Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "TIKhistory"
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@gr-s2143 You're going to have to read more widely.
Up until Tehran, the British ALWAYS got their way -- strategically -- vis a vis the Americans. They saw themselves as the Senior Partner and MUCH more savvy than the Colonial Upstarts. When Americans spelled out their production and mobilization schedules -- from Winnie on down -- they DID NOT BELIEVE such fictions. In the event, the Americans exceeded every one of the dis-regarded schedules. The reality of this was flatly attested to by Winnie, himself, in Missouri after the war. This admission was behind closed doors and not set to print for many years. I don't think his admission has ever been circulated in the UK. It's just too embarrassing.
In my post I omitted the reality that the 49th UK division was broken up to feed other UK infantry divisions. Winnie was. actually refusing to ship more blood over from the home islands. The primary reason so many of British 1st Airborne were guardsmen was that Winnie flatly refused to commit HRM's Imperial Guard. He was, however, more than willing to commit the IRISH GUARDS. You might note that they were at the head of XXX Corps during Garden.
After years of warfare, Britain simply had reached the end of its manpower. Winnie, unlike Adolf, was not willing to commit teen aged boys to the fight. By Overlord's success, Winnie knew that the war was going to terminate with total victory. FDR insisted on Unconditional Surrender all the way back at Casablanca. (A stunned Winnie dang near swallowed his cigar. Check the film footage.) [It was a forced 'choice' as there was no way in he!! that Adolf could be allowed to survive his war on humanity. No way that the Nazi Party could exist any longer in any form.]
Britain and Canada had CRITICAL roles in WWII -- but supplying manpower wasn't one of them.
Canada's Dieppe blood paved the way for Uranus and the death of Germany's 6th Army. Somehow decades have passed and Canadians don't connect Dieppe with Uranus.
Here's the connection. Zeitzler was the MG who defeated the Dieppe raid. Adolf boosted this two-star general up to run OKH -- and the Eastern Front -- at a single stroke. He canned Halder. Once in his new seat, he was screaming about Army Group B, ie 6th Army. He begged for reinforcements -- from where ? His old command, is where. That's right he wanted to bring the boys from the Channel into the northern wing of Army Group B. (The boys he knew best, of course. He was buddies with all of the commanders of same. Duh.) Adolf denied Kurt. Instead, Dieppe convinced him that the Channel needed MORE troops -- not Army Group B. So, during all of the weeks leading up to Uranus, Army Group B was starved of reinforcements -- they went to Kurt's old command -- staring at the sea, instead. Zeitzler wanted those troops to replace the Hungarians, Italians on 6th Army's left wing. It was THAT obvious to him, and everybody but Adolf, that the Soviets could just open the door and walk though. And they did so.
It was the BRITISH that informed STAVKA that they just HAD to grab their own Enigma machine ASAP if they wanted to stop Hitler. This they did so -- one was stationed -- against Hitler's explicit order -- with the Hungarian army up north. During a total-white-out the NKVD Special Forces captured that machine -- WITH all of its paperwork AND its operators!!!! This reality has never been admitted to by the USSR/Russia even to this day. You KNOW that they did so because they immediately started to use it to spoof Adolf Hitler's command instructions straight away. Even while he was on his train returning to HQ -- and totally out of communications -- STAVKA broadcast Fuhrer directives to 6th Army -- the most important being that the 29th Motorized Division was to stop its southernly counter-attack AT ONCE because the Soviets had broken across the Volga even further south and that the 29th needed to be committed further and down and away to be stopped. This was pure BS, of course. The 29th was actually a totally fresh, OVER STRENGTH motorized division, that had been held in reserve all during the previous months awaiting just this development. In its early going, it was just cutting the Soviets to shreds. They had not yet gotten their heavy weapons across the Volga, Those karst ridges were a bit$#@.
Manstein DID dope all of the above out PDQ. He counter-spoofed STAVKA to pull of his Winter Miracle.
Brits and Canadians almost always post errantly about their real contribution to the war. They keep looking over their shoulders at the Americans -- and benchmark against them. That's just stupid. The production miracle of the Americans is nothing that any nation can benchmark without looking very, very badly. Ditto for the US Army.
