What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

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charwo
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What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#1

Post by charwo » 24 May 2023, 06:36

Imagine that in the wake of the Kapp Putch, forces within the Reichswehr decide that the restrictions of the Versailles treaty are an opportunity hiding within a crisis. Working with the liberal minister of defense Otto Gessler to not only modernize the Army and Navy but to make them the most logistically innovative in the world with the selling point that any technologies that they can develop that will make the military more logistically sound will have bounce back effects in the civilian sector. You know, Napoleon needed canned food but canned food also was a great consumer product. It will also make it much easier to rearm when the time comes.

As of right now I can see a couple of ways in which the military could create new advances to facilitate supply. One is the creation of what we would now call the mountain bike, which would allow soldiers personal cross country terrain capacity where they could in theory keep up with mounted cavalry and not be so dependent on. This had always been the limitation of the bicycle, something not corrected until the 1970s in our world, by which time it had no military purpose.

Another way could be the invention of container shipping. Preloading giant metal boxes to be loaded onto ships properly configured for logistical supply would make getting large amounts of bulk cargo for any future military operation much easier. Now this doesn't benefit the military right away because they don't really have the logistical fleet or the military to make use of this technology but that's kind of the point. It's mostly intended to revolutionize German shipping and to create a source of revenue for the German government via patent. All without alarming the Allied Powers.

Another thing they could focus on would be field medicine; the development of antibiotics in theory was not unheard of, and anything that would help search and rescue efforts as well as survival on shipwrecks, wilderness emergency, etcetera would benefit the German civilian sector and basically be money well spent by liberal and socialist governments that don't really want to see the glorification of the Prussian Junker officer class.

I do know that historically the military helped create all sorts of anti riot armored cars for the police where the water cannons could quickly be changed out for machine guns or small auto loading cannons. I'm wondering if these sorts of investments could have been expanded in the 1920s into expanding on say Porsche’s land train technology from World War I. Or perhaps looking into hydrofoil and hover craft technology also from Austrian inventors in World War I. Again all of these have immense civilian application and don't technically violate Versailles in any way.

For the story that I'm going with I'm having my main character, and I kid you not, invent Sous Vide. The notion of heat immersion cooking was actually first proposed by Benjamin Thompson, an American loyalist made Count Rumford in 1799. He used it to cook potatoes and he was kind of a mad genius of thermodynamics and had a smokeless chimney and furnace to his name. Going from air circulation to water circulation is only a natural step when Bakelite bags exist, because water retains heat much better than air and it's a lot easier to control its flow. So once you have the idea of making lots and lots and lots of potatoes consistently and perfectly well it really cuts down on the food logistics chain it's a whole new way of food processing especially in the 1930s. I don't know how much food prep and storage takes up in terms of inter war and World War Two manpower and financing but it's gotta be enough to be noticeable. Sous Vide revolutionized restraint cooking in the 1990s, I can only imagine what it could do in the late 20s if they can get it right with just plastic/silicone bags and wall plug laboratory circulators.

I'm also thinking that the Army Air Corps cannot build combat aircraft but reconnaissance aircraft and search and rescue aircraft are basically the same kind of vehicle. I think you could justify the development of gliders in the 1920s suitable for paratroopers as supply delivery vehicles for people in trapped emergency situations. You need a pilot to get them in, but you could load in with a few tons of food and precision pilot into stranded locations and say blizzards or high ground surrounded by flooded plains. In the same measure then well a bomb sight and a paradrop sight for emergency relief supplies being dropped from a plane have a lot of overlap.

