# Stretching German Gasoline Supply.



## davebender (May 16, 2012)

Shortage of high octane gasoline was the single greatest obstacle to Luftwaffe effectiveness. Historically Goering recognized this to some extent with the largest synthetic fuel program in history. However the historical German efforts were inadequate for fighting a protracted war.

What might Goering have done differently as head of the German economic plan?

My ideas…..

Build two additional large hydrogenation plants. Theoretically Germany could produce an unlimited supply of synthetic gasoline from their bottomless supply of coal. However these plants were expensive to build and operate so two are probably the practical limit. This will significantly increase the aviation gasoline supply but it won’t solve the entire problem. Germany must find other ways to reduce dependence upon gasoline.

German Army adopts diesel engines en mass for trucks, half tracks, field generators etc. This will make Daimler-Benz happy as they were the world leader for diesel truck engines during the 1930s. More importantly, diesel engines are inherently more fuel efficient then gasoline engines so the existing supply of petroleum will go further. This frees up a bit of low octane gasoline suitable for use in primary training aircraft. 

Aerodynamics to lower drag and thereby increase fuel mileage becomes a major criterion to determine which aircraft enter mass production. Light weight also becomes more important. He-100 is likely to be an early beneficiary. So will the DB603 engine, at the expense of the large and heavy BMW801 radial.

Development of diesel aircraft engines receives the highest priority. Perhaps they will be suitable for transport aircraft and heavy bombers. Any 4 engine aircraft that doesn’t use diesel engines is unlikely to be approved for mass production. The 26 liter Jumo 208 aircraft diesel program starts in 1936 (3 years earlier then historical) and is pushed to completion (if it works). I suspect Daimler-Benz would also compete for the aircraft diesel contract. If one of these powerful aircraft diesel engines works they will power the He-177B heavy bomber (4 engines). Otherwise the He-177 program will be shelved in favor of a DB603 powered Do-217.

Jet engines use low octane fuel so jet engine development receives the highest priority. The Jumo 004A engine will enter mass production during 1943.

What are your ideas for reducing the German aviation gasoline shortage?


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## michaelmaltby (May 16, 2012)

Postpone Barbarossa and continue to receive Caspian crude from the USSR.

MM


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## TheMustangRider (May 16, 2012)

I would go on the same lines as Michael, do not get overstretched early in the war by opening multiple fronts and, on the wake of the already running British bombing campaign and America's potential entry into the war against Nazi Germany, make an effort if possible to move the chemical and manufacturing industries underground.


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## Elmas (May 16, 2012)

Defeat the U.S.S.R. and obtain an unlimited supply of crude oil......


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## davebender (May 16, 2012)

Nice try. 

The head of the Luftwaffe and German 4 year economic plan is responsible for preparing the Luftwaffe for any likely contingency. Your influence on German foreign policy is minimal.


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## tyrodtom (May 16, 2012)

One reason synthetic fuel is so expensive is that it uses a lot of coal. Though Germany may have had a lot of coal, in the ground, unfortunately, it doesn't mine itself. In that era it was a very labor intensive process. Goering couldn't just wave his marshals wand and say, " more coal, make it so" 
Germany needed more coal mines, and more coal miners, or the other users of coal , explosives producers for instance, would have a shortage. For a country gearing up for war, solving the coal miner shortage might have presented a bigger problem, than opening more coal shafts.

Since this is prewar, slave workers isn't a solution.


As for diesel aircraft engines, Germany and other countries were experimenting with them in the 30's. One big problem they had, was for the same power as a gas engine, they were grossly overweight. Even modern diesels are still quite a bit heavier than their gasoline powered equivilents.


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## vikingBerserker (May 16, 2012)

Interestingly enough, I just read last night In _Luftwaffe Over American _that one of the reasons for the use of rocket assist take off was to help conserve fuel when an aircraft took off


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## norab (May 16, 2012)

I see a few problems with this idea

first, having only one or two sources of gas makes those sources immediate high priority taregets for bombing or sabotage. Loss of either or both plants means immediate critical suply issues.

second, can and will the army except the performance trade off of using diesel engines. It's Blitzkreig tactics are predicated on rapid movement, not the forte of the diesel engine. It also enormously complicates cold weather usage.(and that would include tactical aircraft)

finally, aircraft design is a tradeoff. If you reduce wieght it must come from somewhere, will it be ammo load?, number of guns? smaller bomber load? reduction in range? or a mixture of all of the above. That means you need more aircraft to get the job done so you create strains in other areas, more rubber needed, more ball bearings, more critical machine tools and operators for them and more critical high quality ores imported from neutrals.

the devil is in the details and I don't see this as a pancea to suddenly make the German war effort a sucess. my two cents


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## michaelmaltby (May 16, 2012)

"... Your influence on German foreign policy is minimal."

And that's why you're doomed to lose.

MM


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## davebender (May 16, 2012)

1936 Germany was not gearing up for war. If they had been they would have simply paid the price to build as many hydrogenation plants as deemed necessary to support a Wehrmacht with 10,000 tanks supported by 10,000 combat aircraft. Hence the emphasis of this discussion is how to make the best use of limited fuel supplies.


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## tyrodtom (May 16, 2012)

A country gearing up for war is still limited by what it can afford. The factories have be built with material and by people, neither of which come free.

And in 1936 Germany certainly was gearing up for war, in Hitlers mind, the best defense was a offense.


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## Shortround6 (May 16, 2012)

The He 100 was not a _wunder plane_, it made some rather significant trade-offs to get it's performance. It's ability to be upgraded to any great extent is highly suspect.

The Junkers diesel topped out in service versions at about 1000hp for 1430lbs or about the same weight as a later Jumo 211, While the fuel economy is great the Jumo 211 was giving about 1300hp for take-off (30%) more. You would need 4 diesels to equal the take-off power of 3 Jumo 211s. by the time you are done with propellers, radiators and such you are about 1 ton heavier. Or you have 77% of the power of a 4 engine plane with 211s. 

Perhaps you can get the diesels to put up with the demands of combat planes but they worked a lot better on transports (less time at full throttle and more time between throttle changes.) Transports used what percentage of German Aviation fuel?

Many German vehicles used rather small engines derived from commercial designs ( part of German tax code?). Not a knock on the Germans, the French and British had similar problems. Germans didn't really have a full range of diesel engines available for all classes of vehicles. And certainly didn't have production lines set up for large numbers of diesels. You can't wave a magic wand and turn regular car engines into diesels as GM found out back in the 70s. Even small diesels need crankshafts, connecting rods and pistons of high performance quality to stand up to the higher peak pressures in a diesel cylinder. many small engines can use cast iron crankshafts, most diesels are going to need forged crankshafts for instance. 

Perhaps the Germans could have "dieselized" but the disruption caused by the retooling would have been considerable. 

Considering the difficulty they had just trying to build "military" trucks compared to civilian trucks (painting a truck grey, slapping flat fenders on it and maybe a wooden cab _DOES NOT_ make it a military truck.) I rather doubt the German ability to change a large portion of the motor industry to diesel.


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## Shortround6 (May 16, 2012)

tyrodtom said:


> A country gearing up for war is still limited by what it can afford. The factories have be built with material and by people, neither of which come free.
> 
> And in 1936 Germany certainly was gearing up for war, in Hitlers mind, the best defense was a offense.



Quite right, the notion that Germany in 1936 was plodding along, spending small sums of money of purely defensive weapons/forces is simply preposterous. Germany was trying to build one of the largest air forces in the World( well behind the Russians but who were even in the top 5 spots?), Their orders for MK I tanks put them in the top 5 for armored vehicles and so on.


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## davebender (May 16, 2012)

A 1936 order for use of diesel engines would allow three or four years to build engine factories before German half tracks, Panzer III, Panzer IV and 4WD cargo trucks enter mass production. No disruption to historical vehicle production.


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## davebender (May 16, 2012)

I agree. However it was fuel efficient which would make it look more attractive in this scenerio.


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## davparlr (May 16, 2012)

The best thing for the German economy and the world. Shoot Hitler, escape to England.


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## norab (May 16, 2012)

davebender said:


> A 1936 order for use of diesel engines would allow three or four years to build engine factories before German half tracks, Panzer III, Panzer IV and 4WD cargo trucks enter mass production. No disruption to historical vehicle production.


You are then trying to introduce new vehicles with all their teething problems during combat. A look at German problems with the wartime introduction of both the Panther Tiger I demonstrate the problems with that policy plus you do not get the chance to store suficient advance reserves of both parts vehicles. This was not a system set up for mass production in the American style.


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## wuzak (May 16, 2012)

Where did German Diesel come from? Surely it came from the same oil plants that provided them with petrol?


Hydrogenation plants are very large targets, just ripe for aerial attack. It would take susained attacks to disable the plants, as was the case historically. Also, the transportation of coal to the plant is another area where the plants are vulnerable. Disruption to the coal supply through attacks on the transportation industry would also restrict the output of the hydrogenation plants.

Perhaps teh best method would have been to purchase larger quantities of fuel in the years leading up to war, creating a larger stockpile.


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## Tante Ju (May 16, 2012)

Fuel has a shelf life, unfortunately. You cannot store the same fuel for years, so large stockpiles only make a sense up to a certain point.

I am not sure though it is same case with crude oil...


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## michaelmaltby (May 16, 2012)

".... I am not sure though it is same case with crude oil..."

USA stores millions of barrels in salt domes beneath the Gulf of Mexico with no problem, I assume it's crude.

MM


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## bobbysocks (May 16, 2012)

like norab said, extreme cold temps cause diesel to gel. you need special additives to prevent that from happening. with the war being fought in some of the coldest weather in russia and europe...and with the supply lines being strained or cut...you would be hard pressed to keep diesels in action.


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## tyrodtom (May 16, 2012)

Don't forget the T-34 had a diesel engine, so operating one in subzero weather can be done.

I know from experience with coal trucks, you can let them idle for hours, and they use very little fuel at idle, unlike a gas engine.


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## Milosh (May 16, 2012)

The Russians somehow kept their tanks running despite the cold.

Syscom3 posted some pdf files on German fuel production. http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ww2-general/german-oil-industry-ww2-analysis-report-15567.html


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## Siegfried (May 16, 2012)

wuzak said:


> Where did German Diesel come from? Surely it came from the same oil plants that provided them with petrol?
> 
> 
> Hydrogenation plants are very large targets, just ripe for aerial attack. It would take susained attacks to disable the plants, as was the case historically. Also, the transportation of coal to the plant is another area where the plants are vulnerable. Disruption to the coal supply through attacks on the transportation industry would also restrict the output of the hydrogenation plants.
> ...



There were several types of synthetic fuel plant.

Firstly the Bergius hydrogenation plants, these pressurised a slurry of oil-coal with hydrogen at 700 atmospheres. The alloys and compressors developed were quite a technical achievement.

This distilled product of this process produced both diesel and gasoline of about 77 octane that was upgraded with TEL to B4 87 octane. 

These were the main type of plant; they required rather a great deal of steel. The heavy steel used tended to make them bomb resistant however the syn gas plant that produced hydrogen via water gas shift reaction was vulnerable.

Secondly there were the Fischer-Tropsch plants, these produced ammonia via the Haber-Bosch process that was used to de-sulphurise the syngas. Coal was converted to syngas via passing steam and oxygen over it. It was de-sulphurised with ammonia then passed over catalysts. Iron for gasoline like products and cobalt for diesel. Gasoline product was essentially useless because of its low octane rating of around 45 RON. These plants were mainly used to produce chemical feedstocks. However the FT process tends to produce long linear chains and made an excellent diesel with a very high cetane rating. (A high cetane rating means the diesel will ignite easily but burn nice and slow). The cetane rating was rather too high and often the fuel did not complete combustion so it was generally blended with the inferior diesel from the Bergius hydrogenation plant.

Towards the end of the war Uranium based catalysts that produced good grade gasoline fuel were in a laboratory stage.

Thirdly there was the coal pyrolysis or Kerrick process where coal is heated and steamed to remove the volatile oils and tars for processing into fuel. It was used where heavy metal contamination of the coals was considered to expensive to remove due to its catalyst spoiling effects.

The Japanese also used the above process. Yields can be quite good. The Japanese received German help in the other processes but never succeeded since they never built a preliminary pilot plant and so their plants were so unreliable they never managed to clean up the mess.

Fourthly they had a process that synthesised iso-octane. Syngas was passed over chromium catalysts to produce butanol, this was dehydrated over aluminium chloride to n and iso-butylene which was then polymerised to iso-octane. 22% iso-octane added to B4 made C3.

The butylene was required for making n-Buna synthetic rubber and this seriously hampered production of high octane C3 aviation fuel and cost the Germans quite a bit of engine power.

To supplement or replace the synthetic iso-octane alkylation plants were started in 1940. This is the process the British used to make their 100/130. One was completed in 1943 but most weren’t finished. Synthetic polymerisation plants remained the main process, more started coming on line anyway however the allied oil campaign of 1944 seems to have dashed German hopes of a smooth introduction of a new generation of powerful new engines.

The Friction Modification waxes the Germans came up with to solve their lubrication problems on the Russian front were seminal in the development of modern lubricants.

The USA used something called catalytic cracking via the Houdry regenerative catalyst. It made possible 100 octane fuel. The RON ratio was probably 100/120 or 100/125. US fuel shipments to Britain didn’t initially meet RAF’s 100/130 rich mixture response requirement. The US was more interested in producing lightweight powerfull engines for economic high speed cruise than a quick dash.

The Germans were always trying to improve their process and were on the cusp of major advances built around new catalysts and fluidised bed reactors that were promising major improvements in yields. fischer-tropsch.org has details if you have lots of time. There are microfilm based pdf and many are not ocr

Getting the coal out of the ground was also a problem even with miners getting extra rations and exempt from the draft.


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## Juha (May 16, 2012)

tyrodtom said:


> Don't forget the T-34 had a diesel engine, so operating one in subzero weather can be done.
> 
> I know from experience with coal trucks, you can let them idle for hours, and they use very little fuel at idle, unlike a gas engine.



Yes, but one had to know how. Russian knew the tricks, Germans didn't at first, so during the winter 41/42 they were in deep trouble whether they used petrol or diesel and as bobbysocks wrote, normal diesel became rather unuseable in subzero enviroment.

Juha


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## Siegfried (May 17, 2012)

Juha said:


> Yes, but one had to know how. Russian knew the tricks, Germans didn't at first, so during the winter 41/42 they were in deep trouble whether they used petrol or diesel and as bobbysocks wrote, normal diesel became rather unuseable in subzero enviroment.
> 
> Juha



In many cases they used lubricant oils derived from marine mamals eg Whales and Seals not really available to the Germans, particularly important for guns. I think its fairly well known that you reformulate diesels for winter and add gasoline to sump lubricants to start an engine. Parts of Eastern Germany do get -40C; that is serious cold. There was little time to prepare for Barabarossa, I spoke to a German machine gunner (now deceased) who told me that he ended up on the cold Russian front in still in his summer uniform from France. One day he was getting out of a tent eating fresh snails that were crawling by (they had to be a certain type), a few days latter his urine was solid ice as it hit the snow. Apart from some silly mistakes like de lanolising wool to make lightweight garments the Germans knew what to do, in general they just didn't prepare enough. Few Ju 52's were equiped with winter pre-heating equipment for instance.


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## Shortround6 (May 17, 2012)

davebender said:


> I agree. However it was fuel efficient which would make it look more attractive in this scenerio.



Fuel efficiency should not be the primary criteria of a fighter plane. The He 100 was fast, it was fuel efficient it had good climb. It was lacking in fire power, turn radius, load carrying ability and was more vulnerable to minor caliber gunfire than most other designs.


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## Juha (May 17, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> In many cases they used lubricant oils derived from marine mamals eg Whales and Seals not really available to the Germans, particularly important for guns.



Finns managed with fuels and oil products imported from west, and it was/is very cold up here during the winters.



Siegfried said:


> I think its fairly well known that you reformulate diesels for winter and add gasoline to sump lubricants to start an engine.



IIRC Germans learned at least the diluting the motor oils with gasoline from Russians during the winter 41/42



Siegfried said:


> Parts of Eastern Germany do get -40C; that is serious cold.



For what I have read troops from Eastern Prussian knew few tricks how to manage in subzeroenviroment, but for some reason this knowledge hadn't spread to the rest of Heer. Finns had to improvise crash courses to Germans on the basic skills of survival in subzero enviroment during the winter 41/42.



Siegfried said:


> ...a few days latter his urine was solid ice as it hit the snow.



IMHO that is an overstatement



Siegfried said:


> Apart from some silly mistakes like de lanolising wool to make lightweight garments the Germans knew what to do, in general they just didn't prepare enough.



IMHO that is also an overstatement, there were lot of mistakes for ex. many machine gunners didn't know how to use oil in their mgs in subzero enviroment, how to warm engine before trying to start it. Even how to survive a night watch/sentry turn without frosbites etc



Siegfried said:


> Few Ju 52's were equiped with winter pre-heating equipment for instance.


 LW was much better prepared for winter than Heer.

Juha


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## Siegfried (May 17, 2012)

davebender said:


> Shortage of high octane gasoline was the single greatest obstacle to Luftwaffe effectiveness. Historically Goering recognized this to some extent with the largest synthetic fuel program in history. However the historical German efforts were inadequate for fighting a protracted war.
> 
> What might Goering have done differently as head of the German economic plan?
> 
> ...



I think there might be several ways though I suspect the Germans had already considered some of them and did the best they could.

Firstly they might try and improve the efficiency of high octane aviation gasoline production. Making C3 was apparently 30% more expensive than 87 octane B4. The alkylation process the allies used might have helped here and such plants were started in 1940 so for some reason the Germans made a belated start. As it was German engines performed superbly on ordinary 87 octane aviation fuel though they were still disadvantaged.

Diesel, Kerosene and Jet fuel is relatively easy to make in the smaller fisher-tropsch plants (which were unable to make gasoline in any significant way at that time) as well as the bigger Bergius hydrogenation plants will make good gasoline and diesel.

This suggests:
1 Diesels which are however heavier and more expensive.

2 Hesselman spark ignition engines these run of diesel and/or kerosene but are easier to make than diesels though not as efficient. Hesselman engines were widely used in prewar Swedden and in 1960 Saab produce a few hundred cars designed to run of Fischer-Tropsch Kerosene.

3 Gas turbines, in fact the Anthony Kay book “German Gas Turbines and Jet engines 1932-1945” covers a multitude of these that were under development for ships, patrol boats, locomotives and tanks. AFAIKT a scaled down BMW 003 known as the GT100 was built and tested on a Panther tank It used direct drive with an automatically clutched two stage gearbox. It was noted that the direct drive gave enormous engine braking force. GT101 was to have a separate power turbine and GT102 a ceramic heat exchanger recuperator.

I would say the Germans need to treble fuel production. They need to double it for themselves and provide what they were producing again for their Italian colleagues.

German production of oil was about 15-20 million tons per year from all sources compared to over 220 million of the US alone. To do that they need major investment or greatly improved efficiency.

This was an energy war, had the Germans managed to capture, hold and exploit the Caucuses oil fields they would have had all the energy they needed. Ironically this involves Hitler following Halders advice and taking Moscow and destroying the Soviet Army rather than turning Sth and heading for those oil fields and the granary that was the Ukraine.

At the end of the war the Germans initiated the Geilenberg Plan of disperse mini plants and at least one bomb proof underground plant.

Speer had eschewed building bomb hardened plant as he had calculated that it was better to devote resources to winning a short term were than dedicated them to fighting a long term war not in Germany's favour.

In general I think your ideas are good and would have been achievable. Two additonal hydrogenation plants means 33% more production. The mass production of the DB603 by or before 1942 would have been critical. It saved fuel by providing 1750hp without high octane gasoline or it provided 1900hp with high octane gasoline (DB603G). BMW801, running of B4 would still have been usefull eg for the various transports such as the Ar 234 or Me 323.


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## GrauGeist (May 18, 2012)

The Heinkel jet engines were designed to burn Kerosene. That was a huge plus, regarding the fuel situation...


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## stona (May 18, 2012)

It is perfectly possible for urine to freeze "en route" to the snow if the air is cold enough. I was working,in Canada,many years ago,in some God forsaken town who's name I have forgotten. It was as cold as I have ever experienced in my life! A local stage hand showed me a party trick whereby he threw a cup of warm water (not cold) into the air which almost instantly froze into a sort of snow.
Cheers
Steve


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## mhuxt (May 18, 2012)

Betcha there weren't snails crawling across that ground a few days prior though.


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## Juha (May 18, 2012)

stona said:


> It is perfectly possible for urine to freeze "en route" to the snow if the air is cold enough. I was working,in Canada,many years ago,in some God forsaken town who's name I have forgotten. It was as cold as I have ever experienced in my life! A local stage hand showed me a party trick whereby he threw a cup of warm water (not cold) into the air which almost instantly froze into a sort of snow.
> Cheers
> Steve



I definitely have urined at -32deg C, and the urine was fluid all the way down to snow, did I urine at appr -45deg C, which is coldest I have experienced in wilderness, I cannot recall.

Juha


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## Juha (May 18, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> ...had the Germans managed to capture, hold and exploit the Caucuses oil fields they would have had all the energy they needed. Ironically this involves Hitler following Halders advice and taking Moscow and destroying the Soviet Army rather than turning Sth and heading for those oil fields and the granary that was the Ukraine...



Now what you think AG South and PzGroup 1/1. PzA were doing in Ukraine in 1941, they got to Rostov, the gateway to Caucasus, but were then pushed some way back by Soviet counter-attacks. Hitler did another try in 42 but messed up that try with well-known consequences.

Juha


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## davebender (May 18, 2012)

Historical German fuel production peaked during early 1944.

*Annual production in tons.*
http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/MofFP/ger_syn_ind/mof-secta.pdf
1,950,000. Aviation fuel. Almost entirely from hydrogenation.
1,595,000. Diesel. 
1,145,000. Motor fuel. 
1,110,000. Fuel Oil.
840,000. Lubricating oil.
290,000. Misc.

*Gelsenberg Hydrogenation Plant.* RM 208 million to build during 1939.
.....400,000 tons of aviation gasoline per year.
.....460,000 tons of motor fuel per year.

5 additional Gelsenberg size plants to double production @ a cost of about RM 1 billion.
Tripling production would require 10 plants @ a cost of about RM 2 billion.

As already noted, these plants require a lot of steel to build in addition to the high construction cost. The only way to obtain steel and money in that quantity without derailing the civilian economy would be to cancel construction of battleships, aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers. Personally I think that would be a great thing but it would require a change of German naval leadership during 1935.


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## Milosh (May 18, 2012)

Don't know the source.


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## davebender (May 18, 2012)

That doesn't help unless we also know gasoline requirements. I don't have that information but shortage of fuel is a common topic in most first hand accounts of German pilot training from 1941 onward. So the fuel shortage wasn't just a late war problem. You can bet the fuel shortage also had a lot to do with the Heer procuring so few motor vehicles. More 3 ton cargo trucks won't help without more fuel.


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## Siegfried (May 18, 2012)

Juha said:


> Now what you think AG South and PzGroup 1/1. PzA were doing in Ukraine in 1941, they got to Rostov, the gateway to Caucasus, but were then pushed some way back by Soviet counter-attacks. Hitler did another try in 42 but messed up that try with well-known consequences.
> 
> Juha



You don't get it. The German army had to destroy the Soviet Army when it had the chance in 1941 and only then turn South. It turned Sth too soon, against Halders advice, and let the Soviet army escape and recover.


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## Shortround6 (May 18, 2012)

The only ships that could be canceled without affecting the war much would be the Graf Zeppelin and Seydlitz. Is that enough steel?

Cutting theScharnhorst and Gneisenau and a couple of the Hipper class cruisers means no invasion of Norway. It means unmolested Convoys to Murmansk. It means the British _CAN_ interfere with the Swedish ore shipments more than was done historically. The Lutzow was sold to Russia for raw materials. 

It means the British don't have to build as Many KG V battleships and modern cruisers. Freeing up money (and steel) for more British aircraft and tanks. 

No Bismark and Tirpitz means the Hood lasts longer. It means the British save 10s of thousands of tons of fuel oil. It means the RAF does something else with dozens or scores of bomb raids. It may mean no "X" class submarines 

The German heavy ships caused the British (and the allies) lots of trouble, effort and money even if their combat results don't show very well on a "score board".

German truck production may not have been all that great because the factories needed to build _LARGE_ quantities of trucks never existed. Private ownership of cars and trucks in Germany prewar was not as high as in some other countries although far ahead of most/all of eastern Europe or southern Europe. 
America had factories that each could make 10s of thousand of cars/light trucks of a single model per year.


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## stona (May 18, 2012)

Tante Ju said:


> Fuel has a shelf life, unfortunately. You cannot store the same fuel for years, so large stockpiles only make a sense up to a certain point.
> 
> I am not sure though it is same case with crude oil...



You can certainly store large quantities of oil. We did.

BBC News - Return to Highlands' Inchindown secret tunnels

Steve


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## davebender (May 18, 2012)

_Cutting the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and a couple of the Hipper class cruisers means no invasion of Norway. _
Invading Norway was not part of pre-war German planning so it had no effect on ship procurement decisions.

_It means unmolested Convoys to Murmansk_. 
I disagree. More fuel means convoys to Murmansk get clobbered by more numerous German airpower.

_It means the British CAN interfere with the Swedish ore shipments more than was done historically._ 
I disagree. More fuel means more airpower. A far more effective deterrent then German capital warships.

_It means the British don't have to build as Many KG V battleships and modern cruisers. _
I doubt it. Italy and France were the major naval threats at the time the KGV battleships were constructed.

_No Bismark and Tirpitz means the Hood lasts longer. _
Unless it gets sunk by the stronger German airpower. Either way it makes no difference to the German war effort.

_German truck production may not have been all that great because the factories needed to build LARGE quantities of trucks never existed. _
Building truck factories is no more difficult in Germany then in the USA. 

If the Heer adopt diesel they will probably pay to expand existing Mercedes L3000A production facilities. Or perhaps the Opel Blitz will be modified to accept the Mercedes 95hp diesel truck engine. The same diesel engine could also power German half tracks.
Engines of the Red Army in WW2 - Trophy "Mercedes L3000A", 3-ton, 4x4, Cargo Truck


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## norab (May 18, 2012)

> German truck production may not have been all that great because the factories needed to build LARGE quantities of trucks never existed.
> Building truck factories is no more difficult in Germany then in the USA.



With all due respect it certainly was. The mechanical literacy of the average US male was much higher than the same factor among German males. You have a much smaller labor pool to draw on. If you impress large numbers of the civilian male population to build and work in factories, then the rest of German economy suffers. Tax revenues go down and the Reich loses vital economic resources needed for raw materials. If you use your troops to build and man the factories, they aren't available to fight. Couple this with the German reluctence to use women as a large scale industrial resource makes it even more difficult.

The factories and skilled operators already existed in the US prewar. One can not simply snap one's fingers and generate trained people and facilities out of the blue. and no one was bombing US factories and bottlenecking supplies. please look at this qoute from American Heritage. 



> In 1943 alone, Germany built 5,966 tanks of all types, while the U.S.S.R. produced an estimated 20,000 and the British 7,500. That year the United States built 30,000 tanks, most of them Shermans.



that should give you a little idea of the difference in industrial capabilities. You can not just slap someone into overalls and have him instantly become a trained worker. There is a learning curve that is sometimes very steep. If your experienced personel are busy teaching new workers and trying to fix their mistakes, then the experienced workers productivity suffers accordingly. This is a very complex issue and you can't simply say, well they would just do " X " in a given situation without appreciating all of the interlocking factors involved in the issues.


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## Shortround6 (May 18, 2012)

davebender said:


> _Cutting the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and a couple of the Hipper class cruisers means no invasion of Norway. _
> Invading Norway was not part of pre-war German planning so it had no effect on ship procurement decisions.



You are correct in that the invasion of Norway had no part in pre war ship procurement decisions. However you are wrong if you think the Germans could have invaded Norway without those ships. The Bulk of the German invasion forces were moved by ship. I don't know how much fire support the german navy gave but take that away, put fewer men in Norway and then see how far you get.



davebender said:


> I disagree. More fuel means convoys to Murmansk get clobbered by more numerous German airpower.



More fuel to operate the more numerous German airpower operating from Denmark and Finland? That's a lot of fuel.




davebender said:


> I disagree. More fuel means more airpower. A far more effective deterrent then German capital warships.



Not if they are flying from Denmark and Holland to try to cover the German convoys coming down the coast of Norway. 



davebender said:


> I doubt it. Italy and France were the major naval threats at the time the KGV battleships were constructed.



Italy yes, France was a Naval threat to England in 196-39??? in what alternate reality???




davebender said:


> Unless it gets sunk by the stronger German airpower. Either way it makes no difference to the German war effort.



Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. The point is things don't happen in a vacuum. Eliminating all German large Ships after the Graf Spee class _WILL_ affect the British procurement program, it will affect German operations and British operations, it will affect force allocations (more British ships in the Med in 1940-41 Mucking up the supply lines to North Africa. yes they may take more losses but since there is no German surface threat to worry about they can take more losses if it strangles the Africa Corp.in the Far east 

It may mean more ships in the Far East in Dec 1941. 4 Battle ships and a carrier of Singapore rather than 2 battle ships. This doesn't affect German plans directly but may affect WW II as whole. 

You have also ignored the benefit the British get in not having to use battleships as North Atlantic and North Cape convoy escorts. Several thousand tons of fuel oil per trip per ship. The Cruisers are also needed in much fewer numbers, again at a savings of over 1000 tons of fuel per trip per ship. British may be able to lay up a few of those old WW I Battleships at about 1500men per ship. 

you want to take advantage of all the "Benefits" of canceling the ships and pay none of the costs to the Germans of canceling them. Some of the German admirals knew very well what a "fleet in being" was worth. 






davebender said:


> Building truck factories is no more difficult in Germany then in the USA.
> 
> If the Heer adopt diesel they will probably pay to expand existing Mercedes L3000A production facilities. Or perhaps the Opel Blitz will be modified to accept the Mercedes 95hp diesel truck engine. The same diesel engine could also power German half tracks.
> Engines of the Red Army in WW2 - Trophy "Mercedes L3000A", 3-ton, 4x4, Cargo Truck



Rather ignores the fact that many of the US factories already existed. 

See: U.S. Automobile Production Figures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just for 1938 (well before the war) the top EIGHT US car makers made over 1,697,000 cars in one year.


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## Milosh (May 18, 2012)

It would also mean the British could build more anti submarine ships and man them


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## davebender (May 18, 2012)

List of Nobel Laureates by Country - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Then why did Europeans receive most Nobel Prize awards during the 1930s?


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## Milosh (May 18, 2012)

davebender said:


> List of Nobel Laureates by Country - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
> 
> Then why did Europeans receive most Nobel Prize awards during the 1930s?



How many of those NLs could fix an engine?


