German fuel situation and what to improve on it, 2.0

[MIflyer]

Early Scud's (R-11) used T-1, or RG-1

But we are not worried about the early Scuds but the ones that have proliferated. And the biggest proliferator of the Scud, North Korea, does not have a lot of oil available and so they use petroleum distillates. When the USAF launched Scuds as targets, that is what they used.

And as someone who was heavily involved in the USAF Thor and Atlas programs, I am amused to see the "old" LOX/RP-1 attaining dominance over the the "more advanced" propellants such as A-50 and N2O4, which are not only much more expensive, but are far more hazardous and have a lower ISP was well.

 

[MIflyer]

Using the horse drawn wagons to move the same amount of cargo, thats 4 wagon loads, 8 horses.
144 Gallons of Water, 360 pounds of Fodder, and takes 8 hours, using at least four operators

And then there is all that horse poop. Scientific American Magazine pointed out circa 1910 that the switch to internal combustion engines had already made a huge improvement in the health of major cities.

They have started using hybrid engines for RR yard switchers. They take the old diesels out, install a bunch of batteries and a larger pickup truck engine driving a generator on the chassis. The engine starts when required to recharge the batteries and they don't have the big diesels running all day.

 

[marathag]

And then there is all that horse poop. Scientific American Magazine pointed out circa 1910 that the switch to internal combustion engines had already made a huge improvement in the health of major cities.

Urine too. Most of those gallons of water of intake mostly go out that way
But those who deal with horses swear they are like this sometimes

 

[yellownose]

After the war the Germans found a lot of oil in their own country:

Erdölförderung in Deutschland – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

They managed to extract 8,2 million tons in 1968. And this is only Western Germany, not including everything east of the Elbe and Austria.

As far as I know, in 1943 they only consumed 11,4 million tons, 1,92 mil came from domestic sources (1,2 from Austria). Keitel wrote in 1941 (!) that per months the Wehrmacht ´would require 400,000 tons more. Now of course, they probably managed to produce more oil in the following two years, but the consumtion also went through the roof. Overall one can assume that because of that lack of oil the Wehrmacht never ran on full capability. Remember that oil isn't only required for fuel.

What would have happened if Germany would have had at least the oil fields they had 10 years after the end of WW2 (3,147 million tons/year in Western Germany)?
I think we would live in a different world.

Edit:
I found a nice graph

Source: Oil and War | Defense.info).

Edit: btw the article on defense.info is weird, because here MBD does NOT mean million barrels per day, which it usually does, but thousand barrels per day. I don't know why, but the author has all the credentials you can wish for

 

[33k in the air]

What would have happened if Germany would have had at least the oil fields they had 10 years after the end of WW2 (3,147 million tons/year in Western Germany)?
I think we would live in a different world.

Don't think it would have mattered in the long run, as the Allies were outproducing the Axis in war materials, and the U.S. was the only one to have the atomic bomb.

 

[Daggerr]

Source: Oil and War | Defense.info).

Edit: btw the article on defense.info is weird, because here MBD does NOT mean million barrels per day, which it usually does, but thousand barrels per day. I don't know why, but the author has all the credentials you can wish for

The Roman numeral for thousand was M which stands for Mille.
The British and US units system still uses M for thousand, and MM stands for million.
You can still see that today, for example in the Natural Gas futures price, which is now about 2 $/MMBTU.

In the SI system M stands for million, but barrels and day are not SI units.

 

[yellownose]

That was a bait. I knew somebody would react with the typical argumentations that the western allies, especially America, were basically invincible. First of all I'm not an alternative history guy, even though it can be a fun thing. But in the end we don't know what would have happened IF. I also didn't say with more oil the whole world would be speaking German right now, I said the world would look different. But the article on defense.info gives you a great overlook of how much oil made a difference in WW2. Strategically it was a perfect war from the western allies. But it worked because of the biggest vulnerability: oil. The amout of hardware Germany could produce wasn't a problem. And nuclear bombs, well: they would have to be dropped from an airplane, for this purpose you need air superiority. The total destruction of the German cities didn't cause them to surrender. I don't see how fat man and little boy would have caused more damage than the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg. From a German perspective it probably wouldn't have made a big difference.
Also, don't forget: before the Germans ran out of fuel, they did pretty well fighting the biggest land war of all time, the biggest air war of all time, the biggest naval war of all time, and the biggest "counterinsurgency operation" of all time, all at once - despite never having enough fuel. Imagine them with enough fuel. Hm. I think the American's willingness to accept high casualties is very limited, as we have seen in the last 70 years.
And until the tide turned at Stalingrad and in North Africa, a lot of people in Europe thought that the Germans would win. Don't you think they were well informed about the industrial capacity of the US? Anyhow, a lot of things would be very different now.

