User:MinorProphet/Draft subpages/German logistics on the Eastern Front in WW2

German logistics on the Eastern Front in WW2

An offensive is dependent on a balance of: the quantity of combat power it could muster for an attack; the tempo of its operations; and the depth and speed of sustainable advance into enemy territory. "Around half of all Soviet offensives on the Eastern front failed at some point. Similarly, the German offensives of 1941 and 1942 failed to achieve this balance because their advances were not sustainable due to a lack of logistical support. The correct balance of mobility and combat power did not arise from mechanization but from an understanding of the interaction of the three tyrannies of weight, demand, and distance."(Logistics of the Combined-Arms Army — Motor Transport by H. G. W. Davie. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies Volume 31, 2018 - Issue 4. Online web text Notes at TandFonline)

The Kursk Offensive of 1943 was rather different: it was doomed to failure from the start because the Germans had no reserves at all; the start was delayed for several weeks; they attacked some of the best-constructed defences in depth ever built; and the Soviets knew exactly what the Germans were planning.

Many contemporary reports, memoirs and histories, especially German but also American, refer to 'Russia' and 'Russian', where the 'Soviet Union' and 'Soviet' are meant. This includes not only Russia but Latvia, Lithunia and Estonia, Byelorussia and Ukraine.

Overview
Logistics on the Eastern Front were the responsibility of a mixed or even muddled combination of Army and Luftwaffe commands.

Military intelligence and logistics were never high priorities for the German Army officer corps leading up to WW2.
 * "The mentality of the German general staff and the officer corps, which reflected their deeply held values, placed intelligence, personnel management, and logistics at the bottom of the Wehrmacht’s priorities. For a conflict in Central or Western Europe, this did not matter greatly, as the battles in 1939 and 1940 indicated. But when the war spread into a great continental struggle from the North Cape to the Mediterranean and from the Caribbean to Stalingrad, in which the Third Reich pitted itself against powers with global resource bases and vast industrial capabilities, the German military leadership was quite literally at sea."(Megargee, p. 12)

The German Army (Das Heer) controlled railways and motor transport, two main sources of supply to the Army Groups North, Centre and South: in January 1942 the railways came under control of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB).

Before the war it was never envisaged that the Luftwaffe would be engaged with supplying the Army's needs for matériel, equipment, spares, fuel and so on.(Morzik p. 21) The emerging transport branch of the Luftwaffe concentrated on carrying paratroops and airborne forces. At the outset of the war the transport fleet consisted of only a single wing of Junkers Ju-52s (1st Special Purpose Bomber Wing). To increase the size of the transport fleet, the pilot Training Command was raided of both aircraft (some 378 Ju-62s) and their instructor crews. This meant that fewer pilots were trained after the war began. According to Richard Suchenwirth, this treatment of the Training Command as a ready reserve for front-line forces was one of the main reasons Germany lost the war.

Morzik, German Air Force Airlift Operations p. 25 says freight gliders were used to transport fuel to the rapidly advancing armoured units of the Northern and Central Army Groups in 1941.

The massive airlift to keep the 2nd Army Corps of AG North supplied in the Demyansk Pocket during the winter of 1941-42 was a superficial success, but with huge losses of trained personnel and aircraft. This broke the Luftwaffe's ability to supply more trained pilots for some time.(Morzik, pp. 137, 142-3, 160) According to Morzik, the high command continued to use airlifts as a means of supplying encircled forces, leading to the tragedy of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43 and the loss of more pilots and planes.(Morzik, p. 179) The growing lack of fuel from mid 1943 seriously constrained the Luftwaffe's ability to function as a means of supply.

Army Logistics
See Megargee pp. 117ff

"29 July 1941. c) Spare parts situation; Repair installations in the Orsha base have been centralized. Engines have arrived for 80 Tanks 111 and 30 Czech 38 Tanks, (We  requisitioned  250.)  Specialist workers have arrived at the front." Halder Diaries, Vol. VI. Search also for "Buhle", General Walther Buhle, chief of the organizations section of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH).

