Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

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John T
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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1081

Post by John T » 05 Feb 2013, 22:56

phylo_roadking wrote:
From what I have read on this forum (but,I have to seach where),the maximum a German loc could carry was 400 ton of freight (10 wagons of 40 ton,the weight of an empty wagon also being 40 ton)
Don't forget "doubleheaders".... :wink:

In 1922 the max weight of a train on the malmbanan (Narvik - Gällivare) where 1900 tons
So with an engine weight of 250 tons gives aprox 800 tons of bulk goods, ore or coal in each train.
But that's an electrified and built for heavy loads.

Image

Cheers
/John

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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1082

Post by John T » 05 Feb 2013, 23:31

ljadw wrote:
John T wrote:
1. There where other means of transportation of bulk volumes, inland waterways where already used for Romanian oil and both Germany and USSR had a large infrastructure in this sector. They are pretty useless during military operations but once you only need a steady flow of goods that can be channeled in larger volumes.

And why should they need to send all the ore to Germany ?
Why not rebuild the local infrastructure and eventually just deliver the complete tanks?

Cheers
/John
You are joking of course:transporting the Caucasian oil to Germany by inland waterways :lol: :lol: :lol:
Inland vessels can navigate coastal waters, like the Baltic and the Black sea.

The Baltic - Volga route opened one hundred years before the second world war.

And If Germany restored the Grozny -Tuapse pipeline the Black sea - Donau route where available.


You fins some maps here:
http://maneuver-warfare.com/Stalingrad/ ... ngrad.html

Cheers
/John
Last edited by John T on 05 Feb 2013, 23:57, edited 1 time in total.


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phylo_roadking
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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1083

Post by phylo_roadking » 05 Feb 2013, 23:39

John...
In 1922 the max weight of a train on the malmbanan (Narvik - Gällivare) where 1900 tons
So with an engine weight of 250 tons gives aprox 800 tons of bulk goods, ore or coal in each train.
But that's an electrified and built for heavy loads.
...they're talking about somewhere where electrified trains were not typical -
1)Let's assume that the German railway capacity in the east was 12 million of ton (= a minimum of 30000 trains,a lot of trains were carrying less than 400 ton)
2)What would be the available capacity if the war in the east
was over in october 1941?
Everything was depending on the railway capacity in the east
Ljadw - I was thinking along THESE lines for heavy loads...

Image
Image
Image

...."double heading", the "period" solution for heavy loads/hard climbs.
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...

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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1084

Post by Trackhead M2 » 05 Feb 2013, 23:43

phylo_roadking wrote:
[qu...."double heading", the "period" solution for heavy loads/hard climbs.
Dear Phylo,
I thought you had discovered baseball. We usually call these tandems in the States.
Strike Swiftly,
TH-M2

KDF33
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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1085

Post by KDF33 » 05 Feb 2013, 23:43

From what I have read on this forum (but,I have to seach where),the maximum a German loc could carry was 400 ton of freight (10 wagons of 40 ton,the weight of an empty wagon also being 40 ton)

On" the most valuable asset of the Reich" P 9O (partly available on the net),I found the following:

-Germany operated daily 25000-30000 trains (which is corrobating my figures of the loc's)
-the car twinaround day (the time needed to goand return,loading/unloading included/or not ?) was the following:
september 1939:3.9 days
october 1940:4.4
late 1941: 6

We also know that most railway capacity was tied elsewhere,ans was not available for the east .

1)Let's assume that the German railway capacity in the east was 12 million of ton (= a minimum of 30000 trains,a lot of trains were carrying less than 400 ton)

2)What would be the available capacity if the war in the east was over in october 1941?
a)the occupation army and the civilians would claim 4 million ton (for some 1.4 million of men)
b)remaining 8 million of ton,but,to produce and transport to Germany one ton ,an other ton would be needed(the factories in the Urals would need oil,coal,raw materials,to be trasported by the railways,claiming ...coal)
c)remaining 4 million of tons :let's take 1 million of coal,one million of oil,one million of food,one million of ore (of anything)
d) to produce these 8 million (of which only 50 % would go to Germany),Germany would be obliged to export an enormous amount of machines,machine-tools,even coal to Russia,and the whole result would be a net loss for Germany .

