decisive battle debate

Amazing, just amazing. Horses moved everything. So obviously, there was no need for trucks.

I bought my car in 2002. The nearest garage is 12 km away. Your point is invalidated.

 

Are you sure it was easier to replace a truck or what it the lack of an effective production base, for every truck you replace you need at least one wagon of two to four horses each, . When I said stop and rest, a truck does not require a rest break, of course the driver does, but as pointed out two drivers can switch. I can easily drive for ten hours with a total of a hour or so break, for a horse once its made its journey its done. Its not just trucks that break down, horses can get injured, wagons break so those factors cancel each other out. The reality is a horse is not an effective means of moving men and material long distances.
Why do you think rail and barge were the primary means of long distance transport

 

1)Obviously,you are desperate and are searching for strawmen


2)Which was something before WWII,people could not afford .

 

1) 2 drivers does not mean that the truck could advance farther,the radious of action of a truck is first limited by wear and tear and by the reserve of fuel ; if the fuel is sufficient for 10 hours,2 drivers does not mean that the truck can go 11 hours


2)Before the war,long distance transport of humans was exceptional:while in the US farmers from Oklahoma were going to California, Bavarians were not going to Berlin ,in Flanders,for generations,a lot of Flemish workers were going to the south to work in the industry,using the railways: they were to poor to buy a car/truck,others,even more poor,were going to the region of Reims in France to work in the French farms,ON FOOT .
In an other post,the Autobahnen were mentioned : they first were build by Weimar and wre not used before/during the war : they would be used later,when every one would have a car .

For the long distance transport of goods,railways and barges were used because they were more economical : a train could transport 400 tons(a barge even more) and a truck : 1/2 tons .If I am not wrong,before the war,even in the US,railways were dominating .

Most people in Germany could not afford a truck/ car/did not need one ,because: a truck was not economical :mostly,a truck would be used one /two times a week on very short distences : 10 km,with a total km number of 1000 a year:a truck would be economical only if he would be used every day for long distances,and this did not happen,because a small German factory in Munich was not doing business with a small factory in Hamburg and what the factory in Munich needed was arriving by railway (the railway stopped in almost all small villages )by carriage or barrow.

3) But this is not the most imported thing,because the content of the discussion is not if compared to a horse and carriage,a truck was "better",but,if to use more sophisticated instruments would benefit the Germans,and,IMHO,the answer is negative .The objections to my statement are only proving the fascination (mainly in the US) for technological progress and the belief that quality will dominate quantity .In Iraq and Afghanistan,the US used very sophistical weapons (which costed a lot of money) while the opponents used primitive cheap weapons,and,we have seen that the results were not very brilliant .

Saying that a truck could transport more goods faster,does not prove that the use of more trucks would be a good thing for the Germans :was it needed that trucks would transport more goods faster ?

It has been claimed that Germany used a lot of weapons of WWI and that these were inferior .Why would these weapons be inferior ?

It is the same for the horses : in the OTL,using a combination of horses and trucks,the Ostheer received a certain amount of goods in the summer of 1941 and the Ostheer was victorious ?If in the ATL,using more trucks and less horses,the Osther received more goods (if they were available),would the Ostheer be more victorious ?Would the Germans then be in Moscow on 1 september ?

 

I don't need to search for straw men. You've stated, there was no need for trucks, as everything not moved by rail/boat was moved by horse. Obviously, you have great difficulty in communicating in a coherent manner, as you are unable to either remember or interpret what you yourself have posted. Whether or not it is actually what you meant to say, no one else but you can confirm or deny.

It's like saying there was no need for penicillin, because doctors at the time were prescribing and people were using other medicines.

Face it. Motor transport was a revolution for mankind. It was desperately needed. It wasn't always affordable. But it was needed. Horses were major problems in cities. Ease and speed of transportation, the reduction of care and maintenance times, pollution reduction, all made the motor vehicle necessary.

 

I agree fully. One fundamental difference being, that the motor vehicle companies in the states started targeting the farmers trying to sell their trucks to them already in 1919. They had tours around the countryside, and lent trucks to farmers for free, so they could see first hand, just how useful a truck would be.

Most people are conservative, so it is easy to see just how persuasive this strategy would be.

But if a farmer in Iowa can see his need, maybe he is just much more intelligent than European farmers. Apparently all the intelligent ones got up and left for the US while the getting was good.

 

LJAd, You keep talking about "No need". Perhaps it means something entirely different to you than the rest of the world. But let us have a quick look at recent European history, for those Europeans that seem to be entirely and remarkably unaware of their own history.

"Van der Vlist was founded in 1930 in Hoogblokland as a road haulage company, building materials, livestock and straw."

"Alongside the longstanding haulage tradition of our company, which was established by Paul Hölzer in 1930, we are also looking to new routes, now and for the future. Our IT and communication technology is up to the minute - we work, for example, with Atlas, the software used by the German Customs & Excise authorities."

