.

Due to an abundance of both documentaries and movies showing the German Army during the Second World War, a myth developed about its high motorization. The contemporary propaganda and advertisement posters with their action scenes of rushing motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles traversing muddy fields, and attacking tanks help to support this misconception. So let us look closer at the real situation.

At the beginning of the war, the German Army had around 100 divisions on its roster; 53 were activated. Its elite was formed by 10 completely motorized divisions – 6 Panzer and 4 Light Divisions. Up to 1943, an infantry division had on its roster only 942 motor vehicles; 1,133 horse-drawn carriages and 5,375 horses. By the end of the war, this ratio changed to the detriment of the motor vehicles, because of the critical shortage of fuels and lubricants. The unbelievable number of used horses is supported by reports on their losses in Russia. Due to wounds, overloading, hunger, and frost over 1.5 million horses died there. It can be safely stated that the German Army was mostly dependent on horse traction and its motorization never exceeded 20%.

As was already stated in the Introduction, the German industry was constantly fighting shortages of raw materials and convertible currencies. The motor vehicle manufacturers were working under the same constraints and were manufacturing a huge number of models in small production runs. The Army was suffering a serious lack of motor vehicles, and those it had formed a curious collection. In 1938, the Army had over 100 types of trucks, 52 types of passenger cars, and 150 types of motorcycles. This situation was clearly untenable. Such a great variety of types needed a great quantity of spare parts and special jigs, etc. The demands on warehousing, shipping and servicing grew enormously and in the end this led to a limited battle readiness. The Army tried to solve this situation by drastically lowering the number of types in its Schell Programm from 1938. The program limited the number of manufactured passenger cars from 52 to 19, and from 113 to 30 for trucks. At the beginning of 1939, the Army tried to solve the lack of motor vehicles by requisitioning about 16,000 civilian motor vehicles, but these proved to be unsuitable for the demanding military use. At the beginning of 1940, the deliveries of new vehicles could not even replace the vehicles written off, so that the vehicle pool of the German Army was decreasing even before the fighting in the West began.

All those organizational improvements never did solve the problems with the spare parts. Especially on the Eastern front, all Army units suffered their great shortage up to the last days of the war. The main reason was the great vehicle losses, and subsequent enormous demands on new vehicles production. This naturally led to curtailing the production of the spare parts...
...SAMPLE
 

CAMOUFLAGE COLORS IN ACTION  |  DEVELOPMENT OF GERMAN CAMOUFLAGE PATTERNS IN THE YEARS 1939–45  |  TABLE OF COLOR HUES  |  COLORS ON ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT