German vs. Soviet production in 1942

Discussions on the economic history of the nations taking part in WW2, from the recovery after the depression until the economy at war.
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Guaporense
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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#76

Post by Guaporense » 10 Oct 2010, 17:14

RichTO90 wrote:
Guaporense wrote:I had the impression that many people think that the USSR and UK had superiority in material resources over Germany.
Then you would be correct since they did.
Not the resources used to make munitions.

Steel (1942):
UK - 12.9 million tons (http://books.google.com.br/books?id=RxF ... el&f=false)
USSR - 8 million (http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/sovprod.html)

total: 20.9 million

compare to:
Germany - 31.9 million (http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/SteelCoal.html)

Pig Iron (1942)
UK - 7.7 million tons (http://books.google.com.br/books?id=RxF ... el&f=false)
USSR - 4.8 million tons (http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/sovprod.html)

total: 12.5 million tons

compare to:
Germany - 24.9 million (http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/SteelCoal.html)

Machine tool production (1940-1944)

UK: 374,000 (The Economics of WW2, page 59)
USSR: 115,400 (http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/SovLendLease.html)

total: 489,400

Germany: 813,400 (http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/149/234/0)

Well, maybe these statistics are useless for determining the relative resources of these countries. Maybe not.

Also, note that UK had perhaps more resources than the USSR. After Barbarossa, the USSR was reduced to a rump state and their industrial capacity was smaller than before the invasion.
When in fact, Germany had more material resources than both powers combined.
No Germany did not.
They didn't have the natural resources, like florests and rivers, that USSR and the British empire had. Nor they had more illiterate peasants. They only had more machines and factories. You know, the things that make weapons. And more people with education, you know, people that design, make and and operate weapons.
I based them on the statistics about steel, coal, iron, & other industrial commodities.
Really? Which ones? Where did they come from? How do "industrial commodities" differ from "material resources"?
I understood that the sentence "materials resources" in relation to World War Two would probably mean "resources necessary to make munitions".

Since people confuse material resources with natural resources, which are a small part of "material resources".
Er, so "population" must not equate to "human"? :roll:
No. Human resources includes the human capital of the population. Germany controlled the population that produced 67% of the nobel prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine between 1918 and 1938. Germany itself produced 30% of these nobel prizes, France, Netherlands, Belgium, etc, produced the other 37%. The US produced 12% of these prizes. USSR didn't produce anybody.

UK controlled the illiterate population of India, which consisted of self suficient subsistence farmers. That was pretty much 65% of the population of the British empire: Illiterate peasants, at the margin of the global economy and society. Germany controlled nearly 200 million people of western europe, that was at the time most of the core of western civilization itself.

People usually don't understand that in the 1940's, the most important part of the world was western europe, and Germany controlled the bulk of it (3/4 of western europe GDP).
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#77

Post by Jon G. » 10 Oct 2010, 18:06

Guaporense wrote:These figures include black coal and brown coal. If you want comparable figures for Germany you have to sum up their black coal production with brown coal production.

For example, in 1942 the USSR produced:

48,951,000 tons of black coal
26,585,000 tons of brown coal

which adds up to 75 million tons.
According to the Harrison figures via Sturmvogel, yes. As you well know, the Sturmvogel figures have been drawn into doubt, upthread, specifically regarding fuel production.
...Note that you almost cut my throat when I added coal and lignite but the USSR's coal numbers always did that...
It is significant in this context that League of Nations statistics use the standard conversion model for Soviet lignite production, whereas German lignite production is sufficiently significant to warrant its own header.
Yes, I was wrong in giving 100% trust over Jason Long's numbers.
That's a mistake anybody could have made. Your mistake is much graver. You keep repeating figures which have been shown to be wrong in multiple replies in multiple threads. But why then would I expect to put such mis-information past someone who also quotes me for things which I didn't write http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 0#p1514870 :roll:
Theoretically it doesn't make a difference if coal was produced at territory A or B at pre war borders if B conquered A. You are free to disagree with me, but you aren't free to simply delete the occupied territories from consideration.
I am not deleting occupied territories from the equation, merely telling you that you can't add the coal production of territory A to the warmaking potential of territory B simply by snapping your fingers. That is not a matter of disagreement, but of examining how much coal and other raw materials the Germans actually got from occupied Europe.

