Hi Jon,
One day I will manage to post a table which doesn’t make people’s eyes bleed…
I’m gradually working my way through linked references and flame wars!
As ever forgive the wanton snippage caused, in my case, by a disorderly mind
However, my argument that Nov 1 1941 represents a low point in German vehicle strength on the East Front does not really endorse that point of view - I don't think Glantz has much time for German generals' memoirs (but correct me if I'm wrong!); he has just chosen a point in time when German strength was at its lowest since Barbarossa began. The German logistics services also lost vehicles at alarming rates in largely non-muddy France, Belgium and Holland in 1940. The main difference is not one of weather, but rather one of time, because the Russian campaign dragged on for longer than Wehrmacht planners had allowed for.
That’s an excellent point on Glantz’s choice of dates which I hadn’t considered. I think very few modern historians are willing to take von Manstein, Guderian etc at face value any more. Although not many go as far as Glantz, who makes snide little notes referencing Guderian’s memoirs. However, it is interesting on how much emphasis Glantz places on the unpublished review of the campaign by Heinrici, even if he disagrees with some parts of it (most notably the decision of August being the root cause of German failure). I’ll quote it at length at the end of this post because it does seem to be unpublished, which is an absolute travesty if the conclusions cited by Glantz are anything to go on.
Your point on the time factor is well made as is the issue of tank losses reflecting intensity of combat. However, I’m trying to establish some kind of underlying cause (eg the very nature of mechanical warfare leads to gradual attrition) which cannot just be explained away by weather or nature of the opposition. Both obviously played a role in attrition of the number of motor vehicles, but the repeated nature of the attrition to German motor vehicles in WW2 in every theatre seems to point to some more fundamental issue.
Well yes, but the 30% of trucks assumed to be out of operations applied at all times as I understand it from van Creveld, under all circumstances - so no time frame element in the calculation as I understand it. But perhaps I've read too much into the 30%
Regarding your second point, yes, the Luftwaffe cooked the books by cutting back on spares production in order to increase apparent strength. There are some insights to be gained from the USSBS aircraft industry report I recall a similar point being made about German tanks. On a related note, it's important to remember that the greatly increasing German aircraft production in 1943/1944 is overwhelmingly made up of single-engined types measured by weight or by number of engines the Luftwaffe production increase isn't as impressive as it may appear at first glance.
In fairness, I’m adopting the stance of something approaching Devil’s advocate. I’ve not read Van Creveld for some time so it might be useful for me to review his work. It just strikes me as very odd that in almost every campaign there is an issue with motor vehicles and attrition despite the 30% being assumed.
I drew the Luftwaffe comparison to see whether it would hold true for motor vehicles in general. It’s interesting you remember something similar being true for tanks (I recall the issue of new engines in 1941 being difficult because Hitler wanted to keep them for new tanks and not use them as replacements). Could there be a more fundamental underlying cause or causes which have been overlooked in favour of more simple explanations?
Well, the ~1175 vehicles per division correspond rather well with early Wellen German division vehicle establishments. The vehicle to horse relationship seems to have improved greatly by the time of Barbarossa, no doubt due to vehicle requisitions from occupied Europe.
Absolutely, but what is intriguing is the concentration of those vehicles in the motorised and armoured units while despite the expansion which has occurred in the number of infantry units, no similar expansion is present in the number of horses.
Some digging in Hans Potgiesser's book Die deutsche Reichsbahn im Ostfeldzug yielded these numbers: (brilliant source work snipped)
Absolutely superb – thank you! For what little it’s worth, I’d read the phrase in question as ‘daily number of wagonloads’ but my Oma always said that I understood less than I read with my German
The document Qvist provided and you’ve posted is amazing. It is interesting that Glantz places a large part of the blame on the failure of German logistics on their inability to capture Soviet rolling stock.
