But — recalling the proverbial dog in the night, in the Sherlock Holmes story — there was one subject upon which he hardly touched at all during these three years when his ‘Table Talk’ was being so meticulously recorded. That subject was oil. At no point did he express any serious concern about a fuel crisis — let alone that it was the single most crucial fact in his waging of the Second World War.
When he did mention oil, his comments were either blithely sanguine, bordering even on the frivolous, or wildly theoretical. He had the modern ecologists’ passion for discovering new forms of fuel — not out of necessity, but because he regarded the automobile as a smelly, dirty object. At the same time he had grandiose ideas for exploiting oil under the rainforests of South America; and even, at a lunch in July 1942, expressed enthusiasm for prospecting for it beneath the woods round his beloved Vienna.
The nearest he came to expressing any concern on the subject was his admiration for the Soviets who had cut out the monopolies and private interests… As a result, they are now in a position to prospect throughout their territory for oil with the assistance of very large-scale maps… There is no limit to what we could have extracted from the sources in the vicinity of Vienna, if the State had undertaken the necessary exploitation in time. This, added to the oil wells of the Caucasus and Rumania, would have saved us all from anxiety.
His one other reference to fuel was again in 1942 when he said: ‘In future mobilization will no longer be a problem of transport for us. We still have the problem of petrol, but that we’ll solve.’
He did not say how — which, Hawn reflected, was a pity.
CHAPTER 16
It was the first week in October, and they had still heard nothing from Pol. It was the weekend. The libraries and Record Office were closed. They had a large lunch, made love until it was almost dark, then brewed up a pot of strong coffee, lacing the cups with brandy, and began a detailed post-mortem on their researches — which might accurately be described as more dead than alive.
‘The trouble is,’ Anna said, ‘it’s all negative. Negative proof, if you like. Nothing to prove that our theory isn’t feasible, or untrue. But nothing to prove definitely that it’s true.’
‘Nevertheless, there was still a dead body in a Paddington bedsitter. And Mönch’s memoranda.’ (Anna had got the documents back from her brother, which Hawn had translated and had copied, with the original deposited in his bank.) ‘Then there’s the tie-up with Salak and Shanklin, and Shanklin and Frisby and that man Rice. It would be enough to get my editor putting ten of his best men on the job.’
‘Let’s just look at the facts first,’ Anna said. ‘What do we have on the credit side? We have no evidence — in any of the files that we’ve gone through or books we’ve read — that contradicts our theory. All right?
‘Secondly — there are firm, corroborated statistics that German consumption of oil actually increased as the war went on. I can give you chapter and verse for all this if you want it.
‘Three — one of the commonest arguments we’ve heard to dispose of our theory is that the Germans had accumulated vast oil reserves before the war, and went on to capture more huge reserves in the Occupied countries. The facts, however, are that when Hitler invaded Poland, he had only three months’ reserves. And in France — where he captured most oil — the supplies were barely enough for two months. Also, we mustn’t forget that in this first year of the war, the scale of Hitler’s mechanized machine was vastly inferior to that of the later years.
‘Four — contrary to popular belief, he did not receive a great deal of oil from Russia, either during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, or after his invasion of Russia in June 1941. The Russian oil industry was very underdeveloped, and after the invasion what there was of it was being constantly sabotaged.
‘Five — and this is the really crucial factor, the linchpin on which our theory stands or falls. Ploesti, Rumania. Officially, from the beginning of the war, Rumania was Germany’s main source of crude oil. But, Tom, here the statistics are very odd.’ She turned to a page with columns of handwritten figures; he groaned sardonically and she held up her hand. ‘I know — lies, damned lies, and statistics. The trouble is — from ABCO’s point of view — these statistics don’t add up. They not only contradict each other — they contradict history.
‘Unfortunately, I’ve had to do a certain amount of improvisation — inspired guesswork, as our critics and enemies would no doubt call it. Anyway, pay attention, because this is vital. In 1943 the Germans were refining approximately 23 per cent of Rumanian oil. We know that Ploesti didn’t have many refineries of its own, so I think we can make an intelligent guess that total German fuel imports from Rumania would have been about 30 per cent.
‘And we know that after the Allies invaded Southern Italy and captured the airfield at Bari, Ploesti and the other smaller Rumanian fields were being bombed round the clock. I haven’t been able to find any exact figures
