German Railways in the East

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Re: German Railways in the East

#286

Post by recidivist » 22 Dec 2014, 19:01

Der Alte Fritz wrote:That is a useful illustration for engine production.

To put it into some sort of context here are the number of engines used in Russia for 1943 and 1944 and you can see the small numbers involved.

The German network was between 30,000 and 40,000 km at its peak ie around 40% of the German network of 78,000 km and 35% of the pre-1941 Soviet network. The NKPS used around 11,000 locomotives in this area pre-war and the wartime DRB used 29,000 locomotives on their 78,000 km. Yet GVD Osten used only 4,671 engines on their 30,000 + km which was less than half the density of locomotives that either the DRB or NKPS would have used on this length of track.
But can we conclude that the GVD Osten was short on train locomotives on that basis? Would it not be more pertinent to conclude that the GVD-O was simply serving entirely different needs than the pre-war NKPS was? For one thing, I would expect that resources allocated to civilian passenger traffic would be very close to zero - there would of course be no imports whatsoever coming from further east, and as discussed upthread the Germans didn't really bother railing around food for the population in the occupied areas, either.

Finally, even if the Gerans managed to re-gauge the entire rail net in the occupied parts of the USSR, did they also re-gauge every little secondary line, every shunting yard and every siding - i.e. they may have inherited a massively long rail network, but the capacity may not have been the same, and the needs certainly weren't.

In short, I think that comparisons between the GVD Osten and pre-Barbarossa Soviet railways should be handled with great care.
In 1944 when the GVD Osten track has shrunk to under 10,000, the density of locomotives is still lower.
...but overall DR locomotive stocks are higher. Admittedly, the Germans have assumed certain responsibilites by 01.05 1944 that they didn't have by Jan. 1st 1943 - mainly, supplying Italy - but that is a small and trivial addition compared to the loss of territory (and rail lines) in the east as shown by Potgiesser's table.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#287

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 22 Dec 2014, 22:12

Jonathan Harrison wrote:Holocaust deniers claim that Jews were being 'resettled' in the USSR during this period. In what ways would the bottlenecks have prevented such transfers, leaving aside such other logistics as guarding the trains and feeding the deportees?

For example, death camp Belzec was on the old demarcation line alongside the Lemberg-Kiev rail line.

Bella Gutermann claims the line was restricted to 8 trains per day in February 1942:

http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Micro ... 202023.pdf
Well given that over this period the front line forces of the Wehrmacht were starved of supplies due to lack of rail capacity this would be true.

All of the early extermination camps are on the 1939-1941 German - Soviet border ie within the Kresny (Eastern Borderlands) of pre-1939 Poland and were connected to Germany and the rest of Western Europe by the improved railway lines of the Otto program so there was plenty of capacity to empty the ghettos of Poland or the cities of the rest of Europe. Beyond this the railway capacity is insufficient to meet the military demands of the Ostheer and economic demands of the Reichskommisariat.

However I would urge caution on using this argument as Alfred Mierzejewski pointed out in the second volume of "The most valuable asset of the Reich" that the number of trains proportional to the overall traffic needed to transport the extermination camp victims is quite small and that therefore you could find sufficient trains for the duty with little cost to overall operations.

There are problems with Bella Gutermann's account as her account would give the impression that the change of gauge was a crash programme started in November 1941, whereas the military evidence states that the change of gauge was decided upon before the launching of Operation Barbarossa and implemented quickly by the Eisenbahnpioner. Her account would be correct if it was restricted to the track improvements and the rebuilding of the railway installations which had been destroyed particularly beyond the Dneipr.


