Germans doomed to failure

about the LSSAH,Kampfgruppe Nord,GD:would they make 2 divisions ? (The Lehrbrigade being part of the OKH reserves)
I have for the LSSAH:11535;the Kampfgruppe Nord:10O18,for GD,sadly enough nothing .

 

No its not the logistical system handcuffing the system, not in anyway shape or form. The Infantry divisions were at work reducing the Bialystok/Minsk pockets, as per the operational plan and by necessity. The plan was to destroy the Red Army west of the Dnieper river with all of AGC and once complete, pause three weeks to restore combat power to the mobile formations and then move forward and take Moscow with this reduced force (mobile units only) while the rump of AGC remained in the Smolensk area. According the this plan, all was well:
"July 8 Colonel Kinzel reported that of the 164 Soviet rifle divisions that had been identified since the beginning of the war, 89 had been fully or partly destroyed, and of these only 46 remained on the battle-fronts, while another 14 divisions were tied down facing Finland and 4 more were in the Caucasus. The Russian rearward reserve was reckoned at 11 divisions. Of the 29 Russian tank divisions that had emerged, only 9 were still considered to be battle worthy."

This Intel report here clearly indicates that according to the pre-campaign estimates of enemy strength and as per the original operational construct that the Red Army was finished and in no way was the logistical plan a hindrance to strategic victory within that context.

The failure of Barbarossa has its roots in the pre-campaign intel estimates and planning phase, not in any inherent flaws or inability of the Quartermaster service of the Wehrmacht or with the Personnel office of the German Army. Barbarossa failed due to logistical and personnel shortages, but to say that these are the root cause is to put the cart before the horse so to speak.

 

Certainly a factor especially sense some of their policies were responsible for the level of said will.

 

That's a very perceptive point. The historical focus on why the German lost, rather than why the Soviets won, sometimes obscure the really essential fact. If we take the grand strategy, force composition, planning as constants, German victory was inconceivable.

The German plan was to annihilate the Red Army by locating the biggest concentration of Soviet forces on the field and neutralize it. In his protestations, Guderian pointed out Moscow was where the biggest enemy concentration most likely to be found.

In other words, no one really believed capturing Moscow would make the Soviet Union collapse. Yet destroying the Red Army, in retrospect, was patently absurd. In order for that to happen, the Soviets must forget that they had prepared their civilian population as a military reserve just for this kind of contingency and to fail at transplanting their armament factories to Siberia.

I think the crippling effect of poor logistics should not be underestimated. TA said elsewhere that Gen Wagner, OKW's quartermaster, estimated the German army could operate no more than 500 km from their railheads. That infantry division was not able to catch up to the Panzers after that distance was no coincidence.

 

Well you are the proponet for it not making a difference while I have mearly pointed out potential.
So How muchmore demading was a US army compared to a German one? Or better what are the log demands of a German motorized vs leg infantry division as that may give us a better standard to judge from.
Note it's not really a US army we are discussing either but a German army with access to the types and levels of equipment the US had.

Again your reference to "belief in the omnipotence of the US technology" is an insulting strawman. No one here has shown such beliefs. You on the otherhand keep bringing it up when it seems like you have no real data to support your position.

 

about some criticism of Glantz :see :Glantz on B

 

Isn't it? Certainly movement of troops is logistics. If your troops have to walk they aren't going to cover more than about 30 miles a day. With truck transport they can cover that in an hour. Certianly some delay in either case but an order of magnitude less with trucks compaired to horses and foot.

 

PC problems :Glantz on Barbarossa (in the Dupuy Institute Forum )

 

No, there is no logistical issue here. The time and supplies necessary to move the Infantry Divisions from where they were to Smolensk was accounted for in the operational, personnel and logistical plans which meets the operational objectives of the original Barbarossa plan, thus no issue.

 

I know I haven't posted for awhile and I'm sure most of the stuff your looking for has already been posted on here but I'll throw my 2 cents in. First off, your Russian numbers are far, FAR greater than your German numbers. It is always said the Germans chose quality over quantity with vehicles, which is correct. But the Russians used both in the way of vehicles, not so much with weapons though(apart from the PPSh line of SMG's). Go ask any historian what the best tank during WWII was and I can guarantee their answer will be the T-34. Although my personal favorite is the Tiger, it was always prone to mechanical failures. However it had thick armor and an 88mm gun, not to bad. But the T-34 wasn't as prone to mechanical problems and it had good armor and a good gun. Like I said, quality over quantity.

Secondly, probably the biggest problem was that Hitler was the one commanding everything. I don't know how many times the Germans were ready to attack something and Hitler decided to go somewhere else. Moscow is a perfect example. The Germans were ready to attack Moscow and Hitler decided to have his troops take a few oil fields instead which gave the Russians more time to build defenses. Germany had some really good generals, if they were in command rather than Hitler the war in Russia might not have even happened.

I know there's much more to add but I'll look at other peoples replies before I go on.

