Nazi Germany had oil supply?

About 2 years ago Dr. Leo Niehorster sent me some of his source documents on the German Army in 1939.

I used them to work out the combined personnel, animal, vehicle and weapons strengths of the 90 infantry divisions that existed in September 1939.

The 86 non-motorised infantry divisions had a combined total of 437,369 horses of all types (riding, light draught and heavy draught).

The 4 motorised and 86 non-motorised infantry divisions had 132,313 motor vehicles of all types (personnel carriers, load carriers & prime movers, armoured vehicles, solo motorcycles and motorcycles with side cars).

Fully motorising the entire force of 90 divisions would have increased the establishment by 230,207 motor vehicles to 362,520 of all types.

I have a spreadsheet ready to post if Dr. Niehorster gives me permission to do so.
 
In the USA, Indian made 38,000 motorcycles, and Harley Davidson almost 90,000, of which, a third were Lend Leased, mostly to the USSR
 

Deleted member 1487

About 2 years ago Dr. Leo Niehorster sent me some of his source documents on the German Army in 1939.

I used them to work out the combined personnel, animal, vehicle and weapons strengths of the 90 infantry divisions that existed in September 1939.

The 86 non-motorised infantry divisions had a combined total of 437,369 horses of all types (riding, light draught and heavy draught).

The 4 motorised and 86 non-motorised infantry divisions had 132,313 motor vehicles of all types (personnel carriers, load carriers & prime movers, armoured vehicles, solo motorcycles and motorcycles with side cars).

Fully motorising the entire force of 90 divisions would have increased the establishment by 230,207 motor vehicles to 362,520 of all types.

I have a spreadsheet ready to post if Dr. Niehorster gives me permission to do so.
That is a lot more tires and fuel required. Even the US only managed to field about 100 divisions with heavy motorization/mechanization.
 
That is a lot more tires and fuel required. Even the US only managed to field about 100 divisions with heavy motorization/mechanization.
Not to mention all the mechanical parts, engines, etc that would have to be produced and in turn means finding more labour from somewhere.
 
That is a lot more tires and fuel required.
If Austria and Germany produced oil in the 1930s ITTL in the quantities that they did in the 1960s IOTL it makes greater motorisation of the German Army feasible because it provides the fuel required.

As for the tyres does anyone know if synthetic rubber could be made from the oil that Austria and Germany actually has?

Also IIRC Germany made synthetic rubber from its synthetic oil IOTL. Can anyone confirm or deny that?
Even the US only managed to field about 100 divisions with heavy motorization/mechanization.
That's a yes an no thing.

Yes, they only sent about 100 fully motorised divisions overseas, but they also supplied large quantities of motor transport to their allies, which must have been dozens of divisions worth.

The number divisions sent overseas was limited by the amount of merchant shipping that was available, not necessarily the ability of American industry to provide the equipment.
 
Not to mention all the mechanical parts, engines, etc that would have to be produced and in turn means finding more labour from somewhere.
What I didn't put in Post 103 is that mechanising all the infantry divisions saves 40,000 men or 39.394 to be exact.

I can't remember the exact figure, but there were still several hundred thousand unemployed in Germany in 1938.

I thought the raw materials for the alloys would be more of a problem. However, not importing oil saves foreign currency that can be spent on increasing imports of other commodities.
 
Also IIRC Germany made synthetic rubber from its synthetic oil IOTL. Can anyone confirm or deny that?

The technology to do that came from a series of agreement between Standard Oil of New Jersey, BASF and I.G Farben in the interwar period, a combining of German Buna and US Thiokol and Neoprene patents to make oil resistant rubber products, something that natural rubber can't do, but at far higher cost.

cracking coal to liquid fuel gets you many other chemical feedstocks. For synthetic rubber, styrene and ethylene are the building blocks

Synthetic Rubber


Another example of polymerization reactions of the alkenes is in the manufacture of synthetic rubber. A number of synthetic rubber have now been developed so as to find a replacement for natural rubber. Natural rubber is a polymer of 2-methyl buta -1,3 -diene (previously known as polyisoprene).


n(CH2=C(CH3) -CH = CH2)
2-methyl buta-1,3-diene (isopren
e)

® ...-CH2 -C(CH3)=CH - CH2-...
1. The most important synthetic rubber is styrene-butadiene. The process for the manufacture of this synthetic rubber involves the warming of styrene (i.e. phenyl ethene) with buta-1,3-diene in water, in the presence of an emulsifying agent and the reaction initiator.


n(CH2 = CH - C6H5) + n (CH2= CH - CH = CH2)
styrene buta-1,3-diene

®
polymer.JPG

Polymer

2. Thiokol: This is made by heating 1,2-dichloroethane, ClCH2-CH2Cl with sodium polysulphide, Na2Sx.


3. Neoprene rubber: This is a polymer of chloroprene (2-chloro-1,3-butadiene), CH3= CCl - CH = CH2


4. Buna S rubber: This is a co-polymer of 1,3 - butadiene and styrene with soduim as catalyst. The name Buna S is an abbreviation for butadiene - Na- styrene.


