German fuel situation and what to improve on it, 2.0

33k in the air said:

Yes, that's why they spent a vast amount of resources and money on the V-2. Whoops, wait, that was effort spent on a militarily useless program. (At least the V-1 program was cheap in comparison, if also militarily pointless except perhaps as a political pressure diversion.)

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While the V-1 was useless from a military standpoint in terms of whatever they hit, one could argue they were useful in the sense that they forced the Allies to devote considerable resources to shoot them down. Also air attacks against the launch sites were costly as they were heavily defended by flak batteries.

Shortround6 said:

However what causes the impact were the shells not the guns.

Artillery was changing during the war let alone from WW I.

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Indeed, artillery doctrine changed a lot, partially due to realizations about what worked and what didn't, and also things like better communications tools (radios!) etc. In WWI (and partially in WWII as well, see e.g. USSR artillery usage) a lot of shells were wasted on week long barrages. Turns out that after the first few shells land people tend to take cover, massively reducing casualties from a prolonged barrage. In WWII the USA was doing short and intense time-on-target barrages with multiple batteries (perhaps UK too?), which are vastly more 'efficient' in terms of casualties caused per shell fired.

AS far as getting rid of the horses (even 30%) from German agriculture. Good idea, if you can get the tractors and trucks.
Since the Germans could not built enough trucks (of any type) for the army this seems like a non-starter.
If you want to replace even a fraction of the several million horses you need several hundred thousand vehicles. US built about 12 times the number of jeeps compared to the German Kubelwagens.

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I think I was musing about the mechanization of German agriculture upthread, but, yes. Germany was economically devastated after WWI, the Versailles treaty, hyperinflation during the Weimar republic and whatnot. So during that time there were no resources to devote to agriculture mechanization. After the Nazis took power, then Germany was recovering economically but also then the focus was on rearmament, so again no resources to devote to agriculture mechanization. Further, if the agricultural mechanization had been done with liquid fueled tractors, that would have further complicated the situation with liquid fuels, necessitating devoting even more resources to the synthetic fuel program which already was a strain on the economy as-is. As one can see in other countries, while steam powered tractors etc. did exist agricultural mechanization only really got going with the introduction of ICE powered tractors. So while Germany could have mechanized their agriculture, in terms of having the technical knowhow how to make decent enough tractors, there were reasons why the USA and UK were the first.

I think, at best, what they could have done is devoting more resources to mechanizing the army (with diesel power as I argued above!). Resources for this could have been taken from, say, the largely useless capital ship program.

z42 said:

Resources for this could have been taken from, say, the largely useless capital ship program.

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Actually Germany got a fair return on the capitol ship program. Even by providing targets
When looked at in a "fleet in being" aspect the the British certainly spent a lot of time, money, manpower, and oil fuel countering the German capitol ships that could have been spent elsewhere.
How many tons of bombs were dropped on Brest to try to hit the sisters and the PE and at what cost?
Bombs that were not dropped on German infrastructure (or attempting to hit German infrastructure)
How many 10s of thousands of tons of fuel oil were burned providing battleship escorts for North Atlantic convoys in the eastern Atlantic and for the Murmansk convoys?
No German capitol ships (or at least not building the last two) means the RN can put more BBs and carriers into the Med in 1941-42 and finish off the Italian navy and shorten the campaign in NA. Of course this may mean that the US gets to land green troops in Italy or southern France in in 1943 which might have been a bad idea.
Not building the sisters really gives the RN Carte Blanche in the NA in 1940-41.
Also may mean that the Norway invasion either isn't done or fails to take all of Norway (Germans don't get access to the Swedish iron ore year round.)

33k in the air said:

(At least the V-1 program was cheap in comparison, if also militarily pointless except perhaps as a political pressure diversion.)

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Cost more to defend against, than the Nazis to implement
from the wiki

z42 said:

While the V-1 was useless from a military standpoint in terms of whatever they hit, one could argue they were useful in the sense that they forced the Allies to devote considerable resources to shoot them down. Also air attacks against the launch sites were costly as they were heavily defended by flak batteries.

