All extra aircraft and tanks do is stretch the available POL further. Instead of getting to the outskirts of Moscow, the extra tanks and aircraft only really ensure that the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe are stopped after Kiev.
ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro
True-to a certain extent. However, one needs to analyze the cost of an entire divisions that requires supply and support while it is missing (or critically short of) its primary weapon system which makes it mission capable. An armored divsion which still had 14,000 men, 1,500 trucks, but 25 tanks is a huge and wasteful drain on the supply system. With 100 more tanks and 500 more men, the added costs to keep that division supplied would be minimal-especially when you consider its added capabilities-which would be several times more than the depleted division.
Well, General German policy would probably have used several thousand new Panzers to build major new formations. This would have required finding the extra trucks and vehicles which would have required POL that wasn't simply available.
On the more specific point, your example is still increasing the Panzer Regiment's POL requirements by 300%. Given most German Units in Army Group Centre were hand to mouth with supply most of the time, adding hundreds of new vehicles would have caused more problems than it solved.
The point was that Hitler wasn't allowing the maufacture of spare parts. Only one new tyre per month per 16 vehicles was being sent to motorised units. Failures to convert the railways were causing excessive usage of trucks to haul fuel and ammo and causing further drop out rates. (AGC lost about a third of its trucks within the first month).
Cranking up tank production just produces new toys without the logistical wherewithall to keep them mobile and armed in the field. Fuel itself was only taking Tanks forward less than half what it should because the vehicles were guzzling fuel in the poor road and ground conditions.
The Germans couldn't sustain what they had. Tripling the number of tanks would just have made it worse.
The same rational holds true for air units. To maintain a base that is meant to sup[port a hundred a/c, but there are only 20 to keep going is not the most productive way to do things.
As above, I don't see the Luftwaffe launching many more sorties with many more aircraft. Ultimately, it's sorties, not gross numbers of aircraft available that count.
ORIGINAL: IronDuke
Also, with regards munitions. Given the German logistical situation, extra munitions didn't help because the Germans couldn't lift them to the front anyway.
This is largely true from the late summer of '41 well into '42. By the spring of '42 the rail system had been repaired well enough so that operational shortages should not have occurred (until jumping forward again another few hundred miles). (side note, this raises the grand strategy for the '42 campaign-many though that by standing on the defensive-(except for Leningrad and Sevastopol)- for a year would pay off better than attempting another big push when things were just starting to go right-supply wise-no small consideration).
But by January 1942, Germany was essentially beaten. It was of crucial importance that the problems occurred in 1941 when they stood a slim chance. Also, given the pol situation, the strike into the Caucasus was inevitable.
The same applies to the trucks. Germany lacked the raw materials to make rubber. They simply would not have been able to produce enough tyres to equip 20000 or 50000 new trucks even if they had had the fuel to fill them up. 20000 was also not enough. The Wehrmacht marched into Russia with thousands of French Civilian vehicles that were simply not up to the job. Any serious programme should have concentrated on upgrading the truck fleet, not necessarily augmenting it.
Regards,
IronDuke
There were very good stocks of strategic materials at the start of the war-Goering was actually a very sharp chap in that regards. It is true that rubber was a looming problem, but one that was eventually overcome with synthetic rubber. The supplies could have handled the added production for a few years
I disagree. The Germans were hopelessly short of rubber and the spare tyre situation illustrates that. Even at full speed, the synthetic rubber production was simply nowhere near enough. Further raw materials became short when russia was invaded because she was Germany's sole source of some materials (eg, Manganese).
Shift work and the 72 hour work week could not have bee that difficult to implement-after all, the Brits did it immediately, Speer was able to get it rolling quite quickly after the demise of Todt. (in fairness, Todt did start the program for non Luftwaffe factories a few months before his accident).
The German issue was not just production, though, but the archaic practices and cottage industry that characterised it's industries. Much of German industry was made up of numerous small firms supplying a little each at widely dispersed locations. Ramping up family firms to three shifts per week would not have been easy, particularly since three was a shortage of skilled labour.
The key was rationalisation and mass production, which was not solved nearly as simply.
Secondly, the real issues for German production were not just primarily around labour, but around resources and methods. Put simply, they could have put everyone in the Reich onto Tank production in 1941 and not made a single extra vehicle. The problem was the Reich didn’t produce enough coal. Lack of coal meant that steel production was difficult to ramp up (much of what was ramped up in 1942 went to Ammunition production not tanks.) In other words, there was a limit to how many tanks Germany could make because she didn’t have inexhaustible supplies of steel.