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## norab (May 18, 2012)

> Then why did Europeans receive most Nobel Prize awards during the 1930s?



you are trying to compare apples to oranges by combining all europeans Nobel prizes and attributing them all to Germany and comparing that to the United States. In the list you cite as evidence, not including peace prizes, durings the years 1930-1945 there are 12 German winners and *13* Unted States winners, hardly an overwhelming difference.


the following qoute is from National D-Day Museum sources. The bold face is my addition



> Any discussion of the scientific and technological advancements during WWII must acknowledge the important developments in the field of training. It was one thing to design and build thousands of new, high-tech weapons and produce wondrous new medicines, but without people trained to use them, they would be worthless. New technologies – from moving pictures to new kinds of projectors and even simulators – allowed the military to train thousands of men and women quickly and efficiently (and formed the predecessors to modern technologies like PowerPoint presentations). _ *At the end of the war, one frustrated Nazi general remarked that he and his fellow officers were not surprised that American industry could mobilize for war as quickly as it did. What was surprising and ultimately a major element of Germany’s undoing was how quickly American industry and the American war machine could train its people*_


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## Shortround6 (May 18, 2012)

There are way too many variables in trying to compare the top 1/10 of 1/10 of 1% of one nation to another. 

America had several advantages over Germany, one was a much larger population which means, even if the people are NOT as smart on the average, it is more than likely the larger population while have more geniuses just due to numbers. I am not putting the Americans down, just pointing out how the numbers work.

The second advantage was that America, ON THE AVERAGE, was the most technically advance nation in the world. By that I mean that that the AVERAGE American was more exposed to technology than any other nation. The US had a higher percentage of cars per 100 people, a higher percentage of tractors and power driven farm machinery, more telephones, radios and other devices. Now, not every American had these things or even every other american but take 100 Americans and 100 citizens from any other nation and see which group had the most people who could drive cars, do minor repairs, had used phones or typewriters, had done more than just listen to a radio (like change a tube/valve) and so on. I am not saying they were smarter, just that they had a head start in dealing with certain mechanical and electronic devices ON AVERAGE. It does NOT mean an American machinist with 5 years experience was better than a German machinist with 5 years experience or anything like that.


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## stona (May 19, 2012)

The essential difference between German skilled workers and their US contemporaries was quantity not quality.

Steve


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## Juha (May 19, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> You don't get it. The German army had to destroy the Soviet Army when it had the chance in 1941 and only then turn South. It turned Sth too soon, against Halders advice, and let the Soviet army escape and recover.



Sorry for that, not being native speaker sometimes produces misunderstandings. But anyway, Hitler wasn’t fixed with oil, not at least initially. Originally Hitler had demanded more powerful northern attack towards Leningrad than what OKH had planned and Barbarossa Plan was modified accordingly. July/August he changed his mind, but that wasn’t only because of economic factors, both AG North and South had run into troubles and were lagging behind, especially AG South was too weak to fulfil its main 1st phase object, the capture of Kiev. So the turning of the PzGr 2 / 2nd PzA temporarily to South had also clearly military aims and it produced the Kiev encirclement and so produced enormous losses to Soviet army. In theory using mobility of mechanized forces to deliver attack to unexpected direction and so destroying was that 3 enemy armies sounds good, but it probably wasn’t worth of lost time. Germany needed Caspian oil but was it realistic to hope that they could capture the Baku oilfields in such conditions that they would have been able to utilise them in that war? IIRC Maikop oilfields were so thoroughly destroyed that Germans could not utilize them during the time they occupied them. And anyway Baku was far away from the Reich.

Juha


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## davebender (May 19, 2012)

http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp905.pdf
Most WWII era weapons were made by unskilled workers and they became less skilled as the war continued. The above paper documents this trend for the Ju-88 aircraft program but the story was essentially similiar for other major firms such as Boeing, Daimler-Benz, Tankograd etc.

Engineers and machine tools are the critical components for mass production (plus raw materials). Germany was (and probably still is) a world leader in both areas.


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## Shortround6 (May 19, 2012)

Duplicate post


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## Shortround6 (May 19, 2012)

"A" world leader.

"THE" world leader?

If the US has twice the engineers and twice the capacity to make machine tools even if the German ones are a bit better on _average_ the US still comes out on top. 

in 1940 the population of the US was 132 million, the population of German ( including annexed Austria, Memelland, and the Sudetenland) was 80,600,000. 

Look at car production,in 1938 Plymouth was the 3rd place maker of cars in the United States, and they made more cars by themselves than all 35 car companies in Germany put together. And 1938 was a bad year for the US car companies.

you seem to like things like the US Strategic bombing survey. 

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: Motor Vehicle Industry Report


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## parsifal (May 19, 2012)

a few observations about the side debate about overunning russia to get additional oil supplies.

1) Whilst halder intially advocated a rush on Moscow following Smolensk, after he had received the situatiuon reports on the supply situations, the aircraft readiness rates, the positions of the German supply heads, and above all the fitness rates of the german infantry, he realized that a "dash" on Moscow was virtually imppossible. All except 2 pz were down to about 40% effectiveness rates....a report by the chief inspector of the infantry forces states they needed 6 weeks for the troops and equipment to recover. The decision to send 2 pz south was the first signs of desperation by the germans, as ther supply lines were being harassed already by bypassed elements of the soviet army, who were receiveing some supply from Sth Front HQ. AGS was by this stage in deep trouble, virtually stalled and unable to cross the Dnieper. Hitler, always impulsive, wanted to at least do something, whilst Halder and most of the gerneral Staff, now realizing that a quick dash for moscow was impossible, favoured a period of rest and recovery, followed by a renewed ofensive effort. I actually think Hitler was more correct on this ocasion than halder. halders approach would almost certainly have seen AGS stalled and defeated in front of kiev, which would place germany's oils resourcess (the Ploesti Oil Fields) at great risk. A meat grinder in front of Kiev would have forced a dissipation of effort from AGC and AGN anyway, but with the soviets a million men stronger than they were , and with the AGC principal supply line under increasing threat from effectively supplied partisans 

3) The germans were never going to capture the oilfields in the Trans-Caucasus in operational condition. The oilfields around Maikop that were captured were so comprehensively sabotaged that in the context of the war they would never be returned to operations. A report undertaken by the germans estimated that even with 40% of AGS supply trains diverted to the reconstruction effort, meaningful production would not be achieved until May 1944 at the earliest. The rreport further stated that no effective means existed to get the oil back to germany without severely compromising the military situation on the Eastern front as a whole.

There was never the slightest possibility of the germans returning any of the fields they did capture to anything like useful production for the duration of the war.


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## stona (May 19, 2012)

davebender said:


> http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp905.pdf
> Most WWII era weapons were made by unskilled workers and they became less skilled as the war continued.



That is true but with qualification. You still need skilled workers(toolmakers,engineers etc) but much assembly can be,and was,done by less skilled people. You still have to have people available (one British manufacturer complained about having to use "infirm" workers in its factory) and they still need some training.
Someone had to show "Rosie the riveter" how to rivet.
A member of my own family went from serving in a shop to sewing the fabric on the control surfaces of Spitfires. Not a particularly "skilled" job but one that required training nonetheless.
Steve


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## war eagle (May 19, 2012)

Fuel shortages were not an immediate issue in the first 2 years of hostilities only failure to capture the oil rich areas of russia and romania prompted and accelerated the problem.In hindsight knowing what transpired on the Eastern front and after failure to win the skies over the channel thus scuppering an invasion of britain and if a looming shortage of fuel was becoming apparent i would have turned south through spain and portugal joining up with and massively re-enforcing Rommels victorious afrika corp.Then after capturing all the strategically important mediterranian ports and middle eastern oil fields and capturing control of the suez canal thereby cutting all allied means of re-supply.Now with a plentiful supply of fuel and with the allied means of resistance totally eliminated a very different warpath becomes clear.JUST A THEORY !


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## stona (May 19, 2012)

war eagle said:


> Rommels victorious afrika corp.



When was that then?
It never achieved its objectives,unless you count preventing the ejection of Germany's axis allies from Africa as the ultimate aim,and ended up being comprehensively defeated. The second battle of El Alamein took place more than a year AFTER the launch of "Barbarossa". Where were the resources to come from to bolster the Afrika Korps?
The Royal navy might have had something to say about "capturing all the strategically important Mediterranean ports." The Germans never even subdued Malta!
Steve


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## Hop (May 19, 2012)

> Then after capturing all the strategically important mediterranian ports and middle eastern oil fields



The Germans tried maintaining an army a thousand miles from their main port in Tripoli. They failed. 

To take the ME oil fields they would first need to succeed in capturing Egypt. Then they'd have to take Palestine. Then they'd have to march their army another thousand miles across the desert to Iraq and Kuwait. Again operating a thousand miles from their base, they'd have to defeat the British forces there. Having done that they'd have to restore production, then take all the oil back across a thousand miles of desert. 

It's just not doable. To have access to ME oil the Germans would need to control the sea routes to the Persian Gulf. They simply didn't have the naval forces (or bases) to do that.


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## parsifal (May 19, 2012)

Similar difficulties arise with 'oh we will take the ME oilfields" school. Firstly, as indicated above there is the problem of actually capturing the oilfields, but not that, the ports to carry them. Suez has to be captured, intact, and a safe route for tanker traffic established....requiring reconquest of Abysinnia and most of Arabian peninsula. The oilfields have to be captured intact, the port capacities rebuilt and the tanker capacity found. It might be possible to build a pipleline to the med, but this would have taken years, and still does not gurantee the supply line. 

Capture and use of Middle eastern oil is another pipe dream in the context of a wartime environment for germany. Even more remote than the possibility of using Soviet sources


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## davebender (May 19, 2012)

That's not surprising since the Wehrmacht had few combat aircraft or motor vehicles during 1939. By 1941 German military production had increased enough to cause fuel shortages. Those shortages should have been predictable.


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## stona (May 19, 2012)

davebender said:


> That's not surprising since the Wehrmacht had few combat aircraft or motor vehicles during 1939. By 1941 German military production had increased enough to cause fuel shortages. Those shortages should have been predictable.



I don't know about motor vehicles but your staement is incorrect regarding combat aircraft.

In 1939 the luftwaffe had 2,916 combat aircraft,out of the 2,950 "authorised" (98.9%).

In June 1941 it had slightly more,3,451 (81.6% of the 4,228 authorised)

By March 1942 the Luftwaffe actually had LESS combat aircraft than in 1939,only 2,876 ( 62.2% of the 4,623 authorised).

If you include operational ready rates the picture is even worse. For example,in December 1941 the bomber force only possessed 47.1% of its authorised strength. Only 51% of that force was in commission. This means that from an authorised strength of 1,950 bombers only 468 were in commission in December 1941. This represents a mere 24% of authorised aircraft! 

I'm not sure where your argument is going,but this is sure a sh*t one of the reasons that Germany lost the war.

These maybe boring facts and statistics but that's the best way we have,seventy years later,of establishing what really happened rather than making assumptions about aircraft numbers and fuel consumption.

Steve


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## parsifal (May 19, 2012)

Similar arguments arise for motor vehicles. Germany entered the war with over 750000 motor vehicles from memory. by June 1941 that figure had slumped to 550000 and by June 1944 to less than 200000. 

The reasons for German fuel shortages in 1942 was due mostly to the levels of activity.....offensive activity sucks out more fuel than defensive activities, and 1941-1942 were the years of offensives for the germans. There was a slight pause in 1943, which led to a slight improvement of fuel stocks, and then a plummet to the bottom of the ocean in 1944, as allied offensives strangled the reich of its fuel supplies


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## Siegfried (May 20, 2012)

stona said:


> I don't know about motor vehicles but your staement is incorrect regarding combat aircraft.
> 
> In 1939 the luftwaffe had 2,916 combat aircraft,out of the 2,950 "authorised" (98.9%).
> 
> In June 1941 it had slightly more,3,451 (81.6% of the 4,228 authorised)



Your claim that the defeat of Germany does not lie on fuel shortages is based upon the assumption that as actual strength of the Luftwaffe did not match authorized strength and so their fuel consumption would have been below planed. This shortfall may be due to losses, or it may be due to planed production shortfalls.

However, the reality would seem to be that even IF they had the larger numbers they would not have been able to generate an increased number of missions as there WAS a shortage of fuel.

The Role of Synthetic Fuel In World War II Germany
_As a highly developed industrial state, Germany was dependent even in peacetime on external sources for an adequate supply of oil. Even though Germany’s 1938 oil consumption of little more than 44 million barrels was considerably less than Great Britain’s 76 million barrels, Russia’s 183 million barrels, and the one billion barrels used by the United States, in wartime Germany’s needs for an adequate supply of liquid fuel would be absolutely essential for successful military operations on the ground and, even more so, in the air.1 For Germany, it was precisely the outbreak of the war in 1939 and the concurrent termination of overseas imports that most endangered its ability to conduct mobile warfare.

German oil supplies came from three different sources: imports of crude and finished petroleum products from abroad, production by domestic oil fields, and syntheses of petroleum products from coal.

In 1938, of the total consumption of 44 million barrels, imports from overseas accounted for 28 million barrels or roughly 60 percent of the total supply. An additional 3.8 million barrels were imported overland from European sources (2.8 million barrels came from Romania alone), and another 3.8 million barrels were derived from domestic oil production. The remainder of the total, 9 million barrels, were produced synthetically. Although the total overseas imports were even higher in 1939 before the onset of the blockade in September (33 million barrels), this high proportion of overseas imports only indicated how precarious the fuel situation would become should Germany be cut off from them.2

At the outbreak of the war, Germany’s stockpiles of fuel consisted of a total of 15 million barrels. The campaigns in Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France added another 5 million barrels in booty, and imports from the Soviet Union accounted for 4 million barrels in 1940 and 1.6 million barrels in the first half of 1941. Yet a High Command study in May of 1941 noted that with monthly military requirements for 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German stocks would be exhausted by August 1941. The 26 percent shortfall could only be made up with petroleum from Russia. The need to provide the lacking 1.9 million barrels per month and the urgency to gain possession of the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus mountains, together with Ukrainian grain and Donets coal, were thus supposedly prime elements in the German decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941_


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## stona (May 20, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> Your claim that the defeat of Germany does not lie on fuel shortages is based upon the assumption that as actual strength of the Luftwaffe did not match authorized strength and so their fuel consumption would have been below planed. [/I]



I claim no such thing. A lack of fuel was a critical factor in the defeat of Germany. 

I didn't say that a decrease in the number of available combat aircraft resulted in the use of less fuel than planned. I don't even know what the planned fuel consumption for the Luftwaffe at various times was and certainly can't be bothered to spend a day trying to find out! I'm sure that the OKL planners worked on actual rather than authorised numbers and I know that they would have been aware of the various units operational ready rates,that's how we know today.

The Luftwaffe strength being less than authorised is obviously due to production shortfalls,production was not covering losses,another one of the many reasons that Germany lost the war.
In 1939 Germany produced 1,856 fighters and 2,877 bombers. In 1941 it produced 3,732 fighters and 4,350 bombers. Despite this increase in production it started operations in 1942 with less aircraft than it had in 1940. Another thread might discuss who was to blame. Much responsibility lies with Udet but Goering,Jeschonnek and many others must shoulder some of the responsibility too. 

The appalling operational ready rates are harder to explain but must be at least partly due to a lack of preparation for a long conflict,a lack of spare parts,personnel,facilities for example. Also a lot of poor or muddled planning. Yet another reason that Germany lost the war.

I did say that the statement that the Germans had more aircraft in 1941-2 than in 1939 was incorrect. I posted the figures above (#61).

I also implied that the fact that Germany had far less combat aircraft in commission by 1942 than in 1939 (unlike her Western adversaries,don't know about the USSR without checking) was a factor in her eventual defeat and it certainly was.

I was interested to see how much importation was reduced by the (principally) British blockade. A reduction of 5 million barrels must have hurt.I often see it argued that the blockade had a minimal effect on the German war effort.

Cheers
Steve


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## Siegfried (May 20, 2012)

One of the achievements of the Hitler since taking office in 1934 to 1939 was an increase in automobile production from 44,000 per year to 250,000 year. That is no chump change, the Germans certainly knew how to design and produce motor cars and trucks. The expansion is somewhat belated in comparison to the US however its worth considering that Germans invented the Otto cycle (4 stroke engine), invented the Diesel, invented high speed diesel injection (Robert Bosch) and invented the automobile (Daimler) and the high speed 4 stroke they even invented the woman driver when Emma Daimler had an argument with Gotlieb and took their child in the car to her mother.

1 Germany had a dense network of rail for urban and interurban transport and so was not reliant on the automobile.
2 Germany had coal but not oil, trains can run of coal or electricity.
3 The use of rail in transport of logistical supplies to the Soviet Union was *essential* as the unpaved roads turned into a quagmire for much of the year. One might have imagine 6x6 trucks but doing the job but because of the slowness of negotiating inadequate roads and the high fuel consumption of all wheel driving it would be a very expensive proposition. These were not commercial truck routes.

As for the delayed expansion of the German automobile industry into mass production that is easy to understand. In 1914 Germany was 15% of world GDP slightly ahead of Britain with 14%. Germany was an economic dynamo, Kaiser Wilhelm II plans for expansion rested on the Berlin Baghdad railway which was to exit into the Gulf of Persia at a purpose built port in what is now the British created Kingdom of Kuwait. The idea was to modernise the Turkish empire and the Arabs of the middle east to western levels. Laurence of Arabia and British gave the world Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and the Israel/Palestine abomination and created Kuwait to prevent the port.

After WW1 the treaty of Versailles
1 Scheduled reparation payments scheduled to 1988, not only for damages but they counted allied widows pensions and the lost incomes of fallen allied soldiers.
2 Prevented Austria and Germany from having a free trade zone amongst themselves.
3 Forced Germany to accept Allied goods without tariffs but applied tariffs on German exports.
4 Removed nearly 4 million ethnic Sudden Germans from the bordering Germany, forced them into Czechoslovakia, a country with 20% the population of Germany but almost its area where due to gerrymandering not one single ethnic German was ever elected to federal parliament. This was a economically dynamic people and heavily industrialized.
5 Several hundred thousand ethnic Germans lost private land in Poland and had to leave. Millions of Germans in land bordering Poland was removed.
6 The French marched into the Rhineland, tool control of the mines, and exported all the coal at a time there was a fuel shortage in Germany. (this leads to deaths in Europe, many on these news groups will be old enough to remember deaths of retirees, children or workers with pneumonia)

Essentially Germany was squeezed into semi-poverty and no concessions were given. Its why Hitler came to power, he was the only politician that was effective. Every German Democratically elected Chancellor was completely rejected and humiliated by the allies and France. The one prior to Hitler had rotten vegetables thrown at him in 1932 when he came back from his failed mission in France, which is why he lost.

In these circumstances one can certainly see why the German automotive industry did not take off sooner.

As far as reliabillity goes. Tanks like the *Panther* were *very* efficient to produce in terms of man hours more so than the lighter *panzer Mk III and Mk IV.* Early Ausf D had reliabillity problems in particular but the subsequent Ausf A and Ausf G were much more reliable with most problems fixed in Ausf G.

The most notorious problem was the final drive of the transmission which used straight cut gears unlike the lighter Sherman which had Herringbone cut gears. Now German engineers knew that Herringbone gears are much better due to the fact they engage multiple teeth at once. It's common knowledge. The reason they weren't allowed to use them was a shortage of machine tools or 'cutting time' in the Reich and Speer's department under Saur was ruthless in applying man-hour requirements. It can take years to get a machine tool ordered and delivered. The pressures were very high, even the engineers of the Jumo 004 and BMW 003 were forced to reduced turbine blade numbers to reduce production man-hours and therefore compromise other aspects of the engine.

Perhaps its worth considering that the Luftwaffe bombing of the aviation engine and machine tool industry in and around Coventry may have helped delay the Napier Sabre to such an extent that it was limited in production due to its unreliability. (eg they punched rather than machined sleeve valves)


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## Siegfried (May 20, 2012)

stona said:


> The appalling operational ready rates are harder to explain but must be at least partly due to a lack of preparation for a long conflict,a lack of spare parts,personnel,facilities for example. Also a lot of poor or muddled planning. Yet another reason that Germany lost the war.



It took Germany 3 weeks to defeat France and throw Britain of the Continent. The French didn't have any modern aircraft, the small numbers of MS 520 was 30 mph slower and that barely reached production was inferior to the Me 109E3 then appearing with the DB601Aa replacing the DB601A (boosting speed to 355mph)

German planning was almost perfect. 

There were no plans for war with Britain so no plans for a strategic war apart from contingencies. There weren't even plans for war with Poland, Hitler wanted the military Junta that ran Poland and was headed by their Pedophile President Beck as an Allie. Hitler was an Austrian with no particular bone to pick with Poles, Chamberlains badly communicated guarantee to Poland was a knew jerk reaction to fabrications of an imminent German invasion from a US Journalist and by Pressure from Churchill's goading. The badly communicated British guarantee was actually to grantee Poland independence not its territorial integrity (Chamberlain was happy to let Danzig go which was the only issue for Hitler but couldn't get the message across) but the result was that the Polish Junta became intransigent and a Franco-Polish-British allegiance that was sending feelers out to the Soviets (which the Poles scuttled). The resulting sense of encirclement only then triggered German planning for a wider longer war. War with Poland, was only possible because of the bizarre and improbable Soviet-Nazi friendship pact. A pact that delighted Stalin as it brought the Soviet Pariah state in from the cold.

German planning had to emphasize the Army. It's no good having a large air-force if a combined Polish and French army has marched halfway to Berlin.

The tendency to being derogatory towards the Nazis has obscured the real difficulties the Germans faced.

AFAIKT Luftwaffe expansion was restricted not by poor planing but inadequate resources which would have had to have been obtained by compromising expansion of the Army or the Navy. Jenkoschenks culd not have had more aircraft if he wanted them.

The big upswing in production in 1943-1944 was based on the fruition of careful technocratic improvements as well as aircraft plant investments coming on line.

It would have been difficult to expand production prior to this. This required automated factories with presses etc that don't build themselves. You can build cottage style aicraft industry (the French Nationalized industry was like this) but for mass production you need to wait.

I would agree however the Germans had problems with what would today be called risk management: the failures of the Me 410 and He 177 programs and the vain attempts to produce a 2000hp hyper engine to some degree at the expense of the more achievable engines such as the DB603 and Jumo 213.


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## Juha (May 20, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> ...4 Removed nearly 4 million ethnic Sudden Germans from the bordering Germany, forced them into Czechoslovakia, a country with 20% the population of Germany but almost its area where due to gerrymandering not one single ethnic German was ever elected to federal parliament...)




First of all, Sudetenland had been part of Austria and later Austro-Hungarian since early 16th century, not part of Germany, so Sudeten were not removed anywhere, borderline remained in place, but the old Germany/Austria border became Germany/Czechoslovakia border. But its true that Sudeten wanted to be annexed to Germany or to Austria.

And to your latter claim, sorry, from Wiki, but it ws easier in this way:

Czechoslovakian Chamber of deputies 1920-1935 - German and German-Hungarian parties or lists[3][4]

Party/List ______________________seats 1920__ seats 1925__ seats 1929 seats 1935 votes 1935 
Sudeten German Party________________ -_________ -__________ -________ 44____ 1.256.010 
German National Party________________ -________ 10__________ 7_________ -______ - 
German National Socialist Workers Party 15________ 17__________ 8_________-______ - 
German Social Democratic Workers Party 31________17__________21________11______ 300.406 
German Christian Social People's Party____7________13__________14_________6______ 163.666 
German Union of Farmers ______________11_______ 24__________ -_________5______ 142.775 
Hungarian Parties and Sudeten German 
Electoral Bloc_________________________9_________4__________9_________9_______292.847 
United German Parties _________________6_________ -_________16_________-_________- 
Total (out of 300 seats)_______________79________ 85_________75________75 

Hungarian Parties and Sudeten German Electoral Bloc (1935)[5]: German Democratic Liberal Party, German Industrialist Party, Party of German Nation, Sudeten German Land Union, German Workers Party, Zips German Party, Provincial Christian Social Party, Hungarian National Party 



Siegfried said:


> Perhaps its worth considering that the Luftwaffe bombing of the aviation engine and machine tool industry in and around Coventry may have helped delay the Napier Sabre to such an extent that it was limited in production due to its unreliability. (eg they punched rather than machined sleeve valves)



What I have read the main problem with Sabre was the company and its practices, in the end the authories put the Napier under control of another, bigger firm. In a way Napier seemed to have been GB's Brewster.

Juha


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## parsifal (May 20, 2012)

> One of the achievements of the Hitler since taking office in 1934 to 1939 was an increase in automobile production from 44,000 per year to 250,000 year. That is no chump change, the Germans certainly knew how to design and produce motor cars and trucks


. 

Completely untrue. according to The german war economy - The Motorization Myth - a commercial edited version of the two chapters of the USSBS German mototr vehicle production in 1934 (the height of the depression) was just short of 248000 vehicles. In 1939 the figure had expanded impressively to 540000 vehicles, however nearly all this expansion was in types of very limited military application. whereas motor cycle production had expanded close to fourfold, and domestic passenger vehicles had doubled, truck production had moved by only about 50%. Military production was in deep trouble, the types being built were too numerous, they were too light to be considered optimal military adaptations. 



> The expansion is somewhat belated in comparison to the US however its worth considering that Germans invented the Otto cycle (4 stroke engine), invented the Diesel, invented high speed diesel injection (Robert Bosch) and invented the automobile (Daimler) and the high speed 4 stroke they even invented the woman driver when Emma Daimler had an argument with Gotlieb and took their child in the car to her mother.




you failed to mention that german auto industry languishged at the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of man hours needed to produce each vehicle. it was grossly innefficient, using more than twice the man hours to produce comparable vehicles. Costs were correspondingly inflated. The german auto industry was heavily subsidised, which as herman Schacht pointed out was driving the german economy to bankruptcy. 

What successes that the german auto industry did enjoy had nothing to do with hitlers 'inspired leadership'....he in fact was one of the biggest problems as the regime he ran ran on nepetism and corruption. only the able intervention of germany's middle management class involved in the industry saved what would other wise have been an unmitigated disaster...


1


> Germany had a dense network of rail for urban and interurban transport and so was not reliant on the automobile.


True, i agree, but this approach does not completely address the needs of the modern mobile battles being advocated prewar....to make that work the germans needed an efficient SUSTAINABLE truck pool to sustain the concept of mobile warfare. in the end, the german efforts in this area failed completely. 




> Its why Hitler came to power, he was the only politician that was effective.




Thats a new low, even for you. hitler btrayed his own people from the very beginning, and was NOT the panacea for germany's problem. he was a lie, his economic miracle for example was in relaity the steady de-construction of her limited assets, his drive to war flying in the face of military wisdom. his morale boosting exercises a temporary affair that completely was based on falsehood. 




> Every German Democratically elected Chancellor was completely rejected and humiliated by the allies and France. The one prior to Hitler had rotten vegetables thrown at him in 1932 when he came back from his failed mission in France, which is why he lost.



yeah, by Nazi thugs paid and recruited for that very purpose. Every one of those democrats had more morality and purpose and achievement than hitler achieved in his entire career


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## Juha (May 20, 2012)

Siegfried
France had modern planes like LeO 451, Br 693, Bloch 174 Potez 630 series and even Bloch 152 was modern but not as good as 109E

Juha


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## Tante Ju (May 20, 2012)

stona said:


> The Luftwaffe strength being less than authorised is obviously due to production shortfalls,production was not covering losses,another one of the many reasons that Germany lost the war.



Not neccesary. Lost aircraft replacements need time to get to units, especially if those units are 1000s of km from the factories...

You can answer if there was production shortfall only if you find 




> In 1939 Germany produced 1,856 fighters and 2,877 bombers. In 1941 it produced 3,732 fighters and 4,350 bombers. Despite this increase in production it started operations in 1942 with less aircraft than it had in 1940. Another thread might discuss who was to blame. Much responsibility lies with Udet but Goering,Jeschonnek and many others must shoulder some of the responsibility too.



I think this goes long for playing with numbers and picking a date ... in the spring of 1942 it is well known the whole Wehrmacht was in poor shape. It was fighting in Russia, at the end of the supply line, in a conquest country in which much of railroad and infrastructure was destroyed in advance, and primitive to start with, and locomotives not converted for Eastern European gauge standard.

I think its unfair to blame on industrie or leaders the appaling supply situation in Russia 1941.



> The appalling operational ready rates are harder to explain but must be at least partly due to a lack of preparation for a long conflict,a lack of spare parts,personnel,facilities for example. Also a lot of poor or muddled planning. Yet another reason that Germany lost the war.



Rate*s*? You pick a single date, then apply it for the whole war, the error is obvious is in logic... how do srping 1942 readiness have to do anything with readiness rates for summer 1942, winter 1944 etc.?

I did say that the statement that the Germans had more aircraft in 1941-2 than in 1939 was incorrect. I posted the figures above (#61).



> I also implied that the fact that Germany had far less combat aircraft in commission by 1942 than in 1939 (unlike her Western adversaries,don't know about the USSR without checking) was a factor in her eventual defeat and it certainly was.



What is 'in commission'? All figures I have seen LW strenght steadily increased through war..



> I was interested to see how much importation was reduced by the (principally) British blockade. A reduction of 5 million barrels must have hurt.I often see it argued that the blockade had a minimal effect on the German war effort.



The question is how much oil Germany was importing from overseas. I believe they relied on Rumania and USSR for oil imports, unlike Britain which was main importing from USA I believe.


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## Njaco (May 20, 2012)

> ....to make that work the germans needed an efficient SUSTAINABLE truck pool to sustain the concept of mobile warfare. in the end, the german efforts in this area failed completely.



I have to agree with this. Almost every account I have read states that much of the transport for 39-40 campaigns were horse-drawn. Fuel only counts if you have a vehicle to use it.

AS far as German planning, my impression has always been that actual aggression from Germany was planned for 1942 - not 1939. Hitler caught many of his military planners off-guard with that one.


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## stona (May 20, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> It took Germany 3 weeks to defeat France and throw Britain of the Continent.
> German planning was almost perfect.



If only that had been the end of it.
The Luftwaffe had no long term plan for an extended conflict. Hundreds of aircraft were unserviceable for the want of basic spare parts that were not available. There was no equivalent of the British civilian repair units. Aircraft were entrained and sent hundreds of miles back to repair facilities. Poor planning.
Having a couple of thousand fighter aircraft of which barely half are seviceable is also down to poor planning. Logistical support is essentially planning!

A schematic of the Luftwaffe aircraft repair system,unwieldy and,as it turned out,inefficient. It was at OAC level that the system really failed,the parts were just not available resulting in aircraft being transferred into the "Industry" side of the scheme or,where transport was unavailable,being canabalised to keep others in service. Many were eventually abandoned,something the RLM complained about,demanding that they be salvaged. The problem was that the infrastructure to do so didn't exist.







Repeatedly stripping training schools of experienced pilots to bolster other operations resulting in a lack of properly qualified pilots,poor planning.

I could cite many more examples of short term fixes to long term problems which resulted in disaster for the Luftwaffe and defeat for Germany.

The confused and muddled system of Luftwaffe procurement also deserves a thread of its own. The Me 210/410 debacle is one of many.

Cheers
Steve


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## Tante Ju (May 20, 2012)

stona said:


> There was no equivalent of the British civilian repair units.



What was so special about them..? 

