Ukraine to this day still gets most of its gas and oil imports from Russia and also continues to transit Russian gas through pipelines to Europe.

Weird, but there's probably good reasons. For one, EU countries that depend on Russian gas via Ukraine would stop their support of Ukraine if they were to stop the flow.

> US scrap metal companies were furiously selling scrap to Germany & Japan in 1939

In Herman Wouk's novel The Winds of War, an admiral, aboard an aircraft carrier near Pearl Harbor in 1940 or -41, groused to his officers that (paraphrasing from memory) "sooner or later the [Japanese] are going to come steaming over the horizon, burning Texaco oil and shooting pieces of old Buicks at us."

I asked my friend to recommend his favorite historical novels, and they were 'The Winds of War' and 'War and Remembrance.' It's amazing how much history is embedded in them, well worth the time to read.