Aid the Union against a Nazi assisted Confederacy (RAR!)

[K. A. Pital]

Join the Nazis and try to sabotage their operation from the inside.

[Thanas]

That assumes the Nazis don't say "my work here is done" once they've created the Confederacy and just concentrate on keeping it united and threatening to the United States. The Nazi mission here would mostly just be to remove the US as a threat in the WWII era, by giving it a Confederacy powerful enough that it has effectively nothing to spare for fighting in the WWII era. Occupying large chunks of the North outside the slave states isn't a realistic strategy and the Confederates have no real interest in doing so.

That is true, but a confederacy in existence will just end with them collapsing once cotton from Egypt becomes more widespread. An economy based on cash crops and slavery is simply not viable in the early 20th century. I don't think the Nazis will manage to help them with those economic trends, not with the Nazi tech base deterioating after a few years.

[Alferd Packer]

Was rubber commercially available in the US in the 1860s? I think that would be the production bottleneck, once spares were used up. After all, your steam-powered trucks aren't going to be riding on smooth blacktop, or indeed anything paved outside of major cities, and blowouts are bound to be a common occurrence.

[madd0ct0r]

Hmm.
Option 2. Nazis blitzkrieg as skimmer describes. They don't actually have many trucks (15) and so the blitzkrieg can't be much larger than 600 men and two tanks. That is small enough to swallowed in urban fighting, especially if We have time to train snipers. If they works trucks hard as buses and if We cannot hold them the options are surrender followed by insurgency or evacuate the cities and take their supply lines. It will be hugely costly in death and parallels the invasion of Russia by the Nazis. Depends what season they arrive in Alabama.

Option 1 - as the op describes they do not blitzkrieg but focus on building the confederate capability. Then it is a race between infrastructural upgrades. They have many more men and can oversee a lot of work in parallel. We have access to many many more drawings, fast design programs, critical path theory and a strong communication advantage. Mineral maps mean We can start building a railway before the mine opens.

We also know their capabilities. They do not know ours.

Does civilian lequopmint include hunting rifkes explosives and motorbikes?

[Zor]

Was rubber commercially available in the US in the 1860s?

Yes, as it had been for centuries. Moreover vulcanization had recently been developed.

Zor

[Elheru Aran]

Was rubber commercially available in the US in the 1860s?

Yes, as it had been for centuries. Moreover vulcanization had recently been developed.

Zor

The actual question of industrially producing parts with it though is perhaps another matter. Tires, tubing, and so forth.

[Ziggy Stardust]

IIRC, pneumatic air-filled tires were first invented in the 1840s or so, not long after the invention of vulcanization. I don't know exactly when (or where) mass industrial scale production of these began, but I think B.F. Goodrich opened their first factories in the early 1870s (albeit in the far more industrialized Ohio). So 1860s doesn't seem radically departed from the timeline of industrial rubber production.

I don't know about the South, but I know New England at least had wide-scale production if rubber products (mostly clothing and rubber for industrial uses) by the 1820s or 1830s. And rubber toys were widely produced beginning in the 1850s.

[Simon_Jester]

The supply of rubber is probably enough to make rubber tires for a handful of motor vehicles, but not for massive production (this was before a lot of the creation of extensive rubber plantations in various parts of the world).

[Elheru Aran]

IIRC, pneumatic air-filled tires were first invented in the 1840s or so, not long after the invention of vulcanization. I don't know exactly when (or where) mass industrial scale production of these began, but I think B.F. Goodrich opened their first factories in the early 1870s (albeit in the far more industrialized Ohio). So 1860s doesn't seem radically departed from the timeline of industrial rubber production.

I don't know about the South, but I know New England at least had wide-scale production if rubber products (mostly clothing and rubber for industrial uses) by the 1820s or 1830s. And rubber toys were widely produced beginning in the 1850s.

The supply of rubber is probably enough to make rubber tires for a handful of motor vehicles, but not for massive production (this was before a lot of the creation of extensive rubber plantations in various parts of the world).

Both of these points were what I was basically referring to, yeah. The South does *not* have much heavy industry at all in the 1860s. There's Richmond, there's some stuff in Atlanta, there's Birmingham (which was mostly steel-working IIRC), and... that's about it as far as I know. Everything else is rural stuff. There's plenty of *light* industry, but nothing which can really mass produce on a massive scale. Even on a small scale, there's not that much, and you do have to consider how you're going to allocate your resources-- your soldiers need guns and cannons, your tracks need trains (and vice versa), and so forth...

[Alferd Packer]

Well, ignoring for the moment rubber gaskets and hoses that would be needed for the drivetrains of the trucks(I suspect those smaller parts can be brought back in enough quantity), what I'm wondering is if they can manufacture replacement truck tires to tight enough tolerances and in enough quantity to keep them in use. I mean, it would be well within the Union's production capacity to manufacture caltrops or other tire-puncturing devices and place them on the main roads. After discovering the first few punctures, the advancing Confederates would be forced to screen the road on foot (maybe on horse, but then again, caltrops could probably damage a hoof as badly as a tire), which would negate the speed advantage of the trucks.

[Adam Reynolds]

The only idea I can think of is for the 150 kg each to be tactical nuclear weapons, but that is banned by the fact that it is civilian equipment only. 1600 kg is also not enough for any sort of modern combat aircraft and weapons, which would have been my other idea. Though a BD-5J would just nearly be possible for a single person to take back, with a weight of only 162.5 kg, it is the worlds lightest single engine jet aircraft. Unfortunately it is far too small to carry even remotely useful weapons, with a payload of only 136 kg (300 lb) including the pilot and fuel. If nukes were an option, some of the smaller ones would work, but that is all that I can think of. If you were lucky you could even hit the aircraft on the ground. If not, bombing their support facilities would neutralize them in the long run. Though that jet is actually slower than a BF-109, so there is actually a non-zero chance it would be shot down. On the upside, it could act as essentially a manned cruise missile, flying too low and maneuvering too rapidly to be easily intercepted.

Actually that does give be an alternative idea that isn't exactly cheating. Take a handful of these aircraft through and use them as actual cruise missiles. Replace the pilots with explosives and a remote control unit. A final aircraft would serve as an airborne relay.

I would also agree with Thanas that the Nazis would have been better off going back to change the outcome of World War one. That would even be their own nation, which would seem a vastly superior result in the long run(from their perspective, obviously not from a global one).

[Purple]

You probably could justify atomic weapons as civilian tools if you get creative.

[Patroklos]

I'd contact the British Empire quick-fucking-smart. That's not me being overly patriotic or anything, it was the most powerful nation on Earth at the time and absolutely what I'd need to gain enough firepower to overcome these bastards. Union soldiers ain't got a prayer.

A couple years into the CW British infantry were no better soldier for soldier than that of the Union (or the best of the Confederacy for that matter). Even at the beginning they were armed and equipped comparably, though the the British were far more uniform. British power relied on sea power, and ship for ship their Navy would fair no better against Bf109s than that of the Americans.

It would just be more lambs to the slaughter. Plus, they have an Empire to look after.

Also, the bulk of the Wehrmacht ran on horses, not trucks. They did just for a few years that way, and passibly thereafter. They will operate just fine without trucks.

[Adam Reynolds]

You probably could justify atomic weapons as civilian tools if you get creative.

Actually, if this was a serious program to travel back in time, then perhaps you could get the government to reclassify everything as civilian for the purpose of the program.

[Purple]

If nothing else. You can always make the case that it's just firefighting equipment.