I am sure you agree that the British enjoyed advantages because they had very different position. After Britain ground troop left the continent, they were always fighting from their own bases in England, which meant that civillian infrastructure was natural available for repairs. That's an advantage of retreat and falling back to your own center of operation.

It is only natural that the Germans did not found nearby 'German civillian repair' units in France, Yugoslavia, Africa, Russia etc.



> Aircraft were entrained and sent hundreds of miles back to repair facilities. Poor planning.



Uhm, this was necessary because Wehrmacht Heer tended to advanced hundreds of miles into enemy territories and the owners forgot to prepare these territories with sufficient repair facilities to the advancing enemy... Seriously, I am not certain what alternative you see to sending seriously damaged aircraft back to Germany. Building an aircraft factory (years..) just to repair planes in Russia sounds like a good idea to you? Getting aircraft mechanics from German factories to frontline sounds like a good idea to you?

How did the British solve this overseas in North Africa, Far East? I am quite sure they were forced to adopt the same procedure, when far from England industrie.


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## davebender (May 20, 2012)

The Luftwaffe repair service had little to do with the German gasoline supply. Neither does Sudetenland.


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## parsifal (May 20, 2012)

I


> am sure you agree that the British enjoyed advantages because they had very different position. After Britain ground troop left the continent, they were always fighting from their own bases in England, which meant that civillian infrastructure was natural available for repairs. That's an advantage of retreat and falling back to your own center of operation.



German serviceability rates even for units based within the reich itself remained very low. There were a number of possible explanations for that. Low reserves of spare parts, a relatively lean repair and squadron support organization are the most obvious. later, poor quality of workmanships might also be a possible reason. earlier in the war, German units had a high sorie rate, which might also have contributed to the low readiness rates 



> It is only natural that the Germans did not found nearby 'German civillian repair' units in France, Yugoslavia, Africa, Russia etc.



Actuially, they did, Germans did not hesitate to press gang civilians into aircraft repair and salvage operations, as slave labour. in Russia they worked them to death, but thats another debate

The allies did not make much use of local populations for support work....part of the Marshall aid plan, but seviceability rates even in overseas commands were consistntly higher than for Axis air forces. 



> Uhm, this was necessary because Wehrmacht Heer tended to advanced hundreds of miles into enemy territories and the owners forgot to prepare these territories with sufficient repair facilities to the advancing enemy... Seriously, I am not certain what alternative you see to sending seriously damaged aircraft back to Germany. Building an aircraft factory (years..) just to repair planes in Russia sounds like a good idea to you? Getting aircraft mechanics from German factories to frontline sounds like a good idea to you?
> 
> How did the British solve this overseas in North Africa, Far East? I am quite sure they were forced to adopt the same procedure, when far from England industrie.



Britian did not use slave labour for salvage operationsl and did not ship aircraft back to the UK or even to depots (usually) for major repairs. They created mobile formations called SGSUs (squadron Support Units) which undertook major rebuilds in the field. This was a process utilized in New guinea, Burma, Northern Australia and North Africa that i know of. It was also used in Murmannsk for units deployed to that area. Britain enjoyed a considerable surplus of spare parts, so could afford to stock larhe amounts of spare parts away from a centralized point. Germany either voluntarily or was forced by spares shortages to nopt decentralise its erpair facilities. One effect of that was to lower serviceability rates...in the end, dramatically...


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## parsifal (May 20, 2012)

In the RAAF, the maintence units were highly mobile and were called Repair and Salvage Units (RSUs). They were intended to provide repair services that the squadrons themselves could not handle.....anything with a category C level of damage or higher (category C was the terminaology used earlier in the war, and indicated damage levels of about 50% or higher). 

I think the maintence and support echelons were a major contrast to the approaches. The British, with their extensive prewar experience of operating from remote locations, and their emphasis on providing strong spare parts support seemed to have seamlessly transitioned to a warime environment in places like Burma, New Gunea and North Africa.

The germans, seemed to have placed far less emphasis on spare parts support, and had a far more limited experience of operating in remaote locations. Whatever the explanation, their repair and salvage efforts, whilst adequate at the beginning of the war, were never fantastically outstanding, and as the war progressed degenerated to a fairly low level by wars end. 

The following is an example (not especially picked out) of one RAAF RSU 



> "6 Repair and Salvage Unit RAAF (6 RSU) was established at Mt. Druitt in New South Wales on 10 April 1944. It was initially sharing facilities with 18 Repair and Salvage Unit, but took over the shared facilities when 18 RSU started to move out on about 26 July 1944.
> 
> One of the first tasks for 6 RSU was to recover a Beaufort bomber from Mascot airfield and relocate it to 5 Aircraft Depot at Wagga. This may have been Beaufort, A9-585, which crashed at Mascot at some time in July 1944. 6 RSU also undertook the relocation of 6 main-planes and and three fuselages for Wackett Trainers from the Newcastle Aero Club. They also carried out 240 hour services on Boomerang aircraft.
> 
> ...


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## stona (May 21, 2012)

Parsifal the RAAF system is broadly based on the British system. It obviously is more efficient to repair aircraft at relatively accessible Maintenance Units than to ship them back to the manufacturer or one of its sattelites. The pre-requisite for this is a proper supply of spare parts and other,basic,logistical support. 
The Germans failed miserably at this. 
This maybe partly due to political rather than military considerations. 
There was something in the Nazi pshyche that refused to acknowledge the possibility of a long drawn out campaign. I recall Speer complaining as late as 1944 about the unwillingness of the Nazi leadership to release raw materials to his armaments program which were "required" for the manufacture of women's cosmetics!
Cheers
Steve


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## parsifal (May 21, 2012)

I think it was more about the "quick war" philosophy as much as anything. But there are a couple of other considerations.... It needs to be conceded that for the eastern front, the Germans suffered chronic supply shortage that probably made it more efficient for them to ship damaged aircraft all the way back to their supply heads, or even back to germany, rather than ship the spares and the personnel out to the front. The other issue is that conditions on the eastern front were probably harder than anywhere, so readiness rates for a nation like Germany, whose repair teams had never known or been as exposed to harsh conditions as other nations quite likely underestimated those connditions.


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## Shortround6 (May 21, 2012)

In some nations there are "political' considerations. AS in a factory manager being asked how many aircraft, tanks or trucks 'his' factory produced that month. A number very closely looked at and failure to meet quota could mean demotion and/or transfer, perhaps to a "re-education camp"? A much more seldom asked question is "how many spare parts did you make this month?"

The US could screw up on occasion too. The US planners only allocated 20% spares for the Merlin powered P-40s in North Africa. The British broke down several hundred of their Merlin engines to provide spare parts.


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## tyrodtom (May 21, 2012)

Shortround6 said:


> In some nations there are "political' considerations. AS in a factory manager being asked how many aircraft, tanks or trucks 'his' factory produced that month. A number very closely looked at and failure to meet quota could mean demotion and/or transfer, perhaps to a "re-education camp"? A much more seldom asked question is "how many spare parts did you make this month?"
> 
> The US could screw up on occasion too. The US planners only allocated 20% spares for the Merlin powered P-40s in North Africa. The British broke down several hundred of their Merlin engines to provide spare parts.


I think the re-education camps or the gulag was the usual Soviet solution for poor performance. The German solution might be to fire you, which would make you eligible to be drafted, and off to the east front.


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## davebender (May 22, 2012)

*German military spending as a % of GDP.*
1.9 1933.
1.9 1934.
4.0 1935. Increase army to 36 divisions. After French refusal to disarm their large standing army.
5.8 1936. Spanish Civil War begins.
8.2 1937. Germany response to 14 billion franc French military expansion approved during September 1936.
18.4 1938.

I think a "no war" philosophy is more applicable to 1936 Germany. They had a détente with Britain during the time frame we are discussing and that makes a big difference diplomatically. Germany did not begin serious rearmament until 1938 when relations with Britain went south and France threated invasion by mobilizing 1 million troops along the border.


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## Shortround6 (May 22, 2012)

davebender said:


> Germany did not begin serious rearmament until 1938 when relations with Britain went south and France threated invasion by mobilizing 1 million troops along the border.



Was the French mobilization before or after Austria was annexed into the German Third Reich on 12 March 1938?

Was the French mobilization before or after German's annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland?

Or during that crisis? Like French called for mobilization on Sept 7. Of course this is after the Germans call up 750,000 troops For "maneuvers? on Aug 12. 

Sorry, but this portrayal of Germany in the mid to late 30s as a peace loving nation driven to war by it's neighbors isn't cutting it. 

Some of the German Citizens may have been peace loving but's leaders were not.


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## Edgar Brooks (May 22, 2012)

davebender said:


> * Germany did not begin serious rearmament until 1938 when relations with Britain went south and France threated invasion by mobilizing 1 million troops along the border.*


*
???????? Tirpitz laid down Oct 1936, launched April 1937;
Bismarck laid down July 1936,
Scheer planned for in 1931,
Hipper Blucher ordered 1934,
Graf Spee ordered 1932, launched 1934,
Scharnhorst Gneisenau laid down 1935, launched 1936,
Me 109 ordered 1934/5, 109B in 1936,
He111 ordered 1934,
Ju87 ordered 1934, first flew 1935.*


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## parsifal (May 22, 2012)

Its also completely untrue and as usual deliberately misleading to portray German rearmament as a response to French agreession or militarism. Hitlers various memorandums dating back to the earliest days of the regime, and even before that make it very clear what the intentions were. In regard to the motor vehicle industry it was in the first instance to be expanded and organzied for export sales and for domestic production, however changeover to military production standards was always planned. It finished up being botched, that much I will concede, mostly because of Hiterls corruption and intervention. Because of the failure of the full implementation of the Schell plan (a result of Hilters nepertism yet again), the detailed plans for changeover to military standards and types were never fulfilled, but these moves date all the way back to 1934 and was clearly aimed at waging an aggrressive war. Moreover, the quotes given for military spending are wrong, and further still dont take into account the massive spending being undertaken in what might be termed support industries.

Make no mistake. From the very beginning the Nazis prepred and planned for an aggressive war. This was conclusively shown and established at Nurenberg after the war, and the detail is ther for anyone to find. It most certainly was not because of the french or any other external power. The Germans went after their neighbours, not the other way round.

The claim that the Nazis had peaceful interntion at any time in their existence is laughable


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## DonL (May 22, 2012)

> ???????? Tirpitz laid down Oct 1936, launched April 1937;
> Bismarck laid down July 1936,
> Scheer planned for in 1931,
> Hipper Blucher ordered 1934,
> ...



I agree with you, but to be fair the three "Panzerschiffe" (Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee) were all planed and ordered from the Weimar Republic to replace the old Deutschland Klasse from 1904, this has very little to do with rearmament.

To my opinion all political parties of the Weimar Republic even the SPD wanted to eliminate the Versaille Treaty and an rearmament of the german military (Air Force, Navy, Army). So many of the above Weapon Systems we have also seen but in more little numbers, if germany were not lead by the Nazis but from democratic parties and the democratic parties had have success to eliminate the Versaille Treaty.

Also there would be always a tendency and the danger that Germany, even with democratic parties in the lead and France/Poland could get in a "revenge" war. German people hadn't forget the humiliation of the Versaille Treaty and the Ruhroccupation in the 1930's.

But and this is a *very big* but, the Nazis planed an agressive war from the beginning and here I totaly agree with parsifal!


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## parsifal (May 22, 2012)

Here are some extracts of Hitlers memorandum dated 19 August 1936. Parts of it had ben repeated in various earlier directives, but it all came together after the re-ccupation of the Rhineland

Part I 

"I therefore draw up the following programme for a final solution of our vital needs: I. Like the military and political rearmament and mobilization of our people, there must also be an economic one, and this must be effected in the same tempo, with the same determination, and, if need be, with the same ruthlessness as well. In future the interests of individual gentlemen can no longer be allowed to play any part in these matters. There is only one interest and that is the interest of the nation, and only one single view, which is that Germany must be brought politically and economically into a state of self-sufficiency. II. For this purpose, in every sphere where it is possible to satisfy our needs through German production, foreign exchange must be saved in order that it can be applied to those requirements which can under no circumstances be supplied except by imports. III. Accordingly, German fuel production must now be stepped up with the utmost speed and be brought to final completion within 18 months. This task must be attacked and carried out with the same determination as the waging of a war; for on its solution depends the conduct of the future war and not on the laying in of stocks of petroleum. IV. It is equally urgent that the mass production of synthetic rubber should be organized and secured. The contention that the processes are perhaps not yet fully determined and similar excuses must cease from now on. It is not a matter of discussing whether we want to wait any longer, for that would be losing time, and the hour of peril would take us all unaware. Above all it is not the task of State economic institutions to rack their brains over production methods. This has nothing to do with the Ministry of Economics. Either we possess today a private industry, in which case it is its task to rack its brains about production methods, or we believe that the determination of production methods is the task of the State, in which case we no longer need private industry.

The question of the cost of these raw materials is also quite irrelevant, since it is in any case better for us to produce in Germany dearer tyres which we can use, than for us to sell [sic – verkaufen] theoretically cheap tyres for which, however, the Ministry of Economics can allocate no foreign exchange and which, consequently, cannot be used produced for lack of raw materials and consequently cannot be used at all. If we are in any case compelled to build up a large-scale domestic economy on the lines of autarky – which we are – for lamenting and harping on our foreign exchange plight will in any case not solve the problem – then the price of raw materials individually considered no longer plays a decisive part. It is further necessary to increase German production of iron to the utmost. The objection that we are not in a position to produce from the German iron ore, with 26 per cent content, as cheap a pig-iron as from the 45 per cent Swedish ores, etc., is irrelevant because we are not in fact faced with the question of what would rather do but only of what we can do. The objection, moreover, that in that event all the German blast furnaces would have to be converted is equally irrelevant; and, what is more, this is no concern of the Ministry of Economics. It is for the Ministry of Economics simply to set the national economic tasks, and it is for private industry to carry them out. But should private industry believe that it is not able to do this, then the National Socialist State will succeed in carrying out this task on its own. In any case, for a thousand years Germany had no foreign iron ores. Even before the war, more German iron ores were being processed than during the period of our worst decline. Nevertheless, if we still have the possibility of importing cheap ores, well and good. But the future of the national economy and, above all, of the conduct of war, must not be dependent on this. It is further necessary to prohibit forthwith the distillation of alcohol from potatoes. Fuel must be obtained from the ground and not from potatoes. Instead, it is our duty to use any arable land that may become available, either for human or animal foodstuffs or for the cultivation of fibrous products. It is further necessary for us to make our supplies of industrial fats independent of imports as rapidly as possible and to meet them from our coal. This task has been solved chemically and is actually crying out to be done. The German economy will either grasp the new economic tasks or else it will prove itself quite incompetent to survive in this modern age when a Soviet State is setting up a gigantic plan. But in that case it will not be Germany who will go under, but, at most, a few industrialists. It is further necessary to increase Germany’s output of other ores, regardless of cost, and in particular to increase the production of light metals to the utmost in order to produce a substitute for certain other metals.

It is, finally, necessary for rearmament too to make use even now whenever possible of those materials which must and will replace high-grade metals in time of war. It is better to consider and solve these problems in time of peace than to wait for the next war, and only then, in the midst of a multitude of tasks, to try to undertake these economic researches and methodical testings too. In short: I consider it necessary that now, with iron determination, a 100 per cent self-sufficiency should be attained in all those spheres where it is feasible, and that not only should the national requirements in these most important raw materials be made independent of other countries but that we should also thus save the foreign exchange which in peacetime we require for our imports of foodstuffs. Here I would emphasize that in these tasks I see the only true economic mobilization and not in the throttling of armament industries in peacetime in order to save and stockpile raw materials for war. But I further consider it necessary to make an immediate investigation into the outstanding debts in foreign exchange owed to German business abroad. There is no doubt that the outstanding claims of German business are today quite enormous. Nor is there any doubt that behind this in some cases there lies concealed the contemptible desire to possess, whatever happens, certain reserves abroad which are thus withheld from the grasp of the domestic economy. I regard this as deliberate sabotage of our national self-assertion and of the defence of the Reich, and for this reason I consider it necessary for the Reichstag to pass the following two laws: 1) A law providing the death penalty for economic sabotage, and 2) A law making the whole of Jewry liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy, and thus upon the German people. Moreover, only the performance of these tasks in the form of a Several Years Plan for rendering our national economy independent of foreign countries will make it possible for the first time to demand sacrifices from the German people in the economic sphere and the sphere of foodstuffs, for in that case the people will have a right to demand of their leaders, whom they blindly acknowledge, that they tackle the problems in this sphere too with unprecedented and resolute action and do not merely discuss them, that they solve them and do not merely record them!

Nearly four precious years have now gone by. There is no doubt that by now we could have been completely independent of foreign countries in the sphere of fuel supplies, rubber supplies, and partly also iron ore supplies. Just as we are now producing 700,000 or 800,000 tons of petroleum, we could be producing 3 million tons. Just as we are today manufacturing a few thousand tons of rubber, we could already be producing 70,000 or 80,000 tons per annum. Just as we have stepped up the production of iron ore from 2½ million tons to 7 million tons, so we could process 20 or 25 million tons of German iron ore, and if necessary even 30 million. There has been time enough in four years to discover what we cannot do. It is now necessary to state what we can do".


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## Njaco (May 22, 2012)

Edgar Brooks said:


> ???????? Tirpitz laid down Oct 1936, launched April 1937;
> Bismarck laid down July 1936,
> Scheer planned for in 1931,
> Hipper Blucher ordered 1934,
> ...




You forgot when "Mein Kampf" was published.


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## parsifal (May 22, 2012)

DonL said:


> I agree with you, but to be fair the three "Panzerschiffe" (Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee) were all planed and ordered from the Weimar Republic to replace the old Deutschland Klasse from 1904, this has very little to do with rearmament.
> 
> To my opinion all political parties of the Weimar Republic even the SPD wanted to eliminate the Versaille Treaty and an rearmament of the german military (Air Force, Navy, Army). So many of the above Weapon Systems we have also seen but in more little numbers, if germany were not lead by the Nazis but from democratic parties and the democratic parties had have success to eliminate the Versaille Treaty.
> 
> ...



Completely agree. Von Seekt epitomises the feelings of the german establishment of this unfair and unequal treaty. It was one thing to free germany of the burden of the versaille treaty, but the nazis went a lot further than that. Versaille was an unsatisfactory treaty for all parties. For those with evil intent and wanting to dismember germany, it failed to deliver. For those wanting a reconcilaition, it was simply too nasty in its details to ever deliver on that. It was cynical in the extreme because it paraded as being based on Wilsons 14 points. In fact it was just a cynical parody of it.

Make no mistake, i am in the camp of Pershing. No surrender terms should have been offered to Ludendorf until unconditional surrender had been secured. Distasteful as it is, the germans never experienced warfare on their own soil in WWI. Perhaps (only perhaps) if they had, they ight not have been as quick to return to war 20 years later.


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## DonL (May 22, 2012)

> Make no mistake, i am in the camp of Pershing. No surrender terms should have been offered to Ludendorf until unconditional surrender had been secured.



Here we have no disagreement!
To be exact, to my opinion every big nation of WWI was guilty of WWI, because every *big* nation had it's very own interests and agenda, so not germany was alone guilty!
But the german empery and Willie (that included Ludendorf and the other military leaders) were at the end of their timeline!



> Distasteful as it is, the germans never experienced warfare on their own soil in WWI. Perhaps (only perhaps) if they had, they ight not have been as quick to return to war 20 years later.



I don't know, many to all familys had dead sons and at the end of the war the foot shortage was dangerous and many or most german people suffering hunger. So it was no warfare but I think enough harm for the german people.

To me as you stated the Versaille Treaty was the real issue.

Mr. Joschka Fischer (ex foreign secretary of germany) had said some very wise sentence: "Germany is too big/powerfull for Europe (economy, military) but too little/weak to be a global power.


I think if the allieds have tried to bind germany (Weimar Republic) in an european context as equal member with equal interests (mostly trade and also military security) many harm could have been denied!

To me Mr. Clemenceau was one of the people who didn't understand, that you can't humiliatie to this extend, the most powerfull nation of Europe from economy- and military- options and direct neighbour of his own country without major consequences, for a long time period.
His thinking was mostly driven from revenge and hate and a totaly wrong imagination of security for France.
From my knowledge he was the most driven person to get revenge on germany and get the Versaille Traty as it was, without concessions for germany. 
I think Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George have to be stronger against Mr. Clemenceau and Mr. Wilson had to my opinion the right vision but was not powerfull enough against all the other countrys (most of them) which were only driven by their very own interests.


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## Tante Ju (May 23, 2012)

Edgar Brooks said:


> ???????? Tirpitz laid down Oct 1936, launched April 1937;
> Bismarck laid down July 1936,



Bismarck and Tirpitz were response to French Richeliue laid down 22 October 1935, Jean Bart, in December 1936.



> Scheer planned for in 1931,Graf Spee ordered 1932, launched 1934,



The Deutschland class were replacement for the old imperial pre-dreadnaughts. Six permitted by the Versailles treaty (10 000 tons, 28 cm guns). Deutschland were excellent ships, more like cruisers but still - just replacement, and hardly a 'rearmament'. The old ships were withdrawn from service as the new ones were built.



Edgar Brooks said:


> Scharnhorst Gneisenau laid down 1935, launched 1936,



Scharnhorst Gneisenau were response to French Dunkerque laid down 24 December 1932, Strasbourg in November 1934.



> Me 109 ordered 1934/5, 109B in 1936,
> He111 ordered 1934,
> Ju87 ordered 1934, first flew 1935.



And what's your point? The Germans procured modern planes like everybody else. Hurricane was ordered in 1933 for example, the Spitfire originated to a British specification of monoplane fighter 1931 etc. OP was saying there was no serious rearmament until 1938. Even during Spanish civil war Legio Kondor was flying completely obsolate planes like Ju 52 and Heinkel biplane fighters for most part... there were no 109 until 1938 in Spain, no Ju 87A either... and even then small number. Why is that if rearmarmament was so massive before that as you imply..?


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## DonL (May 23, 2012)

@ Tante Ju

If you want to rearmament your miltary after 15 years absent from some very important Weapon Systems and do this proper, then you need research and development time and much money.

What you are writing is simply true on the surface, but to my opinion *nazi* germany could not develop faster modern weapons.
So only why the circumstances at the first hint looked like the german rearmament was only a reaction to france rearmament, it isn't true.
Hitler and the Nazis were agressive from their first day at their goverment and they were working very hard from the start at 1933 for their goals and a big war. 



> Bismarck and Tirpitz were response to French Richeliue laid down 22 October 1935, Jean Bart, in December 1936.



Yes but Richeliue and Jean Bart were a response to the Littorios!

As I said above, many weapon systems of germany we have also seen if germany would be in the lead of democratic parties after a successful elimination of the Versaille Treaty but in more little numbers with a much much less agressive politic.


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## Tante Ju (May 23, 2012)

DonL said:


> @ Tante Ju
> 
> If you want to rearmament your miltary after 15 years absent from some very important Weapon Systems and do this proper, then you need reasearch and development time and much money.
> 
> ...



German rearmament policy existed independently of France of course. Immiidate after World War I during Weimar Republic, in that there was no difference in that when Hitler came to power, he just built on the foundation provided by the people before him. Hitler of course had an agressive foreign policy in mind, but its also impossible to ignore the French rearmament's effects on speeding up German rearmament.

France had a big standing army with lots of heavy weapons, Germany had none in the 1930s. If Germany wanted to break free of Versailles, it wasn't going to happen without an effective armed force. And all political parties wanted to do that, so re-armament was inevitable.

It is true about time. But these weapons systems were not founded by the Nazi, truth is that weapons systems and tactics were developed in secrecy by Weimar republic. Already in 1920 when Hitler and cronies were nowhere near the steering wheel Krupp was developing basis of Flak 88 in Sweden, Rheinmetall was doing MG research in Switzerland's Solothurn, the core of the Luftwaffe and Panzerwaffe were making training in USSR.. etc.



> Hitler and the Nazis were agressive from their first day at their goverment and they were working very hard from the start at 1933 for their goals and a big war.



I don't think Nazi were planning for a big war _in 1939_. Certainly later from everything I read, by say, 1946, when all fleet, air programme are completed. By that time other's war rearmament would be completed, too. Sadly the world was going towards a massive war in the 1930, not in just Germany, but the US was on a collision course with Japan, France with Italy, it was a matter of when the French and German war would broke out, and the USSR waiting to take the opportunity for a big world revolution.. with a bit of help of Red Army. It feels very much like before 1914.



> Yes but Richeliue and Jean Bart were a response to the Littorios!



Yes. My point was that there was a naval arms race between France and Germany in 1930s, which was fueled by French developments. Germany did not require a strong surface navy per-se, but it was threatened by France and all German weapon systems were tailored against the French threat. Of course French developments at the same time, at least partly were fueled by Mussolini's naval ambitions.



> As I said above, many weapon systems of germany we have also seen if germany would be in the lead of democratic parties after a successful elimination of the Versaille Treaty but in more little numbers with a much much less agressive politic.



I agree. Though there were hardly any democratic parties with chance to govern in 1933, so the idea is a bit theoretical. Realistically the choice was between the Nazi and the Commie, and to me a rearming Germany with Commie leaders joining the USSR does not sound to well either.. I presume they would probably take a similar route, given that Poland's anti germanism and anti communism would not change.. and a communist Germany allied to a communist USSR is not much more reassuring than what happened historically.. I don't think there would be much of chance for a modern europe this way.. at least historically the two most evil ideoligies were at each other's throat, more or less cancelling each other.. at a horrible cost. This is another story.


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## Shortround6 (May 23, 2012)

While the Deutschland class were replacements for the old imperial pre-dreadnaughts, their capabilities scared the crap out of the British. *NO DEFENSIVE* ship needed a 10,000 mile range. With their combination of guns, speed and thin armor it was rather obvious that they were intended to be commerce raiders. They were hardly replacements but signaled Germany's intention of waging a war on sea born trade if needed. 
It does take several years to design a battle ship. While the design offices are always busy designing something "in case" it is wanted/needed the ordering dates (if known) might be a better indicator than the laying down dates, which are sometimes limited by both finances and available building slips. 
Conventional "wisdom" has it that the French Dunkerque and Strasbourg were built to counter the Deutschlands. And the Scharnhorst Gneisenau were a response to the French pair. But did the French start the cycle? 

The Germans ordering the 109, the 111 and the Ju 87 was perfectly normal, what was not so normal was the hundreds of Arado and He 51 fighters built before the 109s and the hundreds of Dornier bombers and Junkers bombers built before the 111 was built in numbers.


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## DonL (May 23, 2012)

> While the Deutschland class were replacements for the old imperial pre-dreadnaughts, their capabilities scared the crap out of the British. NO DEFENSIVE ship needed a 10,000 mile range. With their combination of guns, speed and thin armor it was rather obvious that they were intended to be commerce raiders. They were hardly replacements but signaled Germany's intention of waging a war on sea born trade if needed.



One moment!

The *design parameters* for the replacemnt of the old imperial pre-dreadnaughts are listed at the Versaille Treaty. 
Germany wasn't allowed to built a replacement design higher then 10000ts deplacement, but was allowed the same caliber.

But *standard* deplacemnet was specified at the Washington Treaty where germany wasn't allowed but the allieds allowed germany to specify the 10000ts deplacemnt of the Versaille Treaty after the standard deplacement of the Washington Treaty, but germany wasn't bound to the heavy cruiser specification of the caliber (8 inch/ 20,3cm).

The range, heavy guns and the relative high speed of the Panzerschiffe was absolutely on purpose to create a ship (political) what was not specified with the Washington Treaty.

The intention was to built something dangerous with the given limits, to get back political as an equal member.

You realy can name the Deutschland class political ships, that was the main goal and intention of the Weimar Republic. They wanted back as equal partners and have create something realy serious, with what they can deal.


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## Siegfried (May 23, 2012)

It should be noted that the Anglo-German naval treaty of 1935, which Britain eagerly signed, allowed Germany a navy at 35% of British tonnage. The Germans got nowhere near it. In fact the treaty required the German navy to have a balanced fleet which compelled them to more battleships than they would have preferred. The Scharnhorst Gniesus 11 inch guns were well below the 13 inches the Kriegsmarine wanted and a gesture of Goodwill directly determined by Hitler as the British were traditionally paranoid about naval gun calibres.

Germany had legitimate naval needs.

Between her formation with the unification of 16 German states in 1871 to 1914 Germany was the most peacefull of European nations fighting absolutely no wars While Britain and France fought several. Prior to that German or Prussian wars looked more like civil wars.

There wasn't even a plan to invade Czechoslovakia; Hitler only did so after Eduard Benes cried wolf and faked a planned invasion. German officers escorted British officers around the border and the lie was exposed however Hitler was humiliated as the press made it seem he had been aggressive and forced to back down when there had been no invasion preparations or even plans at all. The event upset Hitler. Latter as a plebiscite for Suddeten German independence was in preparation Czech police entered the homes of German political activists and bashed them in a vain and silly attempt to intimidate them. (99% voted to leave in supervised elections). It was the former event which caused Hitler to plot the end the end of Czecholovakian chimera and the latter that firmed his decision. The million Mygars gladly went back to Hungary, the Suddetens to Germany, Tschen was grabbed by a Polish invasion while the slovaks declared independence after receiving guarantees from Hitler to protect them from Hungarian designs, this leaving the Czechs isolated. Hitler took his time then simplynintimidated a Czech surrender nevertheless he was somewhat generous; allowing the Czechs their parliament for a while And paying out the parliamentarians pensions.


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## Tante Ju (May 23, 2012)

Shortround6 said:


> While the Deutschland class were replacements for the old imperial pre-dreadnaughts, their capabilities scared the crap out of the British. *NO DEFENSIVE* ship needed a 10,000 mile range. With their combination of guns, speed and thin armor it was rather obvious that they were intended to be commerce raiders. They were hardly replacements but signaled Germany's intention of waging a war on sea born trade if needed.



Agree!



Shortround6 said:


> It does take several years to design a battle ship. While the design offices are always busy designing something "in case" it is wanted/needed the ordering dates (if known) might be a better indicator than the laying down dates, which are sometimes limited by both finances and available building slips.
> Conventional "wisdom" has it that the French Dunkerque and Strasbourg were built to counter the Deutschlands. And the Scharnhorst Gneisenau were a response to the French pair. But did the French start the cycle?.



It is more difficult to answer, as slowly we go back to Adam and Eve. Deutschlands were no doubt offensive in spririt. While may they have "scared the crap out of the British", they did too with the French. It did have something to do with the French occupying the Ruhr area in 1921, and in 1923. It turned everybody's attention to how vulnerable they were to French bullying. Design studies on sevaral types of replacments begun in 1923 (some of them slow, heavily armed and armored), but the design was finalized between 1926-28, with decision taken on the final variant (the light commerce raider won vs. what were essential coastal monitors).These ships were designed obviously with the intent of wreacking havoc on _FRENCH_ sea trade if the French start a war.

