Was the German war effort badly run?

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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Richard Anderson
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#31

Post by Richard Anderson » 02 Sep 2016, 19:16

Stiltzkin wrote:I certainly like humor, sarcasm and cynical comments but I am just saying that this does not match Guaporenses percentage of allocation theory... (not to mention that any occupant would loot and salvage everything possible, that is nothing extraordinary as the Soviets usually dismantled whole factories)
You may have focused too much on the humor, sarcasm, and cynicism in my post. I actually told you why Jentz is correct while Mr. G remains clueless about the cause and effect nature of the world. He apparently believes more tanks get built when a functionary in some office makes a directive and writes a check. Unfortunately, the real world is very different. Tanks are built in factories, which are supplied with components built in many other sub-factories, all of which move about on transportation networks. Increasing tank output required increasing the number and size of those factories, which required additional raw materials and labor to manufacture and move them.

This, for example, is the reality of the "savings" generated by building the StuG (from my posts at TankNet and WW2f).

The original manufacturers and plants allocated to building German tanks were Krupp-Gruson at Magdeburg, MAN Nurnberg, Miag Brunswick, Henschel Kassel, Daimler-Benz Berlin-Marienfelde, and Alkett Berlin-Borsigwalde. After the annexation of Czechoslovakia, Skoda and BMM were added.

Later, Henschel's plant was expanded, Nibelungenwerke was built, and VOMAG and MNH were added.

Most of the plants could be switched to other, larger vehicles for final assembly. Skoda and BMM could not, the manufacturing bays and entrances were simply too small and the craneways unable to support the additional weight without a considerable investment of time and money to expand - the decision was instead made to keep production of the Pz-38 (t) chassis as supporting vehicles. They eventually did try to use it for an "assault gun platform", the PzJg 38 (t), but in many ways that was a miserable failure that exceeded the capabilities of the chassis.

A similar problem occurred at Alkett. The original factory was big enough for Pz-III chassis production (and probably could have been used for Panzer-IV as well). However, it was selected to produce the StuG-III since it was already producing the Pz-III. The StuG III production then became important enough that Alkett expanded to component manufacture at a site at Tegel. Then, when the main assembly hall was bombed out they went to nearby Falkensee, which was an unused rail engine plant for final chassis assembly and opened a plant at Spandau for final assembly. That decision was based on minimal conversion costs and convenience, as well as the absolute necessity of maintaining the StuG production. The critical necessity of maintaining StuG production was also why some of the Pz-IV production at Krupp-Gruson was sidelined to the StuG-IV.

Meanwhile, Krupp-Gruson and Miag had moved from Panzer-III to Panzer-IV production, with VOMAG added, while Nibelungen was planned for Panzer-IV and VI production from its inception. MAN, MNH, and D-B went to the Panther production pool, which was a bit of a Johnny come lately. Those decisions were based upon the cost of converting/retooling and the realization that the changeover would result in a drastic reduction in tank production, which might have been temporary, but still catastrophic. Capital conversion costs plus loss of production was what kept the Panzer-IV producers from converting to Panther and it was decided Alkett continue StuG-III production for the same reasons.

Note that while factories were added, only Henschel saw any significant expansion, which may have been because it along with Nibelungenwerke was the only producer of the Tiger series.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#32

Post by Stiltzkin » 02 Sep 2016, 20:12

Yes, this makes significantly more sense, the point is: Even if they had a bigger raw material pool (that would be one part of the industry, it could be also a prewar stock), turning them into weapons is another story. Furthermore, if I understood correctly they could never concentrate and expand most of the facilities because that would have made it a bigger target for aerial bombardment, hampering effective production.


