Mechanization Capabilities of the German Wehrmacht

Hello! I have painstakingly compiled a breakdown of production statistics for vehicles of the Wehrmacht between 1939-1945 from many sources. My goal was to get an accurate estimate of how many German soldiers would have been potentially mechanized during World War II. Obviously, not all vehicles were available at the same time to transport the Wehrmacht soldiers (could you imagine?), and horrific losses on all fronts must be taken into account. But, if one includes every vehicle ever produced and/or captured in the Wehrmacht, multiply the number of crew and passengers presumably in each vehicle at maximum capacity, a complete picture begins to emerge regarding just how many soldiers were theoretically capable of being mechanized at some point during the war.
In other words, if one were to take all the vehicles produced or captured during the war at the same time, and load them to maximum capacity with troops, you would get the “potential mechanization” figures. For anyone who will say “I saw this figure or that figure on so and so’s website! ”, don’t panic, please refer to my sources at the bottom of the page
I have included all books, websites, and people I drew some sort of statistic from when I compiled this list.
I hope at least some people find this informative and educational when put into a historical context. It is meant to give an idea of the mechanization capabilities of the German Wehrmacht, in order to better understand a specific aspect of World War II. We’ve all heard the rumors that only approx. 10% of the Wehrmacht was mechanized during World War II. Let us see….

--German Vehicles--

Half-tracks

SdKfz. 2 -8,345 built, crew: 3 = 25,035 men

SdKfz. 4 – 22,500 built, crew: 3 = 67,500 men

SdKfz. 6 – 3,660 built, crew: 15 = 54,900 men

SdKfz. 7 – 12,187 built, crew: 12 = 146,244 men

SdKfz. 8 – 4,000 built, crew : 13 = 52,000 men

SdKfz. 9 – 2,700 built, crew: 8 = 21,600 men

SdKfz. 10 – 14,000 built, crew: 8 = 112,000 men

SdKfz. 11 – 9,028 built, crew: 8 = 72,224 men

SdKfz. 250 – 6,628 built, crew: 6 = 39,768 men

SdKfz. 251 – 15,252 built, crew: 14 = 213,528 men

Schwerer Wehrmachtschlepper – 800 built, crew: 2 = 1,600 men

[*Grand Total: ~98,300 half-tracks, ~806,399 troops potentially mechanized]

*Models built in smaller or insignificant quantities not included

Trucks

[[German]]

Opel Blitz (3-ton) trucks: 82,356 built, passengers+crew: 12-18 = 988,272 – 1,482,408 men

Opel Blitz (1-ton) trucks: 21,437 built, passengers+crew: 12-16 = 257,244 – 342,992 men

Steyr (Austrian): 4,420 built, passengers+crew: ~12 = 53,040 men

Mercedes-Benz 320: 1,764 built, passengers+crew: 4 = 7,056 men

Mercedes-Benz L 1500 A: 4,900 built, passengers+crew: 9 = 44,100 men

[Total: 116,877 trucks, 1,349,712 – 1,929,596 men]

[[French]]

Citroën (French trucks produced for Germany):
Type 23 : 3,700 built – crew+passengers: ~14 = 51,800 men

Type 32U: 6,000 built – crew+passengers: ~12 = 72,000 men

Type 45: 15,300 built – crew+passengers: ~12 = 183,600 men

[Total Citroën: 25,000 trucks - 307,400 men]

Peugeot : ~28,000 built/captured, passengers+crew: 12 =336,000 men

Renault: ~28,000 built/captured, passengers+crew: 12 = 336,000 men

[*Total for Citroën, Renault, and Peugeot: 81,000 trucks, ~979,400 men potentially mechanized]


[**Grand Total (German+French): ~197,877 trucks; 2,329,112 – 2,908,996 soldiers potentially mechanized between 1940-45]

*Including other smaller French companies, a high estimate is about 90,000 trucks were commandeered by the Germans/produced for the German by the French.
**3-ton Ford Type V 3000S, 3-ton Ford Type G 917T, Horch 830 B, Krupp Protze (all models), and other models are left out due to lack of production information. These statistics could be upwards of 75,000-100,000 units (according the Military Production during World War II from Wikipedia, Germany had 345,914 “military trucks” at its disposal, therefore there is an almost 150,000 gap in truck numbers between this data and Wikipedia’s figure. One could presume lesser models, captured vehicles from other occupied nations and axis allies could contribute to the remaining unaccounted for 150,000 military trucks if Wikipedia is indeed correct in its estimate. (Military production during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Motorcycles