Glantz’s figures could just be wrong, or perhaps mis-stated. I’ve been flicking through the ‘soviet perspective’ works primarily to draw comparisons with German logistical arrangements rather than establishing firm facts on the German arrangements themselves. Without reading Glantz’s source it’s hard to tell how the figures have been obtained.
It’s amazing that the Germans managed to find so many horses in the captured areas of SU. I’m presuming that a fair amount must have come from the Soviet army itself but surely that can’t explain away such a big number? The figure is also astonishingly similar to a rough ballpark figure of horses needed by the 88 cavalry divisions (at 3500 horses each) raised by the SU from June to December 1941.
Andreas very rightly points out that it’s an exceptionally flawed argument to say that the Heer relied on horses because they could cope with bad weather better, but there is a glimmer of truth in such an argument being made for the Red Army cavalry units if Glantz is correct that they were intended as long-range guerilla units. Even so, one wonders whether quite so many would have been raised if the SU had the requisite amount of motor vehicles which its pre-war ToE called for.
Well, Franco has his apologists too, and Hitler may have had his own reasons for over-stating Franco's price for entering the war as an active belligerent on the Axis side. But the LoN harvest figures which I posted earlier seem to support Tooze's point - the 1940 Spanish harvest is lower than both the 1939 and 1941 harvests.
True. Although if the evidence supports such a requirement one may have to dismiss the idea that it was purely Hitler overstating the cost of the Franco alliance.
It's worth noting that daily calories as expressed by what people would be entitled to with their ration cards do not
necessarily reflect actual calorie intake - wherever there is rationing, there is a black market too. In turn, if food stocks are relatively abundant, the black market will usually trade in food stamps, whereas the black market will trade in the commodities themselves if food is scarcer than expressed in daily calorie rations.
Sure, although I do agree with many of the points raised in the posts previous to this on how rationing would more severely hit urban areas (even without the measures which the Germans undertook to separate Polish cities from the countryside). I’m reminded of the British attempts to destabilise the German ration system by dropping fake ration cards which had some small success and led to increasingly harsh punishments on those who were discovered to use them (mentioned in Holt’s The Deceivers).
While taking onboard the points about general ration levels, one has to bear in mind that certain categories of people would be far more ‘visible’ (for lack of a better word) and thus less able to access the black market. The Jewish Ghettos perhaps provide the best example of this. The amount of requisitions made by the Wehrmacht in any area would also lead to a problem of absolute scarcity which would in turn reduce the supply into the black market.
Rationing may well represent a ‘guaranteed’ minimum intake but, taking all the factors mentioned in this thread so far, I don't believe that the surplus of food making its way into the black market would have been enough to significantly improve the diets of the majority of the European Grossraum population.
Interesting point on black market trade. It’s an area in which I should really improve my knowledge.
I believe there are also some Speer quotes around to the effect that if the USAAF had carried on bombing German ball bearing factories (the Schweinfurt raids, which also incurred heavy losses on the USAAF), then Germany's war effort would soon have been doomed. But then both Speer and Tooze, in agreement for once, go on to critisize the Allied air forces' failure to keep up the pressure, instead moving on to other targets.
I can’t decide whether this is because the Speer statements come from a time when he was being relatively honest or not
Well, I think that Milch cut a number of corners in order to increase aircraft production, which by the way is quite congruent with the reduced production of spares, addressed above. The He-177 heavy bomber held little promise in 1941, with many technical faults to iron out. The Me-210 had proven to be an expensive failure because a year had been cut off its development time, a risk that had paid off with the Ju-88 according to Tooze. I think Milch simply settled for good enough aircraft in great numbers next year, instead of a new generation of aircraft several years down the pipeline, irrespective of how the air war against Britain and the USA might develop.
