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Notes -
Germany has lost every war it ever fought as a direct result of being shut out of resource access through those methods, and the French lost their fair share of wars to this too (Napoleon).
I think it's fair to call that a strategic weakness.
They don't have natural gas, they don't have oil, they don't have good coal so they have trouble making steel, they don't have alloying elements so the metal (including steel) they are able to make is not the best quality. They have no large mountains for hydroelectric generation so their only indigenous source of electricity is coal. Food production is not their strong suit either (hence the need for Haber-Bosch, and really, why its inventors were German in the first place). Sure, they might have a highly educated and motivated society, but without any material/materiel to work with they're at the mercy of those who do.
This is also why the EU is a massive deal for Germany, because a politically-united Europe (under German economic control) means a Germany less constrained by American-English and/or French resistance to pursue its own policy goals. The "Fourth Reich" snark is not entirely untrue.
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