Through Turkey to the Mideast or Caucasus....historically feasible??

[Hoyt Burrass]

Let me just say up front, that I like and am enjoying this game, and think Alvaro's support of it has been outstanding.

I'm just throwing this out there for discussion (and to bring it to Alvaro's attention) because I've seen it posted here as a viable strategy for the axis. If I am missing something please point it out.


Now, admittedly, I am not fully versed in the nuances of the supply system in War Plan, but I've seen a couple of Axis players post about romping through Asia minor via Turkey and then down into Iraq and Persia to gobble up the oil. My question is...was this legitimately possible?

My limited (1 cup of coffee, early morning internet) research tells me that there was no rail bridge across the Bosphorus/Dardanelles until 1973, War Plan has a rail link in place at the Bosphorus from game start.

Further, I question the continuity of the rail lines down through Lebanon/Syria. My understanding is that the rail link from Turkey through Syria to Eqypt was narrow gauge until some time after 1941.

Similarly, the rail link between Syria and Iraq (Baghdad) was not completed until July 1940 and the southern portion linking Basra and Baghdad was narrow gauge as well.

There is also a lengthy discussion of the logistic difficulties of supplying an Axis thrust through Turkey on the Axis History Forum that can be found here

Bottom line is that I do not believe there was sufficient rail capacity or continuity to support an axis drive through Turkey in the strength that it is possible in War Plan, because (and this is a big because) of the way rail supply works in War Plan. To quote from the manual (p64) "A map supply level of 9 does not reduce when connected by undamaged rail." So, with a contiguous rail line in War Plan it is possible.

Like I said, I like this game. I bought it on release day. I like the detail Alvaro has put in and I am impressed with the support he has shown. I like the way Port Supply works. I think this rail supply issue can be addressed without too much trouble by either breaking the rail line at the Bosphorus or limiting the rail net through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, or a combination of those two.

Thanks for reading

[AlbertN]

What I believe you're missing is that you need a bazillion of divisions to man the railroad or a partisan blows up and then the Axis is pratically screwed over as they've no control on what gets repaired.
So you end up playing WarLottery on rail repairs against ubiquitous and overpowered partisans.

If the Axis on the other hand wants to dedicate 1 Infantry every 3 hexes of rail - they're fine. But that's a huge investment in production and logistic points in terms of assets.

[Hoyt Burrass]

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith

What I believe you're missing is that you need a bazillion of divisions to man the railroad or a partisan blows up and then the Axis is pratically screwed over as they've no control on what gets repaired.
So you end up playing WarLottery on rail repairs against ubiquitous and overpowered partisans.

If the Axis on the other hand wants to dedicate 1 Infantry every 3 hexes of rail - they're fine. But that's a huge investment in production and logistic points in terms of assets.

Thank you for the information and response...I've just seen posts, (admittedly, in Single Player against the AI) talking about seizing the Iraqi and Persian oil fields.

[aspqrz02]

Actually, there was NO rail link from Turkey through Syria to Egypt ever.

It would, quite inconveniently I would suggest, have had to pass through the Palestine Mandate and I guess the British may, just possibly, mind, have objected.

That and the fact that Egypt was under British control as well means there wasn't even a link when Palestine was under Ottoman control before WW1

This particular what-if has been discussed extensively on soc.history.what-if and a number of problems have been thrown up that have proved to be insoluble ...

* Turkish railways barely had enough rolling stock at all, let alone in Anatolia, even for their own needs.

* The lines (two, IIRC) to the Caucasus were single tracked, and of limited capacity anyway.

* The Reichsbahn had an ongoing rolling stock capacity problem as it was ... they had perennial shortages throughout the system and, as with many other such shortages, they had limited capacity to expand it. It was, like many such things in WW2 Germany, literally a choice of whether to pull things from Tank, or Artillery, or Aircraft or even Ship production to produce more of something else (steel shortages were key and unresolvable ... there was no extra capacity to mine or refine).

They had particular issues with Tanker cars for petroleum products, and could barely keep up with the demands of the Panzer armies in Russia, for example.

So, even if the Turks rolled over and played dead for the Germans (diplomatically unlikely ... the Brits, for example, had pre-purchased the entire Turkish wartime and post war production capacity of Tungsten so the Germans couldn't get any ... a serious issue as it limited the availability of high speed machine tools so useful for producing things like, oh, tanks ... or rolling stock) the rail lines running through Anatolia were, as noted, of limited capacity ... the availability of indigenous rolling stock was limited and the Germans really had no capacity to make it up ... and etc.

We did some rough calculations and the supply requirements of running a a single German Army level formation through Anatolia exceeded the one-way capacity of the rail lines several times over so that even if you ran the nonexistent rolling stock down there it would not have been able to return!

The whole German 'plan' for WW2 was to win quick as they simply didn't have the industrial capacity to cater for a long drawn out war ... they only kept their economy going in 39-41 by stripping first Poland and then Western Europe bare and relied on doing the same to Russia after a quick victory. That worked so well ... [:D] [:D] [:D]

[aspqrz02]

Actually, seizing the Iraqi oilfields would have been even more difficult ... the Berlin-Baghdad line had been physically ripped up by the British and all of the infrastructure destroyed.

So the steam trains would have had, for example, no coaling or watering points and no maintenance facilities even if the Germans relaid the tracks.

I suppose you are aware that the real problem the Germans had with the Russian railways was NOT the fact they were 5'3" rather than 4'8.5" per se? Its basically a nothing and requires only unskilled labour and hand tools to convert the gauge ...

Nope, the real problems were more complex ...

* The Russian locos were physically much bigger than those used in the west an the coal and water capacity was such that their coal and water stops were about twice as far apart as the German locos needed.

The Germans had made no plans to build the hundreds of extra facilities needed ... worse, they had no capacity that could ramp up quickly enough to do so and, yet worse, their steel shortages limited how much they could ramp up anyway.

* Then there were the maintenance facilities ... they were placed roughly twice as far apart as was needed as well, and required really specialised equipment, and the retreating Russians destroyed almost all of them. So not only did the Germans need to build scores and scores of new ones, they had to replace the ones that were destroyed.

And, you guessed it, they'd made no preparations for this and had even less capacity to produce the replacements than they had for the simpler coal and watering points.

* Then there's the switching and loading yards, also often destroyed, and requiring specialist equipment, some simple, some more complex than even the maintenance depots ... and, yet again, the Germans had made no effort to prepare and had even less capacity to ramp up production.

So, while the Iraqi section of the B-B line could have, theoretically, have had lines laid relatively quickly, the infrastructure would have had to have been rebuilt from scratch.

And, in the meantime, they'd have had to run all supplies to the front on Trucks ... more trucks than they'd committed to the entire Russian campaign (which was the lion's share of what they had available ... to get an idea of the massive problem ... the Afrika Korps, a CORPS, had about as many, or slightly more, trucks committed to supplying it than an entire Panzer Army in Russia).

Nice idea, but unless you strip Russia bare or leave North Africa entirely to the Brits, you're not getting Persia, either.

And the chances of getting any of the wells intact?

Zip.

And remember what I said about the perennial shortage of POL rail tankers? How do they ship it back even if some wells are captured intact?

Phil McGregor

[AlvaroSousa]

I misread the map I was looking at. There is no rail crossing Istanbul. If someone could PM me a map of the area of the time I will be happy to update the map. I will correct the rail there in the next patch. Thanks for catching this. I was concerned about an easy Turkish invasion.