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Yes, that's what I meant by a political pressure diversion. It was not politically possible to let V-1s hit British soil and not respond, and thus military assets had to be diverted to deal with the threat.

marathag said:

Cost more to defend against, than the Nazis to implement

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The Allies could easily afford it, however. Was the diversion in Allied military effort worth the German expense? Time and resources were spent on V-1 sites only to have that investment wrecked.

z42 said:

As one can see in other countries, while steam powered tractors etc. did exist agricultural mechanization only really got going with the introduction of ICE powered tractors.

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in the USA, Steam Traction Engine production was about 5000 a year in 1900, two years before Hart-Parr introduced the first commercially successful ICE Tractor. The mechanization of US AG sector started in the 1880s

By 1920, around 200,000 ICE Tractors a year were being made, reducing the number of horses needed

Before 1900, the main uses of the very large Steam Traction engines was plowing in the Spring, and then Threshing in the Fall.


But they were very expensive.

My Grandfather, when he was a boy before WWI, well the Family wasn't rich enough to own a Steam Engine, as were most Farmers of the era, had Horses.

But the Steam Engines was such a benefit to the Farmer, deals were done. The Owner of a Steam Traction Engine, would offer uses of the Engine for a cut of the later harvest. Farmer Co-Operatives were very much a thing in the MidWest. Engine would go from Farm to Farm, all the local Farmers would help each other getting the work done.

But the lower cost ICE Tractors did replace all that, where every Farmer could own a small Tractor, and the Farmer and his kids or even hired help, could do all the work themselves, and sell all of the Crop.
Far lower cost for ICE Tractors vs Horses, though we still had a few Horses on the Farm when I was a kid, they really weren't for doing Farm work anymore.

Great post!

33k in the air said:

The Allies could easily afford it, however. Was the diversion in Allied military effort worth the German expense? Time and resources were spent on V-1 sites only to have that investment wrecked.

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Germany could not win the long game of Deep Pockets.

But the V-1 kept all those AA gunners and Tubes in SE England, along with Interceptors, rather than having them in France or L-L'ed to the Soviets, so was worth the expenditure. The most effective WonderWeapon they did from an economic sense.

Shortround6 said:

Actually Germany got a fair return on the capitol ship program. Even by providing targets
When looked at in a "fleet in being"

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Fair enough, "fleet in being" is about the most that the German capital ships achieved. Which certainly did have an effect in how the Allies used their resources, no argument there.

But what is the opportunity cost of this program? Even if they had scaled back the capital ship and heavy cruiser program by half, that would have left somewhere around 100ktons of steel that could have been used to build something else. Like, say, 25k medium trucks.

33k in the air said:

The Allies could easily afford it, however. Was the diversion in Allied military effort worth the German expense? Time and resources were spent on V-1 sites only to have that investment wrecked.

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That is the real argument. Not that they got something back for the expense but that what they were doing was more effective than using the resources for other things.

Other things figure into the equations.
Near the end of the V-1 Campaign the British were shooting down V-1s with about 150 AA shells. The British were using up to 15,000 shells during the BoB.
Two major changes were the proximity fuse and and radar aiming. Minor changes (but important) were better guns and shells.
Even if the shell counts were the extreme you now have to figure in the cost of the Fuses (similar to the atomic bomb in R & D) and the provision of local radars to the gun batteries and directors.
Germans were working on proximity fuses of their own but they didn't know that the British already had them. Which would skew the missiles launched vs missiles reaching the target calculation.

z42 said:

Even if they had scaled back the capital ship and heavy cruiser program by half, that would have left somewhere around 100ktons of steel that could have been used to build something else. Like, say, 25k medium trucks.

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An overlooked source for Steel

Horseshoes.
Iron vs Steel is mostly about carbon content, and then trace elements. Most steel horseshoes are mild steel with less than 0.2% Carbon, like 1015 or 1020. Easy to work in a forge for minor reshaping.

Horses and mules need to have their shoes either replaced or, at a minimum, re-set, every 6 weeks, because their hooves grow, and shoes are a wear item, and can be thrown/lost.
One set of shoes will often last for 12 weeks, that is, for an initial shoeing and one re-set.