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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#33

Post by Richard Anderson » 02 Sep 2016, 23:25

Stiltzkin wrote:Yes, this makes significantly more sense, the point is: Even if they had a bigger raw material pool (that would be one part of the industry, it could be also a prewar stock), turning them into weapons is another story. Furthermore, if I understood correctly they could never concentrate and expand most of the facilities because that would have made it a bigger target for aerial bombardment, hampering effective production.
The final contract signed on 15 August 1940 required Chrysler build a 690,000 square foot tank assembly plant on a 113-acre site at Warren, Michigan for a projected cost of $21-million and with an output of initially three, but eventually 100 tanks per month. The intention was Chrysler would build 1,000 Medium Tanks M2A1, while American and Baldwin finished the remaining 741.

Noted industrial architect Albert Kahn designed the main building, which measured 1,378 by 518 feet with ceilings 29 feet high. It had a railroad spur that ran directly adjacent to it for accessing materiel to any one of its 23 sub-assembly bays. Ground for the new plant was broken on 9 September 1940 and work continued round the clock on the plant through the winter in order to ready it by early spring, although the contract only specified 15 September 1941 as the completion date of the arsenal.

In November 1941, the US War Department let further contracts that increased the original FY 1941 Chrysler order to $127-million. In addition, it also allocated $25.782-million to build a General Motors-managed tank arsenal at Flint, Michigan (built in the Flint suburb of Grand Blanc) and awarded a further $39-million to Ford for development at its Highland Park, Michigan parts plant (although Ford produced some tanks it quickly concentrated on producing tank engines). Chrysler allocated $19-million to a 400,000 square foot plant expansion at the Chrysler Tank Arsenal (the total arsenal area under cover eventually expanded to 1,348,321 square feet) and converted twelve of its Dodge, DeSoto, and Plymouth auto plants into factories producing tank parts and sub-assemblies. They became parts suppliers for the main plant, significantly increasing its production capacity.

Eventually, General Motors turned over management of its government-owned plant to its subsidiary, Fisher Body, and usually referred to it as the Fisher Grand Blanc Tank Arsenal (Fisher officially called it the Grand Blanc Tank Division). Built on a 311-acre rural site called Page’s Farm, the main assembly building as completed covered 452,000 square feet. General Motors also converted the existing Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint to war use. Sixteen days before the plant produced its last car body in January 1942; it began conversion to assembly of the Medium Tank M4A2. Just 47 days later, the first General Motors-produced Medium Tank M4A2 was completed. Ten other General Motors plants eventually contributed to the manufacture of tanks and other armored fighting vehicles.

This is only a fraction of the plant investment by the US War Department into tank arsenals. Compare to the German.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#34

Post by EvanHarper » 03 Sep 2016, 03:00

You're arguing is that the catastrophic fall in GDP and output in occupied countries represented an output gap, pure slack in the system; that if there had been demand for much greater output, the captured French factories could have produced it unproblematically. This is just absurd. Those countries were cut off from their previous trading networks and incorporated into a new autarchic German bloc that was, on the import side, under blockade and resource constraints, and on the export side had completely different demands and requirements than the occupied countries' previous trading partners. Then you have the fact that these countries were, upon occupation, systematically looted for things the Germans wanted in the short term, like rolling stock to make up for their own underinvestment in rail infrastructure. And you even have less tangible factors like the implications for labour relations of the fact that you're now producing for the Nazis, or the implications for investment decisions of being under a fundamentally criminal and predatory regime that does not respect property rights.

Imagine if somebody invaded New England, set up a military occupation regime, and put up a wall around it so that it could no longer trade with the rest of the United States. From now on it's only allowed to trade with Russia and China. Obviously, this would be a serious economic catastrophe and GDP and output in most sectors would sharply decrease.

The reduction of output in Nazi-occupied territories by ca. 40% does not imply that this ca. 40% is just left "on the table" waiting to be used for something if only the Germans wanted it.

