WWII: Germany starts total war mobilization earlier

[Iosef Cross]

First, a specific claim you made, Iosef.Could you please show me some figures?

About? Well, the fact that the US produced 130 million tons of oil per year during the years before WW2, while for Germany a few tens of million tons of oil in stock by the start of WW2 would make a large difference.

Was it practical for them to stockpile such a large amount? Did suitable tankage and distribution infrastructure exist? Germany's peacetime oil consumption was 44 million barrels per year, or roughly seven million tons. You're talking about them storing a quantity equivalent to several years of their peacetime oil consumption. And presumably not all in one or two very large facilities, either, because such facilities would then be painfully vulnerable to enemy bombing raids.

If the country was making massive preparations for war, they would build storage facilities for their oil and rare minerals. I don't know the costs of storage of ton of oil per year in the 30's, but it is probably higher than the costs of not having oil stocks when the war starts.

Could they do that?

They could certainly have stored some oil for the war.

Today the US has over 700 million barrels in stock. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_ ... um_Reserve. Japan has nearly 600 million.

Considering that Germany was planning in making war agaisnt the Allies with had nearly the entire oil reserves in the world, they certainly should have stocked some oil.

"If Germany manages to defeat the USSR in 1941..."How? Does this plan involve Soviet commissars shooting every single Russian and then shooting themselves? Because if the USSR doesn't conveniently commit suicide, there's no way for the German army to knock them out of the war in 1941. They might have gotten a little farther than they did, but you yourself point out that they couldn't have delivered much more in the way of firepower (tanks, planes, etc.) to the front than they did historically. Better tactics would not have gotten them much farther.

If you understood what I said you would see that I said that if Germany had 1944 war production levels in 1940 and 1941, then they could have defeated the USSR in 1941. I also said that they probably couldn't have 1944 production levels in these years. And that they wouldn't have the fuel to use the additional equipment as well. So I was assuming away these factors.

Ah. So if the Saudi fields suddenly relocated to the Black Forest in the 1930s, then the Germans could beat Russia in 1941. Somehow, I fail to see how this is more plausible than the Russians all spontaneously deciding to commit suicide.[/quote]

If the Germans build a large fuel reserve in peacetime. That would be more plausible than collective suicide.

Also, you should note that every kilometer advanced by the Germans would reduce the manpower base of the USSR, and make then weaker in the war of attrition. While it is true that it would be impossible to any army to occupy the 20 million square kilometers of the USSR, to defeat the USSR would mean to make an armistice were the USSR gives to the Nazis most of their European lands. That could be done if they managed to occupy Moscow and Leningrad, advance further and inflict perhaps 2 million extra casualties on the Red Army in 1941.

What makes you think they could do this? Even with nigh-unlimited supplies of fuel from God, the Germans would still be faced with the same problem with captured Soviet rail infrastructure. How would they support an army powerful enough to overwhelm the Soviet forces facing them in the way you describe?

Also, the "two million casualties" figure you throw about so lightly is roughly half the total casualties the Soviets already suffered during 1941, a year of total military disaster for them, as it is!

How would greater tank production help them cause such massive Soviet losses while avoiding getting tied down in battles of annihilation that delay them and render them unable to capture key cities?[/quote]

Well, I think that the main reason why the Germans failed to defeat the USSR was that the USSR could supply replacements at a faster rate that the Germans could inflict casualties. Between June 1941 and January 1942, they lost 4.4 million men (you have already provided a source). However, their frontline strength increased from 2.7 million in June to 4.2 million in December (source: Glantz, When Titans Clashed, page 301).

Since German production of heavy artillery rounds was 4 times higher in 1944 than in 1941 (source: The German War Economy, Nicolas Kaldor, 1946) and the bulk of casualties were inflicted by artillery, by having several times the supply of artillery ammunition and guns, they could certainly increase the rate that they inflicted casualties. I think that a 50% increase in casualty infliction is feasible, given a quadrupling in supply of ammo and guns.

If they managed to defeat the USSR in 1941, they would have 4-5 years for the added funds to make a difference in research.

You are making a fallacy here, while it is true that they couldn't linearly accelerate research by simply increasing the funds available (i.e. double the speed of research by doubling the money), this doesn't imply that money won't make any difference.

This is disingenuous. You implied great increases in speed, enough to allow them to begin rapid production of advanced weapons by 1945-46, when many of the weapons in question hadn't even reached the prototype stage and still had crippling engineering weaknesses at that time historically.

They already had every available brain working on these problems, and many of the projects in question (like the V-weapons) had priority over other war production as it was. How would freeing up funds and resources from things like tank production help?[/quote]

The manhattan project involved the construction of major industrial projects. They even build the largest building in the world to make the enriched uranium needed. The millions of workers released from the eastern front would surely increase the resources available for the construction of the industrial plants to build nuclear bombs.

2) Even if the German nuclear program was not led by idiots (it was), your assertion that they could have a bomb in 1942 is completely laughable.

I said that they could START a serious nuclear program in 1942. You clearly didn't even try to understand that.

The fact is that you would want for me to say something as stupid as that while at the same time considering anything said by the user with the label "Iosef Cross" to be wrong and making the most uncharitable interpretation possible of my points.

Aah. I see. I misunderstood.

Instead of making the insane claim that the Germans could have a bomb in 1942, you merely made the irrelevant claim that they could have started a bomb program in 1942. They surely could have; in fact, they did have one at that date It was a complete cluster-fuck.[/quote]

Hitler didn't believe that nuclear bombs would work because he though that nuclear physics was "Jewish physics". They gave priority for programs like the V-2, because these programs weren't based on Jewish physics. Actually, with the surplus resources from the lack of an massive front like the eastern front, resources could be used to supply marginal programs like the nuclear program.

And in that case, the relevant point for you was not "...starting in late 1941, early 1942. Over 3 years before the first American nuke is tested." That's what misled me, because it made me think you thought it somehow mattered that this would be happening before the Trinity test. It wouldn't, if all you meant was that the program started at that date... because the relevant point wasn't "over three years before the first American nuke is tested." It's "No earlier than the American nuclear program began." And since the German program would be less competently led and staffed, in a country with fewer assets, that was still being bombed at the time from Britain... they're still not going to be the ones to build the bomb first. Or even a close second.

1- The countries that Germany occupied by 1941 had produced 65% of the nobel prize winners of 1918-1938 in physics, chemistry and medicine (source: just look at the nobel prize site). By 1941, Germany probably controlled greater intellectual resources than the US. Though the fact that the Nazi state was a total disaster for scientific research would help to decrease the difference. Also, the GDP of the German dominated area was a little greater than that of the US, second to estimates for 1928 and 1938 (source: http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical ... 2-2010.xls), thought it decreased during the war while US GDP increased. With the supply of natural resources from conquered parts of the USSR, Western Europe's economy wouldn't suffer like it did during WW2, and their GDP would probably increase rather than decrease.

2- Strategic bombing before 1943, was insignificant. German bombing of Britain before Barbarossa was greater than British bombing of Germany in 1941 and 1942. If they manage to make peace with USSR by december, they will focus in the Luftwaffe, increasing their strength agaisnt enemy bombing raids. Hence, the allies will have a very hard time in trying to disrupt the German research programs though bombing.

[Iosef Cross]

I said that they could START a serious nuclear program in 1942. You clearly didn't even try to understand that.

Big deal. That means, starting in 1942 at what essentially would be from ground-zero (pun intended), and assuming that somehow the Nazis magickally recruit a team of actual competent scientists instead of the clown-squad who were running what they thought was a serious nuclear R&D effort —who then have to backtrack through the previous team's fuckups to put the project on the proper course, and assuming that the programme remains free from the usual Nazi organisational chaos— then going full-bore they maybe get a prototype bomb by 1947 at the earliest.

Too bad several of their cities would already have been treated to dosages of instant sunshine from the Americans by 1945 and 1946.

Well, I agree with you that the Germans would need more time than the Americans to make an atomic bomb. But I disagree that a few atomic attacks in 1945 and 1946 would have great effects on the German war effort.

Historically the Allies dropped 1.4 million tons of bombs over Germany, these bombs failed to have great effects on German war production, with maintained high levels of production until December 1944. These 1.4 million tons of bombs contained 700 thousand tons of explosives, nearly equivalent to 50 Hiroshima bombs.

I think that if the US wants to win the war with nuclear weapons, they would have to drop at least 100 nuclear bombs over Germany. That they could do in 1947.

[Patrick Degan]

I said that they could START a serious nuclear program in 1942. You clearly didn't even try to understand that.

Big deal. That means, starting in 1942 at what essentially would be from ground-zero (pun intended), and assuming that somehow the Nazis magickally recruit a team of actual competent scientists instead of the clown-squad who were running what they thought was a serious nuclear R&D effort —who then have to backtrack through the previous team's fuckups to put the project on the proper course, and assuming that the programme remains free from the usual Nazi organisational chaos— then going full-bore they maybe get a prototype bomb by 1947 at the earliest.