Size 0 horseshoe, 10-16 oz.
Size 1 horseshoes 1.5 pounds, Draft horse shoes 4 pounds, and more.

Each shoe would typically use six nails, box of 100 for 8-10 ounces

Germans used around 2.7 million horses

That's a lot of Steel tied up in horseshoes and nails

yellownose said:

Ok, listen: at this point you are not arguing with me, but with my sources.

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Actually you are drawing bad conclusions from material you have ruled as inadmissible. I have noted problems with one article, the response was a form of words about how sources are graded good or bad, no mention of the problems.

Let me make it explicitly clear again, giving the Germans more fuel does not make a difference to the military operations by the Germans until mid 1944. Unless the fuel comes with a whole lot more. Therefore it does not buy time for various wonder weapons to arrive in numbers with trained troops to inflict losses on the US that make the US give up, even with the US give up level set at below that of the Germans. No amount of text about how the Germans towed aircraft etc. with animals late in the war changes the situation before then.

yellownose said:

If you want to know how many German soldiers were Nazis:

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To use your words, "After the war many wanted to be "the guy who secretly resisted"" Similar for prisoners.

yellownose said:

There also was no "scorched earth"-policy in Germany. Hitler's order to destroy Paris was probably made up by Dietrich Von Choltitz, just as the Nero Befehl was made up by Speer.

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You seem quite good at making declarations, the army was destroying things as it retreated as per usual orders, then comes if there was a special do more order. When it comes to Paris the Germans needed to keep the bridges and roads clear for as long as possible for the retreating army, while destroying things allowed under the then rules of war, then comes things that the city needed but not strictly military then comes cultural. There were not enough troops and explosives to destroy the city and not enough to stop the FFI forces, similarly the FFI lacked the ability to overwhelm the garrison, stand off time. Then allied ground troops arrived.

yellownose said:

The problem here is: your ideas are based on hear-say by people who after the war wanted to show themselves in a good light, Hitler's testament though exists in written form.

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One document to rule them all is absurd. The Germans were destroying things as they retreated, if they could. A testament that urges people to fight on is not likely to mention orders to wreck the place.

yellownose said:

You did a pretty good job in your first post, after that - not so much.

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And I draw the opposite conclusion based on the failure to refute what I wrote and how the psychological defences are arranged from the section on good and bad sources, rules that exclude you from being a good source but can be used to write off anybody putting holes in the idea.

yellownose said:

If you want the US-stats for artillery(or shrapnel/explosives)-casualties in WW2, also according to Beebe and DeBakey: 58,5% in the mediterranean theater between January and June 1944 (page 131), 60,2% after D-Day and the final assault on Germany. (Page 129)

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And there were no major improvements in German artillery being developed. Which means a major upgrade to other weapons to make the idea work.

yellownose said:

Then the German soldiers also called for a semi-automatic rifle. ... You get it. They had a lot figured out.

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And the fundamental reality the new rifle did little.

yellownose said:

A major problem was morale. A lot of German soldiers thought "they have tanks that drive, we don't, they have aircraft, we don't, this sucks, let's surrender".

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I have posted the US ETO PoW take, note how low it is unless things like a port garrison is taken, or an encirclement, until the allies cross the Rhine. Once again the Germans regularly ran out of supply lines before they hit strategic fuel limits. And if the above was correct the Africa Korps would have surrendered in Egypt, the German armies in Italy surrendered in 1944 and the prisoner take in June/July 1944 in France would have been way higher than it was.

The scenario being postulated,

A Hitler so fanatical and a system so obedient and with enough morale it would fight on through multiple nuclear strikes but not so fanatical or obedient to issue and obey scorched earth tactics in Germany. So just right fanaticism.

A U-boat blockade able to sink the nuclear weapons en route to Europe. Ignoring the fast cruiser option, the regular air freight option or the way a B-29 could carry a nuclear weapon across the Atlantic by itself. The US Military has a breaking point within reach of a better firepower Wehrmacht. This point can be reached without any sort of weakening in the east or south.