I'm pretty sure some of this would sound outlandish, and that's part of the appeal for me, but if there are more practical things the German military could have done in the 1920s to become logistically sound and innovative, roads not taken, I'd actually like to hear them. There wasn't a lot of experimentation going on in the military in the 1920s but only part of that was a lack of money. I believe that if there had been the imagination of civilian downstream benefits, the governments of the Weimar Republic would have allocated more money to the military for those ends. So if you know about interwar logistical innovations the German army could have built on but failed to do so or failed to do so sufficiently they could have, please let me know. Thank you.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#2

Post by Peter89 » 24 May 2023, 16:32

Modern, industrialized war on a global scale - when technology and economy were on the verge of breakthroughs - is an immensely complex business. On top of this, R&D management is tangentially different than military administration. The only similarities are the craving for immortality through achievements and the ever-present interservice rivalry. Thus, even if you have an invention, it is magnitudes more complicated to turn it into an innovation; and it is even more complicated to employ that innovation successfully in a global military conflict.

Also let's not forget about the nature of science back then. Basically every scientist was connected, and usually they worked closely together. Radio / radar, jet aircraft, synthetic rubber, synthetic fuel and nuclear weapon projects were all known to contemporary powers. In fact Axis did not have a leading edge in anything related to technology, nor did the Allies until mid-war. The difference was the employment of the already known technologies, and the careful selection of them, which will be supported by the governments. It remained largely the same until today. The Allies chose better, the Germans chose somewhat worse; but ultimately, it was the amount of resources, top-level cooperation and the HR that decided that question, because it gave the Wallies a latitude the Germans could never hope to achieve.

To answer your points:

The armored car project was not lacking the will, but the funds. If you could choose between 5 military-ready car and 10 cheaper, lighter, riot-breaking cars, you'd always choose the latter. The Germans did as well.

Food preserving and such techniques were employed more and more. However, while the Germans made an extensive investment into mining and industry, they made almost none into agriculture. That was a wrong approach as many of their suppliers were making inventions that could directly profit German interests (like the Mirelite in Hungary). We can safely assume that Germany was mismanaging everything that they did not consider as their own (see Raubwirtschaft). The numbers show that Germany-ruled Europe might have been less subjected to famine as we previously thought. Bad administration was the keyword.

Building aircrafts, as well as gliders, was actually a state-ran business in Germany. Moreover, the Lufthansa employed more aircrafts, flying more distance than the future enemies of the Reich combined. That meant, however, close to nothing. The Lufthansa's net contribution was called into question in literature as it gave very little manpower, very little militarily useful knowledge and very problematic types zo work with; on the other hand, it completely derailed militarily useful programmes and the guaranteed financing from the government made the industry so careless of productivity that they still produced aluminum ladders in 1941 instead of aircrafts; as well as 1bn RM worth of practically useless spare parts. I'm not even beginning to cite the problems
that civilian air traffic caused to the Luftwaffe's ground echelon, because I know it the best.
"Everything remained theory and hypothesis. On paper, in his plans, in his head, he juggled with Geschwaders and Divisions, while in reality there were really only makeshift squadrons at his disposal."


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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#3

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 24 May 2023, 17:37

US Army CoS Peyton Marsh proposed a industrial mobilization plan that included a robust R & D system circuit 1919. Congress refused to fund it then and again when Pershing proposed a similar system during his tenure a CoS. The industrial; mobilization plans the War Department did make up suffered from lack of manpower to do the extensive research/plannin and from a complete lack of funding for setting up a industrial reserve to have a manufacturing capability at hand. Instead the politics ridden Quartermaster Corps, and a few Army and Navy arsenals were funded on the basis of favorite pork barrel projects of a few powerful Congressmen. We were lucky the Army was not still flying Keystone Bombers and JN-25s in 1941.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#4

Post by T. A. Gardner » 27 May 2023, 01:53

As I've posted times before here, and elsewhere, what the Germans needed most was a vastly improved ability to do civil engineering. Rather than neglecting this and relegating it to mostly, almost entirely, manual labor, the Germans adopt to some degree--whatever is possible-- mechanizing their construction engineering and adopting other related engineering in this field.