Too bad several of their cities would already have been treated to dosages of instant sunshine from the Americans by 1945 and 1946.

Well, I agree with you that the Germans would need more time than the Americans to make an atomic bomb. But I disagree that a few atomic attacks in 1945 and 1946 would have great effects on the German war effort.

Historically the Allies dropped 1.4 million tons of bombs over Germany, these bombs failed to have great effects on German war production, with maintained high levels of production until December 1944. These 1.4 million tons of bombs contained 700 thousand tons of explosives, nearly equivalent to 50 Hiroshima bombs.

I think that if the US wants to win the war with nuclear weapons, they would have to drop at least 100 nuclear bombs over Germany. That they could do in 1947.

You make a fundamental mistake in your comparison. Yes, the allies dropped the equivalent of 700KT of explosives on Germany —over a five year period, in hundreds of separate bomb drops. No German city got even a tenth of that in one shot, which is what an atomic bomb delivers. Nightly bomb damage can be rebuilt if the factory is substantially intact after the raid. Rebuilding won't be possible with a factory, it's entire district, and a substantial radius of urban landscape it once sat in having been transformed into a huge radioactive vacant lot.

[Simon_Jester]

Was it practical for them to stockpile such a large amount? Did suitable tankage and distribution infrastructure exist? Germany's peacetime oil consumption was 44 million barrels per year, or roughly seven million tons. You're talking about them storing a quantity equivalent to several years of their peacetime oil consumption. And presumably not all in one or two very large facilities, either, because such facilities would then be painfully vulnerable to enemy bombing raids.

If the country was making massive preparations for war, they would build storage facilities for their oil and rare minerals. I don't know the costs of storage of ton of oil per year in the 30's, but it is probably higher than the costs of not having oil stocks when the war starts.

Could they do that?

They could certainly have stored some oil for the war.

So. No discussion of costs, no discussion of whether they could afford to build storage tanks on that scale without taking away from other critical areas. Just "they could have stored some."

How is that an argument?

What makes you think they could do this? Even with nigh-unlimited supplies of fuel from God, the Germans would still be faced with the same problem with captured Soviet rail infrastructure. How would they support an army powerful enough to overwhelm the Soviet forces facing them in the way you describe?

Also, the "two million casualties" figure you throw about so lightly is roughly half the total casualties the Soviets already suffered during 1941, a year of total military disaster for them, as it is!

How would greater tank production help them cause such massive Soviet losses while avoiding getting tied down in battles of annihilation that delay them and render them unable to capture key cities?

Well, I think that the main reason why the Germans failed to defeat the USSR was that the USSR could supply replacements at a faster rate that the Germans could inflict casualties. Between June 1941 and January 1942, they lost 4.4 million men (you have already provided a source). However, their frontline strength increased from 2.7 million in June to 4.2 million in December (source: Glantz, When Titans Clashed, page 301).

Since German production of heavy artillery rounds was 4 times higher in 1944 than in 1941 (source: The German War Economy, Nicolas Kaldor, 1946) and the bulk of casualties were inflicted by artillery, by having several times the supply of artillery ammunition and guns, they could certainly increase the rate that they inflicted casualties. I think that a 50% increase in casualty infliction is feasible, given a quadrupling in supply of ammo and guns.

...Artillery does not work that way.

1) Increased supply of artillery does not grant the ability to move the shells to the front, not when the railroads aren't working.
2) Doubling the mass of shells thrown at dug-in opposition does not automatically double the number of casualties the shells inflict; see the Western Front in World War One for reference. When the enemy is well entrenched, throwing twice as many shells of a given caliber is useless, because the enemy is nigh-immune to those shells.
3) As you are apparently not aware, a large fraction of total Soviet casualties during 1941 were due to encirclement of large Soviet field forces near the border. Having more artillery would not help the Germans encircle the Soviet armies, as the German artillery was horse-drawn and thus not suited for mobile warfare.

Therefore, this is an absurd way for the Germans to achieve the kind of success you deem necessary. Can you do better than this?

The manhattan project involved the construction of major industrial projects. They even build the largest building in the world to make the enriched uranium needed. The millions of workers released from the eastern front would surely increase the resources available for the construction of the industrial plants to build nuclear bombs.

It would not, however, ease the scientific problems (which were fundamental). Nor would it increase the Germans' incentive to engage in blue-sky research on nuclear weapons; the US only went through with its bomb project because of heavy political influence from the European refugee physicists (such as Einstein) who (mostly incorrectly) feared that the Germans would soon have the bomb.

Remember that Hitler viewed his secret weapons programs as ways to gain an equalizer against superior opponents; he would not have had as much incentive to pursue them if all his enemies had fallen before him so easily!

Hitler didn't believe that nuclear bombs would work because he though that nuclear physics was "Jewish physics". They gave priority for programs like the V-2, because these programs weren't based on Jewish physics. Actually, with the surplus resources from the lack of an massive front like the eastern front, resources could be used to supply marginal programs like the nuclear program.

Why would the Germans devote such vast resources to a weapon they didn't think was going to work? Even having more surplus available would not make the absolute investment needed to develop the bomb any greater; we're still talking about a large fraction of Germany's total industrial output.

And this in a country that's been on full war mobilization since the mid-1930s, with the wheels starting to come off the economy. The logical move for Hitler is to push resources back into the civilian economy as a peace dividend, not to continue weapons research into highly expensive and very dubious projects.

1- The countries that Germany occupied by 1941 had produced 65% of the nobel prize winners of 1918-1938 in physics, chemistry and medicine (source: just look at the nobel prize site). By 1941, Germany probably controlled greater intellectual resources than the US.

Name them. Did you even read the names of those laureates? Nobel laureates like Einstein, who fled to the US? Fermi, who fled to the US? Conquering a country doesn't mean its physicists will work for you. Quite the opposite, really.

The US nuclear program was dominated by geniuses like Einstein, Fermi, and Bohr who escaped Nazi persecution. Virtually none of the great physicists of the era cooperated with them, with the notable exception of Heisenberg... who was useless.

[Iosef Cross]

They could certainly have stored some oil for the war.

So. No discussion of costs, no discussion of whether they could afford to build storage tanks on that scale without taking away from other critical areas. Just "they could have stored some."

How is that an argument?

I admit I don't have data about the costs of storing oil in the 1930's. So I don't have anywhere to go if you want a detailed financial study of the feasibility of storing 1 billion barrels of oil in preparation to WW2.

And also the fact that since oil consumption was a very small part of German resource consumption, to store several years of oil equivalent consumption wouldn't be much, considering that the Germans consumed dozens of times as much coal as they consumed of oil in those days, oil was not like today in the US, were several years of oil consumption is an absurd quantity, in 1938 Germany produced over 300 million tons of black and brown coal, 50 times their oil consumption.

Good strategic planning would involve storing rare resources for the war. The fact is that their historical strategic oil reserves were too low in 1939.

Artillery does not work that way.

1) Increased supply of artillery does not grant the ability to move the shells to the front, not when the railroads aren't working.

True. However, I think that the Wehrmacht could have used an increased war production. I don't think that the flow of supplies to the eastern front in 1941 consumed the maximum tonnage capacity that they could supply.

The gauge problem of the railroads was related to the speed of advance, as the advancing armies converted the gauge of the railroad, since it was a wider gauge than german trains. This slowed the speed of advance, buying time for the USSR to mobilize their manpower.

The Germans could press the Red Army until their army became stronger by december 1941. That's because they managed to send more men than they lost, and hence, by december 1941, the USSR had 4.2 million men in the front, while the Germans had around ~2.5 million, enabling enough numerical superiority to launch a strategic offensive.

With greater supply of equipment and ammo, it would help to make the German forces stronger. To have stronger forces is always good.

2) Doubling the mass of shells thrown at dug-in opposition does not automatically double the number of casualties the shells inflict; see the Western Front in World War One for reference. When the enemy is well entrenched, throwing twice as many shells of a given caliber is useless, because the enemy is nigh-immune to those shells.

Partially true. Of course, doubling the firepower spent on a enemy doesn't automatically double the enemy's losses. However, I think that the quadrupling of ammunition and guns supply would certainly help to increase the casualty inflicting capacity of the army.

In WW1 shell production was fundamental for the outcome. The Entente produced twice as much artillery shells as the Central powers (they produced 790 million shells to the 410 million shells of Germany+Austria, see: http://books.google.ca/books?id=cipOEMk ... 17&f=false).

Also, note that in WW1 the Germans would have probably won as well if they had 1918 levels of production in 1915, with had tripled by 1918.

That doesn't mean that the Germans would quadruple the casualty infliction, I never claimed that (if they could quadruple the casualty infliction rate in 1941 simply by having 4 times more ammunition and equipment, them they would have forced the USSR into surrender in 1 month*). One way to calculate the total firepower available to the army is the total volume of explosives used to supply ammo to the army.