Is just rearranging Carbon and Hydrogen chains in the correct order, using heat, pressure and the right catalyst here and there
 
Yes, they only sent about 100 fully motorised divisions overseas, but they also supplied large quantities of motor transport to their allies, which must have been dozens of divisions worth.
Studebaker by themselves made just under 200,000 2 1/2 ton 6X6 Trucks with most being Lend Leased
 
I didn't know that lignite could be used to produce syngas. Very interesting. Or that avgas required bituminous coal to produce.

While a big increase in German oil production would be a great boost for Germany's war effort, there's a few issues I see.

1) To greatly increase syngas or refined petroleum output, we probably need a PoD in the 20s. One would need to carefully select a PoD that both increased the output by 1940 AND didn't derail Germany becoming Nazi and wanting to start WW2.

2) If western and central Europe is producing oil like 1960s western and central Europe, where are the refineries located, and can Germany end up with enough refineries on her soil/on soil she can capture intact?

3) How much manpower will be required to support these expanded industries? Especially if we're talking a big increase to coal-hungry syngas production.

Some more interesting thoughts:

1) Would a sufficient PoD simply be Weimar Germany investing in oil exploration and production, instead of investing in syngas production as OTL?

2) If we assume that Germany can radically boost refined oil production or syngas production, and still invades the USSR in 1941, 1942 is likely pretty grim for the Soviets. In OTL, 1942 was their nadir, and Germany didn't have the oil to be as mobile as in 1941. In TTL, while logistical challenges would still be atrocious for the Germans, they can bring a bit more pressure to bear on the Soviets.

fasquardon
 
About 2 years ago Dr. Leo Niehorster sent me some of his source documents on the German Army in 1939.

I used them to work out the combined personnel, animal, vehicle and weapons strengths of the 90 infantry divisions that existed in September 1939.

The 86 non-motorised infantry divisions had a combined total of 437,369 horses of all types (riding, light draught and heavy draught).

The 4 motorised and 86 non-motorised infantry divisions had 132,313 motor vehicles of all types (personnel carriers, load carriers & prime movers, armoured vehicles, solo motorcycles and motorcycles with side cars).

Fully motorising the entire force of 90 divisions would have increased the establishment by 230,207 motor vehicles to 362,520 of all types.

I have a spreadsheet ready to post if Dr. Niehorster gives me permission to do so.
Here it is.

German Infantry Divisions 1939 Mk 2.png


Although there were 4 "waves" of non-motorised infantry division there actually 16 different types of establishment because there were actually 10 types of 1st Wave division, 2 types of 2nd Wave division and 3 different types of 3rd Wave division.
 
The Hathi Trust website has the Final Report of the Oil Division of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey on it. This is an interesting extract.
The High Cost of Synthetics

Gasoline produced from coal by either the Bergius hydrogenation or the Fischer-Tropsch process costs from four to five times as much as gasoline obtained from natural petroleum. From 8 to 10 tons of brown coal, or 4 to 5 tons of bituminous coal, are needed to make a single ton of gasoline. Fifteen times as much steel is required for synthetic oil plants as for crude oil refineries, and the comparative amount of labor necessary is almost equally staggering.

The Germans continued, nevertheless, to extend their plans for synthetic production. The four-year plan gave way in July, 1938, to the Karin Hall plan, which placed more emphasis on preparations for war. Existing plants and refineries produced about 3,700,000 tons of oil products in 1938; the new plan called for production of 11,000,000 tons annually by the beginning of 1944, and estimated that this would take 4,500,000 tons of steel, or 0.62 ton of steel per additional ton of annual capacity. This estimate, moreover, probably did not cover steel needed to mine the coal from which the oil was to be produced.

Diversion of steel and labor to the production of tanks, submarines, and other materiel curtailed and delayed the oil program, but actual deliveries of steel for the oil projects, between 1 July 1937 and 1 April 1944, were about 4,380,000 tons. This amount of steel would have sufficed to build a battle fleet four times as big as the U. S. Navy was in January, 1940.
 
the amount of steel allocated to synthetic oil production is not product but raw resources involved in construction and the quality of steel involved is inferior to naval steel to say nothing of armored steel or worse still, naval gun tonnage.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Here it is.

