Why were the Wehrmacht's logistics so bad?

[TDM]

So they weren't fuelefficient enough? (as in: they used more fuel for their operations they could afford, while their opponent could beat them with less).

I did wonder that when the point was made, but the difference in size* of teh mobilized armies would mean it would have to be a massive difference in efficiency

another factor could be the soviets were better at keeping their actual vehicles themselves going efficiently and discarding them when it was more efficient to?

I guess it always going to be easier for the Soviet to rebuild their own railways when heading west than it would be for the Germans.


*although here again it might be the soviets were more efficient at moving enough men around for what was needed without moving all of them around

 

[Crueldwarf]

Cool!, where are those from?

Soviet figures are from Народное хозяйство СССР в Великой Отечественной войне 1941-1945 гг. М. 1990, сс.54-55 (Economy of USSR in Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. Moscow, 1990. pages 54-55). German figures are from US post-war strategic bomber survey, but my old links to that are long dead and have no idea where it is published online nowadays.

 

[TDM]

By May 1, 1944 Red Army had organizational strength (so what it should have) of 736 671 automotive vehicles (so anything larger than a motorcycle), of which they actually had 541 466 vehicles (so 73,5% of required strength). Of which 408 297 (75,4%) were domestically produced, 113 307 (20,9%) were foreign-made and supplied by the Allies and 19 862 (3,7%) were battlefield captures from the Germans.

I would try to find figures for 1945.

So how did they manage to operate so well given that based on the different mobilized figures for Barbarossa for the axis and 1944/Bagration for the Soviets it would appear to be roughly half the number of motor pool per man?

 

[Crueldwarf]

So how did they manage to operate so well on given that based on the different mobilized figures for Barbarossa for the axis and 1944/Bagration for the Soviets on what would appear to be roughly half the number of motor pool per man?

Because per capita counts are not actually very useful. Soviets had more tanks in 1941 than they had in 1945 both in absolute and in relative numbers. Didn't help them much in 1941.

What matters is the ability to get the material in places where you need them and to determine these places well enough in advance to actually manage the movement of stuff. Basically Soviets had enough stuff by like late 1943 and especially by the middle of 1944 to do what they wanted to do, while Germans didn't have that anymore and it have gradual compounding effect on the situation on the front. Each passing day, Soviets were getting better (and getting more stuff), while Germans were getting worse and getting less stuff.

And the difference with Barbarossa is that there is no difference. The relation was still the same. During 1941 Germans were also slowly loosing their capability while Soviets were growing it. And it is in the end exactly the reason why Germans lost in the East and then lost the whole war.

 

[Aber]

I agree the British do always like to paint ourselves as underdogs, but we did manage to do some arse kicking of our own in N.Africa, even against Rommel the god or war!

And when we do the fast advance thing do we call it something sexy like Lightning War; no, we call it The Great Swan...

See definition
Swanning around

 

[yulzari1]

Knowingly digressing from the OP: but Rommel‘s actions in North Africa and the British actions in the early period of the same were both founded upon having weaker logistics than their opponents. Defending conservatively was a route to a slower ultimate defeat. Only a bold taking of risks in the attack could avoid that ultimate defeat. Once the British got their logistics up to speed the end for Rommel was inevitable. Ironically he only got the logistics he needed too late at the very end in Tunisia when it was wasted.

 

[Hydra1234]

I thought the German motor pool of 600k in Barbarossa includes a wider range of motor vehicles than just trucks?

I'll be honest given the size of the Russian army and the speed of their advance 1944-45, I think I'll need to see some pretty iron clad figures or have some other explanation that would allow this if it's not more trucks.

also ending the war and having them during the ongoing operations are two different things,

Sorry, I misremembered the exact numbers.

https://fat-yankey.livejournal.com/32078.html

Admittedly not on par with an academic source, but based on this post, all acquired motor vehicles in the USSR (captures, domestic production, and lend-lease) throughout the entire war totaled to about 745k vehicles (all vehicles, not just trucks). Of those, 352k were lost. The post seems to be based on some Soviet memorandums, but I cannot verify them (due to not speaking Russian and not having access to the memorandums in question. Some figures are also corroborated by other online sources too.