I can definitely see your point. But I’m wondering how that then squares with the need for increased production? Obviously the decisions to mass-produce certain planes were taken before the winter 1941 crisis (and even before Udet’s suicide), which leads to the question on why would Germany need to respond to US production figures to such an extent if the air war was not to be fought over the Grossraum/Reich? As far as I can see, the only real alternative is that Germany planned to repeat the attempt to bomb Britain to the negotiating table but I can’t quite see how that would work. Obviously the next generation planes were not ready for mass production in mid-to late 1941, but they did eventually come good, so the question has to be asked why was it so vital to make a decision at that point?
That’s a fun little thread. Much can be explained by comparing the dates when the various evaluations cited were done. For me, Carson’s claims do need to be taken seriously. Which leads on to the question of why the FW-190 wasn’t pursued as a real option. But the answer to that will probably lie in the relative political clout of the various design teams.
I mentioned a study on the Russian campaign by Heinrici which Glantz cites (sometimes at length). It does seem to be genuinely unpublished in either German or in translation. So I’ll just put what Glantz cites down here.
Gotthard Heinrici, The Campaign in Russia, Volume 1, Washington DC, US Army G-2,1954. Translation by Joseph Welch.
‘The goal set for the Eastern Campaign was not achieved. The enemy’s armed forces were defeated, but the Russian State structure did not collapse. The threat of a two-front war stood at the door. The attack on Russia did not prevent this from happening; on the contrary, it conjured up its possibility.
The basis of failure rested on the following:
1. Politically, Hitler had underestimated the inner stability of the Bolshevik system. It proved to be tenacious and consolidated. The spirit within the Russians to defend ‘Mother Russia’ was stronger than their rejection of the Communist dictatorship. The improper treatment of the population in the occupied areas, above all, in the Ukraine and the Baltic States, only increased this feeling.
2. Economically, Russia was also better established than Hitler was willing to admit.
3. Militarily, the Russian armed forces were surprisingly capable. They often defended with a stubborn tenacity, and they had an astounding ability to improvise, even in the technical arena. These qualities consistently made up for the inability of the senior Russian leadership. However, all of this does not explain away the failure. German negligence and omission may make it easier to understand.
4. Most decisive was the operational decision of August 1941, which shifted the main emphasis of the operation from Army Group Centre to Army Group South and, in part, to the north. This forfeited the best chance to conduct a decisive battle with the enemy during a direct attack on Moscow. I stress ‘best chance’, because there has been no evidence to the contrary.
5. The motorized problem must also be considered. The German Army did not have the necessary motorized units and air transport formations or the required fuel reserves for a campaign in an area with the depth of Russia. The result was the necessity of having to stop the panzer formations until the infantry could catch up, instead of exploiting the opportunity to attack into the depth. Secondly, complete dependence on the railroads for supply, with all of the ensuing problems, was no way to tackle the East.
6. The width and depth of Russia had a decisive significance. After the rapid defeat of the Russian armed forces was not accomplished, the German Army was still faced by these two factors and they did not have the means to overcome them.
7. The Russian climate and terrain also complicated matters. The effect of the mud period was surprising in its significance. The coming of the Russian winter did not correspond with German expectations. And the difficulty of the terrain, with its wide marshes and impassible regions, the great primeval-like forests complexes, the few good roads and the wide, unregulated river courses may not have stopped the offensive, but they did cause considerable delays.
8. Therefore, the Germans had to fight a constant battle with time. The end of June start time, in conjunction with the time lost during the battle of Kiev, took bitter revenge upon the Germans. If the incorrect decision of August 1941 were not made, the time left before the beginning of the mud period would have been sufficient for a decisive success. However, it would still have been very close.
In summary, it can be established that the decisive factor in the failure of the operation was the August 1941 decision. In addition, however, there was also the underestimation of the enemy, German weakness, above all in the realm of motorization, the depth of the area, the climate, the terrain and the time factors.
With this in mind, the efforts made by the German soldiers takes on special significance.’
I’d really like to see whether or not Heinrici expands upon points 5 through 7 prior to drawing his conclusions.
All the best,
Zeb