Everything was depending on the railway capacity in the east,and,as this could not be increased,the whole thing was a non sequitur (the Russian railways could not be used,the whole system had to be transformed to German norms,in the OTL,the Germans occupied only a small part of European Russia,in the ATL,they would go to the Urals,etc.....,the local population had to be feed,which also would claim railway capacity )
Looking at this page, the average wagon load fell somewhere between 11.7 and 12.1 tons from 1941 to 1944, a figure indirectly reinforced by the fact that the average daily coal car placings were counted in 10 ton units.

This Wikipedia page tends to confirm the figure, with most payloads falling between 10 and 15 tons.

Regarding railroad capacity being "tied elsewhere", I already provided figures indicating that by the end of 1942, 20% of the German rolling stock was assigned to the Eastern Front.

Taking a figure of 10 tons per wagon and multiplying by 200,000 (the December 1942 Eastern wagon count), we get a total of 2 million tons of freight, which multiplied by a year (i.e., 365) gives the tremendous figure of 730 million tons in carrying capacity. Obviously not all 200,000 wagons were arriving / departing the Eastern areas every day, and dividing by the figure of 6 days of twin around time, we'd get slightly over 120 million tons.

Of course, the 6-day figure was the RB's average, and probably more or less approximates twin around time in the Zone of the Interior. You previously mentioned a figure of 8 days for the Eastern round trip. Let's say we adjust for loading / unloading and double the RB's 1941 average: this would give us about 60 million tons in carrying capacity in a single direction, which is probably still too high considering that some of the wagons assigned to the East were passenger cars and that the distances involved might be somewhat off. Still, the yearly capacity must have been many tens of millions of tons, with my best estimate falling somewhere around 35 million tons (which fits nicely with over 200 daily trains each at 400 tons), and not the 12 million tons you mentioned.

You then have to account for the Germans producing over 60,000 new train wagons a year, which, if fully allocated to the exploitation of the East, would add about 10-15 million tons of freight capacity each year.

Considering that a significant part of all this rolling stock could serve both the needs of the field forces (on the departing trip) and of German industry (on the return trip), especially in HG Süd's sector, I think that Germany was quite capable to significantly exploit the East.

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KPI

#1086

Post by John T » 06 Feb 2013, 00:02

Logistical capacity is often rated in Weight-Distance per Time period
Like Ton-kilometer per day.

Cheers
/John

KDF33
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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1087

Post by KDF33 » 06 Feb 2013, 00:05

I know, but I can't find German figures in ton-kilometer for the relevant period.

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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1088

Post by Marcelo Jenisch » 06 Feb 2013, 04:07

About the topic's subject: according to the series WWII Behind Closed Doors, the Western Allies did everything to please Stalin, because, according to the series, they perceived that the Soviet participation was indispensable for defeat Germany. Ok, at the time the things could have been (and were) perceived differentely, in the case of the WM strenght. However, if the Allies belived they could have defeated Germany by themselfs, it would not be better to let the Soviets and Germans destroy each other? What I know about this, is that Churchill have this idea, while FDR trusted in Stalin, and hence refutated Churchill's idea. Is this correct?

KDF33
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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1089

Post by KDF33 » 06 Feb 2013, 04:22

As I understand it, the problem with letting Hitler and Stalin "destroy each other" is that it posed the risk that instead one would subdue the other, a particularly worrisome situation if Hitler came on top.

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Re: KPI

#1090

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 06 Feb 2013, 04:59

John T wrote:Logistical capacity is often rated in Weight-Distance per Time period
Like Ton-kilometer per day.

Cheers
/John
Thanks for that precise & clear point.

This is ultimately how one has to calculate to arrive at realistic comparisons. To use a crude round number example:

On the Eastern Front a wagon was in use for 45 days to deliver one metric ton to its destination. That includes the time from being marked for the load until the load is off the wagon. Dead time on sidings awaiting the load, with the load, or halted awaiting the tracks to clear of partisan activity are items that extend the 'time per ton per wagon'.

To come closer to finding the actual savings one also has to know the 'time per ton per wagon' for other uses. ie: moving industrial freight inside the Reich, or moving military freight to the Atlantic Wall, or into Italy.

To continue the example; if 'time per ton per wagon' carrying supplies to the Atlantic Wall is 22,5 days then the savings is significant and must be brought into the comparison.