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@TheLoyalOfficer He kept delaying the battle for weeks. Finally Winnie put his foot down. As I said, Monty was looking at Churchill's life-long foul record of strategic decision. Narvik and Gallipoli were in his ears. Further, he had a HUGE morale problem with the SA troops, Aussie troops, et al. During the climax of the battle, Monty had to leave his HQ to convince the South African general commanding (IIRC Smitts) to press on. (!!!) He had to reveal ULTRA to him. (!!!!) Yet, he was forbidden to do so. THAT'S why Monty went to see him -- PRIVATELY. Monty was able to show Smitts that Rommel was -- literally -- out of gas, tanks, 88s, everything. Smitts only believed Bletchley Park. This final surge broke Rommel. THAT'S how close el Alamein was. Monty saw it coming a mile away. He was a first class staff officer.
The massive loses taken by 8th Army are glossed over by official records -- as they were hugely in terms of equipment. But for the boys at the front, el Alamein was a first class bitch. Because of the constrained terrain, even when chased, Rommel was able to screen his retreat with a tiny guard of 88s. The moment 8th Army left the road, it bogged down. The highway was SO much faster. And Rommel kept pulling back. Torch had worked -- and Torch was a British idea. ( Alan Brooke -- not Churchill. Brooke was Monty's best buddy and patron, of course.)
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@James
In point of fact, the Germans used barges -- both in the Baltic and Black Seas.
These were pre-existing assets, and had such shallow drafts that they were designed for the Rhine and Danube -- both were linked by canal, BTW.
A single barge of this type is equal to ~700 tons in capacity. So one barge per day could shift enough to support a corps. They aren't the fastest, but they do carry a lot. France, Germany and the low countries have large fleets of these barges -- even now -- typically family owned -- with the owners living on them, too.
The larger issue would be that such barges are ALREADY committed to the internal economies of said nations.
Germany did use barges, but only in tiny amounts, yes, all the way to Rostov-on-Don.
Logistically, the Germans never had their head screwed on right.
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@timobrienwells
Lastly, manganese IS a very important element, metal, BUT, is not anywhere near as critical as nickel.
I've never heard of any nation panicking over manganese -- even though it's essential in dry cell batteries and much else -- but virtually every modern power is obsessed with nickel.
There are just so few workable deposits, and even those are a bitch. It's a tough critter.
Russia, Canada, New Caledonia (France), were the big players back in WWII.
Speer was freaked out when the jet engine demanded so much nickel.
BTW, they STILL DO.
In the USA, nickel demand went through the roof during WWII.
It was the critical item in stainless steel -- THE limiting element in the production of PENICILLIN. Yup. Most nickel went for this drug.
The second priority: the diffusion plant at Oak Ridge. It was built entirely around nickel 'sponge' filters.
This technology is passe, but still can't be discussed. So we'll stop here.
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If he was to invade in 41, Adolf should've stayed out of Ukraine. The grain there would've automatically been harvested and stored in Kharkhov. Stalin built a MASSIVE food storage complex there, right on the Russian-Ukraine border. From Kharkhov up to Moscow Stalin built the ONLY double-tracked and ballasted rail line in the whole nation.
So the obvious play is to never send 1st Panzer Army into Ukraine, just block the Red 5th Army with the German 6th Army -- and send the 1st PA up with the 4th PA to Leningrad.
Why? ALL of Russia's locomotive production came from a super factory in that city. It took the USA to replace the lost production ~ 2,000 full sized locos by war's end. How can Stalin survive without trains ? He can't.
Everyone on the planet knew the factory was there, because it was imported, and Leningrad is where the ENTIRE Russian rail net originated. It went straight to Moscow and then branched out.
The route to Leningrad was greased: the Baltic nations hated the Reds. During the actual campaign, all of the locals would rat out the Red Army, and solve every 'map problem' for the lost and corn fused Germans. That's why the leap to Leningrad was so FAST.
Further, the Baltic sea solved German logistical nightmares. They did a chitty job of it, but they actually did use barges to ship everything up the Baltic coast -- the barges worked fine even without reaching port. There were tons of calm small bays that proved suitable.
Once Leningrad caves, both panzer armies could be fed from that port -- and then race south for the rest of the campaign.
No attempt at bombing Moscow, or Leningrad should've been attempted. Why destroy what you'll soon own? The Bismark and Tirpiz should've been buddied to take out the Russian BBs at Leningrad. They would've totally out classed anything there. They were totally over matched against the British. Forget the propaganda, they were dead meat in front of the Royal Navy.
