German logistics, purchase programs and war booty, reality and alternatives 1935-43

Yes, it matches the accepted thinking (and their own assessments) that Germany did not have the breath for a long, exhausting war. Germany's war in the west was just that - short and devastating campaigns. Poland, respite, Denmark/Norway almost complete before Battle of France, rest, Yugoslavia/Greece finished almost before Barbarossa. And here we come to the USSR and USA problem. It was perfectly clear that the war in the east was inevitable, and on the other hand, Roosevelt's policy was not (excessively) hidden either (like any real politician - say "we never want to go to war" in the elections and then do everything to provoke it). The mustache assessment was that America would not have a greater influence on the war in Europe until 1942 (sorry America - he was right), that's why the decision to get rid of the USSR in 1941 was not illogical (and the declaration of war by the USA does not change the situation on the ground - it can only draw Japan into the equation of war with the Soviets).

Only the assessment (but not only Germany - let's not forget that the rest of the world during the summer and autumn of 1941 was sure of the collapse of the USSR) was faulty.

Whether better logistics (and let's say a better plan of Barbarossa than Halder's) would lead to the collapse of the USSR is a slightly bigger question. But it is not entirely impossible that the fall of Leningrad, Moscow and Ukraine in 1941/2 would reduce the Soviets (at least for a while) to negligible danger and thus provide (them) time to fortify the coasts of Europe and set up air defenses and/or clear North Africa and/or neutralize the UK. That is, to prepare for the arrival in the USA.
Again how successful and what the wallies moves would be - that's up for debate.

So instead of a conclusion, if I may return to logistics.

As usual the answer is not just one magic item. But a combination of gas generators for trucks (much earlier), diesel propulsion for tanks (because it is easier to produce synthetically) steam wagons, and generally less horses for transport (and more food for people) ... would certainly solve the logistics issue.
Admittedly, for that to happen, there would have to be a visionary who would see it and an economic genius who would balance the economy between consumption and the price of oil and the alternatives, at least in the pre-war era.

And the results could deprive us of the possibility of discussing it at all (in terms of a much different world that I'm sure you wouldn't want to see).

Again, this is a conversation about technology, but ultimately it's impossible to avoid the implications of its application and what it would mean for millions of people.

As I recall, although I was only one year old at the time, Germany declared war on the U.S. The only time he declared war before attacking, which freed the USA.

As I hinted, the German declaration of war on the USA did not change anything on the ground, and what exactly was the agreement (or wishes) about Japan's actions towards the USSR in the Germany-Japan agreements, if we have not found out by now, we can only guess.
At least it is clear that Germany expected reciprocity, i.e. a Japanese declaration of war on the USSR.

The war between Germany and the USA was simply not declared. Military aid to the UK (and before that to France), convoy protection zones, Ruben James ... are not exactly a show of neutrality .

Zmauky said:

As I hinted, the German declaration of war on the USA did not change anything on the ground, and what exactly was the agreement (or wishes) about Japan's actions towards the USSR in the Germany-Japan agreements, if we have not found out by …..

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special ed said:

As I recall, although I was only one year old at the time, Germany declared war on the U.S. The only time he declared war before attacking, which freed the USA.

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Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941 in support of Japan, Italy followed soon after.

It was most likely in support of Japan's membership in the Axis, but a huge mistake on his behalf, since the U.S. was still officially neutral with the European Axis nations.

BTW - does anyone have some good data on the natural gas production and consumption in Europe and world, 1930 to 1945? TIK of the youtube fame mentioned that plans for 1943 were including the natural gas production/consumption of some 500 000 tons for that year (or it's equivalent in gasoline?).

tomo pauk said:

BTW - does anyone have some good data on the natural gas production and consumption in Europe and world, 1930 to 1945? TIK of the youtube fame mentioned that plans for 1943 were including the natural gas production/consumption of some 500 000 tons for that year (or it's equivalent in gasoline?).

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World, I do not have.
USA


Most Gas was from Gasified Coal, aka Town Gas not Natural Gas. USA started pipelines that eventually put those plants out of business after the War.
UK didn't start phasing them out til the '60s.

Europe, I have no data, but given the lack of oil production, normally means lack of Natural Gas, as is formed in same geological processes-- while Coal was everywhere.

tomo pauk said:

Many thanks for the overview.
Do you have similar data for the coal types that Germany could've also used back in ww2, coming from France, Belgium, Bohemia, Poland or Ukraine?

