The Paradox of Germany’s WW2 COAL Problem 

TLDR: the Kohlenklau was running around stealing all the coal and turning it into butter

Spaniard here. My Mother who had lived through the Civil War and postwar periods and had had her fair share of ersatz products, always went mad at the sight of margarine. She would say: that rubbish is made from coal!......I always wondered where that idea came from........now I see she was right. No Wonder. She always was :)

"Mom, there is butter in my coal!" - German children, probably

Sooo... they needed more wagons, but more wagons congested the traffic therefore they should have doubled or tripled the railways. But railways need steel so they should first allocate everything for steel. In order to make steel you need coal and without wagons there's no coal and no steel...

Who would’ve ever thought that someone (TIK) could make the coal shortage issue in Germany during World War II - a fascinating topic? Well you did! Thank you!👍👍👍

Every German Landser (Soldier) had a "spreads" container to put on their bread ration The "spreads" consisted of ersatz (replacement) Butter was replaced by a margarine - troops complained of a heavy petroleum taste An artificial "honey" , a glucose syrup made from wood pulp was also issued

It also has to be said that the german coal wasn't the highest quality coal. Also a reason why in WW1 the german ships rarely reached their trial speed since the best coal got used for the trials but not during deployment.

Great job! Thanks :D There is joke in Poland: When You implement socialism in a desert, soon there will be shortage of sand.

Great content Lewis! No suggestions here, keep doing what you’re doing. We all love it

I live in a small German town at the gates of Munich. There is a "Spezialbrennstoff Raffinerie" around which was responsible to convert coal into pretty much ANYTHING. Petrol, Lubricants, Fertiliser, you name it. The strangest thing was "Petrol-Schnapps". In 1946 there were two waggons of highly pure petroleum left from the war, which was made from coal. Using it for fuel was considered a waste of this expensive liquid. So a food chemist sat down and made a pretty good Schnapps out of it. For Christmas 1946 every household in our town got one bottle of "Petroleum Schnapps". The food chemist later became pretty successful and famous by also inventing "Fanta" and then changing the formula for Cola (either Coca or Pepsi Cola, can't remember) and later creating a German branded Cola for like 20% of the price which is still produced today. My Grandpa worked there when they produced the Petroleum Schnapps. The factory back then was just being handed over from the US military to Texaco. It was hilarious how much security they had around that rather small refinery: Inside the compound worked German civilian workers under the supervision of an US officer. Then they had a big fence which was patrolled by US soldiers. Then came another big fence which was patrolled by German security and that is where my Grandpa worked. He still laughed his ass off when they got a new US officer and the officer demanded to remove the pictures of women from the outside of the lockers. He said they can put them inside but not outside the lockers. My Grandpa and his buddies did as told and under every picture there was an swastika ironed into the wood of the locker. The officer quickly gave permission to put the pictures back on the lockers. When they finally removed all the lockers my grandpa got one for our sheet. It still has the same picture of a woman from some 1946 magazine over the swastika.

TIK you might have been describing the New Zealand Railways. In the late 70’s the government imposed a price freeze on freight charges. After three years the system was choked with loaded wagons. Operating costs were skyrocketing and deferred maintenance and loss of customer confidence led to a situation from which the railway has never recovered. I’m a retired railwayman. Thank you for your amazing work.🇳🇿👍

Göring used up all of it to power his miniature train collection.

Glad to see Mierzejewski getting some recognition. Years ago I attended his classes ranging from the war economy and logistics, to the postwar Erhard era economy. His office was adjacent to the often cited Citino.

