A thorough analysis showed that Great Britain would not have enough energy fuel even for two months if the conflict with Germany happened. The attempts to produce artificial fuel from coal failed, as hydrogenation was far more expensive than oil import.

After long consultations and debates, the English government took an unambiguous and uncompromising decision. According to it, in case of war, “any competition” should be excluded and all the British industry should go under control of one giant state-owned concern.

Despite the complexity of this task and necessity of its fastest fulfillment, the British government faced another problem that was called Royal Dutch/Shell.

That time, there was a real danger that Nazi Germany could establish control of giant English-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch/Shell, on which British energy safety depended. It could come true because Henry Deterding who, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill nimbly remarked, had only two devotions – his German secretary and Adolf Hitler, headed the concern.

Henry Deterding was a Dutchman who had moved to Great Britain before WWI and was a staunch admirer of Hitler. Owing to his hatred for the USSR, admiration for Hitler, and an obsession of friendship between Great Britain and Germany as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union, Shell started negotiations with the German government for delivering oil on credit, which means in fact creating a war oil reserve. It is only natural that the company management in London objected to it.

The situation became strained after Deterding’s death in 1939. The Nazis not only organized pathetic funerals for him but also tried to gain control over Royal Dutch/Shell. Luckily, under the company charter, preference shares could belong only to the company directors, which meant that, at best, the Nazi government would be able to get only an insignificant part of common shares.

The next stage of providing Great Britain’s energy safety was the amalgamation of British oil companies including Shell into a special Oil department. The consolidation was conducted surprisingly quickly and without serious consequences while the single trademark Pool was introduced for oil products.

However, this had not solved all British energy problems. The hydrocarbons economy regime was not a solution for oil deficit, especially considering that Germany had reached rich and well-placed Romanian reserves.

An attempt to prevent Germany from using the Ploiesti oilfields failed. As early as before the capitulation of France, both the British and French governments offered Romania $60 million for self-destroying its oilfields and, thus, preventing Germany from exploiting them. However, the parties failed to agree about the price, so the Romanian oil came to Nazi Germany.

Expecting the war to be long and bloody, the British government developed a plan to destroy British fuel reserves in case of German invasion and closed over 17,000 gas stations in the eastern and southeastern Britain.

However, depriving the enemy of its potential access to one’s reserves does not mean to add these reserves. The lend lease agreement with the United States on delivering energy products to Great Britain, which was supported by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a real breakthrough.

In spring 1941, 50 US tankers set a course for British ports via the Pacific Ocean. But not all the ships reached their destination; German submarines that used the «wolf packs» tactics ran down a lot of them.

The results shocked the British. On learning the consequences of submarine attacks, Churchill got so upset that he called them “the blackest cloud on our horizon”. He had all the grounds for such a saying as Great Britain had only five-week reserves of fuel left while its fuel reserves for the Royal Navy were enough for nine weeks.

To resist the threat the United States intensified patrolling the Atlantic region and established Navy bases on the Newfoundland Island, Bermudas, in Greenland, and Island. At the same time, British intelligence service MI-5 succeeded in breaking German Navy codes, which allowed sending convoys via safer routes. However, soon after the lull, a new stage of the submarine warfare began. It is in the first three months of 1942 that almost four times as many tankers were killed as were built anew. In spite the number of ships taken down increased every passing day, the United States had not taken proper steps in order to secure oil supplies for a long time.

Only a few months later, the situation was thoroughly analysed and it was revealed that the United States not only neglected developing their sea defense, but also helped the Germans with killing cargo ships. US coastal cities elucidated with neon lights were an excellent background for tankers’ silhouettes to be clearly seen.

However, when the authorities tried to introduce the regime of rigid blackout, hotel owners objected to it also rigidly. In particular, Florida hotel tycoons expressed strong dissent from blacking out in nighttime explaining that their clients should not be disturbed in the height of a tourist season. All attempts to solve the problem failed and during long period gapers walking along neon-luminous banks of prestigious resorts could see horrible attractions at nights. When dark horizon used to suddenly flare from the ocean direction another tanker was taken down.

As soon as in summer 1942, the outdoor lightning started to be switched off on the east US coast and local inspectors launched patrolling the streets seeing after putting off the indoor lights at nighttime, too. In addition, a most reliable convoy system was organized along the east coast, which protected tankers more seriously.

The most dramatic period in the struggle for Atlantic took place in the second half of 1942. At the time, improved submarines with increased endurance, greater submerged operating depth and more effective communications systems started entering service with the German Navy. At that, the Germans succeeded in breaking the communications codes used by British convoys. To cap it all, the commander-in-chief of the German Navy, Gross Admiral Erich Roeder initiated sending “milk cows” – submarines carrying diesel fuel, water and food for combat duty submarines – to the Atlantic.

Delivering fuel to Great Britain became more and more difficult, with the United States losing a quarter of their total tanker fleet in 1942.

In Casablanca (Morocco), Churchill and Roosevelt negotiated on hydrocarbon supply safety along with opening the second front in Europe. One of the participants in the meeting, Chief of British General Staff General Alan Brook said, “Mainly, navigation problems interfere with any offensive actions and until we are unable to counter German submarines effectively, we will not be able to win the war”. Fighting the German submarines became the main alliances’ objective for 1943.

Soon, the scale abruptly turned to another side. Working hard, the allies managed to break new communication codes used between German submarines and Berlin. The allied navy succeeded in using codes that were improved and unfamiliar to the enemy. In addition, the latest radars were developed and fielded, up-to-date long-range aircraft entered service to provide air support in the most dangerous Atlantic regions.

In this context, it is worth mentioning staff replacements in the opposing fleets. Very early in 1943, ‘old salt’ Erich Roeder was replaced as commander-in-chief of Kriegsmarine by Karl Doenitz who was far younger but less luckier and, by the way, failed to become the führer after Hitler had committed suicide (it is interesting that later the Nuremberg tribunal equalized the merits of gross admirals – both of them got “a tenner inside”). Six months later, the First Sea Lord, Dudley Pound, who was terminally ill, was replaced by legendary Admiral Andrew Brown Cunningham who won back the title of “the mistress of the seas” to Great Britain and was awarded the honorable title of the viscount of Hindhope in the end of the war.

Generally speaking, the situation in the Atlantic theatre of operations changed finally and definitively. In May 1943 alone, the Germans lost 30% of their attack submarines. Several months later after a number of bloody fights, an almost four-year deadly war finally came to an end. Oil could be delivered to Europe freely, so the victory over Nazism came nearer.