The Wehrmacht inflict at least 4 times the historical losses on the US ETO units. OB West started with a ration strength of the best part of 2 million. At 4 times the troops in the west the Red Army drives to Berlin wondering where the Germans are. To overcome this the Germans get weapons upgrades, none of which were around in anything like the numbers required at the times required to equip a well trained force to use them for long enough to actually be able to inflict the casualties. And their historical arrival had no dependence on oil supply. Artillery is estimated to have caused around half US Army casualties but no upgrade to German artillery is available, if anything a downgrade applies as explosives supplies dry up. So the infantry weapons are to be upgraded to be 8 times better and sometime in 1944.

Criteria for believable sources exclude the person making the scenario and most of the information used to support the idea.

Me262. The ETO heavy bomber war effectively ended in mid April 1945, the example of Me262 abilities is from mid March and counts losses to flak as losses to Me262. Reading books like the Nachtjagd War Diaries shows how hard it became for the Luftwaffe to figure out what the night bombers were doing with all the electronic warfare and the loss of coastal radars. Quite often the bombers were first plotted at the German border. The USAAF started flying more direct routes in mid 1944 to encourage Luftwaffe interception (and save fuel, lessen navigation errors, timing issues etc.). A similar electronic screen for the day bombers was quite possible if interceptions became a problem. The Me262 required the better airfields, and as such were often targets of the USAAF overlapping bomb crater deliveries. With the allied forces in France, the 15th Air Force relieved of targets like Ploesti, there was a lot of allied airpower available to go after the Me262 from production to all through a sortie.

In terms of bomb tonnage dropped on Germany Bomber Command reached its half way mark end September 1944, the 8th Air Force in mid November. The night bombers in particular were dropping more effective bombs more accurately than previously. The target list was settled and effective, oil, transport and if the weather was not good enough area attacks. Oil killed German tactical mobility, transport killed strategic mobility and the economy, intact factories are useless without regular deliveries and pick ups. With saturation of the repair system minor damage on a less important factory from an area attack could shut production down for a long time.

People think of Lend Lease aircraft etc. but rarely about Lend Lease agricultural machinery, as you can farm a larger area with a tractor than a horse team the new machinery tended to be put into pools and shared as required. One way of sustaining food production or increasing it but with fewer people.

In September 1944 at a strategic level the US Army had no fuel problems. Huge supplies in the US, closer to France there were ample supplies in Britain, closer again and some 207 ships in European waters, less those awaiting a return convoy, were loaded with all sorts of supplies for the US army in France, so plenty of fuel, making it to land the army fuel system had around 12 million jerricans, less losses, so plenty of fuel transport, however after the invasion the system of one empty for one full had been abandoned, as the US Army leaves Normandy it leaves behind over 2 million jerricans, think about them making it to the front full in September 1944. Or similar other improvements in fuel supply and troop allocation (Ignore Brest and Brittany for a start, don't ignore Antwerp approaches)

z42 said:

To which extent was German coal production mechanized before/during WWII? A quick look on wikipedia suggests bucket wheel excavators have been around since the 1920'ies, which surely beats guys with shovels for open pit lignite mining. I suspect for these power/weight isn't a massive issue, so they could have built them steam powered, thus saving the oh-so-precious liquid fuel.



The Mosquito is of course the stellar example of wood composite construction of the day. My understanding is that weight-wise it was about the same as an equivalent plane built from aluminum. So yes, no particular reason why Germany couldn't have developed this technology back then either.

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I don't think it was that mechanized given how relatively easy Ruhr coal was to mine still at that point. Also I haven't found references to open pit mining in Germany in WW2 and the bucket wheel excavators were a 1950s introduction in germany. Power to weight isn't the issue, it is the labor, time, and resources to manufacture add on steam conversion power kits to existing vehicles. Though as others have mentioned the coal-water slurry fuel might be viable in diesel engines.

From what I can gather about wood construction aircraft, it was futurism snobbery that prevented it. They wanted the most advanced designs and materials, not what they considered outmoded materials. Big blindspot that cost them dearly during the war with say the HS-123, which was superb as a CAS aircraft, but basically scrapped except for a handful due to thinking the Ju87 was better. Had they made thousands of them and imbedded them in even infantry corps to use them like attack helicopters were in the cold war who knows what could have happened. Especially if they were made with wood to make them even cheaper.

33k in the air said:

The Germans are outnumbered 4 to 1 in total manpower. The four Commonwealth nations of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa add another 30.07 million, raising the ratio to 4.35 to 1.

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The vast majority never being used in Europe, nor did the shipping capacity exist to utilize them there, nor did the political will to use them all there exist as well, especially considering the Japanese threat. The Canadians ran out of manpower by 1944, the ANZACs were needed in the Pacific, and South Africa really only fielded a division or two.

33k in the air said:

The Soviets alone outproduced Germany in all categories except for major naval vessels.

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Sure and lost over 75% of it just fighting Germany alone. German losses were for all fronts and a fraction, even combined, of Soviet losses. After all 75% of Soviet tankers died, not were casualties, died during the war. Per Krivosheev. Raw production alone isn't a trump card.

33k in the air said:

That coal is also needed in other areas: to power the locomotives and the railways; to generate electricity; to produce steel; to heat the homes of the citizens. Any coal diverted to synthetic fuel production is coal not available for other purposes.

Germany had a coal problem. This is examined in The Wages of Destruction, pages 413–418.

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I know. I'm explaining part of the reason why: malnourished miners. The British/Allied blockade, for all the moral problems with it, did have a substantial impact at dropping productivity...and caused a lot of death among civilians. I saw one estimate that production could have been increased by 15% of overall production is sufficient calories existed for miners. That would have been enough to fix the coal problem.

z42 said:

While the V-1 was useless from a military standpoint in terms of whatever they hit, one could argue they were useful in the sense that they forced the Allies to devote considerable resources to shoot them down. Also air attacks against the launch sites were costly as they were heavily defended by flak batteries.

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Useless? It did more damage than it cost to make despite the shootdowns. Not even counting Allied countermeasure cost. The V-2 was entirely a waste except for its use against Antwerp later on.

33k in the air said:

Yes, that's what I meant by a political pressure diversion. It was not politically possible to let V-1s hit British soil and not respond, and thus military assets had to be diverted to deal with the threat.




The Allies could easily afford it, however. Was the diversion in Allied military effort worth the German expense? Time and resources were spent on V-1 sites only to have that investment wrecked.

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Yes it was worth diverting Allied bombers from targets in Germany. The Allies couldn't afford it, as they had to divert major bomber resources from the transportation plan and hitting German factories.

The Germany economy wasn't big enough to start with.
The US was simply too big. In the late 30s the US was making several million passenger cars per year.
Truck production was separate.
In 1939-40 there were over 40 companies making car, bus, truck and boat engines. granted some of them were small. The Auto factories were shuttered or turned to other products.
The Germans did not have a high percentage of motor vehicles to population, it was better than some other European nations but it was still poor compared to the US and Britain.
Sharing farm equipment only goes so far. It can help with big jobs that are seasonal and share costs, however it doesn't get rid of all the horses. A prosperous farmer that had more than few horses might well reduce the number but he would still need a few for regular day to day jobs, so would the poorer farmer. Without 1-2 horses and a cart the farmers are reduced to wheel barrows/hand carts and production really drops.

Power from horses is/was wasteful and inefficient. Problem is that it took years (decades?) to change over and the Germans (and Europe) were behind the curve.
Look again at the chart provided by marathag. It took the US over 20 years to to just equality of tractors to horses and in that chart one tractor was equal to 6 horses in space on the chart. IF the Germans start 10 years late (1930 instead of 1920) and with a smaller motor industry to begin with?

wiking85 said:

The Canadians ran out of manpower by 1944 . . .