But here's where the oil would start making a big difference: if Germany would have had enough oil, they would have been less dependent on imports, so their geopolitical outlook would have been different. As you can read in Brendan Simm's book "Stalin's War", Romania played a big role in the hostilities between Germany and the USSR. Eliminating that factor alone would probably have made a big difference.

 

[ThomasP]

If Germany had 'enough' oil they might not have started the war at all (or at least not when they did) regardless of whether Japan attacked the US (or UK, France, etc). But then if Japan had 'enough' oil they might not have started the war with the US at all, and not have attacked anyone else either (other than China).

In real life the only chance(s) Germany had to win the war, was if the Allies let them (for whatever reason) which might have been a likely result if the UK lost the BoB, or if Germany had succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union by sometime in 1943(?). Then consolidated their conquest and prepared for the possibilities of attacks by the US. If they did not get belligerent thereafter with the US, the US would possibly (probably?) not have nuked them in-or-around 1945 or 1946, and/or the Germans might have been able to stop the first attempts. Unless the scientists from Poland, Germany, France. England, and other countries, did not defect/emigrate to the US as they did historically, the Germans would have no chance of developing the A-bomb before the US (unless the US did not pursue the A-bomb). What would have happened after that is too far down the variable line rabbit hole to predict (I think).

 

[Deleted member 68059]

If Germany had 'enough' oil they might not have started the war at all (or at least not when they did) regardless of whether Japan attacked the US (or UK, France, etc). But then if Japan had 'enough' oil they might not have started the war with the US at all, and not have attacked anyone else either (other than China).

In real life the only chance(s) Germany had to win the war, was if the Allies let them (for whatever reason) which might have been a likely result if the UK lost the BoB, or if Germany had succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union by sometime in 1943(?). Then consolidated their conquest and prepared for the possibilities of attacks by the US. If they did not get belligerent thereafter with the US, the US would possibly (probably?) not have nuked them in-or-around 1945 or 1946, and/or the Germans might have been able to stop the first attempts. Unless the scientists from Poland, Germany, France. England, and other countries, did not defect/emigrate to the US as they did historically, the Germans would have no chance of developing the A-bomb before the US (unless the US did not pursue the A-bomb). What would have happened after that is too far down the variable line rabbit hole to predict (I think).

If Hitler controls Europe, its very difficult to see how the atomic bomb helps. This isnt Japan and the eastern war where lives are ten-a-penny according to their own leaders, its a densely packed multinational area where friendly nation populations are just next door. The Polish are less than 70km from Berlin, the Czechs are 50km from Dresden, and the Swiss, French and Dutch are on the opposite side. Its extremely difficult to see how you can wipe out Germany from the air with "the bomb" without leaving Europe a toxic catastrophe.

Also whats to stop Hilter setting up his new administrative home in London for example and taking all the High Command there ?

I think its very difficult to nuke your way to victory in Europe.

 

[yellownose]

I am not familiar with how nuclear weapons developed and how fast you could produce them, but "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" didn't cause more damage than the firebombing of Hamburg, Dresden or Tokio. These were not the nuclear weapons of the cold war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still two densely populated cities. These bombs did not turn these cities into Chernobyl.

Also: apparently 1930 Me262 were produced, but only 1433 were taken into Luftwaffe-service. Most of them were destroyed or damaged in transport, usually by allied aircraft who at that time could roam free. Only 100 were operational at a time, 232 were lost to enemy fire, 727 lost in accidents, and according to most sources I found only 100 were shot down. Inexperienced pilots were a major problem. The lack of fuel did not only keep the Me262 on the ground, in prevented adequate training. And apparently the R4M-rockets were very effective against bombers. In Ziegler's "Hitler's Jet Plane: The ME 262 Story" you can read that on march 18, 1945, 6 Me262 engaged 1221 bombers and 632 escort fighters. During the battle, the Me262's launched 144 R4M-rockets. Result was that 25 bombers were lost, for just 2 Me262. Now imagine what 60 would have caused, and this happening more often.