Now, you shrug your shoulders at my examples of German eagerness to absorb war materiel from occupied territories, and say that it's only logical to do so - "Why not use this equipment if it's lying around?" I agree completely, it's only logical to do so. The problem is that you're saying this now after you just got done telling us that the Wehrmacht had the optimal quantity of materiel on hand, because its industrial mobilization was planned in an almost perfectly efficient way, and that adding more would have been counterproductive. The logic of your argument requires that using old Czech LT-35 tanks to equip an extra Panzer division was in fact a blunder; that it left the Germans with an overly tank-heavy armed forces, or with more tanks than they could reliably fuel, or something. If you're saying instead that it was only logical for them to use those LT-35s, because it's better than training those soldiers as infantrymen and sending them out without tanks, then you're retreating from the logic of your whole argument. If the LT-35s really were better than nothing, then more Pz IIIs and IVs would have been even better than the LT-35s. So if the Germans didn't produce those initial Pz III or IVs, it's either because they didn't have enough production capacity, or they didn't use the production capacity they had in the most efficient way.

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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#35

Post by Guaporense » 03 Sep 2016, 04:29

EvanHarper wrote:You're arguing is that the catastrophic fall in GDP and output in occupied countries represented an output gap, pure slack in the system; that if there had been demand for much greater output, the captured French factories could have produced it unproblematically. This is just absurd. Those countries were cut off from their previous trading networks and incorporated into a new autarchic German bloc that was, on the import side, under blockade and resource constraints, and on the export side had completely different demands and requirements than the occupied countries' previous trading partners. Then you have the fact that these countries were, upon occupation, systematically looted for things the Germans wanted in the short term, like rolling stock to make up for their own underinvestment in rail infrastructure. And you even have less tangible factors like the implications for labour relations of the fact that you're now producing for the Nazis, or the implications for investment decisions of being under a fundamentally criminal and predatory regime that does not respect property rights.

Imagine if somebody invaded New England, set up a military occupation regime, and put up a wall around it so that it could no longer trade with the rest of the United States. From now on it's only allowed to trade with Russia and China. Obviously, this would be a serious economic catastrophe and GDP and output in most sectors would sharply decrease.
The same happened with the WAllies: the US and UK couldn't trade with continental Europe and Japan anymore, essentially half of the world was isolated from the other half. So, technically, the scope of loss from gains from trade was also felt equally in the side of the Allied countries. However, there was not an economic collapse from any countries in the Allied side.

Allied industrial production did not collapse and collapse neither applies to Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. Some specific territories under Nazi occupation collapsed, France and Poland, specifically suffered the worst collapse among occupied countries. These specific areas had specific causes for their collapse.

Also, the Nazi conquests meant that now all of continental Europe was in a free trade area (indeed, the first free trade area in Europe was decreed by the Nazis just after the Fall of France). So there were also potential economic gains from being subjected to Nazi conquest. At the time, Nazi Occupied Europe was effectively the world's largest free trade area.
The reduction of output in Nazi-occupied territories by ca. 40% does not imply that this ca. 40% is just left "on the table" waiting to be used for something if only the Germans wanted it.
Actually there was not a large reduction in GDP of occupied Europe. In 1943, GDP levels of Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Norway and Greece were about 90% of 1938 levels on average.

There was a large reduction in the industrial production of some regions in Europe, such as France. In France's case what happened is that the Nazis' choose to cut France off their coal exports, since more than half of France's coal was imported and all of France's oil was the country was without energy and so GDP collapsed by 20% from 1938 to 1943.

Still in 1943, GDP was 80% of pre-war level according to estimates in:

https://www.amazon.com/Occupied-Economi ... 1845208234
Now, you shrug your shoulders at my examples of German eagerness to absorb war materiel from occupied territories, and say that it's only logical to do so - "Why not use this equipment if it's lying around?" I agree completely, it's only logical to do so. The problem is that you're saying this now after you just got done telling us that the Wehrmacht had the optimal quantity of materiel on hand, because its industrial mobilization was planned in an almost perfectly efficient way, and that adding more would have been counterproductive. The logic of your argument requires that using old Czech LT-35 tanks to equip an extra Panzer division was in fact a blunder; that it left the Germans with an overly tank-heavy armed forces, or with more tanks than they could reliably fuel, or something. If you're saying instead that it was only logical for them to use those LT-35s, because it's better than training those soldiers as infantrymen and sending them out without tanks, then you're retreating from the logic of your whole argument. If the LT-35s really were better than nothing, then more Pz IIIs and IVs would have been even better than the LT-35s. So if the Germans didn't produce those initial Pz III or IVs, it's either because they didn't have enough production capacity, or they didn't use the production capacity they had in the most efficient way.
You are wrong here because Panzer III and IV's cost money while LT-35s were free. Maybe if they didn't have access to the occupied countries stocks of equipment they would have produced more equipment for the army. However, given that they had this ample supply of free equipment they saved billions of RM from producing the equipment.