As for why, the Soviet Railways made up that difference. I mentioned in an earlier post that Germany neglected their railways from 1933-1939, which had ramifications for what rolling stock they had available by Barbarossa. The Soviets had something like 5-6 times as many locomotives as the Germans on the Eastern Front for most of the war, and they also had larger and better organized logistics and engineering troops that could regauge railways, repair infrastructure, and load/unload equipment closer to the last mile, thus making up for having less motorized vehicles.

Edit: This thread describes a lot of the issues the Germans had with the Soviet railway network: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=203286

Basically, the Soviets had a low-speed, large train, long-distance rail network, whereas the Germans (and the rest of Europe) had a high-speed, small train, short-distance rail network. The size of the Eastern front and the sheer scale of war logistics meant that the German network was unsuited to logistics it need to sustain long-distance pushes, but the Soviet network was perfectly suited to do so. In addition, the larger prewar Soviet railway network meant that it had a larger base of skilled laborers from which to expand its railway corps.

 

[CaptainCalvert]

For the small tactical setback at arras. His crossing at Dinnat is still considered mandatory reading at every armored commanders school in the world

It was so successful that it unnerved not just the French corps in his sector, but the entire French army and government with them panicking and pulling back troops in the face of a belief that Rommel had crossed with “thousands” of tanks at dinnat. That division was a bunch of shrewd bastards

I'm not disputing that, but more noting that it wasn't all plain sailing.

Arras along with the river crossing and the odd far East episode shows that a modest tank force (and occasionally even a single tank) can cause mayhem amongst under-prepared forces. A good commander [1] can spot the opportunity to do so. But ultimately if you run out of steam and don't have enough backup you end up with some form of inconvenience rather than victory - Arras is a good example of a good spoiling attack, but not much more. Even Rommel's daring exploits before and after Arras would have had limited value if he'd run out of petrol. As it was, French organisational failings (not destroying fuel dumps) allowed him to overcome German logistical failings (not supplying enough fuel) and to take advantage of his bold advances.

[1] tank commander to general or field marshal

 

[cardcarrier]

Nevertheless the port of Tripoli was used to capacity (and so it couldn't process more). Malta, Gibraltar and Cuprus weren't really relevant for that. Although the convoys suffered losses, they did get through. You say it yourself, 92% of his supplies got through. He got what they told him he would get. It would have helped if he wasn't sitting near El Alamein, so a large part of the fuel he got was used to get it at the front.

There are very solid reasons why he was told not to advance so far. There was no port capacity to supply him more.

Malta Gibraltar and Cyprus were relevant because of the flexibility they gave the royal navy and Air Force…. In the 3 months before the battle of Gazalla he was getting 92 percent. In the months before and after ships and planes from Malta would disrupt his supply convoys the Italian fleet had its strategic deployment options greatly limited by the possibility of sorties from the Gibraltar fleet instead of being able to concentrate all their efforts on the eastern med

The way for Rommel to improve the port situation… was to capture more ports. He got unlucky with the luftwaffe overzealous bombing of Tobruk and even though he captured Merah matruh in tact the Italian fleet refused to run convoys there, even under fighter cover and even after the med fleet temporarily withdrew into the red sea

His German and Italian superiors (who never visited Africa themselves to see what the situation was) routinely lied to his face and in writing about reinforcements and greater efforts to supply the dak. There’s no scenario I can envision where some other general gets more out of the resources committed

 

[cardcarrier]

I'm not disputing that, but more noting that it wasn't all plain sailing.

Arras along with the river crossing and the odd far East episode shows that a modest tank force (and occasionally even a single tank) can cause mayhem amongst under-prepared forces. A good commander [1] can spot the opportunity to do so. But ultimately if you run out of steam and don't have enough backup you end up with some form of inconvenience rather than victory - Arras is a good example of a good spoiling attack, but not much more. Even Rommel's daring exploits before and after Arras would have had limited value if he'd run out of petrol. As it was, French organisational failings (not destroying fuel dumps) allowed him to overcome German logistical failings (not supplying enough fuel) and to take advantage of his bold advances.

[1] tank commander to general or field marshal

It’s not only the French command didn’t react, it’s that to a large degree they couldn’t. Rommels division knifed through to rear areas in surprise night marches and captured many headquarters units… preventing those sorts of orders for scorched earth and tactical retreat from getting issued in the first place

The reputation as the ghost division was born out of that and the prisoner and booty haul spoke for itself. The Rommel myth is the man… in that west Germany tried to cast him as some sort of anti nazi reluctant; which was false. He was a hardcore nazi as much as any in the high command. The military accomplishments in both wars were not myth. The man was a shrewd commander from squad to field army

 

[JasTysoe]

Gosh I wish I remember where he wrote that - I think he wrote off everything east of South Africa as a wasteful, diverting strategic overstretch (thus India, Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia), and possibly the Mediterranean east of Gibraltar, so he still valued the Atlantic parts of the empire, Canada, South Africa, Atlantic and Caribbean islands and such.