This is just ONE factor. Imagine them being able to train their pilots better and more of them being in the air. What makes you think that "Germany could have only won if the allies would have let them"? Stop underestimating the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht 1944 was never fully operational because of the severe fuel shortage, and low morale because of the lack of air support. This lack of morale led to millions of them surrendering without a fight. The western allies took about 7-8 million POWs between the landing in Normandy and the 8th of may 1945, the soviets 2-3 million. Imagine these 10 millon men putting up a real fight. You probably would have had Verdun/Somme instead of the Falaise Pocket. I don't think the American public would have accepted such losses. And sorry, I don't see the American military as this epic fighting force, their wars since 1945 don't indicate that at all. The western allies ability to build bombers and willingness to waste them also wasn't unlimited. These atom bombs were probably very expensive and time consuming to produce. They would have to transport them by ship, unless they produce them in Britain, and a lot of them would get lost at sea.

Most people seem to assume that time was running for the allies. But was it really? Prolonging the war could have made the German army an even better fighting force. The Luftwaffe was about to limit their production on the Bf109, Me262, the Ta152, the Do335, and the Ar234. I might have forgotten one. But these were formidable aircraft, and they wouldn't be rendered obsolete that fast.

At sea the Germans were in a similar situation. They had just developed the Type XXI and XXII-submarine. These submarines were advanced enough for the French to use them until 1969 and Western Germany until 1982. Both the US and the USSR build submarines that were heavily influenced by them. They were also relatively inexpensive to make, compared to the other types.

On land you had the famous Sturmgewehr and the MG 45. The MG 45 could be produced in 60% the time required for an MG 42. Same goes for the STG 45, compared to the STG 44. They also just had the Panzerfaust 150, and were close to fielding a wire-guided air-to-air- and portable wire-guided anti-tank missile, the Ruhrstahl X-7. Nobody knows how effective they would have been, but the design was later refined by the french and sold as the NORD SS-10. The Israeli's in one of their wars used them against arab tank armies and reported about 66% hit probability in a combat situation against moving targets with only little practice required. It was designed to be inexpensive. They also were close of developing their own proximity fusze. The proximity fuze was one of the most important weapons of the western allies, it makes anti-aircraft fire and artillery fire much more effective.

I am not talking about Nazi spacecraft here. These are weapons that at the end of the war already existed, but hadn't been used yet in any significant numbers.

They also had just executed people like Canaris, his co-conspirators, and about 2000 other suspected traitors, spies, resistance members or whatever you want to call them. Canaris was the chief of the German military intelligence service Abwehr and a British agent. According to the testimony of the former Abwehr-officer and -resistance member Lahousen at the Nuremberg trials, Germany's own military intelligence service was leaking all kinds of secret information to the British. A fun topic to research is how often German aircraft with new technology accidentally landed on British airfields, totally undamaged, so that the British can study them. When the British were having trouble with the new Fw190, a pilot accidentally landed his fresh-out-of-the-box Fw190 on a British airfield. The British could then study it's design, strengths, weaknesses. Now maybe this can happen by accident, but in case of the Lichtenstein-radar, it clear what was going on there:

I just quote Wikipedia, auto-translated:

Lichtenstein (Radar) – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

So the German night fighters were giving the British a hard time, then...

In April 1943 a Ju 88 C-6 equipped with a FuG 202 B / C had landed in England, the British learned details about the German aircraft on-board radar. From analysing the wavelength they could adapt in the length of the aluminum strips (called Dübbel in German, Window in England) with which the FuG 202 B/C could be jammed. This made the on-board radar system largely useless for a few decisive weeks.
[...]
Late in 1943 the Luftwaffe began using the improved FuG 220 Lichtenstein SN-2 which operated at the lower 90 MHz frequency at the lower end of the VHF broadcast band. The device was far less sensitive to electronic jamming measures.
[...]
On April 28, 1944, a Bf 110 with the registration C9+EN with the Lichtenstein SN-2 radar landed at Dübendorf Airport in Switzerland after being blinded by headlights that could not be shaken off.[2] The radar was immediately examined by ETH specialists, including in field tests, in which the aircraft was pulled onto a ramp to point the radar in the air.[3] After the German side had also considered an attack on Dübendorf, it was agreed to destroy the aircraft under German supervision. [...]
On 13 July 1944 the improved version of the SN-2 fell into Allied hands after a fully equipped Ju 88 G-1 accidentally landed at RAF Woodbridge in south-east England due to a navigational error. The crew noticed the error too late; she didn't have time to destroy the radar and the friend-or-foe detection device ("Erstling"). Also on board this Ju 88 was the FuG 227 Flensburg, previously unknown to the Allies, for targeting emissions from the Monica radar installed in British bombers. This crew error resulted in the immediate shutdown of all Monica radars and the blocking of some of the SN-2's frequency bands.

Ok, three times? That is not a coincidence. For more of these look up "Oslo Report" for example.

The fact that no Me262 accidentally landed on a british airfield might be connected to the purges after the failed July 20th-plot. So another thing which probably would have strengthened them.


Anyhow. I think many factors contributed to the ultimate outcome of the war, and oil is one of the biggest, if not the biggest. I don't see makes people think the allies would have steamrolled them, no matter what. The "Wunderwaffen" was not just something Hitler fantasized about in his bunker, there was some really good stuff that was just about to get fielded.

 

[Shortround6]

Anyhow. I think many factors contributed to the ultimate outcome of the war, and oil is one of the biggest, if not the biggest. I don't see makes people think the allies would have steamrolled them, no matter what. The "Wunderwaffen" was not just something Hitler fantasized about in his bunker, there was some really good stuff that was just about to get fielded.

Oil was probable the most important product or raw material.
2nd was probably steel production. And here the Allies were pretty much steamrolling the Axis.
The US in 1942-43-44 and 45 produced more steel per year than the rest of the world combined.
The US in their worst year (1942) made 2.63 times the amount of steel that Germany did in their best year (1943).
In 1944 The USSR, The UK and Canada combined made just about the same amount of Steel that Germany did 1944.
The US made 3.3 times the amount of steel compared to Germany in 1944.
Japan was making about 1/10 the amount of Steel the US was and was falling behind in 1944.

The Germans could have done some things to drag the war out a bit longer but the steamroller was coming.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

I am not familiar with how nuclear weapons developed and how fast you could produce them, but "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" didn't cause more damage than the firebombing of Hamburg, Dresden or Tokio. These were not the nuclear weapons of the cold war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still two densely populated cities. These bombs did not turn these cities into Chernobyl.

Also: apparently 1930 Me262 were produced, but only 1433 were taken into Luftwaffe-service. Most of them were destroyed or damaged in transport, usually by allied aircraft who at that time could roam free. Only 100 were operational at a time, 232 were lost to enemy fire, 727 lost in accidents, and according to most sources I found only 100 were shot down. Inexperienced pilots were a major problem. The lack of fuel did not only keep the Me262 on the ground, in prevented adequate training. And apparently the R4M-rockets were very effective against bombers. In Ziegler's "Hitler's Jet Plane: The ME 262 Story" you can read that on march 18, 1945, 6 Me262 engaged 1221 bombers and 632 escort fighters. During the battle, the Me262's launched 144 R4M-rockets. Result was that 25 bombers were lost, for just 2 Me262. Now imagine what 60 would have caused, and this happening more often.

This is just ONE factor. Imagine them being able to train their pilots better and more of them being in the air. What makes you think that "Germany could have only won if the allies would have let them"? Stop underestimating the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht 1944 was never fully operational because of the severe fuel shortage, and low morale because of the lack of air support. This lack of morale led to millions of them surrendering without a fight. The western allies took about 7-8 million POWs between the landing in Normandy and the 8th of may 1945, the soviets 2-3 million. Imagine these 10 millon men putting up a real fight. You probably would have had Verdun/Somme instead of the Falaise Pocket. I don't think the American public would have accepted such losses. And sorry, I don't see the American military as this epic fighting force, their wars since 1945 don't indicate that at all. The western allies ability to build bombers and willingness to waste them also wasn't unlimited. These atom bombs were probably very expensive and time consuming to produce. They would have to transport them by ship, unless they produce them in Britain, and a lot of them would get lost at sea.

Most people seem to assume that time was running for the allies. But was it really? Prolonging the war could have made the German army an even better fighting force. The Luftwaffe was about to limit their production on the Bf109, Me262, the Ta152, the Do335, and the Ar234. I might have forgotten one. But these were formidable aircraft, and they wouldn't be rendered obsolete that fast.

At sea the Germans were in a similar situation. They had just developed the Type XXI and XXII-submarine. These submarines were advanced enough for the French to use them until 1969 and Western Germany until 1982. Both the US and the USSR build submarines that were heavily influenced by them. They were also relatively inexpensive to make, compared to the other types.

On land you had the famous Sturmgewehr and the MG 45. The MG 45 could be produced in 60% the time required for an MG 42. Same goes for the STG 45, compared to the STG 44. They also just had the Panzerfaust 150, and were close to fielding a wire-guided air-to-air- and portable wire-guided anti-tank missile, the Ruhrstahl X-7. Nobody knows how effective they would have been, but the design was later refined by the french and sold as the NORD SS-10. The Israeli's in one of their wars used them against arab tank armies and reported about 66% hit probability in a combat situation against moving targets with only little practice required. It was designed to be inexpensive. They also were close of developing their own proximity fusze. The proximity fuze was one of the most important weapons of the western allies, it makes anti-aircraft fire and artillery fire much more effective.