You haven't bothered to do that, which reduces your calcualtions to pointless number exercises. This has been pointed out to you before.

Fortunately, people far more knowledgeable than you and me have made an effort to calculate the importance of occupied territories to the German war effort.

From DRZW 5/1
Image
...or c. 27.5% of German coal coming from occupied territories as a 1943 monthly average.

For example, you'd be interested to know that France started out with a coal deficit; peacetime French coal imports came from Poland (Silesia), Germany and the UK. No less than 44% of French coking coal (the kind of coal you need for steel production) came from the Ruhr.

You would also be interested to know that coal production in occupied Europe, while actually restored quickly to peacetime levels, dropped off again just as quickly: French, Belgian, Polish and Dutch miners didn't have much incentive mining for the occupiers at ever-reduced rations, and strikes, go-slows and black market coal peddling all increased, as did absenteeism, all to the detriment of coal production.
And remember, these were countries which were mostly coal *importers* prior to the war - well, the Netherlands was a net exporter, but mostly of bunker coal, of which there was precious little use in occupied Europe.

Overall declining coal production in occupied Europe did not help the Germans, who also had to send about a million tons of coal to the energy-starved Italians every month.

The dilemma to the Germans, then, was deciding whether to shoot the cow, or milk it harder. The differences between these two competing strategies were never really resolved.
Last edited by Jon G. on 10 Oct 2010, 18:13, edited 1 time in total.


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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#78

Post by Jon G. » 10 Oct 2010, 18:08

Guaporense - your comment:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1515115

...don't expect to get away with mis-quoting me.

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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#79

Post by Guaporense » 10 Oct 2010, 18:29

LWD wrote:Which
A) Doesn't explain why you created a strawman.
B) You're wrong as you admit below.
Well, I have heard some people that think that Germany couldn't hope to win against the USSR because of their superiority in "industrial resources", but these people aren't as informed as you and the people here are. The impression that I got here was that Germany had more industrial resources than the USSR, but only a little more (like, 30-40% more), not several times more.
.... In some areas Japan had more material resources than the US.
In what areas? Certainly they were far worse off in comparison to the US than the USSR was in comparison to Germany.
That depends. In some areas the difference between the USSR and Germany was like the average difference between the US and Japan.
a) That doesn't answer the question about which areas Japan was superior to the US.
b) You were giving an overall statment now you are talking about "some areas". The implication is you were wrong and are refusing to admit it directly.
Japan had only superiority over the US in some very restricted areas, like they produced 2 superheavy battleships during the war, while the US didn't produce a single one. In all types of industrial commodities, from coal, iron, steel, machinery, etc, US production was around 10 times greater than Japan's.
If the US's industrial production were 10 times Japan's during WW2, Germany's industrial production was 5 times USSR's.
Are these hypothetical numbers or can you document them?
I based them on the statistics about steel, coal, iron, & other industrial commodities.
Then you shouldn't have any problem documenting them.
Let's see?

All data for 1943, millions of tons.

------------------ Japan ----- USA
coal supply ----- 61.6 ------ 586.2
pig iron --------- 4.9 ------- 55.8
ingot steel ----- 7.8 ------- 80.6
aluminium ------ 141 ------ 835 (thousand tons)

average ratio: 9.29

Sources:
Japan - http://www.archive.org/stream/effectsof ... 8/mode/2up
USA - http://books.google.com.br/books?id=RxF ... al&f=false

All data for 1942, millions of tons.

