How much gas did the Germans have in April of 1945?
- Thread starter wtw
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The Germans couldn't scrounge up enough gasoline to properly cremate Hitler's body. That says something.
I mean in theory there may have been a small amount that was unaccounted for, i mean a bigger hole in the theory is the thousands of allied craft patrolling german airspace, his advanced illnesses etc. They also recently tested the skull fragments and teeth of what was believed to be Hitler that the Russians had and yep, he died in the bunker and got torched.
AFAIK Luftwaffe and German Armed Forces in general suffered from fuel shortage for quite some time. The only natural source of oil was Romania. Germany was able to produce synthetic fuel (based on coal) which made most of fuel supply for the Luftwaffe, but there was another problem: the Allies persistently attacked German supply lines, including railways which made transport of fuel quite problematic.
However, it doesn't mean the Germans had no fuel at all. I'm pretty sure that if Hitler decided to leave besieged Berlin, he might have a chance to do so. After all, he was the Fuhrer and he wouldn't need too much of it, just for a single plane. And, as Hanna Reitsch had proven, flying into and from Berlin was possible, while extremely risky. So no, lack of fuel would not be a problem. Hitler's sense of failure were enough.
However, it doesn't mean the Germans had no fuel at all. I'm pretty sure that if Hitler decided to leave besieged Berlin, he might have a chance to do so. After all, he was the Fuhrer and he wouldn't need too much of it, just for a single plane. And, as Hanna Reitsch had proven, flying into and from Berlin was possible, while extremely risky. So no, lack of fuel would not be a problem. Hitler's sense of failure were enough.
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There were small producing oil deposits in Austria, and Poland. Standard Oil had been a partner or contractor in developing the Austrian deposit. I'm unsure how productive the Polish deposit was. It had originally been a surface site and locals had exploited the pitch and other petroleum weeping onto the surface at least as far back as the 1600s. In the early 19th Century locals were hand digging wells & carting the product off in casks or tubs to customers. Drilled wells, pumps, & separation or refining came to this deposit later.
The delivery of fuel collapsed with the final transportation destruction program of the Allied air forces from February 1945. By late March delivery of anything became problematic. Fuel, ammunition, food, medical supplies, replacement soldiers, or anything else effectively ceased delivery and sat on the factory loading docks, or in the depots, and on railway tracks as the locomotives could only move a few kilometers before finding blown tracks & downed bridges, or a wrecked train. Factory operations were ceasing as well as parts and raw materials were not being delivered.
The Allied air forces had attempted to start this anti transportation campaign in the autumn of 1944. Weather, their own transportation problem in France, and competing priorities prevented it from getting rolling. The US 9th AF had moved most of its attack wings within range in September/October, as had the RAF 2d Tac AF. Hypothetically it was possible to collapse the German transport system by early January, or even December had the circumstances been favorable. In the spring of 1944 they had done so in Italy and NW France. It would have cut months off the war had they been able to reproduce that at the end of 1944.
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An airforce 'running out of fuel' and "literally no fuel left" are two very different things.
Deleted member 1487
Found a link:
http://kolegia.sgh.waw.pl/pl/KES/czasopisma/kwartalnik/Documents/WM30.pdf
In 1938 Poland in total produced about 507,000 tons. Not sure if the Soviets and Germans were actually able to boost that in 1941 or not, but it was still probably on the order of several hundred thousand tons.
I'd read that article & was disappointed at the end as it did not have numbers for 1942-44 production. It implies refinery operations ceased after the US bombing in 1944, but does not indicate if any extracted oil was refined elsewhere. Not so clear is how the German air attack on 1939, Soviet occupation, and Soviet sabotage in 1941 affected production.
The statement is usually a general operational-strategic one rather then an absolute blanket. Tactically, the Germans were still able to get planes up to the very end of the war. What they couldn't do is get planes up in any meaningful numbers to have a noticeable impact on the greater war. Exact numbers for remaining aviation fuel stocks in the Spring of 1945 probably don't exist, given that the state of the Reich precluded record keeping with any degree of accuracy. Hard to compile stockpile reports when you are busy dodging Russian or American artillery.
