Chris Madel

within the Reich and within particularly Germany.

So motorization unquestionably has been vital for the success in France.

Those leading Panzer divisions are really an all-arms mechanized formation equipped with fantastic comms.

This is a mass use of radios.

But the actual lack of mechanisation in Germany is a massive, massive problem.

And I think it's worth us just honing in on one of the individuals within the Wehrmacht trying to sort all this out.

This is a largely forgotten character today, Major General Adolf von Schell.

who has the grand title of General Plenipotentiary of Motor Vehicles within the War Economics and Armaments Office of the OKW, the Oval Commando de Wehrmacht, the Combined General Staff of the German Armed Forces.

And it's his job to try and sort it out.

But

Of course, Germany is experiencing vehicle shortages now at the end of 1940, beginning of 1941, because of the problems of the 1920s and 1930s and because of the economic decline and for very obvious reasons.

You know, motor vehicles are still quite new post-First World War.

And the great period of expansion is the 1920s, first and foremost.

And then the 1930s, when they're all quite, you know, Germany's strapped, of course, for cash in the first part of the 1920s and then playing catch up.

And it's the catch up that's the problem.

So also the tariff war that followed from 1930 onwards with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

has ensured that very, very few US cars, which are being mass produced in great numbers, are actually coming into Europe.

So they have to build their own cars because there aren't any Model T Fords and Buicks and Chevrolets and all the rest of it.

So they have to develop their own motor vehicle industry.

And again, for the same reason, that's quite difficult to just get up and running from a standing start, particularly when you're late for the party.