German explosive consumption for the ammunition production, 1941-1944, metric tons:

1941 - 162,150
1942 - 256,450
1943 - 380,000
1944 - 624,000

Source: http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/ussbsappd.html

*Historically the USSR lost 700,000 men per month in 1941. If the Germans quadrupled this rate, they would lose 2.8 million per month, considering that the Red Army had less than that number at the operational forces in June 1941, it would be equivalent of the total destruction of their armed forces in 1 month. Even if the Germans destroyed this force in the border and didn't occupy the country, Stalin would have tons of shit in his pants and would probably accept the terms as defined in the objectives of Barbarossa. Of course, the Germans could never quadruple the amount of casualties rate that they inflicted in 1941.

3) As you are apparently not aware, a large fraction of total Soviet casualties during 1941 were due to encirclement of large Soviet field forces near the border. Having more artillery would not help the Germans encircle the Soviet armies, as the German artillery was horse-drawn and thus not suited for mobile warfare.

1- A larger number of trucks and tanks would certainly help. German truck production doubled between 1941 and 1943. More trucks and tanks would help to form a greater number of fast divisions, capable of executing fast encirclements. In reality, the armored divisions had to work with infantry divisions (with used horses for transport), slowing the encirclement process, enabling soviet soldiers to flee.

2- German WAR production tripled between 1941 and 1944, production of everything needed for the armed forces (with the possible exception of uniforms). The argument that bad railroads could entirely negate a 200% increase in war production is like saying that the US could never defeat Japan in war just because they had 10 times the warmaking potential because the Atlantic ocean would create supply difficulties.

Therefore, this is an absurd way for the Germans to achieve the kind of success you deem necessary. Can you do better than this?

Clearly, it is absurd to think that in WW2 the supply of material resources available to a certain side had some connection with the outcome of campaigns.

Of course, no matter the supply of materiel, the Germans could never defeat the Red Army in 1941 and force a peace settlement leaving their European part to the Germans, since bad railroads and the winter would be enough to make conquest impossible, for any armed force, no matter the volume of resources they had.

Like WW1, WW2 was a war of production. And in wars of production, the side with greater material resources has a very important advantage over the other. If the Germans were able to increase their war production by 1944, they would have certainly lost the war sooner, since they wouldn't be able to replace lost airplanes, tanks and guns, while being unable to supply ammunition for a 4 front war (italy+west+east+air) by 1943-44.

The main problem with my argument, "With 3 times the war production of 1940 and 1941 the Germans would win", is that increased production of weapons, supplies and ammunition doesn't substitute perfectly for lack of manpower. The best argument against mine would be that increased war production doesn't imply in increased manpower, and manpower was the key problem in the German war effort. Increased war production emerged as response to losses in equipment, to replace these losses, hence, increased supply of equipment would have zero marginal benefit to the german war effort in 1941. This argument assumes that the Germans had maxed out the benefits of increased supply of weapons and ammo in 1941, like the Americans had in 1944, when each gun could fire as much as they liked, but that was not the reality.

[Simon_Jester]

I admit I don't have data about the costs of storing oil in the 1930's. So I don't have anywhere to go if you want a detailed financial study of the feasibility of storing 1 billion barrels of oil in preparation to WW2.

And also the fact that since oil consumption was a very small part of German resource consumption, to store several years of oil equivalent consumption wouldn't be much, considering that the Germans consumed dozens of times as much coal as they consumed of oil in those days, oil was not like today in the US, were several years of oil consumption is an absurd quantity, in 1938 Germany produced over 300 million tons of black and brown coal, 50 times their oil consumption.

Good strategic planning would involve storing rare resources for the war. The fact is that their historical strategic oil reserves were too low in 1939.

Germany also had coal mining, storage, and distribution infrastructure which had been in full operation for many decades, whereas their consumption of oil on a significant scale hadn't started until the 1910s. Of course they consumed enormous amounts of coal; they also mined enormous amounts, makign it unnecessary for them to store it by the tens of millions of tons. Could they do the same with oil? Did the tanks, the refineries, physically exist? Did they have enough pipelines or tanker cars?

Good strategic planning would first involve making sure you can do what it would be nice for you to do. That's a critical hole in the way you're representing this situation. You're saying "It would be nice for the Germans if they had X," without bothering to stop and analyze whether X was possible.

True. However, I think that the Wehrmacht could have used an increased war production. I don't think that the flow of supplies to the eastern front in 1941 consumed the maximum tonnage capacity that they could supply.

Why do you believe this to be true?

The gauge problem of the railroads was related to the speed of advance, as the advancing armies converted the gauge of the railroad, since it was a wider gauge than german trains. This slowed the speed of advance, buying time for the USSR to mobilize their manpower.

The Germans could press the Red Army until their army became stronger by december 1941. That's because they managed to send more men than they lost, and hence, by december 1941, the USSR had 4.2 million men in the front, while the Germans had around ~2.5 million, enabling enough numerical superiority to launch a strategic offensive.

With greater supply of equipment and ammo, it would help to make the German forces stronger. To have stronger forces is always good.

...This makes no sense. I mean, did you even listen to your own argument here? First you talk about how the Germans could not advance faster because of the need to convert the gauge of the railroad.

Then you talk about the Germans "pressing" the enemy harder, which would require advancing faster, which they could not do because of the problem you yourself mentioned about the railroads.

Then you assume that increased war production in Germany would mean better equipped troops in Russia- there is no reason to assume this, or to assume that the effect would be at all significant. You do not know how much the Germans were already shipping their troops on the Eastern Front; you do not know whether they could have shipped twice as much, and you do not know whether they would have been significantly more effective at killing Russians if they could have and did do so.

Partially true. Of course, doubling the firepower spent on a enemy doesn't automatically double the enemy's losses. However, I think that the quadrupling of ammunition and guns supply would certainly help to increase the casualty inflicting capacity of the army.

Could the Germans quadruple the amount of munitions fired at the enemy? Is this physically possible? If not, it's like saying the Germans would win if all their troops had laser guns- an absurd and childish fantasy.

Without a reason to believe that the Germans' hypothetical increased war production could all be delivered to the front in 1941, this entire argument you make is shown to be hopeless.

---

In WW1 shell production was fundamental for the outcome. The Entente produced twice as much artillery shells as the Central powers (they produced 790 million shells to the 410 million shells of Germany+Austria, see: http://books.google.ca/books?id=cipOEMk ... 17&f=false).

OK. Now look at the military casualty figures. Despite increased shell production, the Entente powers suffered 18.5 million casualties in World War One; the Central powers suffered 12 million casualties.

So this argument of yours is either foolish (because you just looked to see whether the winning side made more shells than the losing side, without checking for any other variables), or a blatant lie (because you pretend that making more shells guarantees the ability to stack up massive casualty ratios in your favor, using as evidence a war where the winner produced twice as many shells but took 50% more casualties than their enemy).

That doesn't mean that the Germans would quadruple the casualty infliction, I never claimed that (if they could quadruple the casualty infliction rate in 1941 simply by having 4 times more ammunition and equipment, them they would have forced the USSR into surrender in 1 month*). One way to calculate the total firepower available to the army is the total volume of explosives used to supply ammo to the army.

You missed the word "available to" in your own statement. Shells in a warehouse in Berlin are not available to frontline soldiers on the outskirts of Leningrad, being as how the shells are in Berlin, not Leningrad.

To make these weapons available, they must be picked up and carried to the front by some other force- ships, trains, trucks, pack mules, something.

Why do you believe that the shells made in Germany could be carried to the front in the quantity you describe in 1941? We are talking about hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions here, not trivial quantities that are easy to move.

A real economist does not ignore the transportation infrastructure when making claims about what a country is capable of.

*Historically the USSR lost 700,000 men per month in 1941. If the Germans quadrupled this rate, they would lose 2.8 million per month, considering that the Red Army had less than that number at the operational forces in June 1941, it would be equivalent of the total destruction of their armed forces in 1 month. Even if the Germans destroyed this force in the border and didn't occupy the country, Stalin would have tons of shit in his pants and would probably accept the terms as defined in the objectives of Barbarossa. Of course, the Germans could never quadruple the amount of casualties rate that they inflicted in 1941.

Do you have evidence that Stalin would have yielded under those conditions? My impression was that he was a lot tougher than that, tough enough that he certainly wouldn't quit fighting until the enemy had driven deeper into European Russia, regardless of how lethal their troops were at the first clash of arms.

---

3) As you are apparently not aware, a large fraction of total Soviet casualties during 1941 were due to encirclement of large Soviet field forces near the border. Having more artillery would not help the Germans encircle the Soviet armies, as the German artillery was horse-drawn and thus not suited for mobile warfare.

1- A larger number of trucks and tanks would certainly help. German truck production doubled between 1941 and 1943. More trucks and tanks would help to form a greater number of fast divisions, capable of executing fast encirclements. In reality, the armored divisions had to work with infantry divisions (with used horses for transport), slowing the encirclement process, enabling soviet soldiers to flee.

And yet much of that increased truck and tank production came from captured factories that were not under German control until 1938-40, and which could not have been fully mobilized for German use in 1941. Beyond that, one of the great limiting factors in the German mechanized force during the late war was fuel shortages- would the Germans have been able to supply the fuel to move a larger mechanized force in 1941?