For example:

They go heavily into prefabrication of system components. This means, like the British and US, the Germans have a series of prefabricated buildings kitted for shipment and use in erecting bases as they advance. The buildings, in their case, could be mostly wood products making them "non-strategic" in materials use.
For railroad repair, they have prefabricated lengths of track with the ties installed and use a flatcar to bring them forward. A crane on another car sets them in place. They have dump cars (bottom or side) that can deliver ballast for the railbed quickly.

Road construction units have at least a proportion of mechanized equipment to include one or more bulldozers, road graders, road rollers, and dump trucks. They don't have to be fully motorized or mechanized, but rather have some equipment to do the heavy lifting alongside manual laborers.

They also have portable sawmills, rock crushing plants that make sand and gravel, etc. You bring these in by rail, set them up, and they go to work making mass materials for construction. They had some historically, here they add more.

For use in Russia, they kit the necessary parts to construct standardized riverine craft that are then assembled using locally manufactured wood (eg., a sawmill making the lumber) to which the parts are added. This means they can make more use of the Russian river system to move troops and supplies.

This really becomes critical in Russia. Imagine the Germans did the above. They could be improving unpaved roads as they go, upgrading them to say, oiled (using used motor oil, etc.) and graveled with a compacted, graded surface with good drainage. Such a road would stand up to the rainy season and mud reasonably well. The few paved roads are maintained better and improved in terms of drainage, etc. Truck losses due to wear and tear are decreased meaning less need for replacements.

Where railroads exist, the availability of prefabricated rail sections and dump cars delivering gravel ballast make it possible to quickly expand a single rail system with sidings or a second track. Prefabricated buildings, tanks, and such allow building coaling and watering stations along with offices for communications rapidly.

Prefabricated buildings mean less waste of supplies sitting outside as you can build warehouses quickly. Troops have more shelter available in winter. Maintenance services have shelter to do their work rather than being outdoors.

Better roads and railroads equate into less wastage of vehicles and materials. This in turn means what supplies are already available are made more readily accessible to the front in a timely manner.

Fewer construction troops can do the same amount of work with the added mechanization meaning more men available for combat units without drafting more men.

Thus, by having improved civil engineering available, the Germans get improved logistical results with the same level of materials and supplies they had historically. There is less wastage across the whole system.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#5

Post by Peter89 » 27 May 2023, 08:55

T. A. Gardner wrote:
27 May 2023, 01:53
As I've posted times before here, and elsewhere, what the Germans needed most was a vastly improved ability to do civil engineering. Rather than neglecting this and relegating it to mostly, almost entirely, manual labor, the Germans adopt to some degree--whatever is possible-- mechanizing their construction engineering and adopting other related engineering in this field.

For example:

They go heavily into prefabrication of system components. This means, like the British and US, the Germans have a series of prefabricated buildings kitted for shipment and use in erecting bases as they advance. The buildings, in their case, could be mostly wood products making them "non-strategic" in materials use.
For railroad repair, they have prefabricated lengths of track with the ties installed and use a flatcar to bring them forward. A crane on another car sets them in place. They have dump cars (bottom or side) that can deliver ballast for the railbed quickly.

Road construction units have at least a proportion of mechanized equipment to include one or more bulldozers, road graders, road rollers, and dump trucks. They don't have to be fully motorized or mechanized, but rather have some equipment to do the heavy lifting alongside manual laborers.

They also have portable sawmills, rock crushing plants that make sand and gravel, etc. You bring these in by rail, set them up, and they go to work making mass materials for construction. They had some historically, here they add more.

For use in Russia, they kit the necessary parts to construct standardized riverine craft that are then assembled using locally manufactured wood (eg., a sawmill making the lumber) to which the parts are added. This means they can make more use of the Russian river system to move troops and supplies.

This really becomes critical in Russia. Imagine the Germans did the above. They could be improving unpaved roads as they go, upgrading them to say, oiled (using used motor oil, etc.) and graveled with a compacted, graded surface with good drainage. Such a road would stand up to the rainy season and mud reasonably well. The few paved roads are maintained better and improved in terms of drainage, etc. Truck losses due to wear and tear are decreased meaning less need for replacements.