The Dominions certainly didn't spend anything like as much of their per capita GDP on defence even though they had a higher per capita GDP than the UK, so it does seem highly likely that they were a liability in many ways. The sheer number of aircrew and ground forces they sent probably more than made up for it in the air and in the mud, but even the Canadians didn't have a navy anywhere near as big as that of the UK in per capita terms, IIRC.

As an Australian it's pretty apparent that even our navy, which received the majority of defence spending between the wars, was nothing like the RN in per capita strength. I think Canada's defence spend was even smaller.

Some argue that the Dominions couldn't spend as much on defence because their newer and bigger nations required more spending on infrastructure and that they also had war debts from WW1 where they were arguably spending blood and gold on defending part of Europe and not themselves, but I haven't seen anyone go into that aspect in detail.

 

[TDM]

Because per capita counts are not actually very useful. Soviets had more tanks in 1941 than they had in 1945 both in absolute and in relative numbers. Didn't help them much in 1941.

What matters is the ability to get the material in places where you need them and to determine these places well enough in advance to actually manage the movement of stuff. Basically Soviets had enough stuff by like late 1943 and especially by the middle of 1944 to do what they wanted to do, while Germans didn't have that anymore and it have gradual compounding effect on the situation on the front. Each passing day, Soviets were getting better (and getting more stuff), while Germans were getting worse and getting less stuff.

And the difference with Barbarossa is that there is no difference. The relation was still the same. During 1941 Germans were also slowly loosing their capability while Soviets were growing it. And it is in the end exactly the reason why Germans lost in the East and then lost the whole war.

Hi yes I do get "truck per capita" is a very raw way of looking at this and do definitely do agree with all your points about efficient use, availability of fuel, lubricants, the German menagerie of captured and confiscated vehicles etc. And I also agree about the German capability being eroded from day one of Barbarossa. I also wrote another post about how not every mobilised red army soldier is riding around at the same time and so on.

So yes I do get your point here and agree with it


But given we regularly make the point that the Germany army was very definitely under mechanised and lacked vehicles for their logistics, For the Red army to operate so much better in this area but with proportionally half the vehicles does need some explanation other than they were just that much better. Because yes they got better, yes they spent time getting their logistics systems tuned, but they were not wizards


So we're saying

Barbarossa launched with 3.8m men and a motor pool of approx. 660k vehicles. (5.8 men per vehicle) And this is an army we regularly describe as being significantly under resourced when it came to motor vehicles

In may 1944 when the red army had a mobilised figure of 6.4m with from your source a motor pool of 540k (11.9 men per vehicle)

as another point of comparison

The British & Co army that topped out at 2.9m mobilised during WW2 apparently had a motor pool that increased to 1.5m* vehicles during the war (1.9 men per vehicle). Although I'd like better link than that to be honest

(I can't find a US army motor pool figure if anyone has it though I'll slot it in)

So to summarise yes I know per capita is a rough way to do this for all the reasons given and more, by that is a massive difference. I think we need a bit more of an explanation than the red army were just that good at this.





*this figure includes AVs but obviously they were by far teh minority

 

[Crueldwarf]

But given we regularly make the point that the Germany army was very definitely under mechanised and lacked vehicles for their logistics,

The issue with that argument is rather simple: this famous Band of Brother scene about 'ha-ha. Look at you, you have horses!' scene that underlying this whole debate is at its core a stupid joke and not an accurate assessment of Wermacht issues.

Basically, there was nothing wrong with having horse-based logistics. It worked for thousands of years. It was still working in WW2 and it could work even nowadays in a pinch (if anybody at that point had enough horses to actually manage an army level logistics of course).

Having more trucks or even fully mechanized support trail was and is definitely useful but it is in no way decisive factor. It is an enabler for other things to happen. And these other things do not exist or do not work, it doesn't matter if you have truck-based logistics or have not.

 

[TDM]

Sorry, I misremembered the exact numbers.

https://fat-yankey.livejournal.com/32078.html

Admittedly not on par with an academic source, but based on this post, all acquired motor vehicles in the USSR (captures, domestic production, and lend-lease) throughout the entire war totaled to about 745k vehicles (all vehicles, not just trucks). Of those, 352k were lost. The post seems to be based on some Soviet memorandums, but I cannot verify them (due to not speaking Russian and not having access to the memorandums in question. Some figures are also corroborated by other online sources too.

As for why, the Soviet Railways made up that difference. I mentioned in an earlier post that Germany neglected their railways from 1933-1939, which had ramifications for what rolling stock they had available by Barbarossa. The Soviets had something like 5-6 times as many locomotives as the Germans on the Eastern Front for most of the war, and they also had larger and better organized logistics and engineering troops that could regauge railways, repair infrastructure, and load/unload equipment closer to the last mile, thus making up for having less motorized vehicles.

Edit: This thread describes a lot of the issues the Germans had with the Soviet railway network: https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=203286

Basically, the Soviets had a low-speed, large train, long-distance rail network, whereas the Germans (and the rest of Europe) had a high-speed, small train, short-distance rail network. The size of the Eastern front and the sheer scale of war logistics meant that the German network was unsuited to logistics it need to sustain long-distance pushes, but the Soviet network was perfectly suited to do so. In addition, the larger prewar Soviet railway network meant that it had a larger base of skilled laborers from which to expand its railway corps.

The thing is with the railway system explanation is that yes a good railway system is very important for long distance fast movement and I can certainly see the Soviets will do a much better job rebuilding the Soviet railway system as they march west 1943-1944 than the Germans did when they matched east 1941-42, but a a couple of points

1). it stop at the stations you still need to move from the rail line to the front and the red army's front in 1944-45 was huge and very, very long

2). what happened when they get past their own border in 1944? Did they literally just keep building teh soviet railway into Eastern and central Europe? (don't get me wrong if anyone can it's teh Soviets in WW2, so if that's what they did then cool!

 

[TDM]

The issue with that argument is rather simple: this famous Band of Brother scene about 'ha-ha. Look at you, you have horses!' scene that underlying this whole debate is at its core a stupid joke and not an accurate assessment of Wermacht issues.

Basically, there was nothing wrong with having horse-based logistics. It worked for thousands of years. It was still working in WW2 and it could work even nowadays in a pinch (if anybody at that point had enough horses to actually manage an army level logistics of course).

Having more trucks or even fully mechanized support trail was and is definitely useful but it is in no way decisive factor. It is an enabler for other things to happen. And these other things do not exist or do not work, it doesn't matter if you have truck-based logistics or have not.

Look again yes I get it it's more complicated than that, yes I understand that, and if you really want we could I'm sure both write very long posts detailing the complications and difficulties the German logistics had. But since we have both done so in many previous threads and seem to be pretty much in agreement* on that I don't think we need to here.

Also to be clear I'm not disputing your figures here, and we can't dispute the movement happened.

But at the end of the day men need to be moved and the apparent difference is huge here, and 'the red army was just that much better' is not really an explanation since they also had to operate in harsh reality




*although I do to an extent disagree with you on the horses point in WW2, yes it worked for thousands of years but armies moved a lot slower and were a lot smaller for those thousands of years)

Interestingly I found this on the wiki article on comparative horse use sin WW2 for the Soviets:

Background[edit]​

Collectivization of agriculture reduced Soviet horse stocks from an estimated 34 million[18] in 1929 to 21 million in 1940.[25] Of these, 11 million were lost to advancing German armies in 1941–1942.[25] Unlike Germany, the Soviets had sufficient oil supplies but suffered from a shortage of horses throughout the war.[25] Red Army logistics, aided with domestic oil and American truck supplies, were mechanized to a greater extent than the Wehrmacht, but the Soviets employed far more combat cavalry troops than the Germans.[25] In total the Red Army employed 3.5 million horses.[17]

the cite [25] is "Dunn pg231", not vey helpful, do you think that is: Hitler's Nemesis: The Red Army, 1930-45

​

 

[historyfool]

As other already have mentioned, changing the gauge wouldn't have been that difficult. It's a question of priority and long term planning. Of which the latter was pretty much non existant in German high command. One of the reasons for that is that they knew they couldn't win a long war, so their aim was to keep it short. Which works fine if you manage to knock out your opponent at the first blow, but goes to shambles if you don't.