"4 August 1941: The Fuehrer gives the reasons for his tighthandedness in allotting tanks to the Divs. Still, he releases 350 engines for Tank III (without being aware, however, that OKH has already released them). Will be shipped by air.

Railways
Oh dear, what a mess.

Railways within the German homeland were run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB), an independent, state-owned organisation. Much of the railway system was designed to ship coal, the basis of much of German industry and economy, from the mining areas of the Ruhr in the west and Silesia in the east, to the industrial centres in the north, centre and south. This all worked relatively well until the failure by November 1941 of Operation Typhoon to capture Moscow. The burdens of an unexpectedly long war eventually proved too much.

Railways beyond the border with Poland were the responsibilty of the Ostbahn. NB The WP article is slightly wrong about who it belonged to (it claims DRB):


 * "It was ﬁnally agreed that the Ostbahn would be a special property of the General Government of Poland, ﬁnancially separate from the Reichsbahn. However, it would use DRB operating and administrative procedures, and traﬃc priorities would be set in Berlin. The Ostbahn would be organized along the lines of a Reichsbahn operating division and would receive a backbone of DRB personnel on secondment. The majority of the Ostbahn’s employees would be Poles, and four operating divisions would be organized. Frank promulgated an order calling the Ostbahn into existence on 9 November 1939."

Thus to all appearances it was a subsidiary of DRB.

But it became a permanent drain on DRB's resources of locos, rolling stock and manpower. (Mierzejewski 2000, p. 79 [pdf 106] )

When Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941, the Ostbahn took over control of the Soviet railway network east of the Polish border as the Wehrmacht advanced on Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev in Ukraine. But the Reich Ministry of Transport took over in January 1942, overseeing Rudolf Gercke, head of both the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) Transport, (Chef des Feldtransportwesens of OKH) and the subsidiary Army Transport Branch. (Megargee, p. 117-122)

See also (Mierzejewski 2000, p. 95 [pdf 122] )

de:Rudolf Gercke


 * Halder War Diary, 16 November 1941. "Evening: Another talk with OQu I [Oberquartiermeister I, Friedrich Paulus from 03.09.1940-18.01.1942, see for others] and Col. Baentsch on the supply problem. The trouble seems to lie in two factors. One is the attitude of the Government-General, which refuse to run our rail transports  with priority, rather than any difficulties in the ZI. [NB This is a German abbreviation for 'the homeland', can't find the exact trans. atm, Zone Innenland or summat]. The other is the relative rigidity of the procedure for calling trains which the forward agencies must follow."

Re-gauging the lines
The Soviet Union used 5' gauge, whereas DRB and the Ostbahn used Standard gauge of 4'6" i fink. The Soviets withdrew most of their locomotives and rolling stock eastwards, and the invading Germans had to re-lay all the lines

For Army Group Centre, the main double-track line from Brest-Litovsk was the re-gauged as follows: on 3 July 1941, it ran to Baranowicze with an unloading point there, and it was drivable on Union gauge with a further unloading point at Minsk. By 31 July 1941, unloading was happening at Orsha, with a second Union gauge track from the border through Lida as far as an unloading point at Polozk, while on 28 August a Standard gauge track was unloading at Smolensk with the second Union line from Lida unloading at Vitebsk.(Davie 2017)


 * Halder War Diary, 11 July 1941: "I know about the supply troubles in AGp. Center. But the reason is not the limited capacity of the railroad, but failure to unload supply trains (Russian rolling stock).  In AGp. area, four trains for the Air Force, three trains with Engineer construction materials,  and  five trains  for Armd.Gp.  3 have not been unloaded with the result that rolling stock runs short. A  Gen. Staff  Officer  of  the  Transp.  Chief's  Office will fly to the front tomorrow, to look into the situation."