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Here are the analyses for Polish and French coal:



Coal production of the Axis powers and the occupied countries is given in the following table (thousands of metric tons):

Data is from the following website.
Polish coal is estimated
Clearly German coal production dwarfs the contributions of the other countries

If you really want to understand combustion this is the industry bible:
The reference book I have is:
It was published by B&W's major rival Combustion Engineering who were kind enough to give a copy to me. The B&W book is superior but I would just borrow my boss's copy

Zmauky said:

Only the assessment (but not only Germany - let's not forget that the rest of the world during the summer and autumn of 1941 was sure of the collapse of the USSR) was faulty.

Whether better logistics (and let's say a better plan of Barbarossa than Halder's) would lead to the collapse of the USSR is a slightly bigger question. But it is not entirely impossible that the fall of Leningrad, Moscow and Ukraine in 1941/2 would reduce the Soviets (at least for a while) to negligible danger and thus provide (them) time to fortify the coasts of Europe and set up air defenses and/or clear North Africa and/or neutralize the UK. That is, to prepare for the arrival in the USA.
Again how successful and what the wallies moves would be - that's up for debate.

Click to expand...

It's possible that the USSR would have collapsed with the fall of Moscow. But I think it's more likely that trying to capture Moscow would have resulted in another Stalingrad-esque meat grinder that the Wehrmacht could ill afford. Similarly, winning in NA would have taken huge resources (and what does winning NA constitute? Capture Cairo? Or Palestine, and the Iraq oil fields?), and with the RN roaming in the Med, how to keep your troops supplied?

As usual the answer is not just one magic item. But a combination of gas generators for trucks (much earlier), diesel propulsion for tanks (because it is easier to produce synthetically) steam wagons, and generally less horses for transport (and more food for people) ... would certainly solve the logistics issue.
Admittedly, for that to happen, there would have to be a visionary who would see it and an economic genius who would balance the economy between consumption and the price of oil and the alternatives, at least in the pre-war era.

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Yes, maybe. But the German economy was already going full bore with rearmament; if you do more of X you have to do less of Y. Better logistics and more alternative fuels would likely have been useful, but what to sacrifice in order to get those? Sacrifice a couple of the surface warships might have helped a little? And would the army be better if it was motorized but smaller than historical?

As for earlier introduction of gas generators, I think one of the big advantages of gas generators is that you can quickly switch an existing vehicle over to it. So while international trade is still possible, maybe keep using imported petroleum and reap the benefits of cheap and convenient fuel as long as possible. That of course doesn't prevent manufacturing and stockpiling gas generators so they can quickly be taken into use once the foreign fuel taps are cut off.

German industrialists were actually quite opposed to the synthetic fuels program, as they saw that it would never be economical, particularly considering the depressed price of oil on the international market in the 1930'ies. Well, except those industrialists involved in the production of the synthetic fuels, that is. But there's also the foreign exchange situation, which was in quite a critical state already before Hitler took power. The synthetic fuels program was not only in order to insulate the nation from a blockade in case of war, but it was also intended to help with the foreign exchange crisis.

marathag said:

Higher taxes and speed limits than what gasoline had.
Steam wagon

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Steam wagons were already going the way of the Dodo before the Salter Act of 1934 and before the taxation laws. By 1930 there were only two major manufactures left in the game, Foden and Sentinel. The death knell was sounded when an enterprising bus company, Barton Transport, installed one of the just developed Gardner L2 diesels into a Lancia bus in February 1930. Foden quickly saw the light and started switching to the improved Gardner LW as soon as it came out in August 1931 and had phased out steam by 1934.
Here is an interesting article from The Commercial Motor in 1934 pleading the case for steam but what is does nicely is enumerate it problems.
Note the steam wagon was favored with a special allowance of an extra ton in gross weight, which considering the size of the lorries at that time, was a substantial concession but that that was not considered to be enough and 2 tons was proposed.

Reluctant Poster said:

Steam wagons were already going the way of the Dodo before the Salter Act of 1934 and before the taxation laws. By 1930 there were only two major manufactures left in the game, Foden and Sentinel. The death knell was sounded when an enterprising bus company, Barton Transport, installed one of the just developed Gardner L2 diesels into a Lancia bus in February 1930. Foden quickly saw the light and started switching to the improved Gardner LW as soon as it came out in August 1931 and had phased out steam by 1934.
Here is an interesting article from The Commercial Motor in 1934 pleading the case for steam but what is does nicely is enumerate it problems.

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If there was ever the opportunity for the Germans to buy cheap, that was it.

