LWD wrote:Guaporense wrote:The Germans never focused their entire warmaking potential agaisnt the USSR.
They came pretty close in 41 and it's not at all clear that focusing more of it would have helped that much. Also note that the huge gains that the Germans made in that year had little to do with relative "warmaking potential".
In 1941 and 1942 the Germans focused 70-80% of their army and most of their airforce on the USSR. But they also didn't focus their resources on the maximization of present production of weapons.
Only in the final years of the war that Germany's production plans were focused on the maximization of the current stream of armament production. By the time that the US and UK were fully engaged.
...
As a example of this is the fact that when they failed to defeat the USSR in 1941,them by early 1942 they increased steel allocations to ammunition production, which were the primary factor in the start of Speer's armaments miracle. So, they could have easily increased production of tanks, guns, ammunition and other army items before 1942, but they didn't. Why? Because they underestimated the USSR.
Your example is flawed as are your conclusions.
My example shows that the production of army munitions, weapons, tanks, etc, was much lower than they could have acheived had they focused their resources on the maximum production of weapons for the invasion of the USSR.
When it was clear that the USSR wasn't going to be defeated in short time (January 1942), steel allocations to the production of army equipment increased and the production of ammunition, guns and tanks multiplied.
Actually, Germany's strategic planners didn't work with the contigency that the opening of the eastern front would mean a total war against a powerfull opponent. They thought that conquering the USSR would have been rather feasible in short time without a full scale mobilization of resources, only with 3/4 of the present military strength (1941 strength) would be enough to conquer the european part of the USSR.
If Germany didn't have to worry about the US and Britain, they could have attacked the USSR initially with 200 divisions instead of 150, they could have allocated millions of tons of steel to the production of army equipment, increasing production several times. They would have been able to mobilize greater number of armored divisions and mantain a much stronger eastern front. The allocation of resources between fronts doesn't take only the present number of divisions and replacements but also the long run strategic plan and the future contingencies that required present preparations, like the atlantic wall.
To illustrate the relative distribution of resources, at the time of the Stalingrad counter attack (1 November 1942), the Germans had 2,400,000 men in the eastern front while the USSR had 6,124,000. (source: Glantz, When Titans Clashed, page 302). However, the Wehrmacht had 8,410,000 men while the USSR's armed forces had 11,430,000 men. (source: Harrison, The Economics of World War Two, Page 14) in 1942.
In 1942 the Germans maintained 28.5% of their armed forces personnel in the eastern front, while the USSR maintained 53.6% of their armed forces personnel in the eastern front. A much smaller proportion of the Wehrmacht was engaged in the Eastern front than the Red Army's. If the Germans were allocating 100% of their resources agaisnt the USSR and fully neglecting the Western powers, they would have 4 million men in the eastern front with 30-40 armored divisions, instead of the historical 2.5 million men and 17-20 armored divisions.
The Germans never focused remotely all their resources agaisnt the USSR at any point during the Russo German war.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz