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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.Early Scud's (R-11) used T-1, or RG-1
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.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
Urine too. Most of those gallons of water of intake mostly go out that wayAnd 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.
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.
The Roman numeral for thousand was M which stands for Mille.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
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.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).
Oil was probable the most important product or raw material.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.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:
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.
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.
That was a bait. I knew somebody would react with the typical argumentations that the western allies, especially America, were basically invincible.
But it worked because of the biggest vulnerability: oil.
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.
Also, don't forget: before the Germans ran out of fuel, they did pretty well fighting the biggest land war of all time . . .
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.
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).
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.
About the western front: I do not believe that the US would just have accepted millions of 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.
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.
Sometimes you are lucky and just happen to luck into good timing.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.