All four panzer armies should've slammed into Moscow. Unlike Napoleon's day, CRITICAL war industries vital to the Red Army were right there. One stands out: the Germans actually destroyed Stalin's ONLY RADIO TUBE FACTORY. It was so small that the Germans didn't realize what they'd done. This fiasco was one of the deepest secrets of the USSR. They conned FDR in to prioritizing Lendlease raido tubes. Until these arrived the Red Army actually pull radio sets out of front line tanks -- to save what they had for command sets. (!) This fiasco explains why the Red tanks were so pathetic during 1942. It took that long for this matter to be corrected. (They basically had to redesign their radios to use American tubes. They were too embarrassed to take complete radio sets.)
As you might grasp, the same radio scavenging hunt occurred in the Red Air Force.
So, Moscow WAS important... think tank optics... etc.
The Red Army in Ukraine is parallyzed. It HAS to hold down the furious locals and collect the harvest. Attacking Moscow forces Stalin to force feed all of his best units straight into the maw of the panzer force... that's four armies side by side.
Then it's off to Kharkhov to pick up food rations, repairing the rail net ASAP -- like a maniac. ( The American Army did so at every occasion. They rebuilt the rail net in Northwest Africa for 7th Army... filmed it even. )
Then it's off to the oil fields racing away from the winter cold... leaving the infantry armies well behind.
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TIK -- the US Army did NOT run out of fuel on the way to the West Wall. That's a BRITISH trope. We gave up our transport to the British to make Monty happy. My own father lost his truck to them at that time. His entire truck regiment was 'un-trucked' at a stroke. With no trucks, the US Army's gasoline just built up back at its tank farm in Normandy. PLUTO ended up being TOO LATE to perform its duty. When the Break Out occurred, PLUTO was still delivering a trickle. Yeah, PLUTO was a screw-up. The Mulberries ended up being a fiasco, too. The American one was destroyed by the storm because the Americans constructed their's faster than its designers -- the British. The British Mulberry was not destroyed -- because it had not been completed. The terminus was, naturally, where the storm had its maximum impact -- and it was the terminus of the British Mulberry that was not built.
BTW, my father rode the rails to the port. The D-Day move was smooth as silk. The British civilians passed stood speechless witnessing the parade of the US Army going into battle. This transit occurred in the week prior to 6-5-44. When at sea, the convoy sailed in circles, as the landing was delayed 24-hours.
When ashore, the US Army ended up discovering, belatedly, the awesome niftiness of the DUKW. It entirely replaced Mulberry and PLUTO. The sands off Omaha were, and remain, so flat that one could easily get away with bottoming Liberty ships -- even Victory ships -- twice a day -- with each swing of the tide. When the sea was all the way out, mere GMC trucks sufficed to off-load the ships. When things got wet, the DUKWs stepped up. This scheme was so efficient that in no time flat, the British and Canadians started to get fully HALF of all their stuff across the American beach-head. This reality was suppressed for years and years. Try and find a photo of it. I've never seen even one. Every official photo omits the stream of British lorries coming down Highway 13 from Omaha.
Omaha was used because it was nature's instant port, a trait that every planner, British or American totally missed.
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Fortunately it's not that far. All that the panzers have to do is beat Soviet infantry marching across the snow on foot.
1) The lead elements had no heavy weapons until days passed.
2) The pincers didn't close up until THREE days passed. You might run some calculations as to how much faster a Mark III tank is versus a bunch of ground pounders.
3) The supply echelon would chase down the westward panzers, there can be no doubt about that.
4) The T34s coming down from the north have to cover twice as much ground -- and are racing AWAY from their supply echelon.
5) During this race, the panzer can pretty much stay right on their own supply trails// roads if you want to call them that.
6) The departure of the panzers would take with them as many soldiers as could reasonably ride on top -- just for the shear joy of escaping the pocket. Expect many volunteers.
7) No small number of the panzers would be half-tracks -- which are absolute death for light infantry. They're more deadly than Mark III panzers. They pack more machine guns and have better visibility. They also don't do so bad with fuel consumption.
8) In the actual campaign, Paulus sent the panzer regiments up to fight -- in a swirl -- with T34s -- northward. BIG mistake. They needed to race away from the Soviets and then shield their own supply echelon. Going all the way to Rostov was merely a term of art, as it would be expected that the supply stream would meet the panzers some place around the Chir river// or Kalach.
9) The 11th Panzer was located to the west of 6th Army and would've been very able to hook up with the 14th Panzer Corps or 24th Panzer Corps or both.
10) The key thing being that panzers are virtually worthless on defense. Their mobility is their number one asset.
( Kind of the same with helicopters, and helicopter troops. If they stay
put, they get shot to chit. )
As for your estimate of the fuel available to the panzers at start: wrong.
