How Hitler could have won

Not for the first time you prove not having the basics : an earlier opening of the port of Antwerp would have been a shot in the dark:

1) the importance of Antwerp was secundary : in december 427000 ton was discharged at Antwerp for a total of 1.555.000 ton at the continental ports

2) this was less ,much less than was assumed by the planners :it was 13.370 ton daily while the assumption was 15000 ton,for january it was even worse :13970 for an assumption of 21500

3) already very soon,the storage capacity was full

4) clearance was essential : what remained at the port was not helping the front and,what happened in december : only 10290 ton was leaving daily the port= 77 % of what was arriving .

45 % was leaving by train,only 15 % by barge and 40 % by truck.
And,of this 10290 ton not everything had as destination the front,the civilians and the economy also needed supplies,the same for the rear and support units .

5) what was determining was not what was arriving at the port but what was leaving the port .

6) If the port had been opened earlier,much less could have left the port,because the transport facilities were very hindered,almost inexistent :in september Belgium was paralysed

7)Antwerp was only useful in a strategy of ending the war in the long-term= in 1945,while MG was a possibility for ending the war before Christmas

8) Antwerp could wait,while MG could not : after 15 september, MG had no chance to succeed because of the weather and the increasing German strength


And last point : it is not so that Antwerp could have been made operational much earlier: even if the approaches had been cleared a few weeks earlier, there still was the problem of clearing the Scheldt of the mines,something which took several weeks in the OTL .

But of course, you will not let facts hinder the realisation of your imagination .

 

If you were to conduct a poll on this forum I strongly suspect that most would say that it is you and not I who lacks understanding of the situation.

"Secondary"? In it's first real month of operation it was handling over 25% of the cargo delivered to the continent. I will admit that I don't know if a single French port was handling more but that's of little real import is it. Note that Antwerp was closer to the front and didn't rely on the same road and rail network as the French ports which were saturated from what I've read. Allied estimates were often off that's why they were called estimates. Some problems at first are to be expected, the earlier a port is open and working the earlier the problems are worked out.

Opening the port earlier means that the resources to help move stuff out of the port can be allocated earlier. The shorter runs to the front may even make it easier to move cargo from the port to where it is needed at the same time building up the infrastructure to increase this capablitly.

And they were substantially better in December? Certainly one would expect the through put of the port in December to be much improved if it were opened in September rather than the beginning of Novemenber.

I would agree that opening Antwerp earlier wouldn't likely see the war ending before 45 but Market Garden wasn't going to have that effect either. What's more a clear study of the issue at the time would have resulted in the same conclusions.

Market Garden had no or very little chance of success as it was. Certainly it wasn't going to produce the extreme results some claimed it would. Antwerp could indeed wait but waiting turned what could have been a fast relativly easy campaign into a very tough and bloody one and ment that logistics were in wourse shape for months if not the rest of the war than they would have been otherwise. Clearing Antwerp had a much better chance of ending the war earlier.

Indeed but clearing the mines had to wait until the Scheldt was cleared so clearing it earlier means the mines get cleared earlier. There may also have been fewer mines and the weather was likely to have been more conducive to the mine clearing so there's a good chance it wouldn't have taken as long.

"realisation of your imagniation"??? What is that suppose to mean?
In any case the facts don't seem to contraindicate my suggestions. That's not to say that it would have certainly worked out the way I suggest but IMO the odds favor it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beN9DC8paPs

 

Compared to the préwar period,the Belgian railways transported monthly

in september 1944 5%
in october 1944 15 %
in november 23 %

The Belgian coal production

1939: 30 million of tons

1940:25.5 million

1941:26.7

1942:25

1943:23.7

1944:13.5

1945 :18.6

And,in 1944 a big part was requisitioned by the Germans .

MG was the only chance to finish the war in 1944 : there was a window of opportunity (the Hun was on the run),but the windows were already closing :at the end of september MG would be impossible .

The opening of Antwerp would not result in the possibility to start a big offensive in the autumn while a small offensive with 3 divisions was possible without the opening of Antwerp .

In october only 23700 ton were daily discharged,while 12 AG needed23000 ton for its 28 divisions,this,without stocks,without supplies for the rear troops,for the air force,for the civilians,and WITHOUT the supplies needed for the British .

It was MG in september,or waiting till the spring of 1945 to start a big offensive .

 

LJAd, why do you think that clearing Antwerp sooner wouldn't have allowed for a new major offensive into Germany earlier than historically?

 

Uh oh...

 

Antwerp would have allowed supplies to arrive closer to the front. What hurt the supply effort was the need to ship supplies so far. The allies had reached the point in that they used as much gasoline transporting it as they delivered

 

Because,clearing Antwerp would have resulted in the possibility to ship more supplies toAntwerp,but not in the possibility to transport these supplies to the front :supplies who could not leave Antwerp were useless .