 

They can cover that in a hour :NOT in the east,I suspect that infantry could advance faster than motorized troops .

 

Really? Why? I can perhaps see it in certain very limited circumstances but have you really looked at how much road space troops take up? or what adverse conditions do to the movement of both troops and horses?

 

Because(among other things),in the east,motorized troops only could move on roads,and,as the roads were rare and primitive,...

 

In post 57,LWD asked the following :
If the Germans had had resources equivalant to the US Army in 1944,when they launched Barbarossa,could they have won ?
My answer:
Wrong question :the Germans did not fail in 1941 because they had not enough resources.Fail or victory for the Germans did (mainly) not depend from what they did,or could do (you can imagine the Germans having more resources,improving the infrastructure,etc,etc:it would not help),but from what the SU did,or could do .
More(better) trucks,more fuel,I could enumerate the whole technological panorama,nothing of this would give the Germans the victory in september,only one thing would cause the collaps of the Red Army:if there were on 1 september only 1.5 million Soviet soldiers manning the front,but,there were 3 million Soviet soldiers manning the front .

 

as demanded,some information about US army daily ammunition expenditure in WWII (in tons !!)
armoured division :in attack :436-832 ,in defense:596-969,pursuit :1O7,delay:321
the same for an infantry division :353-658,472-768,83,256
on 31 august 1944,there were in western europe:20 US,16 BC,1 Polish and 1 french division
for june 1941,there would be 120 US styled divisions(a tripling):it is easy what this would mean for the dailey ammunition consumption

 

as demanded,some information on the gasoline consumption sourceuline of operation Overlord)
the gasoline consumption for the period from DDay to D + 90 ,is estimated to require some 5000 tons per day on D Day + 20,rising to 10500 tons per day by DDay + 90
The allied strength(without losses and withdrawals)being on 31 august 1944:2052297 men and 438471 vehicles, it is not that difficult to imagine what would be the daily gasoline consumption for a much bigger US style army operating in Eastern Europe.

 

Originally Posted by LJAd
And,this depended not on the Germans,but on the Russians .That's,IMHO,the mistake of Barbarossa:the whole thing was very unstable:success or failure depended not on what the Germans could-would do,but,on what the SU could-would do

This is my view as well, from a purely material perspectictive Germany had little or no chance of victory, but if wars were only a matter of material the big batallions would always win and that's simply not true. IMO logistics are just part of the "material" and while the German shortcommings in materials eventually doomed them they were not the deciding issue in 1941. Germany's best, and possibly only, chance of victory resided on the "morale" (other members called it will) plane, and it was there that they miscaculated worse.
Barbarossa in a nutshell was
-a) Destroy the Soviet army near the frontier
-b) Advance to occupy the required "lebensraum".
-c) The soviets collapse and the USSR breaks down so badly they no longer pose a military threat .

They succeeded in doing (a) and (b) but (c) failed to happen despite horrendous losses that would have shatteted most other countries, instead the Soviet kept raising fresh troops ad eventually the German momentum evaporated.

A fully motorized army, and better logistic planning, may have made the German momentum last a bit longer and so allowed the Germans to advance a few Kms further, but without a Soviet collapse failure was inevitable.
I doubt that motorization would allow the Germans to achieve much more than the already spectacular successes they had, even assuming that a fully motorized army of 150 divisions with 1941 technology would not simply be paralized by it's own tail, at one point, no matter how many trucks you have, they will use all the fuel they can carry just to get from the railhead to the front, fuel efficiency not number of trucks is the limiting factor, and fuel efficiency over bad roads is pretty poor. Also troop fatigue was another limiting factor no amount of motoriziation will solve, well supplied troops recover faster, but they still need rest.

 

That seems a rather execessive generalization to me. Why couldn't trucks especiall all wheel drive ones travel off road? In any case infantry is faster walking on roads and typically does so. However if the roads are restricted to truck traffic it's more efficient. Especially when the roads have to take trucks, men on foot, and horse drawn wagons.

 

You keep saying this but offer nothing as proof. Had the Germans been able to maintain a more rapid advance Soviet casualties would likely have been greater and German casualties less. Whether it's enough to make a difference or not is an open question. Your blanket denials however are not adding anything to the conversation.
Clearly logistics weren't everything but they were important and at times critical. Dening this, which you seem to be doing, indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of military science.

 

But this is only part of the equation. What is needed is the consumption for both the leg and motorized divisions.
Oh by the way where did your numbers come from?

Here are some relevant sources:
Transporting munitions: a history of transporting munitions and its relevance to aerospace expeditionary forces - page 5 | Air Force Journal of Logistics
Divisions
http://www.mnstarfire.com/ww2/history/land/division.html
While leg infantry divisions do consume less supplies if you start looking at army and corp slices it may not hold especially if you are a couple hundred miles from a rail head. I've seen it stated that even with trucks it became difficult to keep a division supplied if it was more than about 300 miles or 500km from a railhead. Supply based on horse drawn wagons becomes problematic over much shorter distances.