I hope you can sneak van Creveld under your wife's nose Andreas. Failing that, you could always put it on your Christmas wish list.
Andreas wrote:1. The DAK figure of 350t/day. DAK was usually motorised/armoured. In this article
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ww ... rlord.aspx it is claimed that a German infantry division required 100 tons, and a Panzer division 300 tons. So 350 seems not out by a lot.
The 350 tons per day figure is from van Creveld, but I also recall seeing that figure in an old issue of Strategy & Tactics. Don't laugh, wargamers are usually very meticulous about their research. The supply requirements of DAK panzer divisions is specified as
excluding water, there were truck columns and auxiliary units whose sole responsibility was finding and transporting water.
It is worth noting that DAK units probably represent the smallest panzer divisions the Germans fielded - only two Panzer Abteilungen each and little organic artillery. Both earlier and later panzer divisions might need more supplies, having more tanks and more artillery respectively.
100 tons a day for an infantry division seems much too low for me if it's a unit engaged in combat. If we put the basic needs per soldier at 2 kgs a day (and that might well be too low), an infantry division of 15,000 men would consume 30+30 tons of supplies before adding POL, ammunition, spare tires...
2. Living off the land - this was definitely expected, from what I have read. E.g. Meier-Welcker in 'Aufzeichnungen eines Generalstabsoffiziers 1939–1942' discusses the question of how to treat the Soviet population in relation to requisition. Also Manstein's famous order regarding requisitions from the civilian population in 1941. I am not sure how much this would count for, and would welcome explanations on how this was handled administratively, or if it is indeed completely incorrect.
With the DAK figure in mind, water was probably one thing that the Germans expected to be able to find locally. That probably goes for basic foodstuffs as well. My point was more that I don't think the Germans took captured resources into account in their logistic forecasts; and in any event locally procured food and firewood etc. would only constitute a small part of overall German supply needs. I think the difference for Barbarossa was that German commanders were specifically told not to show any consideration to the needs of the local population.
3. Fodder - I am surprised it is only 30t, but the main point is that with the different degree in motorisation, it is not just 30t of extra POL that are needed by the Allies, but a whole lot more...
It could be that the 30 tons only account for what the division's 'own' artillery and ambulance train horses would eat, and much like water, fodder was probably a resource that could nearly always be found locally in varying degrees. However, unlike POL use, fodder use could be accurately projected.
At least in theory a completely static division would consume no POL at all, while a division engaged in pursuit or a long road march would use lots of it. That means that POL use has to be subjected to a projection which - as the D-Day case shows - leaves the potential for error. To take an example from the other extreme, I recall Guderian requesting POL delivered to his Panzer Group by air as early as June 24th 1941. Evidently, he had been issued too little POL and, presumably, too much ammunition, since overall capacity of the supply pipeline would be known beforehand.
4. Posture - this affects supply requirements. Nice point by Shrek that defense maybe more supply intensive than attack.
Well, I think the inference is simply that ammunition is heavier than POL, and that defending units use more of it.
5. Independent units - very good point. I read in numerous places that US infantry divisions had pretty permanent attachments of independent tank/TD battalions. Would these be fed through their own supply units or through the division?
I strongly suspect that attached units would become part of the division's own supply chain. Anything else would be inefficient use of available resources. Maybe the rather high D-Day forecast for supply use simply took attached units into account as an abstract factor, rather than supply calculated on a case-by-case basis. In any case, it's important to distinguish between supply forecasts and actual supply use.
Good discussion, if I may say so.
Yes! Too many historians get away with simply stating the tired old cliché that 'amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics' and leaving it at that.