Those numbers came from Paulus AFTER he'd burned through their gasoline supply chasing off to the north, and then wheeling back into the pocket. (!!!) Most accounts omit the fact that this is what Paulus & Company did in the days prior to the pocket being sealed up. Yes, they went up and back -- back into the Stalingrad pocket. (!!!) This one pointless chase burned up the very fuel that would've permitted all of them to escape to the west.
That's called BAD leadership. NO WAY would Guderian, Rommel, Hoth, ... bring panzers back into a kessel, an obvious kessel.
The panzers had to break out BEFORE they were breaking out: BEFORE the Soviets ringed them in. The closure took THREE DAYS. The panzers could've shot out in less than six-hours. Paulus didn't even post sentries// observation posts to his rear. Yes, the Red Army advanced all that way ON FOOT without Paulus realizing what was unfolding. He really was surprised when the ring was closed. Even then, the panzers could've shot through it -- because the Russians had no anti-tank weapons of any kind. They couldn't even dig fox-holes in that cold weather.
( When the Germans retreated out of their fox-holes -- they couldn't dig replacement holes further back and in, either. )
None of the Soviet weapons and positions you posit were in place until a week had passed. Getting anything across the Volga, the southern wing, was a bitch and a half. The Soviets had to use dynamite to blow the ice ridges out of the way so as to finally have a truck route. Yeah, that process took days. All the longer because the Germans were shelling them at the time. (They were crossing that close to Stalingrad. The Russians had their own logistical nightmare on the east side of the Volga, too. )
To make things short: your thesis lies bleeding, wait, it's dead.
So sad.
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The tendency of WWII tanks to breakdown in the field was epic compared to the modern experience. The Panther Ds at Kursk is merely the tip off.
[ BTW, Gantz asserts that the unit history is explicit: only a trivial number of Panther Ds broke down due to fire at Kursk once committed. What did them in was the brilliant idea of parking the regiment in a hollow, out of sight, overnight. God was not with them. There was a massive downpour in the wee hours. This caused every Panther to sink down all the way to their hull. (!) It then took DAYS for the regiment to recover these Panthers.
For, you see, the only thing that could pull a Panther out of the mud was one, if not two, other Panthers. The boys fell upon their charges with shovel and bucket, but to a large degree the Germans had to wait for the mud to dry out. Since the weather was extra-ordinarily warm ( 90+ F ) the mud did dry out. ]
Because Russian tanks -- T34 -- also have such an astonishing breakdown rate, one is left lost as to what's up.
The best tank of the war, the M4 Sherman, had a breakdown rate of 500miles. The T34 had a breakdown rate of 150miles. (est) The Tiger and Panther had epic breakdown rates of 70miles and 100miles.
Much of the latter was due to sabotage at the factory. All recovered Panthers to date show factory production sabotage in their critical lubrication systems. This goes a LONG way towards explaining why most Tigers can't stay in action more than a day at a time. Heavy Tiger battalions would lose 65% of their strength even without taking any combat losses. (!!!) This can only be detected by working through unit histories. It's not something that the Heer is proud of. You won't see Germans gloating about this crazy failure rate in their personal histories. But it goes miles and miles towards explaining why you read endless German accounts of being overwhelmed by numbers. They really were, The rest of their gear was back in the rear for repair. (!!!)
German stats show that active Panthers at the front at the end of 1943 were almost the same in number as at Kursk. (!!!) Inactive// under repair Panthers were equal in number. Then there were Panthers that were in transit. Hitler's policy was to hold back tanks -- all of them -- to create new formations. Speer absolutely could not talk him out of it. The result is that the stats are skewed. An astonishing fraction of the tank force is always sitting idle back in Germany.
Late in the war, Hitler gave up on the Heer, and moved to create a wholly new army. He started creating Panther brigades. ( Typically numbered in the hundreds: 106th, 107th, etc. ) These were created by taking ardent Nazi officers of True Belief and mating them with young German draftees. Their performance in battle was horrible. I'd say that they were a tad short in the sgt department.
The bottom line is that you can't trust German stats in the least.
Further, Hitler would NOT let Speer produce spare parts. Weird, strange, I know. Speer bitterly recounted how many times this issue was run up the flag pole. In practice it meant that German repair troops had to learn to take cripples apart -- to run a junk yard -- so as to have any repair parts at all.
The Russians had their own problems, starting with their breakdown rate. Early in the war, their breakdown rate with the T34 was off the hook -- something like 50miles.
That is, 50miles of cross country transit would cause half of all the machines to break down to such a degree that they could no longer roll.