------------------ USSR ------- Germany (includes production in occupied territories)
coal supply ----- 48.9 -------- 338.2
coke supply ---- 6.9 ---------- 64.8
brown coal ----- 26.6 -------- 248.9 (Reich only)
steel ingot ----- 8.0 ---------- 31.9
pig iron --------- 4.8 ---------- 24.9
aluminium ------ 52 ---------- 350

average ratio: 6.93

sources:
USSR - http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/sovprod.html
Germany - http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/SteelCoal.html
aluminium: http://books.google.com.br/books?id=RxF ... al&f=false

Japan outproduced the USSR in some areas, like machine tools and nearly equalled Soviet iron and steel production, while having a greater coal supply in 1942 (60 million tons versus 49 million for the USSR).

Japan machine tool production 1940 - 1944: 268,800 (http://www.archive.org/stream/effectsof ... 0/mode/2up), while the USSR produced 115,400.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#80

Post by Guaporense » 11 Oct 2010, 18:18

Jon G. wrote:Guaporense - your comment:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1515115

...don't expect to get away with mis-quoting me.
Okay. I will see what I can do.

Here your post:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1514573

You said:
You've compared two very disparate secondary datasets - namely, one intended to show the effects of strategic bombing upon the German war economy, and another to show the impact of Lend-Lease on the Soviet war effort - to make a totally invalid point.
I don't remenber how I managed to transform that post of yours into that: So, it is completely invalid point. I think that my memory failed me.
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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#81

Post by LWD » 12 Oct 2010, 15:22

Guaporense wrote:
LWD wrote:Which
A) Doesn't explain why you created a strawman.
B) You're wrong as you admit below.
Well, I have heard some people that think that Germany couldn't hope to win against the USSR because of their superiority in "industrial resources", but these people aren't as informed as you and the people here are. The impression that I got here was that Germany had more industrial resources than the USSR, but only a little more (like, 30-40% more), not several times more.
Still doesn't explain the strawman or the conflicting claims.
.... In some areas Japan had more material resources than the US.
In what areas? Certainly they were far worse off in comparison to the US than the USSR was in comparison to Germany.
That depends. In some areas the difference between the USSR and Germany was like the average difference between the US and Japan.
...
Japan had only superiority over the US in some very restricted areas, like they produced 2 superheavy battleships during the war, while the US didn't produce a single one.
Sorry that's not a material resource. Indeed you have just created a new catagory of ships that no one used during the period. Note that the US produced quite a few more battleships than Japan during that period. So again what areas did Japan have more material resources than the US?
If the US's industrial production were 10 times Japan's during WW2, Germany's industrial production was 5 times USSR's.
Are these hypothetical numbers or can you document them?
I based them on the statistics about steel, coal, iron, & other industrial commodities.
Then you shouldn't have any problem documenting them.
Let's see?

All data for 1943, millions of tons.

------------------ Japan ----- USA
coal supply ----- 61.6 ------ 586.2
pig iron --------- 4.9 ------- 55.8
ingot steel ----- 7.8 ------- 80.6
aluminium ------ 141 ------ 835 (thousand tons)

average ratio: 9.29

Sources:
Japan - http://www.archive.org/stream/effectsof ... 8/mode/2up
USA - http://books.google.com.br/books?id=RxF ... al&f=false

All data for 1942, millions of tons.

------------------ USSR ------- Germany (includes production in occupied territories)
coal supply ----- 48.9 -------- 338.2
coke supply ---- 6.9 ---------- 64.8
brown coal ----- 26.6 -------- 248.9 (Reich only)
steel ingot ----- 8.0 ---------- 31.9
pig iron --------- 4.8 ---------- 24.9
aluminium ------ 52 ---------- 350

average ratio: 6.93
So if you round it the Japan to US ratio is 1:9 and the Soviet to German ratio is 1:7 and that's with your rather narrow defintion, not the 1:10 and 1:5 you claimed.