Where railroads exist, the availability of prefabricated rail sections and dump cars delivering gravel ballast make it possible to quickly expand a single rail system with sidings or a second track. Prefabricated buildings, tanks, and such allow building coaling and watering stations along with offices for communications rapidly.

Prefabricated buildings mean less waste of supplies sitting outside as you can build warehouses quickly. Troops have more shelter available in winter. Maintenance services have shelter to do their work rather than being outdoors.

Better roads and railroads equate into less wastage of vehicles and materials. This in turn means what supplies are already available are made more readily accessible to the front in a timely manner.

Fewer construction troops can do the same amount of work with the added mechanization meaning more men available for combat units without drafting more men.

Thus, by having improved civil engineering available, the Germans get improved logistical results with the same level of materials and supplies they had historically. There is less wastage across the whole system.
This is mostly important in the Soviet campaign though. Against the British, naval aviation and expeditionary forces (the lack of them) were much more important factors.
"Everything remained theory and hypothesis. On paper, in his plans, in his head, he juggled with Geschwaders and Divisions, while in reality there were really only makeshift squadrons at his disposal."

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#6

Post by T. A. Gardner » 27 May 2023, 18:53

Peter89 wrote:
27 May 2023, 08:55
T. A. Gardner wrote:
27 May 2023, 01:53
As I've posted times before here, and elsewhere, what the Germans needed most was a vastly improved ability to do civil engineering. Rather than neglecting this and relegating it to mostly, almost entirely, manual labor, the Germans adopt to some degree--whatever is possible-- mechanizing their construction engineering and adopting other related engineering in this field.

For example:

They go heavily into prefabrication of system components. This means, like the British and US, the Germans have a series of prefabricated buildings kitted for shipment and use in erecting bases as they advance. The buildings, in their case, could be mostly wood products making them "non-strategic" in materials use.
For railroad repair, they have prefabricated lengths of track with the ties installed and use a flatcar to bring them forward. A crane on another car sets them in place. They have dump cars (bottom or side) that can deliver ballast for the railbed quickly.

Road construction units have at least a proportion of mechanized equipment to include one or more bulldozers, road graders, road rollers, and dump trucks. They don't have to be fully motorized or mechanized, but rather have some equipment to do the heavy lifting alongside manual laborers.

They also have portable sawmills, rock crushing plants that make sand and gravel, etc. You bring these in by rail, set them up, and they go to work making mass materials for construction. They had some historically, here they add more.

For use in Russia, they kit the necessary parts to construct standardized riverine craft that are then assembled using locally manufactured wood (eg., a sawmill making the lumber) to which the parts are added. This means they can make more use of the Russian river system to move troops and supplies.

This really becomes critical in Russia. Imagine the Germans did the above. They could be improving unpaved roads as they go, upgrading them to say, oiled (using used motor oil, etc.) and graveled with a compacted, graded surface with good drainage. Such a road would stand up to the rainy season and mud reasonably well. The few paved roads are maintained better and improved in terms of drainage, etc. Truck losses due to wear and tear are decreased meaning less need for replacements.

Where railroads exist, the availability of prefabricated rail sections and dump cars delivering gravel ballast make it possible to quickly expand a single rail system with sidings or a second track. Prefabricated buildings, tanks, and such allow building coaling and watering stations along with offices for communications rapidly.

Prefabricated buildings mean less waste of supplies sitting outside as you can build warehouses quickly. Troops have more shelter available in winter. Maintenance services have shelter to do their work rather than being outdoors.

Better roads and railroads equate into less wastage of vehicles and materials. This in turn means what supplies are already available are made more readily accessible to the front in a timely manner.

Fewer construction troops can do the same amount of work with the added mechanization meaning more men available for combat units without drafting more men.