An interesting thing on wiki is that as everyone was scared of the specs, they offered Germany an entry into the the Washington treaty, granting her the same rights as others and the right to build full capital ships up to 125 000 tons, just not build these ships. It would effectively a negotiated settlement of the Versailles treaty's naval limiations. _Only the French refused, so it was no deal in the end._ So Germany built the ships, that fit under the Versailles treaty.

IMHO the French did start the cycle. Deutschlands may be reason to worry, but the French reaction was full-sized battleships (compared to the WW1 dreadnought everybody had at ca 25 000 tons) at 35 000 tons fully loaded. A bit of an overkill for counter for a 10-14 000 ton ship if you ask me, and it started a naval arms race.

Scharnorst were an answer to that, they started out orginal as slightly bigger Panzerschiffe, but after the Dunkerques were heard of all things have changed and had become full sized battleships. The design was finalized in around 1934, and all design considerations were revolving around the Dunkerque's specs (already building) and not to spook the British so much.



> The Germans ordering the 109, the 111 and the Ju 87 was perfectly normal, what was not so normal was the hundreds of Arado and He 51 fighters built before the 109s and the hundreds of Dornier bombers and Junkers bombers built before the 111 was built in numbers.



Something that shades the pictures is that Germany had no airforce to speak of, while France had hundreds of fighter and bomber already. And it wasn't on friendly terms with Germany. I would say for any other normal country with already an air force it would be extraordinarily to order large amount of aircraft, and would sure start an arms race. For a country that has nothing whatsoever, I believe its hardly the same case.



Siegfried said:


> It should be noted that the Anglo-German naval treaty of 1935, which Britain eagerly signed, allowed Germany a navy at 35% of British tonnage.



They did not sign it so eagerly, Ribbentrop went to them with the German demands (which were OTOH quite reasonable) and pretty much made ultimatum. It didn't threat the British, as they agreed in a fleet 1/3 the size, but it gave Germany a common ground with France, perhaps even advantage because German ships were more modern. The British were much more smart than the French, they accepted what was inevitable anyway, rather than provoking an arms race like the French did.


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## michaelmaltby (May 23, 2012)

".... They wanted back as equal partners and have create something realy serious, with what they can deal."

I find much of what you write on this to be truthful ... illustrating the effects of The Law of Unintended Consequences ... but the following statement of yours I seek clarification on, DonL:

"...They wanted _*back as equal partners*_ and have create something realy serious, with what they can deal..."

I assume the "they" are the leadership of the Weimar ... but "_*equal partners*_" .... with whom ... with the Allies ..?? with whom, DonL. 

I think what your words really say is that Germany wanted its self-respect, its belief in itself restored, am I right ...?

Well my friend, the Weimar's idea of regaining former status was to flaunt the military restrictions of Versailles wherever and whenever possible. Building and financing tank warfare and air training facilities in the USSR ... one example. Operating U-Boat construction-refurbishment programs [Krupp contracts] for the Dutch and Danes.

The Weimar wanted a successful, strong military, strong industrial based Germany. It just didn't happen fast enough .... for the Nazis.

MM


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## DonL (May 23, 2012)

@ michaelmaltby




> I assume the "they" are the leadership of the Weimar ... but "equal partners" .... with whom ... with the Allies ..??



*Yes*

The plan and the goal was that the Panzerschiffe were the bargaining chip or unfriendly spoken, press material to get concessions of the Versaille Treaty or to eliminate the complete Treaty.

Strictly spoken for the Weimarer Republic and it's politican, they were to be game for to not or not biult all the Deutschland Class ships to get other concessions out of the Versaille Treaty on military basis.

The Panzerschiffe with their specs was to get political press material to come back as equal partner to the allies, especially Great Britain and the USA but also France.


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## parsifal (May 23, 2012)

we are way off topic here, but anyways....

The question as to whether Germany had aggressive intent or not in its re-armament programs, in my opinion is not best answered by looking at the types or numbers of weapons they were building. That sort of debate, whilst interesting, doesnt get to the very heart of the issue. The questions needed to be asked are

1) What were the intentions of its leadership with regard to the armed forces at their disposal
2) Was the intent driven by foreign aggression/rearmament, or was that foreign rearmement driven by fear of the Nazi regime.

The intentions of the Nazis can be clearly identified. Start with what hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. Then progress to his written memos (which became Directives), and his intent was clear. Because Hitler was an inveterate liar, especially to foreigners there are instances when he would say something like "these are the final territorial demands I have" and then renege almost immediately. But there is no evidence of his lying to his own administration. H intended to go to general war 1943-4, but wanted limited war in 1939 to fulfil what he believed to be an opportunity. However his general prperations from the very beginning were aggressive and violent, and that was a state of affairs clearly discernible to his neighbours. because of the pacifism that existed in these nations, there was a resistance to taking the appropriate action to contain that aggression. The resulot was that the Nazis achieved a head start of several years over their opponent to prepre for war....prepre in terms of the theories of war, prepre in terms of the supporting economic infrastructure, in terms of the military industrial potential, in terms of training and psychological preprations of the nation. It gave Hitler time to quash all opposition to him internally, and complete his betrayal of the German people. 

Ive already posted Hitlers memorandum of 19August 1936 that very clearly indicates the aggressive intent of the regime. there are others very similar. Germany's intent to wage an aggressive war against its neighbours is very clear, moreover this was a finding well established after the war during Nuremberg. Germany was guilty of initiating and planning for an aggressive war. End of story.

Germanys neighbours eventually did react to the threat and begin their own re-armament. They re-armed for defensive measures, they re-armed for offensive measures. Thats not aggression, thats waking up, responding to a threat in a rational and predicitable way. To try and argue that these preparation somehow precitpitated the crisis is not only legally incorrect (there is no crime in preparing to meet a threat), it has a moral stench about it as well. The Anglo German Naval Treaty was written up as an act of appeasement not because the British were keen about it, but because it was yet another attemtpt to parley with hitler as a "reasonable" man. The fact that Hitler was not a "reasonable" man, and had no peaceful or rational aspects to his platform, seems to have been overlooked. Britain had some way to go before they realized that.


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## Shortround6 (May 23, 2012)

parsifal said:


> we are way off topic here, but anyways....
> 
> The question as to whether Germany had aggressive intent or not in its re-armament programs, in my opinion is not best answered by looking at the types or numbers of weapons they were building. That sort of debate, whilst interesting, doesnt get to the very heart of the issue. The questions needed to be asked are
> 
> ...



Two very good points. There can be little doubt that the Germans tried very hard to 'emphasis' if not exaggerate their military power. To "bluff" the "aggressors on their borders"
or to win concessions in diplomatic negotiations? There is, again, little doubt as to how they were used regardless of the original intention. 
Getting back to the weapons for a moment, 370 or so of the Dornier Do 11,13,23 series and large numbers of JU 52 used as bombers because of the _failure_ of the Dornier series of aircraft leads one to wonder just how many bombers "peaceful" Germany needed to defend itself in 1933-36?


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## parsifal (May 23, 2012)

In 1935, the historian HAL Fisher wrote that ‘a country which is determined to have a war can always have it.’ 

Hitler was determined to destroy the League, and it is doubtful if anything could have saved it. 

Hitler had three aims: 

1. To abolish the Treaty of Versailles 

The Germans hated it, especially: 

Tiny armed forces, 

The Saar was under League of Nations control,

The Rhineland was demilitarised, 

Anschluss (union) with Austria was forbidden, 

Germans were forced to live in Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland) and Poland, 

Danzig was under League of Nations control. 


The Treaty was a constant reminder to the Germans of their humiliation in World War I. Hitler did not accept that the German army had lost the war, and he was determined to make Germany great again. 

_The Versailles Treaty is worthless. 60 million German hearts and minds are on fire with anger and shame. They will cry out ‘We want war!’_ 

(Mein Kampf) 

2. To expand German territory 

The German population was growing. Hitler said that the German nation needed more Lebensraum (‘living space’) . He was determined to get Lebensraum by conquering land in Europe. An adjunct to this objective was that Hitler saw it germany's manifest destiny to dominate and subjugate the rest of Europe to serve Nazi purposes. From an early point he identified the defeat of the democracies as central to thjis objective 

Hitlers expansionist policies were connected with his belief that the "Aryan" race was genetically superior and destined to rule over others. He furter believed that it was the manifest destiny for germany to be the the leader of the Aryan races. Hitler believed he had the right (indeed the obligation) to invade neighbouring European nations and make non-aryans and non-Germans peoples (such as the Poles, French and Russians) Germany's slaves. Those who he saw as aryans, but resisting him (particulalry the democracies) like britain came in for particular attention. 

_It will be the duty of German foreign policy to get large spaces to feed and house the growing population of Germany. Destiny points us towards Russia_. 

(Hitler - Mein Kampf (1924)). 

3. To defeat Communism 

The Nazis were Fascists: the exact opposite of the Communists who ruled Russia. 

Hitler blamed the Communists for Germany's defeat in World War One, and he feared that the Communists were trying to take over Germany. 

He was determined to destroy Communism, and this meant a war with Russia. 

_The menace of Russia hangs over Germany. All our strength is needed to rescue our nation from this international snake. _

Mein Kampf (1924)

Many historians – and Hitler himself – claimed that he wanted to reverse the Treaty of Versailles:

_My foreign policy is to abolish the Treaty of Versailles. It is futile nonsense for the rest of the world to pretend today that I did not reveal this program until 1933 or 1935 or 1937. Instead of listening to foolish chatter, these gentlemen would have been wiser to read what I have written thousands of times_.

Hitler, talking on 15 March 1939


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## parsifal (May 23, 2012)

Part I

LEGAL REFERENCES AND LIST OF DOCUMENTS RELATING 
TO AGGRESSION AGAINST POLAND, DANZIG, 
ENGLAND AND FRANCE 

Charter of the International Military Tribunal (comonly referred to as the Nurnberg Trials) , Article 6 (a). Vol. I Pg. 5 

International Military Tribunal, Indictment Number 1, Sections IV (F) 4; V. Vol. I Pg. 26,29 

[Note: A single asterisk (*) before a document indicates that the document was received in evidence at the Nurnberg trial. A double asterisk (**) before a document number indicates that the document was referred to during the trial but was not formally received in evidence, for the reason given in parentheses following the description of the document. The USA series number, given in parentheses following the description of the document, is the official exhibit number assigned by the court.] 


*386-PS; Notes on a conference with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 5 November 1937, signed by Hitler's adjutant, Hossbach, and dated 10 November 1937. (USA 25) Vol. III, Pg. 295 

*388-PS; File of papers on Case Green (the plan for the attack on Czechoslovakia), kept by Schmundt,Hitler's adjutant, April-October 1938,. (USA 26) Vol. III, Pg. 305 

*699-PS; Letter from Funk to Hitler,25 August 1939, reporting on economic affairs. (GB 49) Vol. III, Pg. 509 

*789-PS; Speech of the Fuehrer at a conference, 23 November 1939, to which all Supreme Commanders were ordered. (USA 23) Vol. III, Pg.572 

*795-PS; Keitel's conference, 17 August 1939, concerning\ giving Polish uniforms to Heydrich. (GB 54) Vol. III, Pg.580 

*798-PS; Hitler's speech to Commanders-in-Chief, at Obersalzberg, 22 August 1939. (USA 29) Vol. III, Pg.581 

*1014-PS; Hitler's speech to Commanders-in-Chief, 22 August 1939. (USA 30) Vol. III, Pg.665 

*1639-A-PS; Mobilization book for the Civil Administration, 1939 Edition, issued over signature of Keitel. (USA 777) Vol. IV, Pg. 143 

*1780-PS; Excerpts from diary kept by General Jodl, January 1937 to August 1939. (USA 72) Vol. IV, Pg.360 

1796-PS; Notes to the War Diary from March 1939 to January 1940. Vol. IV, Pg.370 

1822-PS; Telegram from Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rome to Minister of Foreign Affairs in Berlin,25 August 1939, concerning conference with Mussolini and Ciano. Vol. IV, Pg.459 

1823-PS; Hitler reply to Mussolini, 27 August 1939, concerning attitude of Italy in conference of25 August 1939. Vol. IV, Pg.462 

1828-PS; Memorandum handed to German Foreign Office by Count Magistrate in Rome, 7 August 1939. Vol. IV, Pg.463 

*1831-PS; Correspondence between Hitler and Mussolini, September 1939. (GB 75) Vol. IV, Pg.463 

1832-PS; Telephone report of Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs in Rome, 27 August 1939. Vol. IV, Pg.468 

1889-PS; Account of conference of Fuehrer and Italian Ambassador Attolico, 31 August 1939. Vol. IV, Pg.528 

*2327-PS; Two top secret memoranda, 14 June 1939, concerning operation "Fall Weiss". (USA 39) Vol. IV, Pg.1035 

*2357-PS; Speech by Hitler before Reichstag, 20 February 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, Part VI, 1, pp. 50-52. (GB 30) Vol. IV, Pg.1099 

*2368-PS; Hitler's speech before Reichstag, 30 January 1937, published in Documents of German Politics, Part VI, 2, p. 42. (GB 26) Vol. IV, Pg.1102 

*2530-PS; Ribbentrop's speech in Warsaw, 25 January 1939, published in Voelkischer Beobachter, 1 February 1939. (GB 36) Vol. V, Pg. 267 

*2751-PS; Affidavit of Alfred Naujocks, 20 November 1945. (USA 482) Vol. V, Pg. 390 

2817-PS; Telegram from German Embassy, Rome, to Ribbentrop, concerning answer of Duce to Hitler's second letter, 27 August 1939. Vol. V, Pg.452 

*2818-PS; Secret additional protocol to the Friendship and Alliance Pact between Germany and Italy. (GB 292) Vol. V, Pg.453 

2834-PS; Letter from Mussolini to Fuehrer, 25 August 1939. Vol. V, Pg.502 

*2835-PS; German Foreign Office memorandum on conversation between Ribbentrop and the Duce, 10 March 1940. (GB 291) Vol. V, Pg.502 

*2846-PS; Affidavit of Edwin Lahousen, 13 November 1945 Vol. V, Pg. 507 

*2897-PS; Telegram from German Ambassador in Tokyo, Ott, to Ribbentrop, 13 July 1941. (USA 156) Vol. V, Pg.566 

*3054-PS; "The Nazi Plan", script of a motion picture composed of captured German film. (USA 167) Vol. V, Pg.801 

*C-23; Unsigned documents found in official Navy files containing notes year by year from 1927 to 1940 on reconstruction of the German Navy, and dated 18 February 1938, 8 March 1938, September 1938. (USA 49) Vol. VI, Pg. 827 

*C-30; Air-Sea Forces Orders for Occupation Danzig, 27 July 1939. (GB 46) Vol. VI, Pg.831 

*C-120; Directives for Armed Forces 193940 for "Fall Weiss", operation against Poland. (GB 41) Vol. VI, Pg.916 

*C-126; Preliminary Time Table for "Fall Weiss" and directions for secret mobilization. (GB 45) Vol. VI, Pg.932 

*C-137; Keitel's appendix of 124 January 1938 to Hitler Order of October 21 1938. (GB 33) Vol. VI, Pg.949 

*C-142; Intention of the Army High Command and Orders, signed by Brauchitsch. (USA 538) Vol. VI, Pg.956 

*C-172; Order No. 1 for "Fall Weiss" signed by Doenitz. (GB 189) Vol. VI, Pg. 1002 

*C-175; OKW Directive for Unified Preparation for War 1937-1938, with covering letter from von Blomberg, 24 June 1937. (USA 69) Vol. VI, Pg. 1006 

*D-738; Memorandum on second conference between German Foreign Minister with Hungarian Prime and Foreign Minister on 1 May 1939. (GB 290) Vol. VII, Pg. 193 

*L-43; Air Force "Organizational Study 1950", 2 May 1938. (GB 29) (See Chart No. 10.) Vol. VII, Pg.788 

*L-79; .. Minutes of conference, 23 May 1939, "Indoctrination on the political situation and future aims". (USA 27) Vol. VII, Pg.847 

*L-172; "The Strategic Position at the Beginning of the 5th Year of War", a lecture delivered by Jodl on 7 November 1943 at Munich to Reich and Gauleiters. (USA 34) Vol. VIII, Pg. 920 

*R-100; Minutes of instructions given by Hitler to General von Brauchitsch on 25 March 1939. (USA 121) Vol. VIII, Pg.83


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## parsifal (May 23, 2012)

Par II

*TC-2; Hague Convention (1) for Pacific Settlement of International Disputes197. (GB 2) Vol. VIII, Pg.276 

*TC-3; Hague Convention (3) Relative to opening of Hostilities. (GB 2) Vol. VIII, Pg.279 

*TC-9; Versailles Treaty, Section XI, Article 100, Free City of Danzig. (GB 3) Vol. VIII, Pg. 290 

*TC-15; Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Poland at Locarno, 16 October 1925. (GB 16) Vol. VIII, Pg.331 

*TC-18; Declaration concerning wars of aggression; resolution of 3rd Committee of League of Nations, 24 September 1927. (GB 17) Vol. VIII, Pg.357 

*TC-19; Kellogg-Briand Pact at Paris. 1929 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part II, No. 9, pp. 97-101. (GB 180) Vol. VIII, Pg. 359 

*TC-21; German-Polish Declaration, 26 January 1934. (GB 24) Vol. VIII, Pg. 368 

*TC-28; German assurance to Czechoslovakia, 26 September 1938, from Documents of German Politics, Part VI, pp. 34346. (GB 22) Vol. VIII, Pg. 378 

*TC-29; German assurances to Poland, 26 September 1938, from Documents of German Politics, Part VI, p. 336. (GB 32) Vol. VIII, Pg. 378 

*TC-53-A; Marginal note to decree of final incorporation of Memel with German Reich, 23 March 1939, from Documents of German Polities, Part VII, p. 552. (GB 4) Vol. VIII, Pg. 408 

*TC-54; Proclamation of the Fuehrer to German Armed Forces, 1 September 1939. (GB 73) Vol. VIII, Pg. 408 

*TC-70; Hitler's Reichstag speech concerning agreement with Poland, 30 January 1934, from Voelkischer Beobachter, 31 January 1934. (GB 25) Vol. VIII, Pg. 433 

*TC-71; Reports of British Consul in Danzig, July 1939. (GB 47) Vol. VIII, Pg. Vol. VIII, Pg. 434 

*TC-72 No. 13; British Blue Book. Hitler's Reichstag speech, 28 April 1939. (GB 43) Vol. VIII, Pg. 438 

*TC-72 No. 14; British Blue Book. German memorandum renouncing 1934 agreement, 28 April 1939. (GB 42) Vol. VIII, Pg. 441 

*TC-72 No. 16; British Blue Book. Polish Government's reply, 5 May 1939, to 28 April memo. (GB 44) Vol. VIII, Pg. 445 

*TC-72 No. 17; British Blue Book. British Prime Minister's statement in House of Commons, 31 March 1939. (GB 39) Vol. VIII, Pg. 450 

*TC-72 No. 18; British Blue Book. Anglo-Polish communique issued 6 April 1939. (GB 40) Vol. VIII, Pg. 450 

*TC-72 No. 53; British Blue Book. Report of British Ambassador, Warsaw, 26 August 1939. (GB 51) Vol. VIII, Pg. 451 

*TC-72 No. 54; British Blue Book. Report of British Ambassador, Warsaw, 26 August 1939. (GB 52) Vol. VIII, Pg. 452 

*TC-72 No. 55; British Blue Book. Report of British Ambassador, Warsaw, 27 August 1939. (GB 53) Vol. VIII, Pg. 452 

*TC-72 No. 56; British Blue Book. British Prime Minister's letter to Hitler, 22 August 1939. (GB 55) Vol. VIII, Pg. 453 

*TC-72 No. 60; British Blue Book. Hitler's reply to British Prime Minister, 23 August 1939. (GB 56) Vol. VIII, Pg. 455 

*TC-72 No. 62; British Blue Book. Danzig Senate Decree appointing Forster Head of State, 23 August 1939. (GB 50) Vol. VIII, Pg. 457 

*TC-72; No. 68; British Blue Book. Hitler's verbal communique to Sir Neville Henderson,25 August 1939. (GB 65) Vol. VIII, Pg. 458 

*TC-72 No. 74; British Blue Book. British Government's reply, 28 August 1939, to Hitler's message of 25 August. (GB 66) Vol. VIII, Pg. 460 

*TC-72 No. 75; British Blue Book. Hitler and Sir N. Henderson conversation, 28 August 1939. (GB 67) Vol. VIII, Pg. 463 

*TC-72 No. 78; British Blue Book. Hitler's reply to British Government, 29 August 1939. (GB 68) Vol. VIII, Pg. 466 

*TC-72 No. 79; British Blue Book. Hitler and Sir N. Henderson conversation, 29 August 1939. (GB 69) Vol. VIII, Pg. 469 

*TC-72 No. 89; British Blue Book. British Government's reply, 30 August 1939, to German communication of 29 August. (GB 70) Vol. VIII, Pg. 470 

*TC-72 No. 92; British Blue Book. Ribbentrop and Sir N. Henderson conversation, midnight 30 August 1939. (GB 71) Vol. VIII, Pg. 472 

*TC-72 No. 110; British Blue Book. British Government's ultimatum, 1 September 1939. (GB 74) Vol. VIII, Pg. 473 

TC-72 No. 113; British Blue Book. Copy German proposals handed to Sir N. Henderson 9:15 P.M., 31 August 1939. Vol. VIII, Pg. 474 

TC-72 No. 118; British Blue Book. British Government's final ultimatum, 3 September 1939. Vol. VIII, Pg. 474 

TC-72 No. 124; Description; British Blue Book. President Roosevelt's appeal to Hitler, 24 August 1939. (GB 59 Vol. VIII, Pg.475 

*TC-72 No. 126; British Blue Book. President Moscicki's reply to President Roosevelt,25 August 1939. (GB 60) Vol. VIII, Pg. 476 

*TC-72 No. 127; British Blue Book. President Roosevelt's second appeal to Hitler, 25 August 1939. (GB 61) Vol. VIII, Pg. 477 

*TC-72 No. 139; British Blue Book. The Pope's appeal, 24 August 1939. (GB 62) Vol. VIII, Pg. 477 

*TC-72 No. 141; British Blue Book. The Pope's appeal, 31 August 1939. (GB 63) Vol. VIII, Pg. 480 

*TC-73 No. 33; Polish White Book. German-Polish communique, 5 November 1937. (GB 27) Vol. VIII, Pg. 480 

*TC-73 No. 44; Polish White Book. Lipski, Ribbentrop luncheon, conversation, 24 October 1938. (GB 27-A) Vol. VIII, Pg.483 

*TC-73 No. 45; Polish White Book. Beck's instructions to Lipski, 31 October 1938. (GB 27-B) Vol. VIII, Pg. 484 

*TC-73 No. 48; Polish White Book. Beck and Hitler conversation, 5 January 1939. (GB 34) Vol. VIII, Pg.486 

*TC-73 No. 49; Polish White Book. Beck and Ribbentrop conversation, 6 January 1939. (GB 35) Vol. VIII, Pg.488 

*TC-73 No. 57; Polish White Book. Hitler's Reichstag speech, 30 January 1939. (GB 37) Vol. VIII, Pg.488 

*TC-73 No. 61; Polish White Book. Ribbentrop and Lipski conversation, 21 March 1939. (GB 38) Vol. VIII, Pg.489 

*TC-73 No. 91; Polish White Book. Anglo-Polish Agreement,25 August 1939. (GB 57) Vol. VIII, Pg.492 

*TC-73 No. 112; Polish White Book. Ribbentrop-Liski conversation, 31 August 1939. (GB 72) Vol. VIII, Pg.494 

*TC-73 No. 113; Polish White Book. German broadcast 9 P.M. 31 August 1939. Vol. VIII, Pg.495 

*TC-75; Memo for the Fuehrer, 2 January 1938, concerning Anglo-German relations. (GB 28) Vol. VIII, Pg.513 

*TC-77; Note for Reichsminister, 26 August 1938. (GB 31) Vol. VIII, Pg.515 

*TC-78; Memorandum of conversation between Hitler, Ribbentrop and Ciano, 12 August 1939. (GB 48) Vol. VIII, Pg.529 

*TC-78; French Prime Minister's letter to Hitler, 26 August 1939. (GB 58) Vol. VIII, Pg.531 

*TC-79; Hitler's reply to French Prime Minister, 27 August 1939. (GB 58) Vol. VIII, Pg.531 

*TC-90; Goering's interrogation, 29 August 1945. (GB 64) Vol. VIII, Pg. 534 

*TC-91; Ribbentrop's interrogation, 29 August 1945. (GB 276) Vol. VIII, Pg. 535 

Affidavit A; Affidavit of Erwin Lahousen, 21 January 1946, substantially the same as his testimony on direct examination before the International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg 21 January 1945 and 11 February 1945. Vol. VIII, Pg.587 

*Chart No. 10; 1938 Proposals for Luftwaffe Expansion 1938-1950. (L-43; GB 29) Vol. VIII, Pg.779 

**Chart No. 12; German Aggression. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.) Vol. VIII, Pg. 781 

**Chart No. 13; Violations of Treaties, Agreements and Assurances. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal). Vol. VIII, Pg. 782


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

Nazi Conspiracy Aggression
Volume I Chapter IX 
The Execution of the Plan to Invade Czechoslovakia<(Part 29 of 29) 

LEGAL REFERENCES AND LIST OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE EXECUTION OF THE PLAN TO INVADE CZECHOSLOVAKIA 

Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Article 6 (a). 

International Military Tribunal, Indictment Number 1, Sections IV (F) 3 (a, c); V. 

[Note: A single asterisk (*) before a document indicates that the document was received in evidence at the Nurnberg trial. A double asterisk (**) before a document number indicates that the document was referred to during the trial but was not formally received in evidence, for the reason given in parentheses following the description of the document. The USA series number, given in parentheses following the description of the document, is the official exhibit number assigned by the court.] 

*375-PS Case Green with wider implications, report of Intelligence Division, Luftwaffe General Staff,25 August 1938. (USA 84). Vol. III Pg. 280 

*386-PS; Notes on a conference with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 6 November 1937, signed by Hitler's adjutant, Hossbach, and dated 10 November 1937. (USA 25) Vol. III Pg.295 

*388-PS; File of papers on Case Green (the plan for the attack on Czechoslovakia), kept by Schmundt, Hitlers adjutant, April-October 1938. (USA 26) Vol. III Pg.305 

*789-PS; Speech of the Fuehrer at a conference, 23 November 1939, to which all Supreme Commanders were ordered. (USA 23) Vol. III Pg.572 

*998-PS; "German Crimes Against Czechoslovakia". Excerpts from Czechoslovak Official Report for the prosecution and trial of the German Major War Criminals by the International Military Tribunal established according to Agreement of four Great Powers of 8 August 1945. (USA 91) Vol. III Pg.656 

*1301-PS; File relating to financing of armament including minutes of conference with Goering at the Air Ministry, 14 October 1938, concerning acceleration of rearmament. (USA 123) 868 

*1439-PS; Treaty of Protection between Slovakia and the Reich, signed in Vienna 18 March and in Berlin 23 March 1939. 1939 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 606. (GB 135) Vol. IV Pg.18 

*1536-PS; Report of Luftwaffe General Staff, Intelligence Division, 12 August 1938, on reconnaissance by German Air Attache at Prague for airfield in Czechoslovakia, enclosing report of the Air Attache, Major Moericke, 4 August 1938. (USA 83) Vol. IV Pg.96 

*1780-PS; Excerpts from diary kept by General Jodl, January 1937 to August 1939. (USA 72) Vol. IV Pg.360 

*1874-PS; Notes on conference between Goering, Mussolini and Ciano, 15 April 1939. (USA 125) Vol. IV Pg.518 

2358-PS; Speech by Hitler in Sportspalast, Berlin, 26 September 1938, from Voelkischer Beobachter,. Munich Edition, 27 September 1938. Vol. IV Pg.1100 

*2360-PS; Speech by Hitler before Reichstag, 30 January 1939, from Voelkischer Beobachter, Munich Edition, 31 January 1939. (GB 134) Vol. IV Pg.1101 

*2786-PS Letter from Ribbentrop to Keitel, 4 March 1938. (USA 81) Vol. V Pg. 419 

*2788-PS; Notes of conference in the Foreign Office between Ribbentrop, Konrad Henlein, K. H. E rank and others on program for Sudeten agitation, 29 March 1938. (USA 95) Vol. V Pg.422 

*2789-PS; Letter from Konrad Henlein to Ribbentrop, 17 March 1938. (USA 94) Vol. V Pg.424 

*2790-PS; German Foreign Office minutes of conference between Hitler, Ribbentrop, Tuca and Karmasin, 12 February 1939. (USA 110) Vol. V Pg.425 

*2791-PS; German Foreign Office minutes of conversation between Ribbentrop and Attolico, the Italian Ambassador, 23 August 1938. (USA 86) Vol. V Pg.426 

*2792-PS; German Foreign Office minutes of conversations between Ribbentrop and Attolico, 27 August 1938 and 2 September 1938. (USA 87) Vol. V Pg.426 

*2793-PS; Confidential protocol concerning economic and financial collaboration between the German Reich and State of Slovakia. (USA 120) Vol. V Pg.427 

*2794; German Foreign Office memorandum on payments to Karmasin, 29 November 1939. (USA 108) Vol. V Pg.429 

*2795-PS; Handwritten postscript by Ribbentrop to German Foreign Office notes of Ribbentrop- Chvalkovsky conversation, 21 January 1939. (USA 106) Vol. V Pg.430 

*2796-PS; German Foreign Office notes on conversations between Hitler, Ribbentrop and von Weizsacker and the Hungarian Ministers Imredy and von Kanya, 23 August 1938. (USA 88) Vol. V Pg.430 

*2797-PS; German Foreign Office memorandum of conversation between Ribbentrop and von Kanya,25 August 1938. (USA 89) Vol. V Pg.432 

*2798-PS; German Foreign Office minutes of the meeting between Hitler and President Hacha of Czechoslovakia, 15 March 1939. (USA 118; GB 5) Vol. V Pg.433 

*2800-PS; German Foreign Office notes of a conversation with Attolico, the Italian Ambassador, 18 July 1938. (USA 85) Vol. V Pg.442 

*2801-PS; Minutes of conversation between Goering and Slovak Minister Durkansky (probably late fall or early winter 1938-39). (USA 109) Vol. V Pg.442 

*2802-PS; German Foreign Office notes of conference on 13 March 1939 between Hitler and Monsignor Tiso, Prime Minister of Slovakia. (USA 117) Vol. V Pg.442 

*2815-PS; Telegram from Ribbentrop to the German Minister in Prague, 13 March 1939. (USA 116) Vol. V Pg.443 

*2816-PS; Letter from Horthy, the Hungarian Regent, to Hitler, dated Budapest, 13 March 1939. (USA 115) Vol. V Pg.451 

*2826-PS; The SS on 15 March 1939, an article by SS-Gruppenfuehrer K. H. Frank, in magazine Bohemia and Moravia, May 1941, p. 179., (USA 111) Vol. V Pg.472 

*2853-PS; Telegram from German Foreign Office to German Legation in Prague, 24 September 1938. (USA 100) Vol. V Pg.521 

*2854-PS; Telegram from German Foreign Office to German Legation in Prague, 17 September 1938. (USA 99) Vol. V Pg.521 