Good outline from Axis History forum
Der Alte Fritz (poster), November 2013 https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=203286

" Well by 1.1.1943, the Germans controlled Belorussia, the Ukraine and a good portion of Western Russia. According to Kovalev, the Germans controlled 48% of the pre-war Soviet network (106,100 km inc Baltic, Western Poland and Bessarabia) which is 50,000 km. According to Pottgeisser the figure for RVD Osten plus the FEKdos 30,904km. The difference is due to changes in borders plus under counting by the Germans of the low grade local networks. The Soviet network had its highest density of rail in the west and by 1943 all they have left is the area around the hub of Moscow with one line running to Kharkov, one to Stalingrad and the Caucauses and 4 lines running to the Urals and Siberia. The Germans have the rails around the Donbass, the main lines from Brest to Smolensk and Rostov. So there is an argument that they controlled the better half of the network.

Regauging is not a serious problem after the initial advance as over and was expected to be carried out at 20km (Halder war diary) but in reality they achieved higher than this around 25km a day per Eisenbahn Battalion (Halder). Soviets achieved 30km a day with their Railway Brigades. He has 6 regiments of Eisenbahnpioniere so can allocate 2 battalions to each Army Group in 1941 (to convert their two main lines) with the rest being deployed to re-build bridges. Typically the railways are opened for the first train 2-6 weeks behind the advancing troops. By end of 1941 they had converted 15,000km (Pottgeisser) and by mid-end 1942 they had re-gauged all they wanted which was the above mentioned 30,000 km. Mid 1942 the first Ostbau programme starts to up grade key lines from 36 trains a day to 48 (Brest to Rostov line) and includes main and secondary lines using OT and engineers from the DRB brought in from Germany. Workforce at a maximum of 70,000 for a few months.

There is a difference in work force, the RVD+FEKdo employ 615,455 (1.1.1943 Pottgeisser) of whom 104,899 are German plus the Organisation Todt force (unable to get a figure of how many employed in Russia but the total for OT is around 1.8 million across Europe doing a whole variety of construction projects) plus 6 Regt Eisenbahnpioniere. The NKPS employed 2.7 million pre-war and around 4 million during the war (compared with 1.4 million in the Deutches Reichsbahn during the war) plus 30 brigades of railway troops (250,000 men on railway re-construction).

On their half of the network the Germans are running a small service as they only operate 4,671 locomotives and load 13,012 wagons daily (the DRB has 28,630 locomotives and loads 157,572 wagons daily (a good proportion of these are coal wagons for power stations) while the Soviets have 26,000 locos and load 45,700 wagons of freight daily) which perhaps shows the limited economic activity in the area and the fact that the flow was either from military supplies Germany into Russia or taking raw materials from Russia to Germany.

"he Ministry of Transport had direct control of "Ostbahns" and "Generalverkehrsdirektion Osten" (the railway administration in the Eastern territories). These German central government interventions in the affairs of the East Affairs by ministries were known as Sonderverwaltungen (special administrations).

This followed a pattern of administration followed since the annexation of Czechoslovakia. The RVM (Reich Ministry of Transport) set up semi-independent railway operating companies under various titles:


 * HBD Haupteisenbahndirektion:
 * EBD Eisenbahnbetriebsdirektion (5 in Bohemia, 11 France, 1 Belgium)
 * HVD Hauptverkehrsdirektion (1 Belgium)


 * Gedob Generaldirektion der Ostbahn
 * OBD Ostbahn (betriebs) direktion (6 in the Government General)


 * GVD Generalverkehrsdirektion Osten
 * HBD Haupteisenbahndirektion / RVD Reichsverkehrsdirektion (5 in Russia)


 * WVD Wehrmachtsverkehrsdirektion
 * FEDko Feld-Eisenbahnkommando (Field Railway Commands - vary due to operational demand)

By and large the HBD's took over existing foreign railway companies and their rolling stock and staff such as the SNCF in France and simply put in a layer of management over the top to administer them. However this model did not work in Poland as the West of Poland was taken into the Reich and the railway sin this area were subsumed by the DRB. The railways in the Government General contained around 6,000km of track and some rolling stock but in line with racial policy towards Poland, a completely new company was set up and run by Germans. However they could not recruit enough railway men and so started to recruit Polish railway workers to actually do the manual work on the railway. Hans Frank's General-Gouvernement owned and ran the company and took the profits.

