GDG- Re: CS supply

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Jack Lawrence writes:

>>>>As I understand it, the South had ample supplies during  this period, but 
they lacked a means to gather it, centralize it, and  disribute it. Nor the 
recognition of this flaw.>>>
Jack - a couple things:
 
1) Yes they had ample raw materials for making war save lead.  They  imported 
lots of lead.  They also had more than enough food to feed both  the military 
and the civilians as the Deep South grew more crops then than did  the 
Midwest (1860 Census) on a couple levels.
 
2) They had the means to gather it and their railroad system largely  
reflected that.  Coupled with the river system, upon which even more stuff  was 
shipped (you would not believe how much is still shipped by America's rivers  even 
today!), they had the system in place to get crops to market pretty well -  
and those crops to the world via New Orleans.
 
3) Centralization?  When much of your revolt is based on libertarian  
principles, that is anathema politically, so they did not do it to the extent  they 
needed to do it to win their revolt.  In some cases they did when they  created 
their war department and its several supply bureaus and then went to  
impressment of goods and materials from a population increasingly hoarding  things 
due to the devaluing of the currency and hyper-inflation.  But they  never did 
centralize that most critical of systems to help their war effort -  the 
railroads.  The North did.
 
4) In terms of distribution, they had that for a time and it worked OK so  
long as the growing scarce locomotives and cars were returned empty to get more  
stuff to ship to the front.  Increasingly, some generals (especially Joe  
Johnston) used trains as mobile warehouses only of-loading supplies when  needed. 
 This, in turn, tied up rolling stock and engines.  They  already lacked 
enough cars and engines as is; this just made it worse.
 
Then as the railroads wore down, even the removing of rails from trunk  lines 
to replace worn rails on main lines wasn't enough.
 
5) The CS government, including those in middle management and heads of  
certain supply bureaus, did indeed recognize what was wrong and certainly voiced  
their arguments to Pres. Davis about them.  He was often simply not  listening 
- after all, he kept the inept Commissary head Lucius Northrop in  place for 
as long as he did as well as the equally inept Sec. of the Treasury  
Christopher Memminger.  Davis was not a man to show flexibility or to fire  those that 
were his pals.  
 
Besides the lack of capacity to feed both the home economy and the war  
economy, they still were able to do some things right for their cause in terms  of 
supplying both - but overall there was simply not enough capacity.   There was 
also not enough government intervention into what needed to be done on  some 
levels (read libertarianism again) and it was this lack of political will  
that may have caused them the most damage overall.
 
Greg Biggs
 



Like the Axis in WWII. they just did not get  it.


Other than never going to a full war scale production, the Germans did get  
it.  Hitler lied to his industrial and military people by telling them  there 
would be no war before 1942 and everything they planned for was geared to  that 
time-frame.  So when things began in 1939 they were not yet ready as  they 
would have been in 1942 on a number of levels.  Unlike the  Confederates, the 
Germans did centralize and nationalize everything towards the  war.  Albert 
Speer's memoir goes into this.
 
The Japanese were in full war production before Pearl Harbor and kept right  
on going.  They suffered from two severe raw materials shortages however -  
oil and steel.  They solved the first by taking the Dutch East Indies (but  then 
tied it down to a very long and vulnerable to submarines supply line back  to 
Japan) and never really did solve the second for their steel mills never got  
all the raw materials they needed.  It was enough to give them arguably the  
best navy in the world in 1941 that was very cutting edge on a number of 
levels  (save radar) and a very fine air force too.  But once they started taking  
losses they were hard-pressed to replace them, especially bigger ships like  
carriers.  I forget the actual figure (I could look it up) but in 1944  Japan 
built/converted something like 3 carriers while America built 15 (or maybe  
more) Essex class fleet carriers.
 
However, other than the massive naval losses (sea and naval air power) by  
1945, Japan still retained a very formidable armed forces, which certainly led  
to the decision to drop two A-Bombs rather than invade.  Iwo Jima and  Okinawa 
also helped in that decision.
 
Greg Biggs



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