Guaporense wrote:That's the total manpower in each division at the end of 1944 was 64,044 including service personnel and personnel in replacement and training units, combat troops was 24,700. The German value was about 36,000 of which 14,703 were combat troops.
Source: Fighting Power, Van Creveld.
As Rich has pointed out, and now I will, you are playing fast and loose with your numbers. Table 6.13 in
Fighting Power p. 59, lists the US division slice as 43,400, not 64,044. Taking that number off p. 58 where the author writes "Remarkably little information about divisional slices is available in the US Army's official history..." He takes the total strength of the AGF and divides it by divisions. That is clearly wrong since the overall strength of the AGF includes branches like Coast Defense and Ordinance, ones that wouldn't grow with more divisions.
His table on the next page is more accurate dropping your figure by nearly 20,000 men per division.
Not without economic costs. OTL they had 88 divisions, an additional 212 divisions would be 13,568,000 men, for comparison, there were about 40 million people employed in civilian non-agricultural jobs in 1943, so that's 35% of the US's labor force which means that US's GDP would decreased by 35% if they mobilized 300 divisions.
In fact, war related industries employed 12.5 million workers in 1943-44, so if you conscript 13.6 million men more than in OTL you could end up with ZERO military production and a decrease of the civilian economy as well.
Overall, there is no way around this problem other than sacrificing the resources for US's navy and the airforce and the same for the UK's, in order to build up a 250 division army capable of invading the continent.
Since your original numbers are off the rest of this, is off too. The proposed build up would come closer to about 8 million troops, possibly less. Disestablishing some continental units and units elsewhere no longer needed for a defense against Germany (such as reducing coast defenses) could drive that number lower again. If we count in the USMC that reduces the count by 6+ divisions more. Shifting some manpower from the Navy would help too given Germany has no real fleet or sea power, just U-boats and that's a guerre de course that they'll eventually lose.
All of those would have still been better equipped than the Wehrmacht who, even in this scenario, would be heavily dependent on captured equipment and production from occupied countries.
Historically the WAllies were not better equipped than the Wehrmacht.
I'd say this thread, right here on this board proves you absolutely and irrefutably wrong.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... orse+drawn
As but a single example.
In fact, according to the estimates of Operational Lethality Index by Dupuy in Numbers Predictions and War, taking out of account the effects of airpower, the per soldier OLI of the Germans in a set of 41 engagements in Italy was 119.6% of the British and Americans. That means a German soldier fighting Americans or British in Italy from late 1943 to early 1944 usually had about 120% of the firepower of a British or American soldier on average.
Data is: 440,353 German soldiers fought 655,672 WAllies soldiers in 41 engaments, Allied OLI was 2,076,199, German OLI was 1,668,086, discounting the effects of airpower. Pages 74-75 NPW.
The TLI / OLI is rubbish. The final equations he uses are simple ratios. They really aren't even equations since setting them to zero gives you a wrong answer except by pure luck (pg 60 - 61) The "normal battle line" shown is rubbish to if you apply regression to Dupuy's own numbers.
Also, why you assume French, Dutch and Czech equipment is bad? That's just prejudice against European countries. Just because they were defeated by Germany doesn't mean their equipment was of inferior quality.
I don't, even if much of was. The problem with captures is the non-standardization aspect along with getting spare parts, ammunition, etc., for those weapons. Czech equipment was usually good and even very good. But, it also isn't the same stuff the Wehrmacht is using and Germany is producing.
German expenditures on army equipment were insignificant next to either total military expenditures or German industrial production, if the captured equipment were inferior they could easily produced more "German make" equipment if so desired.
Then why didn't they? Why was the Dutch Philips corporation one of Germany's largest valve (vacuum tube) suppliers and absolutely critical to the German electronics production if Germany could "make more" themselves? That's just one example of where you are wrong.
For example, even in 3rd quarter of 1943, German expenditures on tanks and guns were 253 million marks a month, compared to 10 billion marks of military expenditures. So only 2.5% of German military expenditures were on combat equipment for the army.
Worthless information as it is taken out of context. The whole of the German economy could not supply the Wehrmacht all the equipment it needed. In many cases, it couldn't manage it in peacetime, let alone on a war footing.
Well, those "two regiment static infantry divisions equipped with obsolescent and captured equipment, lacking any mobility beyond walking, who's ranks are filled with overage and medically questionable troops" actually outfought the Americans on a per man basis by a wide margin during the war.
No they didn't. But, do feel free to show actual examples from history where they did. Even many "regular" infantry divisions in the Wehrmacht were pathetically bad in combat.
For example, the 94 German infantry division engaged the 88 and 85 American infantry divisions in Italy in May 1944, on average CEV levels there were much higher for the 94 than for 88 and 85. And the per capita firepower available was also similar to the American troops.
Except, Dupuy's methodology is rubbish. The final two equations he gives on pg 61 of NP&W are: (R-R)/5 = (P/P)-1 or P/P = (R-R)/5+1. These are not equalities, nor are the two the same equation.
I've tried to reproduce the results of Figure 4-3
Application of quantified judgement model to engagements (pg 52- 53) but have been unable to as he doesn't give you all the data necessary. That essentially means they are irreproducible results and worthless. The same goes for the table in the back of the book. If you can't verify what he did, it isn't worth anything.
John Sloan Brown in
Draftee Division, likewise castigates Dupuy and his own historical work on the 88th pretty much refutes much of Dupuy's claims on the Italian theater and German combat effectiveness.
I see, like the US did with the Soviet Union just after the war, right?
I don't think the US would have used nuclear bombs on Europe in 1946 in this case. Even if we assume they would have developed nuclear bombs as OTL while Germany wouldn't (I don't think Hitler was interested in nukes because it was "jewish science" even though everybody knew about fission by 1939).
An ad hominem followed by an unsubstantiated claim.
The reason is that US wasn't a militaristic psychopathic government who would just use nuclear weapons to annihilate any government they disliked.
The reason the US would use them was in 1946 they were seen as nothing more than a bigger, better bomb. There was no mystique associated with them, nor the sort of pantywaist hand wringing the public has in 2016 about anything nuclear having been fed decades of scare propaganda and misinformation over all things nuclear. Even well into the 50's and early 60's nuclear power was seen as a panacea for all sorts of energy use. You can't apply the mindset of the US public in 2016 to the mindset of the nation in 1945.
The US is a peaceful democratic nation made of entrepreneurial people that has a low tolerance for military casualties and never fought a war with another great power where they engaged most of the great power's forces (WW1, France, Russia and UK fought the bulk of Germany's army, in WW2, USSR fought the bulk of Germany's army). As a result US's foreign policy usually tries to minimize casualties to a minimum in conflicts (Vietnam was lost because they suffered too many casualties for something that was supposed to be a small scale war) and Americans tend to tolerate less genocide on other people's than countries like Russia, Germany or Japan.
As a result of the US's peaceful nature they wouldn't want to use weapons of mass destruction of foreign civilians, instead they would engage the Nazi Europe the same way they did with the USSR and wait for the regime's natural collapse (I don't think that they would have lasted much longer after Hitler's death which would have occurred naturally not long after 1945).
What does any of that have to do with fighting a war to Germany's surrender? The US nuked two Japanese cities, had a third bomb on Tinian for the next strike, and was making more. The US and Britain turned most German cities to rubble with conventional bombing.
What's the difference between this:
And this...?
The Allies would have flattened Germany with nukes.
If they got enough in production I'd bet there'd be some very surprised, momentarily, U-boat crews too...