Hey TIK, just wanted so say this to you: Seriously appreciate the HIGH QUALITY Content from the endless of hours spending to read those books, edit those videos and constant citation of the sources. Yes, the average RU-vid consumer is not eager to consume a 28 minute long video, but hey, just amazing that you constantly keep uploading these interesting videos Greetings from 🇩🇪

While I love your work and I do not agree with the "Stick to the tanks"-brigade, I do feel like the quality of your economic videos is somewhat lower than that of the other videos, especially the Battlefront series which I await the next part of every few weeks. Instead of the usual verbal aggression I endeavored to summarize some of the things I find problematic and perhaps start a conversation on them. My first complaint would be about your selection of your sources- more accurately, the ones about the theory of economics. While the sources on the historic issues seem to be great, when it comes to general economic theories you seem to prefer citing economists of the Austrian School. While the importance of those economists is beyond question, the Austrian School as a whole is heavily criticized and mostly rejected by mainstream economists. Without going into too much detail, their assumption that almost all economic planning and state interference is bad regardless of context seems unsupported by empirical evidence. Citing them (and only them) on centrally planned economics or economic planning without mentioning this background info is bound to result in presenting a onesided narrative. In the Battlefront series you usually cite several sources, often ones that you disagree with or those that disagree with each other, and compare them while addressing potential misgivings about both and providing background info on the works and the authors. I find that doing the same when addressing these topics would be fantastic, and while I realize that is a lot of work, a short explanation of why you prefer one source over another would be nice. My second point would be that I feel like that unlike in the Battlefront series, where you are very cautious around drawing conclusions (which I feel is a rare and commendable trait in both the general public and researchers), you seem to be far more willing to draw sweeping conclusions without investigating alternative, plausible explanations for the same observed phenomenon in your economic videos. In this particular video, you assert that it was basically the central planning of the Reich’s economy that led to all of its material shortages. In other videos, you equate central planning and any economy that is not fully based on a free market with rapid and automatic economic ruin. The problem is that fully “free” economies do not exist- literally every country on Earth used and uses a mix of state and private ownership, and by the definitions you use (and a bit of a stretch) almost every economy could be described as “socialist”. That is especially true for war economies: literally every major power (and at least several minors too) used some level and form of centralized planning. The economy of a total war is a very special economic situation: total war does not make sense economically, military products have a single user (directly the army, indirectly the state) and have no value to consumers (and thus cannot be priced according to demand, since there is no private demand), they have to conform to norms and requirements that would be counterproductive in peacetime, certain resources, which are a non-issue in peacetime become rare, trade becomes difficult or impossible. Yet the nation has to maximize its production of those goods that enable it to fight and win the war. Any of the rare resources like oil or rubber or others that are consumed by the civilians outside of the essential level of consumption is lost to the war effort. The decision of IG Farben to not invest into synthetic oil production illustrates this point: while the investment would have been positive for the war effort, it would have been inefficient from a fully free-market standpoint, and state intervention became necessary. Even in the US, price controls were introduced and the usage of certain rare resources was drastically restricted, including that of oil. The strongest economy in the war felt the need to heavily restrict the resource usage of civilians. The form it takes can be debated, but I do not see an alternative to state intervention in the case of a war economy. Thus I find your argument that state control caused the oil shortage unfounded. I absolutely do not intend to defend the catastrophic decisions made during Soviet and especially German economic planning, but I would prefer to see a detailed analysis of the real problems instead of you simply concluding they were doomed to fail this hard without sufficiently backing up these assertions. Neither do I deny the existence of the problem of misallocation, but I find that the alternative you seem to suggest- to allow everybody to consume whatever they wanted- would be even less efficient in winning a war. I do not want to be a gatekeeper in this subject or to discourage your research into these very interesting topics (as a student of economics, I always want to read and see more on it), but I do feel like your argumentation here is sometimes not up to your usual high standards. Instead of the usual complaints looking to dismiss your ideas and opinions, I only hope to start a discussion. Your response would be highly appreciated. Sorry for the gargantuan comment! EDIT: I might not have made it clear enough, but I do assume you are acting in good faith. This is the reason I bothered to write this comment- I do believe a rational debate can happen here.

Now that you have more and more of these informational videos out, I am developing a much clearer picture of what was really going on in the war, and popping a few of those German stereotypes. I now find discussing the war with my Dad more and more frustrating, as he idolises German engineering and efficiency, and perpetuates myths about the Soviet hordes. He would prefer it if I were to "stick to tanks" too.

Fascists: At least we made the trains run on time. Traveller: This train is not on time, it is 24 hours late.

"I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!"

