drawn.

Answer 3

That is absurd. The reason we went to war was because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Even the sinking of the Lusitania produced a luke warm commitment from FDR. The country was not ready to enter the war and would not have committed to the extent they did if the Japanese didn't initiate aggression on US soil.

Your poli-sci professor is just a victim of the liberal establishment that has a hold on higher education. They engage in revisionist history and perpetrate a campaign of lies to further their socialist platform.

While the oil (economic) embargo of Japan led them to attack the US, oil did not play a factor in the US's decision to enter the war.

Answer 4

I don't know about the start (embargo, incursions, Pearl harbor) but toward the end of WW II Roosevelt supposedly signed an agreement with the House of Saud that the west would protect his kingdom in return for access to Saudi oil. This happened in a meeting in Iran and I don't think Stalin was invited.

Answer 5

The US and it's allies had huge oil investments in Indo-China and the South Pacific. Japan's growing economy needed that oil, so they started taking it through Imperialistic moves. They invaded and occupied the countries that had oil.

Japan attacked the US on December 7, 1941, hoping to cripple the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor and thus stop our interference with their plans to conquer Indo-China and the South Pacific. The US declared war on Japanthe following day and then declared war on Germany the day after that.

Answer 6

Americans don't know history... their own or anyone elses.

Reading some of the other answers I'm amazed and the almost total lack of knowledge about what got the U.S. into WW2. I guess the revisionists have changed the real truth so much that the current generation really doesn't KNOW the truth.

The Japanese were desperate for oil sources because the U.S. had cut them off from their usual source of supply. Also, the only source for real rubber... latex.. was in the jap backyard of , Malaysia and Celon and the one thing needed at that time, before the discovery of synthetic rubber, was natural rubber.

The Japs were being cut off from all their sources of supply and the ONLY choice they had was to go to war with the U.S. to protect those supplies. People blame the Japs for starting the war... which they did... no argument there... but it was really the American foreign polities that made it necessary for them to attack Pearl Harbor.

Answer 7

I thought the USA went to war because Pearl Harbor was bombed. But what do I know.

In those days, the US was quite self-sufficient in oil, it seems to me. Although I was taught in history class that tires were ratiioned not because there was a shortage of rubber but because the war effort needed more oil, and it was easier to ration tires than oil.

Answer 8

Well, no back then during world war 2 (the 1950s) we didn't have cars then mainly horses and people walking on foot. Oats was the main reason we went to war because there was an oats shortage for the horses.

We were pulled into World War II by the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 by the Japanese.

Answer 9

It had to do with Japan's quest for oil...think of it this way, the USA was the big controller and supplier of oil back then especiallyto Japam. When the USA cut off the flow of oil in response to Japanese agression in China, Japan needed a source of oil, so that meant a grab at the oil fields of Southeast Asia. Japan figured that the USA wouldn't stand for it (with USA's relationships with Britain and France), so Japan issued a warning. That warning was Pearl Harbor and the taking of the Philippines.

Answer 10

WE went to war because the Japanese attacked our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Japanese had some issues with oil supply. Read this article. It's informative.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/pearlhbr.htm