Actually the conversion of Russian railway lines by the Germans is a pretty impressive example of German logistic capability and its problems. From what I remember reading about it a few years back:

Conversion happened at a faster rate than Stavka considered possible and by 43 most lines under German control had been converted at least for a single track. But the conversion was only a bit over half as fast as German planning had anticipated and the routes converted operated at lower efficiency than anticipated for a number of reasons:

A lot hinged on reusing the material of the existing tracks. But often the track did not actually meet even official Soviet quality standards, e.g. simple nails instead of proper fasteners, less sleepers per km, shallow beds etc. That held up conversion as materials like fasteners were used up too fast by the railway batallions. It also meant that Germany did not dare to use many tracks at the same axleloads as in the rest of Europe.

Next was the use of coal: the local coal was of worse quality than anticipated. The Soviets had gotten around that by soaking it in oil and the facilities for that existed at many coaling stations. But ofc for the Germans, perpetually short on oil, that was not an option. Instead to achieve required effectiveness of their engines they had to mix 2 parts local coal with one part German coal. That meant they had to import tons of coal into a major coal producing region instead of using the trains for other stuff as planned.

The third big issue was the size of tenders. These were in German locomotives perfectly adequate for use throughout Europe. Not so in Russia, where tenders were larger and thus the distance between watering/coaling stations was too. The Germans needed to build either larger tenders or additional coaling stations. Both was done. But since the distance between existing watering/coaling stations were of course not twice as far as in Western Europe that meant effectively more fueling stops for trains with normal-sized tenders than in Western Europe, again reducing the capacity of a line.

As the roads in Russia were harder on trucks and horses than anticipated, the Railways were expected to transport more trucks instead of just loads for the trucks present in theater. Furthermore the railroads were now expected to supply places closer to the front originally to be supplied by road.

Hitler explicitely prohibited talking about a winter campaign during the planning stages for Barbarossa so the logistic planners could not officially dedicate resources to winter supplies or keeping frontline maintenance running that long.
The railroad material was not prepared for a Russian winter either, so an outright majority of locomotives broke down during the first major freezes.

And last but not least, the planners were too optimistic about the amount of Soviet rolling stock that would be captured intact. As the Soviet railways prioritised to get production facilities out of the way, they also pulled out that stock faster than the Germans anticipated.

Beyond the faulty parameter set, the biggest mistake was to default in assumptions to European "standards" to fill out the gaps in intelligence. Combined with too much trust in paper information (e.g. Soviet construction standards, amount of coal locally available) and the fact that German railway logistics too were asked to operate well beyond the limits they were designed for, this explains almost all the problems they had.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Look again yes I get it it's more complicated than that, yes I understand that, and if you really want we could I'm sure both write very long posts detailing the complications and difficulties the German logistics had. But since we have both done so in many previous threads and seem to be pretty much in agreement* on that I don't think we need to here.

Also to be clear I'm not disputing your figures here, and we can't dispute the movement happened.

But at the end of the day men need to be moved and the apparent difference is huge here, and 'the red army was just that much better' is not really an explanation since they also had to operate in harsh reality

Then we need to define again what we are talking about here.

If we debate was German logistics ability bad during WW2 then the answer is obvious 'no'. German logistics wasn't bad. Their operational goals were consistently unrealistic and unsupported by their logistical capability. The bad part here is not a logistics, it is the planning and goal setting.

If we debate about reasons why Red Army late war performance was noticeably better than early Wermacht performance then the important bit is how do we define 'better'? If we define it via 'USSR was winning the war while Germany was not' then it is again not really about logistics but a host of different factors that sometimes includes logistics and sometimes not.

And we go even narrower and debate why Soviets were managing to perform mobile warfare late war seemingly better than the Germans while having comparable resources in terms of logistical capacity. Then the answer would be is that Soviets learned the hard way to set up more realistic goals for their operations and planned accordingly. Soviets basically never tried anything on the scope of Fall Blau and especially not Barbarossa because they understood such thing as grandiose hail maries and they had their own share of these things (if at the smaller scale) early in the war and it innoculated Soviet war planning from being over-ambitious.

There is a reason for example why Soviets followed a staggered offensive pattern in 1944 and for the most part in 1945. Because their ability to support simultaneous pushes of the sufficient scale and power to break the German defenses was limited throughout the entirety of the war, so they had to focus and shuffle their assets (including logistics) around the front, preparing different groups of forces for their offensive operations at different times.

