WWII: Germany starts total war mobilization earlier

[Stuart]

Would taking Leningrad alleviate the problem? Because it seems to me that with the baltic ports in German hands, they would have an easier time supplying their forces, at least in the northern sector. Seems to me that this is the only way the Germans could somewhat influence their supply concerns.

It would to some extent because it would allow the Germans to use ships (ships being an even more efficient way of transporting cargo than railways) to shift bulk cargo as far as Leningrad. This would allow extensive operations around that area and an assault up the Kola Peninsula. How far that offensive would get is an interesting question; my private bet is that it would run out of steam around teh White Sea Canal. Kola is superb defensive terrain. It would also allow German operations to proceed towards the White Sea and may add Archangel'sk to the long list of heroic Russian sieges (this is what happens in the book )

However, it would not affect the operations further south; the conformation of the railway net simply doesn't allow for it. There are three railway "lines", one supporting each invading army group and each is pretty much isolated from the rest. By the end of 1941, each was maxed out in terms of capacity. So, eliminating the use of the northern line for primary supply doesn't make mroe capacity available on the central and bakerloo southern lines. It makes more rolling stoke available but the line capacity problem means that rolling stock is less than usable. Having said that, eliminating the northern line would free up engineers to work on the other two so they would push east a bit faster.

So, overall, I would say a serious improvement in the north and a marginal improvement inc entral and south. However, that assumes the docks in Leningrad are usable. I rather suspect they might not be. Not for a long time anyway.

[Thanas]

Wouldn't it pretty much guarantee that the fins can be utilized more effectively though and cut off lend-lease via the north (Persia would still be open, of course)?

All in all, so it would probably allow for a bit more effective siege of moscow, but that would be it?

[Zinegata]

Also, I suspect that while retooling does take a while, the later surge in output more than makes up for the time lost while retooling.

Not always. Some things you need a steady supply of, and disrupting production for six months means death. Are you going to tell Hans, who has to shoot at stubborn Frenchmen, "You will get that ammunition you need. In six months."?

In that context, delaying Barbarossa for six months may very well mean the difference between "We hit a partially deployed enemy army in the middle of a reorganization" and "We run straight into deployed and reorganized units ready for a fight."

Here's the thing though: Soviet industries suffered a much greater level of disruption in 1941-1942, yet still managed to keep producing enough war material while at the same time improving/retooling their factories to produce simpler, yet just as effective weaponry.

Note that you don't have to shut down all of your factories at the same time. Speer's reorganization of Luftwaffe airplane production, for instance, was based primarily around shutting down smaller plants and having bigger ones absorb the production capacity.

[Stuart]

Wouldn't it pretty much guarantee that the fins can be utilized more effectively though and cut off lend-lease via the north (Persia would still be open, of course)? All in all, so it would probably allow for a bit more effective siege of moscow, but that would be it?

Statistically, 25 percent of Lend-Lease came in via the northern ports, 25 percent via Persia and 50 percent via Vladivostok. Perisa could probably have handled a bit more and Vladivostok also so I would guess the average fall in Lend Lease supplies would be around 15 - 20 percent. If, on the other hand, Japan had become a belligerent against Russia, the effect on the Vladivostok bottleneck would have been critical.

The Finns would have been a bit more useful but the real problem is, after Kola there is nowhere else to go. There's hundreds of miles of desolate nothing before one finally reaches desolate bugger-all. So, we'd have seen a more-effectively concluded northern front but that's it. It doesn't translate into anything really important.

[Thanas]

It might help the Germans with the amount of available troops as well as maybe a northern push to moscow, seeing as how there are pretty good railways from Leningrad to moscow.

I do agree with your general assesment about the war, though. Certainly taking Leningrad does not equal winning the war. For that you'd need at least control of the black sea as well as a very efficient campaign against the caucasus - events highly unlikely.

[Zinegata]

Would it have been feasible to attack Kola from Norway?

[Sea Skimmer]

Would it have been feasible to attack Kola from Norway?

