Finland, the Plan to Bomb the Caucasus Oil Fields, and Italy’s Entry into the War

Abstract

We now enter what Neville Chamberlain once described as the ‘twilight’ war.¹ Britain’s hopes rested not so much in the military sphere but in the economic, especially upon an effective blockade of Germany. This was designed to stop the Germans from obtaining urgently needed natural resources that were enabling her to continue the war. She had two major sources of supply — Scandinavia with its iron ore, and the Soviet Union with its oil.