BMW r-12: ~38,000 built, crew: 3 = 114,000 men

BMW r-75 (with sidecar): 16,545 built, crew: 3 = 49,635 men

[*Total motorcycles: ~54,545 built, 163,635 soldiers potentially mechanized]

(*No production figures available for other models, but statistics are higher than listed)

Automobiles/Armored Cars

Kübelwagen – 50,435 built, crew+passengers: 4 = 201,740 men

SdKfz. 221/222/223 - 1,332 built, crew: 3 = 3,996 men

SdKfz. 234 - 478 built, crew: 4 = 1,912 men

[*Total = 52,245 units, 207,648 men]

*No production figures available for other models, but statistics are higher than listed

[*GRAND TOTAL: ~609,334 units built/captured; 3,506,524 - 4,086,678 Wehrmacht soldiers potentially mechanized.]

-That is between 19-22% of the Wehrmacht mechanized to some degree 1940-45, out of approximately 18,000,000 men who served in its ranks throughout World War II.

*Figure includes half-tracks, light/heavy armored cars, staff cars, motorcycles, and troop carriers/transports. Some data was unavailable, thus not included. Tank production NOT INCLUDED. All figures based on Third Reich production figures and specific estimates based on data available. NOT AN EXACT FIGURE.

Conclusion:
Although it is difficult to determine how much of the Wehrmacht was actually mechanized at any given time, especially considering the ratio of men to trucks per operation, what each vehicle was being used for, and the accelerated production from 1943-45, it is safe to assume that approximately one out of five or six soldiers had some form of transportation available to him (or 15-20%) at any given point after the fall of France until the end of the war. If one includes Panzer production and considers the implications of those numbers, the statistics would be considerably higher. Although it is widely known that Panzer-Grenadiers would ride on assault guns and tanks, they weren’t “official” troop transports, and thus are not included in the statistics.
The number of half-tracks, automobiles, lightly armored vehicles, and motorcycles produced during the Third Reich, and the troops they could carry at maximum capacity, give us a vivid and accurate representation of the mechanized capabilities of the German Wehrmacht. These transportation vehicles played a vital role in the development of “Blitzkrieg”, and indeed modern warfare, and the tactics that were then ahead of their time.

Sources:

1. Regenberg, Werner, “Captured Armored Cars and Vehicles in Wehrmacht Service in World War II" (Schiffer)
2. Fleischer, Wolfgang, "Captured Weapons and Equipment of the German Wehrmacht 1938-1945" (Schiffer)
3. David Lehmann – david.lehmann@infonie.fr
4. http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de
5. http://www.wwiivehicles.com
6. Military production during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
7. Milward, Alan S., "War, economy, and society, 1939-1945", University of California Press (1979).

 

Very impressive!

Interesting that French production comprises about 40% of documented trucks, I would never have guessed it was that high.

Of course it wouldn't be the forum if someone didn't quibble - presumably a fair number of vehicles would be used for duties other than moving troops - supplies, prime movers, etc. In some cases like the big halftracks they might do both, tow a gun while carrying its crew.

 

Quibble indeed! You're right though, a fair amount of trucks were distributed to maitanence and supply crews and used for the purposes you stated. Not all vehicles were neccessarily used for troop transport. Of course, we'll never know the exact number that were.

