The Attack on the Railways and Waterways
The attack on transportation was the decisive blow that completely disorganized the German economy. It reduced war production in all categories and made it difficult to move what was produced to the front. The attack also limited the tactical mobility of the German army.
The Survey made a careful examination of the German railway system, beginning as soon as substantial portions were in Allied hands. While certain important records were destroyed or lost during the battle of Germany, enough were located so that together with interrogation of many German railroad officials, it was possible to construct an accurate picture of the decline and collapse of the system.
Germany entered the war with an excellent railway System; it had general overcapacity in both lines and yards (built partly in anticipation of military requirements), and, popular supposition to the contrary, the system was not undermaintained. Standards of maintenance were higher than those general in the United States. The railway system was supplemented by a strong inland waterways system connecting the important rivers of northern Germany, crisscrossing the Ruhr and connecting it with Berlin. The waterways carried from 21 to 26 percent of the total freight movement. Commercial highway transport of freight was insignificant; it accounted for less than three percent of the total.
Although the investigation shows that the railroad system was under strain -- especially during the winter campaign in Russia in 1941-42 when there was a serious shortage of cars and locomotives -- it was generally adequate for the demands placed upon it until the spring of 1944. New construction and appropriation of equipment of occupied counties remedied the locomotive and car shortage. The Reichsbahn had taken no important steps to prepare itself for air attack.
The attack on German transportation was intimately woven with the development of ground operations. In support of the invasion a major assignment of the air forces had been the disruption of rail traffic between Germany and the French coast through bombing of marshalling yards in northern France. At the time of the invasion itself a systematic and large-scale attempt was made to interdict all traffic to the Normandy beachhead. These latter operations were notably successful; as the front moved to the German border the attack was extended to the railroads of the Reich proper. Heavy and medium bombers and fighters all participated.
Although prior to September 1944, there had been sporadic attacks on the German transportation system, no serious deterioration in its ability to handle traffic was identified by the Survey. The vastly heavier attacks in September and October 1944 on marshalling yards, bridges, lines, and on train movements, produced a serious disruption in traffic over all of western Germany. Freight car loadings, which were approximately 900,000 cars for the Reich as a whole in the week ending August 19 fell to 700,000 cars in the last week of October. There was some recovery in early November, but thereafter they declined erratically to 550,000 cars in the week ending December 23 and to 214,000 cars during the week ending March 3. Thereafter the disorganization was so great that no useful statistics were kept.
"The German economy is heading for inevitable collapse within 4-8 weeks." Report of Speer to Hitler, March 16, 1945.
The attack on the waterways paralleled that on the railways; the investigation shows that it was even more successful. On September 23, 1944, the Dortmund-Ems and Mittelland canals were interdicted stopping all through water traffic between the Ruhr and points on the north coast and in central Germany. By October 14, traffic on the Rhine had been interdicted by a bomb that detonated a German demolition charge on a bridge at Cologne. Traffic in the Ruhr dropped sharply and all water movement of coal to south Germany ceased.
The effect of this progressive traffic tie-up was found, as might be expected, to have first affected commodities normally shipped in less-than-trainload lots -- finished and semi-finished manufactured goods, components, perishable consumer goods and the less bulky raw materials. Cars loaded with these commodities had to be handled through the marshalling yards and after the September and October attacks this became increasingly difficult or impossible. Although output of many industries reached a peak in late summer and declined thereafter, total output of the economy was on the whole well- maintained through November. Beginning in December there was a sharp fall in production in nearly all industries; week by week the decline continued until the end of the war.
Although coal traffic (about 40 percent of all the traffic carried by the German railways) held up better than miscellaneous commercial traffic, the decline was both more easily traceable and more dramatic. The September raids reduced coal-car placements in the Essen Division of the Reichsbahn (the originator of most of the coal traffic of the Ruhr) to an average of 12,000 cars daily as compared with 21,400 at the beginning of the year. Most of this was for consumption within the Ruhr. By January, placements in the Ruhr were down to 9,000 cars a day and in February virtually complete interdiction of the Ruhr District was achieved. Such coal as was loaded was subject to confiscation by the railroads to fuel their locomotives; even with this supply, coal stocks of the Reichsbahn itself were reduced from 18 days' supply in October 1944 to 4½ days' supply in February 1945. By March some divisions in southern Germany had less than a day's supply on hand, and locomotives were idle because of lack of coal.
The German economy was powered by coal; except in limited areas, the coal supply had been eliminated.
Military (Wehrmacht) traffic had top priority over all other traffic. During the period of attack this traffic came to account for an ever-increasing proportion of the declining movement. Through 1944 the air attack did not prevent the army from originating such movements although the time of arrival or even the arrival of units and equipment became increasingly uncertain. Couriers accompanied detachments and even shipments of tanks and other weapons; their task was to get off the train when it was delayed and report where it could be found. After the turn of the year even military movements became increasingly difficult. The Ardennes counter-offensive, the troops and equipment for which were marshalled over the railroads, was probably the last such effort of which the Reichsbahn would have been capable in the west.