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Re: German Railways in the East

#288

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 23 Dec 2014, 00:09

Re: Locomotive numbers.
In 1941 and 1942 the GVD Osten shortage in engines comes from several factors
1) The DRB has sent over 4,000 engines to the east which reduces its own reserve to very low levels.
2) The DRB has started (see earlier in the thread page 2) to receive French engines etc but was short of motive power right from the start of the war
3) Winter 1941 puts 70% of engines out of operation due to cold and lack of facilities. Ostbau 42 Winter 42 and 43 programmes go a long way to addressing this but only by the Autumn of 1943 by which time the retreat has started.
4) GVD Osten was for a variety of factors a very inefficient railway. Pottgeisser quotes Daily Wagon loadings at 13,000 compared to the Reich total of 157,000. This is 8%, similarly Daily Train km were 398,400 vs 3,000,000 or 13%. So we can conclude that transport demand in GVD Osten was under 10% of the Reich total? So little economic activity given that the area represented 40% of the Soviet pre-war economy which was larger than the German economy?
The Ostheer demands had to be met by the FEDkos who ran 1,221 engines over 7,940 km of track leaving the RVDs to run 3,450 engines over 22,964 km of track. So 26% of the engines are running on 26% of the available track yet carry no heavy economic load, mainly military loads. Wagon loadings for the FEDko are 4250 a day and for the RVD 8762 so the FEDko are making 32% of the Daily Wagon loadings.
Similarly the table here: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 0#p1854381 shows the kind of traffic we are seeing cross the border 240 trains a day at end of 1942

So the picture that appears is of little economic activity in Russia other than stripping the country of its resources, the RVD mainly running through trains for the military and is transporting food and raw materials back to the Reich while the FEDko carry out military duties. But we have 3450 RVD engines operating on 22964 km of track or 6.6 km of track compared to the Reich total 28600 engines on 78,600 km of track of 2.7. Even the Gedob has 3.1 km per engine. So very few engines operating in a big network in a very big country with a low density of railways.

This in part reflects the lack of traffic. But on the other hand that traffic is supporting a military operation by 3,000,000 men. How many trains does that take? See the posts on page 9 and 10 but each HG was supposed to get 25 trains a day in supplies and then further trains for replacements, unit moves and leave trains. Taking the example of HG Mitte during 1943 and 1944, it works out around 60 trains a day and even then they found themselves having to trade off supply trains to rush in reinforcements during June 1944 as there was no spare capacity.

So the other half of the picture is a lack of capacity in the railway network to support the military operation which is a combination of a lack of capacity in the tracks and low levels of motive power. The Ostheer needed the tracks to carry more trains and more locomotives to move those trains.

There is steady improvement up to the Ostbau 1943 effort but then the retreat starts and these factors again start to limit military operations especially in the South.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#289

Post by GregSingh » 23 Dec 2014, 01:21

As for BR 52 in RVD Dnepropetrowsk, here is one in Dolginzewo (Долгинцево) in 1943. Quite new, made in 1943...
I earlier marked stations mentioned in those documents recently on that Soviet map.
Source: http://www.eisenbahnstiftung.de/
22440.jpg
BR 52 in Dolginzewo 1943
And below is an older one, sent to RVD D. on 4th of August 1943.
233b1c790a7b.jpg
BR 52 sent to RVD Dnepropetrowsk in 1943
233b1c790a7b.jpg (52.41 KiB) Viewed 1181 times

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Re: German Railways in the East

#290

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 23 Dec 2014, 06:54

GregSingh
This site is a great source of interesting photographs and there seems to have been a photographer Walter Hollnagel operating in the area of the RVD in the summer of 1943. I like this one of the RAW Dnepropetrowsk as this 1916 shunting engine served under the Germans, the Poles, the Soviets and then back to the Germans. Behind it are a couple of venerable Russian/Soviet engines.

Image

We were discussing the supply of water earlier and this picture illustrates the effort required to provide extra water points and keep them supplied in the relatively dry southern Ukraine.