Don't just look at rates of production here- look at the total size of forces sustained. How did the German mechanized force of 1943-44 compare to that of 1941 in size, and in terms of readiness, of vehicles that could actually drive long distances to participate in an offensive?

2- German WAR production tripled between 1941 and 1944, production of everything needed for the armed forces (with the possible exception of uniforms). The argument that bad railroads could entirely negate a 200% increase in war production is like saying that the US could never defeat Japan in war just because they had 10 times the warmaking potential because the Atlantic ocean would create supply difficulties.

Atlantic? I will assume you meant "Pacific."

Here's the catch. Up to a point, that's actually true. There was no way the US could have defeated Japan in 1942, for example. This is because defeating Japan in war would require attacking Japan directly (by air, by land, or both). And the US didn't control bases close enough to the Home Islands to do that. They didn't even control bases in striking range of the bases they needed.

It took years of production for the US to solve the problems of beating Japan, by using that massive advantage of war production. We had to churn out huge numbers of ships that could take the weapons we needed to beat Japan and bring them to where they could be used. That took three and a half years; it would have taken longer if not for the atomic bomb letting us win the victory on the cheap, without having to take the further massive step of invading the Home Islands.

Likewise, the Germans cannot say "Ah-ha, I produce twice as many guns, therefore I can move my soldiers 50% faster." They have to build the systems that allow them to move, and that takes time independent of the total national GDP, or the percent of GDP devoted to making it happen. They can't trade war production for victory on a one-for-one basis like it was something they bought in a market.

Defeating Russia would still take time independent of the amount of munitions made available to do so.

Therefore, this is an absurd way for the Germans to achieve the kind of success you deem necessary. Can you do better than this?

Clearly, it is absurd to think that in WW2 the supply of material resources available to a certain side had some connection with the outcome of campaigns.

Of course, no matter the supply of materiel, the Germans could never defeat the Red Army in 1941 and force a peace settlement leaving their European part to the Germans, since bad railroads and the winter would be enough to make conquest impossible, for any armed force, no matter the volume of resources they had.

Essentially, yes. To quote one of the better-spoken military veterans I am aware of:
"The most brilliant strategy, the most courageous intent, come alike to naught if the troops are marshalled at one point and their transport at another."

The World Wars were not just wars of production, they were wars of consumption- supplies were produced at home and consumed on the front. This is why the British became so nervous in 1917 and 1940 when German U-boats attempted to blockade Britain. Even given that they could rely on American factories to make essential war materiel for them, that did them no good if the bullets were in America and the guns were in France.

Likewise, it does the Germans no good to make four, or ten, or even a thousand times more bullets if the bullets are in Essen and the guns are in Kiev. The bullets must be moved to the guns, and this cannot be done if the transportation network does not allow it.

The main problem with my argument, "With 3 times the war production of 1940 and 1941 the Germans would win", is that increased production of weapons, supplies and ammunition doesn't substitute perfectly for lack of manpower.

No, this is only half the main problem with your argument. The other half is that you have yet to establish that the weapons could be moved from the places they were made to the places they were needed... and this is at least as important as the manpower issue. Manpower can be stretched, by using proportionately more heavy weapons in the army, by recruiting from allied nations, by importing foreign workers to free up laborers to be turned into soldiers.

Logistics cannot be stretched, except on very small scales that you pay a high price for doing.

[Sea Skimmer]

I admit I don't have data about the costs of storing oil in the 1930's. So I don't have anywhere to go if you want a detailed financial study of the feasibility of storing 1 billion barrels of oil in preparation to WW2.

The German government spent every cent it had already. As early as 1934 the Nazi government was down to only a few weeks foreign exchange reserves, and had to seize all private gold and currency stocks. German citizens could not even leave the country with more then 100 reichsmarks worth of currency because the Germans did not physically have the foreign exchange to allow them to do so. This was actually a major problem when the SS tried to simply force Jews to leave German, before concentration camps or death camps were politically acceptable. You want a giant pile of German oil, then you've got to cancel something else that was imported of equal value. That's pretty much going to have to be either food, hardly an option, or rare strategic minerals like molybdenum which was used for making armor plate and weapons.

Imports were already tightly rationed, and this plus the very tight credit supply even for German currency created by the massive arms programs made everything worse because it precluded an expansion of exports that would have earned more money. As it was the Germans very much DID try to build reserves, and expand synthetic oil production. They failed dismally because it was too expensive to stockpile anything, and the synthetic oil plants were hugely expensive, and produced far more expensive fuel while taking years to build.

And also the fact that since oil consumption was a very small part of German resource consumption, to store several years of oil equivalent consumption wouldn't be much, considering that the Germans consumed dozens of times as much coal as they consumed of oil in those days, oil was not like today in the US, were several years of oil consumption is an absurd quantity, in 1938 Germany produced over 300 million tons of black and brown coal, 50 times their oil consumption.

Today we have a far more evolved oil industry to deal with the problem, and the Germans never had enough coal anyway, some had to be imported before the war began. Once the war started the coal shortage just kept getting worse because of insufficient food for miners, German and slaves alike. If the Nazis could have afforded more oil, they would have spent the money on more tanks and bombers to try to win wars more quickly anyway. The German empire was fucked in a long term war and they knew it, which is why Hitler wanted to just seize most of Europe and eliminate any credible threat prior to the as yet unknown atomic bomb.

Good strategic planning would involve storing rare resources for the war. The fact is that their historical strategic oil reserves were too low in 1939.

So were a fuckload of other strategic resource stocks. That's what you get when you mobilize in peacetime to wage massive wars of conquest. If the Nazis had somehow been willing to adapt a defensive posture in Europe then building up large stocks would have been possible. You can't expand an economy, which stockpiling resources is part of, and mobilize for war at the same time. It just will not work.

True. However, I think that the Wehrmacht could have used an increased war production. I don't think that the flow of supplies to the eastern front in 1941 consumed the maximum tonnage capacity that they could supply.

You have no idea what the Eastern Front was like then, at all. The German advance was delayed over and over again by supply shortages, cumulating in the utter disaster in the winter of 1941-42 when the Germans could not even more winter clothing forward to prevent tens of thousands of soldiers from outright freezing to death. Nor could they bring up anti freeze or numerous other vital items like ammo. They lost hundreds of thousands of men from this, and indeed they actually had fairly good supply stocks, 700 miles to the rear in Poland. Trucks BTW are good for about 400 miles in WW2 operations, any further and they will burn up more supplies then they can move forward. Course the Germans didn't have enough trucks for anything, let alone replacing railroad capacity.

With greater supply of equipment and ammo, it would help to make the German forces stronger. To have stronger forces is always good.

But you want the Germans to spend money on oil. This cannot happen without weakening the military forces. The Nazis spent very cent they had in foreign exchange and barely made the balance of payments work. You cannot 'add' anything else without either finding a source of more money, or only adding items which can be entirely produced with resources within the boarders of the Nazi Empire. That doesn't include a whole lot since almost everything needed one kind of imported mineral or chemical or another. It does not matter how much factory capacity you can find if you have no material to feed it, and like I said before the Germans needed to increase civilian EXPORTs in ordered to afford more imports. More intensive mobilization directly undercuts this.

Partially true. Of course, doubling the firepower spent on a enemy doesn't automatically double the enemy's losses. However, I think that the quadrupling of ammunition and guns supply would certainly help to increase the casualty inflicting capacity of the army.

Sure, that's also totally out of reason. Don't you think of the fucking Nazis of all people could have had FOUR TIMES as much ammo they would have done so?

Also, note that in WW1 the Germans would have probably won as well if they had 1918 levels of production in 1915, with had tripled by 1918.

Did you miss how the Germans totally collapsed in WW1 because the German population basically starved to death because all the government did was make guns and ammo? The Nazis were intent to avoid that, and this is one place they did well. You want to start starving the German population in 1933... okay, they'll collapse by 1940 and end up speaking French.

The main problem with my argument, "With 3 times the war production of 1940 and 1941 the Germans would win", is that increased production of weapons, supplies and ammunition doesn't substitute perfectly for lack of manpower. The best argument against mine would be that increased war production doesn't imply in increased manpower, and manpower was the key problem in the German war effort. Increased war production emerged as response to losses in equipment, to replace these losses, hence, increased supply of equipment would have zero marginal benefit to the german war effort in 1941. This argument assumes that the Germans had maxed out the benefits of increased supply of weapons and ammo in 1941, like the Americans had in 1944, when each gun could fire as much as they liked, but that was not the reality.

Increased production late in the war was the result of years upon years of steady increases in factory capacity, backed up by looting and starving occupied countries for labor and resources. You seem to think this can just happen earlier if the Nazis wish it. It cannot. The Nazis only took power in 1933 and by 1934 they already had enormous economic problems which ultimately forced them into war before they were ready. You want mass Nazi mobilization to an even more intensive degree, the most likely result is utter bankruptcy and war in 1936. Indeed the Germans only hung on until 1939 in large part because they stole all the Czech's gold after they seized everything in Germany.

[Thanas]

Did you miss how the Germans totally collapsed in WW1 because the German population basically starved to death because all the government did was make guns and ammo? The Nazis were intent to avoid that, and this is one place they did well. You want to start starving the German population in 1933... okay, they'll collapse by 1940 and end up speaking French.

Starving the German population in 1933 will quickly lead to a mass riot, mass civil upheaval which will give the army the push it did not have in reality to replace Hitler. Hitler already was unpopular with large parts of the army, starving the population will just make them hate him more.

Also, by 1933 the Nazi rule was not iron-tight, there was massive political pressure on them to deliver on their promises, which were food, jobs and a higher standard of living. If Hitler has the idea to go to a war economy then, he will simply find himself without any political support, not even in his own party.

[Iosef Cross]

Germany also had coal mining, storage, and distribution infrastructure which had been in full operation for many decades, whereas their consumption of oil on a significant scale hadn't started until the 1910s. Of course they consumed enormous amounts of coal; they also mined enormous amounts, makign it unnecessary for them to store it by the tens of millions of tons. Could they do the same with oil? Did the tanks, the refineries, physically exist? Did they have enough pipelines or tanker cars?

Of course the creation of strategic oil reserves would involve the construction of infrastructure. The question is: Does the cost of building up this infrastructure are paid off by the benefits of building up a strategic oil reserve? I would say that it is certain that the Germans should have stored some oil for the war, the question is: they should have stored 50 million barrels or 500 million?

Good strategic planning would first involve making sure you can do what it would be nice for you to do. That's a critical hole in the way you're representing this situation. You're saying "It would be nice for the Germans if they had X," without bothering to stop and analyze whether X was possible.

X is possible, given the money channeled into. What I am saying is that oil was a critical element in WW2, even in small quantities if compared to the size of the German material production, would make a large difference. Hence, it is clear that the benefits of using some resources to build up strategic oil reserves is greater than the opportunity cost of employing these resources in other areas.

True. However, I think that the Wehrmacht could have used an increased war production. I don't think that the flow of supplies to the eastern front in 1941 consumed the maximum tonnage capacity that they could supply.

Why do you believe this to be true?

Because the German Railway system was only allocating less than 1% of their car loadings to the Eastern front even in 1943 (when manpower the strength in the Eastern front peaked):

For example, as of 01.01 1943, daily car placings in the east (excl. the Generalgouvernement) were 13,012 as opposed to 1,575,572 in the Reich (that is, not including occupied Europe) and 3,625 in the 'Gedob' (Generaldirektion der Ostbahn in the Generalgouvernement); locomotive stocks at the same date amounted to 4,671 in the East, 2,088 in the Gedob, and 28,630 in the Reich.

Source: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1456322

Clearly, the logistical problems of the eastern front were of less significance to the failure of operation Barbarossa than lack of equipment and lack of manpower.

Albert Speer said that if he ran the German armaments production since 1940, Germany's equipment stocks would be twice as large as the historical levels and they would have better chances in Barbarossa. Clearly, even though it is untrue that if Speer ran the German war economy they would have greater production levels in 1940 and 1941, it is true that increased supply of armaments and associated equipment would help.

This makes no sense. I mean, did you even listen to your own argument here? First you talk about how the Germans could not advance faster because of the need to convert the gauge of the railroad.

Then you talk about the Germans "pressing" the enemy harder, which would require advancing faster, which they could not do because of the problem you yourself mentioned about the railroads.

1- Pressing the enemy harder doesn't always means faster advances, since the speed of advance is partly determined by the speed of retreat. However, it would certainly increase the soviet casualties during their retreat, decreasing their strength in pivotal battles/sieges like Moscow and Leningrad.

2- Assuming that the stronger German army advance as fast as they did historically, 1,200 km by late November, they would be strong enough to CONTINUE to advance in the next months. Hence, they could capture important strategic targets, like Leningrad and Moscow and reduce the free part of the Soviet Union from 1942 historical levels. This would probably make the continuation of war agaisnt Germany unfeasible for the USSR, and they would be forced make peace under the terms set forth by Barbarossa (european part of USSR up to the A-A line).

[Simon_Jester]

Iosef, you are still trapped in a network of impossibilities. This is getting silly.

Of course the creation of strategic oil reserves would involve the construction of infrastructure. The question is: Does the cost of building up this infrastructure are paid off by the benefits of building up a strategic oil reserve? I would say that it is certain that the Germans should have stored some oil for the war, the question is: they should have stored 50 million barrels or 500 million?

Iosef, how is that affected by the extremely tight constraint of Germany's foreign exchange reserves, which Sea Skimmer expanded on in depth?

Germany could not afford to import massive stocks of oil and build tankage to store it, not without sacrificing in other areas. And even importing massive stocks of oil would not make them self-sufficient in the event of a long war.

Do you have any real response to this? Or are you just going to keep saying "well they should have and they'd have won if they did," while ignoring that they could not do so and that it's an absurd fantasy to imagine they could?

X is possible, given the money channeled into. What I am saying is that oil was a critical element in WW2, even in small quantities if compared to the size of the German material production, would make a large difference. Hence, it is clear that the benefits of using some resources to build up strategic oil reserves is greater than the opportunity cost of employing these resources in other areas.

Prove it.

True. However, I think that the Wehrmacht could have used an increased war production. I don't think that the flow of supplies to the eastern front in 1941 consumed the maximum tonnage capacity that they could supply.

Why do you believe this to be true?

Because the German Railway system was only allocating less than 1% of their car loadings to the Eastern front even in 1943 (when manpower the strength in the Eastern front peaked):

Do you realize that for every carload of munitions delivered to the front, many carloads of coal and ore and metal and finished goods must be shipped around inside the home country? Do you realize that the population must be fed using goods moved on the home country's rail network? That railroad operations in occupied territory are vastly more difficult, requiring more security and more delays, reducing the number of cars that can be used on the network?

And, the moment of truth:

Are you objective enough to make an honest effort to account for how this complicates the picture, rather than just waving your hands and cherrypicking whichever figures undermine your case the least?

This makes no sense. I mean, did you even listen to your own argument here? First you talk about how the Germans could not advance faster because of the need to convert the gauge of the railroad.
Then you talk about the Germans "pressing" the enemy harder, which would require advancing faster, which they could not do because of the problem you yourself mentioned about the railroads.

1- Pressing the enemy harder doesn't always means faster advances, since the speed of advance is partly determined by the speed of retreat. However, it would certainly increase the soviet casualties during their retreat, decreasing their strength in pivotal battles/sieges like Moscow and Leningrad.

The Germans managed their rapid advance by two factors: encirclement of Soviet armies with fast mechanized units, and by the massive advance of their (marching, foot-borne) infantry armies.

The mechanized units cannot advance faster because they cannot outrun the bulk of the German army by too great a distance- they rely on the foot infantry and horse drawn artillery to flatten the encircled Soviet forces before they begin the next encirclement. Moreover, the mechanized units cannot inflict greater casualties simply by having more supplies: they can't encircle an army that isn't there to be encircled.

The infantry cannot advance much faster no matter how much surplus ammunition piles up back in Poland, because they have to walk all the way. Even light resistance delays a marching infantry force enormously. The Germans cannot fix this without mechanizing their whole army, which they cannot do. And, again, they can't chase down and annihilate Soviet formations with marching infantry- having more ammunition will not help.

2- Assuming that the stronger German army advance as fast as they did historically, 1,200 km by late November, they would be strong enough to CONTINUE to advance in the next months. Hence, they could capture important strategic targets, like Leningrad and Moscow and reduce the free part of the Soviet Union from 1942 historical levels. This would probably make the continuation of war agaisnt Germany unfeasible for the USSR, and they would be forced make peace under the terms set forth by Barbarossa (european part of USSR up to the A-A line).

How would they advance while suffering from massive supply problems due to the lack of transportation to move even such vital goods as winter clothing for an army sitting in Russia in December from the supply dumps in Poland to the front?

[Sea Skimmer]

Because the German Railway system was only allocating less than 1% of their car loadings to the Eastern front even in 1943 (when manpower the strength in the Eastern front peaked):

You just literally do not get how railways work do you? This seems to be a crucial issue. How do you think the number of cars on the entire German railway system is a relevant indicator of the supply constraints imposed by the railway tracks in the western USSR? Remember the whole German system is a vast grid with huge yards and generally one of the densest concentrations of track on earth. The invasion of Russia meanwhile is following straight tracks which rarely cross connect towards Moscow. These lines also lack many facilities which are not demolished, and generally are built to low standards in the first place because the Soviets industrialized so damn fast.

It doesn’t matter one bit how many cars you have. You can not push an infinite line of train cars of supplies down a railroad end to end. Even if you could that would just cause a massive backup and blocking of the line because most Russian lines are single tracked back then. That means 50% of the time the railroad is passing empty wagons and locomotives in need of servicing to the rear while the full trains wait on sidings. Trains cannot be longer then said sidings, though realistic train length will become even lower due to poor track conditions, crudely repaired bridges after Russian demolitions. This isn't even considering partisan attacks and the need for traffic control gaps to avoid collisions. Any blocking of the line is lost transport time you cannot get back. You cannot turn the train onto a side road or the ruts to get around a wreck.

