I believe this has a lot to do with the failure of the Maginot line: it had been constructed to slow down an army with horse-drawn logistics (after all, germany had no oil) but the germans did their end run with mechanised units (having researched synfuels in the meantime).

From 1940 to 1943, one can readily explain Axis strategy as an insatiable quest for more oil: no barrels, no Blitz.

EDIT: Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow#World_War_II

Reflecting the interwar German society more broadly; agricultural mechanization was decades behind the US and UK.

The industrial and economic "miracle" of the pre war Nazi regime wasn't spent on tractors either, but on weapons.