It's EXTREMELY good that you cite your references, that's professionalism in the handling of information. Thank you for your great productions!

It disturbs me to see a most clever men doubling down so hard on taking the wrong conclusions from right observations. The reichsbahn was in state control since the late 19th century. It fell under state control earlier then many other lines in other countries like the US or England and by the 1910's it had grown from a few struggling lines to probably the biggest, densest and most efficient piece of infrastructure in the world. It sustained it's high performance all through the first world War, operating on time even during the revolution. After the war it still improved it's network and also lead innovation in railway transportation fields with experimental high speed electric and diesel locomotives as well as standardization and improvements to it's tank engine fleet. For nearly half a century the German railway was state controlled and still cutting edge in efficient rail transportation in the world. During most of the 20's the reichsbahn also was heavenly influenced by unions of railway workers and basically one of the most socialist businesses in Western Europe. Then the Nazi's came around, defunded the system, broke up the unions and put their cronies in charge. And you want to tell us that not primarily the Nazi's were the problem but that a service run by the state for 50 years got state run? Oh, and maybe it would be good to point out the the prices for railway usage didn't decrease by a lot for private citizens, but for the big cooperations who where closer friends to the Nazi's as the left leaning railways. Big cooperation who used this system of corruption to increase their profit margin by cheaping out on railway workers payments. Maybe their is more of a problem with having big oligarchic structures interfere with your state, then with your state deciding some important services shouldn't be run to ever increasing profits.

I appreciate the amount of effort you put into your videos

Overall situation in Germany sounds as if you were reading about Soviet problems. Interesting coincidence?

I love how the worst and best books on the German railway have been written by Poles

From what my parents told me: It was not only the move to a non-price controlled economy it was also the firing of those who were not a Nazi. That way lots of stupid and lazy people came to power. Same again in east-Germany after the war. Then only communists were left in command. Starting again today. Strong preference of women and "diverse" for job openings.

Wow. So it seems like Germany invested into the military, diverting funds from infrastructure. Which in turn, the infrastructure couldn't support the expanded military because the infrastructure itself hadn't kept up with its own expansion because of lack of funds, leading to the downfall of the military (though sped up by other poor decisions compiling the problem further).

So the Germans got there first with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?

7:00 The bottom line is: The German tradition of killing grand-scale projects by perfectionism and bureaucracy (BER... *coughcough* Stuttgart 21... *coughcough* Elbphilharmonie) goes back to the mid-20th century.

Hmmmm yummy coal 😋

As a Pole 1st thought Ober Schlesien = Górny Śląsk region = lots of mines, population with strong miners' tradition and tons of coal. I remember as a kid in 1970 ties and 80 ties in whole Poland even at the shore we prepared in classes black miners' hats (from carton painted by us) for the 4th December "Barbórka" Saint Barbara (Patronne of miner's) Fête

So, steampunk Germany could have won WWII?

#ILoveEatingCoal

The principle reason for the shortage of coal within German was AH's implementation of his version of Großraum. Once France, Belgium and the Netherlands were occupied and were meant to now supply Germany with goods, they had to be supplied with raw materials. Half of France's coal came from the UK and nearly all of Belgium and the Netherlands did, which was now cut-off. Much of the increase in German coal production was exported to those three countries. Add in the increase in coal use for synthetic fuel and Germany very quickly had a coal shortage problem. Read Karl Haushofer to understand Großraum.

TIK, you sure are stressing that poor bookshelf.

TIK really does not have much understanding on economy and logistics. All he does in the end was repeating the libertarian talking point of "free market solves everything". However look at the history. It's not only Germany, but all of the major countries had moved their economy much more towards centrally planning during the war, not one country moved to more free market. TIK just ignored the reason of this in his videos. Keep in mind, during a total war, efficacy was not always a priory. As long as the war effort gets larger portion of resource compared to peace time, its acceptable. Essentially war time economy was sacrificing the civilian sector in order to boost war production. It doesn't matter that much if the civilian sector lost more than the increase of war effort. Another point is, free market only become efficient if the price actually reflect the true value of goods, which is not always the case. In an stable environment, when market condition keeps more or less the same, free market works better. But during the war, its not the same. Sudden change of supply chain conditions and panic of the public can seriously distort the price, and price adjustments takes time, often cannot keep up with the quickly changing condition. When the normal price system breaks down, free market no longer works. Why Germany suffered more from the logistic problems than the Allies? It was because it did not have a strong economy in the first place and didn't have access to many resource during the war. Not because Germany was a socialist country as TIK put, at least not the main reason. Running a "free market" during the war would not help at all.