I am not talking about Nazi spacecraft here. These are weapons that at the end of the war already existed, but hadn't been used yet in any significant numbers.

They also had just executed people like Canaris, his co-conspirators, and about 2000 other suspected traitors, spies, resistance members or whatever you want to call them. Canaris was the chief of the German military intelligence service Abwehr and a British agent. According to the testimony of the former Abwehr-officer and -resistance member Lahousen at the Nuremberg trials, Germany's own military intelligence service was leaking all kinds of secret information to the British. A fun topic to research is how often German aircraft with new technology accidentally landed on British airfields, totally undamaged, so that the British can study them. When the British were having trouble with the new Fw190, a pilot accidentally landed his fresh-out-of-the-box Fw190 on a British airfield. The British could then study it's design, strengths, weaknesses. Now maybe this can happen by accident, but in case of the Lichtenstein-radar, it clear what was going on there:

I just quote Wikipedia, auto-translated:

Lichtenstein (Radar) – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

So the German night fighters were giving the British a hard time, then...

In April 1943 a Ju 88 C-6 equipped with a FuG 202 B / C had landed in England, the British learned details about the German aircraft on-board radar. From analysing the wavelength they could adapt in the length of the aluminum strips (called Dübbel in German, Window in England) with which the FuG 202 B/C could be jammed. This made the on-board radar system largely useless for a few decisive weeks.
[...]
Late in 1943 the Luftwaffe began using the improved FuG 220 Lichtenstein SN-2 which operated at the lower 90 MHz frequency at the lower end of the VHF broadcast band. The device was far less sensitive to electronic jamming measures.
[...]
On April 28, 1944, a Bf 110 with the registration C9+EN with the Lichtenstein SN-2 radar landed at Dübendorf Airport in Switzerland after being blinded by headlights that could not be shaken off.[2] The radar was immediately examined by ETH specialists, including in field tests, in which the aircraft was pulled onto a ramp to point the radar in the air.[3] After the German side had also considered an attack on Dübendorf, it was agreed to destroy the aircraft under German supervision. [...]
On 13 July 1944 the improved version of the SN-2 fell into Allied hands after a fully equipped Ju 88 G-1 accidentally landed at RAF Woodbridge in south-east England due to a navigational error. The crew noticed the error too late; she didn't have time to destroy the radar and the friend-or-foe detection device ("Erstling"). Also on board this Ju 88 was the FuG 227 Flensburg, previously unknown to the Allies, for targeting emissions from the Monica radar installed in British bombers. This crew error resulted in the immediate shutdown of all Monica radars and the blocking of some of the SN-2's frequency bands.

Ok, three times? That is not a coincidence. For more of these look up "Oslo Report" for example.

The fact that no Me262 accidentally landed on a british airfield might be connected to the purges after the failed July 20th-plot. So another thing which probably would have strengthened them.


Anyhow. I think many factors contributed to the ultimate outcome of the war, and oil is one of the biggest, if not the biggest. I don't see makes people think the allies would have steamrolled them, no matter what. The "Wunderwaffen" was not just something Hitler fantasized about in his bunker, there was some really good stuff that was just about to get fielded.

Germany was running out of able bodied men. It doesn't matter what weapons you have if there is no one to use them. As for the US not accepting casualties the Russians didn't mind. after Bagration and Normandy the outcome was inevitable.

 

[ThomasP]

Hey yellownose,

Take a look at the populations, GDPs, natural resources, and tech of the allied nations. You can argue details in technical development to a small degree, but once the Germans failed to take the Soviet Union in 1942-43, no advanced weapon system that the Germans could have manufactured in time or numbers could have saved the Third Reich. Maybe if they had been anywhere near developing an A-bomb they could have stopped the Allies, but since they were behind in that area by about 10 years relative to the US/UK at that point (1942-43), and behind the Japanese by about 5 years, short of magic even the A-bomb was not possible.

 

[33k in the air]

I am not familiar with how nuclear weapons developed and how fast you could produce them, but "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" didn't cause more damage than the firebombing of Hamburg, Dresden or Tokio.

The difference was efficiency: one plane and one bomb to knock out a city as compared to hundreds of bombers and thousands of bombs — and hoping for a firestorm, which is what caused the enormous damage at Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. Firestorms could not be created on command.

The U.S. had a third atomic bomb on the way to the Pacific, scheduled to be dropped on or about August 19th until Truman ordered a halt to future atomic bomb attacks. Production was ramping up, with an expected rate of two bombs per month.

 

[33k in the air]

That was a bait. I knew somebody would react with the typical argumentations that the western allies, especially America, were basically invincible.