View attachment 443014

Although there were 4 "waves" of non-motorised infantry division there actually 16 different types of establishment because there were actually 10 types of 1st Wave division, 2 types of 2nd Wave division and 3 different types of 3rd Wave division.
Dear @NOMISYRRUC , as always your soreadsheats are a - at least by me - much appreciated enrichment on this site.

However, regarding the complements, structure and outfit of german troops at different times ...
Did you ever came across this site ?
In the section "Kriegsstärkenachweise" you can find for (almost) every kind of body of troop, companies, staffs of several levels, specialist platoons (i.e. here's an infantry horse-riders-platoon of 1937), etc. from 1937 onwards until 1944.
These "KStN's" describe how a certain body of tgroops should look alike in terms of men and equipment.
 
the amount of steel allocated to synthetic oil production is not product but raw resources involved in construction and the quality of steel involved is inferior to naval steel to say nothing of armored steel or worse still, naval gun tonnage.
I put the quote in because I wanted to show the amount of coal it took to produce a ton of synthetic oil.

I also wanted to show that more steel is required for synthetic oil plants than crude oil refineries and that more labour was required to operate them too.

However, on the subject of the quality of steel required, this is another quote from the same document.
The Lag in Construction

Germany's economy was strained increasingly by the demands for labor and steel to supply the war machine with liquid fuels. Men and material were needed simultaneously for many other projects. The oil industry's requirements, more over, were especially burdensome on the steel industry because alloy steels and special forgings constituted a substantial part of the tonnage needed. Making the large high-pressure vessels required for the hydrogenation plants was a job comparable to manufacturing naval guns. Steel deliveries began to lag as early as 1938 and were 130,000 tons short of allocations when the war began. Allocations from then on had to be cut drastically and frequently.

The oil industry, moreover, could not obtain enough construction workers to put in the steel actually delivered. It was allocated 275,000 tons of steel in the third quarter of 1941 and got 180,000 tons; its allocation for the next quarter was 290,000 tons and it received 170,000 tons. To make effective use of the steel that was delivered, the industry needed at least 90,000 of the 135,000 construction workers it had been promised for each quarter, but it actually had only 71,000 workers in the third quarter of 1941 and only 65,000 in the last quarter.

Even before Germany went to war, the expansion program was far behind schedule. Several plants (Wanne Eickel, Schwarzheide, Welheim, and the Scholven extension) were completed as planned in 1938, but others (including Luetzkendorf Fischer, Hoesch, and Essener Verein) missed the deadline by from three to six months.

By the next year, every project except the Gelsenberg plant and the iso-octane plant at Oppau had been delayed from one to nine months. The Luetzkendorf hydrogenation plant was thirteen months behind. Boehlen III and Zeitz I and II, scheduled for completion in December, 1939, and May, 1940, respectively, lagged from 11 to 16 months.
 
I put the quote in because I wanted to show the amount of coal it took to produce a ton of synthetic oil.

I also wanted to show that more steel is required for synthetic oil plants than crude oil refineries and that more labour was required to operate them too.

However, on the subject of the quality of steel required, this is another quote from the same document.


They're nice words, but of limited value due to being out of any context. The 3-6 months and 11-16 month delay could be removed by addition of 215,000 more tons of steel in the second half of 1941? [275kt+ 290kt - 180kt, -175kt = 215kt]. No it should also need more labour, "but how much mister SPOCK???". In 1941 they needed 135,000 labour force, but actual had only 90,000 and 65-71,000 in the second half of 1941. So what does all this that actually mean? Another 215,000 tons steel plus 45-70,000 labourers in 1941 produces what. OH YEAH removes delay of 11-16 months?

USSBS also reports KM monthly merchant ship construction quotas for 1944 at 192,000 tons, when the actual MV construction was 75,000 tons. The same figures for warships was 705,000 tons steel. But this produced only 288,000 tons warship. This suggest the naval industry needed 2.44 tons steel construction for each warship ton built; while the figures for each ton of Merchant construction also required about 2.44 tons steel [192/79].

Those figures for the 1940 USNAVY suggest the battle fleet was 1,802,469 tons [0.41 x 4,380,000] ?

Hey what do you know, not bad?

1939 end = 1,751,978 TONS
end of 1940 =1,899,730 tons

http://navypedia.org/js/all_displacements.htm

Clearly the 4,380,000 tons referred to in post 113 is raw resources not final product.
 
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