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That was largely the fault of politics. While there was a draft in Canada, only those who volunteered to do so could be sent overseas. The unexpectedly high casualties from the fighting in Normandy caused a shortage. This could have been rectified by rescinding the volunteer requirement. Doing so, however, would have triggered a political crisis in that the province of Quebec had been opposed to the war from the beginning and did not want its people sent overseas without them agreeing to it. Consequently, other means were found to alleviate the shortage. As it happened, some time later on, the volunteer requirement did get dropped, but only a relatively small number of non-volunteers ended up fighting overseas.

wiking85 said:

Sure and lost over 75% of it just fighting Germany alone. German losses were for all fronts and a fraction, even combined, of Soviet losses. After all 75% of Soviet tankers died, not were casualties, died during the war. Per Krivosheev. Raw production alone isn't a trump card.

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Yes, the Soviets were not shy about taking casualties. But if the Soviets alone were outproducing the Germans, adding in the rest of the Allies makes the German position even worse.

wiking85 said:

I know. I'm explaining part of the reason why: malnourished miners. The British/Allied blockade, for all the moral problems with it, did have a substantial impact at dropping productivity...and caused a lot of death among civilians. I saw one estimate that production could have been increased by 15% of overall production is sufficient calories existed for miners. That would have been enough to fix the coal problem.

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This aspect is mentioned in the book. I was going to post the pages relevant to the German coal problem, but it would have been too many in my judgement. Either that, or it would have been a fair bit of editing to get shorter snippets.

wiking85 said:

Yes it was worth diverting Allied bombers from targets in Germany. The Allies couldn't afford it, as they had to divert major bomber resources from the transportation plan and hitting German factories.

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With some 2,243 heavy bombers, and 678 medium and light bombers in the USAAF, along with 1,212 heavy bombers in Bomber Command, operational as of 6 June 1944, there would seem sufficient resources available to handle some being diverted to Crossbow duties while still retaining a meaningful striking force for other targets.

marathag said:

An overlooked source for Steel

Horseshoes.
Iron vs Steel is mostly about carbon content, and then trace elements. Most steel horseshoes are mild steel with less than 0.2% Carbon, like 1015 or 1020. Easy to work in a forge for minor reshaping.
.....

That's a lot of Steel tied up in horseshoes and nails

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I never would have thought of that.

G Geoffrey Sinclair

In 1950 the British were building their nuclear weapons. At that time, the British government probably sent an inquiry about how effective these weapons would be. The document I posted probably is the reply from those people who build it. If you for some odd reason are so confident in your opinion that you don't even believe them, there is nothing I can do. So we can stop the discussion.

On top of it you have an idea of Nazi Germany that is completely outdated. Hitler probably said that Paris should be defended, In that case, the Allies would have had to choose between having infantry fight around every house, or to bomb the city like Manilla. Von Choltitz probably thought that in this case he'd rather surrender, and sell himself as the "savior of Paris". Strategically it would have made total sense to fight for Paris, because urban warfare causes enormous casualties, especially with the tactics of that time, and because the french are very sensitive when it comes to Paris. That would probably have led to tensions within the alliance.

Btw: my numbers for how many German soldiers were aktive or passive Nazis is not from interviews. The British wiretapped the cells in German POW camps. They wanted to find out how to undermine German morale, for example with things like Senfton Delmer's radio station Gustav Siegfried Eins.

I highly doubt that Hitler thought it would even be possible that he can order the Germans to genocide themselves. You say "I only have one document" - you don't even have one document. You believe the nonsense from Speer that Hitler told him by phone to order the ethnic suicide of the German people. That doesn't make sense. Hitler's testament doesn't fit into the same reality.

Then you consistently deny that Germany was suffering from an oil shortage from the very beginning. Their Panzers ran out of fuel in Poland. Insufficiant logistics were responsible for this, but that also has to do with the poor mechanization, or ability to fully mechanize. Luckily for them the Polish defense strategy was outdated, to put it nicely. In 1940 they were lucky to capture large oil depots in northern France and Belgium. The only region where the French had oil fields was Alsace-Lorraine. The French have always had the strategic problem that their most productive regions are all in the north.

Anyhow, I can't convince you, you just double down. So for me the discussion is over.