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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#82

Post by RichTO90 » 13 Oct 2010, 05:33

Guaporense wrote:Not the resources used to make munitions.
Ah, I see, so now the definition has become undefined "resources"? And the measurement is randomly selected raw materials rather than finished goods? How...flexible? :roll:
So the UK is now an isolated island, incapable of drawing from more than its own insular resources? So the 2.8-million tons of steel produced and consumed by Canada as well as the 2.8-million tons freely imported to Britain from the US don't count because they aren't dug out of the ground on Perfidious Albion? :roll: But, in some strange twist of reality, steel produced in France does? BTW, either your inveterate dishonesty or your equally inveterate inattention to detail is showing again; your own source rounded correctly would give Britain 13-million tons (12.968). :lol:
Well, maybe these statistics are useless for determining the relative resources of these countries. Maybe not.
Maybe they are and maybe they aren't? You seem to have a problem deciding? :roll:
They didn't have the natural resources, like florests and rivers, that USSR and the British empire had. Nor they had more illiterate peasants. They only had more machines and factories. You know, the things that make weapons. And more people with education, you know, people that design, make and and operate weapons.
Yeah, exactly, like the weapons produced by the USSR and the British Empire that, you know, are more than those produced by Germany's oh so cool non-peasant types? Those German peasant types that obviously didn't exist in Germany since they didn't really depend on primitive agricultural methods and small peasant farms extolled as virtuous by that Hitler guy? :roll: Yeah, all those perfectly literate German's that weren't peasants that quoted Goethe and Schiller to each other as they shoveled shit on the farm...must have been a relief when they had enough POWs and other forced labor to do the job so they could get their farm philosophy clubs going again. :roll:
I understood that the sentence "materials resources" in relation to World War Two would probably mean "resources necessary to make munitions".
You "understand"? How nice. :roll: Meanwhile the rest of the world is trying to make sense of your flexible definitions that shift as you need.

BTW, nice non-answer. :roll:
Since people confuse material resources with natural resources, which are a small part of "material resources".
Who "people" are those? As far as I can see from your lame response the only "people" remaining confused is you. Try again with someone that might still believe your horseshit obfuscations. :roll:
No. Human resources includes the human capital of the population. Germany controlled the population that produced 67% of the nobel prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine between 1918 and 1938. Germany itself produced 30% of these nobel prizes, France, Netherlands, Belgium, etc, produced the other 37%. The US produced 12% of these prizes. USSR didn't produce anybody.
Uh-huh. Einstein? Hertz? Franck? Stern? I guess Stark and Heisenburg made up for them in physics right? At least they did better with the chemists...and we all know how that work won the war for Germany now, don't we? :roll:
UK controlled the illiterate population of India, which consisted of self suficient subsistence farmers. That was pretty much 65% of the population of the British empire: Illiterate peasants, at the margin of the global economy and society. Germany controlled nearly 200 million people of western europe, that was at the time most of the core of western civilization itself.
Good Old Germany! They kept those illiterate peasant hordes in check for a while now, didn't they! :roll:
People usually don't understand that in the 1940's, the most important part of the world was western europe, and Germany controlled the bulk of it (3/4 of western europe GDP).
There's those "people" again that keep misunderstanding poor old G. :roll:
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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#83

Post by South » 13 Oct 2010, 09:13

Good morning Guaporense,

You're dealing in pedantics in your discussion of "industrial capacity" - and your mixup of this term with "industrial capability". Military mobilization for national defense deals with a broad definition and application of industrial production coupled to the inherently required transport and distribution systems in place or in development.

For focus to my point, see:

MILITARY MANAGEMENT FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE, John Robert Beishline, PhD, Brig Gen, US Army, 1950

For the basics, see:

MILITARY GEOGRAPHY, Louis C. Peltier, Chairman, Committee on Military Geography, AAG and G. Etzel Pearch, The Geographer, US Dept of State, 1966

Above 2 refs are probably out of print and difficult to obtain but there are many, many, many foundation references in re this thread.