TThe way the map was drawn back then Norway and Russia didn’t touch, Finland had access to the Barents Sea. The Germans launched an offensive in real life out of Finland with several mountain divisions. The attack completely failed when it turned out what the Germans had taken to be roads on the maps were in fact just telegraph wires. No roads existed at all, it was just trackless forest wasteland. Even the lightweight mountain guns the Germans had could not be supplied allowing the Russians to hold the line. The Finns themselves attacked further south and cut the railroad, but the Russians built a bypass and kept it open throughout the war despite air raids and a number of large scale sabotage operations. The Finns would need to advance about another 100 miles through trackless wastes to cut the bypass.

As aside note in real life the Russians also opened a railroad from Kotlas to Vorkuta in 1942, which came within about 60 miles of the Artic Sea. The main purpose of the line was coal traffic. It was later connected to the lower reaches of the River Ob, a distance of around 80-100 track miles though I not know the date of this work. If Murmansk was lost then its entirely likely this route would have been developed with Lend Lease aid to restore some flow of traffic. Ships could unload and supplies stockpiled in the summer months and moved south year round. Cutting this traffic in turn would require that the Germans advance no less then 600 miles west of Leningrad or 500 miles west of Moscow depending on which junction you want to cut the track at.

[Zinegata]

Ouch. An attack on the Kola is that bad, huh?

So, to win against the Soviet Union, the Nazis basically had to do what Thanas outlined and burn down Baku.

[Stuart]

Ouch. An attack on the Kola is that bad, huh?

It's actually worse than that. My book Winter Warriors (coming shortly) is set in Kola and I looked hard at it. It's not just a trackless wasteland, it's carved up by lakes, swamps and watery things that don't even have names. Any attack is funnelled into narrow killing zones where a company-sized battle group can hold regiments or divisions back for days or weeks. If ever the gods meant to provide somewhere that's perfect defensive ground, Kola is it.

So, to win against the Soviet Union, the Nazis basically had to do what Thanas outlined and burn down Baku.

No. Burning down Baku deprives the Germans of their one hope of winning. They had to capture Baku intact. Not good.

[Zinegata]

Why couldn't they just have burnt down Baku?

I seriously doubt that they could transport the oil from Baku to supply their forces, and destroying Baku would deprive the Soviets with much of their oil supply. Sure, America could try to ship them more oil, but that would put a greater strain on the Lend-Lease supply lines.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to try and get their oil from the Middle East anyway? (By knocking out Malta perhaps with a mass parachute raid, screwing the losses?)

[Samuel]

Wouldn't it have made more sense to try and get their oil from the Middle East anyway? (By knocking out Malta perhaps with a mass parachute raid, screwing the losses?)

No. This thread gives more detail:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... it=dunkirk

but essentially you need transportation to ship the oil. Germany was has problems supplying her forces as it was so...

I seriously doubt that they could transport the oil from Baku to supply their forces,

Why not? The oil is much closer to their forces- better to use oil from locale wells than ship it across Ukraine and use up precious cargo space and suffer attacks from partisans.

[Zinegata]

Double ouch.

So, essentially, they have to pray that the Baku fields were intact, and they would get their oil from Baku while they get their ammo from Germany?

Yeah, they are so screwed.

[Thanas]

Double ouch.

So, essentially, they have to pray that the Baku fields were intact, and they would get their oil from Baku while they get their ammo from Germany?

Yeah, they are so screwed.

Not intact, "merely" operating at a seventh or so of their capacity.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Germans actually had a 'Technical Brigade Mineral Oil' formation assigned to the Blue offensive. Japan for its part formed some oil well drilling companies, and the US Army no less drilled oil wells in England during the war. People say modern wars are over oil, that's a joke compared to WW2.

But at Maykop which the Germans did capture they faced complete destruction of the wells and all supporting infrastructure. Baku is even more fun because back then they couldn’t drill in the water, so they built dykes and created new land out of the Caspian Sea. That means the Russians can blow up the oil wells and then actually flood the sites! The German brigade was essentially only intended to put Russian equipment into operating condition, and was actually expected to increase production well above peacetime levels. Japan expected similar delusions from the East India fields.