"By 1930 the tendency was for traders to rely increasingly on contractors for the carriage of their goods. Many traders who employed haulage contractors to take care of their transport insisted that their vehicles were painted to their own specification. By contrast, big retail firms tended to own the vehicles they used, a good example of which was a well-known pharmaceutical retailer which distributed products from bulk stores to its 300 shops by road, using a fleet of 63 lorries and 18 battery-powered electric vehicles."

"In 1930, Hermann Büteführ, grandfather of current Managing Directors Klaus and Ulrich Büteführ, started his eponymous company in Duisburg in North Rhine-Westphalia with just one flatbed truck. He began by transporting all types of materials locally and long distance."



1930 Thomas Dachser founds a haulage company in Kempten as a one-man operation. Amid the greatest economic crisis Dachser began in 1930 to transport the popular cheeses of the Allgäu to the Rhineland. In 1934 the first branch office was already opened in Memmingen, in 1938 the opening of a branch in Neuss in the Rhineland took place. Dachser is at the forefront of transport companies in the Allgäu.

"Haulage companies of the period tended to expect a longer life span for their vehicles than would be the case today - Lorries of ten or fifteen years of age were still common in the 1930s, and as the depression depeened this longevity was extended further. Firms with in-house maintenance facilities would routinely rebuild completely after a lkong initial period of service; a new engine and gearbox, a re-spray, new pneumatic tyres, and the old girl would start trundling down the road for another ten years or more. The luxury of such maintenance facilities was enjoyed mainly by the big operators, while the small contractor with one or two lorries kept his vehicles on the road as best he could. A local garage or blacksmith would have been employed as finances allowed, but for the most part the owner of the firm and his driverscarried out most maintenance tasks in yard, in the street, or on the open road. The transport worker of the day displayed resourcefulness quite out of the ordinary and it was common for the driver to replace a wheel bearing, a cylinder head gasket, or even a clutch lining with whatever rudimentary tools he had to hand. Despite the prevailing economic conditions, these were considered to be ultra modern times on the road; garages and roadside facilities were growing in number and thriving, providing the necessary infrastructure to serve the ever-increasing commercial traffic.""

The need was so little, people were apparently willing to throw their entire fortunes away in order to gamble on the lack of need.

The lack of garages was so acute, and the drivers so stupid, it was impossible to own one, even if you had the money to buy one, because the trucks fell apart and distintegrated. Of course, there was so few goods to transport, that if you actually owned one, you wouldn't get to use it all.

That will be why many, many of the large historic haulage firms in Europe today started at this period of time.

Give me a break. "No need" indeed.

 

"Though there remained much horse-drawn traffic in Germany in the 1930s, the horse could not compete with the motor vehicle, even for short-haul traffic."

"...the road-haulage industry developed rapidly during the 1930s. In 1935 the Reichskraftwagenbetriebsverband was formed and by 1937 could count almost 35,000 firms."

- R.J. Overy "War and Economy in the Third Reich"

------

"In 1923, when French troops occupied the Ruhr area and confiscated the transport capacity of the railroad, the resulting gaps in freight traffic could be filled the truck, and its usefulness could be clearly demonstrated. Until 1930, Allied forces occupied the left bank of the Prussian province Rhineland and cut the capacity of the railway. Thus, truck transport of cargo substituted railway transport and showed its advantages."

"As a result of the restrictive transport policy, it is not surprising that the German economy experienced severe transport bottlenecks in the years 1937 and 1938,..."
(the Transportation administration was not licensing enough haulers!!!!)

"So the (German) regulation made truck transport far more expensive than under conditions of competition leading to a loss in gross national product"

"Besides the displacement of horse-drawn vehicles, the literature focuses on the profitability of truck traffic. The costs and range of a truck were compared to the costs of keeping a horse, as well as to the costs of maintaining vehicles. Research on this topic in the corporate archive of DaimlerChrysler revealed that already before 1914, these arguments were supported in the advertising brochures of the two truck producers, the Daimler factory and the Benz factory."

"It is striking that despite bad road conditions and many raods leading through towns, truck traffic on lines from Berlin up to a radius of 400 kilometres was faster than, or as fast as, the railroad."

- Richard Vahrenkamp in "The Logistics Revolution: The rise of logistics in the Mass Consumption Society".


A major part of the Autobahn effort, was not the Autobahns themselves, but the 17,000 km of road works that vastly improved the previously existing network of roads.

