Forty, Simon/Taylor, Richard C. German Logistics 1939-45

A volume from the "Casemate Illustrated" series. When we think of the German army, we think of the Blitzkrieg years of 1939-41, when the tanks penetrated deep into enemy territory, forcing huge encircling battles that crushed the enemy's strength in Poland, France, the Balkans and the Soviet Union. With their mission tactics and cutting-edge weaponry, they epitomised modern, incisive warfare. But there was a problem, and despite their outstanding battlefield leadership, their brilliant victories, their technical prowess and their mighty Tigers and Panthers, they lost because of it. It was not, as the German generals argued after the war, the Soviet hordes that overran them. It wasn't the industrial capabilities of the United States. It was not the control exercised by a dictator who was becoming more and more removed from the real world. It wasn't the effort that went into transporting millions of people to their deaths in the camps, or the amount of concrete that was poured into the Atlantic Wall from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. All these points helped to decide the war in favour of the Allies, but they were not the main reason for the defeat of the German Wehrmacht. The crux of the matter was logistics. It is easy to point to the successes of the Germans in the Blitzkrieg, but the war was not over in 1941. It's easy to talk about the positive aspects of German logistics - the fact that they were able to push so far into the Soviet Union in such difficult terrain until the weather and bad roads conspired against them; the way German industry was kept going despite strategic bombing by the Allies; the resilience and ingenuity with which they kept the railways running so that huge numbers of men and armoured vehicles could shuttle from east to west when they were needed. At the critical moments of the war, the logistics finally failed.