So epic, I live in Duisburg and as you put old maps of Duisburg as your background, I even saw my house.

In WW2 my grandfather hid escaped Russian PoW's from the Germans on his farm in Limburg, Belgium. They escaped from the coalmines where they were forced to work , I guess the not so great distance to the Ruhr made our coal very wanted by "de Pruus"...

[Desire to eat coal intensifies]

Wow, these guys made oil, butter, soap out of coal. I wouldn’t be surprised if I hear about a coal sauerkraut at this point

I bought both Volume I & II ... and I too am blown away by both the research and presentation!

#eatthecoal

There was a song about this: Fuel if you think it's over, it's just begun.

Comment 2: nationalization alone is not allways the problem. Example from my own Sweden and our railways/roads: the maintenance was mainly nationalized right thru the end of the 80's. It worked. Kind of. There were problems, such as lack of cost controll. So in the 90's, the whole thing went private. And it is an ongoing joke. The railways are ridicously worn out. The traffic has gone up, but none to little efforts have been done to accomodate that. And maintenance are made after the principle "whoever offers to do it to the lowest price get the job - who cares about quality?" The roads are no better: in 2008, it was stated that it would not matter how much mkney was thrown on the roads, they were in such a state that it could not be fixed anytime soon - there were simply not enough skilled labour and machines in the country for that. My point: whatever a country does - the main thing is to take care and put the effort in to do it well. Because both nationalization and privatization can go horribly wrong.

Putting the socialism into national socialism. Seizing and reforming the economy around political delusions.

if state planning is so bad, explain the centuries of success of the British navy.

Dear TIK. I have watched through your entire video. And all I have to say is this. Amazing, get wrecked, well done. The evidence of everything you've said, shown and quoted in your video. Is out there and referenced in all of your videos. Even Wiki was made to agree with you, that most holy of sanctions of trustable information. And I didn't know you could make butter from coal. Looking forward to more of your videos. The get wrecked part, was for your so called critics. Just wokest screeching and screaming and attacking your character because they have no argument.

So the coal shortage was a problem of logistics. I'm guessing after 1940 that they made sure to never have logistics failures again.

If Germany had won in the European theatre then during the ensuing cold war with America. The joke would have been; in America you buy car made with steel in Socialist Reich you buy steel made with car.

Central state planing and intensive focusing on the army, what did you expect. They simply didn't spend enough of their infrastructure. And they spent too much on their armed forces.

It's funny because Germany is still buying coal power from Poland, then claiming they have more green energy than it's neighbors.

Exellent work as ever tik. I've found coal quality to be a factor in all this mess too, as you quotes tropani where heads it took 5 times more brown coal that hard coal to produce gasoline it also damaged the boilers and furnaces that used it (needing more steel and iron to repair them). Its often a massive complaint found in German naval documents too as it ruined ship boilers. If you need 5 times more coal you need 5 times more rolling stock to move it. Although that's just one type of freight in and amongst the whole lot

Yes! More economy videos. The best kind.

27:01 "It was the misorganised (sic) central planning, not the coal shortage, that crippled the Reichsbarn" This is an argument against misorganised central planning, rather than central planning itself. If they introduced the system in 1934, and they knew it had problems, why did they not try to improve it in all that time?

I was aware of massive "shortages" during WWII but coal in Germany ???? ! Very interesting video as usual !

The real problem was that they were spending too much on their military. It doesn't matter the economic system, capitalism, communism, fascism, they all would fail. You can't divert that many resources to the military without shortages everywhere.

"The most progressive enterprise in the world"

So basically, what you are saying is that the Nazi party committed their atrocities so that Santa would keep giving them coal for being so bad.

