Fahrschulwanne

"This is the revenge of reality”

thus wrote Guderian, in November 1941, at Moscow's doorsteps. The Third Reich’s best laid-plans were failing the test of energy reality.

Just like the Americans in 1944, the Wehrmacht had to pause its advance because it was running out of fuel. Unlike the Americans and the Russians, the Wehrmacht was chronically short of fuel; this is what hindered and defeated Rommel's "Afrikakorps", and now Guderian's “Panzergruppe 2”. Germany never really overcame this critical shortcoming; in 1941, it controlled 4% of the world's refining capacity, compared to 70% for the Russians and Americans together.

Luftwaffe: horses pulling a Dornier Do-17

In its Western Europe campaign, it adapted by requisitioning local supplies. In the East, it had less luck. Operation Barbarossa's initial successes worked against the Wehrmacht; the vast distances burned fuel, devoured supplies, and exhausted troops to the extent that the army’s rapid advance and early successes only served to “disguise a critical structural deficiency within the army”. In addition, the Soviets had a measure of advance preparation.

Operation Barbarossa: the Opening Gambit

The Germans had to do more. So, they adapted in other ways. For logistics, Germany relied heavily on trains and horses.

For war machines…

…they accelerated synthetic fuel production; the "Fischer–Tropsch" process that produced high-quality diesel and lubricating oil, waxes, and some lower-quality motor gasoline, and the "Bergius" coal hydrogenation for high-quality aviation and motor gasoline..

However, those “ersatz” fuels still had a low ERoEI, and proved to be poor substitutes for the higher-octane petroleum distillates available to the allies.

The Wehrmacht needed more.

It revived the "gazogene".

France, under German occupation, had already done so.

Trucks adapted with systems like Berliet's "Imbert" system moved goods and services at a brisk... 20 to 25 kmh. It was clunky, dirty, and slow, but good enough for wartime civilian use.

...and for military training?

Gazogene

To the Werhmacht, those gazogene-powered tanks would have been useless in battle, but they were good enough to familiarize recruits with the equipment...

To the troops, “Fahrschulwanne” vehicles were like going to the “Fahrschule”( Driving school) in a “Badewanne” (Bathtub).

In the end, it was all for naught...

Within a year of the German invasion, the Wehrmacht would face far more than the 40 Soviet Divisions its had "wargamed" for.

Worse, the Soviets could afford the loss of 35,000 tanks in a few months.

Within a year,

the Soviets had rebuilt a good size tank force, with new T34 and KV1 models that were also far superior to Germany's Pzkpfw III and IV.

Within a year,

the Soviets had mobilized 8 times more forces than what Germans had expected. To face Germany's 138 divisions, and pin down the 31 divisions of Japan's Kwantung Army in Manchuria, the Soviets mobilized 800 Divisions.   

...7 to 12 Million Men.

It was "mektoub".

From the get-go, the Russians had an energy "edge"; they leveraged it to speed up development. Any project could be any two of Good, Cheap, Fast. The Soviets wanted fast, it had to be good enough for the upcoming war, it was not cheap.

They could afford it.

Plentiful coal and oil…

…allowed the Soviets to speed through the industrial revolution. Energy, by itself, was not enough. So they squeezed the populations under their care; the factories captured by the Wehrmacht, were "gargantuan" in size, some employing "more than 60.000 workers [...] who nevertheless live like animals and such"

... and that was nothing compared to what the Soviets were building in the Urals. Germany had lost the war even before it invaded the Soviet Union.

It was not about tactics.

It was not about weapons.

It was about logistics.

Energy logistics....

Ain't no technical solution to geostrategic problems.