It is beyond pedantics.......It is a statement that is just not correct to say: "in the 1940's the most important part of the world was western Europe,...". The Great War devastated western Europe and the intermission did not show a recovery. There was a shift of importance to the United States. Note, for example, Regulation T of the US Federal Reserve System. Reg. T had the effect of shifting the world financing of international trade from London (located in western Europe) to New York City (Although Americans are taught Aristotelian Logic applied to all of the social studies, the real Federal Reserve Bank - as the US Central Bank - is the Fed branch in NYC), a location outside of western Europe.

"GDP" is not a holy Scriptural reference. Today, for example, Singapore holds more foreign exchange (FOREX) than India.

Overally, you're missing the economic component to industrial production matters.

You're also missing the political component. China, under Lin Sen and Chiang Kai Chek, was at a loss for Nobel Laurets. Was China, like your referenced British India, insignificant for human capital, compared to your referenced Belgium and Netherlands?

Do note that prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, ending circa 1922, the Ukraine was known as "the bread basket of Europe". To accept your point that in only a generation a major economic shift made western Europe the most important part of the world............omits the rise of Japan - and most especially, if not near-exclusively, the United States.

I could offer you some references available on today's book market but am busy doing post WWII research on US transport and distribution of comfortable matresses used in Vietnam.


Warm regards,

Bob

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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#84

Post by RichTO90 » 13 Oct 2010, 14:46

Guaporense wrote:Japan had only superiority over the US in some very restricted areas, like they produced 2 superheavy battleships during the war, while the US didn't produce a single one.
See, it's nonsense like this made up strawman of an argument that makes you so tiresome. :roll:

So now "superiority" can apply in "certain areas" such as the building of "2 superheavy battleships", neatly allowing you to skip over the inconvenient facts of the actual relative shipbuilding capability and capacity of the two nations. Such as the fact that after 1921 Japan commissioned two battleships, Yamato and Musashi, with an aggregate displacement of 144,000 tons, while the US completed ten with an aggregate of 402,000 tons. Now who had the "superheavy" battleships?

Even better, your "comparison" ignores that Japan had the capability, if she desired, of completing one more battleship, Shinano, if she desired, since she was on the slip building. But the US had seven more building that she chose not to complete, with an aggregate of 415,000 more tons.

Thus the real comparison of capacity and capability in "superheavy battleship" construction is actually Japan three for 216,000 tons and the US 17 for 817,000 tons.

Of course that all ignores that all battleships, at least according to the sage of the internet G, were only built because they were kewl. Of course then the only "real" naval vessel was the aircraft carrier, of which the US had 40 fleet types built or building during the war along with 10 light carriers and over a hundred escort carriers, while Japan had built or were building nine fleet carriers, three other carrier-type conversions from liners or battleships (none were fleet capable), and fewer than a dozen conversions of merchant ships to excort carriers by the end of the war.
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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#85

Post by Guaporense » 17 Oct 2010, 18:22

South wrote:It is beyond pedantics.......It is a statement that is just not correct to say: "in the 1940's the most important part of the world was western Europe,...".
It is.
The Great War devastated western Europe and the intermission did not show a recovery. There was a shift of importance to the United States.
There was. But the largest shift of importance really happened after WW2.

Before WW1, Westert Europe was the world, the rest only existed as sources of raw material for Europe. The US was the most important nation outside western europe and was already an industrial superpower, by 1913 their industrial production was greater than Germany + UK. But in other terms, political and scientific terms, the US was less important than Germany, France, UK and maybe even Austria Hungary.

After WW1 the shift of relative importance to countries outside western europe occured, but western europe was still the most important region in the world.