You make history clear and enjoyable. 👍🏻

Who stole Germany's coal. I did but don't tell anyone.

Concerning the shortages of raw materials and more specifically wood. There is not only the problem of building new infrastructure, but this is aggravated by the need to replace existing infrastructure like rail lines, buildings, bridges destroyed by bombing.

Shortage is not an issue but integral part of our reality. There are finite resources and infinite wishes... Capitalism is build around shortage thus fluctuating prices and free market.

I'm done with Soviet Food jokes Time for Nazi coal food jokes

Hey tik absolutely LOVE the content, keep it up man. :))

WOW!!! Amazing episode. Thank you so much. I’d venture to say that it was even the best I’ve see so far. I’ll make sure to get my paws on that book you recommend

As someone who's been timed via stopwatch by management both overtly and (attempted covertly), it's an idiotic process for the most part. Management typically doesn't understand that slowdowns that are unavoidable can happen and they're most certainly not interested in knowing why. I'm for the German worker having protested that practice.

one of the things you have to realize is that the German coal was of extremely low quality even the hard coal had a much lower quality compared to the high quality coal found in South Wales or Pittsburgh when it comes to use in Steam turbines like those used for generating electricity, this had a major impact in both wars in WW1 this can be shown as once the High Seas Fleet ran out of the high quality coal they imported from the UK prior to the war none of their vessels were able to get to their design speed usually being 2-3 knots slower and having to spend much more time in maintenance due to the damage the poor quality coal had on the machinery. While in WW2 this had a major impact in the amount of electricity produced by their power-stations.

Nazi Leaders: 'How are we going to win this war when we lack every necessary resource?' Hitler: 'Smells like team spirit'

Holy fuck Sowell and Mises You're my new go-to source for history

The whole coal nicking thing reminded me of a documentary of the black market in France 44-45 where almost 2 divisions worth of AWOL GI's where stealing and even raiding supplies. You may find that one interesting to look into;)

I don't like the way you present. You start with what seems to be a presentation of history, but then you end up with what seems to be a heavily ideologically driven message, where the historical example only is meant to prove your point. If you wanted to properly present history, you would give your viewers the facts and let themselves make their own conclusions. I really disliked the sermon at the end of this.

Interesting comment about the paper shortage. I've read of Germany encountering the same problem in the first world war, with generals and their staff having to scribble in the margins of orders

Great economic analysis of socialistic disaster. I drive semi truck & know the urgency of dispatch & supply problems by private firms. Can't imagine central planning making the millions of minute by minute decisions made by private managers & shippers.

Germany was the one place where kids would ask Santa for coal.

Didn't the United States also implement price controls and even had rationing for certain items. I remember seeing both American and German ration stamps in my grandfather's effects after he passed away. I also recall reading a novel set in WW2 in high school (I can't recall the title) where the protagonist complained that everyone had jobs but there were no goods to buy. To wit: "Everyone had money, but nothing to spend it on." The US also had scrap metal drives. It is mentioned in the movie "It's A Wonderful Life." This movie was made right after the war, so the audience would have been familiar with the drives.

18:11 I'm getting flashbacks to Swedens feminist snow plowing strategy.

my favorite video game quote is "It takes a strong man to deny what's in front of him. And if the truth is undeniable, you create your own." it is from the game "Spec Ops: The Line"

Do you plan to make a video on the central planning in Japan ? Or is there a lack of English documentation. It sounds like a very interesting subject.

So you are saying it takes socialism to screw up any organization completely.

I would love TIK to maybe take a look at the shortages and bottlenecks in the modern economy, like the chip shortage or the inflationary rise of commodities over the last few months. It seems very similar to the "What causes Depressions or Recessions" video he did about monetary policy and the capital goods industries.