[Zinegata]

Thanks for the clarifications.

How would the Soviet war machine been affected by the lost of Baku though? (Let's assume they destroyed Baku to prevent Germany from taking it) I know Baku provided the bulk of their domestic oil production, but could the US have easily stepped in and provided them with all the oil they would ever need anyway? What are the logistics/transport costs involved?

[Stuart]

The most logical way to supply replacement oil would be to ship it up from Persia by rail. That would require the U.S. war machine to produce the rail tank cars and locomotives. A better idea would be to build refineries in Persia and then ship the refined products but that would be a longer-term plan. There's a key point here which a lot of people forget. the U.S. mobilized only a portion of its warmaking potential. While Britain (and empire), Russia, Germany and Japan were maxed out, the U.S. was still only partially mobilized in 1944 when it started to demobilize. The usual figure is that, at its peak (in mid-1944) the U.S. had mobilized about 44 percent of its warmaking potential. To put this into imagery, imagine it as a horse-race with Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan thundering along, heads down, whips flailing the horses flanks, spurs digging deep and shouting encouragement while the U.S. streaks past them with the horse barely trying and its rider strumming a guitar and admiring the desert moon.

The main problem would be planning the production so it didn't interfere with more important programs. That's why the U.S. used steam locomotives in WW2 (they actually took old Mikados out of storage and used them) - they had better things to do with diesels.

[Edi]

Ouch. An attack on the Kola is that bad, huh?

It's actually worse than that. My book Winter Warriors (coming shortly) is set in Kola and I looked hard at it. It's not just a trackless wasteland, it's carved up by lakes, swamps and watery things that don't even have names.

Not in English they don't. In Finnish they do. We have close to a dozen different words for different types of swamps, marshland, overgrown lakes and their different variations and I bet that many of the things you did look at were some of these, or combinations of them.

Any attack is funnelled into narrow killing zones where a company-sized battle group can hold regiments or divisions back for days or weeks. If ever the gods meant to provide somewhere that's perfect defensive ground, Kola is it.

It's like that all over the territory in the eastern parts of Finland and the Russian territory east of us. You can't turn around without falling into a lake and when you're busy climbing out of the last lake you fell into, you'll be stumbling face first into one of the swamps/marshes/watery things.

It's just worse up north because it gets colder and things never get the chance to properly dry off during the summer, all they manage is melting after the winter.

[Simon_Jester]

Ouch. An attack on the Kola is that bad, huh?

It's actually worse than that. My book Winter Warriors (coming shortly) is set in Kola and I looked hard at it. It's not just a trackless wasteland, it's carved up by lakes, swamps and watery things that don't even have names.

Not in English they don't. In Finnish they do. We have close to a dozen different words for different types of swamps, marshland, overgrown lakes and their different variations and I bet that many of the things you did look at were some of these, or combinations of them.

I would love to hear some of these described, if not named.

[Iosef Cross]

The most logical way to supply replacement oil would be to ship it up from Persia by rail. That would require the U.S. war machine to produce the rail tank cars and locomotives. A better idea would be to build refineries in Persia and then ship the refined products but that would be a longer-term plan. There's a key point here which a lot of people forget. the U.S. mobilized only a portion of its warmaking potential. While Britain (and empire), Russia, Germany and Japan were maxed out, the U.S. was still only partially mobilized in 1944 when it started to demobilize. The usual figure is that, at its peak (in mid-1944) the U.S. had mobilized about 44 percent of its warmaking potential.

Let's see, proportion of the labor force engaged in industrial labor for the armed forces in 1943:

UK - 23.0%
US - 19.0%
Germany - 14.2%

source: Resource Mobilization for World War 2: the US, UK, USSR and Germany, 1938-1945, Mark Harrison, page 18

Proportion of munitions production of total industrial production, 1940 to 1943:


source: World Economic Survey, 1942-1944.