Reluctant Poster said:

If you really want to understand combustion this is the industry bible:

B&W Steam - Its Generation and Use

The newly released 42nd edition of Steam/its generation and use, a book written and published by B&W, details advances in the production of steam and the utilization of all types of fuels

www.babcock.com

The reference book I have is:

Combustion, fossil power systems : a reference book on fuel burning and steam generation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

1 v. (various pagings) : 27 cm

archive.org

It was published by B&W's major rival Combustion Engineering who were kind enough to give a copy to me. The B&W book is superior but I would just borrow my boss's copy

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1919 era book, out of copyright
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22657/22657-h/22657-h.htm

z42 said:

Yes, maybe. But the German economy was already going full bore with rearmament;

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Greater Germany famously didn't go to full War Economy til 1942, when Speer became Armaments Minister after Todt died in another of those frequent Nazi aircraft accidents.

This is because the Nazis knew full what happened at the end of the Great War, with consumer production of Goods not even able to provide Starvation levels of Food. Keep the Volk happy with full bellies.

Also, after Schacht was moved aside for Göring to do economic planning, those 4 year plans hardly worked any better than Stalin's.

If Hitler like the idea of increasing farm productivity via Steam Tractors, it would have happened 1936-1940

Reluctant Poster said:

Note the steam wagon was favored with a special allowance of an extra ton in gross weight, which considering the size of the lorries at that time, was a substantial concession but that that was not considered to be enough and 2 tons was proposed.

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So why were there such low road limits in the first place?
To make sure freight traveled by rail, not road.
Gasoline vehicles in the UK were not a threat, as none had the load capacity of the Steamers at this point.

Over in the USA Mack was making the 7.5 ton AC


and 10 ton Mack AP

Now these would have been great in Europe for moving big loads, but they did not 'Think Big' enough.
In defense of the UK, they did have inexpensive Oil before the War, and liquid fuel with ICE is far less expensive than Steam.


Germany didn't have cheap liquid hydrocarbon fuels available.

Yes, end was in sight for UK Steam, but it was euthanized rather than by normal economic methods. Tax things to limit use, subsidize to increase. UK subsidized Steam on the Rails, taxed on the roads.

marathag said:

So why were there such low road limits in the first place?
To make sure freight traveled by rail, not road.
Gasoline vehicles in the UK were not a threat, as none had the load capacity of the Steamers at this point.

Over in the USA Mack was making the 7.5 ton AC
View attachment 815833
View attachment 815834
and 10 ton Mack AP

Now these would have been great in Europe for moving big loads, but they did not 'Think Big' enough.
In defense of the UK, they did have inexpensive Oil before the War, and liquid fuel with ICE is far less expensive than Steam.


Germany didn't have cheap liquid hydrocarbon fuels available.

Yes, end was in sight for UK Steam, but it was euthanized rather than by normal economic methods. Tax things to limit use, subsidize to increase. UK subsidized Steam on the Rails, taxed on the roads.

Click to expand...

marathag said:

Greater Germany famously didn't go to full War Economy til 1942, when Speer became Armaments Minister after Todt died in another of those frequent Nazi aircraft accidents.

If Hitler like the idea of increasing farm productivity via Steam Tractors, it would have happened 1936-1940

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That is true, but not the argument I was making. I was talking about the capacity of the economy before the war started. There was no big 'slack' left unused (and no, forcing a war economy in peacetime was never going to fly) that would have allowed some massive extra construction of (steam or otherwise) trucks, tractors, synthetic fuel plants and whatnot without impacting other things, like the arms buildup. Do more of those, and you have to do less of something else. Not saying that, say, mechanizing the army wouldn't have been worthwhile, but it's a tradeoff that has to be made by doing less of something else instead.

Now one could argue that mechanizing agriculture and horse-drawn logistics would have freed a large labor pool to work in industry and thus allow both having the cake and eating it, but that's probably a process that takes at least a decade, or several decades. If you're gearing up for a war in just a few years it might not work out as then your factories are churning out tractors and trucks rather than military equipment.

marathag said:

Gasoline vehicles in the UK were not a threat, as none had the load capacity of the Steamers at this point.

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Nonsense. There were plenty of petrol lorries with greater than or equal to the load capacity of the steamers.

Thornycroft JJ in 1928

Mercedes Benz 1928
AEC Mammoth 1929
Leyland Hippo 1929
Maudsley 1929
Scammell 1929
Thornycroft JC 1929
The remarkable Scammell 100 tonner of 1929
Note that the remarkable Scammell Pioneer first appeared in 1927 with petrol power.
As a matter of interest here is data on worldwide commercial vehicle production in 1928 and 1929
American production is an order of magnitude greater than any other country.

As for road trains AEC produced a petrol powered one in 1930.