 

Some more quibbling(source:the German war economy:the motorization myth )
Motor Vehicle Productin(Germany,Austria and Western czechoslowakia):
1940:
automobiles:67,561
motorcycles:116,081
trucks:63,296
half-tracks and special vehicles:6,435
1941(in the same order)
35,165
74,167
62,400
8,821
1942:
27,895
53,083
81,279
10,733
1943
32,238
33,733
109,085
17,535
And,now the correction on the "mechanization capabilities of the WM):
Distribution of trucks,automobiles and motorcycles(not every truck was destined to the WM),rough figures
trucks
1940:
WM:38000
civilian economy:15,000
export:9000
1941(same order)
37000
15000
9000
1942
59000
16000
5000
1943
92000
13000
3000
Automobiles:
1940:28000 26000 13000
1941:27000 3000 5000
1942:24000 1000 2000
1943:30000 1000 1000
motorcycles
1940:54000 48000 13000
1941:42000 23000 8000
1942:33000 10000 10000
1943:28000 4000 2000
Vehicle standardization
Motorcycles :number of types :1939:150 1942 :26
Passengers cars :1939 :55 1942 :26
Trucks :1939:131 1942 :26
1944 production:
trucks :88000 (the US produced in 1944 595000 military trucks)
half-tracks:18000
automobiles:22000
motorcycles :30000

 

A lot of trucks were used for both purposes :first,transporting supplies to the front ,secondly,claimed by the front troops,and ,never returning to the depots .

 

Another factor is the absolute nightmare the "vehicle park" the German system would have produced for the Quartermasters keeping them running! They were a true mish-mash of makes, models, sizes, etc... If a French truck blows a head gasket, where do you find another? While the German manufacture of different types had been reduced, they still counted on other nations vehicles to fill out their auto-park.

 

I think the biggest problem, (followed closely by Clint's) would be not enough fuel to employ all these vehicles. Secondly, if all these vehicles could be employed you'd probably be better off using a fair proportion of them to upgrade your logistics network. Trucks generally trump horses and wagons.

 

There also was the problem of transporting these vehicles (by train) to the front .

 

At least the trains ran on coal. I found out a really weird thing while looking into the vehicles and fuel production of the German nation during WW2. The farmers had to convert to tractors during the war since the military had "requisitioned" all of the horses and mules they had used pre-war for their farming.

 

Far from being my area, but that took some work by original poster...Whether its correct or not. A good place to start a debate by those who know. Good one.

 

I dunno if it's relevant, but serviceability is a dramatic issue I know with aircraft. I did a research project trying to pin down the fighter combat around Stalingrad (not an easy task, for some of it I had to infer field deployments by combat losses/awards), anyway I did a similar, more cursory project with the air battles around Kursk and found some interesting things. For example for weeks at a time, at the height of fighter operations at Stalingrad (under Wilcke) as few as 15 fighters were actually going up on sorties on a given day and facing small pockets of bunched soviet fighters, but overall maintaining air superiority on those few alone, just the individual skill of about a dozen experten flying good planes basically, at least for about a 100km radius of the city.

Very different picture it paints to the fact some 60 or so fighters were actually stationed there. Most OOB for Luftwaffe published around these days tends to list serviceable aircraft alongside those stationed, and anything from 15-85% of those stationed is by default, with around 50% serviceability commonplace on the eastern front.

Now I've also read some accounts regarding motorised serviceability, particularly during the rasptuta (the mud season), which is worst south of Moscow all the way to the Don valley (in some places as impassable as the pripet marshes at these months).
Apparently the one reason the Cougar or Panther was it? that really cool later German armoured car with the tank gun, it was really popular. That and StuGs were apparently the only things still mobile at some points, whilst T-34s were operational according to one field diary.

That 8 wheeled heavy armoured car, apparently they bogged. Panzers of every kind bogged or shed their tracks. Hanomags were particularly reliable but as valuable as gold, demand was way too high for them. Same with the StuGs, which were lighter and more mobile than panzers but had good guns. They started putting tracks on trucks at the factory to supplement Hanomags because demand for serviceable mobility in rough field conditions was so high.

That just doesn't sound like an army that can motorise over a million riflemen. Hell the Russians couldn't even achieve that until the 70s.

There are photos of the Barbarossa invasion taken by infantrymen posted over at the Axis History Forums. They show, at a rough estimate about 70% of the heer invasion force using 1916 era cannon on wood wheels, and their equipment pack and horse drawn. The panzers and motorised infantry were way up the front, just the spearhead, a very small proportion of the military.
The bulk of the German army invaded Russia equipped exactly like the Kaisers troops. That would be why when the blitz on Moscow failed it immediately turned into a trench war whenever battlelines were static. The east front got bogged down either in trench warfare or urban warfare for most engagements, a situation which favoured soviet artillery/shock-troop dual prong strategy.