Nobel prizes, by region, in medicine, physics and chemistry (1918-1938):

Western Europe - 53
US - 8
rest - 1 (India)
total - 62

After WW2, the nobel prizes changed torwards the US, since the European countries were devastated by WW2 and the most intelligent people of Europe moved to the US. This explains why today Harvard, Princeton and the MIT are the top universities in the world, and not Vienna and Sorbonne.

Nobel prizes, by region, in medicine, physics and chemistry (1946-1966):

United States - 46
Western Europe - 39
USSR - 7
rest - 7
total - 99

The Soviet Union emerged as an relevant producer of science, and the rest of the world, countries like China, Japan and Argentina, produced some nobel prizes as well. While the US outproduced Western Europe in nobel prizes.

Western europe produced 40% of the nobel prizes in the 20 postwar years, while in the 20 pre war years it produced 85% of the nobel prizes.

source: nobelprize.org

GDP, by region (1938) (billions of 1990 PPP US$ dollars):

Western Europe - 1,281.1
United States - 799.36

source: the economics of WW2, Mark Harrison

In 1950, the picture had changed:

United States - 1.455.916
Western Europe - 1.396.287

source: http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/Historical ... 2-2010.xls

In terms of industrial production the change was similar, in 1938 Western Europe produced ca 50 million tons of steel, while the US produced 26 million. In 1955, the US produced 95 million, while Western Europe produced 75 million.
Note, for example, Regulation T of the US Federal Reserve System. Reg. T had the effect of shifting the world financing of international trade from London (located in western Europe) to New York City (Although Americans are taught Aristotelian Logic applied to all of the social studies, the real Federal Reserve Bank - as the US Central Bank - is the Fed branch in NYC), a location outside of western Europe.
Yes, the US was an emeging economic powerhouse in the interwar period, like China is today. One could certainly foresee that the US would become the leading player in international politics
"GDP" is not a holy Scriptural reference. Today, for example, Singapore holds more foreign exchange (FOREX) than India.
Of course it is not. These PPP GDP figures have to be used with caution.

For example, China's PPP GDP estimate for 1938 is larger than UK's and nearly as large as Germany's. However, their industrial production at the time was insignificant and their warmaking potential wasn't anywhere near UK's and Germany's.
Overally, you're missing the economic component to industrial production matters.
Like?
You're also missing the political component. China, under Lin Sen and Chiang Kai Chek, was at a loss for Nobel Laurets. Was China, like your referenced British India, insignificant for human capital, compared to your referenced Belgium and Netherlands?
Yes, China and India had population, but didn't have relevance as scientific producers. Only recently that China's potential for development is beign exploided that their scientific production has become relevant for the entire world.
Do note that prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, ending circa 1922, the Ukraine was known as "the bread basket of Europe". To accept your point that in only a generation a major economic shift made western Europe the most important part of the world............omits the rise of Japan - and most especially, if not near-exclusively, the United States.
In 1940 the US was the second most important part of the world. Japan was quite insignificant next to the big two (Western Europe and US). Though in scientific and cultural terms, the US was still way below Western Europe's league.

Still today Western Europe is the most important part of the world, in terms of scientific production, trade and GDP. But their relative importance is not the same as it was 70 years ago, when 85% of the world's scientific research was made in Europe.
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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#86

Post by Guaporense » 17 Oct 2010, 18:45

RichTO90 wrote:
Guaporense wrote:Japan had only superiority over the US in some very restricted areas, like they produced 2 superheavy battleships during the war, while the US didn't produce a single one.
See, it's nonsense like this made up strawman of an argument that makes you so tiresome. :roll:

So now "superiority" can apply in "certain areas" such as the building of "2 superheavy battleships", neatly allowing you to skip over the inconvenient facts of the actual relative shipbuilding capability and capacity of the two nations.
I never claimed that Japan had greater shipbuilding capacity than the US.