Image

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Re: German Railways in the East

#291

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 23 Dec 2014, 06:55

GregSingh
This site is a great source of interesting photographs and there seems to have been a photographer Walter Hollnagel operating in the area of the RVD in the summer of 1943. I like this one of the RAW Dnepropetrowsk as this 1916 shunting engine served under the Germans, the Poles, the Soviets and then back to the Germans. Behind it are a couple of venerable Russian/Soviet engines.

Image

We were discussing the supply of water earlier and this picture illustrates the effort required to provide extra water points and keep them supplied in the relatively dry southern Ukraine.

Image

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Re: German Railways in the East

#292

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 26 Dec 2014, 19:38

Another area it has been suggested that we look for railway evidence is the Project Alexander:

Project Alexander or Human Resources Research Institute
Virgina Department of Records
Cornell University

Partisan Warfare in the Dnepr Bend Area of the Ukraine: Technical Research Report, Number 24, Volume 1.

 Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Role of Airpower in Partisan Warfare, Project
“Alexander” Monographs: Volume 3, Headquarters, United States Air
Force, December 1984, p. vi

John Armstrong and Kurt DeWitt, Organization and Control of the Partisan
Movement, Project “Alexander” Monographs: Volume 4, Headquarters
United States Air Force, December 1954.

Columbia Uni Library
Project "Alexander"

Staff, "The Soviet Partisan Movement in World War II: Summary and Conclusions" (2 copies)

Box 8
Armstrong, J., "Partisan Warfare in the Dnepr Bend Area of the Ukraine"
Box 8
Dallin, A., "The Soviet Partisan Movement in the North Caucasus, 1942-43"
Box 8
Devitt, K., & W. Moll, "The Partisan Movement in the Bryansk Area, 1941-1943"
Box 8
Devitt, K., "The Role of Partisans in Soviet Intelligence"
Box 8
Epstein, F. et al., "A Survey of German Agencies Dealing with Partisan Warfare in the USSR
Box 8
Mavrogordato, R., & E. Ziemke, "The Partisan Movement in the Polotsk Lowland"

Box 9
Weinberg, G., "The Partisan Movement in the Yelnya-Dorogobuzh Area of the Smolensk Oblast"
Box 9
Weinberg, G., "The Role of Airpower in Partisan Warfare"
Box 9
Ziemke, E., "Composition & Morale of the Partisan Movement"
Box 9
Ziemke, E., "The History of the First Belorussian Brigade"
Box 9
Ziemke, E., "The Soviet Partisan Movement in 1941"
Box 9
Project "Caesar"

Staff, "Political & Police Controls in the Red Army during World War II (vols. 2,4,5)

Box 10
Project "Cassandra"

Armstrong, J. et al., "Soviet Reoccupation Policy in Kharkov, 1943"
Box 10
Devitt, K., "The NKVD in the Defense of Tula, 1941
Box 10
Project "Ceres"

Dallin, A., & G. Weinberg, "The Peasantry as a Source of Soviet Vulnerability: Experiences & Lessons of World War II"

Box 11
Project "Cleopatra"

Moll, W, et al., "Soviet Agent Operations in the German-Occupied
Box 11
Territories during World War II" 
(4 folders)
Box 11
Miscellaneous Projects

Staff, "Activity Report of the Troika (Re-establishment of the Soviet

Box 12
Regime in a Partisan-Held Area, 1941-1942)"
Box 12
Staff, "Selected Soviet Sources on the Partisan Movement"
Box 12
Armstrong, J. & K. Devitt, "Organization & Control of the Partisan Movement"
Box 12
Beck, A., "Partisans in the Polisto Area"
Box 12
Moll, W., "The Local Population "between the Occupying Power and the Partisan Movement"
Box 12
Waldman, E., "German Occupation Administration in the USSR"
Box 12
Waldman, E., "The Ordnungsdienst (OD) in Army Group Center"
Box 12
Draft Reports-Miscellaneous Fragments & Chapters

Box 13


"Composition & Morale of the Partisan Movement"