Had the entire invasion force been motorised, reliably, Moscow was a no brainer. Hitler would've got it 12 weeks sure, why not.

 

Mechanisation's a funny old subject though.
Theoretically, the British Army of the 1939/40 BEF were one of the most mechanised forces in the world - still got hammered though (funnily enough, in the process leaving a pretty substantial mound of newish light vehicles for Germany to absorb...).

Germany made a brave effort on wider mechanisation in areas beyond the Panzerwaffe, and certainly talked it up, but the infrastructure for lighter vehicles as established prewar simply wasn't substantial enough. Despite much bigging up of Autobahns & People's cars the state was in truth somewhat behind much of the rest of Europe in local car/lorry production, and the factories that were available didn't lend themselves too easily to the modernised rapid production necessary to keep up with replacing wear & tear & combat losses. (There's shots out there of production facilities for eg.halftracks, that look more like blacksmith's workshops than factories - they are a bit harder to find than gleaming Tank factories though, as understandably Signal & Goebbels wouldn't exactly be shining a light into these murkier corners.)

Nice summation from Friedli's recent "Repairing the Panzers":

All of the above also raises a large problem for the Wehrmacht of 'consistency' - it's interesting to look at the overall figures for the entire war, of course it is, but they can't tell the full story of what was actually possible to be produced when, and how a regular supply could be established for the front lines in the face of very mixed production facilities. Military planning in such a large war is not assisted by supplying machinery in dribs & drabs, which for many of the vehicles stated above was the only realistic situation after initial larger orders were delivered.
Much of which may explain why the German Army of 1939-45 was still largely dependent on that old favourite - the horse.

(Horse-drawn thread from WW2T if anyone's interested, some nice shots & links on the equine situation: German Horse Drawn Transport. - Page 2 - World War 2 Talk )

~A

 

That's an interesting approach to working out how much motor transport the Germans could have had to hand during the war.

Adding to the qualifiers already listed, I'd echo the point that for the most part MT was used to move supplies and equipment, not riflemen. The US experimented with Motorized Divs, the idea being one such formation would combine with two Armored Divs to create an Armored Corps. The Motorized Div was intended to make up for the lack of infantrymen in the Armd Div, and to keep pace was equipped with enough 2.5-ton trucks to lift all its personnel. Problem was, it took about as much shipping space as an Armd Div, generated a huge logistical requirement of its own to keep the concentration of vehicles running, and wasn't really much different from a standard Inf Div in terms of combat power. When the Armd Corps principle was abandoned, the Motorized Divs were surplus to requirements and no theatre commander wanted the logistical headaches that came with them, so they reverted to standard Inf Div structure.

The preferred way to motorise units was a pool of Corps/Army level transport that could be allocated to Inf Divs as and when required, and only when required. Any US Inf Div could be fully 'motorised' via the attachment of Quartermaster Truck Companies to lift those units without sufficient organic vehicles. British Inf Divs always included a large amount of MT, but again these were employed in roles other than direct troop transport. If a British Inf Div was to be made fully mobile, then it too needed non-Div assets from Corps or Army Troops, primarily to lift the Rifle Coys of the Inf Bns.

The key difference between Br/US and German use of transport is that the Germans made a deliberate decision to concentrate their motorisation efforts on a fraction of their Divs. The vast majority of German formations were Inf Divs, and these consistently had the minimum of motor vehicles allocated. As a quick comparison of just the Div picture, and then limited to Europe 1944-45, transport requirements were -

British Inf Div of approx 18,500 men; over 1000 motorcycles, over 2600 cars, trucks and lorries and over 650 carriers, scout and armd cars

US Inf Div of approx 14,500 men; just under 2000 trucks (1/4-ton & 3/4-ton light trucks and 2.5-ton heavy trucks), plus a handful of armd cars and halftracks

German Type 44 Inf Div of approx 12,500 men; 160 motorcycles, just over 600 cars, trucks and lorries, and approx 4700 horses

Just to note that none of these three formations types had enough vehicles to lift all their personnel without being reinforced by Corps/Army assets. Both British and US forces had these additional transport units available, and they were assigned as required. The Germans had non-Div transport units, but to the best of my knowledge they were never allocated to 'ordinary' Inf Divs in the Allied way. They opted instead to maintain a body of permanently motorised Divs to be used for mobile operations. Once they did that, the Germans effectively gave up on the idea of large scale motorisation throughout the army, and limited it to particular sections. That, I'd suggest, is where the 10% motorisation level mentioned in the OP largely comes from.

