Agreed. I really wish Art had more stuff and honestly I'm surprised.
I know, I was disappointed as well.
It does occur to me that the figures would exclude whatever production came from any captured and still-operational synthetic plants in Eastern Europe like we have been conversing about, but IDK what amount that would be. 1946 production figures would be more relevant for this specific discussion though, given that the Soviet assault would be coming practically at the end of 1945. Late-40's production would also give us some idea on how fast the Soviets got that Siberian Plan online, since we could expect a big jump in production for whatever year it managed to become operational.
I'd be interested in you sharing the results, although I do heavily caution against using google translate as the basis for that; it nearly led to me failing Spanish classes before. Make a thread on AHF and see if one of them can translate?
My experience is that google translate can handle translation of individual words just fine, it just craps out when it comes to assembling those words into coherent sentences with actual grammar, tenses, punctuation, and all that stuff. Fortunately, tables of items don't require any complete sentences, numbers are pretty universal, and usually formats something like:
[Year] [Year] [Year]
[Item] [Number] [Number] [Number]
I can reasonably be sure that, for example the table which goes:
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
[Cattle (million heads)] [54.5] [31.4] [28.4] [33.9] [44.2] [47.4]
Is showing that the number of cattle in Soviet agriculture increased by 10.3 million heads from 1943-1944 and 3.2 million heads from 1944-45.
Two big caveats here:
1) Is this both low and high octane?
2) What is the monthly consumption rate? Expanding on that, when is the stockpile recorded?
1. Total.
2. It
seems to be recorded for End of Year.
The Soviet stockpile figures for avgas for end of 1944 and 1945 are 1.334 million and 947 thousand tons respectively, a fall of 387,000 tons. Production for 1945 is 1.017 million tons. One could possibly try to calculate consumption figures from that and modify that based on 1944 production if one wants to assume the Soviets keep production up (the table indicates that Soviet production in '45 was scaled back for some reason). There would be four remaining holes in such a calculation however: first, what was the supply of L-L avgas during the course of 1945? Secondly, how much production was derived from captured German plants? Thirdly, what proportion of avgas was high-quality vs low-quality? And fourthly, how fast could the Soviets repair/relocate German refining capacity if they accorded those programs with relevant priority, assuming that is possible?
Yes because the Germans had been stripped of armor units and had effectively no armored support.
The Germans disposed of more then twice as much armor against the Soviets as they had against the WAllies in both France and Italy.
Yes, because they had begun to hit POL in 1944 and at this time were already conducting the Post-War bomber survey so they will know their value. It's also not that hard to sabotage oil facilities; the Dutch were able to do it quite nicely in the NEI, as did the Soviets for their own in 1942.
They had begun to hit POL with strategic bombing as part of a coherent plan developed over the course of years of war. That's quite a bit of a different situation then several weeks or months of the chaos and surprise that would accompany a sudden Soviet assault. The possibility that in the first weeks of a massed Soviet assault, with Anglo-American staffs scrambling just to ensure their armies are able to retreat in a coherent manner, that they will suddenly take the time and effort to consider such long-term strategic considerations as resource denial isn't completely inconceivable, but it is
far from guaranteed. Obviously it become more and more possible the longer the Soviets take to advance, but it still doesn't guarantee it. While I grant you the Soviets at Maikop, that had a year of planning and preparation behind it. The Dutch example however doesn't stand up at all because your claim that they did it quite nicely is untrue: their demolition of the oil facilities was carried out rather poorly and production in the DEI rebounded quite quickly as a result.
No, it's specifically saying 1943-1944; this was the height of Lend Lease food aid and the dearth of Soviet production.
No. It quite clearly stays “1942, 1943, and early-1944” which clearly places the increase of Soviet food production in 1944, with the harvest of that year obviously only having an effect in late-1944 for what I hope is exceedingly obvious reasons, as being what relieved starvation.
Agreed. Immediately going to back to war, however, would undue this progress.
The Soviets were still at war in 1944 and a large portion of 1945, with the Red Army remaining heavily mobilized right past the planting season for 1945, yet the progress was not undone.