Box 14
"History of the First Belorussian Partisan Brigade"
Box 14
"Organization and Control of the Partisan Movement"
Box 14
"The Partisan Movement in the Bryansk Area, 1941-1943"
Box 14
"The Partisan Movement in the Polotsk Lowland"
Box 14
"The Partisan Movement in the Yelnya-Dorogobuzh Area of Smolensk Oblast"
Box 14
"Partisan Psychological Warfare 8c Popular Attitudes under the German Occupation"
Box 14
"Partisan Warfare in the Dnepr Bend Area of the Ukraine"
Box 14
"The Role of Airpower in Partisan Warfare"
Box 14
"The Role of the Partisans in Soviet Intelligence"
Box 14
"Selected Soviet Sources on the World War II Partisan Movement"
Box 14
"The Soviet Partisan Movement in 1941"
Box 14
"Soviet Partisan Movement in the North Caucasus, 1941-1943"
Box 14
"The Soviet Partisan Movement in World War II: Summary & Conclusions"

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Re: German Railways in the East

#293

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 26 Dec 2014, 20:13

Taken from "The Soviet Partisan Movement 1941-1944 by Edgar Howell US Army Pamphlet 20-244 1956

p5:
Railroads
In 1941 the USSR had for its 8,400,000 square miles of territory only 52,000 miles of railroads, the greatest portion of which lay in Euro-
Russia. Of this trackage, less than 15 percent could be classed as heavy capacity, as opposed to medium and light. As a means of
comparison, the density of the rail lines was 17.6 miles per 1,000 square miles for European Russia as against 155 miles per 1,000 square miles for
Germany.1 The gauge differed from the standard European gauge,2 necessitating transshipment at the western border.

The references are interesting:
1 Militaergeographische Angaben ueber das europaeische land, Allgemeiner
Ueberblick, I.IX.41., Gen. St.d.H. Abt. fuer gskarten und Vermessungswesen
(IV. Mil.-Geo.), pp. 38-40. 29/IDZ.11.

Postwar estimates of the 1940 trackage total have raised this estimate to just over 60,000 miles, of which 16,000 were double-track. See: P. E. Garbutt, The Russian Railroads (London, 1949), p. 12; Nikolae A. Voznesensky,. . The Economy of the USSR During World War II (Washington, 1948), p. 59.

2 Standard European gauge: 4 feet 81/2 inches; Russian gauge: 5 feet.

3 Militaergeographische Angaben ueber das europaeische Russland, Allgemeiner Ueberblick,1.IX.41, GenStdH. Abt. fuer Kriegskarten und Vermessungswesen (IV. Mil.-Geo.), pp. 38-40. 29/IDZ.11.

A 1938 American estimate placed the total at 64,200 miles, of which some 2,400 miles were believed to be asphalted. See: E. J. Simmons, USSR, A Concise Handbook (Ithaca, 1947), ch. XIV.

These items in bold are the official Military Geography Departments assessment used by Marcks (and presumably Lossberg and Paulus) for planning Barbarossa and we now know them to be incorrect.
52,000 miles of railway is 83,000 km which is the Soviet track in 1937 and does not include the 6,000 km in the Baltics States nor the 6,700 km in Eastern Poland

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Re: German Railways in the East

#294

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 26 Dec 2014, 20:18

"The three major geographical areas-the Ukraine, White and Great Russia, and the Baltic States-were each served by one heavy-capacity double track rail line. In the Ukraine this was the line Krakow-Lwow -Kiev- Kursk or Dnepropetrovsk. Only to a small extent could it be
supplemented by the tortuous and winding medium-, and often low-, capacity line Przemy-Stanislaw-Cernauti-Odessa on the southern slopes
of the Carpathian Mountains. Through White Russia to the east the primary trunk was the Warsaw-Brest-Litovsk-Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow.
This was paralleled on the south by the low-and medium-capacity line through the Pripyat, Brest-Litovsk, Pinsk-Gomel-Bryansk-Moscow.
Several lateral lines of medium capacity, however, and one diagonal route from Kovno in Lithuania southeast through Minsk Bobruysk
to Gomel offered possibilities for alternate routes. To the north the one trunk was the Warsaw-Bialystok-Vilnansk-Pskov-Leningrad
line. With the exception of the stretch Dvinsk-Ostrov, it was double track. The few alternate lines, for the most part to the north of Pskov,
were all of low capacity."