In Russia as in Poland, policy dictated the railway higher functions be run by Germans and Ukrainians, White Russians and Russians did the manual work but the railway never came under the control of the Reichskommissariats as it remained under military and then RVM control due to the continuing military operations. Haupteisenbahndirektion (HBD) Mitte and Reichsverkehrsdirektion (RVD) Mitte. Until January 1942, the HBD was under military control, even though its personnel consisted of railroad officials and employees. This control was exercised by the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH)/Chef des Transportwesens (General Rudolf Gercke) through his Betriebsleitung Osten, under Ministerialdirigent Dr. Joseph Müller, in Warsaw. The HBD Mitte, which was one of several in the newly occupied territories of the USSR, was placed under the jurisdiction of the Transport Ministry in January 1942. The same transfer affected the other HBD's and the Betriebsleitung Osten became the Generalverkehrsdirektion (GVD) Osten.

http://www.bahnstatistik.de/AbkDir_besetzt.htm For United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives see http://www.ushmm.org/online/archival-gu ... 3002M.html "

"The difference between the Blau Eisenbahner and the Grau Eisenbahner was that the former worked for the HBD and the later were conscripted under military discipline and worked for the FEDko. The Eisenbahnpioniere - a military unit ran the railways in the zone of operations.

In all cases as far as I can discover the German personnel were drawn from the Deutches Reichsbahn - which lost men a) to the Wehrmacht in conscription (and provided men to the Eisenbahnpioniere) b) to the Wehrmacht FEDko (as para-military forces?) c) to the RVM to man the EBD and HDB. The DRB replaced these men as far as possible with retired DRB men and also women but later with the usual crop of forced labour as was common in German industry.

The DRB in 1.1.1942 had a workforce of 1,415,869 personnel but lost 7,000 to the Ostbahn and 104,899 (Pottgeisser) to GVD Osten but had to meet the extra work of wartime so these losses were not inconsiderable especially as they took the younger men."

Pics: https://web.archive.org/web/20141222032522/http://www.bundesarchiv.de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/bilder_dokumente/00683/index-7.html.de archived 22 December 2014


 * More from Der Alte Fritz: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=203286&sid=b96fdf7b74bf9d749bebd429c9d4d79f&start=15

The issue of French rolling stock may seem off topic but it is not really, as a central part of the study is that by middle 1942, Julius Dorpmüller General Director of the DRB and Reichsminster for Transport goes to Hitler to say that the DRB cannot guarantee that it will meet all of its commitments due to a shortage of rolling stock given the demands of the East. He is replaced in "day to day operations" by Albert Ganzenmueller (HBD Poltava) as Deputy General Director of the DRB and Under-secretary of State at the Reich Transport Ministry. It is at that point that the DRB gains control over the European rail network (the Ostbahn comes later in 1943 due to Frank's influence) and is able to re-balance car numbers across Europe which helps the situation plus a new car replacement programme. This is all from Mierzejewski Hitlers Trains.

Interesting statement from the Ostbahn drivers but I presume they were talking about the GV rather than further East? Can you give the source? von Bork in the FMS series on transport given at the start of this thread says that 70% of all German operated locomotives were out of action in the winter of 1941. Operations were also slower because temporary water towers were frozen. temporary coaling stations (ie heaps of coal lying beside the track) were frozen solid and could only be dynamited apart, points were frozen and locomotives stored in the open took ages to thaw out.

As regards numbers Pottgeisser gives for 1.1.1943 locos / daily wagon loadings / length of line Reich: 28,630 / 3,003,806 / 78,675 Ostbahn (Gedob): 2,088 / 238,060 / 7,111 Russia (RVD/FEDko): 4,671 / 398,408 / 34,979

which shows that the traffic in Russia was just under double that in the Ostbahn and yet the length of line was 5 times longer or 16% the number of locomotives running on half the length of the Reich. Traffic (even through traffic) was very thin in Russia)

"COMMENTS ON RUSSIAN RAILROADS AND HIGHWAYS" By Gen. Lt. a.D, Max Bork
 * Comments by Lt. Gen. Max Bork