The pattern only broke when Soviet reached the Eastern Europe and more or less flipped Romania and Bulgaria around unrooting the German defenses in the Balkans radically. And they still had their fair share of troubles of advancing there even if German resistance was relatively minimal and they had now local help.

To put it simply: logistics is important but it is not alpha and omega of military strategy.

 

[TDM]

Then we need to define again what we are talking about here.

If we debate was German logistics ability bad during WW2 then the answer is obvious 'no'. German logistics wasn't bad. Their operational goals were consistently unrealistic and unsupported by their logistical capability. The bad part here is not a logistics, it is the planning and goal setting.

If we debate about reasons why Red Army late war performance was noticeably better than early Wermacht performance then the important bit is how do we define 'better'? If we define it via 'USSR was winning the war while Germany was not' then it is again not really about logistics but a host of different factors that sometimes includes logistics and sometimes not.

And we go even narrower and debate why Soviets were managing to perform mobile warfare late war seemingly better than the Germans while having comparable resources in terms of logistical capacity. Then the answer would be is that Soviets learned the hard way to set up more realistic goals for their operations and planned accordingly. Soviets basically never tried anything on the scope of Fall Blau and especially not Barbarossa because they understood such thing as grandiose hail maries and they had their own share of these things (if at the smaller scale) early in the war and it innoculated Soviet war planning from being over-ambitious.

There is a reason for example why Soviets followed a staggered offensive pattern in 1944 and for the most part in 1945. Because their ability to support simultaneous pushes of the sufficient scale and power to break the German defenses was limited throughout the entirety of the war, so they had to focus and shuffle their assets (including logistics) around the front, preparing different groups of forces for their offensive operations at different times.

The pattern only broke when Soviet reached the Eastern Europe and more or less flipped Romania and Bulgaria around unrooting the German defenses in the Balkans radically. And they still had their fair share of troubles of advancing there even if German resistance was relatively minimal and they had now local help.

To put it simply: logistics is important but it is not alpha and omega of military strategy.

The thing is it's not comparable, as I said it seems to be from you figures roughly half that of Barbarossa (but yes I think that narrower question is the one I'm most interested in here)

If the difference wasn't so great I wouldn't be raising the question at all because I do basically agree with your points certainly Germany 1941+ vs red army 1943+

I do think your point about leap frogging / staggered attacks attacks is a relevent one, but you still need logistics to follow the ongoing attack and to build up for the next one it can't truly be either/or. Also pretty quickly Germany was forced into staggered / sequential attacks anyway, but I agree never knew when to quit in terms of throwing even those forward.


P.S. what did you make of that "Dunn" cite?

 

[Crueldwarf]

I do think your point about leap frogging / staggered attacks attacks is a relevent one, but you still need logistics to follow the ongoing attack and to build up for the next one it can't truly be either/or

Ongoing operations are supported by a formation own logistical train that runs between the front and whatever place (places) was chosen to be a supply dump. While strategic logistical assets (so train traffic, centrally-controlled logistics units and so on) could be redirected for the different tasks. And if the planning was sound and operation was reasonably successful then whatever was accumulated during the preparation phase would be sufficient to achieve the goals and no extraordinary logistical traffic would be generated (or at least its amount would be limited to a sane degree) .

And it was the core of German issues with logistics. Their planning was unrealistic for their capacity of doing stuff and was hinged basically on the presumption of superior German will overcoming all the obstacles regardless of physical limitations of men and equipment. It was not a fault of poor exhausted German horse.

P.s what did you make of that "Dunn" cite?

As something that doesn't actually mean much without a serious amount of research backing this claim. Because how did they measured this 'greater extent of mechanization' is unclear. Because for example Soviets had basically nothing like German all-terrain half-track prime movers and these things were arguably incredibly important in supporting the ability of German mobile formations to punch way over their apparent weight.

Basically it is a generalized statement of some common wisdom and I'm not sure that there is an actual foundation besides that in it.

 

[cardcarrier]

Another big driver of the this was that hitler liked to see large numbers of divisions on his maps, and throughout the war was building new divisions instead of the ww1 practice of keeping the cores/shells and giving them replacements This as one could imagine created wild strength fluctuations in units depending on who their patrons were and of course made logistics dumb as a box of rocks