Before anyone rushes off to find hypothetical comparisons let me toss two buckets of ice cold water. The Allied air campaigns vs German transportation in 1944-45 are understudied sucesses. When I took a close look at those campaigns a couple years ago I was suprised by just how effective these actions were. I dont have a wad of number to toss out, tho what I will suggest is the 'time per ton per wagon' for delivery of supplies or combat units from Germany to Normandy during May-July was significantly slower that to the battlefields in the East. Decisively slower in that the negative supply rate vs consumption was the primary factor in the German army groups south of Rome and in Normandy being defeated and forced to retreat.

A second cost, that is decisive over the longer run is the destruction of railway equipment in the West, including Italy. In 1944 the Brit & US air forces were becoming significantly more effective in destroying railroad rolling stock than the Soviet VVS. The ratio of rolling stock lost in the East vs lost in the West lays somewhere between 3-1 & 6-1. Exactly where the tipping point between German repair/replacement and loss was I cant say. I did not find numbers I had confidence in. Point here is the Allied ability to cut deeply into the German transportation/logistics in 1944-45 was significant. that capability needs to modify any calaculation of transfer of transportation capacity from the East to Germany or a Western battlefornt.

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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1091

Post by Marcelo Jenisch » 06 Feb 2013, 05:07

If, by 1943, the Western Allies let the Soviets and Germans fight each other, I don't see much of an exist for any of them. According to you, Germany needed from Soviet resources, and after Stalingrad I don't think that Germany could have inflicted a collapse in the Soviet state.

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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1092

Post by Marcelo Jenisch » 06 Feb 2013, 05:13

http://ww2history.com/experts/Adam_Tooz ... ion_of_WW2

Posting this again:
ADAM TOOZE: Well, there’s something I’d like to talk about that we haven’t spoken about so far, which is the strategic bombing campaign. I actually think that the RAF had the German war economy by the throat by the summer of 1943. The series of attacks launched by the British from March 1943 through to the cataclysmic attack on Hamburg at the end of July has a devastating impact on the German war effort that’s been very, very largely underestimated so far. But from the inside of the Speer Ministry there’s no question that this is seen as a fundamental turning point in the war and a moment potentially of no return. They expect the German war economy to be crippled in the winter of 1943 and the reason why that doesn’t happen is that the RAF turns its attention from the west of Germany to Berlin, and makes a vain attempt to destroy Berlin. However, Berlin is an inappropriate target. It’s too large, it’s too far away and it’s at the end of the productive chain, whereas the Ruhr stands at the very beginning because it’s the centre of German coal mining, without which the heavy industrial economy of Germany grinds to a halt.

And the Germans are deeply puzzled why the British make this move. And in the autumn of 1944 and into the spring of 1945 when the attacks on the Ruhr are resumed and focused on the shunting yards which are necessary to move the coal around they have an immediate and absolutely dramatic effect on the German war economy. So I think the RAF’s decision to shift its focus from the west of Germany and the Ruhr in particular to Berlin does count as a pretty major strategic miscalculation.

LAURENCE REES: And it also follows from that that you think the strategic bombing campaign was extremely effective?

ADAM TOOZE: Yes. There’s no question that it had an absolutely devastating impact on the functioning of the German war economy from as early as the spring of 1943. The Germans just about begin to believe by the beginning of 1943 that despite the setbacks on the Eastern Front the Russians are a long way away, and they actually began to get a real grip of their armaments production and are beginning to shuffle resources around in a quite strategic, and deliberately calculated way, and had put the organisation in place to do that. That’s the substance behind the Speer 'miracle'. What then happens is that steel output becomes completely unpredictable because of the impact of the British attacks and begins to fall, and immediately you see a plateauing off of armaments production. Instead of continuing to rise it grinds to a halt at a moment when everybody else’s is ramping up and the American war economy in particular is hitting top gear.

And this is a complete disaster for the German war effort and produces a major political crisis. Speer begins to lose his grip on power and has, in the end, to solve this problem with his ill fated alliance with Himmler which emerges in the autumn of 1943 and unlocks a whole new supply of slave labour for the German war economy.

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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1093

Post by Marcelo Jenisch » 06 Feb 2013, 15:51

http://ww2history.com/experts/Adam_Tooz ... in_the_war
LAURENCE REES: It’s right, isn’t it, that by the summer of ’41 the Germans realise that industrially they can’t cope with the demands of the war effort?

