Modern armies require vast amounts of rubber-for vehicle tires, fan belts, hoses, surgical gloves, etc.
Germany had no access to tropical rubber-growing regions in WWII (as far as I know), so were they able to develop synthetic rubbers good enough?
I know that natural rubber (produced from the sap of a brazilian tree) has some excellent properties, and the loss of Malaya (to the Japanese Army) in 1941 was a major blow to the US and British-although some natural rubber was produced in Brazil and Central America. The US developed “butyl rubber” as a substitute, but I undestand it was not as good as the natural stuff.
Germany had a very advanced chemical industry, and excellent chemists-were they able to make acceptable synthetic runbbers?
By the way, is there still a market for natural rubber today? Or have synthetics taken over?
Yes, Germany was able to (and did) produce synthetic rubber. Just read the wikipedia article.
However, I opened this thread out of curiosity : did your question came from playing “Hearts of Iron” ( a WWII game where obtaining and/or producing rubber is major issue) by any chance?
That general Wikipedia article about the history of synthetic rubber surprisingly only glances off the notoriety of the German efforts to produce it during WWII. Auschwitz III was a huge part of the whole “camp” - technically, a huge subcamp in the constellation of locations around the original camp, all using slave labour, together forming a geographically sprawling organisation - and is best known for its synthetic rubber plant, hence its alternate name of Monowitz-Buna.
AFAIK, not a single gram of synthetic rubber was ever produced there. In no small part this was because of the courage of the inmates/workers who, if not actively sabotaging things, made sure things were never up and running.
Natural rubber is a major export of Thailand. Still is of Malaysia too, I believe. Although some rubber is grown in northeastern Thailand, 83% is grown in the South, which is full of rubber plantations. You’ll see the rubber lying out in sheets, looking like little bath mats. And those places stink! Tapped rubber smells akin to dirty diapers.
Also, I recall the gas rationing during the war was actually to cut down on tire wear and not to save fuel, the Axis powers having control of the world’s rubber supply. Am I remembering correctly?
The Axis powers took control of the largest pre-war source of natural rubber, it is true. What they never had, however, was a reliable way to move mass quantities from Europe to Asia or vice-versa. Allied sea control was never seriously threatened in the Indian or South Atlantic oceans, and a German blockade-runner had to face one of those two routes. Actually, if they went west from Southeast Asia, they had to run a gantlet through entirely Allied-control seas. There were some U-Boats and I-Boats that made the trip, and a small number of blockade runners and some auxiliary cruisers, but these represented minuscule quantities of trade. Land routes weren’t any better.
My aunt and mother-in-law survived Auschwitz by being assigned to Monowitz.
In WW1, the Germans got cut off from all rubber supplies. Meaning they had to do things like insulating power and telephone lines with tarred paper. It caused no end of problems for the Germans.
Because of this, the Germans made inventing synthetic rubber a priority, and they succeeded. By the time WW2 started, the Germans had good synthetic rubber.
The US however hadn’t put much effort into this, and when WW2 broke out, the Japanese occupied most places that the US got rubber from. This caused some trouble. The US had to put quite a large effort into inventing and manufacturing new and better synthetic rubber during the war.
Since Germany and Japan were allies, did Germany get any natural rubber from them?
They were allies on paper, but there was never much communication or help between them. For one thing, they had no safe way to send goods to each other. A few submarines made the trip, but that’s a long shot from transporting industrial quantities of Stuff.
Er-hum. Post #6.
they also bought and stockpiled a lot of rubber shortly before the war. I have seen claims to the effect that the Russian decision to be intermediary in the sale (or maybe sell from their stockpile, or something to this effect) was one of the factors that allowed the German invasion of Russia to physically take place.
Was German artillery still mounted on rigid steel wheels in WW2?
I also wonder if the lack of rubber (for truck tires) was a factor in the German defeat in Russia.
The Germans had to use horse-drawn transport, for much of their supply routes in Russia-which meant that the fast Panzer columns had to wait for horse-drawn supplies This had to have slowed them down-imagine, you are commanding a panzer column-and you have a chance to get behind a Russian unit, encircle it, and destroyit…but you have to wait for horse-drawn wagons to bring you spare parts and fuel!
Had the German Army had adequate trucks, their offensive might not have stalled out in December, 1941 (within sight of Moscow).
Horse-drawn wagons are NO way for a Panzer-based army to fight!
No. Lack of access to petroleum sources was a hugely greater constraint than rubber. But the core cause of the German defeat in Russia is that they simply took on more than they could chew; if they don’t win by the end of 1941 they don’t win at all, simple as that. And they had enough rubber and fuel for that period.