View Single Post
Old 11-10-2017, 02:16 PM   #2866
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Sure, they captured Baku and the oil. But the Reds blew up the oil fields and the Brits wont let the Germans ship any oil home. Trucking the oil to Germany overland uses more oil than it delivers and the trains tracks aren't in place yet!
The Germans don't remotely have the trucks for that. One way to ship oil back to Germany from the Caucasian region is to mend the pipelines from Baku to Batumi, on the Black Sea, and Grozny to Tuapse, also on the Black Sea. Then you use barges to transport it round the northern coast of the Black Sea to the mouth of the Danube, and then up-river to Germany.

The Soviets used that route, but went up the Don or the Dnieper rivers. They also shipped oil from Baku across the Caspian Sea and up the Volga into the centre of European Russia. That made cutting off Volga transport a sensible thing for the Germans to do, and, hey, Stalingrad is on the most accessible part of the Volga!

If the Germans of this world control the Caspian and the Volga, they can use that route into Russia, and then use the railway routes from there back to Germany. But it's easier to take the oil by barge to Sevastopol or Odessa on the Black Sea and use the railway from there back to Europe.
johndallman is offline   Reply With Quote