Despite the US Army abandoning the idea, the British Cyclist Corp was active for much longer and saw service in WWI
Bicycles filled an important gap in the transportation infrastructure, and they employed an approach where groups of soldiers would move many miles per day by rotating between trucks, bicycles, and walking on foot. Sleeping was not part of a soldier's schedule in these blitz invasions, and he'd presumably get some shut eye on the back of a truck or in a field during a very brief pause. This was also made successful by excellent planning, and maybe drugs.
Also, I heard that German soldiers appropriated a bunch of bicycles during their occupation of the Netherlands.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/blitzed-norman-ohler?...
I'm basing this on a youtube video I once watched by an MRE review channel, where he kept referring to the additive as "Kola".
That “a bunch” is really in the “six zeros” range. There’s an episode of 99% invisible that tells the story of bikes in the Netherlands and mentions this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/de-fiets-is-niets/
[0] translates roughly to "Give me my bicycle back"
Not that surprising since the French and especially the British armies were motorized to a much higher degree than the German army (generally German infantry divisions still heavily relied on horses).
The French had at least 3 times as many trucks as the Germans (400 000 vs 120 000). Without the equipment looted from Czechoslovakia France would've had more tanks as well. The Germans had a significant advantage in the air (more/better anti-air and fighters).
There's a great scene at the end of the Band of Brothers miniseries where the victorious American soldiers drive their trucks past a column of surrendered Germans with horse drawn wagons. We're fortunate that the Nazis never quite got the hang of industrial scale assembly line mass production.
Through the lens of "Germany doesn't have enough fuel" a lot of Hitler's decision making makes a lot more sense. Lots of people talk about what would have happened if Hitler had tried to take Moscow instead of deciding to drive south towards Baku. The speculation goes that if Hitler had taken Moscow, they could have won. Well, no they couldn't: they didn't have enough oil to win the war. Baku is where all the oil is, so if Germany had been able to take Baku, it's possible that they'd be able to win. Well, they weren't able to take Baku, so they lost the war. It also explains North Africa; if the Axis were able to take Egypt, it would have been relatively easy to continue the drive on to the oil fields in the Middle East. (closing the Suez Canal would have effectively cut off the British colonies there)
Then you've got the supply problems on the eastern front. From what I understand the Stalingrad airlift failed not because they couldn't carry enough stuff on the planes, but because they couldn't get the stuff from the rail heads to the air strips.
It's very under appreciated just how much oil impacted the war.
I'm not sure they really had enough to industrial capacity, it's not like they were able to manufacture that many tanks either.
But yeah it doesn't matter because they wouldn't have had enough oil anyway as you say.
> Lots of people talk about what would have happened if Hitler had tried to take Moscow instead of deciding to drive south towards Baku
Had the USSR not supplied Germany with massive amounts of oil and other raw materials during 1939 and '40 (which they did for some bizarrely deranged reasons), that likely wouldn't have been a problem in the first place. After Poland, Germany only had enough fuel to last a few months, so it would've been very hard for them to successfully invade Norway and France without Stalin bankrolling them..