I. Description of the Russian Traffic Network A. The Rail Net (Sketch 1). In 1914 the Russo-Polish border area between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian mountains was connected with European Russia by four main west-east rail lines which terminated in Leningrad, Moscow, the Donets Basin, and the Black Sea port of Odessa. These lines were crossed by four main north-south lines which connected Leningrad with Odessa; Archangelsk with the Crimea; Moscow with the Donets Basin; and Moscow with the Caucasus. This network was then crossed by two diagonal lines extending from Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad) to Kremenchug and from Riga to the Donuts Basin. In addition, this net connected with the Siberian and Mongolian systems to the east and with the Murmansk line to the north. The main rail lines of European Russia were supplemented by a number of low-capacity branch, spur, and narrow gauge liner. Most of the latter had been built to meet the requirements of World War I. An overall view of the Russian rail net gave the impression of a lack of uniformity. In some places main lines were single-track for no apparent reason. Often, construction apparently intended to establish lateral links between main lines ended in the middle of nowhere.

SKETCH 1. SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM OF THE RAIL NET OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA There were three areas in which industrial development had resulted in a certain density of trackage: the Donets Basin, Moscow, and Leningrad. The following statistics may serve to illustrate the density of the Russian rail net as compared to that of Germany. In 1938 the USSR had but .65 miles of rail per 100 square miles, most of which was in European Russia, where the average was 1.8 miles for the same area. During the same year the German rail net averaged twenty miles of rail per 100 square miles. Expressed differently, Russia had 3.3 miles of trackage per 10,000 population; whereas Germany had 5.8 miles in the same year. 1. Railroad Plant Since rock is scarce in Russia, few railroads had beds of crushed rock ballast. In lieu of rook, sand and gravel was widely used. The prevailing gauge of Russian railways is five feet, as compared to a gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches, which is standard in most other countries. This wider gauge provided more loading space per oar and compensated to some extent for the Russian shortage of rolling stock and the limited capacity of the railway lines. Marshalling yards, shunting installations, and turnarounds (wyes instead of turntables) covered wide areas because land was cheap. This dispersion was advantageous in the event of air attacks. Signaling and safety devices, even on the main lines, were primitive. In many cases only a semaphore was used to designate the right-of-way. The Germans observed electrically-operated devices only on the Moscow - Kharkov line, which, incidentally, was the only line with a bed of crushed-rock ballast. The German invaders found that some of the railway bridges in European Russia were temporary, having been built during World War I. By German standards they were unsafe and most of them could not have supported the trains loaded with heavy tanks, which were in use during the later years of World War II. On several of these bridges the girders, made from sheet metal, had been riveted together. For unknown reasons there were no double-track bridges. Double- track lines which crossed rivers did so on separate spans spaced 50 to 100 yards apart. Much of the coal and water of European Russia is unsuitable for use in locomotives without special processing. For instance, at Losovaya, a large rail junction south of Kharkov, the Germans found a large tank of oil at the coaling point in which coal from the Donets area had to be soaked to render it usable. Between Dnepropetrovsk and Stalino the water at each of the eleven watering points had to be treated with different admixtures to prevent the formation of boiler scales. Along the Russo-Polish border, east of the Bug and Niemen Rivers, the Russians had established a strip of no man's land to deprive an invader of railroad facilities. As a result, the railroads passing through this area were equipped to handle only through-traffic. There were no marshalling yards, shunting installations, detraining points, workshops, or other major facilities. This deficiency proved disadvantageous to the Germans during their advance as well as at the time of their withdrawal. 2. Rolling stock Russian locomotives were classified by type similarly to those in other countries. In addition, the Russians used a rather complex condenser locomotive, the "Siberian," supposedly of American manufacture, which could cover up to 600 miles without taking on water. Frequently, wood was used as fuel on secondary lines, especially in the north. In employing western European locomotives in Russia, the Germans had to remember that in Russia water stations are farther apart than in most other countries since Russian locomotives have a greater water capacity. Throughout the war the Germans converted Russian-gauge freight CATS to normal gauge. The German State Railway developed specially equipped shop trains with lifting devices which permitted the change-over within a few minutes. However, the gauge of the Russian locomotives could not be changed. 3. Personnel Because of the vital role which the railroads played in the national life, Russian railroad personnel considered themselves a separate class within Russian society. This feeling was expressed not only by pride in their profession but also by a love for their work that led them in times of stress to hide their tools from friend and foe alike in order to be able to go back to work the moment traffic was resumed. Their technical proficiency and willingness to work, even in the employ of the enemy, were remarkable."

