Full mobilisation of the German war economy from the start

[Politician01]

I recall reading that until Stalingrad German factories were running only at 16 hours a day and that on weekends they were shut down.

And Speer wrote in his Erinnerungen that had they started to organize the German war economy from the start of the war they could have reached 1944 production levels allready in 1942.

So what happens if Germany starts to fully mobilize its war production from late 1939/early 1940 onwards?

[ljadw]

to have a bigger war production in september 1939,more workers were needed,more factories were needed,and more raw materials and machine-tools were needed .
And I doubt that all this was available in september 1939

[phylo_roadking]

And I doubt that all this was available in september 1939

In September 1939...before any other nation with a sizeable industrial capacity and workforce was occupied, or their Jewish populations shipped East to be divided up for slave labour or death - it means FAR fewer German workers in all industries being called up into the reserve divisions

[Exlurker]

And I doubt that all this was available in september 1939

In September 1939...before any other nation with a sizeable industrial capacity and workforce was occupied, or their Jewish populations shipped East to be divided up for slave labour or death - it means FAR fewer German workers in all industries being called up into the reserve divisions

Errm...? Czech armaments industry? Not inconsiderable, and definitely played a major part in the decision to move ahead with Fall Weiss.

Just sayin'

To the OP of this thread: As others have already stated...if they put all of the existing armaments production facilities onto a round the clock schedule; this while continuing to fully fund (materials/labor) the massive historical infrastructure projects (plant and tooling), then they will quickly run out of steel, coal (productive/transport capacity), and they will also have no soldiers in the field.

Things don't happen in a vacuum my friend.

[Carl Schwamberger]

I'd recommend folks who raise this question go read Tooze 'Wages of Destruction' and John Ellis 'Brute Force'. Both tend to contradict the people, like Speer, who claim there was a large unused capacity in German industry 1939-42.

[stg 44]

I'd recommend folks who raise this question go read Tooze 'Wages of Destruction' and John Ellis 'Brute Force'. Both tend to contradict the people, like Speer, who claim there was a large unused capacity in German industry 1939-42.

But there were large resources in manpower and raw materials that was tied up building factories and other capital resources that were ultimately never completed. Also the Germans entered the war with major administrative chaos.
Have the Nazis actually complete a their labor and economic mobilization plans prior to September 1939 and Germany can achieve peak efficiency far earlier. It wasn't until about June 1940 that they actually worked out who was supposed to issue production orders and who commanded labor. It took until the end of 1941 and the rise of Albert Speer that the economy was finally centralized under one authority, Göring was marginalized administratively, and the military were forced to stop constantly ordering upgrades to models, which was badly reducing efficiency in production.

[LWD]

One of the problems was the demand for skilled labor and the fact that much of the skilled labor became part of the military. Coal production is a classic example of this.

[BDV]

One small example is that of a polish factory whose workers had been shipped to gostarbeit in the german factories (expanded presumably using french equipment), where the [new Aryan] owners asked for skilled, and failing that unskilled jewish labourers.
.
How was that efficient one wonders - with now idle and upset french labourers, upset polish workers and upset and likely unskilled jewish workers. "Full mobilization" means:
1. Taking Horthy's sage advice, sprinkling nazi pixie dust over the jewish minority and stopping the shortsighted self-foot shooting antisemitic policies and
2. Leaving things mostly how they were when Nazis took over in the ocuppied lands, with the difference mostly consisting of the final factory products being stamped "Exclusively for Wehrmacht use", instead of the corresponding national armies.

[gurn]

IF the women were put to work it may have helped production and still kept the military numbers up.Hoever this would not make up for the damage caused by killing millions of your own people.

[Exlurker]

IF the women were put to work it may have helped production and still kept the military numbers up.Hoever this would not make up for the damage caused by killing millions of your own people.

As much as was possible (within the context of the extant situation), "the women" were already fully engaged in the German economy. They played a huge part in the domestic agriculture industry...not as "sexy" as "Rosie the Riveter" perhaps, but indespensible nonetheless.

As I said upthread...things don't happen in a vacuum.

Germany was an agrarian society when Hitler and "crew" inherited it in 1933. Massive efforts were made to "rationalize" domestic agriculture under the Nazi's, but pulling 3 million men away from their farms (for service in the Wehrmacht) negated any tangible advances...as did the lack of any surplus productive capacity with respect to motorization/mechanization of agriculture. So the men went to war and the women stayed at home, raised the kids, tended the oxen, and maintained the fields of potatoes, sugar beets, turnips...etc, etc.

In North America, agriculture WAS increasingly mechanized...this freed "Rosie" from the homestead.

Another poster mentioned "Wages of Destruction".

It would behoove you to buy this book and read it.

That is all.

[Carl Schwamberger]

To put a violent spin of Thread drift on here in the hope of learning something usefull...

....
Germany was an agrarian society when Hitler and "crew" inherited it in 1933. ...

I had assumed, from some stray bits of evidence that Germany was at or near the same point in changeover from a agrarian to industrial labor employment. That is somewhere near 50%/50% or 60/40 in favor of industrial labor. What was the actual fact, or are you using some other measurement?

Thanks

[Gorque]

My understanding is that only 1 in 4 were employed in agriculture within Germany at the start of the interwar period, with the numbers steadily declining during the same time-frame due to the higher wages offered in the factories, especially during the Nazi era.

[Carl Schwamberger]

There is the 'how you count them' factor. A portion of the labor that left the fields did not move to the urban factories. They took up tasks supporting the mechnized agriculture. Truck drivers who mostly or exclusively carried grain or cattle, men who became mechanics at the tractor sales business, operators at the grain loading terminals, Department of Agriculture employees, laborers & technicians working for the University research projects. With industrialized agriculture just counting field hands fall a bit short of the whole picture.

[Gorque]

That's a good point to consider Carl, whether the statistics defining 'agriculture' involve just the producers or the producers and the ancillary industries.

[Gorque]

I did a web-search in an attempt to reconcile the differences between my notes from Kershaw's Popular Opinion & Political Dissent in the Third Reich, where he states that agricultural employment in Bavaria declined from 20.7% in 1933 to 13.6% in 1939, with the various figures that have been presented above. Naturally, Bavaria wasn't indicative of the rest of pre-war Germany due to its larger than normal small landholdings, so a national analysis of the German economy was in order.

After a bit of searching, I found this graph, compiled in 1978, on the various sectors of the German economy in 1933 and again in 1939. Although the graph was compiled in order to highlight the decline of Jewish involvement in the German economy for the years mentioned, it does provide a good (IMHO) snapshot of the size of the German labor force in the various economic sectors.

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub ... nt_id=4387

However, as before, I'm still in the dark as to how broadly, or narrowly, agriculture is defined for the above table.