Hitler is a train enthusiast

tigercat

What if Hitler in the 1930's had focussed more on improving Germans railways than its road system and was in general a train enthusiast

What implications would it have ? What impact would a less developed road system have had . What other programmes might have suffered from a diversion of resources . How would improved railway system with more resources have impacted ww2 . Would more resources spend up conversion of Russias rail system and what would impact have been on Eastern Front
 
NORGCO

NORGCO

tigercat said:
What if Hitler in the 1930's had focussed more on improving Germans railways than its road system and was in general a train enthusiast

What implications would it have ? What impact would a less developed road system have had . What other programmes might have suffered from a diversion of resources . How would improved railway system with more resources have impacted ww2 . Would more resources spend up conversion of Russias rail system and what would impact have been on Eastern Front
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Well if he could reduce the German military's demand for trucks down to what it actually had and could find fuel for that would be a help. My understanding is that a lot of the stop-start stop start nature of some offensives in the east - Sixth Army was stopped repeatedly on the way to Stalingrad waiting for fuel etc to catch up with them - was the result of this.

The Wehrmacht apparently destroyed more trucks a year than occupied Europe produced. Extending the reach of railways to make the horse-drawn wagons they were mostly dependent on not have to travel too far from the railhead would also help to some degree.

That the horse-drawn wagons and steam trains supply system was straight out of the American Civil War is of course also problematic. But given the lack of trucks, and fuel for the trucks, and spares for the trucks ...
 

Devvy

Donor
Definitely not a subjects I expected to ever see mashed together in this forum, but hey ho! :)

In all seriousness, I'm going on the proviso that rather than being a "train enthusiast", Hitler is more aiming to improve logistics for the war with rail. Steam locomotives for goods purposes were built in large numbers anyway (Linky), so there's not that much you can do there. Realistically, the best bet you have is electrifying more routes (Germany was well aware of the advantages of electrification); the Nazi's didn't bother continuing to modernise the infrastructure. The use of coal would be far more efficient if used to generate electricity in a power station, and then supply electricity to the railways (and other places), so they'd make better use of the resources, but electrification takes time which they may not have. I'm not sure it makes a massive difference to be honest. The other problem is the significant change of gauge when the Nazis decide to pop over to Stalingrad. It is a not complex, but massively labourious task to regauge the Russian broad gauge tracks to standard gauge, whilst the Soviets made sure to not leave any rolling stock for the Nazis to use (further spreading their rolling stock thin).
 

tigercat

I was aiming for more aware of it's use in logistics rather than collecting engine numbers at his local bahnhof.
How about some kind of early introduction of containerisation to improve his logistics .
 

Triune Kingdom

A lot depends on what exactly greater focus on railway means. I mean, if we are talking N. Germany putting into its railways the amount of money and effort that was expended upon building the Autobahns, which according to Wiki was about 6.5 Billion RM, there would certainly been some positives for them.

From more and better rolling stock, modernization of the railway infrastructure, greater use of automation, electrification... even if only a fraction of what was spent on Autobahns, which really made little to no positive impact on the German WW2 perfomance, goes into railways, then Germany does benefit a lot.

Millions more RM for other purposes, although, hundreds of thousands of people, and millions of tons of steel, concrete and other resources would find gainful employment elsewhere.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Triune Kingdom said:
Millions more RM for other purposes, although, hundreds of thousands of people, and millions of tons of steel, concrete and other resources would find gainful employment elsewhere.
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precast concrete ties fed into a tracklaying machine. One mile per day, perfectly aligned once roadbed is in
romove old ties, plate and spikes, moving old rail off to the side, and replaces with new

That's how you really do it, not using starved prisoners to do it.
 

Arkenfolm

Wouldn't train enthusiast Hitler make serious effort in completing at least a portion of the Breitspurbahn in the late 30s? Might Hitler take one of these massive trains from Berlin to Nuremberg for the annual rally?
 

USS_Ward

Resurgam said:
...people hate train enthusiasts?
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Go over to r/railroaders on Reddit and lookup "foamer" or "railfanner". In general people tend to bash on Train enthusiasts or railfanners. Slang term is "Foamer" since a stereotype is that they "foam" at the mouth when they see a train.
 

iron

Devvy said:
" The other problem is the significant change of gauge when the Nazis decide to pop over to Stalingrad. It is a not complex, but massively labourious task to regauge the Russian broad gauge tracks to standard gauge, whilst the Soviets made sure to not leave any rolling stock for the Nazis to use (further spreading their rolling stock thin)."
Click to expand...
Gee thanks for that Mr Ward.
Now back to the meat of the matter...

This is addressed in A.C. Mierezejewski.
The bigger problem is the fact that the roadbed engineering (excavation to a solid surface, ballasting, compaction) was abysmal on the established Soviet grades/lines.
Soviet Railroads were built to operate at an entirely different standard as opposed to European practices.
Moving the rails and replacing the turnouts was accounted for in the initial planning for "Barbarossa".
What was not accounted for was the fact that the poor state of the roadbeds limited operating speeds to a crawl, lest you have trains derailing left right and center.
The effort put into the planning (by the DRB) for Barbarossa was significant. They (Dorpmuller) recognized the need to establish additional coaling/watering stations on the lines they would be expected to "convert".
The thing that really bit them was the engineering aspect.
Hindsight is 20/20.
 
BELFAST

BELFAST

tigercat said:
What if Hitler in the 1930's had focussed more on improving Germans railways than its road system and was in general a train enthusiast

What implications would it have ? What impact would a less developed road system have had . What other programmes might have suffered from a diversion of resources . How would improved railway system with more resources have impacted ww2 . Would more resources spend up conversion of Russias rail system and what would impact have been on Eastern Front
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OTL the autobahn were built with money diverted for the railway system.
Autobahns were not much use during the war. Best drop the autobahn.
Resources would be better used to build more locomotives and carriages.
For the invasion of the Soviet Union, a method fast laying of the prefabricated track is needed to keep the Germany military supplied.
 
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