By 1943 65% of the total industrial production of the US was allocated to the armed forces.

The US utilized their industrial plant much more intensively than the Germans, for example, compare:

Total labor force engaged in manufacturing production for the armed forces in 1943, in thousands:

US - 12,260
Germany - 6,480
UK - 5,230

sources:
UK munitions labor force: Mark Harrison, The Economics of World War 2, page 57
Size of labor force (US and Germany): Mark Harrison, The Economics of World War 2, page 101 for the US and page 160 for Germany,
Proportion of labor force employed in manufacturing for the armed forces: already provided.

Compare with the total stock of machine tools in 1943:

US - 1,529,386
Germany - 1,554,900

Source: http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/149/240/0

The German industrial capital stock was much less intensively used than US's industrial capital stock, due to lack of labor to man the factories, as the war with the USSR drained the German labor force and was partially replaced with foreign labor.

You are completely wrong in believing that the US didn't mobilize for total war. They mobilized their industry to a greater extend than Germany and to a comparable extend that the UK did. While military expenditures in proportion to national resources were greater for the US than UK in 1943 and 1944:

Military resource mobilization for WW2, in proportion of national income as measured at factor prices:

------- US ---- UK
1942 - 40% --- 43%
1943 - 53% --- 47%
1944 - 54% --- 47%

source: Mark Harrison, Resource mobilization for World War II: the U.S.A., U.K., U.S.S.R., and Germany, 1938-1945, page 16.

The article in question: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econo ... tprint.pdf

[Edi]

It's actually worse than that. My book Winter Warriors (coming shortly) is set in Kola and I looked hard at it. It's not just a trackless wasteland, it's carved up by lakes, swamps and watery things that don't even have names.

Not in English they don't. In Finnish they do. We have close to a dozen different words for different types of swamps, marshland, overgrown lakes and their different variations and I bet that many of the things you did look at were some of these, or combinations of them.

I would love to hear some of these described, if not named.

For an easy summary, you can start with the English language Wikipedia article on bogs. The Finnish language Wikipedia article on suo (swamp/marsh/fen/bog) is much more extensive, but you're going to need to run it through a translator. The different basic types of swamp we have are listed under the heading Suotyypit.

You have the various combination swamp types under Suoyhdistelmätyypit. If you use the Finnish names for the swamp types to do a Google image search, you will probably get a fair bit of material.

For the Kuola peninsula, you can probably take the worst of all of those and ramp them up and add the effects of permafrost and old growth forests (such as they are that far north), the lakes and everything else and then you can get around to imagining performing any kind of large scale military operations in the middle of it.

[Zinegata]

Iosef, the point isn't that the US overwhelmed the Germans in sheer production (they did). The point is that the US economy still wasn't even fully utilized yet when they were already massively outproducing the Germans.

If they wanted to, the US could have ramped up production even more.

Overy sums it up neatly in one line: "The entire Manhattan Project was built using just the leftovers of the Victory Program".

[Iosef Cross]

Iosef, the point isn't that the US overwhelmed the Germans in sheer production (they did). The point is that the US economy still wasn't even fully utilized yet when they were already massively outproducing the Germans.

I have already PROVED that the US industrial capacity was utilized to a GREATER degree than Germany's (just by comparing employment in the armmament production and the supply of capital goods). If the US didn't mobilize for "total war", neither did Germany.

If they wanted to, the US could have ramped up production even more.

No, they couldn't. They mobilized nearly everything that they could. The proportion of their industrial capacity used for war production in 1943 was the same as the USSR! And greater than Germany's.

The US reduced production in 1944 because labor was mobilized for the armed forces (conscription). And in 1943 the proportion of the US labor force engaged in war production plus the proportion in the armed forces was the same as Germany.

Overy sums it up neatly in one line: "The entire Manhattan Project was built using just the leftovers of the Victory Program".

The Manhattan project was not a big expenditure of resources. It cost less than 2 billion dollars. Germany's war effort cost about 200 billion dollars from 1940 to 1944 (converting their RM expenditures to 1944 dollars).