*2855-PS; Telegram from German Foreign Office to German Legation in Prague, 16 September 1938. (USA 98) Vol. V Pg.522 

*2856-PS; Telegram from German Foreign Office to German Legation in Prague, 24 September 1938. (USA 101) Vol. V Pg.522 

*2858; Telegram from German Foreign Office to German Legation in Prague, 19 September 1938. (USA 97) Vol. V Pg.523 

*2859-PS; Telegram from German Legation, Prague, to Consulate at Bratislava, 22 November 1938. (USA 107) Vol. V Pg.523 

*2860-PS; Document No. 10 in the British Blue Book. Speech by Lord Halifax in the House of Lords, 20 March 1939. (USA 119) Vol. V Pg.523 

*2861-PS; Document No. 12 in the British Blue Book. Dispatch from Sir Nevile Henderson to British Foreign Office, 28 May 1939, relating details of conversation with Goering. (USA 119) Vol. V Pg.524 

*2862-PS; Document No. 126 in Peace and War. Statement by Acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles, 17 March 1939. (USA 122) Vol. V Pg.525 

**2863-PS; Lecture by Konrad Henlein, delivered in Vienna, 4 March 1941. Quoted in "Four Fighting Years", Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, London, 1943, pp. 29-30. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) (USA 92) Vol. V Pg.525


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

Part II

2906-PS; German Foreign Office minutes of meeting between Hitler and Chvalkovsky, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, 21 January 1939. Vol. V Pg.571 

*2943-PS; Documents Numbers 65, 57, 62, 65, 66, 73, 77 and 79 in the French Yellow Book. excerpts from eight dispatches from M. Coulondre, the French Ambassador in Berlin, to the French Foreign Office, between 13 March 1939 and 18 March 1939. (USA 114) Vol. V Pg.608 

**3029-PS; Affidavit of Alfred Naujocks, 20 November 1945, on activities of the SD along the Czechoslovak border during September 1938. (USA 103) (Objection to admission in evidence upheld.) Vol. V Pg.738 

3030-PS; Affidavit of Alfred Naujocks, 20 November 1945, on relationship between the SD and pro-Nazi Slovak groups in March 1939. Vol. V Pg.739 

**3036-PS; Affidavit of Gottlob Berger on the composition and activity of the Henlein Free Corps in September 1938. (Objection to admission in evidence upheld.) (USA 102) Vol. V Pg.742 

3037-PS; Affidavit of Fritz Wiedemann, 121 January 1945, on the meeting between Hitler and his principal advisers in Reichs Chancellery on 28 May 1938. Vol. V Pg.743 

*3054-PS; "The Nazi Plan", script of a motion picture composed of captured German film. (USA 167) Vol. V Pg.801 

*3059-PS; German Foreign Office memorandum, 19 August 1938, on payments to Henlein's Sudeten German Party between 1935 and 1938. (USA 96) Vol. V Pg.855 

*3060-PS; Dispatch from German Minister in Prague to Foreign Office in Berlin about policy arrangements with Henlein, 16 March 1938. (USA 98) Vol. V Pg.856 

*3061-PS; Supplement No. 2 to the Official Czechoslovak Report entitled "German Crimes Against Czechoslovakia" (document 998-PS). (USA 126) Vol. V Pg.857 

3571-PS; Report of US Military Attache, Berlin, including an article in magazine Wehrmacht, 29 March 1939, describing occupation of Bohemia and Moravia by German troops. Vol. VI Pg.264 

3618-PS; Report of US Military Attache in Berlin, 20 March 1939, Concerning occupation of Czechoslovakia. Vol. VI Pg.389 

3619-PS; Report of US Military Attache in Berlin, 19 April 1939, concerning occupation of Czechoslovakia. Vol. VI Pg.398 

3638-PS; Memorandum of Ribbentrop, 1 October 1938, concerning his conversation with Ciano about the Polish demands made on Czechoslovakia. Vol. VI Pg.400 

*3842-PS; Statement of Fritz Mundhenke, 7 March 1946, concerning the activities of Kaltenbrunner and SS in preparation for occupation of Czechoslovakia. (USA 805) Vol. VI Pg.778 

*C-2; Examples of violations of International Law and proposed counter propaganda, issued by OKW, 1 October 1938. (USA 90) Vol. VI Pg.799 

*C-136; OKW Order on preparations for war, October 21 1938, signed by Hitler and initialled by Keitel. (USA 104) Vol. VI Pg.947 

*C-138; Supplement of 17 December 1938, signed by Keitel, to 21 October Order of the OKW. (USA 105) Vol. VI Pg.950 

*C-175; OKW Directive for Unified Preparation for War 1937-1938, with covering letter from von Blomberg, 24 June 1937. (USA 69) Vol. VI Pg.1006 

*D-571; Official report of British Minister in Prague to Viscount Halifax, 21 March 1939. (USA 112) Vol. VII Pg.88 

*D-572; Dispatch from Mr. Pares, British Consul in Bratislava to Mr. Newton, 20 March 1939, describing German support of Slovak separatists. (USA 113) Vol. VII Pg.90 

*L-79; Minutes of conference, 23 May 1939, "Indoctrination on the political situation and future aims". (USA 27) Vol. VII Pg.847 

*L-179; "The Strategic Position at the Beginning of the 5th Year of War", a lecture delivered by Jodl on 7 November 1943 at Munich to Reich and Gauleiters. (USA 34) Vol. VII Pg.920 

*R-100; Minutes of instructions given by Hitler to General von Brauchitsch on 25 March 1939. (USA 121) Vol. VIII Pg.83 

*R-133; Notes on conference with Goering in Westerland on 25 July 1939, signed Mueller, dated Berlin 27 July 1939. (USA 124) Vol. VIII Pg.202 

*R-150; Extracts from Luftwaffe Group Command Three Study on Instruction for Deployment and Combat "Case Red", 2 June 1938. (USA 82) Vol. VIII Pg.268 

*TC-14; Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Czechoslovakia, signed at Locarno, 10 October 1925. (GB 14) Vol. VIII Pg.325 

*TC-23; Agreement between Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, 29 September 1938. (GB 23) Vol. VIII Pg.370 [Page 592] 

*TC-27; German assurances to Czechoslovakia, 11 March 1938 and 12 March 1938, as reported by M. Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Minister to London to Viscount Halifax. (GB 21) Vol. VIII Pg.377 

*TC-49; Agreement with Czechoslovakia, 15 March 1939, signed by Hitler, von Ribbentrop, Hacha and Chvalkovsky, from Documents of German Politics, Part VII, pp. 498499. (GB 6) Vol. VIII Pg.402 

*TC-50; Proclamation of the Fuehrer to the German people and Order of the Fuehrer to the Wehrmacht, 15 March 1939, from Documents of German Politics, Part VII, pp. 499-501. (GB 7) Vol. VIII Pg.402 

*TC-51; Decree establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, 16 March 1939. (GB 8) Vol. VIII Pg.404 

*TC-52; Formal British protest against the annexation of Czechoslovakia in violation of the Munich Agreement, 17 March 1939. (GB 9) Vol. VIII Pg.407 

*TC-53; Formal French protest against the annexation of Bohemia and Moravia in violation of the Munich Agreement, 17 March 1939. (GB 10) Vol. VIII Pg.407 

Affidavit H; Affidavit of Franz Halder, 22 November 1945. Vol. VIII Pg.643 

**Chart No. 11; Aggressive Action 1938-39. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.). Vol. VIII Pg.780 

**Chart No. 12; German Aggression. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.) Vol. VIII Pg.781 

**Chart No. 13.; Violations of Treaties, Agreements and Assurances. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.) Vol. VIII Pg. 782


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

Nazi Conspiracy Aggression
Volume I Chapter IX
Aggression Against Austria
(Part 19 of 19) 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LEGAL REFERENCES AND LIST OF DOCUMENTS 
RELATING TO AGGRESSION AGAINST AUSTRIA 

Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Article 6 (a). Vol. I Pg. 5 

International Military Tribunal, Indictment Number 1, Sections IV (F) 3 (a, b); V. Vol. I Pg. 23-24,29 

[Note: A single asterisk (*) before a document indicates that the document was received in evidence at the Nurnberg trial. A double asterisk (**) before a document number indicates that the document was referred to during the trial but was not formally received in evidence, for the reason given in parentheses following the description of the document. The USA series number, given in parentheses following the description of the document, is the official exhibit number assigned by the court.] 

*386-PS; Notes on a conference with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 5 November 1937, signed by Hitler's adjutant, Hossbach, and dated 10 November 1937. (USA 25) Vol. III Pg. 295 

*812-PS; Letter from Rainer to Seyss- Inquart, 22 August 1939 and report from Gauleiter Rainer to Reichskommissar Gauleiter Buerckel, 6 July 1939 on events in the NSDAP of Austria from 1933 to 11 March 1938. (USA 61) Vol. III Pg.586 

**1060-PS; Order pursuant to law concerning Reunion of Austria with German Reich, 16 March 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 249. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. III Pg.717 

*1544-PS; Von Papen's notes, 26 February 1938, on his parting visit with Chancellor Schuschnigg. (USA 71) Vol. IV Pg.103 

**1659-PS; Second Order concerning Plebiscite and Election for the Greater German Reichstag of 24 March 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 303. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. IV Pg.170 

1660-PS; Decree for registration for active service in Austria in the year 1938 of 16 June 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 631. Vol. IV Pg.170 

*1760-PS; Affidavit of George S. Messersmith, 28 August 1945. (USA 57) Vol. IV Pg.305

*1775-PS; Propositions to Hitler by OKW, 14 February 1938. (USA 73) Vol. IV Pg.357 

*1780-PS; Excerpts from diary kept by General Jodl, January 1937 to August 1939. (USA 72) Vol. IV Pg.360 

*2219-PS; Excerpt from letter from Seyss-Inquart to Goering, 14 July 1939. (USA 62) Vol. IV Pg.854 

*2246-PS; Report of von Papen to Hitler, 1 September 1936, concerning Danube situation. (USA 67) Vol. IV Pg.930 

*2247-PS; Letter from von Papen to Hitler, 17 May 1935, concerning intention of Austrian government to arm. (USA 64) Vol. IV Pg.930 

*2248-PS; Report of von Papen to Hitler, 27 July 1935, concerning National Socialism in Austria. (USA 63) Vol. IV Pg.932 

*2307-PS; Law concerning reunion of Austria with German Reich, 13 March 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 237. (GB 133) Vol. IV Pg.997 

**2310-PS; First Decree of Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor concerning Introduction of German Reich Law into Austria, 15 March 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 247. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. IV Pg.1004 

**2311-PS; Decree of Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor concerning Administration of the Oath to Officials of Province of Austria, 15 March 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 245. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. IV Pg.1004 

**2313-PS; Order for Transfer of Austrian National Bank to Reichsbank, 17 March 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 254. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. IV Pg.1005 

**2367-PS; Hitler's speech of 1 May 1936, published in Voelkischer Beobachter, Southern German edition, 2 May 1936-3 May 1936. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. IV Pg.1006 

*2385-PS; Affidavit of George S. Messersmith, 30 August 1945. (USA 68) Vol. V Pg. 23 

*2461-PS; Official German communique of meeting of Hitler and Schuschnigg, 12 February 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1939, Vol. VI, Part 1. (GB 132) Vol. V Pg.206 

*2463-PS; Telegram from Seyss-Inquart to Hitler, 11 March 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1939, Vol. VI, Part 1. (USA 703) Vol. V Pg.207 

**2264-PS; Official Austrian communique of the reorganization of the Austrian Cabinet and general political amnesty, 16 February 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1939, Vol. VI, Part 1. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.208 

**2465-PS; Announcement of appointment of Seyss-Inquart as Federal Chancellor, 11 March 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1938, Vol. VI, Part 1. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.209 

**2466-PS; Official communique of resignation of Austrian President Miklas, 13 March 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1939, Vol. VI, Part 1. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.209 

2467-PS; Hitler's telegram to Mussolini from Linz, 13 March 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1939, Vol. VI, Part 1. Vol. V Pg.210 

**2469-PS; Official German and Austrian communique concerning equal rights of Austrian National Socialists in Austria, 18 February 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1939, Vol. VI, Part 1. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.210 

**2484-PS; Official German communique of visit of Austrian Minister Seyss-Inquart to Hitler, Berlin, 17 February 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1939, Vol. VI, Part 1. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.234 

**2485-PS; Address by Federal Chancellor Seyss-Inquart from Balcony of City Hall at Linz, 12 March 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, Vol. VI, Part 1, p. 144-145. (Referred to but not introduced in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.234 

2510-PS; Hitler letter to Mussolini, 11 March 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, Vol. VI, Part 1, pp. 135-7, No. 24. Vol. V Pg.244 

*2799-PS; Letter from Hitler to von Papen, 26 July 1934, published in Documents of German Politics, Vol. II, p. 83, No. 38. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.441 

2831-PS; Letter from Office of Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of German Government to Reich Chancellery, inclosing report on Political situation in Austria, 14 January 1937. Vol. V Pg.498 

*2832-PS; Entry for 26 July 1934 from Ambassador Dodd's diary. (USA 58) Vol. V Pg.500

2909-PS; Affidavit of August Eingruber, 9 November 1945. Vol. V Pg.578 

**2935-PS; Order concerning establishment of Reich Propaganda Office in Vienna, 31 March 1938. 1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, p. 350. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.604 

**2936-PS; Instruction of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor, concerning the Austrian Federal Army, 13 March 1938, published in Documents of German Politics, 1938, Vol. VI, Part 1, p. 150. (Referred to but not offered in evidence.) Vol. V Pg.604 

*2949-PS; Transcripts of telephone calls from Air Ministry, 11 March 1938-14 March 1938. (USA 76) Vol. V Pg.628 

*2968-PS; Memorandum from US Army officer concerning plaque erected in Austrian Chancellery in memoriam to killers of Dollfuss. (USA 60) Vol. V Pg.677 

2985-PS; Telephone message of Mr. Hadow British Legation, Vienna, to Sir John Simon, 26 July 1934. Vol. V Pg.687


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

Part II

*2994-PS; Affidavit of Kurt von Schuschnigg, former Chancellor of Austria, concerning Austrian-German Treaty of 11 July 1936. (USA 66) (Objection to admission in evidence upheld) Vol. V Pg. 703 

2995-PS; Affidavit of Kurt von Schuschnigg, former Chancellor of Austria, concerning his visit to Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938. Vol. V Pg.709 

2996-PS; Affidavit of Kurt von Schuschnigg, former Chancellor of Austria, concerning events of 11 March 1938. Vol. V Pg.713 

*3045-PS; Letter, 12 March 1938, to British Embassy enclosing letter from Henderson to Halifax, 11 March 1938. (USA 127) Vol. V Pg.765 

*3054-PS; "The Nazi Plan", script of a motion picture composed of captured German film. (USA 167) Vol. V Pg.801 

3062-PS; Memorandum found in Goering's office, 19 November 1936, concerning Guido Schmidt, Foreign Minister of Austria under Schuschnigg. Vol. V Pg.868 

*3254-PS; The Austrian Question, 1934- 1938, by Seyss-Inquart, 9 September 1945. (USA 704) Vol. V Pg.961 

*3270-PS; Goering's speech on 27 March in Vienna, published in Documents of German Politics, Vol. VI, Part 1, p. 183. (USA 703) Vol. V Pg.1047 

*3271-PS; Letter from Seyss-Inquart to Himmler, 19 August 1939. (USA 700) Vol. V Pg.1047 

*3287-PS; Letter from von Neurath to Henderson, 12 March 1938. (USA 128) Vol. V Pg.1090 

*3308-PS; Affidavit by Paul Otto Gustav Schmidt, 28 November 1945. (GB 288) Vol. V Pg.1100 

3390-PS; Letter from Seyss-Inquart to Keppler, 25 October 1937. Vol. VI Pg. 105 

3392-PS; Letter from Seyss-Inquart to Keppler, 3 September 1937. Vol. VI Pg.109 

3395-PS; Letter from Seyss-Inquart to Keppler, 3 September 1937. Vol. VI Pg.113 

*3396-PS; Letter from Seyss-Inquart to Dr. Jury. (USA 889) Vol. VI Pg.114 

*3397-PS; Letter from Keppler to Seyss-Inquart, 8 January 1938. (USA 702) Vol. VI Pg.115 

3400-PS; Minutes of meeting of German Association, 28 December 1918, and Constitution and By-Laws thereof found in personal files of Seyss-Inquart for period of 1918 to 1943. Vol. VI Pg.118 

*3425-PS; Voluntary statement made by Seyss-Inquart with advice of counsel, 10 December 1945. (USA 701) Vol. VI Pg.124 

3467-PS; Law on Limitation of travel to Republic Austria 29 May 1933. 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, No. 57, p. 311. Vol. VI Pg.169 

*3471-PS; Letter from Keppler to Bodenschatz, 21 February 1938, with | enclosures noting activity of Leopold as leader of Austrian Nazis and possible appointment of Klausner as his successor. (USA 583) Vol. VI Pg.195 

*3472-PS; Letter from Keppler to Goering, 19 February 1938, requesting that Leopold be forbidden to negotiate with Schuschnigg except with approval of Reich authorities. (USA 582) Vol. VI Pg.196 

*3473-PS; Letter from Keppler to Goering, 6 January 1938, giving details of Nazi intrigue in Austria. (USA 581) Vol. VI Pg.196 

3574-PS; Filing notice regarding discussion between Chief of CI and Chief of Foreign CI on 31 January 1938, 2 February 1938, signed Canaris. Vol. VI Pg.265 

3576-PS; Letter from Keppler to Goering, 19 February 1938, with enclosure reporting on situation in Austria as of 18 February. Vol. VI Pg.271 

3577-PS; Letter presumably from Buerkel to Goering, dated Vienna, 26 March 1938, concerning Aryanization of Jewish-held business in Austria and disposition of resulting funds. Vol. VI Pg.275 

*C-102; Document signed by Hitler relating to operation "Otto", 11 March 1938. (USA 74) Vol. VI Pg.911 

*C-103; Directive signed by Jodl, 11 March 1938, on conduct towards Czech or Italian troops in Austria. (USA 75) Vol. VI Pg.913 

*C-175; OKW Directive for Unified Preparation for War 1937-1938, with covering letter from von Blomberg, 24 June 1937. (USA 69) Vol. VI Pg.1006 

*C-182; Directive No. 2 from Supreme Commander Armed Forces, initialled Jodl, 11 March 1938. (USA 77) Vol. VI Pg.1017 

*L-150; Memorandum of conversation between Ambassador Bullitt and von Neurath, German Minister for Foreign Affairs, 18 May 1936. (USA 65) Vol. VII Pg.890 

*L-151; Report from Ambassador Bullitt to State Department, 23 November 1937, regarding his visit to Warsaw. (USA 70) Vol. VII Pg.894 

*L-172; "The Strategic Position at the Beginning of the 5th Year of War", a lecture delivered by Jodl on 7 November 1943 at Munich to Reich and Gauleiters. (USA 34) Vol. VII Pg.920 

*L-273; Report of American Consul General in Vienna to Secretary of State, 26 July 1938, concerning anniversary of assassination of Chancellor Dollfuss. (USA 59) Vol. VII Pg.1094 

L-281; Text of Schuschnigg radio address of 11 March 1938, contained in telegram from American Legation in Vienna to the Secretary of State, 11 March 1938. Vol. VII Pg.1096 

L-291; Telegram from American Embassy Berlin to Secretary of State, 11 March 1938, concerning Austrian situation. Vol. VII Pg.1097 

*L-292; Telegram of American Consul General in Vienna to Secretary of State, 12 March 1938, concerning propaganda dropped over Vienna. (USA 78) Vol. VII Pg.1098 

L-293; Telegram from American Legation in Vienna to Secretary of State, 12 March 1938. Vol. VII Pg.1098 

*TC-26; Agreement between Austria and German Government and Government of Federal State of Austria, 11 July 1936. (GB 20) Vol. VIII Pg.369 

*TC-26; German assurance to Austria 21 May 1935, from Documents of German Politics, Part III, p. 94. (GB 19) Vol. VIII Pg.376 

TC-47; Hitler's Proclamation of Invasion of Austria, 12 March 1938. Vol. VIII Pg.398 

Affidavit H; Affidavit of Franz Halder, 22 November 1945. Vol. VIII Pg.643 

**Chart No. 11; Aggressive Action 1938-39. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.) Vol. VIII Pg. 780 

**CHart No. 12; German Aggression. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.) Vol. VIII Pg.781 

**Chart No. 13; Violations of Treaties, Agreements and Assurances. (Enlargement displayed to Tribunal.) Vol. VIII Pg.782


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

The preceeding posts are just the listed material used to establish Indictment No1 of the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. The material is extensive and conclusinve. From an early point the Nazi regime plotted and prepred for an aggressive war of conquest. From that all the other indictments were made possible.

People may judge for themselves whether germany prepred actively for a war of aggression, or whether it was "someone elses" fault.......


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

How were the germans found guilty of waging an aggressive war?

"Despite the apparent injustice of the aggressive assaults by the German Army in World War II, there was no codified or even customary rule of international law in 1945 that explicitly outlawed a war of aggression. Yet Justice Jackson (chief prosecutor of the American prosecution team) was determined to make "aggression" or "crimes against peace" the dominant allegation of the Nuremberg trials, and the American prosecution team assumed full responsibility for prosecuting the crime. In the aftermath of World War I, there had been a number of initiatives to outlaw wars of aggression, giving Jackson something to work with in legislating a new legal principle in the London Charter. Article 227 of the Versailles Treaty (1919), attempted to establish individual criminal responsibility for Germany's aggression in World War I by requiring the prosecution of the German Kaiser for "a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties." The viability of this provision, however, was never put to the test, for the Kaiser enjoyed sanctuary from prosecution in The Netherlands, which refused to surrender him for trial.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 was sponsored by the United States as manifesting "the outlawry of war" and signed by sixty-five nations, including such World War II aggressor nations as Germany, Italy, and Japan. This agreement expressed the intent to renounce war as a means of settling disputes. Various other pronouncements prior to World War II declared aggression to be an international crime, but no law had yet been written that prohibited a war of aggression. Justice Jackson faced opposition from legal scholars and other allied prosecutors, who challenged his effort to establish a new crime of aggression.

Justice Jackson prevailed with a bold strategic move. He argued that there had been a conspiracy to wage an aggressive war that swept within its reach war crimes and crimes against humanity (the two other major categories of crimes). He went on to assert that the entire indictment of the Nuremberg defendants would be premised on the allegation of this "master plan" that had been implemented through a conspiracy stretching back to 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. He noted that war crimes had a relatively solid basis in existing international conventions that already required a connection with warfare. Therefore, he argued, doubts about the legality of any particular charge of aggression or crime against humanity (along with many other kinds of criminal conduct) should be overcome by implicating such crimes within the overall conspiracy to wage aggressive war. The conspiracy theory, in which all participants can be held equally responsible for criminal conduct, was established in Article 6 of the London Charter and underpinned the first count in the Nuremberg indictment:

_Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan_.

Conspiracy charges were a based on a legal concept that was peculiarly rooted in common law as understood in Britain and the United States. The French, Soviet, and German legal systems had no legal tradition for framing conspiracy charges. They preferred charging defendants for direct participation in specific crimes".

Jacksons arguments won the day, and indeed forms much of the basis of the modern concept of waging illegal or nonsanctioned warfare. The abovementioned bodies of evidence, once admitted into the trial, were to conclusively show that Germany had indeed plotte to wage agreesive war from the very beginning of the Nazi regime. From that successful indictment (directed against the whole nation really) it was then possible to proceed with the trials of the conspirators. Some were acquitted, most were not, but the obvious defence they could have mounted ("oh we were operating under orders!", or, "we didnt pull the trigger!!!" could no longer be used asa valid defence. those men, indeed the whole German nation were guilty of Indictment 1 and indictment 1 meant that individuals could not use detachment as a valid form of defence. if they participated in a crime they were guilty.

Conversely, the Allies and to a lesser extent the Russians could not be indicted for war crimes under the Nuremberg model, because they were not guilty of waging an aggressive war. There are obvious flaws here, such as the Soviet attack on Finland, however I am substantially satisfied that the most guilty were brought to some level of justice using Jacksons legal principal. if nothing else, it meant the trials could be controlled as to their extent and severity....who would face trial and who would not.


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

duplicate post


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## michaelmaltby (May 24, 2012)

".... There are obvious flaws here, such as the Soviet attack on Finland, however I am substantially satisfied that the most guilty were brought to some level of justice using Jacksons legal principal. if nothing else, it meant the trials could be controlled as to their extent and severity....who would face trial and who would not..."

Whose opinion is this, Parsifal? Who is the "I" in "I am substantially satisfied". Your post starts in quotes but never closes them. Clarity, please. 

MM


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## Siegfried (May 24, 2012)

parsifal said:


> The preceeding posts are just the listed material used to establish Indictment No1 of the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. The material is extensive and conclusinve. From an early point the Nazi regime plotted and prepred for an aggressive war of conquest. From that all the other indictments were made possible.
> 
> People may judge for themselves whether germany prepred actively for a war of aggression, or whether it was "someone elses" fault.......



This has to be one of the more lunar series of posts.

Consider your post #106 which refers to Germany waging "aggressive war" against "Austria".

*In 1919 Austrians had voted overwhelmingly for unification. * When the German Army drove into Austria it was to an ecstatic reception by the Austrian population. Hitler had intended to stop just inside the border but the reception was so enthusiastic Reichsmarshall Goering suggested to Hitler "Why don't we keep going". *In a supervised plebiscite of 1938 some 99.9% of Austrians then voted for unification.*

That voluntary union is supposed to be an aggressive war?

In 1919 Austrians had voted overwhelmingly for unification but were denied this, forced into an isolated rump state, The Sudetenland Germans of Austria forced into a gerrymandered minority status in Czech-Slovakia. *Germany and Austria were not allowed to have free trade with each other, they had to be open to imports without tariffs but had tariffs applied against them.*

In 1938 Hitler himself headed the armored column that drove into Austria. His reception was extremely ecstatic, the Austrians came out to touch his black Mercedes as if it were a mystical object possessed with redemptive and healing properties. Crowds filled the town square in Linz where Hitler made speech around midnight. The scene was repeated in Vienna.

It's worth considering why this came about. Primary mission of Hitler was the reunification of all Germans in concordance with the very popular pan German movements of the last 100 years. This was his mission in life.

Most of Europe was run by dictators eg Poland and Austria was not different. Hitler had been gently moving to closer relationship with Austria however on 3 March the Austrian Socialist Dictator Schusnschnigg facing internal violence and lack of external support announced a Independence plebiscite with *only 3 days notice*.

There was one question which required only a yes or no answer. The question was

_"Are you in favor of a free and German independent and social, a Christian united Austria"?_

If you wanted to vote yes to this mendaciously loaded question you were issued a ballot paper at the voting booth.
If you wanted to vote no you had to obtain a seperate no ballot paper from an government department, then have it stamped by another and take it yourself to the ballot booth.

Chances of a successful no vote obviously low.

One had three days to get organized. Schusnschnigg had disbanded any opposition parties that might organize a boycott.

Hitler (who was elected not appointed) was outraged that Germans might forever be separated by this extremely damaging trick and that it might endanger the Sudetenland Germans.

He warned Schusnschnigg, when Schnusnschnigg failed to respond Hitler raised the stakes and threatened invasion, had him resign and appoint the Pan German Seyss-Inquart who promptly requested German assistance which came in the form of Guadarian and the 8th Army and the SS Libenstandart Division. (Hitler had a hole SS combat division as a personal bodyguard)

Not a shot was fired. The 'invasion' of Austria "opperation Otto" had been planed in one day only. So much for 'planed aggressive war'

Another Mendacity in the "Nuremberg Trial Transcripts" and the posts of several others here is the idea that the Germans precipitated aggressive rearmament.

In fact
1 France and Britain were armed.
2 Germany was disarmed,

3 *France, under the Treaty of Versailles was itself required to disarm *. However France was clearly not doing this and when she failed to comply one would expect some consequences and so it was only in 1934 in response to Frances failure to disarm that Hitler authorized an additional 300,000 troops taking the Germany Army to a still modest 500,000.

*France, with surprising idiocy, threw away perhaps the only good part of her own evil vindictive and unfair Versailles Treaty and only then precipitated German rearmament.*

So much for Germany planning a 'aggressive war'.

The integration of the Sudetenland Germans is a similar tale of idiocy. Eduard Benes, faked a planed invasion of his country. The reason was simple: Often delayed Sudetenland German local council elections were taking place and he needed an excuse to interfere in the outcome and to have troops in place in case their were embarrassing demonstrations or popular uprisings. A faked invasion threat gave this hideous man an excuse.

It was this act which turned Hitler from negotiation to swearing to finish the Czechoslovak state. He did this without bloodshed and gave the Slovaks their independence as well while leaving the Czechs independent for a while. Had the Czech simply granted the Suddeten Germans Cantonic Democracy they would have had no issue and Czechoslovakia might still be in existence. So much for Democracy and Negotiation when one side doesn't negotiated or provide democracy.

The Nuremberg Trials are show trials for the most part.

Anyone interested can read Stolfi's "Hitler, Beyond Good and Evil". Possibly the only Hitler Biography which doesn't descend into ramblings about Hitlers unascertainable and mysterious evil but treats him as an rational actor.


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## cimmex (May 24, 2012)

finally this thread had turned completely offtopic and political so the moderators should better close. IMO nobody is interested in those overlengthy posts in an aircraft forum.
regards
cimmex


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## Milosh (May 24, 2012)

cimmex said:


> finally this thread had turned completely offtopic and political so the moderators should better close. IMO nobody is interested in those overlengthy posts in an aircraft forum.
> regards
> cimmex



I find them interesting.


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## davparlr (May 24, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> *In 1919 Austrians had voted overwhelmingly for unification. * When the German Army drove into Austria it was to an ecstatic reception by the Austrian population.



No way! I saw Austrian reactions when I saw "The Sound of Music"!


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## Juha (May 24, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> Most of Europe was run by dictators eg Poland and Austria was not different. Hitler had been gently moving to closer relationship with Austria however on 3 March the Austrian Socialist Dictator Schusnschnigg facing internal violence and lack of external support announced a Independence plebiscite with *only 3 days notice*. .



For those who don't know, Siegfried's propaganda is again at full swing, contrary to his claim Schusnschnigg was a right-winger not a socialist.


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## rank amateur (May 24, 2012)

The Versailles Treaty may have left Germany with a couple (a lot?) of justifiable grievences but the way the NSDAP governement has acted upon cleary disqualifies any complaint. 
I myself find this discussion most interesting.. but not for this thread or this site


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

I can only repeat what ive already posted. My posts contain all the refernce material used at Nurnberg, and the associated local military tribunals. All documents relied upon are listed. most are still available, with many navailable free and online. If people want to make an informed decision for themselves, they can track down these documents and read them. 

I have also provided a good summary byt others that summarises the legal arguments used by the tribunal to find in favour of the first count against the defendants....that Germany was guilty of plotting against peace (from 1933) and waging an aggressive war. My opinions are outside the quoted material, the last three paragraphs of the post dealing with Jacksons submission. 

There is nothing more really I can add that could not be seen as mere opinion and propaganda. I have to leave it up to people to make their own minds up. Was germany guilty of plotting for war from the beginning of the Nazi regime? To me, based on the overwhelming body of evidence to support it, the testimonies of the 1946 survivors, and the solid and convincing legal argument put forward to establish the indictement, it is above argument or specualtion....germany was guilty of plotting for aggressive war from 1933.

I think we should try and relate this material back to the the topic. I will try and kick it off

The obvious link is whether germany made adequate provisions for fuel self sufficiency. Well, Germany opted for the large scale hydogenation plants, but from mere prejudice I think, Hitler banned use of organic material, like potatoes, to distill alchohol which could have been used as a fuel additive. I dont know if that ban extended for the whole war, but in 1936 it certainly did. Hitler was apparently concerned that such diversion of food producing potential could have other more serious effects on food supply.


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

> This has to be one of the more lunar series of posts.
> 
> Consider your post #106 which refers to Germany waging "aggressive war" against "Austria".



The posts you are referring to are just bibliographical lists of the material relied upon at Nurnberg . Im not making any comments or observations for most of them. 

The findings are those of the tribunals and are summarised at post 109 with a few pargraphs from me only. 



> The Nuremberg Trials are show trials for the most part.



Any tribunal dealing with an issue like this is going to be imperfect. No court for any matter is ever perfect. they are devices crafted by human hands, with human frailties and imperfections like anything devised by human beings. But, they were not show trials. They provide us with the most balanced, most complete body of material on which to judge the german leadership. Jacksons arguments with respect to this issue, moreover are not show ponies or shams. They are based on solid leagal precedents that form the basis of modern international warcrimes law. All the member states of the UN have ratified those principals, though many continue to flout them. Thats not the point. The principals laid down at Nurnberg were the basis of the modern body of law. Using the law and judgement of others avoids the problem as much as possible of propagandising and opinionising this issue, which is exactly what you rebuttal appears to be.


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## Njaco (May 24, 2012)

If the next post isn't On Topic and devoid of political schmutz, this thread will be closed.


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## parsifal (May 24, 2012)

Njaco said:


> If the next post isn't On Topic and devoid of political schmutz, this thread will be closed.




I agree, this thread needs to get back on topic. Ive attempted to do that at post 118 with the following:



> I think we should try and relate this material back to the the topic. I will try and kick it off
> 
> The obvious link is whether germany made adequate provisions for fuel self sufficiency. Well, Germany opted for the large scale hydogenation plants, but from mere prejudice I think, Hitler banned use of organic material, like potatoes, to distill alchohol which could have been used as a fuel additive. I dont know if that ban extended for the whole war, but in 1936 it certainly did. Hitler was apparently concerned that such diversion of food producing potential could have other more serious effects on food supply.



If you are going to shut the thread down, because of what you refer to as "Political Schmutz", can you explain to me how relating the findings of a military tribunal, and providing an admittedly overlong bibliographical list of references is in any way "political"? Off topic, I will concede, and you are more than in your rights to shut this down for that alone, but to call the findings of the Nurnberg trials "political Schmutz" is more than a little disresepectful to the millions who died for it. Do what you have to do as a mod, I am not getting in the way of that, but dont disrespect the people who died making those tribunals necessary and exist, by calling them a political excercise.

I make that point with the greatest respect Chris.....l


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## Matt308 (May 24, 2012)

Then move along and get back on topic of German fuel supply. Last warning folks.


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## Siegfried (May 25, 2012)

rank amateur said:


> The Versailles Treaty may have left Germany with a couple (a lot?) of justifiable grievences but the way the NSDAP governement has acted upon cleary disqualifies any complaint.
> I myself find this discussion most interesting.. but not for this thread or this site



Previous democratically elected German regimes were treated with total dismisall and contempt by the allies particularly the French. They were given no concessions and often left with personal insults. 

Franz von Papen himself warned the allies that "If German democrats were not granted a single diplomatic success he would be thje last democratic chancellor in Germany." He received no concessions.

Hitler was the only effective politician. His methods were effective and he had justice on his side. In my opinion after he had succesfully freed the Suddenland Germans from Czechoslovakia and further seperated Czecho-Slovakia by guaranteeing the Slovakian borders against possible Hungarian and Polish attacks (thus freeing them to declare independance) he might have left the Czech state independant indefinetly however the Brinkmanship and instrangience they had played was unforgiven. The other disgrace was the invasion of Holland as the Dutch had done nothing against Germany, clearly this was a panicked measure to try and defeat France and Britain and secure against a possible British invasion via Holland. The Norweigen cabinet had secretly decided to not resist an openly discussed British invasion (German intelligence found out) and therefore violated their on neurtrality. Denmark and Belgium had both taken portions of German territory and populations after WW1.

The Historian Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddin argued that the treaty of Brest-Litovsk merely freed the mall nations of the Russian empire (Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithunia, Poland, Ukrain, Belarus from the giant tsarist prison allowing their peoples to gro free.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He also suggested that Thus he concludes that sound Catholicism, or sound Protestantism, or even—probably—sound popular Sovereignty (i. e. German-Austrian unification in 1919) all three would have prevented National Socialism, although Kuehnelt-Leddihn rather dislikes the latter two.


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## Siegfried (May 25, 2012)

parsifal said:


> I can only repeat what ive already posted. The obvious link is whether germany made adequate provisions for fuel self sufficiency. Well, Germany opted for the large scale hydogenation plants, but from mere prejudice I think, Hitler banned use of organic material, like potatoes, to distill alchohol which could have been used as a fuel additive. I dont know if that ban extended for the whole war, but in 1936 it certainly did. Hitler was apparently concerned that such diversion of food producing potential could have other more serious effects on food supply.



Sorry, didn't see moderators last warning.

The "Nazi" regime is often criticised harshly for dedicating the use of potatoes for the production of ethyl alcahol in order to fuel the V2 rocket. Personally I think the V2 was going to become a very cost effective weapon but the production of alcahole as a piston engine motor fuel is pointless due to the energy it would require (eg tractor fuel, fertiliser production) and of course the famine and crop failures were another reason. The V2 required alcahole as a fuel due to its carbonisation free and soot free burning and reduced oxidiser requirements. 

There is however a case for use for use of fermented alcahole fuels to
1 Make use of substandard crops
2 create a secondary market, agrarian socialism, to subsidise and help farmers so that they can over produce and find a market for their surplus crop; if there is too much for human consumption at least it can be made into fuel ensuring that there is continious over production to compensate for times of crop failure.

Europe faced a food shortage, one cause was the loss of superphosphate supplies from North Africa as the Italian Navy had trouble keeping shipping lanes open. 

Unlike grains Potatoes do not required so much land and also have minimal phosphate requirements. However they were rather manpower intensive, which Germany and Europe lacked at this time and so this created its own problems.

Synthesis of liquid fuels would appear to be the only viable solution. Investing in more plant, more bomb resistant, more dispersed and better camaflauged would appear to be the only alternative.

At that time synthetic fuels must have been at least 5-10 times the price of oil. Its harder to mine, harder to transport, harder to prcess and much is lost in liquifaction.

Petrol in Saudi Arabia sells at about 15-20c Litre which gives you an idea of how cheap it is without all the taxes. One requirement for the export of the GM Holdern Statesman V8 to Saudi Arabia was that the engine can be left parked and idling to keep the airconditioning on all day so that the car is cool when folks finnish work.

It's likely that with another few years German chemists would have dveloped coal to liquids synthesis to a much higher level. 

Fischer and Tropsch personally consulted with SASOL when Sth Africa developed succesfull synthetic fuel plants that produced motor fuel. Fischer-Tropsch synthesis actually is rather good at producing alcahol but poorer at gasoline so producing alcahol fueled engines in which the alcahol came from synthesis would have been quite efficient.


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## parsifal (May 25, 2012)

> Unlike grains Potatoes do not required so much land and also have minimal phosphate requirements. However they were rather manpower intensive, which Germany and Europe lacked at this time and so this created its own problems.



I am the son of a farmer. We grew both grains and potatoes. There was no difference in the phosphate requirements. In the context of the 1940s tech it would have been more labour intensive during the potato picking season. In the 60s automated harvesting machines were devised to overcome this.

In terms of manpower intensive and in the context of a Central European agricultural system, grain production would be more labour intensive than potato farming. harvesting was either by hand, or with small horse drawn or at best lightly motorized harvesters. There was no bulk handling, and threshing and milling was by hand, mostly. If a greater degree of motorization was in place, the manpower requirements might go down. but given that germany remains about 1/10 as efficient at grains production as Australia, even today, that appear unlikley in the context of WWII.

Moreover, ethanol production could have been organised from waste products of the primary product. Whilst not "free energy" if the system had been developed before the war, it could have been cost effective, and had no effect on food supply. If maize is the crop, the corn would still be harversted, but the corn storks could have been used for ethanol production. same applies to potatoes. people dont eat potato peels (usually). What was required was pre-skinning. Also collection of the excess plants for shipment to the ethanol plant.

Brazil has the most efficient ethanol industry today. They use sugar for the purpose. The US aklso has a sizable ethanol industry. Sweden during the war used potatoes and Corn for fuel supplies, with no effect on their available food supplies. 

I dont think an agrarian based ethanol industry would have been any more labour intensive than the big hydogentation plant. these plants at the end of the war were employing nearly 700000 workers in the p-roduction and repair of these plants, to produce I think something like 7500000 tons of fuel annually (havent checked those figures. Austalian grain production employs less than 50000 workers, and produces 4-6 million tons of grain every year. Even allowing for European agricultural innefficiency it may well be the case that an ethanol based synthetic fuel industry was more cost effective than a coal based extraction process. 




> Synthesis of liquid fuels would appear to be the only viable solution. Investing in more plant, more bomb resistant, more dispersed and better camaflauged would appear to be the only alternative


.

Possibly, but your explanation is full of holes and doesnt explain the nitty gritty issues


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## Shortround6 (May 25, 2012)

When looking at alternative fuels it is a good idea to see what they can and cannot do. Alcohol has an octane rating of about 114. This is one reason it is so popular for auto racing. It has been used to "spike" regular gasoline to raise the octane rating but this comes at a cost. Alcohol has roughly 1/2 the BTUs per gallon as gasoline which means you need twice as much to get the same range. Fortunately for power production it needs roughly 1/2 the amount of air per gallon to burn so for the same quantity of air going into an engine you do get more power. It also burns a bit cooler than gasoline and it absorbs more heat as it vaporizes which also helps with engine cooling. 
Problems come in with, not only the quantity needed, but with compatibility with seals and gaskets, vaporization pressure and temperatures and so on. Alcohol powered engines need help starting in cold weather, and cold is a relative term. In some areas of Brazil their alcohol powered cars have a small auxiliary tank of gasoline for starting.


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## rank amateur (May 25, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> Previous democratically elected German regimes were treated with total dismisall and contempt by the allies particularly the French. They were given no concessions and often left with personal insults.
> 
> Hitler was the only effective politician. His methods were effective and he had justice on his side.
> 
> Calling Hitler a politician to me is a bit like calling Al Capone an effective 'businessman'


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## parsifal (May 25, 2012)

Shortround6 said:


> When looking at alternative fuels it is a good idea to see what they can and cannot do. Alcohol has an octane rating of about 114. This is one reason it is so popular for auto racing. It has been used to "spike" regular gasoline to raise the octane rating but this comes at a cost. Alcohol has roughly 1/2 the BTUs per gallon as gasoline which means you need twice as much to get the same range. Fortunately for power production it needs roughly 1/2 the amount of air per gallon to burn so for the same quantity of air going into an engine you do get more power. It also burns a bit cooler than gasoline and it absorbs more heat as it vaporizes which also helps with engine cooling.
> Problems come in with, not only the quantity needed, but with compatibility with seals and gaskets, vaporization pressure and temperatures and so on. Alcohol powered engines need help starting in cold weather, and cold is a relative term. In some areas of Brazil their alcohol powered cars have a small auxiliary tank of gasoline for starting.



I know very little about the energy yields of ethanol as oppsed to coal derived petrol. However, I think it worth noting that after the war coal extracted fuels all but died out, primarily because of cost. its a labour intensive, capital intensive business. ive read somewhere that the cost per gallon of fuel for the germans was between 10 and 20 times that of the allies. Ethanol production, using waste bi-products from agriculture has proven at least close to the cost of real petrol. It seems the best alternative has been to use blended fuels, the mixing of gasoline with ethanol to string out the overall supply of fuel.

I accept that the energy returns of ethanol fuels is not as good as regular fuels. But for Germany that probably is less of a concern to getting any supply of fuel. Siegfried and others are saying more investment should have been made in the coal based extraction plants....build more and make more, protect them better, make them more bomb resistant. Thats a solution, but it comes at a cost. more workers, more money diverted....les production elsewhere...shortages in other areas. To my mind, Germany need more fuel, but her problem is that she has to get it at no additional cost. If fuel is derived from ethanol, which in turn is derived from agriculture, you have to achieve that with the same workforce, modest additional capital and no loss of food production. thats a tall ask


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## Shortround6 (May 25, 2012)

Two notes.

1. "energy yields of ethanol as opposed to coal derived petrol". Coal derived petrol _HAS_ to have the same number of BTUs per gallon as oil derived petrol or else the fuels are NOT interchangeable in the same aircraft. Sure you can be off by a few percent but anything greater and not only the range suffers but the actual mixture ratios/controls for the carburetors/injectors will be thrown off. Modern cars with their computer controls may be able to adjust more readily than WW II engines. Trying to run an 1940-50 engine on alcohol without much bigger main and idle jets in the carb is an exercise in frustration and melted pistons. It may be the same with the coal derived petrol. It _HAS_ to behave like oil based gasoline or else the planes using it have to be segregated and fuel separately from different supply sources. 

2. " If fuel is derived from ethanol, which in turn is derived from agriculture, you have to achieve that with the same workforce, modest additional capital and no loss of food production. thats a tall ask" Quite right, a very tall task. The Germans made a mistake in WW I and mobilized too many of the farm horses which weakened the agriculture sector and contributed to Germany's food shortage in WW I. While the Germans left more horses on the Farms in WW II trying to divert too many of them to "fuel' Production is going to bring back the same problem. There are only so many resources to be had in the agriculture sector, manpower, animal power and motor power (trucks/tractors/ stationary engines. etc) and much of a shift in priorities will lead to shortfalls in the areas with the lower priorities.


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## Siegfried (May 26, 2012)

Parsifal, the phosphate requirements of potato and wheat crops may be equal in terms of kilograms per hectare but as the potato produces 5-10 times the food calories per unit area the super-phosphate requirements are considerably less per mouth fed. I am not making this up, phosphate shortages due to interruption of supplies from Nth Africa were a big cause of European famine.

Incidentally, don't worry about peak oil, worry about peak phosphate. (Of course if you are a westerner one would be worried about immigration patterns if you are really worried about your children)

The idea that Central European Harvesting (which includes Grain) was based on hand harvesting or horse harvesting is greatly overstated. 

Those that grew grain almost certainly had a tractor to pull harvesting machines. A large number of smaller family farms in marginal land eg the hilly very cold parts of Eastern Germany where the owners were Artisans/Trades people that worked at their trade in winter but the farm in summer may have relied on horses or even hitching up the cow. About 3 years ago I was at an agricultural fair at the German Czech border and saw a parade of vintage tractors from the era from both countries.

When the requisitioning of Horses for use by the German army was increased the shortfall in agricultural draft animals was made up by use of motorized tractors. The effect was an overall *increase in fuel consumption* as Albert Speer noted. There was certainly enough tractors around to have this effect.

The use of bio-fuels would completely unrealistic given food shortages and famines, fertilizer and energy shortages in WW2 Europe. In the present era for fermented Alcohol fuels we have Brazil with its sugar, the US with its maize, the Australians with their grains while for biodiesel's we have Europeans with their rape seed and the Malaysians with their palm kernels.

All are so dubious and marginal it took years of controversy and science to even work out if the energy inputs were less than the net energy produced. All require considerable government assistance, subsidies, tax relief and bounties. Most are a form of agrarian socialism that have the effect of raising crop prices though I have no issue with helping the farmers it does rather indicated the inefficiency of the process. Bio-fuels are by some considered a disaster as they raise food prices, damage 3rd world exports (which I care little about personally) and cause the loss of precious rainforest or wilderness.

I also can not see that the waste product would be so large that it would provide an aqueduct source of fermentable materials and in any case such things are perhaps best turned into animal fodder.

Nevertheless the Germans did have a considerable capacity to produce bio-ethanal, which they used to fuel the V2 missile. Perhaps they had prepared this industrial scale process in mind for use in combustion engines.

*Shortround:*

The German synthetic plants plants were able to produce significant quantities of methanol.

See links below.

"Dr. Butefisch referred to experiments which had been carried out using fuels containing methyl alcohol. He referred to the difficulty with water tolerance and to the fact that the total consumption of an engine using a fuel containing 15% of alcohol was no higher than with the petrol alone."

(presumably due to higher octane rating and efficiency of methanol (as well as its higher density)

The process of making iso-octane involved synthesizing iso-butanol. The output of the reactor was 55% methanol and only 15% iso-butanol. The methanol was simply distilled off and back fed into the reactor where it behave as syn gas but obviously it could have been used directly as a fuel.

iso-butanol in fact behaves almost exactly as high octane petrol and can directly be substituted with gasoline with no change to the engine. It does smell a little like vomit.

BIOS 1697 - Synthetic Oil Production in Germany Interrogation of Dr. Butefisch
I.G. Farbenindustrie - Methanol Higher Alcohol Synthesis


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## wuzak (May 26, 2012)

I wonder if the Junkers steam turbine project was allowed to continue (from 1940) if it would have allowed multi-engined aircraft to use less vital fuels (like lower octane petrol, diesel) or even blends of crushed coal/petrol, freeing up the high octane fuels for more critical applications.

How well would a He 111 go with a pair of 3000hp steam turbine power plants?


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## jim (May 26, 2012)

It is very interesting how Parsifal agrees with moderators about the thread returning on topic, immediately AFTER presentig ,in lengthy posts ,his opinions about anything irrelevant.


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## KiwiBiggles (May 26, 2012)

wuzak said:


> I wonder if the Junkers steam turbine project was allowed to continue (from 1940) if it would have allowed multi-engined aircraft to use less vital fuels (like lower octane petrol, diesel) or even blends of crushed coal/petrol, freeing up the high octane fuels for more critical applications.
> 
> How well would a He 111 go with a pair of 3000hp steam turbine power plants?



I hadn't heard of that. Puts me in mind of the rather wonderful Bristol Tramp project, of the '20s, which had a fuselage-mounted boiler and steam turbine, driving wing-mounted propellers through drive shafts. Apparently the boiler/turbine/condenser were not really troublesome; only the drive-train to the propellers proved a real problem.


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## Njaco (May 26, 2012)

jim said:


> It is very interesting how Parsifal agrees with moderators about the thread returning on topic, immediately AFTER presentig ,in lengthy posts ,his opinions about anything irrelevant.



Don't feed the fire. It was meant for all including Parsifal which, if I remember correctly DID NOT have the topic go into political territory at first.


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## parsifal (May 26, 2012)

> Parsifal, the phosphate requirements of potato and wheat crops may be equal in terms of kilograms per hectare but as the potato produces 5-10 times the food calories per unit area the super-phosphate requirements are considerably less per mouth fed.




In word, rubbish. The amount of phosphates needed to produce a calorie of Potyato starch is the same as the amount needed to produce a calorie of of wheat starch. Somewhere I have a study by the CSIRO that deals with this very subject.

Moreover the yields per ha are not that different, though I concede you get more volume per ha under potato cropping than you do with wheat. If you use a proper measure, the tonnages per HA there is virtually no difference. In 2010 Australia harvested 11.5 ha of wheat for a yield of 33 million tonnes. Thts about 3.3 tonnes per ha. Peak yields in the best growing areas are about 8-10 tonnes per ha. In WWII the average yiled per Ha was around 3 tonnes per ha.

By comparison in potatoes, yields have skyrocketed. in 1936 the average yield per ha was 7.6 tonnes per ha. today with a heavy relaince on genetic engineering, the yieds are 35.6 tonnes per ha.

European yields for both potatoes and wheat are similar, but tyhe numbers of people needed per ha are grossly more than in Australia. Germany is competitive in potato growing, they were, and are hopelssly innefficient in grains production. 




> I am not making this up, phosphate shortages due to interruption of supplies from Nth Africa were a big cause of European famine.



Unformtuantelym, and as usual, you are making it up, most of it. Typical method is to mix a little truth with a lot of lies to achieve a certain outcome. The famines in Europe had very little to do with the shortsages of phospahate. It had a lot to do with Nazi mismanagement of the european economies, and the breakdown in the transport system 



> The idea that Central European Harvesting (which includes Grain) was based on hand harvesting or horse harvesting is greatly overstated.



Euro[ean grain harvesting efficiency is still about a tenth as efficient as the great grain growing countries like Canada, the US and Australia. Maybe its not due to lack of modernization, but its still very innefficient



> Those that grew grain almost certainly had a tractor to pull harvesting machines. A large number of smaller family farms in marginal land eg the hilly very cold parts of Eastern Germany where the owners were Artisans/Trades people that worked at their trade in winter but the farm in summer may have relied on horses or even hitching up the cow. About 3 years ago I was at an agricultural fair at the German Czech border and saw a parade of vintage tractors from the era from both countries.



All very intersting. I dont need to go to shows and museums to tell you the local history of motorizTION. mY grandfather setteled on 400 acres as a soldier settler after WWI. He harvrested with horse and scythe until 1926 when a co-op bopught a tractor. We bought the first tractor for the family in 1936. by wwii the family holding was just under 1000 acres of wheat growing land. We had 7 tractorsd by then. During the war, most of the male staff were drafted, but the womens land army filed their shoes pretty well, and production almost doubled again in that six years. Trust me, Europe is a fraction as efficient as Australia at growing grains. 



> When the requisitioning of Horses for use by the German army was increased the shortfall in agricultural draft animals was made up by use of motorized tractors. The effect was an overall *increase in fuel consumption* as Albert Speer noted. There was certainly enough tractors around to have this effect.



Exlain then why German primary production fell during the war, to about half what it was at the begining of the war. germany relied on feding itself by starving the rest of Europe. 





> In the present era for fermented Alcohol fuels we have Brazil with its sugar, the US with its maize, the Australians with their grains while for biodiesel's we have Europeans with their rape seed and the Malaysians with their palm kernels.



Food production could be unnaffected if only the waste bi-products were used, like potato plants rather than the potatoes. 



> I also can not see that the waste product would be so large that it would provide an aqueduct source of fermentable materials and in any case such things are perhaps best turned into animal fodder.



Using the husk material can still be used for animal foder once the ethanol has been extracted. 



> Nevertheless the Germans did have a considerable capacity to produce bio-ethanal, which they used to fuel the V2 missile. Perhaps they had prepared this industrial scale process in mind for use in combustion engines.



Not in 1936, if Hitlers memo was folowed. Perhaps it wasnt, but he seems to have forbade it in 1936. 

Henry Ford and his Model T were initially designed and ran on ethanol 1915-26. Changed to gasoline mostly because of supply issues. Ethanol used in a pure form is not optimal, but ethanol as a fuel additive, which was known in 1940, might be a possibility. if Germany can expand her fuel stocks by 20% in 1940, with a fuel that costs only 80% that of regular German synthetic fuel, why wouldnt you introduce a program like that...Answer, Because the Nazis were not driven by rational behaviour.


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## wuzak (May 27, 2012)

KiwiBiggles said:


> I hadn't heard of that. Puts me in mind of the rather wonderful Bristol Tramp project, of the '20s, which had a fuselage-mounted boiler and steam turbine, driving wing-mounted propellers through drive shafts. Apparently the boiler/turbine/condenser were not really troublesome; only the drive-train to the propellers proved a real problem.



Hadn't heard about that one. Any more details?

There were three war time German steam turbine projects, as far as I am aware. The Junkers one at 3000hp, another at 4000hp - the name of which I cannot recall, and a further 6000hp one proposed for use with the Me 264, which was to use a mix of 35% petrol and 65% pulverised coal. The first two were cancelled around 1940/41, IIRC, the last started about 1944 with a number of components having being manufactured by VE day but not a complete system.








Drawing of Junkers 3000hp steam turbine

from Dieter Herwig and Heinz Rode, Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Ground Attack Special Purpose Aircraft







Size comparison between a 4000hp steam turbine and a Junkers Jumo 213

from Dieter Herwig and Heinz Rode, Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Ground Attack Special Purpose Aircraft







Installation diagram of the Junkers Steam Turbine


from Dieter Herwig and Heinz Rode, Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Ground Attack Special Purpose Aircraft


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## KiwiBiggles (May 27, 2012)

Bristol Tramp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tramp was basically a steam-powered version of Bristol's existing Braemar series. IIRC there was an earlier development in the series which had several Liberty engines (I've no idea why - who would go near one of those voluntarily?) all mounted in the fuselage, with drive trains to the tractor props. I don't think anything of them were successful. Barnes _Bristol Aircraft Since 1910_ is really the only reference I've ever seen to the Tramp.

The mention above of coal power is interesting. The Germans investigated in some depth the use of coal-powered jets. I think they used some kind of vibrating coal-dust dispenser in the flame cans


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## parsifal (May 27, 2012)

jim said:


> It is very interesting how Parsifal agrees with moderators about the thread returning on topic, immediately AFTER presentig ,in lengthy posts ,his opinions about anything irrelevant.



Why not post something useful instead of attempting to control me or the mods. you wont succeed in either case.....

For the record, they are not my opinions, they are the findings of a military tribunal into who was responsible for what. there is some really useful reading there if you feel like broadening your horizons.


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## cimmex (May 27, 2012)

parsifal said:


> Why not post something useful instead of attempting to control me or the mods. you wont succeed in either case.....
> 
> For the record, they are not my opinions, they are the findings of a military tribunal into who was responsible for what. there is some really useful reading there if you feel like broadening your horizons.



Sorry parcifal, when I’m looking for further political education I usually take a good related book, never trust posts in an internet forum where most information is a cut and paste from unknown sources.
Regards
Cimmex


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## Njaco (May 27, 2012)

Lets move on..........


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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2012)

A really big problem with steam turbines as aircraft engines is that while the turbine it self may be small and light compared to a gasoline engine, once you add the boiler and condenser the weight and bulk go up considerably. The second problem is that the efficiency of a steam turbine plant will not match an equivalent internal combustion engine. Efficiency as in pounds of fuel per hp hour. Please do not quote efficiency's of stationary power plants weighing 10s of pounds per HP.


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## FLYBOYJ (May 27, 2012)

*GENTLEMEN - IF THIS THREAD CONTINUES TO GO "POLITICAL" I AM GOING TO CLOSE IT!*


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## wuzak (May 27, 2012)

Actually the steam turbines would have proved more efficient than the piston aero engines.

The 6000hp turbine had a target of 190g/hp/hr (0.42lb/hp/hr), which was as good as the best piston engine of the day - and considerably better than those at max power. It was also said to be able to have an overload capacity of 100% (ie, I presume, could go to 12,000hp) for extended periods (not continuous, but considerably longer than 5 minutes). The target weight was 0.7kg per hp ie an all up weight of 4200kg for 6000hp.


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## wuzak (May 27, 2012)

Found some data on the Junkers steam turbine

The data on a drawing shown in _Luftwaffe Secret Projects, Ground Attack Special Purpose Aircraft_, by Dieter Herwig and Heinz Rodem is:


```
Power                2238kW         3000hp
Turbine Speed        8000rpm
Propellor speed       950rpm
Turbine Pressure      100atm        1470psi
Temperature           550°C         1022°F
Exhaust pressure      0.15atm        2.2psi
Weight                800kg         1764lb
```

And here is the data for the proposed system for the Me 264 (compared to the Jumo 213 and BMW 801).


```
Steam Turbine			Jumo 213	    BMW 801	
power	6000	hp		1725	hp              1600	hp
weight	4200	kg		940	kg              1065	kg
	9240	lbs		2068	lbs             2343	lbs
					
w/p	0.7	kg/hp		0.545	kg/hp         0.666	kg/hp
	1.54	lb/hp		1.199	lb/hp          1.464	lb/hp
p/w	1.429	hp/kg		1.835	hp/kg         1.502	hp/kg
	0.649	hp/lb		0.834	hp/lb          0.683	hp/lb
```

The Jumo 213 is calculated without radiators, etc.

The piston engines' max power is WEP - so restricted in length it can be used. 6000hp the steam turbine can do, to borrow a phrase from Shortround, until the fuel runs out.


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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2012)

Target goals and results actually achieved are not the same thing. The Napier Nomad had some rather impressive target goals for fuel consumption, actually achieving them proved a bit more difficult.

There is a real problem with trying to evaluate steam engines (both piston and turbine) in that the "power section" can often stand up to much more power than the "nominal" power rating. The catch being that the steam generator (boiler and burners/grates, etc) has to be able to generate the required amount of steam for the time in question. For closed loop systems like power plants, marine and aircraft systems (as opposed to 99% of the rail road locomotives), the condenser system also has to be able to handle the quantity of steam back to water needed. In an aircraft situation there is no large quantity of reserve feed water to tide things over for a while. 

For a 6000hp nominal turbine to make 12,000hp for any amount of time, even 5 minutes, you need a boiler that can make 12,000hp worth of steam for 5 minutes and you need a condenser than can handle that volume of steam. If the condenser isn't big enough it is like welding a washer in the tailpipe of a car engine. Power is going to go way down.


Another problem is that Steam turbines do not throttle down real well and keep efficiency. Ships often had 2 sets of turbines and sometimes 3 sets. The high powered ones and low speed cruising turbines with sometimes a 3rd intermediate set. Granted using constant speed propellers in an aircraft can keep turbine speed up compared to ships with fixed pitch props.


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## parsifal (May 27, 2012)

another possibility might have been methane gas derived from effluent. Its used today in light commercial vehicles like fork lifts and bobcat excavators. There are of course some disadvantages in a wartime environment, but it could perhaps have been used for non military purposes and training to conserve fossil fuels for the frontline activities. The technology of making fuel out of methane was known in the early 20th century. Sources of the fuel could have been landfill sites, biowastes, there were I believe also some naturally occurring sites in Europe itself. The resulatant fuel was cheap, easy to gather and placed little strain on the German war economy, because it used waste products and would require very little manpower to harness. Its big drawback was the need to pressurize the fule to get an efficient fuel. Riding around the battlefield with a pressurized bomb in the vehicle might not be a good idea, but for non-frontline duties it might have been useful 

I just dont see the building of more Hydrogenation plants as a viable answer to German fuel problems. In the end they were a proven failure....expensive to build and maintain,, easily knocked and a honey pot for allied bombing efforts. Germany needed de-centralised cheap, manpower neutral sources of fuel, that were less vulnerable to air attack


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## Shortround6 (May 27, 2012)

Considering that the Germans were using "producer gas" to a considerable extent on the home front and in training establishments by the end of the war Methane isn't a bad idea. It is no magic bullet but then nothing the Germans could try would solve the problem alone. 

