Could German WWII Logistics have been improved?

Not much there, but what it does do is simplify the British Logistics by opening up the Suez to British shipping to and from the Far East. This cuts 4-6 weeks off the turn around time for getting Indian and Australian goods to Britain (Australian Beef in particular).
A U-Boat pen at Marseilles or Algiers can still do a lot of damage, so the Germans not helping the Italians doesn't necessarily give the British free-reign over the Med.
 

Deleted member 1487

Not exactly. What they were gearing up for was a quick war against Poland to recover the territories lost to them at Versailles, not a war lasting five or more years.
Richard Overy begs to differ strongly.

True enough, Soviet-style collectivisation simply reduced the peasants to serfs, which led them to make only the barest minimum of effort and led to the collapse of Soviet agriculture. Tooze's solution is more what I had in mind; buy out the little farmers and employ them in other occupations, and give the larger farmers more land so they can benefit from economies of scale.
Agreed.


Granted, but they could and should have done even more than they did. For example, at the time of the Battle of Britain the Luftwaffe was flying three different medium bombers: He111, Do17, and Ju88. There was no earthly reason one of them could not have been selected and the other two terminated, other than the above mentioned inefficiencies.
Everything but the Ju88 was being phased out as the war started, but the war necessitated that older models be used. Politics played into this too, keeping the Do17 in production longer than intended by a year.

True, but I didn't say they were perfect, just head and shoulders above everyone else in that respect. Interservice rivalry was present in every military; look at the Germans, with the Luftwaffe having not only control of all aircraft but controlling all flak units, paratroops, and toward the end of the war their own infantry divisions as well; a ridiculous duplication of effort.
Nazism took it to a whole new level. And German inter-service rivalry was historically worse than just about any western nation. This was also because of Goering, the arch-douche of political infighting and disorganization (he led the LW and economy with disastrous results).

In truth the IJA and IJN were quite capable of cooperating; I-Go was a masterpiece of planning and execution on the part of both services. But as the war progressed it developed into a primarily naval and air conflict in the Pacific and an entirely separate ground conflict in China and Burma; only limited cooperation was possible in any case. What was needed was a supreme military commander who could bend both services to his will. Lacking that, friction was inevitable.
Of course, actually cooperation was the exception to the rule.
 
Ditto on several points.

The Germans hoped for a quick war and got it, but lost their minds when they whipped Poland, Benelux, France and decided to go take a whack at Russia from the west which has been a miserable failure.
They had issues long before the first panzer rolled on Poland as mentioned before- the insane balkanization of effort and multiplicity of designs to support vs picking a few useful truck/jeep, half-track designs and making enough to have a positive impact.

Sure, there were some white-elephant projects that devoured and diverted valuable resources- the commerce-raider cruisers, the V-weapons, and the Final Solution that were crucial to advancing and improving the logistical situation on the Eastern Front.

What escapes many in discussing more motors is the fuel to fuel them. Anyone have any idea what the output of Ploesti and synfuels plants was and how well they could have supplied more of these proposed trucks and AFV's?
Maybe the Heer found themselves using millions of hayburners b/c there was hardly enough fuel for panzers, much less support vehicles?
Also, roads in the Soviet Union were horrible and the Wehrmacht had major issues staying supplied when they had to get away from railheads.
Horses could navigate the rasputitsa. Jeeps had trouble and tanks sank in the mud.
 

Rubicon

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Anyone have any idea what the output of Ploesti and synfuels plants was
Romanian crude petroleum production
1936: 8703K metric tons
1937: 7150K metric tons
1938: 6594K metric tons
1939: 6225K metric tons
1940: 5810K metric tons

I.e. about the same as the Dutch East Indies
 
A U-Boat pen at Marseilles or Algiers can still do a lot of damage, so the Germans not helping the Italians doesn't necessarily give the British free-reign over the Med.

But not at the same scale as the Italian Naval Air-force (very, good) and Luftwaffe (based on both sides across their shipping lanes) + U-Boats based in Italy + Italian subs (which were designed for the Med) + Italian Navy (based on both sides across their shipping lanes).

There is a difference between "not a free-reign" (Italians neutral) and "the Med is closed to British shipping" (Italians in the Axis).
 

Deleted member 1487

Instead the Germans could have used the newly (in 1939) built VW plant to make trucks instead of helmets and mess tins.

I found out much more about this factory. It would have been the biggest auto manufacturing plant in Europe with Europe's longest conveyor belt assembly line. When tooled up in mid-1940 it would have produced 150k cars in the first 6 months; by 1942 it would have been able to produce 1.5 million cars a year.

So, assuming it is instead tooled up for Opel 'Blitz' 3 ton, AWD trucks instead, it probably could have produced 50k in the first six months, with more than 100k a year by 1942, if not significantly more. That was Germany's total truck production, in all models, IN ALL FACTORIES in 1943!

So assuming that Germany gave it over to the army for truck production, they would not have needed to pillage all of Europe for their different trucks and have had to deal with all the various spare parts problems.

That is one. There is much more, but I'm going to hold that back for a TL I have planned.
 
I can't see how having more trucks helps Nazi Germany except on a tactical level which they already dominated consistently with fewer mobile forces. More trucks merely means that each division requires even more fuel to operate, fuel that simply can't be delivered. In every single German operation, from Smolensk to the Bend of the Don, even a few Panzer divisions operating along one axis would run out of fuel in a very short period of time and would have to pause for several days, giving the Soviets time to reorganize and regroup and save hundreds of thousands from encirclement. Adding more trucks increases the frequency and length of these pauses and gives the Soviets time to rescue even more men from encirclement and deal more damage to the Germans. The Germans took heavy losses in the early years when their divisions ended up strung out and low on fuel, pounded from all sides by reformed Soviet tank corps and reserves. Greater losses and longer operational pauses in the middle of major battles are two things Germany cannot afford in 1941 and 1942.

Hurting German conversion of rail lines, which was probably the #1 logistic problem, was the fact that the German's rapid advances left numerous bodies of Soviet troops behind their lines which ranged throughout their rear areas for weeks and even months if they were able to join guerrilla movements. The Germans didn't have the manpower to spare to guard the rail lines while they converted them so there were many delays as they tried to wipe out the Soviets when they could and then move on. These rear area attacks made it impossible for the conversion of rail lines to go smoothly, and if anything had a greater long term effect than the organized partisan offensives later in the war.

Organized Soviet forces were also able to deal damage to German rear areas. In the aftermath of Operation Mars 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps was able to break out of encirclement and ride throughout the countryside with the help of local partisans, shredding German rail lines and generally wrecking havoc before reaching Soviet lines in the Luchesa River Valley.
 
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I found out much more about this factory. It would have been the biggest auto manufacturing plant in Europe with Europe's longest conveyor belt assembly line. When tooled up in mid-1940 it would have produced 150k cars in the first 6 months; by 1942 it would have been able to produce 1.5 million cars a year.

So, assuming it is instead tooled up for Opel 'Blitz' 3 ton, AWD trucks instead, it probably could have produced 50k in the first six months, with more than 100k a year by 1942, if not significantly more. That was Germany's total truck production, in all models, IN ALL FACTORIES in 1943!

So assuming that Germany gave it over to the army for truck production, they would not have needed to pillage all of Europe for their different trucks and have had to deal with all the various spare parts problems.

That is one. There is much more, but I'm going to hold that back for a TL I have planned.

Where are the resources coming from? Don't get me wrong Germany needed to concentrate resources on a single truck design and produce it in bulk whether in that factory or other ones but considering the constraints of the fuel supply 100K a year extra trucks in swapping one problem for another. Also those potential production figures are not reliable, in fact I would class them more under "it would be nice if..." than actual statistics.
 

Deleted member 1487

Where are the resources coming from? Don't get me wrong Germany needed to concentrate resources on a single truck design and produce it in bulk whether in that factory or other ones but considering the constraints of the fuel supply 100K a year extra trucks in swapping one problem for another. Also those potential production figures are not reliable, in fact I would class them more under "it would be nice if..." than actual statistics.