Thus, by having improved civil engineering available, the Germans get improved logistical results with the same level of materials and supplies they had historically. There is less wastage across the whole system.
This is mostly important in the Soviet campaign though. Against the British, naval aviation and expeditionary forces (the lack of them) were much more important factors.
Absolutely true. However, experience from WW 1 with the Belgians and French blowing up bridges and rail lines would make some of this applicable. The pre-fabricated building thing would have been useful even in peacetime for a number of uses as would kits for quickly making amphibious landing craft (Seelöwe?). Yes, Germany didn't originally have plans particularly to invade England, but it never hurts to plan things like that out just in case.
Again, having the kits, prefabricated buildings, and more mechanized rail repair systems wouldn't have hurt the Germans at all. OT could have done the same with road building and other construction they did well before the war. Given some of the grandiose schemes for buildings and infrastructure the Nazis had, OT could have used that pre-war to push for their increased budget to get construction machinery to make those dreams of the leaders reality sooner...

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#7

Post by Peter89 » 27 May 2023, 19:08

T. A. Gardner wrote:
27 May 2023, 18:53
Peter89 wrote:
27 May 2023, 08:55
T. A. Gardner wrote:
27 May 2023, 01:53
As I've posted times before here, and elsewhere, what the Germans needed most was a vastly improved ability to do civil engineering. Rather than neglecting this and relegating it to mostly, almost entirely, manual labor, the Germans adopt to some degree--whatever is possible-- mechanizing their construction engineering and adopting other related engineering in this field.

For example:

They go heavily into prefabrication of system components. This means, like the British and US, the Germans have a series of prefabricated buildings kitted for shipment and use in erecting bases as they advance. The buildings, in their case, could be mostly wood products making them "non-strategic" in materials use.
For railroad repair, they have prefabricated lengths of track with the ties installed and use a flatcar to bring them forward. A crane on another car sets them in place. They have dump cars (bottom or side) that can deliver ballast for the railbed quickly.

Road construction units have at least a proportion of mechanized equipment to include one or more bulldozers, road graders, road rollers, and dump trucks. They don't have to be fully motorized or mechanized, but rather have some equipment to do the heavy lifting alongside manual laborers.

They also have portable sawmills, rock crushing plants that make sand and gravel, etc. You bring these in by rail, set them up, and they go to work making mass materials for construction. They had some historically, here they add more.

For use in Russia, they kit the necessary parts to construct standardized riverine craft that are then assembled using locally manufactured wood (eg., a sawmill making the lumber) to which the parts are added. This means they can make more use of the Russian river system to move troops and supplies.

This really becomes critical in Russia. Imagine the Germans did the above. They could be improving unpaved roads as they go, upgrading them to say, oiled (using used motor oil, etc.) and graveled with a compacted, graded surface with good drainage. Such a road would stand up to the rainy season and mud reasonably well. The few paved roads are maintained better and improved in terms of drainage, etc. Truck losses due to wear and tear are decreased meaning less need for replacements.

Where railroads exist, the availability of prefabricated rail sections and dump cars delivering gravel ballast make it possible to quickly expand a single rail system with sidings or a second track. Prefabricated buildings, tanks, and such allow building coaling and watering stations along with offices for communications rapidly.

Prefabricated buildings mean less waste of supplies sitting outside as you can build warehouses quickly. Troops have more shelter available in winter. Maintenance services have shelter to do their work rather than being outdoors.

Better roads and railroads equate into less wastage of vehicles and materials. This in turn means what supplies are already available are made more readily accessible to the front in a timely manner.

Fewer construction troops can do the same amount of work with the added mechanization meaning more men available for combat units without drafting more men.

Thus, by having improved civil engineering available, the Germans get improved logistical results with the same level of materials and supplies they had historically. There is less wastage across the whole system.
This is mostly important in the Soviet campaign though. Against the British, naval aviation and expeditionary forces (the lack of them) were much more important factors.
Absolutely true. However, experience from WW 1 with the Belgians and French blowing up bridges and rail lines would make some of this applicable. The pre-fabricated building thing would have been useful even in peacetime for a number of uses as would kits for quickly making amphibious landing craft (Seelöwe?). Yes, Germany didn't originally have plans particularly to invade England, but it never hurts to plan things like that out just in case.
Again, having the kits, prefabricated buildings, and more mechanized rail repair systems wouldn't have hurt the Germans at all. OT could have done the same with road building and other construction they did well before the war. Given some of the grandiose schemes for buildings and infrastructure the Nazis had, OT could have used that pre-war to push for their increased budget to get construction machinery to make those dreams of the leaders reality sooner...
I agree. The Luftwaffe airfield construction, for example, was completely inadequate. There should have been more mechanization in that field. During the Iraqi campaign, a local businessman enlarged an airfield in the matter of days, thanks to his British equipment. It usually took weeks for the Germans, if they were really into the effort.

Amphibious landing crafts is a very good idea, however. The inland waterway traffic in Germany and the connected countries made that totally relevant.

But, in any case, I firmly believe that the biggest issue was the lack of interservice cooperation. Namely, Göring. The Germans possessed everything for a proper naval aviation arm (which required Kriegsmarine cooperation) and a dedicated air transport fleet (which required Heer cooperation).
"Everything remained theory and hypothesis. On paper, in his plans, in his head, he juggled with Geschwaders and Divisions, while in reality there were really only makeshift squadrons at his disposal."

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#8

Post by T. A. Gardner » 27 May 2023, 19:43

Peter89 wrote:
27 May 2023, 19:08
I agree. The Luftwaffe airfield construction, for example, was completely inadequate. There should have been more mechanization in that field. During the Iraqi campaign, a local businessman enlarged an airfield in the matter of days, thanks to his British equipment. It usually took weeks for the Germans, if they were really into the effort.

Amphibious landing crafts is a very good idea, however. The inland waterway traffic in Germany and the connected countries made that totally relevant.

But, in any case, I firmly believe that the biggest issue was the lack of interservice cooperation. Namely, Göring. The Germans possessed everything for a proper naval aviation arm (which required Kriegsmarine cooperation) and a dedicated air transport fleet (which required Heer cooperation).
Yea, the Luftwaffe definitely needed capacity to build all-weather airfields. Imagine that in Russia where they have an all-weather runway(s) and prefab buildings brought in including hangers and shops so the ground crews don't work on planes in the cold and the planes are kept out of the weather more.

Interservice cooperation would have definitely helped too, but I think that is less pressing a problem than simply ignoring mechanized civil engineering.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#9

Post by Kingfish » 02 Jun 2023, 00:44

One problem that I see is the commercial side would over time tend to influence, or even drive, ideas and innovation. All that is well and good for things like canned food, but not so much for tanks and torpedoes, neither of which have a commercial mirror.
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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#10

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 02 Jun 2023, 14:47

One problem that I see is the commercial side would over time tend to influence, or even drive, ideas and innovation. All that is well and good for things like canned food, but not so much for tanks and torpedoes, neither of which have a commercial mirror.

Shoveling enough money at some commercial companies can get some innovation. It depends on what kind of innovation culture the business has among its employees. Its common for established businesses to focus on internal politics and stifle true innovation. Another problem specific to certain eras is the unwilling ness of businesses to take on government contracts. Those are as often as not seen as a trap or money losing proposition and declined. The 1920s is a example in the US. What commercial innovation there was for the US Army came from the aviation industry. With nothing to go on but the Great War experience and some limited examples of the Banana Wars the Army/comercial collaboration managed to build a successful foundation for capable combat aircraft.