My point was that while the USSR produced more tanks than Germany, it only meant that in this very restricted class of equipment their production was greater. Like the fact that Japan made more battleships over 60,000 tons than the US (which is true, but tell us nothing about the countries relative industrial potential). The fact that the USSR produced more tanks than Germany also doesn't tell us about the relative industrial potential, only that the USSR focused a greater proportion of their resources into the production of tanks.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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Nobel prizes and WW2

#87

Post by Guaporense » 17 Oct 2010, 18:57

Western Europe - 53
US - 8
rest - 1 (India)
total - 62
Some observations, the ranking in nobel prize winners in the 20 pre war years by country was (in physics, medicine and chemistry):

Germany - 18
other countries in western europe - 18
UK - 12
US - 8
France - 5
India - 1

Proportion of these prizes in Nazi held territory from june 1940 to june 1944:
66.13%
The same territory prize winners from 1946 to 1966:
21.12%

for Germany in particular,
29.03% of the nobel prizes in the 1918-1938 period
8.08% of the nobel prizes in the 1946-1966 period

The only European country that didn't lose participation in the production of nobel prize winners was UK, which produced 19,36% of the nobel prize winners in the 1918-1938 period and 18,18% of the nobel prize winners in the 1946-1966 period. And that was the country that wasn't occupied by the Nazis during WW2.

The shift to the US in terms of scientific production occured because the scholars that worked in the countries occupied by the Nazis (including Germany) migrated to the US. Thanks to Hitler that the US became the world's leading scientific producer!

Now it is clear why the Nazis had superior technology as compared to the Allies: they had the best minds in the world inside their territory. The bulk of the technological innovations made during WW2 were made in Germany. The Soviet Union by contrast, was not a significant producer of science and technology during the interwar period, which explains why their military equipment remained at a very basic level during the war.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#88

Post by ljadw » 17 Oct 2010, 19:12

some proof that the nazis had superior technology compared to the allies ? :wink:

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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#89

Post by Jon G. » 17 Oct 2010, 19:30

I don't want to steal RichTO90's thunder, but this is so off the wall that I can't help but comment -
Guaporense wrote:...My point was that while the USSR produced more tanks than Germany, it only meant that in this very restricted class of equipment their production was greater.
That is an earth-shattering observation. The Soviets built more tanks than the Germans because their production was greater? Are you sure?
Like the fact that Japan made more battleships over 60,000 tons than the US (which is true, but tell us nothing about the countries relative industrial potential).
Like, the US built more battleships under 60,000 tons than Japan? This is the sort of wisdom which leaves me breathless.
The fact that the USSR produced more tanks than Germany also doesn't tell us about the relative industrial potential, only that the USSR focused a greater proportion of their resources into the production of tanks.
And one way of measuring said potential could eg. be by counting how many tanks either nation built during WW2.

But I can understand your desire to warp the discussion. After all, your point about Germany having more material resources (or is that 'human resources'? or 'industrial commodities' or whatever other fuzzy definition is your flavour of the moment) has been full and well falsified upthread. Facile observations don't change that.

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Guaporense
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Re: German vs. Soviet production in 1942

#90

Post by Guaporense » 17 Oct 2010, 19:33

RichTO90 wrote:
Guaporense wrote:Not the resources used to make munitions.
Ah, I see, so now the definition has become undefined "resources"? And the measurement is randomly selected raw materials rather than finished goods? How...flexible? :roll:
Machine tools are finished goods. Also, the difference in stock in machine tools was greater than the difference in production for UK, Germany's stock was 3 times UK's, while production was only a little more than twice.

Also, the US production of these raw materials exceeded Germany and were several time the added sum of UK's and USSR's production.
So the UK is now an isolated island, incapable of drawing from more than its own insular resources? So the 2.8-million tons of steel produced and consumed by Canada as well as the 2.8-million tons freely imported to Britain from the US don't count because they aren't dug out of the ground on Perfidious Albion? :roll: But, in some strange twist of reality, steel produced in France does? BTW, either your inveterate dishonesty or your equally inveterate inattention to detail is showing again; your own source rounded correctly would give Britain 13-million tons (12.968). :lol:
My point was that Germany controlled more resources than UK+USSR, while with American help they could have reduced of bridged this difference.