 

"Using the example of the railway network of Cologne, it can be shown how the freight yards Cologne-Kalk, Colonge-Gereon, Cologne-Eifeltor, Cologne-North, and Cologne-Mülheim have been expanded and rebuilt constantly from 1890 to 1930, without being able to overcome the shortage effectively. The traffic volume exceeded the available capacities. The railway reached its limit for the supply of the metropolises. Due to the concentration effect, the train station Cologne North, which accumulated every day 10,000 freight wagons for destinations right of the Rhine River, had to be closed various times for incoming traffic until the accumulated freight wagons had left. The overloading and congestion of the freight yards offered a strong incentive for the forwarder to substitute the railway transport with a direct truck transport between forwarder and receiver. Consequently the decentralization of the truck traffic also led to decentralized handling in decentralized freight terminals."

-Richard VAhrenkamp, again.

 

You said : "horses moved everything" ,something I did not say. You said " there was no need for trucks" ,something I did not say : I said that where I was living,trucks were very rare.

1939 : Germany : 1.5 million passenger cars and 450000 trucks for 80 million inhabitants.

1940 : US : 5 million trucks and 27.5 million passenger cars for 130 million inhabitants

Reason for the difference :because there was no need in Germany for more passenger cars and trucks .

1940: sales of trucks : 0.75 million; sales of passenger cars : 3.7 million .

Why were the 130 million inhabitants of the US buying in one year more trucks and passenger cars than existed in Germany ? Because there was a need for it .

 

Which is of topic,because reality was that in 1939,the railways were still dominating ,besides the railway problems in Cologne do not prove that the replacement of horses in 1941 on the eastern front by trucks would have given better results for the Germans .

 

Have you read anything anyone has posted in this thread? Including yourself? Because you sure as hell haven't understood much.

It's there. In black & white. The Need is expressed. Clearly. For all to read. Its just that you refuse to admit that you are wrong (again), as you always do.

 

No, it is not off topic because, it shows there was .... (wait for it)




































































A need in Germany for more trucks already in 1930.

 

The railways were dominating, for which reason? The same reason that the German transportation authority tried to restrict licensing to Haulers in 1937 & 1938. The railways were doing everything in their power to restrict and inhibit a perceived threat to their business. As it was they achieved near-monopoly on long haul services, even though they failed to deliver those effectively either.



http://www.deutschebahn.com/en/group/history/topics/schenker_geschichte/2200732/schenker_reichsbahn_part1.html



The "Schenker Contract"

Schenker and the Deutsche Reichsbahn - Part 1

During the 1920s, forwarders and their motor vehicles started to compete seriously with the railways. Many technical innovations had made trucks more reliable, faster and cheaper.
A conflict emerged between the railways and road haulers, both seeing themselves disadvantaged by legislation and regulations. During the world economic crisis of 1929, the situation deteriorated. Julius Dorpmüller, Director General of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, saw the future of the railway in serious jeopardy and demanded assistance from the legislators.
"All commercial contracts for the carriage of goods with motor vehicles over distances exceeding 50 km had to be approved by the Imperial Transport Ministry, with uniform carriage prices standardized throughout the country. This meant that the haulers could not underbid the railway tariffs."

 

So you re saying that horses and wagons have no wear and tear?? or that Horses don't need to eat and rest. I said that wear and tear factors and feeding/ fueling factors are equal, the advantage of trucks is that they can carry more and go farther with out stopping.

 

Need and the ability to do so.

Probably because the American middle class had not been ground into paste in the Great War. They also did not have all their savings rendered worthless by hyper-inflation in '21-'24.

Which was the reality for the German middle class.

Their inability to purchase was never about a lack of need. The Germans had an enormous need for motorised transport, throughout the interbellum. Even during the great depression. Had more motorised transportation been available, and the effective use of which not been countered and thwarted by the Railways legal stooges at every step, then the size and speed of the German economic recovery could've been greater still, than it was.

 

"Could" : which means :i have no proof for what I am saying .

FACTS are

1)that before WWII railway was dominating and the freight transport sector and the transport of persons : in 1937 the trucks had 6 % of the long distance freight transport : 6 %.

2)that there is no proof that the use of more trucks during Barbarossa would have benefited the Germans

not in the supply sector :there is no proof that more trucks = the transport of more supplies and that the transport of more supplies would benefit the Germans

not for the fighting forces :there is no proof that more trucks = a faster advance ,because the advance of the motorized/armoured units was depending on the speed of the advance of the non motorizaed units.

 

The reason is irrelevant,the fact is that the railways dominated,and they dominated during the war and for the axis and for the allies,and they dominated after the war for more than a generation.

 

This is not relevant ,because I replied to a claim that with 2 drivers,the capacity of a truck was doubling,which is not the case .If the truck had a breakdown,the number of drivers would not help .

Besides,the discussion is not about if a truck had a better capacity than a horse,but if the use of more trucks would benefit the Germans,and,as long as there has been no proof for this claim,the answer must be that more trucks would not benefit the Germans .

The economy of Europe was founded on the railways,trucks were something for the far future.