What I mean is that, of course, they could easily increase production of Panzer III and IV, however, that was not free: if they spent 400 million RM more on these tanks, that means 400 million RM less on other stuff and its better to use inferior equipment for free than superior equipment for a cost.
Last edited by Guaporense on 03 Sep 2016, 07:00, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#36

Post by Guaporense » 03 Sep 2016, 04:32

Stiltzkin wrote:I certainly like humor, sarcasm and cynical comments but I am just saying that this does not match Guaporenses percentage of allocation theory... (not to mention that any occupant would loot and salvage everything possible, that is nothing extraordinary as the Soviets usually dismantled whole factories)
The WAllies also used savaged German equipment. So, that implies the US troops didn't have equipment because the scarcity of manpower and raw material starved US industry didn't have the resources to produce equipment for their soldiers? :roll:

Each arty gun Germany produced cost on average something like 30,000 RM, and that's enough money to pay, feed and supply about 6-7 soldiers for a year. So, for each gun they got for free from the stocks in occupied countries they essentially were able to add several soldiers to the armed forces with the money saved from producing it.

Apparently, the concept of OPPORTUNITY COST is beyond understanding for most people: resources are scarce and flexible, you can choose to allocate resources in a certain manner. The fact that the Germans had a tank production of 3,600 units in 1941 was because they did not feel the need for more than that, given the size of their armored divisions and the expected losses they would suffer. It was a consequence of allocation of resources, given their small cost in proportion to total resources, that figure could be easily increased. However, it wouldn't be free: the labor and capital used up in producing tanks could be allocated to somewhere else. Historically, they produced 19,000 tanks in 1944 when demand for tanks was higher because losses at the front were higher. Same reason for the increase in production of guns over 75 mm from 7,800 in 1941 to 62,300 guns in 1944:

Image

Demand for guns at the front was higher in 44 because massive losses of about 200 divisions in terms of personnel in 1944 meant the Germans had to replace guns. While massive ammunition consumption meant that guns worn out frequently.

For example, Germany did conscript 18 million military personnel out of their labor force of 34 million. Increasing tank production would mean fewer soldiers in the armed forces. And they would be better off with fewer soldiers? I don't think so. The Germans lost the war because they had fewer soldiers than the Allies in the battlefield, reducing the number further would do then no good.

This was the allocation of manpower in 1943:

Armed forces - 11,300,000
Motor vehicle and tanks - 380,000
Aircraft - 740,000
Ammunition - 560,000

If they reduced the manpower of the armed forces a little bit they could have increased the labor force for these industries by a huge margin. Why didnt they? Simple, because they needed men at the front and more equipment wouldn't have made any difference in 1943.

As Emile Despres noticed there was no general problem with equipment for the Wehrmacht. The problem was the lack of manpower to use additional equipment. I conjecture the the manpower problem was fundamentally caused by the racist ideology of the Nazis that did not allow for the incorporation of "subhumans" which were 3/4 of the population under Nazi control into the armed forces combined with the institutional factors involved with empire building at the time: while the Nazis controlled vast potential economic and manpower resources their government institutions did not expand over all of occupied Europe to allow for the effective integration of the manpower in those territories into the war effort.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#37

Post by Guaporense » 03 Sep 2016, 05:02

Richard Anderson wrote:You may have focused too much on the humor, sarcasm, and cynicism in my post. I actually told you why Jentz is correct while Mr. G remains clueless about the cause and effect nature of the world. He apparently believes more tanks get built when a functionary in some office makes a directive and writes a check. Unfortunately, the real world is very different. Tanks are built in factories, which are supplied with components built in many other sub-factories, all of which move about on transportation networks. Increasing tank output required increasing the number and size of those factories, which required additional raw materials and labor to manufacture and move them.
First, you should stop being so arrogant while posting irrelevant anecdotal details which provide no useful information for the topic at hand. What's the point in doing that? To show that American expenditures on tanks are large? We all know that.