I can include Canadian production of iron, steel and machine tools and it won't change the fact that UK+USSR had smaller production of these raw materials than Germany. I can also exclude the occupied territories from Germany's supply of these raw materials and it still is higher than the sum of Canadian, British and Soviet production.

Steel production, 1943, thousands of metric tons:

Germany: 30,603
occupied territories: 4,041
total: 34,644
source: http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/149/263/0

UK: 13,239
USSR: 8,475
Canada: 2,725
total: 24,439
sources: http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/sovprod.html, http://books.google.com.br/books?id=RxF ... el&f=false

You can also include imports from the US (2.8 million tons) and their supply would still be smaller than the German supply.
They didn't have the natural resources, like florests and rivers, that USSR and the British empire had. Nor they had more illiterate peasants. They only had more machines and factories. You know, the things that make weapons. And more people with education, you know, people that design, make and and operate weapons.
Yeah, exactly, like the weapons produced by the USSR and the British Empire that, you know, are more than those produced by Germany's oh so cool non-peasant types?
Weapons produced with imported raw materials from the US and other countries.

Anyway, that only shows that UK and USSR made a greater use of their industrial resources. For example, Germany's industry operated mostly in a single shift basis, while UK and Soviet industry operated mostly in a 2 or 3 shift basis. The fact that UK+USSR produced 200,000 combat aircraft while Germany made half of that number doesn't prove that UK and the USSR controlled greater resources.

Also, I suspect that Germany's production of shells were greater than the combined total of UK and USSR. Though I do not have the especific data. Also, the production of explosives probably was greater for Germany than the combined production of USSR+UK.
Those German peasant types that obviously didn't exist in Germany since they didn't really depend on primitive agricultural methods and small peasant farms extolled as virtuous by that Hitler guy? :roll: Yeah, all those perfectly literate German's that weren't peasants that quoted Goethe and Schiller to each other as they shoveled shit on the farm...must have been a relief when they had enough POWs and other forced labor to do the job so they could get their farm philosophy clubs going again. :roll:
The point is that Western Europe had a much smaller proportion of the population without education than India, the country that contained 75% of the population of the British empire. Even thought that population under German control was smaller than the population under British control, the human resources under German control were certainly greater.
Since people confuse material resources with natural resources, which are a small part of "material resources".
Who "people" are those? As far as I can see from your lame response the only "people" remaining confused is you. Try again with someone that might still believe your horseshit obfuscations. :roll:
Actually, I was beign obfuscated because when people say that the British empire controlled more resources in 1942 than Germany, I think that they mean population and natural resources, since this statement only makes sense that way.
No. Human resources includes the human capital of the population. Germany controlled the population that produced 67% of the nobel prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine between 1918 and 1938. Germany itself produced 30% of these nobel prizes, France, Netherlands, Belgium, etc, produced the other 37%. The US produced 12% of these prizes. USSR didn't produce anybody.
Uh-huh. Einstein? Hertz? Franck? Stern? I guess Stark and Heisenburg made up for them in physics right? At least they did better with the chemists...and we all know how that work won the war for Germany now, don't we? :roll:
I gave a more detailed picture of that in the post above. Germany certainly didn't lose the war because the Allies had better planes, tanks and guns, but because the Allies had more lives to throw away and more hands to work in the factories.

Anyway, without the US the Allies couldn't win the war. Even Stalin has acknowledged that.
People usually don't understand that in the 1940's, the most important part of the world was western europe, and Germany controlled the bulk of it (3/4 of western europe GDP).
There's those "people" again that keep misunderstanding poor old G. :roll:
They do not misuderstand my, they misunderstand the period in question. I am only pointing out the obvious!
Last edited by Guaporense on 17 Oct 2010, 19:43, edited 1 time in total.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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