[Simon_Jester]

What's being missed here is that any hypothetical case where the Germans win in Russia depends not on German strength; the Germans applied as much strength as they were able and failed, and applying 10% or 20% more strength in a few areas would not change the outcome. It would have to depend on Russian weakness- on the Germans being able to exploit the same advantages that allowed other badly outgunned armies to conquer empires that nominally had the force to crush them:

-Political fracture lines. Cortez's men would have been easily overrun by the Aztecs if the Aztec empire had been unified against him. Instead, he exploited the opposition between different Aztec city-states to break the empire apart. Alexander the Great did something similar, attacking the provinces on the Persian periphery and rolling them up before striking at the core Persian territories in Mesopotamia and Iran.

The Germans did not have this advantage. To be able to crack the Soviet system, they would have needed to present themselves as credible liberators. And this they could not do, because a Nazi Germany that was willing to liberate (rather than conquer) the unhappy non-Russian populations of the USSR wouldn't be Nazi Germany; they wouldn't be claiming Russia in the name of the Reich and would most likely never have felt motivated to attack Russia in the first place.

-Overwhelming tactical superiority. Cortez and his men had guns, horses, and steel armor against natives with stones and clubs. Alexander had the phalanx, which could smash through almost anything else in the world in hand to hand combat.

This is where the Germans came closest to having what they needed- they did have a vastly superior tactical system in 1941. But the margins of superiority weren't nearly as wide as those between Alexander and the Persians, let alone Cortez and the Aztecs. And the Russians, unlike the Persians or Aztecs, were in a good position to adapt and advance their own doctrine to cancel out the German advantages.

-Weakness of the central leadership. Cortez had the advantage of having to deal first with an emperor who suspected he was a god, then with an emperor whose government was being ravaged by epidemics even as he tried to organize against the Spanish. Alexander had less of an edge in this area, but even then, he was faced with opponents who were nowhere near a match for him in tactics and strategy.

The Germans had no control over this factor, since it depended entirely on the Russians. The Russians had a dictator at least as good at leading his nation in war. They had generals good enough to roughly match their German opposites. They had a system of government that, for all its flaws, was better organized for efficient war mobilization than the Nazi one.

This is arguably the really critical point: for the Germans to win in Russia, the Russians have to screw up by the numbers, or lack the resources to put up the kind of fight they did historically. We can imagine conditions that would make this possible- a more destructive Russian civil war, conditions in Russia that prohibited the rapid spread of industry in the late 1920s and '30s, more corrosive squabbling among the Communist Party leadership that left Russia without a strong, stable government in 1941... but all these factors are hopelessly beyond German control, and without their being changed in Germany's favor, Barbarossa was most likely doomed.

[Steel]

...conditions in Russia that prohibited the rapid spread of industry in the late 1920s and '30s...

Interestingly, the opposite could be the case. Consider the damage it would have done to them had they managed to build a state of the art railway network leading into Western Europe, at the same gauge. Suddenly the German supply problems are greatly reduced, and the Russians could have suffered greatly as a result.

Even in the modern day the coalition forces are encountering supply problems in Afghanistan due to the lack of rail infrastructure. Why did no Afghan government build a railway network in the last century? Because they feared it would make the country too easy to invade.

[Simon_Jester]

Interesting. I don't feel qualified to comment, but interesting.

Even so, though, the essential point remains: the only way for Germany to beat Russia in any variant on WWII would be to weaken Russia, not to strengthen Germany. No plausible Germany could be strong enough to overcome conditions in Russia, given the logistics, the weather, and the strength of opposition they'd face. And the changes that could weaken Russia would be far outside the Nazi's control- many of them would have to take place before the Nazis even took power.

[Sea Skimmer]

Long before they took power. The decision to standardize Russian railways on 5ft broad gauge was made all the way back in 1842 for example. Expansion of the railroad system would require changes before WW2 too, since the Soviets already did an incredible job expanding it afterwords. That would also mean a stronger Russian economy, which might do significantly better against Germany in the first world war to start with. If Imperial Russia could have produced the guns and shells per capita that the western allies did Imperial Germany would have been squished like a bug, just as it would be by the end of WW2.

[Sea Skimmer]

I meant changes before WW1 not WW2 in the above.

[Stuart]

Of course the creation of strategic oil reserves would involve the construction of infrastructure. The question is: Does the cost of building up this infrastructure are paid off by the benefits of building up a strategic oil reserve? I would say that it is certain that the Germans should have stored some oil for the war, the question is: they should have stored 50 million barrels or 500 million?

You're missing the point completely. From around 1935-36 onwards, Germany was maxed out. They didn't have the foreign currency resources to import more than they were historically. It's no use saying that a given policy would have enormous benefits if that policy is impossible from the get-go. You might argue that you would personally benefit from driving a Ferrari but it's a bit pointless saying so if your present car is an '87 Dodge, your credit cards are maxed out and your creditors are camped out on your front lawn. Germany went to war in 1939 because the country was bankrupt and had no other options. Now, you want to spend huge additional sums of money?

X is possible, given the money channeled into. What I am saying is that oil was a critical element in WW2, even in small quantities if compared to the size of the German material production, would make a large difference. Hence, it is clear that the benefits of using some resources to build up strategic oil reserves is greater than the opportunity cost of employing these resources in other areas.

Once again, you are studiously missing the point. The money to buy all that oil did not exist. Nor did the resources needed to build the facilities to handle, store and transport that oil. Strategic planning for a country is a matter of balancing priorities; Germany's problems in the 1930s were that no resources for redeployment into other sectors existed. In fact, the early mobilization discussed is also impossible. hitler secured his position on promises that wars would be short, victorious and pain-free. To make a pretext of fufilling that promise he had to keep civilian life running as per normal. That wasn't a conceit, it was a vital strategic necessity. One can actually put a finger on the date when that situation changed; December 1942. That was when Goebbels announced that, due to the situation in Stalingrad, the German people should have a "Soldier's Christmas" - ie a very austere one. Prior to that, Christmas in Germany had been up to pre-war standards. It took the massive disaster at Stalingrad to make that change possible. Trying it earlier would have undercut the very basis of Hitler's regime.

Because the German Railway system was only allocating less than 1% of their car loadings to the Eastern front even in 1943 (when manpower the strength in the Eastern front peaked)

For example, as of 01.01 1943, daily car placings in the east (excl. the Generalgouvernement) were 13,012 as opposed to 1,575,572 in the Reich (that is, not including occupied Europe) and 3,625 in the 'Gedob' (Generaldirektion der Ostbahn in the Generalgouvernement); locomotive stocks at the same date amounted to 4,671 in the East, 2,088 in the Gedob, and 28,630 in the Reich.

You don;t understand what that means do you? This actually tells you something very different from what you expect. We know that the rail network behind the German lines in Russia was strained to its maximum. Any reputable book on logistics will tell you that. So, this quote gives us a valuable piece of information; the maximum capacity of that railway network was 13,012 car-loads. Now, the Germans had the following types of railway car.

Type SSmys and Sa 705 six-axle heavy load wagon (for heavy tanks, etc) Capacity around 30,000 kg max

Type SSy "Koeln" four axle medium to heavy load wagon. Capacity around 20,000 kg max

Type R10 two axle, open stack wagon Capacity around 9,400kg max

Type R10 "Stuttgart" two axle, open stack wagon with a brake-house Capacity around 9,000 kg max

Type Ommr "Dresden" and "Linz" two axle box cars; (these are they wagons seen in movies transporting the MG or light FLAK crews in some sort of sandbagged protective position) Capacity around 15,000 kg max

"Villach" type two axle open goods wagons capacity around 10.000 kg max

Type OOt "Saarbruecken" four axle coal transporter, capacity around 20,000 kg but optimized for transporting coal

Type Om "Breslau" two axle, open goods wagon with a brake-house capacity around 9,000 kg.

In short, a good average of 15 tonnes of cargo per day per wagon for a total of roughly 195,180 tons of cargo per day. Now, a typical infantry divisional slice would consist of roughly 17,000 men. Prior to 1944 a German infantry division would include over 5,000 horses and almost 950 motor vehicles. A division of this size would need 53 tons of hay and oats, 54 tons of food, 20 tons of petrol, one ton of lubricants, ten tons of ordinance and another 12 tons of miscellaneous supplies plus ammunition and baggage (approx 150 tons total per day). This is before they do any fighting. A unit involved in active service would demand an additional 80 tons per day when largely inactive and a stupifing 1,100 tons per day when in heavy combat. An armored division has a baseline demand of 300 tons per day plus 30 tons per day when largely inactive and 700 tons per day when in heavy combat. Now, German strength in Russia varied wildly but let's take a baseline strength of 190 infantry divisional slices and 24 armored divisional slices. We can also assume that around 40 percent of the army was involved in heavy fighting at any one time. Cranking all those figures together means that we have a demand for roughly 175,000 tons per day. That leaves just 20,000 tons for everything else the Germans wanted to do in Russia including moving raw materials around.