While you do not appear to comprehend the role of prices and monetary figures in determining the allocation of resources and the whole concept of ALLOCATION of resources: the idea that resources have MULTIPLE uses and historical patterns were produced from conscious decisions to allocate resources in certain manners.

For example, in 1941 only .5% of German war expenditures were on panzers, that means that the amount of factory floor, labor and raw materials that were allocated to produce panzers in continental Europe was very small compared to the total amount of these resources available in continental Europe. And much smaller in proportion, for instance, than the focus on the allocation of resources that the Soviet Union did for tanks. If the Nazis didn't have a lot of labor and factory floor dedicated for tank production was because a small proportion of the labor force and of Europe's factory floor capacity was ALLOCATED for that objective.

Why the Soviet Union produced 24,000 tanks in 1942 while the vastly greater economic potential of German occupied Europe only produced 3,600 tanks in 1941? Because the USSR focused more of their vastly smaller resources into producing tanks, because in every way their had far less resources: Hitler controlled territories with 250 million people by mid 1941, Stalin controlled territories with 125 million in 1942. In terms of metals like iron, steel, coal, copper, aluminum, etc, the discrepancy was even higher usually around 3-6 fold. In terms of industrial capital stock, Germany alone had 6 times the installed stock of lathes in 1938 than the Soviet Union. There was no scarcity of capital equipment in Europe at the time:

Image

So the reason, ultimately why the USSR produced 24,000 tanks in 1942 while the whole occupied Europe produced only 4,500 tanks in 1941 was just because they CHOOSE to produce fewer tanks, because they CHOOSE to allocate resources to OTHER AREAS. It was not because these territories had fewer resources overall which was obviously not the case.

This asymmetry in relative allocation of resources is clearly shown in terms of expenditures: while the Soviet Union spent ca. 4.5 billion rubles on tanks in 1942, out of ca. 110 billion rubles (that's 4% of total expenditures) in Germany in 41, it was a proportion 8 times smaller of total expenditures spent on tanks. In other words, the Soviet Army dedicated a fraction 8 times larger of their economic resources to the production of tanks in 1942 versus the Nazis in 1941.

Is that hard to understand? If you wish to prove they didn't produce many tanks because they lacked the basic resources to do so then you need to revolutionize the whole field of economic history by transforming our understanding of the relative economic size of continental Europe vis Siberia and the UK in the interwar period while also falsifying all the data on things like coal production that we have regarding those regions at that period.

The fact is that there was not remotely a comparatively serious shortage of factory floor in continental Europe vis the Allies during the war. In fact, it appears that the stock of industrial machines in Europe was comparable to that of the Allies.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#38

Post by Guaporense » 03 Sep 2016, 05:24

Richard Anderson wrote:This is only a fraction of the plant investment by the US War Department into tank arsenals. Compare to the German.
Because they did not ALLOCATE resources to the area in PROPORTION. If you want to compare investment in plant, then compare aggregate figures (i.e. Machine tool stocks :roll: ), to get an idea of how much was invested. Also, you need to compare tank industry figures with aggregate figures: German stock of metal working machines was similar to the US in number and composition, the question is: which fraction of that stock was used by the tank industry?

If in country A only .5% of expenditures are in good X while country B spents 5% of its income in good X, that implies that firms in country B will allocate a higher proportion of their resources, which means factory floor and employees, engaged in the production of good X. You are just giving an example: since the US spent a higher proportion of their resources on producing tanks, US firms invested more on tank factories. Which is pretty obvious.