I've read / heard accounts of the lead up to the final battle of Berlin the speak of the Luftwaffe flying several thousand sorties (from hard surface runways while apparently the bulk of the Soviet forward air strips were unusable due to mud.) Reportedly these sorties had some impact but clearly the Germans still lost.
The ability of the Germans during the last few months of the war to still offer credible reistance has puzzled me a bit. I'll have to do some more reading re this topic.
It seems that on the one hand they had more or less lost the ability to produce and transport supplies, yet they still managed to fly planes, operate tanks etc.
To some extent I can see units using up stock piles, falling back on supply depots, finding stranded train loads of supplies etc, yet the last fighting for the last few months still seem quite intense. Back in the Cold War era I also used to wonder if there were any lessons that could be learned from this vis a vis a conventional war on the central font if one side lost the ability to consistently deliver more supplies into the theatre.
The supply collapse came in the last eight weeks, roughly. From January the number of German aircraft and tanks on hand we're rapidly declining. At the start of the yeas the average US or Commonwealth infantry division had more tanks than any of the panzer corps had. When the 11th Pz Div was sent to counter attack the Remagen bridgehead in March it could muster barely two companies of armored vehicles of all types. So yes they kept machines operation, but in decreasing numbers.
McDonalds memior as a company commander is a good description of how disintigrating groups of soldiers offered haphazard resistance across Germany.
After the Allies crossed the Rhine and restarted the offensive in the east it took hardly two months to over run most of Germany.
One has to keep in mind the scale here. The Luftwaffe flew a few thousand sorties on the Eastern Front during the course of April, yes. The VVS flew more then 91,000 sorties in the Berlin region alone during the 17 day offensive, an average of over five thousand sorties per day. A few thousand sorties in a month is nothing. Nothing I've read indicates Luftwaffe sorties had any impact beyond the most limited tactical sphere.
A similar example of the disparity between achieving tactical success and having actual impact on the larger battle can be found on D-Day. While the Luftwaffe suffered horrible losses on the ground, the handful of Luftwaffe planes that did launch had a field day. No IFF or AWACS back then, so in a sky full of friendly planes it was impossible to pick out the small flight of 109s or 190s. It's counter-intuitive, but beyond a certain point, numbers actually don't matter much in individual air engagements (though, as we shall see, they still matter a great deal in overall air campaigns). In a contest of pilot vs pilot, what matters most is position and initiative and since larger formations are easier to spot and harder to maneuver, there are actually some pretty decisive advantages for small flights.
All told, the Luftwaffe claimed 24 kills on 6 June,18 for JG 2 and 6 for JG 26, with JG 2 losing no aircraft in aerial comba, and JG 26 losing one in the air, with another destroyed on the ground by a P-47. JG 2 did lose another two planes in "operational accidents," which some historians think may be some fudging of combat damage but that's still a good kill ratio. At least 11 of these kills can be matched with Allied records, with some more possibles. JG 2 ace Herbert Huppertz personally claimed five that day, four of which (two Typhoons and two P-51) can be confirmed from Allied records.
But while tactically German pilots flying on D-Day did quite well for themselves, overall the scale of their effort was insignificant. The Luftwaffe flew 174 sorties on 6 June. The Allies flew 14,000. The Germans didn't even make a scratch.
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Thanks for the reading suggestion. Sustaining resistance for two months still seems lengthy to me under the circumstances. Perhaps there were simply enough supplies scattered arround Germany that the Germans managed to find enough to keep enough forces fighting to offer enough resistance to slow the allies down to the historical levels ?
Any ways I'll dig into this a bit more.
Thanks
I don't disagree with any of this
Your point about the overall disparity in scale is a good one.Thanks
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That seems to be the case. It also may be the supply collapse came later & was less severe in the east.
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