The critical factor here is capacity of the railway lines. Each given length of track can only have one train on it. Putting two trains at once on a single piece of track has dire results. If the railway line is single track (most russian lines were), then only one train can use that track in one direction between sidings. Running two trains in opposing directions on the same track also has dire results. Also, the figures given above are optimum; they assume that all the cars are loaded to capacity. This is not possible. poor Soviet construction standards played a key role in the German decision making process. Whereas German and most western rail bed construction methods contained a multi-tiered rock and gravel foundations - Soviet rails were almost always sitting only on a bed of sand covered occasionally with rocks to minimize the inevitable dust clouds. The western regions of the Soviet Union suffered a great rock shortage. To make matters worse, the vast majority of the Soviet rail ties were made of untreated pine. This meant that their weight capacity fell way below German railway norms (38kg/m for Soviet lines vs. 49kg/m in Germany). Soviet rail ties were also placed further apart than American and German norms (approximately 1.440 ties per km in the Soviet Union vs. 1.500 ties per km in Estonia, 1.600 ties per km in Germany and 2.000 ties per km in the United States). This too added to a lower overall transportation capacity of the Soviet rail line. The way a rail is attached to a tie is also of great importance to speed limits and weight allowances. Soviet rails were attached to the tie with plain spikes. German norms called for the rails to be attached with an angled washer/base plate and screw type tie-downs. Angled base plates allow one to increase load factors and rail speeds. Because of the Soviet rail line construction technique, Soviet cargo and weight capacities were often reduced way below the official allowances. All of these factors absorb that 20,000 tons of "spare" capacity. Notice something. Simple logistics, the sort of maths any competent staff officer can perform in his head, have just eliminated the possibility that raw materials from Russia could feed the German war effort. Sure, Germany may capture them but the railway capacity needed to bring them back to the Reich doesn't exist.

Now, the importance of the relative figures for carloads inside Germany and in Russian becomes apparent. What they actually show us is how many railcar loads are required to support the German economy internally. In other words, the railway load cost of supporting teh Germane conomy at its historical level was 100 times greater than that of supporting the German Army in Russia. Now, if we do a ten percent increase in the size of the German economy, the transportation demand will go up by the same ammount. Thus, that increase will be ten times the size of the railway logistics infrastructure in Russia. That's a massive increase and it still doesn't affect the tonnage of cars that the rail net in Russia can handle.

One final complexity. To ensure that the German rail network had enough locomotives and rolling stock, the Germans cut right back on heavy support equipment such as crane trains and wreckers. They had so few that a derailed or damaged locomotive was simply abandoned. So, track repairs and train accidents cost a lot of supply.

Clearly, the logistical problems of the eastern front were of less significance to the failure of operation Barbarossa than lack of equipment and lack of manpower.

That may be clear to you but it's utterly false.

Albert Speer said that if he ran the German armaments production since 1940, Germany's equipment stocks would be twice as large as the historical levels and they would have better chances in Barbarossa. Clearly, even though it is untrue that if Speer ran the German war economy they would have greater production levels in 1940 and 1941, it is true that increased supply of armaments and associated equipment would help.

Albert Speer said a lot of things. All of which glorified Albert Speer. His statement is his self-serving opinion, nothing more and working with the numbers tends to discredit him.

Pressing the enemy harder doesn't always means faster advances, since the speed of advance is partly determined by the speed of retreat. However, it would certainly increase the soviet casualties during their retreat, decreasing their strength in pivotal battles/sieges like Moscow and Leningrad.

That's utter nonsense. Of course pressing the enemy harder means advancing faster and burning more fuel and ammunition in doing so. That's the textbook definition of pushing the enemy harder.

Assuming that the stronger German army advance as fast as they did historically, 1,200 km by late November, they would be strong enough to CONTINUE to advance in the next months. Hence, they could capture important strategic targets, like Leningrad and Moscow and reduce the free part of the Soviet Union from 1942 historical levels. This would probably make the continuation of war agaisnt Germany unfeasible for the USSR, and they would be forced make peace under the terms set forth by Barbarossa (european part of USSR up to the A-A line).

Once again, you are completely missing the point. The Germans couldn't advance further or faster; they had reached the end of their supply line. What stopped them, more than any other single factor, was their inability to shift supplies deep into Russia, If they had advanced furtehr, their units would have been out of supply; their tanks would have been stopped in the fields without fuel or ammunition, the infantry stalled in their foxholes without food or bullets. When the Siberians arrived, they would have had a real field day (and they did well enough as it was). It's easy to move counters around on a map and "win" wars on paper. The real world is a lot more complicated.

[Simon_Jester]

Long before they took power. The decision to standardize Russian railways on 5ft broad gauge was made all the way back in 1842 for example. Expansion of the railroad system would require changes before WW2 too, since the Soviets already did an incredible job expanding it afterwords. That would also mean a stronger Russian economy, which might do significantly better against Germany in the first world war to start with. If Imperial Russia could have produced the guns and shells per capita that the western allies did Imperial Germany would have been squished like a bug, just as it would be by the end of WW2.

What I was originally getting at was the possible consequences of, say, the Soviet government breaking up into squabbling factions in response to the German invasion. Yes, that's utterly impossible given what happened historically; I'm not saying it was possible, and German fantasies that it would happen were totally unrealistic. But I can't imagine another way for the Germans to win. And I think it's interesting that alternate histories revolving around a German victory never seem to take the tack of weakening the Russians rather than assuming the Germans could have won if they'd just had more Nazi ingenuity or whatever.

A unified Soviet leadership controlling the historical Soviet order of battle would be sure to stop the German invasion, given the constraints faced by the Germans. A (much) weaker leadership that could not rally (nearly) so many troops, or could not manufacture (nearly) the heavy equipment the Soviets historically had, might not have been able to do so.

And, just to emphasize this, I don't think this was a realistic possibility. I'm only mentioning it for the same reason I mentioned the "the Russians all commit suicide" option for a German victory on the Eastern Front- effectively, this would be another form of that.

In short, a good average of 15 tonnes of cargo per day per wagon for a total of roughly 195,180 tons of cargo per day. Now, a typical infantry divisional slice would consist of roughly 17,000 men. Prior to 1944 a German infantry division would include over 5,000 horses and almost 950 motor vehicles. A division of this size would need 53 tons of hay and oats, 54 tons of food, 20 tons of petrol, one ton of lubricants, ten tons of ordinance and another 12 tons of miscellaneous supplies plus ammunition and baggage (approx 150 tons total per day). This is before they do any fighting. A unit involved in active service would demand an additional 80 tons per day when largely inactive and a stupifing 1,100 tons per day when in heavy combat.

Whew. I'm guessing that's mostly petrol and ordnance?

The critical factor here is capacity of the railway lines. Each given length of track can only have one train on it. Putting two trains at once on a single piece of track has dire results. If the railway line is single track (most russian lines were), then only one train can use that track in one direction between sidings. Running two trains in opposing directions on the same track also has dire results. Also, the figures given above are optimum; they assume that all the cars are loaded to capacity. This is not possible...

This raises another interesting question:

What did the Soviets do when it was their turn to advance across the same terrain, following the same railways, on the way to Berlin?

[Stuart]

Whew. I'm guessing that's mostly petrol and ordnance?

For an armored division, yes. For an infantry division it's mostly artillery ammunition which is a fearsome consumer of weight. There's another point here by the way. We're treating train wagons as being an infinitely flexible unit but that isn't so. For example oil tank cars can't be used for transporting anything but oil Coal wagons aren't really usable for anything but coal although they can carry other things at a major loss in efficiency. Box wagons are notoriously difficult to use for bulk cargo (by the way, remember the standard load rating of a railcar; 40 hommes, 8 chevaux. 40 men or eight horses. To carry just the men from an infantry division slice would require 425 carriages. The horses would need another 625 carriages and the vehicles at least 500. So, a division needs at least 1,550 railway cars to move its physical assets. That's in addition to keeping it supplied.

What did the Soviets do when it was their turn to advance across the same terrain, following the same railways, on the way to Berlin?

There's a pronounced difference in fighting style. The Germans loved long, swinging blows that encircled the enemy on a grand strategic scale. The Russians used a series of short, sharp jabs that would envelop their enemy on a tactical scale. If we look at the grand history of the war in the East (again, Ericsson's The Road To Stalingrad and the Road To Berlin are excellent at this) this difference in style comes out very clearly. The Russians would spend time building up their supplies at a point of attack. Then they would launch their attack, consuming their supplies at one point while switching their transport resources to building up at the next point. Then, when their first offensive petered out as the supplies were consumed, the next front down the line would launch its attack. And so on all the way down the front. Add ina mass of maskirovka and we have a Russian offensive. This had an interesting side effect that German reserves would move to meet one assault , then move again to meet another and never actually get into action.

Note it took the Russians quite a bit longer to recapture their lost territory than it did for the Germans to cature it in tehf irst place. Now, an interesting question is what would happen if the Germans had used the same concept of a series of short, more limited attacks instead of racing as deep into Russia as they could?

[Simon_Jester]

What did the Soviets do when it was their turn to advance across the same terrain, following the same railways, on the way to Berlin?

There's a pronounced difference in fighting style...[explains]

Very interesting, but how does that ease the logistical problems? The division still needs food and ammunition, and it's still being shipped down single-track railways; the only difference is that loaded cars are now rolling west and unloaded cars are rolling east instead of the other way around.

Note it took the Russians quite a bit longer to recapture their lost territory than it did for the Germans to cature it in tehf irst place. Now, an interesting question is what would happen if the Germans had used the same concept of a series of short, more limited attacks instead of racing as deep into Russia as they could?

Unless they could wear the Soviets down by attrition in that kind of battle, which I beg leave to doubt... I'm not seeing how that would have helped. Especially if the Soviets still wound up abandoning "not one step backwards!" and trading land for time. The Germans still wind up out-produced and outnumbered; the only difference is that they're not at the fingertip limit of their ability to supply their own forces.

[Stuart]

Very interesting, but how does that ease the logistical problems? The division still needs food and ammunition, and it's still being shipped down single-track railways; the only difference is that loaded cars are now rolling west and unloaded cars are rolling east instead of the other way around.

What it means is that the Russians used their lines to stockpile supplies in one place. As soon as the dumps were full, they'd swing their available transport to stocking up the next jump-off point. Then, they'd launch their offensives in a series down the line (rather like a lightning bolt. Each offensive would go as far as its supplies took it. Then they'd stop and wait to be resupplied. So, instead of a smooth,s weeping advance, there would be a series of jerks, each one taking a chunk out of the enemy line with supply dumps being rebuilt in between.

Unless they could wear the Soviets down by attrition in that kind of battle, which I beg leave to doubt... I'm not seeing how that would have helped. Especially if the Soviets still wound up abandoning "not one step backwards!" and trading land for time. The Germans still wind up out-produced and outnumbered; the only difference is that they're not at the fingertip limit of their ability to supply their own forces.

I'm not sure it would have helped either. Much more of the 1941 Soviet Army would have survived and that would have made rebuilding easier. The Germans would have been in better defenses that's all. It really goes to show the only way the German Army is going to win in Russia is to resign on mass and go on holiday to the Spanish Riviera.

[Serafina]

Again, i am no expert, so forgive me if i am wrong.

Very interesting, but how does that ease the logistical problems? The division still needs food and ammunition, and it's still being shipped down single-track railways; the only difference is that loaded cars are now rolling west and unloaded cars are rolling east instead of the other way around.

No, that's not the only difference.
The problem with the german fighting style was that you had to maintain a constant "running supply" - if you are on the move all the time, you can not create good supply depots. In other words, whenever they are advancing their supply line had to suppor the load you have when advancing.
(Made-up numbers for illustration): Suppose you need 100 units (per unit) of supply while not advancing and 200 units while on the offensive. This number does not change regardless of fighting stlye.
But when you are using the german one, every unit on the offensive needs a supply capacity of 200 units. So, if you have 1000 units to spare you can only supply 5 units.
When you are using the russian stlye, you can stack up supplies that get used up during your short offense. You could, say, supply 8 units using up 800 units out of your 1000. The other 200 are used to stack up supplies. For 5 days of stacking supplies, you get one day of offensive action that you can supply.
Thus, you can supply more units. Your units are not ready for offensive actions all the time, but you have more of them and can still stage large attacks. You just have to made sure that you do not need long, sweeping advances (your supply depots won't hold enough resources), but that's just what the soviets did.

Unless they could wear the Soviets down by attrition in that kind of battle, which I beg leave to doubt... I'm not seeing how that would have helped. Especially if the Soviets still wound up abandoning "not one step backwards!" and trading land for time. The Germans still wind up out-produced and outnumbered; the only difference is that they're not at the fingertip limit of their ability to supply their own forces.

A major problem for german forces after the soviets regained strategic initiative was that they had no good way to deal with it. IIRC they had no good strategies for defense, and they did not have enough time to employ what they had.
If the Soviets are not advancing like they did, the Germans can dig in and fix these issues. They will still loose on the long run, but only when the soviets start a meaningful offensive.

[Simon_Jester]

Thank you, Stuart, and thank you doubly, Serafina, that was very informative. If I understand you correctly, the reason the Soviets could sustain an offensive across the same terrain the Germans had trouble with is because they accepted a slower tempo of offensive operations, giving them more time to build up stockpiles for offensives?

Unless they could wear the Soviets down by attrition in that kind of battle, which I beg leave to doubt... I'm not seeing how that would have helped. Especially if the Soviets still wound up abandoning "not one step backwards!" and trading land for time. The Germans still wind up out-produced and outnumbered; the only difference is that they're not at the fingertip limit of their ability to supply their own forces.

A major problem for german forces after the soviets regained strategic initiative was that they had no good way to deal with it. IIRC they had no good strategies for defense, and they did not have enough time to employ what they had.
If the Soviets are not advancing like they did, the Germans can dig in and fix these issues. They will still loose on the long run, but only when the soviets start a meaningful offensive.

The catch is that the Germans won't be able to annihilate the 1941 Soviet Army in the big encirclement battles that happened historically. And they won't disrupt Soviet industry and infrastructure as badly by seizing such an enormous amount of land. So the Soviets will be able to resume the offensive much sooner than they did historically.

[Sea Skimmer]

A major problem for german forces after the soviets regained strategic initiative was that they had no good way to deal with it. IIRC they had no good strategies for defense, and they did not have enough time to employ what they had.
If the Soviets are not advancing like they did, the Germans can dig in and fix these issues. They will still loose on the long run, but only when the soviets start a meaningful offensive.

The Germans had some very good ideas about defense... the problem is they required continuous defensive lines layered in great depth (20km or more). This was physically impossible in Russia, too much front, not enough men. Instead of several continuous belts of defenses the Germans ended up with a single strung out line of isolated positions. The only depth came from fortifying artillery and command posts behind the infantry, and of course, having your command staff busy shooting rifles at attackers does not lead to a well directed defense. Nor is it good when the artillery crews are doing the same thing. The situation was made worse by Hitlers orders to build the Atlantic Wall. This left very little in the way of concrete, or more importantly simple barbed wire and landmines for dispatch to the Eastern Front into mid 1944 when Overlord put a hasty end to the matter.

The Germans are often made out to be experts on using strong points and mobile defenses, but this is a myth. All of that had to be invented as they went along through many painful defeats, leaving them with fewer and fewer assets to use in the new strategies. Strong points for example were very prone to simply being cut off by Russian infiltrators; more and more would come through the lines each night until a German strongpoint had an entire Russian infantry battalion digging in behind it. No solution could exist to this, the Germans were just stuck mounting a defense which left the frontline units hugely exposed. Without strong reverses the infiltrators could not be wiped out. At best the Germans could pull back to a new line, but Hitler was fond of ordering not one step back.

Mobile defense of course required mobility, and that meant only the handfuls of Panzer and mechanized divisions could do it, and only then by consuming huge amounts of fuel and rail transport. Tanks back then couldn’t drive that far before the engines and tracks were worn out anyway. Hitler made life all the easier by pissing away so many of the Panzers at Kursk and all the while the Russian attacks became more and more mechanized themselves and thus the advantage of an armored counter attack was reduced.

Very interesting, but how does that ease the logistical problems? The division still needs food and ammunition, and it's still being shipped down single-track railways; the only difference is that loaded cars are now rolling west and unloaded cars are rolling east instead of the other way around.

Besides what Stuart already said, it really helps when the local civilian population comes out in droves to help you repair and maintain that single track, instead of sabotaging it every single day. The Germans tried enslaving the locals to help out, that worked about as well as you might expect, and the slaves gained first hand knowledge of German operations and defenses in the process they could pass to partisan bands. So the Russians were far more likely to use a rail line at its theoretical maximum capacity. They also had large supplies of material flowing in from Lend Lease to help them expand key rail facilities; Russia actually built a number of completely new rail lines during WW2, one of them more then 600 miles long. Germany did not have the resources to even think about doing this in Russia.

[PainRack]

The Germans are often made out to be experts on using strong points and mobile defenses, but this is a myth. All of that had to be invented as they went along through many painful defeats, leaving them with fewer and fewer assets to use in the new strategies. Strong points for example were very prone to simply being cut off by Russian infiltrators; more and more would come through the lines each night until a German strongpoint had an entire Russian infantry battalion digging in behind it. No solution could exist to this, the Germans were just stuck mounting a defense which left the frontline units hugely exposed. Without strong reverses the infiltrators could not be wiped out. At best the Germans could pull back to a new line, but Hitler was fond of ordering not one step back.

Are you suggesting that some of the late war exploits by Model, with regards to pocket defence was actually fundamentally flawed?