Hi TIK, your comment on the shortage of wood affecting the ability to construct railways due to wood being used to make the railway ties (or sleepers as they're known in the UK) is interesting as Concrete sleepers were developed during WW2 by France and the UK precisely because of a shortages in wood. Unsure about what Germany did and I have no sources, I just know a lot about railways :)

1:00 - 1:05 lol! The POL situation was so desperate especially near the end where "holzvergaser" (wood gasifiers) were used to power vehicles and tanks! There are pictures of these gasifier even on tanks (Panzerwrecks 2 pp.44-45) such as Pz. II and apparently 2-2.5kg of wood equated to ~ 1L of petrol.

Ya, well done. Makes sense about the breakdown of their infrastructure and why the regime would blame the "coal thief" as a way of deflecting blame for the break down. Also explains the extreme reliance on horses as a mode of transportation which in itself creates it's own logistical challenges. And remind everyone that the US created over 800k 2.5 ton trucks(the famous deuce and a half's) for the war effort.

The german supply-situation was already strained in peace time. When the german forces arrived in vienna (Anschluss, March 1938) they not only took power and hunted jews and political opponents but also went on a huge shopping spree. Buying everything that was short in supply in the „Reich“.

Another very informative video, this is why I watch. In the book the German War, A Nation Under Arms 1939-45 by Nicholas Stargardt, it talks about all the shortages that the citizens endured, mostly coal for heat, food and even clothing. This book also contains some information on the black markets that sprang up to sell these items and the rampant theft of the coal by the party officials. It only talked a little bit about the transportation issue, but this video made the 'why' so much clearer. Thank you.

If they did not use so many rail cars to transport civilian jews to death camps they could have relived their transportation problem.

I wait for each Monday Evening for TIK's vids... the only good thing about Mondays xDDD

I thought you were referring to IG Farbin's disastrous synthetic oil production program from glancing at the title but wow. This is interesting...

Tik looks waaaaay too happy at the end of the video. :D Gee, it's almost as if economics and logistics are somehow more important than tanks! :o

TIK - This is some seriously good scholarship. Well done! I read about the rolling stock issue in Adam Tooze's book The Wages of Destruction, but you put the last piece together for me with the four year plan and central planning with the lowering of prices for transport leading to increased wear and tear on the Reichsbahn rolling stock. Well done sir! Keep up the great work!

"I can't believe it's not butter." To the 100th level!

Now my mentions will blow up with "that's not real socialism."

first

The real teachable lesson isn't so much an argument of state v private rail ownership, but that such a vital infrastructure requires significant investment in servicing facilities, maintenance, personnel and even with artificial manipulating of demand has no appreciable impact on the capacity for trains to run.

TIK... how many passenger cars were built in the US during WW2? You are so focused on your ideological point, you cherry pick facts to prove your arguments.

What isn't mentioned in this piece is the role of the Reichsbahn in transporting millions of Jews to death and concentration camps, even towards the end of the war, when train transport was desperately needed to transport troops and ammunition supplies to the Wehrmacht at the fronts. Each and every Jew transported by the Reichsbahn had to pay the cost of their transportation to Auschwitz and the other camps.

Oh boy a new TIK video about resources and logistics! "They had so much coal they even ate it" Ahhh Germany.

Hello. I just wanted to mention that in addition to your exelent imformation and argument your video quality is also constantly and considerably improving, great work on that. Thank you very much!

Stick to tanks? Yes, I have requested the form for an information request pertaining to the delivery and production schedules of said tanks.

Fantastic to learn about the much neglected economic history of the war and to see that Hitler's socialism is not just an internet meme but was a real thing that had very serious real world consequences.

1:55 twenty-two tons of brown coal or 4.5 tons of hard coal to produce one ton of gasoline. But it takes under two tons of coal to make one ton of methyl alcohol, or methanol. Methanol is what the Germans should have been using in place of gasoline as their standard vehicle fuel (and di methyl ether derived from methanol in place of diesel). Yes, methanol has only about half the range of gasoline but that's largely compensated for by being able to make much more than twice as much methanol as you can of gasoline. Methanol is also much higher octane (thus also solving the German problem of low-quality low-octane gasoline which especially hurt them in aerial combat). THIS is the key step the Germans missed that could well have transformed everything. Along with using Romanian natural gas (which was just being flared off unused) to make methanol even more cheaply and easily.

why didnt they just go to the gas station