[Iosef Cross]

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?

If you understood what I meant you wouldn't write that. I have already refuted some of the opinions contained in this paragraph.

Germany's problems in the 1930s were that no resources for redeployment into other sectors existed.

Plain wrong. Resources always "exist".

In fact, the early mobilization discussed is also impossible.

It was not impossible and it was DONE. The Nazis put over half of the industrial labor force working for the armed forces 6 months after the start of the war.

I am considering the case of assuming that they could get 1944 levels of war production in 1940 and 1941, with they couldn't really. I am saying something like: Let's assume that Q gives Germany 30,000 tanks, 60,000 planes, 50,000 artillery pieces and 400 million rounds of artillery ammunition in June 1941. Does this improves Germany's outlook for success in defeating the USSR? YES!

hitler secured his position on promises that wars would be short, victorious and pain-free.

Hitler planned WW2 to last years and to be costly and that victory could only come after total mobilization of all resources. In his War and Economy in the Third Reich, Overy shatters this common myth that Germany wasn't running on total war mobilization by the start of the war.

The Nazi regime didn't go easy on the civilians before Stalingrad. Actually, the period of greatest fall of civilian consumption in Germany was between 1939 and 1940. Not between 1942 and 1943.

[Iosef Cross]

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,

Then why they stopped to advance just when the correlation of forces shifted to the Soviet side? When they had more men than the USSR, they could advance nearly continuously, when the USSR doubled their manpower strength in the eastern front from November 1941 to december 1941, they stopped and turned back the Werhmacht.

Clearly, there were other factors at work. I never said that logistics weren't a problem, I said that logistics weren't the only reason that Barbarossa failed.

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.

More complicated than you think it is. To say that the Germans failed to defeat the USSR in 1941 because of bad soviet railroads is a gross simplification of your part.

[Iosef Cross]

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.

Do you have some sources that say that Germany's logistics were strained to the maximum in the eastern front?

So, this quote gives us a valuable piece of information; the maximum capacity of that railway network was 13,012 car-loads.

Second to your interpretation that it was operating at maximum capacity and not to the interpretation that 13,000 car-loads were the amount needed to deliver the supplies produced in Germany for the Eastern front.

Now, German strength in Russia varied wildly but let's take a baseline strength of 190 infantry divisional slices and 24 armored divisional slices.

It never reached that number (214 division slices of 17,000 men each), with would mean 3.5 million men. The size of the German army in the eastern front varied from 2.5 million to 3.1 million from 1941 to mid 1944.

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.

If the German army needed 175,000 tons of supply per day, then only 3% of the tonnage was composed of ammunition. Since the German army in the eastern front consumed less than 5,000 tons of ammunition per day (they consumed 5.3 million tons of ammunition between June 1941 and November 1944). I suspect that the German army consumed much less than 175,000 tons of supply per day in the eastern front on average.

German ammunition production was 2,000 tons per day (smaller than consumption in the eastern front once Barbarossa started) in 1941 and 9,000 tons per day in 1944. Tank production was 200 tons per day in 1941 and 1,700 tons per day in 1944. Even the 1944 numbers are very small compared to your estimate of logistical capacity of the German held railroad systems of the USSR.

The difference between 1941 and 1944 production levels of tanks and ammunition are 8,500 tons, or 4.5% of your estimate of railroad capacity.

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.

And how that helps your point? That means that the bulk of the logistic effort was on the German economy, not the supply of equipment to the army, hence, the problem of transporting the added output of armaments is secondary to the problem of transporting the raw materials and goods to make these armaments. Hence, by assuming that German armament production is 3 times bigger, I am assuming away the greatest logistic problem.

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.

That view that logistic problems were the main factor in the German defeat are usually the arguments of people that discredit the importance of the Red Army for allied victory. While they were important in reducing the speed of German advance, and buying time for the Red Army to reorganize, it was the Red Army that stopped the Wehrmacht in front of Moscow in 1941.