And Russia is actually a pretty flat place as things go. Later in the war, things go a lot better, but Russia could never attain what their LendLease Shermans gave them. That's why you'll see -- over and over -- LendLease Shermans leading DEEP penetrations behind German lines. Ploesti comes immediately to mind. Those old photos were Winston Smithed by Moscow after the war was won, BTW. You really have to root around for them.
German propaganda showed both British and American tanks ALL THE TIME. Because they were leading the deepest penetrations -- solely because they could keep on rolling -- and because they always had radios -- a some time thing with T34 machines.
In sum: the German army defeated the German army in Russia. And to a very real degree, the Russian army defeated the Russian army. The Soviets only stopped defeating themselves after Zhukov and his pals took over control of the Red Army. From that point onwards, Stalin had to remain sitting in on the meetings -- attempting to not look stupid and not look no longer in charge.
Asking decent questions and then rubber stamping his marshall's plans started to really work out for him.
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I see that Joseph Layton has a German Coal to Gas Program WW2 lecture linked in the YouTube side bar.
Man is that lecture full of both fact and error.
The PRIMARY error -- shared by the Nazis and their industrial chemists -- was to use the statistics ( chemistry results ) seen with the coking process of Met Coal with the same process when Lignite or Bituminous Coal is processed.
The shift in feedstock is ALL IMPORTANT. Met Coal is prized because it has LOW contamination from Ash, Sulfur and Phosphorous. ( The latter is even more trouble than sulfur, BTW. )
[ In a reducing environment ( iron smelter ) one is always at risk for creation of H3P and H2S -- BOTH are intensely toxic -- way, way beyond HCN -- the stuff used to execute criminals in the gas chamber. This is why Met Coal commands quite the premium. It doesn't create process headaches.
( 5 to 10 times by weight of inferior coals -- indeed many coals just can't be used in iron reduction no matter how cheaply they can be purchased.)
( Lots of ash also just gums up the works something awful. )
In contrast, the vapors that one can drive off of bituminous coal make for IDEAL crude oil feedstock. They HAVE to be light. They don't become vapors any other way.
Where the Nazis went totally off the rails: trying to muck around with the residium -- to convert it into synthesis gas. That's doable only if you're willing to just BURN money.
It just takes TOO MUCH equipment -- very high pressure equipment. It's these high pressure steels that the Nazis couldn't manufacture in sufficient amounts. They never ran low on low performance steels.
The correct solution was to set up a co-generation plant that would burn the residium to rais steam and to generate electric power. No attempt should've been made to muck around with the 'heavies' // aka 'bottoms' // coked out cr ap that the process generated.
Further, the correct device for coking bituminous coal can be seen in mass use: it consists of slots for the coal which are purged by a hydaulic ram after each cycle.
In normal coking the product desired is the coke. For the Nazis, the product desired was the off-gas. The remainder should've been shoved into rail road cars and shunted off to an adjacent power plant.
This kind of gear does not require exotic steels, nor tricky construction. It just needs to eat a LOT of bituminous coal.
To get even MORE syn-crude one should process Lignite. It will, however, produce a totally rotten heat value in the cr ap left over. The vapors will be WET... lots of steam in them. Fortunately, steam is very easy to condense out of the process stream. A wet stream will also largely cleanse the fluid of most acids and bases. They'll be so ionic that they just partition into the water phase. Poof, no longer a problem.
( Don't bring this up with the EPA. )
The kicker with the above scheme is that it dates from the 19th Century.
The ego-problem for German chemists was that they just couldn't bear to live with the energy waste required for maximum through-put and lowest cost. They, the CHEMISTS kept pitching processes that just SUCKED DOWN steel and capital -- as if they were still living in a peace-time economic equation.
It's notable that most of the Nazi plants were schemed up during the pre-war era -- with not one of the key players being told of the larger picture.
As for Diesel fuel ( aka middle distillate for those in the refining trade ) -- it should've been the OBVIOUS target -- never gasoline. Germany had the world's best Diesel engines. Herr Diesel was a German inventor in the first place. Practically every Diesel improvement was initiated in Germany as a result. They, the engineers, had received MASSIVE funding from the Kaiser for Diesel engined U-Boats going back two-generations earlier.
So it's astounding that Guderian and Hoepner ever designed the Mark III and Mark IV panzers to use gasoline. No nation uses gasoline powered tanks these days. They were abandoned, wholesale, during the 1950's. ( And those tanks were left-overs from WWII.)
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