Most of this statement, again taken from the Military-Geographic Report is incorrect.
There was no high capacity line Lvov to Lemburg, the route through Gomel certainly is not one as it runs right through the middle of the Pripet Marshes. The only one correctly identified was the northern route through Bialystok.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#295

Post by GregSingh » 27 Dec 2014, 10:09

There was no high capacity line Lvov to Lemburg
They probably meant "double track" line.
Lemberg-Krasne-Zdolbunow-Kasatin-Fastow-Snamenka, Lemberg-Krasne-Shmerinka-Kasatin-etc. and Lemberg-Odessa were upgraded in 1941-42 to double track.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#296

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Dec 2014, 12:49

The account states "heavy capacity and double track", but I think you could be right.

The Polish 1938 railway map posted earlier shows a heavy line (which is probably double tracked) from Lemburg/Lvov as far as Rovno and then the lines turns back towards Kowel but also a heavy line towards the border crossing.

The Ostbahn map from 1942 shows Route 535 as a heavy line up to Brody where it crosses over to the RVD.

However according to P-048 states that in early 1942 capacity was 60 trains each way to Lemburg but beyond that it was 24 trains a day until Ostbau 42 raised it to 36 trains. But does not indicate that it was double tracked or not.

The Soviet Railway Atlas 1943 shows double track from Lemburg/Lviv right through to Kiev.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#297

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Dec 2014, 14:59

Likewise for the centre line, the account states "Through White Russia to the east the primary trunk was the Warsaw-Brest-Litovsk-Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow."

The Tsarist route ran from St Petersburg through Wilna to Warsaw.

The 1914 German map shows both this route and the MInsk - Brest - Warsaw route.

The 1938 Polish map shows as main routes:
a) Warsaw - Siedlce - Czeremcha - Mosty - Lida
b) Warsaw - Siedlce - Lukow - Brest - Baranowicz

Winchesters article says " there are many important lines radiating from Warsaw. One important route goes through Bialystok, a textile centre, and on north-eastwards to Wilno (207,000 inhabitants), the principal city in the north-eastern provinces. The line proceeds parallel with the Lithuanian frontier and crosses the Latvian border at a point some 350 miles from Warsaw. Another line, branching east from Wilno, runs into Russia. The line from Warsaw to Moscow proceeds via Stolpce. Another line from Warsaw into Russia crosses the frontier at Mohylany, 317 miles distant."

Likewise the passenger traffic shows the main traffic proceeding through Bialystock

The P-048 Appendix 1 map of Polish railways (Polish railway traffic) shows only 12 trains a day to Brest while 24 trains take the Bialystock route yet on the 1942 Ostbahn map, this top route is shown as a minor route. Contrasting with this the P-048 map shows the northern route a with a capacity of 48 trains a day each way (could be 36 plus a further 12 from Bialystok?) while the Brest route shows 38 pairs of trains a day. Also other German maps show the route to Brest not coming from Warsaw but from the south.