 

As I mentioned some times ago,Germany (Austria included) had LESS cars than Britain,and than France :
1938:Germany:1.620.000
:Britain:2.319.000
:France:2.192.000
I also can add that 70 % of the world number of cars was in the US:29.700.000 on 42.830.000
Cars were something exceptional on the continent .

 

OP, how many of that French truck total were actually trucks taken on charge by the Wehrmacht after the Armistice?

Also (and unfortunately) you can't factor in for bad and unreliable designs; a lot of the French trucks used in Barbarossa weren't up to the rigours of the eastern front, and suffered terrible attirition due to suspension damage and also electical/ignition component failure. I can't remember the source now, but I once read that the ever-dwindling stock of French trucks in 1941 ended up being used shifting more and more spares for other French trucks to the front!

Regrding the spares/QM issue - here the Germans would have been well-off for a time using French items....for the French quartermaster system would have had shelf spares and spares kits in stock for some time after the Armistice.

After they were used up however - the problem would have been magnified as French factories moved away from producing French items and onto producing German designs and sub-assemblies; how do they then go about producing more spares for older domestic designs???

 

Well, is it safe to say that nearly all of the French trucks were acquired after the armistice. It surprised me to learn that a number of French factories continued to be allowed to turn out French designs as late as 1942. However, as the war dragged on, most were converted to producing vehicles of the German caste.

Some really good points being made here. I did mention above that horrendous losses (including battlefield losses and mechanical breakdowns) needed to be taken into consideration. These losses were significant, but difficult to estimate of course.

The logistical problems of supplying all German vehicles with fuel and using a large portion of available transports for the Wehrmacht's vast supply lines in the Soviet Union were numerous. Also, it is extremely difficult to determine the number of trucks, halftracks, etc., available at any given time, and at any given place at the front. The organizational structure of a standard German divisions should give you a rough idea though. Which vehicles were servicable or not is another beast entirely, especially considering the effects of rasptuta.

The United States certainly had many more transports available, and spread the "wealth" around to its allies, particularly the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for the Germans, the wide variety of captured vehicles at their disposal and the lack of spare parts for them was a serious problem. Add that to horrific losses and ever-growing number of trucks available for its enemies, and you see an increasing need to rely on horse power and a loss of general mechanization capabilities.

 

Thanks Von Poop, salutes from the site avatars are quite an honour. That Stalingrad project was actually for a little fictionalisation piece I was doing, I like to write it like you're playing a flight sim, so my writing style involves research, research, research then a little bit of writing, rinse/repeat. Reason I mention is because in that story I actually put in this Demag (smaller hanomag scout/cmd used), so of course I had to research how the Luftwaffe might've come across one and what its history was likely to be like. So I wound up with this Demag that started off in a Panzergruppe scout abteilung as a command vehicle, then got passed around to artillery, infantry, logistics and finally got requisitioned by a Luftwaffe officer to play a prank with, it wound up at an airfield and became the GP ute at Pitomnik. All the while it was being refit, stripped, radio installed, stripped, refit, guns put in, etc. The thing had a dozen lifetimes and was almost clapped out by the time pilots used to go rally driving around Gumrak Army FHQ to avoid Soviet snipers.

I tried to get across what I'd found, that life in general was like living on an old farm back then.

 

OP, I meant....how many were taken on charge immediately after the Armistice when the French Army returned its weapons and transport to depot to be turned over to the Germans...as opposed to being manufactured over the next two years for the Germans

 

Does anyone know how many halftracks a panzer division was supposed to have? Or say a panzergrenadier battalion? I know none except a few elite divisions actually had their TO&E.

 

C., IIRC the numbers for a 1940 divsion (can't be that different from early 1941...) are given in diagrammatic form in Deighton's Blitzkrieg of all places, but I can't put my hand on my copy