ADAM TOOZE: Yes, the most extraordinary demonstration of that is the sort of train of logic in relation to the Luftwaffe’s planning which takes on spectacular new dimensions in the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941, directly as a response to the threat that they perceive as being imminent from the build up of British and American air strength. This immediately raises the question of how these aircraft were going to be supplied with rubber and air fuel, which leads to the spectacular planning for the I.G. Farben facility at Auschwitz, which by the end of the war is the single largest investment project ever undertaken by the Third Reich. The extermination camp facility there is dwarfed in its scale and implications by the investment they’re making of six hundred million Reichsmarks in the I.G. Farben plant that is just a few miles away.

But then the question is how do you feed the synthetic fuel plants with sufficient coal? And it’s obvious by the spring of 1941 that even if you’re going to synthesise your petrol, you’re not going to be able to supply enough coal to synthesise the quantity of petrol necessary to fuel the aircraft which you feel you’re going to need to fight the British and the Americans. So into the planning for Barbarossa goes this radical extension of the economic objectives of the Barbarossa invasion that, on strictly economic grounds, requires the prioritisation of the southern flank of the invasion. Even before the famous debate between Hitler and his military commanders in the autumn of 1941 this problem has already been pre-programmed by the train of logic on the economic side.

So by the summer of 1941 the Germans are calmly assuming that the southern flank of their offensive will reach as far not only as the Crimea, but the Caucasus by the end of 1941, so as to enable them by 1942 to bring on stream the oilfields of Baku, and what we now know as Azerbaijan, as a key element in the German strategic planning system. And the invasion to drive a prong of the German armed forces as far south as that, let alone to build the pipeline of the structure that will be necessary to extract the oil from there, is a scale and a dimension of military planning which the Germans are entirely remote from at this point, because the German army’s assumption is the war has to be won in the first 500 kilometres of this penetration.

So there’s a complete disconnect by the summer of 1941 between the economic and armaments programmes which are geared towards the long run war effort against Britain and America. This is assumed to be an attritional, strategic war waged in multiple dimensions by air and by sea and in North Africa on land. The specific planning for Barbarossa now just simply has to assume that it’s going to be like France: that it’s going to be over in a matter of weeks and it’s not going to cost very much in terms of manpower and equipment. And that contradiction explodes into the open in the autumn and reaches its absurd high point in December 1941 when the Germans simply decide that the situation is so irresolvable that they will declare a long Christmas holiday over 1941-42 to allow the armaments factories to somehow reconcile the different conflicting priorities, because there’s no other way, essentially, of making sense of the dilemma that they’ve backed themselves into.

They have to win the war in the East in a matter of weeks and the victory has to be on a scale which they don’t really even dare to spell out in military terms and yet is clearly documented in the economic planning. It has to go as far as the Caucasus, not just the Ukraine, and it needs to go there in the first phase of the offensive.

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Re: Could The USA/British Empire have won on their own?

#1094

Post by Marcelo Jenisch » 14 Mar 2013, 02:01



This BBC documentary claims that the Nazi struggle against the Soviet Union was more important for Britain's survival than Britain's own efforts. I haven't conducted a research about how the military situation would develop in case Hitler defeated Russia in 1941, and therefore I'm skeptical about claims that Germany would certainly defeat Britain militarily like this documentary says. This view however, fits to the Kremlin's contemporany political agenda for the time, which true or not, is basically like this: "Anglo-Americans, thank you for your help, but the adults stuff was in the Eastern Front."

Note: I know that including on this topic, this subject was already discussed here many times, and the majority of the participating members of this board are also skeptic about the claim of the documentary. I posted this to attract members who have a different view and might be interested in discuss it.

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Re: Smiting Britain's continental sword from her hand

#1095

Post by BDV » 14 Mar 2013, 20:16

Marcelo Jenisch wrote:Note: I know that including on this topic, this subject was already discussed here many times, and the majority of the participating members of this board are also skeptic about the claim of the documentary. I posted this to attract members who have a different view and might be interested in discuss it.
No, it was always and all about England for GroFaz, as the title quote points out. With good reason, too. That Russia turned out to be this:
Image

(better version here)
... just another miscalculation by GroFaz - well, at least it ensured Romanian/Hungarian/Finnish/Bulgarian cooperation until 1944.
Nobody expects the Fallschirm! Our chief weapon is surprise; surprise and fear; fear and surprise. Our 2 weapons are fear and surprise; and ruthless efficiency. Our *3* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency; and almost fanatical devotion

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