Military run R & D can be more productive or successful as long as the management & engineers are not mismanaged managed. In the 1920s the US Army Ordnance Dept was able to avoid some of the worst practices and come up with a decent group of proposed cannon for the nest 30-40 years. Production of those were not funded until 1939-1940 but the prototypes were built and tested. Since there was little interest in a export market, and Congress was not funding new production there was near zero interest by the US arms industry in developing new cannon & carriages.

In either case, commercial or military R & D the killer is legislative politics intruding. Earlier I referred to the old Army Quartermaster Corps in this. It was more of a creature of the US Congress & a source of frustration to any Army Chief of Staff trying to build for the future or execute war time operations.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#11

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 02 Jun 2023, 14:55

Getting back to the OP and the Reichswehr...
charwo wrote:
24 May 2023, 06:36
Imagine that in the wake of the Kapp Putch, forces within the Reichswehr decide that the restrictions of the Versailles treaty are an opportunity hiding within a crisis. Working with the liberal minister of defense Otto Gessler to not only modernize the Army and Navy but to make them the most logistically innovative in the world with the selling point that any technologies that they can develop that will make the military more logistically sound will have bounce back effects in the civilian sector. You know, Napoleon needed canned food but canned food also was a great consumer product. It will also make it much easier to rearm when the time comes. ....

There are some examples of this in the Reichswehr. I'm only familiar with weapons. The MG34 was one well thought out item. The 10.5cm FH18 cannon was another, designed in the 1920s & well tested. As in the US the budget did not allow much beyond that. Guderian & his peers tried hard to get some R & D accomplished on the automotive side of their ideas for the Panzerwaffe. Most of that died stillborn.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#12

Post by thaddeus_c » 02 Jun 2023, 15:40

not sure if it fits this discussion, but the KM could have focused on oil tankers, they had the Dithmarschen-class design historically.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#13

Post by T. A. Gardner » 02 Jun 2023, 23:01

thaddeus_c wrote:
02 Jun 2023, 15:40
not sure if it fits this discussion, but the KM could have focused on oil tankers, they had the Dithmarschen-class design historically.
The Dithmarschen were exactly what the KM needed for at sea replenishment. Sure, they weren't as efficient as a USN oiler or supply ship at transferring oil and supplies to a warship at sea, but they did it all on one hull, and for the Germans that was a big deal. The Dithmarschen were also fast enough to keep up with the fleet so they didn't require independent escorts. Again, with the limited number of hulls and ships the KM had that made sense for them.

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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#14

Post by Kingfish » 02 Jun 2023, 23:11

Carl Schwamberger wrote:
02 Jun 2023, 14:47
Shoveling enough money at some commercial companies can get some innovation.
True, but establishing a national strategy that marries military "must have" with commercial "nice to have" reminds me of that old adage: "the man who chases two hares catches neither"
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Re: What if the Reichswehr focused on lostics and adjacent tech?

#15

Post by thaddeus_c » 03 Jun 2023, 14:23

T. A. Gardner wrote:
02 Jun 2023, 23:01
thaddeus_c wrote:
02 Jun 2023, 15:40
not sure if it fits this discussion, but the KM could have focused on oil tankers, they had the Dithmarschen-class design historically.
The Dithmarschen were exactly what the KM needed for at sea replenishment. Sure, they weren't as efficient as a USN oiler or supply ship at transferring oil and supplies to a warship at sea, but they did it all on one hull, and for the Germans that was a big deal. The Dithmarschen were also fast enough to keep up with the fleet so they didn't require independent escorts. Again, with the limited number of hulls and ships the KM had that made sense for them.
my speculation was for commercial use during peacetime, that they might gain some advantage(s) on their huge imports of oil, stockpile a larger reserve than historically.

somewhat the same theme, the KM employed (and lost) dozens of large, modern commercial ships as Sperrbrecher but found much smaller 1,700t trawlers functioned about as well to clear mines.

thus building a fleet of fishing trawlers with features beyond what industry would have constructed would have been a wise effort.

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