So my best estimate is the Minsk - Brest - Warsaw route was used in Imperial Russian days, not used as the main route during the PKP 1921-1939 period but was re-instated by the Germans 1939-1941 who then developed the line 1941-1944 while other PKP routes were used less.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#298

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 29 Dec 2014, 17:44

Scheme of the railways of the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR, 1940 Eng.jpg
Former Polish railways under Soviet operations 1940
Not sure that the captions are correct.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#299

Post by recidivist » 29 Dec 2014, 20:30

Happy holidays, everyone. It seems the posts on this thread keep rolling even during Christmas.
Der Alte Fritz wrote:4) GVD Osten was for a variety of factors a very inefficient railway. Pottgeisser quotes Daily Wagon loadings at 13,000 compared to the Reich total of 157,000. This is 8%, similarly Daily Train km were 398,400 vs 3,000,000 or 13%. So we can conclude that transport demand in GVD Osten was under 10% of the Reich total? So little economic activity given that the area represented 40% of the Soviet pre-war economy which was larger than the German economy?
I don't think it is unreasonable to conclude that economic activity, or at least the rail-bound part of it, declined so dramatically as compared to the occupied areas' pre-Barbarossa contribution to the Soviet economy. After all, the Generalplan Ost envisaged the annihilation or forced expulsion of most people who lived there, and the economic policy in the Ukraine run by Gauleiter Koch seems to have focussed mainly on plunder.

So I don't think the wagon placings in the Reich vis-a-vis GVD Osten wagon placings make a viable basis of comparison for the relative efficiency (or non-efficiency) of the railways in the occupied areas of the USSR. Rather, it reflects the economic policy followed in the area; i.e. outright plunder and pillage in the east (not camouflaged by artificial exchange rates and similar tricks as used in occupied Western Europe) versus a fully matured economy which had been running at full capacity since the mid-1930s.

As far as I am aware, Rosenberg's Ostministerium had perhaps a more practical view on how to exploit the conquered east, but his agency was rendered impotent by his institutional enemies - Koch, Himmler and others - but later on the Germans did make more effort to reestablish the economy of the occupied areas by restoring electricity works and similar, which coincides with the GVD Osten reaching its peak performance around 1943.
So the picture that appears is of little economic activity in Russia other than stripping the country of its resources, the RVD mainly running through trains for the military and is transporting food and raw materials back to the Reich while the FEDko carry out military duties.
Yes, that is an accurate description to me.
But we have 3450 RVD engines operating on 22964 km of track or 6.6 km of track compared to the Reich total 28600 engines on 78,600 km of track of 2.7. Even the Gedob has 3.1 km per engine. So very few engines operating in a big network in a very big country with a low density of railways.
Yes. The somewhat higher train-kilometers-to-wagon placings in the RVDO compared to the Reich underlines that the distances involved were longer than what the DR was otherwise used to.
So the other half of the picture is a lack of capacity in the railway network to support the military operation which is a combination of a lack of capacity in the tracks and low levels of motive power. The Ostheer needed the tracks to carry more trains and more locomotives to move those trains.
After the initial Barbarossa (which of course was hampered first by the whole re-gauging effort, and then by the winter crisis), the Germans and their allies as far as I know never mounted a full offensive along the entire eastern front again. Both the 1942 offensive in the south and the 1943 Kursk offensive only involved parts of the front, and therefore also only parts of the railway network. As I understand it, Fall Blau in 1942 was hindered right from the onset by having only a single rail line to support the operations of two army groups. Contrast that to the 1940 offensive in the west (also the 1914 Schlieffen Plan, I think), which had a rail line - usually double-tracked - behind each seperate army.

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Re: German Railways in the East

#300

Post by recidivist » 29 Dec 2014, 20:39

From this website http://www.eisenbahnstiftung.de/bilderg ... im%20Krieg which has many, many pictures relevant to this topic.
zwore.jpg
Ore train being loaded by 'volunteers' in Kriwoj Rog in 1943
pows.jpg
Soviet POWs transported west in open wagons
nrg-ukr.jpg
A narrow-gauged ore train in the Ukraine unloading its content to normal-gauged open railcars.
br50and52.jpg
A comparison between the pre-war BR.50 and the BR.52 war locomotive. The more austere, mass-produced appearance of the BR.52 should be evident. The BR.52 also needed fewer strategic materials for its construction than the BR.50.

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