Stats
Potgiesser (p. 103) is a table of trains running in HG Mitte's area of the front from April 1943 to August 1944 (after that date, HG Mitte had ceased to exist, more or less)

Wehrmacht trains   Total    'Wirtschaft' trains*    Grand total Supply   Troops 1943 Apr.      1,146       885     2,031           339                2,370 May      1,123       752     1,875           321                2,196 June     1,114       768     1,822           321                2,143 July     1,131     1,151     2,282           357                2,639 Aug.     1,025     1,134     2,159           348                2,507 Sept.      543     1,009     1,552           209                1,761 Oct.       630       722     1,352           154                1,506 Nov.       712       745     1,457           134                1,591 Dec.       785       947     1,732           112                1,844 1944 Jan.        814     1,005     1,819           152                1,971 Feb.       726       745     1,471           188                1,659 Mar.       736     1,169     1,905           174                2,079 Apr.       738       969     1,707            -                   - May        857       963     1,820            -                   - June       661     1,013     1,674            -                   - July       373     1,589     1,962            -                   - Aug.       439     1,523     1,962            -                   - 30,582        2,809               33,391  *includes trains with coal for the railroads' own needs.

Source: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=186134 Axis History Forum, 2012

Specific things
The single track railway line to Stalingrad was not in full operation, and was only capable of carrying 12 supply trains per day, 1 1/2 of which were reserved for Luftwaffe supplies. Both the Army and the Luftwaffe made use of extra air transport to supply the thrust towards Stalingrad.(Morzik, p. 182)

In April 1942 during the buildup for the Stalingrad campaign, on a typical day 104 trains were reaching Kasatin, 64 Dnepropetrowsk, and only 34 at Stalino, so sufficient railway capacity was 600 km from the front line, and the armies were receiving a trickle of supplies.(Davie, Influence of Railways on Military Operations...)

At the time of the encirclement of Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe only had a total of 750 Ju-52s, whereas with an operational readiness of 30–35%, some 1,050 aircraft would be needed. Total Luftwaffe losses from 24 November 1942 to 31 January 1943 were 488 aircraft and around 1,000 men.{Morzik, p. 195 plus breakdown of aircraft losses)

Apart from other things, the airlift to the Kuban Bridgehead brought out 55 tons of copper from 4 through 13 February 1943.(Morzik p. 210)

Trucks
This is where it get complex, transport columns driving 600 km + from Stalino (N. of Mariupol) to Stalingrad[?] which included plenty of trucks just carrying fuel for the return journey...

etc.

Luftwaffe logistics
It seems that the Luftwaffe's spares and repairs system for its own aircraft was infinitely better organised than the Army's. It ran dedicated trains filled with spare parts, and was able to fly supplies to its own airfields without having to go through the bewildering chain of organisations and commands which bedevilled the Army's operations.

In the effort to supply the 1st Panzer Army near the Carpathians in March–April 1944: "A workshop platoon (field workshop) was assigned to each take-off base to carry out major repairs and overhauling jobs. The area aircraft equipment depot had a branch at Krosno airfield (now in in SE Poland): in this way, spare parts were always immediately available. This branch was exceptionally well organised, and was flexible enough so it would not issue required parts without a specific order from the main depot, but would even fly them to the airfield where they were needed so that repairs could be completed without any delay whatsoever." (Morzik, pp. 246–7) (Luftwaffe Airfields 1935-45 Poland by Henry L. deZeng IV, pp. 23–4) The Germans also used Krosno-Moderówka and Łężany (Krosno-Iwonicz) airfields.