Richard Potter

z42 said:

. If you're gearing up for a war in just a few years it might not work out as then your factories are churning out tractors and trucks rather than military equipment

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There was that Tractor Factory at Stalingrad, Designed by Albert Kahn( who designed for Ford and many other plants in the USA), made with machinery from the USA and Germany, and made copies of the US McCormick 15-30 Tractor in 1930, and nearly 300k made by 1939
In 1933, it started making T-26 Light Tanks, and retooled to make the T-34 in late 1940
All about planning ahead. STZ Plant was dual purpose.

The idea the Germans did not mobilise until 1942 or later is largely wrong, what they did do was squeeze the civilian side of the economy harder and stepped up efficiency. With full employment in 1939 mobilisation cut the civilian work force from 39.1 million Germans plus 0.3 million foreign workers or PoWs to 34.8+1.2 a year later, a decrease of over 3 million and foreigners were not as productive. By June 1941 it was 33.1+3.0, June 1942 31.3+4.2, in June 1943 30.3+6.3, in June 1944 29.0+7.1, in other words the civil work force dropped from 39 million pre war to around 36 million for the war, but with steadily fewer well motivated workers. The economy's resilience was helped by having more factory space and machine tools than were needed, Germany exported many machine tools during the war.

Autarky cost, the pre war plan was to push synthetic fuel production from 630,000 tonnes a year in 1936 to 3,425,000 tonnes in 1940, apart from the workers needed to make them the plants needed their work forces and raw materials. A crude calculation by the USSBS says 200,000 German "oil workers" were needed, while in the US around 270,000 workers produced over 20 times the output.

In reality synthetic fuel capacity in September 1939 was around 1,467,000 tonnes rising to 1,854,000 in May 1940. Output by year was 1,953,000 tonnes in 1940, 2,581,000 tonnes in 1941, 3,218,000 tonnes in 1942 and 3,915,000 tonnes in 1943, if the Germans had maintained output at Q1/44 for the entire year, around 4,288,000 tonnes in 1944. As the rise in production shows the Germans were investing in capacities pre and early in the war.

The Nazis wanted females back home combined with the growth of the military and economic stimulus of deficit spending meant full employment by the late 1930's, however in 1932 German consumer goods production was down to nearly 20% of the 1928 total, by 1938 it was back up to 80% of the 1928 total, consumer goods consumption did not return to the 1920's level until post WWII. The Nazis wanted more guns, their choice.

Nazi doctrine of strong take what they want and a focus on preparing for war meant worrying about the money being spent was secondary, there was horrendous inefficiency in the pre and early war period. Richard Overy has done some studies on the Nazi economy and does come to the conclusion Germany mobilised much earlier than the original post war studies suggest. He points out Speer has a vested interest in his version of the story and the original German economy study for the USSBS was written by a person from Speer's ministry. In effect Overy does note Speer did make things better but not in the way or to the extent he claimed.

The negatives in translating resources to output were things like incentives to employ people, not machinery, continuing into the early war period, if employers or workers found a more economical way to do something their quota was raised but not profit or wages, profits were a percentage of costs (more costly more profit), no comparisons between suppliers was done, the most costly could be 2 or more times more expensive than the cheapest, nor sharing of information between the different manufacturers, raw material quotas being industry averaged rather than based on what was being made at a plant, lack of controls, the Messerschmitt plant making aluminium step ladders for example, interference from the armed forces continually making changes so not allowing long manufacturing runs, changes in plans like the plant that rather than produce aircraft spent much of the war tooling and retooling as orders changed and things like Nazi party infighting. The looting of other countries directly or by fixing the currency exchange rates helped cover the gaps, charging them in commodities like food for the services of an occupation army another method, the successes to end 1941 clearly meant the system was working, little need for change. Though ironically the military turned down the Hitler request to up gun the Panzer III pre Barbarossa on the grounds of costs. The early war years were when successful fighter pilots could ask for custom modifications.

The BMW801 aero engine in 1940 took 5,145 kg of raw materials and 2,400 hours of labour, in 1944 it was 2,790 kg of raw materials and 1,250 hours of labour. Henschel made a 64% saving when building engines between 1939 and 1943, in 1942 Junkers improved Ju88 production efficiency by 30%. In May 1943 each ton of munitions used less than half the iron and steel, a sixth of the aluminium and half the copper compared with 1941. According to Overy the output per head for the arms industry looked like, 1939 100, 1940 87.6, 1941 75.9 (provisional figure), 1942 99.6, 1943 131.6, 1944 160.0 (minimum).

In early 1942 plenty of fixable things to start with. Speer had a good platform and once he had authority could do significant improvements quickly. Goering even gave Milch real power again to sort of the mess in aircraft production. Speer made a difference, the investment programs of 1940 and 1941 also made a difference. Part of the Speer program success was the authorities needed results now. As a result the interest groups and methods that had retarded production began to be over ridden. It also helped Speer was competent.