In 1942 there's only 125,000 in the entirety of the USSR and in 1944 there's only 150,000 in Belarus, which was the point. This would mean the Partisan numbers would've had to shoot up by 375,000 in 1943 to achieve the 500,000 number over the same general area but the 1942 and 1944 numbers don't fit such an estimate.
So? What prevents the partisans during the course of 1942 and '43 from recruiting, training, and arming an additional 375,000 men and women, especially with the intensive support they started receiving from the Soviet government in terms of supplies and military advisors in this period?
Germany had inferior production, no doubt. The problem here is that, as a result of Lend Lease, the Soviets essentially were building very small amounts of their own logistical needs relative to what they were getting. For example, they were overwhelmingly reliant on American trucks. Here, they'd have to begin retooling factories to make up for this, which takes time, and means sacrifices in other areas of war production.
Also, in the fall of 1944 something like 25% of the Soviet motorpool of trucks was down for needed repairs/lack of parts. Don't have the 1945 figures, but given they've just lost their main source of parts...
Doesn't change the fact the Soviets still have those logistical assets at the start and it would take much longer for them to burn them off then a mere half-year. The Soviets were already domestically producing spare parts for American trucks by the end of '44, some of which they even went through the formality of doing so under license, and the quantities were enough to keep those models working for roughly the next decade so it's doubtful they'd get any worse like you'd claim... well, at least not for the first year of war.
Looking at history, Soviet motor vehicle production in 1945 was 74.7 thousand vehicles. Soviet motor vehicle irrecoverable losses during the war according to the Soviet Automobile Directorate were 351,600 vehicles broken down as follows:
1941: 159.0 thousand
1942: 66.2 thousand
1943: 67.6 thousand
1944: 32.5 thousand
1945 (to September 2nd): 27.5 thousand.
Given that truck loss rates against the WAllies for the first one-two years of the war will probably resemble 1943 at worst and 1944 at best, it's pretty clear that Soviet domestic production by 1945 will be more then enough to keep up with losses as far as motor vehicles are concerned.
Downfall was scheduled for October, so about three months into the European demobilization. By that poin in 1945 the JCS had given up on maintaining unit cohesion/combat effectiveness and were essentially allowing a mad dash home for everyone. Given the war is still being waged, American factories are still going and divisions are being maintained. Yes, in the initial euphoria of victory standards had slipped, but the men were overwhelmingly combat vets and by July the units JCS expected to eventually rotate to the Pacific were back to regular training. This even extended to more veteran outfits, and Stephen Ambrose's works revealed with the 101st shows.
As already pointed out, Downfall was scheduled for November, not October, and that's before the delay from the Typhoon which would likely push it back into December. American factories were switching back to consumer production as early as 1944, because frankly production in the '43-'44 was that excessive. The claim that all units would be maintained doesn't stand up to scrutiny: only the units that would be rotated to the Pacific, who would already be gone from Europe by the time this war begins, would expect to see further combat so I don't see why the JCS would bother trying to maintain cohesion and combat effectiveness among those units which aren't heading off to the Pacific given the lack of any apparent enemy for them to fight and the pushback they'd get from those men for trying would be damaging for morale. The number of combat vets was relatively small and they'd be the first to either go to the Pacific or get demobbed. And citing Stephen Ambrose's work on the 101st rather ignores that (A) the Airborne formations (and Ranger units) were the exceptionally above the average in terms of personnel quality even during the war and (B) Stephen Ambrose is known for
severely embellishing his accounts...
They had 44 fighters for air cover, no Armored divisions and rampant artillery shortages while AGC's sector was the longest on the Eastern Front. Increasingly they were made up off younger, less experienced cadres.
The Axis forces on the Eastern Front had close to 3,000 aircraft (2,500 were German) in June of '44 of which 750 were fighters. In armored divisions, they had 20 divisions (16 German) . Fixating on AGC's part of the front ignores the fact that even in those locations where the Germans artillery, armor, and air were concentrated, like AGNU, the Soviets rolled their defenses in a matter of days and advanced hundreds of miles in weeks, achieving major encirclement in the process that decimated German forces.It's not like the Americans will have a lot of experienced manpower replacements on hand for the first year of war either, what with demobilization and transfers to the Pacific and all...