This was the real bottleneck for German production. Speer did force through some improvements and they fuelled the economic growth, but many of Speer’s improvements came not through ramping production up or instituting a 72 hour week, but simply making what was already happening more efficient by building new mega factories or cutting down the number of vehicle types that needed to be manufactured.
There was a very definite limit to how far Germany could go on her coal production figures, particularly as 1943 and British bombing of the Ruhr gathered pace. After initial heavy raids early in 1943, German production of steel fell by 200 000 tons per month. As the Allies shattered the ruhr's transport infrastructure and shut down steel production and coal production, they nearly brought the Reich to its knees before switching targets and giving them some breathing space.
As for the fuel situation; there was no strategic shortage which would effect primary operations.
I disagree. The Germans were fundamentally afflicted by POL shortages right from the start. Fuel was very short within Germany during Typhoon. The Germans simply couldn't get it from anywhere. It affected everything from operational movement for the Heer to sortie rates for the Kriegsmarine to pilot training for the Luftwaffe.
I have seen statements that there were fuel shortages in France during the 1940 campaign-these were due to poor staff work rather than any strategic shortage of fuel.
It was largely a logistical problem. One the Germans overcme by flying fuel to the spearheads or being lucky enough to capture French stocks. To be fair, this was a very short campaign.
It was not until late in '42 before fuel was becoming critically short for primary operations. This is not to say that Germany was not acutely short in a strategic sense, but they had more than enough in 1941 for Barbarossa-even if there were another several thousand more tanks and a/c.
They had issues during Barbarossa. By August, fuel was getting short and the situation was exacerbated by the logistical apparatus and operational tempo. Wherever the Germans paused following an encirclement, Motorised troops used massive amounts of ammo beating off Russian counterattacks trying to get into the pocket and stopping breakout attempts from troops inside the pocket. This meant ammo took priority for deliveries and building up any kind of fuel surplus was impossible.
Hitler had told Todt that he wanted a thousand tanks a month after the French campaign-he was told it was impossible. It clearly was not.
It was impossible, simply because the Germans lacked the resources to build them and the production centres to assemble them. German tank production did significantly rise, but it took the building of major new factories (most notably at Linz in Austria) to achieve this. These factories simply didn't exist in 1940.
Tanks need dedicated production facilities organised in a modern industrially efficient way. Speer developed that but it was out of reach in 1940-42 and hampered significantly after 1943 by British bombing.
The Luftwaffe would have had to start looking into better ways to train much larger numbers of pilots, as they did later in the war. Fuel was certainly a big consideration in training the force. Had the cutbacks begun earlier, and accelerated the improvements in ground training, a much larger (and high standard) German Air Force would have been available by 1942.
But they didn't train pilots better at the end of the war. The number of hours German pilots got in training was steadily cut to the point the only reasonably trained pilots coming out of the schools in 1944/45 were bomber converts who already knew how to fly. Fuel was the key consideration in training the force and they simply didn;t have nearly enough.
Again, I think that a simple stroke of a pen ordering the 72 hour work week would have given enough material to make a significant difference in Barbarossa. By 1942, the differences would have been rather huge-especially in the air.
As above, I disagree as I don't see where the Reich would have got the coal, modern facilities or steel to make a significant difference to production that early, and even if they had, I don't see the logistical apparatus in the field being good enough to keep these extra vehicles moving.
On a related point; Goering wanted the new Volkswagen factory to be put under the Luftwaffe sphere right at the beginning of the war. This was Germany's biggest factory. Had he received control of that plant, resource consumption by the Luftwaffe would have expanded drastically. Goering had no qualms about that-and he was the guy who should have knon better than anyone in Germany. Luckily for the allies, Hitler decided to give it over to Army orders-but it sat idle for a very long time.
Goring was a fool. Milch was the driving force behind aircraft production and produced wonders on a shoestring by early 1943. Also, resource consumption expanding is only possible when excess resources are available to consume.
Compared to British prewar planning, the Germans were far behind the curve. The Brits (even under Chamberlain) had made real plans for turning all automotive plants into a/c factories. The appropriate executives were all informed so that the plan could commence as soon as required. They planned to double production in the first year, and double iot again in the second year-quite ambitious-and nearly completed.
The Germans steadily improved, but never got to grips with the central issue which was lack of resources. Britain had the empire and lend lease. America was the world's pre-eminent industrial giant. Russia threw everything into production in a way only a communist dictatership could and reaped the benefits, although we should note Soviet troops were moved by American trucks. The Russians produced thousands of tanks a month because they didn't have to produce everything.
Regards,
ID
