High Tech German military

LOL. I thought this would be a fine addition to the pics posted earlier in the thread. And interesting that even some armored vehicles were adapted.

 

High tech retreat. LOL

 

It occurs to me that Germany's high-tech horse-drawn military had one advantage.

Later in the war, when Allied bombing and Soviet advances denied the Germans access to oil, their horses didn't stop working.

That was probably an unplanned benefit, but it was a benefit nevertheless. I hope our own high-tech militaries of the present have a fall-back plan.

 

The only advantage I see to horses is that you can eat them when you are surrounded.

 

The US has a massive strategic reserve of fossil fuels that is kept in storage in case of a national emergency. It's tremendous.

 

"The photograph was snapped from a British "Battle" bomber during strafing attack on a German horse drawn ammunition train."

 

I'm not trying to glorify the Nazis, or to claim that their equipment was superior.

I'm just pointing out that when they ran out of oil -- which was due to the heroic actions of Allied soldiers -- their horses still worked.

If their army and its logistics trains had been fully mechanised, using petrol- and diesel-fuelled trucks, they would have been in a worse state from 1944 onwards. But the fact that they relied on horses and coal-powered steam trains for much of their military transport, allowed them to survive a little bit longer after they lost access to oil.

 

If the German logistics were fully mechanized like the US (and that means that Germany would have to be a fossil fuel rich state with a well developed motor vehicle construction infrastructure), they may have won the Eastern Front by 1943.

Motorized infantry divisions had far more firepower than horse-drawn infantry divisions.

 

Indeed. The German non-motorised divisions were clearly inferior to what they could have been, in a high-tech, fossil-fuel-rich environment.

We can be grateful for that, since I personally prefer a world that isn't dominated by Nazis.

My only point here is that Germany was starved of oil, and therefore its horses and steam trains were useful.

 

Even before the war when they had fuel they were still reliant on the horse for most of thier logistics and transport. It just got worse as the war dragged on. The original point of this thread being that what was portrayed in the press and propaganda was far from the truth. With the way thier economy and industry was set up they had no chance. Later in the war as more transport and logistics were relying on horses it hampered quite a bit of the German military in its ablility to fight. And with that the huge losses of horses and mules was horrendous.There are quite a view accounts from Allied soldiers about the amount of carnage inccured on the German horses. They may not have used fuel but they used up other much needed resources also. And certainly not as efficient as other means.

 

Horses consume enormous amounts of feed...

What was the general level of German Army motorization? I know that it reached a peak in the summer of 1941 with 1/3rd of the Armed forces mechanized. And it went steadily downhill from there..

 

Anybody know what was the difference in one serving of artillery ammunition tonnage for a horse-drawn German infantry division compared to a US infantry division?

If my memory serves me right, the German infantry division, with thousands of horses ( 5,000?), can haul 230 tons or so of artillery ammunition.

 

I take your point, that the Nazi propaganda about their high-tech military was deceptive.

I'm not saying that horse-drawn carriages were great. Clearly they were inferior to the mechanised transport of the Western allies.

But in the absence of oil, and with the lack of vehicles produced by German industry, they were the only practical alternative. If the Nazis had relied on motorised transport to the same degree as the Americans and British, their armies would have collapsed earlier than they did.

I recall that the D-Day invasion included, among other things, a submerged oil pipeline that ran all the way from England to the French coast. This enormously expensive enterprise was necessary for the mechanised Western Allies, who could hardly move without oil.

The Germans, however, had few oil resources, and much of what they did have was denied by Allied bombing and occupation. So, in a very limited sense, the German reliance on low-tech horses enabled them to avoid some of the consequences of their lack of oil.

But it was still low-tech. I'm not arguing that point.

 

Nope, not a motorized vehicle in sight. Seems kind of amazing. I like this thread because it got me to pay attention to an aspect of the German military I never even considered.

 

That series I mentioned in "Films and TV" is quite propaganda slanted of course, and Dr. Goebbels goes out of his way to show just how extremely "modern and mechanized" the Wehrmacht is, and how they only use horses for parades and mounted bands. One of the favorite shots is of "twin" timpany drummers showing expertise in two-handed, cross-chest/lap drumming while their steeds prance ahead of the rest of the horse-mounted band. That does demonstrate excellent training and discipline (both horse and musician), but not exactly war winning/worthy skills.

 

This was very safe until later in the war