Fictive exemple :

Arriving every day 600 tons

storage capacity :1000 tons

clearance capacity (= tons which were leaving) : 500 tons

result :
after one day : 10 % of the storage capacity is full up

after 10 days :the whole storage capacity is full up and all ships must wait or return .

There is also the problem that what was leaving Antwerp was insufficient to supply a big offensive .
If Antwerp had be become operational,the situation would have been worse,because,less could have left the port,with as result that in our fictive exemple,the strage capacity would not ha been exhausted after 10 days,but earlier .

 

But not to the front

 

In december 10290 ton was leaving the port every day:
4630 by train
1540 by barge
4120 by truck

This was insufficient for a big offensive

In november less could have left the port,thus no big offensive

In october it would be not possible to make the port operational

The situation became "better" every month,which means that it would be worse if one would return in the time

december : 427592 discharged
january :433094
february :473463
march: 588066
april:628627

What was leaving the port was also increasing and the total discharged (for all ports) also :

Total

october : 1309184

november:1402080

december:1555819

january:1501269

february:1735502

march:2039778

april:2025142


Source :Ruppenthal :Logistical support of the Armies :Volume 2

 

The original problem was that the supply harbour in early part was meant to be elsewhere and Falaise situation went ahead in importance.

" [SIZE=12pt]One must also remember that the original key logistics semiartificial harbour was to be the Quiberon Bay:

the Brittany attack was very important for the logistics of Allied army. It was meant that there would be a semi-artificial harbour at Quiberon Bay, in Brittany. It would have been important to get Brest first as there were German naval artillery that could destroy the parts of the pier elements on their way to Quiberon.
The idea was that the Normandy railroad would be destroyed but Colonel Harold Mack had noticed, that the best railroads in France ran along the coast of the Bay of Biscay. This is where the deep water vessels would land and 7,000 tons a day would come in. It was called operation "Chastity" and were stamped "Top Secret Bigot".

Somehow though as "Cobra" was a success, Patton instaed turned east and only the 8th was sent to Brittany.later on the Allied could not meet the need for supply and were forced to stop. So Patton " shot himself in the leg" as he was later on forced to stop and received no oil...

Jonathan Gawne " 1944 Americans in Brittany " [/SIZE]

 

But:7000 ton in every day does not mean 7000 ton out every day .

 

There is a thesis about Quiberon'"seduction in combat:losing sight of logistics after D-Day" but it is not convincing .

 

"It would have been important to get Brest first as there were German naval artillery that could destroy the parts of the pier elements on their way to Quiberon."

These "pier elements" couldn't be kept out of range of guns at Brest while they were being towed to Quiberon? If you were towing Mulberry harbor sections or whatever, you'd want to keep well offshore just for safe navigation; the area around Ushant/Ile d'Ouessant has a dangerous reputation and is a lee shore with the prevailing winds from the west.

A lot of ink has been spilled trying to rationalize why the US Army "had to" fight a brutal battle for a port they made almost no use of. For some reason none of these rationales apply to say l'Orient, which is closer to Quiberon Bay and to the Allied front lines.

If the Allies determined that they needed to secure an existing port city it should have been St. Nazaire, a hundred miles closer to where the supplies ultimately need to be delivered. As we saw historically, the main bottleneck wasn't getting supplies ashore, it was delivering them overland to the front lines. The east-west roads and railroads along the Loire river would not have received as much bombing under the Tranportation Plan as those which might carry German reinforcements to the Channel coast. The river itself would likely be usable at least as far as Nantes, or further for landing craft.

 

But if they were also unloading enough trucks to transport the supplies to the front, then shouldn't that alleviate Allied supply issues?

 

You can't supply an army by trucks : the only way is by train .

A train can transport 400 ton, a truck : 2,3 ton .

If 14000 additional tons were needed daily to start a big offensive ,the earliest day of which would be 15 november,that would mean a minimum of 7000 additional trucks (a minimum,if one is considering the wear and tear on the trucks).

7000 additional trucks would block the port : there would not be enough space to load them :it would be an enormous traffic-jam.There also would not be enough space-road for these additional trucks:7000 trucks would need 700 km of roads,while the distance between the port and the front was some 100 km . There were not enough roads for these trucks.

It would take hours to load the trucks, hours before they could leave the port,hours to get to the front,again hours to be unloaded,hours to return to the port .

It could not be done .

 

Well they had to...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ball_Express

 

But the RBE failed : the Allies were stopped and the war was not over in 1944

 

Details. Again.
What of 'The Bomb'. Again.
A weapon created on the US mainland, miles out of Nazi reach, that Germany were years from being capable of creating, and could hammer any state with no effective countermeasure into defeat, even with a trickled supply of inefficiently dropped weapons.

What of the bomb?
The arbiter of all such 'what Germany could have done differently' chat. She either had to have sued for a political settlement in 1941/2, or eventually faced the bomb. Repeatedly, until abject surrender.

 

Heisenberg made a crucial error and thought the method the allies used was not possible. The one chance the Germans had was ended when the train carrying the Norwegian heavy water was sunk in a deep lake in Norway while in transit