See; Low-tech Magazine: Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (May 27, 2012)

jim said:


> It is very interesting how Parsifal agrees with moderators about the thread returning on topic, immediately AFTER presentig ,in lengthy posts ,his opinions about anything irrelevant.



I find it interesting that after several moderators tell everyone to get back on topic and quit the bullshit, you ignore them and continue to throw fuel on the fire. What is your damn problem? Grow up...

Next person to ignore the warnings, will go to the beach with the thread.

This childish kindergarten behavior is very old and annoying.


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## parsifal (May 31, 2012)

Shortround6 said:


> Considering that the Germans were using "producer gas" to a considerable extent on the home front and in training establishments by the end of the war Methane isn't a bad idea. It is no magic bullet but then nothing the Germans could try would solve the problem alone.
> 
> See; Low-tech Magazine: Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank




So, we do have at least some common ground. not 100% but I think we are saying similar things.....Germany needed a cheap, easily produced, low cost easy to maintain fuel source. And that seems to be best derived from organic biowastes of some description. Do you agree? if so, why did Hitler initially reject these alternatives. Or is his 1936 an un-adopted edict. maybe the technology was beyond his understanding. i dont know. What is apparent is that germany pursued the high end of the industry.....the big hydrogenation plants, that were expensive, produced expensive product, and a honey magnet to being bombed. Why did Hitler support that option and not the lower cost organic fuels????


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## Njaco (May 31, 2012)

parsifal said:


> So, we do have at least some common ground. not 100% but I think we are saying similar things.....Germany needed a cheap, easily produced, low cost easy to maintain fuel source. And that seems to be best derived from organic biowastes of some description. Do you agree? if so, why did Hitler initially reject these alternatives. Or is his 1936 an un-adopted edict. maybe the technology was beyond his understanding. i dont know. What is apparent is that germany pursued the high end of the industry.....the big hydrogenation plants, that were expensive, produced expensive product, and a honey magnet to being bombed. Why did Hitler support that option and not the lower cost organic fuels????



Hitler was a vegitarian. He could stand veggies going to waste.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 1, 2012)

While producer gas, methane and alcohol can all help with powering vehicles and stationary power plants on the home front and free up quantities of fuel they are pretty much useless for combat vehicles/aircraft or even tactical supply vehicles. Much like horses and horse fodder the alternative fuels are heavier and much bulkier per 1000/10,000 BTUs and need a higher percentage of transport capacity the longer the supply lines are. While not technically difficult to switch an existing engine from one fuel to another it does require a few parts and a mechanic. Not something done in a few minutes but a few hours.


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## davebender (Jun 1, 2012)

3 September 1939. First RAF Bomber Command operation against Germany.
12 May 1944. First effective RAF Bomber Command attack on hydrogenation plants.

If hydrogenation plants were so easy to bomb then why did the RAF require 56 months to seriously impair production of German aviation gasoline?


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## wuzak (Jun 1, 2012)

Perhaps because initially they couldn't hit anything and then the oil installations weren't a primary target objective for a while?


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## mhuxt (Jun 1, 2012)

wuzak said:


> Perhaps because initially they couldn't hit anything and then the oil installations weren't a primary target objective for a while?


 
Reading through the official history, oil was identified almost from the start as a critical bottleneck, but as wuzak says, the early RAF raids couldn't hit it. By the time Oboe came along, BC was being run by Harris, who saw oil as just another "panacea target." Even after the heavies did better than he believed they could in attacks on French railway targets, he wanted to go back to city attacks, and Portal didn't have the cojones to force the change comprehensively.


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## davebender (Jun 1, 2012)

They why not build a couple more during the late 1930s?


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## wuzak (Jun 1, 2012)

davebender said:


> *Early RAF raids couldn't hit hydrogenation plants*
> 
> They why not build a couple more during the late 1930s?



That would require the Germans forseeing that a) the RAF would be forced to bomb at night and b) that night bombing would be woefully inaccurate.

Remember that most of the bombing theorists in the mid-30s held that the bomber would always get through, no matter what the opposition. So they would be coming during daylight nd would have better accuracy.

It would also require Germany moving towards a war economy earlier. The extra capacity cannot possibly be for domestic use, the only purpose being for future military action.

Building more plants would surely signal to their enemies that here is a very important target. It may have led to the Briitish not giving up on oil as quickly as they did, and may have signalled the US that this was rather more important than ball bearings.

I'd also ask, how long did a plant take to build and become operational? I would guess years.

And when did the existing plants become operational?

There were plans to move the plants to underground installations, but that would be difficult and time consuming. Had they built them underground from the start, or moved them underground from the beginning of hostilities, they may have been more difficult to disrupt.


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## davebender (Jun 1, 2012)

Sure it can.

WWI wrecked the world economy. By the 1930s a multitude of trade barriers prevented nations from freely importing and exporting. 1930s Germany could not take importation of petroleum products for granted. But they could always count on petroleum products produced from domestic coal which Germany had plenty of. 

If Britain and France don't start a general European war during September 1939 the German hydrogenation plants will produce gasoline for VWs driven by civilians. The new Wolfsburg facility was supposedly the largest automobile factory in the world during 1939. So there should be millions of VW Beetles parked in German driveways by 1945.


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## michaelmaltby (Jun 1, 2012)

".... VWs driven by civilians. The new Wolfsburg facility was supposedly the largest automobile factory in the world during 1939. So there should be millions of VW Beetles parked in German driveways by 1945...."

Yeah sure, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn that you'd like too ....

Have you actually read Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction", Dave ...? The most damning indictment of the Nazi economy was the VW dream .... Opel, Ford and other German car manufacturers wouldn't touch the Nazi idea of a _Volks _Wagen (for the specified price) .... but lots of German tool and die makers - and the like - paid out their 10DM month by month for the their future car .... none was delivered. 

Volkswagen was an utter disaster of consumer-based enterprise. 

The quest to build a *VolksRadio* ... so folks could listen to Der Feuher's broadcasts ... was equally disastrous. 

MM


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## parsifal (Jun 2, 2012)

> 3 September 1939. First RAF Bomber Command operation against Germany.
> 12 May 1944. First effective RAF Bomber Command attack on hydrogenation plants.
> 
> If hydrogenation plants were so easy to bomb then why did the RAF require 56 months to seriously impair production of German aviation gasoline?[/


QUOTE]

In 1939 germany did not suffe from critical shortages of oil. it had large prewar reserves, access to Rumanian Oil, some access to neutral oil and the hydrogenation plants.

There was an embargo on strategic bombing until after the invasion of france, and for much of the summer the RAF was fully preoccupied with bombing targets thought to be of immediate impact to the battle of france. BC was concentrating at that time on communications....a poor choice of target but legitimate.

The real bombin effort against strategic targets in Germany did not begin until november 1940, and then at a miniscule level and at night . for that first year of the campaign, to november 1941, the night bombing campaign was undertaken on the assumption that night bombing could be undertaken as a precision bombing campaign. Oil was a legiti
mate target but was not the priority......main focus of this early campaign was still communications, followed by u-boats there was also some priority given to electrical generation from memory. As is well known, there was a spectacular lack of success in precision targets, moreover oil was still not the priority for the RAF.

1942 was the first oil crisis suffered by the German army and air force....brought on by a shortage of certain kinds of fuels and a shortage of transport to the front rather than a shortage of actual crude oil. the shortages were real enough and had a tangible effect on Axis strategy and war potential. The italian fleet and to a lesser extent the german heavy fleet were severely constrained by oil shortages, the luftwaffes ability to train and exapand wa limited, the ability of Rommels army to exploit local successes was also constrained by fuel limits, the ability of the armies on the east front to undertake a front wide offensive was constrained, and lastly german strategic decisions were by now being greatly influenced by fuel shortages. i dont know how much effect british actions were affeecting this shortage, but it is at least arguable that the naval blockade, the diplomentic isolation of germany and of course the effects of bombing were all playing some part in that strangulation of the german war effort. it certainly wasnt doing it any good.

it was, however, the US decision to concentrate their daylight offensive on oil from January 1944 with fully escorted raids all the way to the targets that proved decisive. germany by then, in terms of oil reserves had staged a partial recovery, though not without cost. She had severely curtailed bomber production, reduced training for aircrew to dangerous levels, curtailed and cut back on the size and usage of her fleet. sure, all these things were also due to other issues, but oil shortages were playing their part as well into this descent.

So, ther are two things to say in response to your claim. the first is that far from being made fireproof from oil shortages prior to 1944, germany had an ongoing and chronic problem that appears to have been exacerbated by the activities of the allies (which for practical purposes were the activities of the british and the CW rather than the Us up to that time). The second is that once the hydrogenation plant became the focuss of a credible threat from a properly protected and sizable precision daylight force, it folded very rapidly. German resistance was shortened by at least a year as a result of US precision bombing of oil targetes (joined belatedly by the RAF from about September)


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## stona (Aug 9, 2015)

In 1938, the last full year of peace, only about 30% of Germany's 7.5 million tonne consumption of oil was produced domestically. About 5 million tonnes was imported from Venezuela, USA and Iran with 451,000 tonnes from Romania.

In 1939, before the start of the war the Germans imported 5,165,00 tonnes, nearly 200,000 tonnes more than in 1938. 
In 1940 this fell to just 2,075,000 tonnes and all of this was from continental Europe, 619,000 tons from the USSR. The Germans started to suffer a shortage of oil as early as 1940. This was partly due to a failure to meet pre-war targets for reserves. The Germans started the war with a reserve of 492,000 tonnes of aviation fuel against a planned reserve of 1.5 million tonnes and 1,118,000 tonnes of diesel and fuel oils against a planned reserve of 2.8 million tonnes. Despite fortuitous supplies of aviation fuel like the 250,000 tonnes captured in France, the Germans never really had enough fuel.

This did not become a crisis until Barbarossa because early war successes were so fuel efficient. One source reckons that all Germany's successes of 1940 used 12 million barrels of oil, equivalent to just three days US production!

As early as March 1941 General Thomas warned both Keitel and Goring that reserves would be exhausted by October that year and that it would be impossible to offset the critical shortage in supply. He urged that it was critical that the Germans _'seize quickly and exploit the Caucasus oil fields'._
On 26th August, as his prognostication came true, he wrote another report for the OKW noting that current production was insufficient and that_ 'even if production was pushed to its limits it would be impossible to supply all the required oil. Accordingly our only option is to cut consumption in accordance with the availability of supplies'. _
Four days later Thomas met with Generalmajor Wagner who explained that Army Groups South and Centre on the eastern front were experiencing critical fuel shortages (partly due to transport problems), but that he believed requirements could be met with further rationing of domestic and non-operational supplies (this would have a dire effect on Luftwaffe training in 1942) and cuts in supplies to occupied territories. Nonetheless he felt that supplies would be exhausted by early 1942 and that _'new oil fields would have to be captured'._

A lack of oil was the elephant in the conference room as the OKW planned its campaigns as early as 1941. This was without any useful intervention from the RAF. Towards the end of the war the fatal, not critical, shortages experienced by the Germans were as much to do with the loss of territory as they were due to Allied bombing.

Cheers

Steve


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## Koopernic (Aug 9, 2015)

michaelmaltby said:


> ".... VWs driven by civilians. The new Wolfsburg facility was supposedly the largest automobile factory in the world during 1939. So there should be millions of VW Beetles parked in German driveways by 1945...."
> 
> Yeah sure, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn that you'd like too ....
> 
> ...



I have Tooze's book, the pulp paperback one that is supposed to be produce a new Historical insights by an penetrating economic genius. The book disappoints, the economic data is sparse, the graphs completely illegible and literally nothing to do with the price of eggs anyway. Hyping a book is not uncommon but I haven't seen anything as hyped since Tomas Pikkety's "Capital". Another book that shall be brought cited but never read. Tooze has a more academic title, maybe its professional, but that book sucks. it belongs in the same bookshelf as many other historians, such as Kershaw, who prefer a haughty rant rather than a study separated by time. Central to Tooze's book is the claim that nazi economic incompetence sent Germany broke and that the solution was to invade the Soviet Union so as to obtain grain.

Totally missing is the effect of Allied economic and commerce embargos, US economic warfare (Munro doctrine in German Sth American markets) and the latter military embargos and the fact that Western Europe also grew food and the incredible expense of running even a short war such as the war with France.

Some of the impending German economic problems were real. Britain's economic problems due to war costs were real until the US rescued her with lend lease. 

Tooze over states these problems and most particularly over states their cause (clearly a persistent them). He does repeat interesting points that were well known anyway but by repeating them he helps dispel the myths further. The myths are that
1 German women didn't work but sat at home for ideological reasons. (they had a higher participation rate than British women but were focussed on farms, particular family farms)
2 The German economy was on a peace time footing and not efficiently run (the lack on munitions production is due to the effort in tooling up and investments in factories that don't come to fruition till 1942. In fact the Germans couldn't even run a second shift in a factory, their labour shortage was so severe. many School leavers were forced to work as cleaners and in other vital services as a duty for 6 months since the positions couldn't be filled in any other way.


The volkswaggon factory ended up making Fi 103, V1 missiles. They were hoping for production rates of 100,000/month ie 1.2 million V1's year.


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## kool kitty89 (Aug 9, 2015)

Koopernic said:


> Central to Tooze's book is the claim that nazi economic incompetence sent Germany broke and that the solution was to invade the Soviet Union so as to obtain grain.
> 
> Totally missing is the effect of Allied economic and commerce embargos, US economic warfare (Munro doctrine in German Sth American markets) and the latter military embargos and the fact that Western Europe also grew food and the incredible expense of running even a short war such as the war with France.
> 
> Some of the impending German economic problems were real. Britain's economic problems due to war costs were real until the US rescued her with lend lease.


It also ignores that the German economy was in horrible shape in 1933, and the Nazi economic planning wasn't focused on creating a long term stable economy from internal resources, but expanding its economy through deficit spending with plans to recoup that through economic/military expansion. Somewhat similar strategies might actually have worked internally as well without the intentions of posing an international bluffing/posturing (and obscuring of insustainability) if actually aimed at and managed more aggressively rationally. (that could include some territorial expansion, but with or without that, it really would depend on ability to establish favorable international trade while also breaking through the bonds of lingering WWI reparations) Deficit spending with less offensive military emphasis and greater focus on pure economic productivity investment to the extent of actually becoming profitable (able to shed the national debt and then some) and stable in the long run so long as they could establish/maintain favorable international commerce. (doing that with absolutely zero expansion might be tricky though ... even without grandiose aspirations of a European -or world- empire or new world order, demonstrations of force and power tend to be genuinely useful and often necessary devices in international diplomacy - the US did that well enough in the early 1900s and even with Taft's more 'passive' dollar diplomacy, at least until isolationism took hold)


The volkswaggon factory ended up making Fi 103, V1 missiles. They were hoping for production rates of 100,000/month ie 1.2 million V1's year.[/QUOTE]
That points more to mis-allocation of resources relative to more practical/useful needs at the time, but that's a logistics problem, not an economic productivity one.

From the recent discussions regarding the German economy (particularly in the strategic context) was failure to really modernize the national transportation network. 

On the fuel end of things, we already had the long discussion on potential shift to alternate synthetic fuels pre-war had there been serious goals for breaking away from oil dependency altogether. (designing an infrastructure with the majority of domestic land vehicles powered by methanol -or a fuel blend with dominant methanol composition- would be high on that list along eith generally focusing on fischer tropsch plants rather than large, centralized, costly hydrogenation plants)

Small fischer tropsch plants only made sense strategically (for dispersed production) but should have been faster and cheaper to set up and fit in better in the interim period with the existing somewhat scattered transportation network and potentially be more efficient even after expansion of transportation. (predominantly localized fuel production rather than centralized, less fuel wasted due to long-distance transport from centralized production -this is only potentially, though, and reliant on fuel production being distributed at least relatively close to local demand)

Feedstocks for fischer tropsch plants should also be more flexible, with various fuel crops and agricultural waste (and wood and other organic materials/waste -preferably relatively compact and dry material) would be useful along with coal. (including the lignite Germany had in great supply)

TEL wouldn't be good for boosting alcohol based fuels' octane ratings, but you'd only really need that for aircraft use anyway (along with high energy density), and limited amounts of benzoyles and other aromatics from distillation of oil, coal, and potentially wood would be useful along with synthetically produced high-octane additives in a blend of high-energy density alcohols (probably mostly butanols), isooctane, ketones, and aromatics. (a variety of blends should work, but you need a good management of energy density, combustion qualities, and low freezing/jelling points to cope with low temperatures at altitude -vaporization qualities would be more important for carureted engines, but less problematic for fuel injected ones) You'd also want to minimize rubber and metal incompatibility/corrosion issues, but I think that may be more an issue with methanol and to some extent ethanol than most of the other fuel options in play. (and most extreme for aluminum components, so ground vehicles with iron blocks and steel fuel tanks should have fewer engineering problems except the air-cooled boxer engines Volkeswagon used might be more of a problem depending how many aluminum components were in prolonged contact with methanol -obviously something that would be worked on during the initial design phase if transition to a methanol economy had already started in the late 1930s)

Turbine engines have a lot more flexibility and lack of freezing and energy density should be the only considerations there (and vaporization during start-up, or requiring a secondary reservoir for easily vaporized, preferably smokeless fuel during start-up -ether should work well there, dimethyl ether would be the cheapest option but possibly unattractive due to pressurization requirements, maybe ether dissolved in methanol would be a more practical cheap option).


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## stona (Aug 10, 2015)

Hitler always intended to seek sources of oil elsewhere. The earliest overt confirmation I have found with a very quick look are his remarks at a conference at the Berghof in July 1940 when he said that after 'the destruction of Russian manpower' the German Army must drive towards the Baku oil field (in 1942 the British MEW estimated the output of this oil field at 24 million tons per year). I'm sure this was a long held intention. It would be typical of Nazi thinking to assume they would access the oil of the Caucasus long before they had actually achieved it.

This was nothing new for Germany. After *WW1* Ludendorff wrote that _'Romanian oil was of decisive importance...the production of oil in Romania had increased to the limits of the possible, but this could not make good the whole shortage.'_ The High Command made a plan to seize the very same Baku oil field, but were beaten to it by the British who occupied it in August 1918, before being removed by the Turks. However no oil became available to the Germans before they (and the Ottomans) signed the armistice and in November the British were back. The British occupation of Baku was, according to Ludendorff, _'a serious blow to us'_
Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat its mistakes, and the Nazis had a view of history which did not make them great learners.

The Nazis did make efforts to mitigate the problem domestically, but nowhere near enough. State subsidies for exploration resulted in an increase in domestic crude production from 238,000 tonnes in 1933 to 1,052,000 tonnes in 1940.
When the Nazis came to power there were only three synthetic fuel plants operating in Germany on a virtually experimental basis. Despite the high cost of producing fuels this way, something nobody has mentioned yet, the regime enlarged this industry throughout the 1930s so that production reached an annual rate of about 2,300,000 tonnes by September 1939.
There wasn't any 'slack' in the domestic oil economy. The only way to increase production was to build more expensive plants producing fuels at a minimum of four times the cost as those from crude oil (and still fall short of even peace time requirements for years to come) or to adopt the easier option of seizing someone else's supply. No prizes for guessing which option the Germans went for.

Cheers

Steve


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## davebender (Aug 10, 2015)

Running out of fuel allowed the Soviets to occupy most of Europe. So high cost or not, I think synthetic fuel was worth every pfennig Germany and other anti communist nations invested in the program.


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## wiking85 (Aug 10, 2015)

davebender said:


> Running out of fuel allowed the Soviets to occupy most of Europe. So high cost or not, I think synthetic fuel was worth every pfennig Germany and other anti communist nations invested in the program.


Considering Germany couldn't use all the vehicles she made in 1944 because of fuel shortages nor train enough replacements starting in 1942 for the Luftwaffe for the same reason, having less production for more of the basics is pretty critical, because anything above what you can fuel is a waste of resources.


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## parsifal (Aug 10, 2015)

> because anything above what you can fuel is a waste of resources



Not really. Shortage of reserves, whether that be manpower shortages, or equipment shortages, is a major reason why campaigns (be they offensive or defensive) ran out puff and fail. It was the major reason for the failures in front of Moscow in 1941, and again in 1942. Having everything in the shop window was something Hitler ardently believed in, and it probably did more to lose his war that any shortages of fuel ever did.


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## wiking85 (Aug 10, 2015)

parsifal said:


> Not really. Shortage of reserves, whether that be manpower shortages, or equipment shortages, is a major reason why campaigns (be they offensive or defensive) ran out puff and fail. It was the major reason for the failures in front of Moscow in 1941, and again in 1942. Having everything in the shop window was something Hitler ardently believed in, and it probably did more to lose his war that any shortages of fuel ever did.


Reserves fall into what you can fuel.


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## parsifal (Aug 10, 2015)

Of course, and the issues of fuel shortages fall into a number of differing categories. Strategic shortages curtailed German economic activity and curtailed economic activity affected a whole range of war production programs. Synthetic fuel production was too expensive to help that situation.

In terms of battlefield logistics, there were localised shortages from the beginning of the war, but such shortages really began to bite deep from the fall of 1941. In Russia, logistic shortages of all kinds meant the heer, and the LW were unable to keep vehicles operational, Not being able to maintain operational rates affected the force ratios and ultimately this led to defeats of 1941. 

But equally important to fuel shortages were the shortages of transport vehicles to replace losses. By early December '41, the state of repair of the Heers vehicle park was parlous, to say the least, and could not be rectified because of a lack or reserves. Cutting back on vehicle production would absolutely have made the situation worse. Fuel was not in short supply, so much as in the wrong place. There was plenty of fuel at the supply heads, but none at the front. The supply heads were several hundred miles behind the lines, at the slowly advancing rail heads. There was sufficient truck transport to get the supplies from the supply heads to the front depots, and this was directly a result of insufficient numbers. German defeat in 1941 had nothing to do with supply shortages in a strategic sense, it had everything to do with an inability to get those supplies where needed. And that was a function of vehicle numbers.


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## stona (Aug 11, 2015)

The Germans were only able to provide enough fuel to the eastern front 'in a strategic sense' in early 1942 by severely rationing supplies elsewhere in the domestic and non-operational military fields. They had mitigated their lack of fuel by using reserves, which always act as a buffer, in the previous year. In 1941 the reserves had been plundered to support the 3.5+million men, 600,000 vehicles, 3,500 tanks and more than 2,000 aircraft committed to 'Barbarossa'. That is what reserves are for, but the problem for Germany was that once used the reserves could not be replaced. Oil usage followed oil supply to a large extent from late 1941 onwards. It was this that prompted Hitler to tell the senior officers of Army Group South on 1st June 1942 that _"if I don't get the oil of Maikop and Grozny, then I must end this war"._

5 days after War Directive 35 (for Taifun) was issued on 6th September 1941, Halder estimated the fuel requirements for the front at 27 train loads *per day * for the rest of September and then 29 per day for all of October. The OKW offered 22 train loads up to 16th of September and then the requested 27 for the rest of that month. 

For October it could only supply 22 train loads per day (just over 75% of that required)

For November, when Halder asked for 20 train loads per day, the OKW offered only 3 (15% of that required).

It wasn't just that fuel was in the wrong place.

Cheers

Steve

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## parsifal (Aug 11, 2015)

Oil was a problem for Germany from the first day of the War, but the shortages were of negligible impact on the conduct of her campaigns up to the end of 1941. It did however affect the domestic economy from the very beginning . When Hitler launched the Panzers across the Polish frontier, Germany had stockpiled 15 million tons of fuel. As he did not expect the British and French to declare war, he did not think oil would be a problem. Even when the Allies did declare war, oil was still not an immediate problem. Rather than consuming their stockpile, the Germans actually increased it by seizing the stockpiles of the defeated nations: Denmark and Norway (April 1940) and then the Netherlands, Belgium, and France May 1940). This added added another 5 million tons to the German reserves. This was, however, a one-time bonanza, as these countries imported oil and because of the Royal Navy blockade, further maritime imports were cut off. The NAZI-Soviet alliance which made the War possible, however, added a whole new source of desperately needed oil for the Germans. 

The Soviets as part of the NAZI-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact delivered significant quantities of oil to the NAZIs. The arrangement was tht Soviets would deliver grain and raw materials and the Germans manufactured goods desired by the Soviets. As it worked out, the Soviets immediately began delivering large quantities of critically needed raw materials to the Germans. The Germans were to deliver the industrial goods on a longer time frame, but fell behind on even this schedule. The Soviets delivered 4 million tons of oil in 1940 and 1.6 million tons during the first half of 1941. This was just part of the vast quantity of critical materiels the Soviets delivered to the Germans. These deliveries temporarily alleviated one of the most serious problems faced by the Wehrmacht. of course this bonanza ended when Hitler launched the Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941). Ironically a rail transport of Soviet tankers was crossing the border at the very moment that the Wehrmacht launched Barbarossa. 

Additionally, the major source of oil for the Germans was Romania. The Romanian oill fields, especially Ploesti, was Germany's principal source of oil during the War. German had purchased 2.8 million tons (1938). As part of its foreign policy, Germany steadily increased its influence in Romania. Romania declared its neutrality at the outbreak of World War II. The country was targeted by the Soviet Union as part of its series of Eastern European aggressions. The Soviets seized the provinces of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina (1940). This essentially forced Romania into the NAZI camp. German troops were allowed to move into Romania, taking over the rail system (October 1940). Hitler was desperate to prevent Soviet seizure of the oil fields. The Germans began enlarging the oil fields. Romanian shipments to Germany increased to 13 million barrels (1941...about 2.5 million tons). The Germans were, however, no longer paying for the oil in any meaningful way. It was considered part of Romania's contribution to the war effort. Romanian deliveries continued at the 1941 level in both 1942 and 1943. This amounted to about half of Romania’s total production, but the Germans wanted more. Here the Romanians were not overly cooperative. The increase in production meant that the fields were being rapidly depleted. In addition the Germans were not paying for the oil and promised deliveries of coal and other items were not arriving. Despite falling production, the effects of bombing, a failing transport system, total mistrust between the germans and the Romanians, Romanian deliveries still totaled 7 million barrels in the first 6 months of 1944. Further American raids hammered Ploesti (late spring and summer of 1944). By this time the Luftwaffe defenses had been largely depleted. When the Red army arrived, the ploesti fields and refineries were left a total wreck.

Ploesti and Synthetic production was just enough to meet German needs, with a pinch and a tuck here and there, and provided the Germans could keep their campaigns to short sharp affairs. They managed to do this until Barbarossa. German oil reserves actually peaked 21 June 1941, though there was never a lavish over supply. Thereafter the vast distances meant the germans spent vast amounts of fuel just to remain supplied and in heavy operations they found consumption rates skyrocketed. An Infantry Division on the western Front in 1940 consumed about 100 tons of oil per day during peak periods of exertion. In the East, with the vastly worse roads, longer distances, massive frontages and sparse disposition of the rail network, the average fuel consumption shot up to 700 tons per day. It was so high, divisional tails.......the truck borne supply echelons of the divisions....could no longer be considered as having sufficient lift capability to keep the divisions fully supplied and on an offensive footing all the time. this was the problem that Halder was referring to in his diary, and it only got worse as time progressed. The overworked truck park rapidly fell apart and broke down, the worsening situation at the front meant that most of the front had to remain inactive and unable to react to Soviet initiatives, it was not longer possible to put into effect large movements of men and material without losing large numbers of both. It was not until the end of the war that the Heer began to receive less than it minimum allocations considered necessary, but they were increasingly unable toi get the fuel where they needed to get it. Admittedly, in order to retain necessary levels of fuel allocations to the army, massive dislocation occurred in terms of other functions such as industry and training, but at the front, at least to the higher echelon distribution points, there was never the shortages that are so often used as an excuse for German defeats. The defeats occurred because of the breakdowns in their logistic system more than anything. I have to disagree with you Im afraid.


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## stona (Aug 11, 2015)

I'd agree with most of that.

Synthetic oil plants were increased from the 3 I mentioned in 1933 to 14 operating and another 6 under construction by the outbreak of the war, but there was never any realistic way such plants could supply all of Germany's needs (and of course that of her allies, particularly Italy) in peace time, let alone war time.

In 1940 only 2,040,000 tonnes of oil were imported to the Reich, well less than half the figure for 1939. I have a figure of 619,600 tonnes from the USSR. Set this against a domestic_ peace time _ (1938 ) consumption of about 7,500,000 tonnes. The Reich received 256,300 tonnes from the USSR in the first part of 1941 but obviously supplies ceased with the German invasion. 

Romanian supplies were never going to be enough. In 1941, after Romania had acceded to the Tri-Partite and Anti-Comintern Pacts, hitching its wagon to Nazi Germany's horses, it exported just over 2,000,000 tonnes of oil to the Reich. 
Synthetic production was never going to be enough. The only option for the Germans was to capture a significant source in 1941 or at worst 1942. The Germans couldn't operate on a scale in 1942 which even allowed the possibility, and the existing shortage was one of many, many, factors that led to this failure.

Cheers

Steve


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## kool kitty89 (Aug 12, 2015)

stona said:


> When the Nazis came to power there were only three synthetic fuel plants operating in Germany on a virtually experimental basis. Despite the high cost of producing fuels this way, something nobody has mentioned yet, the regime enlarged this industry throughout the 1930s so that production reached an annual rate of about 2,300,000 tonnes by September 1939.
> There wasn't any 'slack' in the domestic oil economy. The only way to increase production was to build more expensive plants producing fuels at a minimum of four times the cost as those from crude oil (and still fall short of even peace time requirements for years to come) or to adopt the easier option of seizing someone else's supply. No prizes for guessing which option the Germans went for.


Those were hydrogenation plants, very, very different beasts from fischer troph synthesis plants. Had investment in extensive development of hydrogenation plants been greatly reduced and plans instead pushed for small, far less costly localized fischer troph synthesis plants, it would have improved many of the logistical fuel supply issues a great deal.

Fischer troph synthesis is less efficient at producing gasoline/kerosene/diesel type hydrocarbons (or light hydrocarbons) than hydrogenation plants, but aside from being far faster and less costly to set-up, they ARE quite efficient at producing a variety of other useful fuels and solvents with methanol the ideal case for pure efficiency, but producing primarily methanol with a lesser (but still significant) portion of other fuels could have filled most or all of the needs from domestic automobiles to transports to aircraft.