If Germany actually rationally distributed her resources, she should have enough to actually do this. Remember the resource base in 1944 was just about the same as 1941, but inefficiency was high, so production was significantly lower. This too was because Germany was busy building new factories and other capital projects that eventually were cancelled as being unnecessary that an earlier rational look at what was being spent and where would have released large amounts of raw materials of the VW line, which BTW was a 'Detroit Style' factory with assembly lines and lower skilled machines, rather that the wasteful, high skilled general purpose machine tools that made up most of the other German factories. Basically the VW plant was set up to use the efficient methods that allowed for the production 'miracle' of 1944...and this in 1940.

The big problems will be rubber and oil though, but OTL in 1941 Germany found the necessary resources to use all of those captured trucks and civilian models, so the resources would be there, up to the point the Germany used trucks in 1941 IOTL, but without the standardization problems that plagued the German army in Russia.

@Julian: the trucks were what brought forward the fuel to the tanks. As it was IOTL the tanks didn't have trucks to the fuel from the rail heads, because they broke down due to lack of spare parts thanks to using a variety of different models, which would be eliminated here, and using civilian models that lacked all wheel drive and reliability that military models like the 'Blitz' had. Standardization has its benefits.
 
@Julian: the trucks were what brought forward the fuel to the tanks. As it was IOTL the tanks didn't have trucks to the fuel from the rail heads, because they broke down due to lack of spare parts thanks to using a variety of different models, which would be eliminated here, and using civilian models that lacked all wheel drive and reliability that military models like the 'Blitz' had. Standardization has its benefits.

I was under the impression that the problem was that the Panzers simply advanced too quickly to be supplied by truck, broken down or otherwise, and that the rail network and the rate of fuel production was prohibitive in preventing the rapid distribution of fuel to them once they were stranded. Once they outran their initial start lines and railheads there was little that could be done; throwing more trucks into the mix just ends up wasting fuel. Even with spare parts breakdowns would also be incredibley frequent and take their tole over the long run just as much as they did IOTL, albeit the effect woudl soemwhat be mitigated.
 
In the macro sense I think the best way to improve German logistics would be to mandate the use of diesel fuel from as early in the 30s as possible. With the same amount of vechicles available a greater distance could be covered due to the inherent fuel efficiency of diesel. I also think, and if there are any fuel scientists out there please correct me, diesel is easier to make and you can squeeze more out of it per barrel of crude than petrol. IIUC it is easier to make by the F-T process and can be bulked out with all sorts of shitty additives like vegetable oil, all of these things would add right up for Germany in the largest sense of yearly national fuel use etc.
 
I was under the impression that the problem was that the Panzers simply advanced too quickly to be supplied by truck, broken down or otherwise, and that the rail network and the rate of fuel production was prohibitive in preventing the rapid distribution of fuel to them once they were stranded. Once they outran their initial start lines and railheads there was little that could be done; throwing more trucks into the mix just ends up wasting fuel. Even with spare parts breakdowns would also be incredibley frequent and take their tole over the long run just as much as they did IOTL, albeit the effect woudl soemwhat be mitigated.

This, according to RAILWAYS AT WAR. The road system, especially in Russia, made the rails imperative. Once you outran your railhead you had to wait until the gauge was redone and the line moved forward so supplies could be built up again.
 
From the looks of it the production peaked in 1936, why? Don't know. But it seems to get stable at 5500K-5600K during the war.

This is normal for oil fields; the initial production is high, when the pressure is at its maximum, then drops off as oil is pumped out faster than inflow from other deposits and local acquifers can compensate for. At some point, if the management is intelligent, production will be balanced with inflow and a steady level of output can be maintained, until the reservoir is nearly empty, when production will drop off.

A good example would be Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia, which has maintained a production level of roughly 5 million barrels (763 million liters) per day for many years, and is likely to continue to do so for the next thirty years or so with the help of water injection and other pressure-maintaining mechanisms. The Saudis could have increased the output, but have wisely refrained from doing so because it would lower future output drastically.
 
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