That appears to be projection. Nowhere did I state anything like that. I did say the Allies were substantially outproducing the Axis in war materials, which is factually accurate. And the atomic bomb offered an enormous advantage over conventional weapons in destructive capability.

But it worked because of the biggest vulnerability: oil.

The U.S. by itself was the source of 62.9% of the world's crude oil in 1940 and 58.1% of the world's refining capacity.

And nuclear bombs, well: they would have to be dropped from an airplane, for this purpose you need air superiority.

Something which the Western Allies had gained by mid-1944. German fighters were able to inflict losses proportional to the number of Allied sorties flown up through April 1944. After that, however, it falls off markedly. USAAF strength increased enormously in the spring of 1944 — the 8th Air Force saw the number of available heavy bombers double in the three months between March and June, for example.

The total destruction of the German cities didn't cause them to surrender. I don't see how fat man and little boy would have caused more damage than the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg.

As mentioned, the scale of destruction at Hamburg and Dresden was caused by the creation of a firestorm. Remove the firestorm, and the destruction and casualties would have been far lower. The night after Dresden the city of Chemnitz was attacked by a similarly sized force as the once which had attacked Dresden, but few remember that Chemnitz raid since no firestorm occurred and thus no mass damage and casualties.

The destruction of Hamburg in July 1943 was unprecedented at that time. It caused considerable concern among some in the German leadership. Speer himself said that another half-dozen or so German cities meeting the same fate in a short amount amount of time would have caused armaments production to completely stop. Had Bomber Command been able to repeat its Hamburg success on another six German cities in the subsequent weeks it could well have knocked Germany out of the war. The problem is that Bomber Command could not create firestorms at will and thus the ability to readily repeat Hamburg-scale damage was virtually nil.

Also, don't forget: before the Germans ran out of fuel, they did pretty well fighting the biggest land war of all time . . .

Was it a case of the Germans doing well or the Soviets doing poorly? Once the Soviets got their act together, they were formidable. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union with the expectation that it would collapse relatively easily once pressed. They should have asked the Japanese, who got clobbered by the Soviets in 1939, and thus had first-hand experience of the kind of tough foe the Soviets could be.


,

And until the tide turned at Stalingrad and in North Africa, a lot of people in Europe thought that the Germans would win. Don't you think they were well informed about the industrial capacity of the US? Anyhow, a lot of things would be very different now.

If you are going to grant the Germans more oil, then one must also grant to the Allies the various options they had which were not pursued for one reason or another, as well as the implementation of various countermeasures.

 

[33k in the air]

2nd was probably steel production. And here the Allies were pretty much steamrolling the Axis.
The US in 1942-43-44 and 45 produced more steel per year than the rest of the world combined.
The US in their worst year (1942) made 2.63 times the amount of steel that Germany did in their best year (1943).

Add to that the fact that German steel production in 1943, as a result of Allied bombing, was 12% lower than what it could have otherwise been absent the direct and indirect effects of the bombing.

 

[yellownose]

GDP in 1913, in millions 1960 US Dollar, only Europe. In brackets: population in 1910

Germany 49,760 $ (65,900,000)
Austria-Hungary 26,050 $ (52,400,000)
Bulgaria 1,260 $ (4,500,000)
Ottoman Empire 6,578 $ (21,300,000)
= 83,648 (144,100,000)

UK 44,074 $ (45,400,000)
France 27,401 $ (39,600,000)
Belgium 6,794 $ (7,400,000)
Italy 17,624 $ (35,600,000)
Serbia 0,725 $ (5,000,000)
Romania 2,450 $ (7,500,000)
Portugal 1,800 $ (6,000,000)
Russia 52,420 $ (175,100,000)
= 153,288 $ (321,600,000)

If you want it a bit more extreme:

Winter War 39/40

Finnland (1938): 3,339 (3,600,000)
USSR (1938): 75,964 (170,500,000)
Finnland didn't really win the Winter War, but nobody would seriously call this a victory for the USSR as well.

History is full of examples where a smaller army/country defeated a much larger, richer and better equipped one.

In my opinion what is really important is a grand strategy, the tactics, the operational competence, morale, equipment, production, ressources, and also flexibility and ingenuity. Germany was lacking ressources and a strategy, but they compensated a lot of blunders with tenacity and ingenuity.

Manpower doesn't matter, since the kill ratio is usually not 1:1.