A total switch to vehicles and engine designs fully optimized for those alternate fuels would have been the most costly area to invest in, and given the incompatibility between directly switching between gasoline and methanol impractical (you'd at very least need to recalibrate the carburetors for the differing fuel/air mixtures) it would probably have been more practical to aim at fuel blends closer in overall characteristics to normal gasoline. (at least for military vehicles intended to potentially operate on captured foreign fuel resources when needed) For purely domestic cars and trucks, 'unique' fuel standards could be more practical. (the Volkswagon project could have championed engine design optimized around this and potentially used higher compression ratios to take advantage of the high octane ratings of fischer troph synthesis derived fuel blends -be it a standard based on nearly pure methanol with only minor additives, or larger portions or other fuels, though the former seems more likely)



You'd also neither need nor want TEL used in alcohol dominant fuel blends as that tends to worsen octane numbers and may have some other incompatibility issues. I'm not sure if eliminating high volume TEL production would help overall industrial output much, but it shouldn't hurt. (plus, distribution of TEL wouldn't be a limiting factor for usable fuel production/distribution -ie remote small plants could produce everything they needed for most needed fuel blends locally with the possible exception of aviation fuel)





parsifal said:


> But equally important to fuel shortages were the shortages of transport vehicles to replace losses. By early December '41, the state of repair of the Heers vehicle park was parlous, to say the least, and could not be rectified because of a lack or reserves. Cutting back on vehicle production would absolutely have made the situation worse. Fuel was not in short supply, so much as in the wrong place. There was plenty of fuel at the supply heads, but none at the front. The supply heads were several hundred miles behind the lines, at the slowly advancing rail heads. There was sufficient truck transport to get the supplies from the supply heads to the front depots, and this was directly a result of insufficient numbers. German defeat in 1941 had nothing to do with supply shortages in a strategic sense, it had everything to do with an inability to get those supplies where needed. And that was a function of vehicle numbers.


Again, this would be an area fischer troph synthesis plants would actually alleviate the logistical supply-chain issues the Germans had. Plants could be set-up relatively quickly and cheaply near front lines (and along ever-changing boarders during the war) while also being small and easily dispersed and potentially hidden/obscured/disguised. The low set-up cost and time would also make any losses of said plants far less critical or costly to replace.

Fischer troph synthesis plants and hydrogenation plants are pretty much night and day across the board.

Granted, if you want fischer troph plants to put out fuel directly equivalent to conventional military standard gasoline, it's going to be much less efficient than producing predominantly methanol. (fuel blends close enough to gasoline to run as 'drop in' replacements would have under 1/3 the yield of methanol or other mixed output yeilds with similar efficiency to pure methanol synthesis -both in the >60% thermodynamic efficiency range) This is only a real hurdle if said vehicles to be fueled had to be able to easily be fueled by captured gasoline resources in the field. (else, full optimization around domestic synthetic fuels would be practical) Carburetors with rapidly adjustable (or more typically, replaceable) jets would make things more flexibile, or perhaps most realistically: featuring chokes with wide enough control to switch between fairly drastically different mixtures. (maintaining fuel blends with consistent ignition and vaporization characteristics would be much easier than having to have gasoline-type fuel/air mixture ratios)



The only other limiting factor is keeping those remote plants well fueled with feedstocks. German lignite would be the obvious feedstock, but for any plants where shipments of coal would be uneconomical or too risky to rely on, there'd still be plenty of other options. (just about any sort of organic material will do, but wood and agricultural/vegetable waste would be among the more ideal options with dry materials preferable to wet ones -animal waste and byproducts could also be used, even domestic waste, but like vegetable waste would need to be dried first; obviously any waste materials more efficiently used for farming purposes -as fertilizer, hay, etc- would be less ideal options)


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## stona (Aug 12, 2015)

So you set a plant up nearer the front. Now you have to supply the feedstuffs to the plant rather than fuel directly to the front. I don't see how this can improve a difficult logistical situation unless the feedstuff happens to be both near your new plant and near the front. Building near an active front entails problems of its own. The Germans were always worried about long range attacks on their Romanian sources of oil, a synthetic plant within a couple of hundred miles of a front is going to be very exposed.

Fundamentally there is no way that the Germans could have manufactured the amounts of various fuels (or proposed alternatives) during the war. It is a salient fact that German production of various fuel types peaked in 1940.
The war was not winnable without the capture and exploitation of sources of millions of tonnes of oil outside Germany. This was never achieved and the war was indeed lost. Had Germany accessed sources of 15-20million tonnes of oil per year......

Cheers

Steve


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## Shortround6 (Aug 12, 2015)

How many tons of coal into the plant equaled how many tons of fuel out?

As far as transporting goes. 1 short ton of coal (2000lbs) has the heating value (BTUs) of 142 gallons of fuel oil. (both vary some depending on exact type/quality of coal and/or oil). Even if the coal has 30,000 BTUs per ton that equals 214 gal. 

Transporting several million tons of coal per year to synthetic fuel plants is a logistic problem of it's own. Germany had problems (strain on rail system) caused by trying to supply Italy with coal after Italy was shut off from British coal.


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## parsifal (Aug 12, 2015)

> I have a figure of 619,600 tonnes from the USSR.



Actually you are right. ive misread many of the units of measurement from my sources. They should be in barrels. There are roughly 7 barrels to the tonne. My reference to 4 million tonnes should be barrels,, and that equals your figure. 



> Again, this would be an area fischer troph synthesis plants would actually alleviate the logistical supply-chain issues the Germans had. Plants could be set-up relatively quickly and cheaply near front lines (and along ever-changing boarders during the war) while also being small and easily dispersed and potentially hidden/obscured/disguised. The low set-up cost and time would also make any losses of said plants far less critical or costly to replace


.

It doesnt help much. Necessarily the plant would need to be located near to a rail head, and the shipment of materials needed to run the plant , build the plant would be beyond rail lift capacity in the east. According to Hayward, Germany reached a peak operating capacity in the east of about 70% requirements in the latter part of 1942. That meant most of the frontline forces were immobilised for most of the time and forced onto the defensive to conserve all manner of supply. Soak up some of that lift capacity by decentralising the synthetic oil production, and you are simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.

But thats not the only problem. Whilst the Germans had issues a plenty with getting supplies of all descriptions to the railheads, they then had the problem of distributing that supply to the front, and this could only be done with truck. With the distances between the sparse railheads to the frontline depots up to 6 or 7 times as great as was the case in western Europe, there just wasnt the lift capacity in the divisional and Corps level truck parks to get the supply distributed to the front line units in near sufficient quantity. Having a depot at an army level supply head (almost always a railhead) isnt going to help the lower orders of the supply chain, and it is here that the real problems existed for germany. They simply did not have the trucks needed to get the supply (of all descriptions) from the army level depots to the front line units.

Horse Drawn units could not do this job very efficiently either, furthermore the horse drawn baggage train for the units was declining in a similar way to the truck park. The To&E for a 1941 Infantry division, @ 15000 combat effectives, was 6500 horses. By 1943, attrition was so bad it was down to about 2000 horses for a 12000 strong To&E. Units could only be moved and supplied en echelon.....basically pooling the horse (and truck pools) to move one unit, then another and another and so on. If units had to be moved quickly, it meant abandoning vast amounts of equipment if the russians atacked on a broad front, as they did 1943-4


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## parsifal (Aug 12, 2015)

> The war was not winnable without the capture and exploitation of sources of millions of tonnes of oil outside Germany.



In the East, even if they had captured and held the Caucasus fields, they couldnt use them. A report from the German Ministry of Supply in 1942, forlornly showed that it would not be possible to return any of the oilfields back to meaningful production in less than a year, with 100% of East front rail capacities devoted to getting the necessary materials needed to rebuild the infrastructure and build the pipelines to get the fuel to where it was needed. Maikop had been so comprehensively sabotaged that it took the russians until 1955 to bring its main fields back into service.

Germany simply lacked the transport capabilities to get the oil back to where it could be used. They needed seaborne lift capability, which just wasnt possible


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## stona (Aug 12, 2015)

parsifal said:


> In the East, even if they had captured and held the Caucasus fields, they couldnt use them.



I agree, that's why I wrote "capture and *exploitation*" in my original post. 

The Germans never stood a chance. The original 'Four Year Plan' called for an increase in production from around 2 million tonnes in 1936 to 4.7 million tonnes in 1940. A substantial part of this increase (from 620,000 to 2,730,000 tonnes) was to be in synthetic fuels from the hydrogenation plants using the recently developed Bergius process.

The four year plan was superceded by the 'Karinhall Plan' which called for an increase in production of finished oil products of 11 million tonnes per year by 1944. It was a completely unrealistic and unattainable target and like its successors, ending in January 1944 with the 'Mineralol Plan', typical of many Nazi regime plans. Writing something into a plan doesn't make it happen! I can think of dozens of production plans from 1933 to 1945 which were never worth the paper they were typed on. 

Cheers

Steve


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## Koopernic (Aug 14, 2015)

Coal to Liquids is now and has been for a long time competitive with conventional sources outside of two areas: The plant must be large to gain economies of scale, it must have a long life time of around 20 years to amortise that investment, it must be near a coal field to minimise the significant costs of coal transport and that coal field must be large enough to support that long amortisation period.

The above parameters limit choices and increase risk. The ability of oil producers to lower production easily and build cheaper refieneries lowers their risk. They can always ruin a coal to liquids investment by slightly undercutting the costs.

The Germans simply didn't have the time to develop their coal to liquids technology. Ideas that worked such as fluidised bed gasifyers and catalytic reactors, alkylation, improved catalysts and new types the could directly synthesis gasoline were developed but entered service in only a small number of plants. 

The kind of technology that became available in the 80s would have given them a chance to build enough plant and make enough oil from a limited coal supply.


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## kool kitty89 (Aug 26, 2015)

Shortround6 said:


> How many tons of coal into the plant equaled how many tons of fuel out?
> 
> As far as transporting goes. 1 short ton of coal (2000lbs) has the heating value (BTUs) of 142 gallons of fuel oil. (both vary some depending on exact type/quality of coal and/or oil). Even if the coal has 30,000 BTUs per ton that equals 214 gal.
> 
> Transporting several million tons of coal per year to synthetic fuel plants is a logistic problem of it's own. Germany had problems (strain on rail system) caused by trying to supply Italy with coal after Italy was shut off from British coal.


You aren't limited to using coal feedstocks. Various forms of organic material could be used, though wood and agricultural waste would probably the most universal. (domestic waste and high-yield fuel crops might be useful too, but the former presents more complex processing logistics and the latter would compete with food production unless limited to land less/not suited to food production but useful for some types of fuel crops)

This doesn't solve all problems, but it at least reduces some of them.

Destructive distillation of many of those materials will also yield some useful liquid fuel fractions as well (just as coal will) but the majority would be solids or gases more useful for synthesis. (tar fractions would be best reprocessed to remove useful aromatics and remaining waste -not useful for industrial grade tar use- cycled back into the synthetic fuel plants)

Methanol synthesis would be the most efficient fuel option with over 60% thermodynamic efficiency (I'm not sure what tonnage that amounts to, but it should be more than 60% of a ton for dry brown coal input due to the lower energy density of methanol ... but probably around 1/2 a ton gasoline/kerosene/fuel oil equivalent). 




Koopernic said:


> Coal to Liquids is now and has been for a long time competitive with conventional sources outside of two areas: The plant must be large to gain economies of scale, it must have a long life time of around 20 years to amortise that investment, it must be near a coal field to minimise the significant costs of coal transport and that coal field must be large enough to support that long amortisation period.
> 
> The above parameters limit choices and increase risk. The ability of oil producers to lower production easily and build cheaper refieneries lowers their risk. They can always ruin a coal to liquids investment by slightly undercutting the costs.


Focusing on synthetic fuels that are relatively cheap and easy to produce that also have potential advantages to conventional petroleum derived hydrocarbon fractions would offer a bit of a different comparison than an apples to apples open-market direct-pretroleum-subsitutute fuel. The problem there is it won't work well on an open market unless there was a massive push for competitive alternative engine designs optimized primarily for non-petroleum fuels. (or rather, not direct distillates -potentially still using petroleum feedstocks among many others, or including a blend of direct distillates and synthetic fuels complying to a common standard range of properties)

Large-scale government intervention (something possible with Germany's planned economy ... had it been managed remotely efficiently) could sidestep that hurtle by mandating development of the new technology (or pushing disincentives for the unnatractive facets of the existing fuel industry), at very least for domestic civil and military use.

This would have been something to very seriously consider during the transition to octane boosted fuels as you'd both avoid any use of TEL and standardize on higher octane fuels with higher compression ratios as standard features. (without the latter, the fuel economy of alcohols -especially methanol- or any high-oxygenate fuel blends is rather poor) With standard gasoline being phased out, you could also take advantage of other properties like reduced or eliminated soot/carbon deposits from incomplete combustion (might still be a problem in blends with high hydrocarbon fractions or high molecular weight alcohols -anything with low molecular oxygen content). And yes, you would need to address corrosion issues and other factors specific to alcohol fuels, but that's much less of a problem if engineering is focused on that as a standard feature rather than tossed in after the fact. (designing flex-fuel engines that worked reasonably well on both normal gasoline and alcohol-heavy synthetic blends would likely be much more troublesome, especially for anything high performance)

It's also really aviation fuel that needs a significantly higher energy density (by volume and weight) than synthetic alcohol fuel blends could offer, and more limited supplies of aviation fuel blends (higher alcohols, ketones, isooctane, and aromatics) should have been reasonable to produce with the available technology as well, but more difficult to produce at just _any_ synthetic fuel plant. (you'd need a supply line of coal/oil derived aromatics to achive high energy density while maintaining high octane rating, short of that you'd likely make do with something with good octane rating but slightly worse than gasoline energy density -likely poorer fuel economy than C2 or C3, possibly competitive with B4 due to the higher compression ratio making up some of the difference; you'd also have to account for the slightly richer mixtures needed for the more oxygen-heavy fuel blends) Destructive distillation of wood and vegetable matter can yield some aromatics, but the yield depends on the type of wood/material and you would need industrial grade charcoal retorts and fractional condensation towers to refine that. (or possibly a hybrid distillation-synthesis reaction chamber cycling though different modes of operation, minimizing waste heat from any sort of batch process, recycling the wood gas directly -as syngas- and using the hot wood char left in the chamber as syngas feedstock directly) Even so, such distillation apparatus might lack the ability to separate out most of the useful aromatic fractions from the wood tar, and additional processing may have been needed. (additional distillation passes/stages)

Similar destructive distillation cycles would make sense to include on primarily coal fired synthetic fuel plants as well. (rather than oxidizing all those useful distillation products into syngas, separate them out as part of the processing cycle of the reaction chambers -this would be more complicated in a continuous reaction arrangement rather than a cycle based one though)






Hydrogenation plant derived synthetic fuels would have far fewer advantages over petroleum and a greater fraction of LPG fractions and methane not so useful for general purpose fuel. (unless fischer tropsch plants were set-up alongside hydrogenation plants to recycle the 'waste' gases by converting them to syngas and then to methanol or other liquids)

A gas-to-liquids program might have worked in Italy too, but their natural gas production was too low in the pre-war and wartime period. (so unless they could massively increase drilling efforts -and needed technology for that- sooner, natural gas derived fuels wouldn't be so useful there either) I don't think Italy's wood or agriculture resources would be enough to make biomass to liquid fuel options attractive either. (same would go for any sort of fermentation based alcohol fuel production system, which would tend to be less efficient than fischer tropsch synthesis anyway unless biomass waste was recycled in synthetic fuel plants alongside ethanol fermentation plants)




> The Germans simply didn't have the time to develop their coal to liquids technology. Ideas that worked such as fluidised bed gasifyers and catalytic reactors, alkylation, improved catalysts and new types the could directly synthesis gasoline were developed but entered service in only a small number of plants.
> 
> The kind of technology that became available in the 80s would have given them a chance to build enough plant and make enough oil from a limited coal supply.


Any one engineering solution with 1930s technology may not have been workable (no direct synthetic gasoline substitute), but a combination of solutions using technology of the day applied in an efficient, logical manner, might have. (all my comments on the fischer tropsch are based on the processes aimed at production of methanol or the alternate catalysts used for butanol and isooctane production -along with potentially useful biproducts) Honestly, optimzing plants around isooctane production and tapping off intermediate and byproducts as needed might have been the most efficient option with pure menthanol plants used on a more limited basis for high purity grades of that as a chemical feedstock rather than fuel. (I believe methanol produced as an intermediate byproduct of butanol synthesis -a stage of isooctane synthesis- achieved similar thermal efficiency to pure methanol synthesis but resulted in an impure product not useful for technical or lab grade industrial use but very useful as a fuel feedstock -rather than recycling it with syngas into another pass of the butanol process which would require that much more energy input compared to using the methanol directly) That way, a single plant could vary its output of a number of different fuel-grade chemicals and a few technical grade ones (isooctane produced in this method would be of high purity, I believe).


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## stona (Aug 26, 2015)

The Germans did invest heavily in the then new synthetic fuel technologies available to them. They did not start from scratch, designing different engines or adapting existing engines for different fuel types for what I think are blindingly obvious reasons. They never produced close to quantities of fuels required in this way. For all fuels the figure would be less than 10% (off the top of my head).

This is a dead end, the only viable option for Germany was to capture and exploit one or several substantial sources of oil outside Germany, and they knew it. There were no miracle solutions. The only miracle is that having failed to secure an oil supply they managed to continue the war for as long as they did.

Cheers

Steve

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## parsifal (Aug 27, 2015)

steve summarises the situation precisely gentlemen, and no amount weaving and jinxing is going to get around those basic home truths im afraid.

There are some ironies to reflect upon. Oil was available in both Libya and French north Africa, but not developed or even the extent of the reserves known. I wonder what might have happened if the reserves in Tripolitania had been more rigourously investigated and developed in the mid 1930s.

Another great imponderable is if the germans had somehow managed to capture the Iraqi oilfields in 1940. if that had been done intact who knows what might have happened. 

Oil is discovered in Libya in 1959.


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## Koopernic (Aug 27, 2015)

Methanol Synthesis was probably the only process that was efficient enough to not require absurd amounts of coal and which had the least capital plant requirements to limit building construction. A fairly mature technology, I believe ICI was considering such a plant in the 1920's. Of course it requires specialised engines to exploit, an unattractive proposition.

I have no great faith in biofuels now, except maybe algae and have little hope for them in the 1930s. Europe was starving due to blockade and there was no spare crop land to dedicate to fuels. Perhaps wood chip waste.

The synthesis via the route syngas->butanol->butylene->iso-octane is interesting as it could produce a high quality product in which it was possible to very accurately trade off output of butanol versus methanol production. The chromium catalysts took in syngas and produced 17% butanol with the balance Methanol and traces of gases, propanol. The methanol could easily be converted to more butanol via cycling through the catalyst. The butanol could eventually be converted to iso-octane. I don't imagine it would be more than 20%-25% efficient but it was a very high grade pure product that didn't required down stream separation from other hydrocarbons. If they could be made small and modular enough they would allow dispersal.

The Bergius Hydrogenation plants were very efficient in terms of coal perhaps over 60% (but required capital and steel) they produced considerable amounts of propane's and butanes. These could be used in LPG to power vehicles, really the entire German commercial transport fleet could have run of this LPG but they couldn't build the required 600,000 vessels. Moreover the propanes and butanes could be subjected to acid alkylation to produce very high grade gasoline (this was the process that allowed the RAF to switch from 100 octane to 100/130). The source of butane for the polymerisation to iso-octane also switched to these gases from the hydrogenation plants thus eliminating the need for syngas production in many cases.

Hence the hydrogenation plants could become the centre of iso-octane and alkylate production as well as direct production of gasoline and diesoline. They were by nature big and expensive and therefore targets that could not be easily dispersed.

This seems to be what happened.

Another possibility is fischer-tropsch plants that produce gasoline (only 46 octane) and some diesel in which any other product is simply burned of to produce electricity thus bypassing the need for elaborate separation facilities. Mixed with the iso-octane and TEL a reasonable fuel could be produced. This process was considered viable in the 1970s and might have been integrated with coal fired power stations. The Germans were at the time capable of producting a sort of turbo-supercharged boiler which was efficient and took of some power from the turbo (which could be water cooled). The latter stage of the war demonstrated some uranium based catalysts that produced more reasonable gasoline.

The Karrick process basically steams of about 1 Barrel of oil per ton of coal, this barrel of oil produces about 25% gasoline and 30% diesel straight out (without cracking) as well as large amounts of combustible gas and semicoke that can be used to make town gas and electricity. This simple process seems to have been the main supply at the end of the war and they plants could be small and hidden.

As far as I can see it the most efficient process was methanol production but that required new engines, itself very unattractive.

Hybrid systems are conceivable, Karrick to make gasoline/diesel, the gas used to make electricity or syn gas and the semi coke used for syn gas or electricity production. The syn gas could then be used to make butanol methanol.

Of course this all takes time and they didn't have that much time considering the first plants were only operating in the late 1930's.


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## kool kitty89 (Apr 17, 2016)

I just discovered this very informative site:
AMF - Advanced Motor Fuels

Very relevant to this discussion, and just interesting in general from a fuel science/engineering point of view.

Among other things it has more specific details on butanol than I'd previously managed to find:
AMF - Advanced Motor Fuels

Isobutanol has the best overall qualities as a gasoline substitute or additive, but Tert-butanol's lower boiling point (and higher vapor pressure) combined with high octane performance makes it quite useful as long as it's dissolved in another liquid fuel (like any other butanol isomer, isopropanol, ethanol, methanol, acetone, suitable hydrocarbons, etc) to suppress its relatively high freezing point. (it's unusual in having a fairly narrow liquid range at standard pressure, but its combustion qualities are relatively good)



Koopernic said:


> Methanol Synthesis was probably the only process that was efficient enough to not require absurd amounts of coal and which had the least capital plant requirements to limit building construction. A fairly mature technology, I believe ICI was considering such a plant in the 1920's. Of course it requires specialised engines to exploit, an unattractive proposition.
> 
> I have no great faith in biofuels now, except maybe algae and have little hope for them in the 1930s. Europe was starving due to blockade and there was no spare crop land to dedicate to fuels. Perhaps wood chip waste.


Biofuels are difficult to implement as the primary fuel source, but fairly useful as a supplemental one, namely using various forms of waste or relatively low yield animal feed (like chaff/hay -which itself could be waste otherwise slated for open burning depending on the situation). Fuel crops that cannot double as food crops are generally a bad idea given the range of high yield crops that can be adapted to either role, particularly those useful for both human consumption and animal feed. (the US has a rather heavy fixation on corn and to lesser extent wheat, but oats tend to be rather high on the list for useful food+biofuel crops, and would obviously fit in well with cool/temperate regions while also remaining quite cold/frost tolerant -there are also hot weather tolerant varieties like red-oats which I suspect are among the rather invasive weedy 'wild oats' scattered about locally here in the San Jose/Santa Clara Valley area of California -they coped with the drought rather well too, though this isn't particularly relevant to Germany ... perhaps more arid portions of Italy though, which certainly had an energy crisis of their own during the war)

Oats would also fit well with the horses still pervasive in German transport/farm/etc use (though a pre-war shift on heavier mechanization would still be a major target -methanol fuel optimized industrial farm equipment might have even been a bit easier to target than general automotive use). Grass feed for farm or work animals is extremely inefficient and likely better employed as biofuel. (though obviously reasonable quality hay has other practical uses than feed)

Proper processing of biomass to sort out fractions (like the aforementioned chaff) to collect the ash for reprocessing into fertalizer (among other things) and partially replenish soil of depleted nutrients.

Wood waste is, of course, also useful, and any sort of organic waste easily dried and transported to processing/synthesis plants. (municipal/household waste might have been reasonable to sort similar to recycling and scrap drives, but the likes of processing sanitary waste -namely sewage- might be a bit much to ask for war-time application, particularly with the high percentage of water content involved -not really useful for a biomass source until you get into common industrialized recycled water production that already includes most relevant organic solid waste processing as part of their function)

Wood and other plant waste (and coal for that matter) should undergo destructive distillation (charring) prior to being subjected to steam for conversion to syn-gas, sorting out useful destructive distillation products (including tar and methanol -though the latter may be preferable to re-circulate through the system anyway along with hydrogen and carbon monoxide 'wood gas' and 'coal gas' fractions). The aromatic fraction of wood tar would be useful for octane boosting additives among other things (even some solid aromatics like napthalene can be useful when dissolved in a suitable solvent fuel) while resin-heavy woods like pine would also produce a great deal of turpentine, also useful as a fuel or solvent. (some grades with relatively high octane values on their own -at least as a low-grade starting point useful for boosting with other additives, and adding enough easily vaporized fractions to function well as a substitute for standard gasoline blends -turpentine fuel was discussed previously, along with various engine times using them, including ones compensating for poorer vaporization qualities -I suspect additives easing vaporization/ignition would be preferable, though)

In terms of farm equipment, conversion of methanol to dimethyl ether would be another simple synthetic fuel option if diesel cycle engines were preferred. It's a gas at standard temperature and pressure, but liquifies easily under modest pressure similar to butane. (to the extent that it may have avoided the issues of pressure vessel production that hindered use of LPG -propane and ethane certainly require much stronger pressure tanks than butane or DME) DME would also be a useful additive for improving volatility of synthetic fuels (and other natural/synthetic fuel blends lacking proper volatility for carbureted engines -like certain kerosene/naptha or turpentine grades of suitable octane rating for boosting to gasoline standards, but unsuitable volatility -same goes for butanol and aromatic hydrocarbons) Diethyl ether could be similarly used, depending on its availability, and is less volatile (and liquid at STP) but still a good engine-start/carburetor function booster. (really, having volatility good enough for reliable cold-start is the main requirement here, and avoiding the need for dedicated starter fluid)

On a side-note, DME would probably have been a much more practical starter fuel for Heinkel's Jet engines than hydrogen gas (I'm not sure if Ohain's engines ever got beyond their hydrogen-fueled warm-up requirements, but I know the original HeS 3B had to employ such -rather like a blow lamp burner's vaporizer warming up). Methanol might have worked reasonably well too (given the smokeless flame even when running rich, thus not clogging the injectors during warmup) but DME seems simpler given its gaseous state.



> The synthesis via the route syngas->butanol->butylene->iso-octane is interesting as it could produce a high quality product in which it was possible to very accurately trade off output of butanol versus methanol production. The chromium catalysts took in syngas and produced 17% butanol with the balance Methanol and traces of gases, propanol. The methanol could easily be converted to more butanol via cycling through the catalyst. The butanol could eventually be converted to iso-octane. I don't imagine it would be more than 20%-25% efficient but it was a very high grade pure product that didn't required down stream separation from other hydrocarbons. If they could be made small and modular enough they would allow dispersal.


The site you linked previously: Technical Report 248-45 - Section V Isobutanol Synthesis
here: Amateurs study aircraft design. Professionals study oil production.

It has a rather nice complete list of byproducts from the initial synthesis (aside from methanol which is recirculated), not just isobutanol, but the majority of alcohols and ketones, possibly some of the aldehydes and hydrocarbons too, such that a modestly refined (distilled) blend of those byproducts and intermediates alone would make a good additive for gasoline or the makings of a high-grade fuel (like aviation fuel) on its own. Of course, with alcohols present, TEL should be avoided due to its detrimental impact and general incompatibility. (aromatics and other organic boosters would work fine in the blend) In fact, it might be best if German had avoided securing a TEL license altogether and stuck with lead-free alternatives pre-war. (and thus already had a head-start on addressing some common engineering difficulties with ethanol/methanol additives among other things and their impact on engines, fuel tanks, pumps, seals, and hoses, etc -plus not spewing out all that leaded vapor to breathe in is a nice bonus)


I would expect the combined efficiency of using most/all of the direct isobutane + byproducts of that process to be quite a lot closer to the 60% efficiency of pure methanol synthesis, and far better than the full isooctane synthesis of only 20% thermodynamic efficiency. (energy density of most of those products is also high enough to be reasonably useful in aviation fuel, though removing some of the more energy poor fractions like ethanol -not to mention adding energy rich fractions of aromatics- would improve that further, while overall octane rating would be considerably higher than even late-war C3 aviation fuel, allowing consistently higher boost pressures and/or compression ratios -stretching fuel supplies more by blending in lower octane gasoline blends would compromise that to some degree, but possibly slightly improve base energy density as well)

Also remember that blends of various liquids (particularly polar oganic compounds -like alcohols and ethers and ketones) can quite easily be significantly denser than their constituent components. This won't improve energy density by weight, but will improve it by volume. (this would be more significant for ground vehicles where volumetric space is more important than weight -though both are obviously important on aircraft as well) Methanol being the smallest of these molecules, 'packs in' rather well with most others, rather like water does. (the typical school laboratory demonstration is mixing water with anhydrous -or 90+ % isopropanol in a 50/50 ratio and demonstrating a significant decrease in volume)



> The Bergius Hydrogenation plants were very efficient in terms of coal perhaps over 60% (but required capital and steel) they produced considerable amounts of propane's and butanes. These could be used in LPG to power vehicles, really the entire German commercial transport fleet could have run of this LPG but they couldn't build the required 600,000 vessels. Moreover the propanes and butanes could be subjected to acid alkylation to produce very high grade gasoline (this was the process that allowed the RAF to switch from 100 octane to 100/130). The source of butane for the polymerisation to iso-octane also switched to these gases from the hydrogenation plants thus eliminating the need for syngas production in many cases.


Properly planned, I'd think hydrogenation and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis would complement eachother rather well, even pre-war, with each having notable advantages. (and, among other things, methanol and isobutanol synthesis -and byproducts- could be combined with hydrogenation plant gasoline along with conventional petroleum derived gasoline -or bituminous coal derived base fuel stocks, non-gasoline fuel grades like kerosene/naptha still useful for boosting into gasoline engine specs, etc)

From a strategic standpoint, the (potentially hardened) centralized hydrogenation plants combined with smaller, dispersed (and non-dispersed) cheap/fast to set up and replace fischer-tropsch synth plants had plenty of potential to develop a pre-war (or pre-Nazi, for that matter) energy development plan around. The earlier such plans were started, the easier to have the entire industry develop around that technology rather than standard (leaded) gasoline tech.



> Of course this all takes time and they didn't have that much time considering the first plants were only operating in the late 1930's.


In that regard, the Fischer-Tropsch plants (once the base technology was established) could have been pursued much more rapidly, and any flaws and setbacks in early plant designs would also be relatively inexpensive to resolve and address moving forward given the low capital overhead intrinsic of such plants.

The obvious time to seriously push such technology would be when TEL production was first being considered, and thus when an alternative route for octane boosting could have been chosen outright. (and initially supplemented by more conventional industrial production of alcohols and aromatics -and ketones, etc- while also investing in engineering solutions for potential corrosion issues caused by some additives)

Pure methanol also would have been the oldest/simplest octane boosting gasoline additive, and while corrosion issues aren't really worse than ethanol (more just different than objectively worse), the bigger issue would be the air/fuel mixture impact when significant fractions are introduced. (adjusting the choke could compensate for this, but more elegant long-term solutions would be preferable) Still, additions of methanol in the 5-10% range should have kept air/fuel mixture behavior reasonably close while still notably improving combustion qualities (knock resistance). Methanol's better vaporization qualities and failure to form an azeotrope with water makes it more attractive than ethanol as an additive too. (especially fermentation derived ethanol -petroleum derived ethanol can somewhat more efficiently be produced anhydrous and avoid quite a few problems specific to 190 proof ethanol)

Dehydrating methanol to DME and injecting it into diesel fuel stock to improve the cetane rating could be another application in limited quantities, especially for winterized blends. (Diethyl ether could be used in larger portions, be it petroleum derived or otherwise, but of course diesel has more specific lubricity requirements that makes dilution a bit more complicated than with gasoline engines, particularly with varying seasonal blends)


The current European Gasoline blend standards should also be of interest:
AMF - Advanced Motor Fuels (more so for the butanol content)


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