About the western front: I do not believe that the US would just have accepted millions of casualties. Nothing in US history serves as a counter argument. We live in a reality where both WW1&2 was a cakewalk for the US, but this was also due to a lot of good timing. It's hard to imagine it differently.
According to Goering at the Nuremberg Trials, the strategy in the east was the "Falkenhayn"-method: continually causes so many casualties that eventually your enemy agree on a truce. Unfortunately for him, millions of German soldiers surrendered without a fight, and as Rommel has learned in Africa, an enemy that has air superiority is hard to beat.

Then on the eastern front:
A lot of people believe that the Red Army was this huge juggernaught at the end of the war that just needed some years to warm up. Here, again, press X to doubt. According to Krivosheev, by the end of the war 73,3% of the Soviet tank force had been destroyed and only 13,000 tanks were left. The USSR had a population of about 205 million when Barbarossa started. But by 1945 they had taken considerable losses. How many exactly is something we will never know. But the soviet census of 1959 revealed that of the "Great Patriotic War"-generation, only 38,4% were male, even though 800,000 women served in the Red Army. I don't think there was that much of the Red Army left.
The "soviet Juggernaught" is something people believe in in peacetime, but anytime Russia gets involved in a war, they marvel at how bad they are.

Technology, well.... I don't think the allies had a major advantage there. In some parts yes, in other parts no.

I am not an on nuclear fission, but Otto Hahn is considered the "father" of this technology, and as far as I know most of the prominent scientists that were involved in the Manhattan project had studied in Germany. I highly doubt that Germany was 10 years behind and Japan 5. I don't doubt that somebody claimed it, though. The problem starts with Hitler showing little interest in a nuclear bomb. There is also reason to believe that a lot of the German scientists didn't want to build one.

 

[33k in the air]

Winter War 39/40

Finnland (1938): 3,339 (3,600,000)
USSR (1938): 75,964 (170,500,000)
Finnland didn't really win the Winter War, but nobody would seriously call this a victory for the USSR as well.

And it was the winter war which made the Germans think the Soviets would not last long. On the other hand, the Soviets stomped the Japanese in the Battle of Khalkin Gol in 1939 so much so the Japanese were happy to sign a non-aggression pact with the Soviets. The Soviet forces in that battle were led by one General Zhukov.

History is full of examples where a smaller army/country defeated a much larger, richer and better equipped one.

Except that WWII was a battle between industrialized nation-states engaged in total war. Industrialized nation-states have a vast production capacity which makes it a war of attrition on an enormous scale. The side that can replace its losses faster than its opponent eventually wins.

About the western front: I do not believe that the US would just have accepted millions of casualties.

How exactly does the western front get to millions of U.S. casualties?

According to Goering at the Nuremberg Trials, the strategy in the east was the "Falkenhayn"-method: continually causes so many casualties that eventually your enemy agree on a truce. Unfortunately for him, millions of German soldiers surrendered without a fight, and as Rommel has learned in Africa, an enemy that has air superiority is hard to beat.

The Japanese tried that. It got them multiple cities burned to the ground, a complete blockade, and two atomic bombs.

I am not an on nuclear fission, but Otto Hahn is considered the "father" of this technology, and as far as I know most of the prominent scientists that were involved in the Manhattan project had studied in Germany. I highly doubt that Germany was 10 years behind and Japan.

Germany was nowhere near getting the atomic bomb. They thought they were ahead of everyone else, and, when looking at the enormous resources involved in such a project and realizing they didn't have enough to do it and fight the war, figured probably no one else could do it either.

The U.S. spent roughly $3 billion developing the atomic bomb during the war. It spent a similar amount developing the VT fuse. Developing the B-29 also cost about as much. The U.S. had that much available in resources to devote to such projects, while still spending an enormous amount fighting the war — the strategic bombing campaign over Europe cost about $30 billion.

 

[Shortround6]

About the western front: I do not believe that the US would just have accepted millions of casualties. Nothing in US history serves as a counter argument. We live in a reality where both WW1&2 was a cakewalk for the US, but this was also due to a lot of good timing. It's hard to imagine it differently.

Sometimes you are lucky and just happen to luck into good timing.
Other times you make your own timing.

The US was using tanks and artillery to keep casualties down. Also ground support. These are generalizations but most armies were running out of troops in 1944 or foresaw they soon would be.
The US (and British) were using artillery in a fashion that was just about unimaginable to the Germans. Everything was changing during the war so what one army was doing in 1940 has very little to do with what the same army may have been doing in 1944. A British infantry division had about 40 radios in 1940, They had nearly 1000 radios in late 1944. The British had the most advanced artillery communications networks in the world and the most advanced artillery doctrine in the world. The US had arguably the best artillery park and best supply of ammo. The Germans may have been the masters in 1939-40 but they didn't have the resources to keep up with the allies.
Guns and gun barrels wear out. One reason for howitzers and multi level charges. Just use enough powder to reach the target. Germans knew this but the Germans never had the quantity of ammunition and spare barrels that they wanted. The US planned for barrel life of 10,000 rounds for the 105mm howitzer but in NW Europe they were often replacing barrels after 5,000 rounds. Longer ranges and higher rates of fire ate barrels. It was a close run thing but spare barrels showed up just in time.
Planning also sometimes didn't work out. Due to the lack of German air power in NW Europe in 2nd 1/2 of 1944 the Army AA guns were under employed (and also were many of the AT guns) So AT guns and large AA guns were used as barrage guns. Small AT guns became infantry support guns.
Ammunition expenditures were enormous. British 21st Army Group in NW Europe used just over 2.6 million rounds of 5.5in ammo from D-Day to V-E Day.

The Allies released the use of VT fuses for artillery ammunitions just about the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Greatly increasing effectiveness of artillery fire for several reasons.
Some of this took a while to sink into all commanders. Or older commanders had to unlearn old tactics.

ALL western Allies used motor transport for artillery after the Battle of France.

Artillery is an overlooked component of the warfare in WW II. The Germans had some good designs. They often didn't have enough of the really good ones and after 1941 they often had to ration ammo to much greater extent than the Allies did. The Russians used large quantities of artillery and ammo but they often didn't use it well. In part because of the poor communications systems (not enough radios and poor field phone systems). Their fire plans were often inflexible.

The Allies weren't going to risk men for the sake of a few hours/days when they could spot strong points and use artillery and air support to blast the strong points.
This was a particular strong point of the British system in late 1944. ANY artillery observer was given the authority to call in ANY and ALL guns within range of the target if he (the forward observer) thought the target warranted it. He might get disciplined later but there was no asking for permission or waiting for approval as the targets escaped, dug in, or transited out of range. And all guns meant all guns, it didn't matter what unit (division, corp, army) the guns belonged to, The Forward observer could call for any guns in range.
This worked because of the early mentioned communications net works where the battery headquarters were linked up not only with their own up and down level HQs but also with the Artillery headquarters of the units on either side of them and the heavy independent support batteries/battalions.

The Allies were in a good position to Steamroller the Germans in 1944-45.

 

[ThomasP]

Hey yellownose,

1st, what do the 1913 GDPs of the nations involved in WWII have to do with this discussion? Look up the combined values for the Allies vs the German controlled areas for the period 1942-45. Examples of the extreme overmatch are:

The 1939 population of ~350,000,000 for the US/UK/USSR vs ~80,000,000 for the Germans including the areas already invaded/under their control.

The fact that during the height of its power during the war, Germany only had access to about 25% of what the Allies had access to (this is from post-war assessments by the Allies)

GDP is a bit more nebulous due to what you count in it, but you might find it interesting to research. The actual production by the various countries during the war gives a good indication of the pronounced difference in scale.


2nd, re the Germans being 10 years behind in A-bomb development

Before August 1939 the US had no real clue that an A-bomb could be developed. The only reason that the US managed to do what it did re the Manhattan Project is due to the combined knowledge of the scientists that had fled Germany and other countries in Europe, along with the research the British had done, and the US manpower & industrial capacity. It still took the US about 5.5 years to make its first viable bomb.

At the time that the German government decided to table the research in the areas related to fission and a possible A-bomb, they had been following a dead end for ~3 years. They would have had to realize this and redirect their research into areas that they had not yet thought of. In effect, in accounting terms the Germans were in the red, and in scientific terms were pursuing the wrong rabbit down a dead end rabbit hole. And the Germans had (at best) about 1/3 the effective manpower and industrial capacity of the Allies.

The Japanese were pursuing a viable path and so were at least in the black. In 1945 the Japanese were at the point the US was in about mid-1941(I think), but without the manpower or industrial capacity needed to build an A-bomb.


3rd, re the Soviet juggernaut

It is not the size of the Soviet army at the end of the war that was important. The important thing was that the Soviet army destroyed the vast majority of the German army via attrition, and still had a lot left over.

And "Manpower doesn't does matter, since the kill ratio is usually not 1:1". Just ask any competent general in the history of human warfare. The underdog may be able to win in the right circumstances, but everything else being approximately equal, it very unlikely. Like I said up-thread, 'magic' would have let the Germans win. Beginning with the battles for Moscow (Sep'41-Jan'42) and Stalingrad (Aug'42-Feb'43) the war became one of attrition. By the end of the battle for Stalingrad the Germans had no real chance, short of tremendous stupidity/mistakes on the part of the Allies.