Now the question is, Europe lacked the resources to invest more in tank factories? The answer is: no. The total stock of metal working machines in Europe was larger than the US's because European metal working industry employed more people overall than the US. If an individual category had fewer employees, such as tank production, that was because it made up a smaller share of total employees. In other words, the relative ALLOCATION of resources was DIFFERENT.

The question is: was the US efficient in producing all these tanks? Meaning, was the US allocation of resources EFFICIENT or there existed some better way to allocate these resources? In my opinion it was very inefficient.

The Sherman looked like a WW1 tank in terms of design and they produced tens of thousands of these tanks to use them in 1944-45 when they were already obsolete models, as indicated by the reports of veterans that complained about the garbage tanks they had to use. The vast majority of US tank production was not used in the battlefield as well. That means that while the US consumed large amounts of resources in producing these tanks there was little benefit for their armed forces in doing so. And Germany couldn't convert fully to Panther production because of the continuous pressure of the Eastern front demanded a stream of replacements, since the Americans had no pressure at all since the Soviet Union was fighting the war for then, they could have focused on at least making a smaller number of non-obsolete tanks.

Hence, I think the Americans would have been much better off producing only 20% of the tanks they did historically, but producing higher quality ones (like Pershings) and employing fewer workers in tank factories overall while using the resources freed from that by increasing the size of their quite modest sized ground army, which would have resulted in better numerical odds at the front and hence a quicker victory or at least fewer casualties since at better odds they would force the enemy to retreat more quickly.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#39

Post by Michael Kenny » 03 Sep 2016, 06:25

Guaporense wrote:

The Sherman looked like a WW1 tank in terms of design and they produced tens of thousands of these tanks to use them in 1944-45 when they were already obsolete models, as indicated by the reports of veterans that complained about the garbage tanks they had to use.
A perfect example of your cavalier disregard for reality and the total lack of any real understanding.
I mean who but a complete and utter fool would say 'The Sherman looked like a WW1 tank in terms of design' when in fact it looked nothing at all like any WW1 tank in shape or design.
The poster is absolutely clueless.

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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#40

Post by Rob Stuart » 03 Sep 2016, 07:47

So the reason, ultimately why the USSR produced 24,000 tanks in 1942 while the whole occupied Europe produced only 4,500 tanks in 1941 was just because they CHOOSE to produce fewer tanks, because they CHOOSE to allocate resources to OTHER AREAS. It was not because these territories had fewer resources overall which was obviously not the case.
It was a very bad choice to produce only 4,500 tanks in 1941 when just one of Germany's three major enemies produced 24,000. A war effort which makes bad choices of this magnitude is by definition a badly run war effort.

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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#41

Post by Michael Kenny » 03 Sep 2016, 08:00

Rob Stuart wrote: It was a very bad choice to produce only 4,500 tanks in 1941 when just one of Germany's three major enemies produced 24,000. A war effort which makes bad choices of this magnitude is by definition a badly run war effort.
The German 'tank shortage' was in place before the invasion Russia hence the use captured tanks.
By November 1941 the tank losses became critical and in 1942 only tank units to be used in the south were reasonably refitted.
The ever-shrinking tank content of the Panzer Divisions 1942-44 (and the way untested Panthers were used prematurely at Kursk) are the best evidence of the chaotic way production was handled.

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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#42

Post by Guaporense » 03 Sep 2016, 08:41

Boby wrote:I have a lot of problems with your views. You quotes many statistics but never provided what experts in the field said, planned, expected, asked, etc.
I quoted Despres in the first post he said that Germany's problem was not lack of weapons, the problem was the lack of manpower. He comments that weapns are not a problem was the opinion of German commanders.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#43

Post by Guaporense » 03 Sep 2016, 08:46

Rob Stuart wrote:
So the reason, ultimately why the USSR produced 24,000 tanks in 1942 while the whole occupied Europe produced only 4,500 tanks in 1941 was just because they CHOOSE to produce fewer tanks, because they CHOOSE to allocate resources to OTHER AREAS. It was not because these territories had fewer resources overall which was obviously not the case.
It was a very bad choice to produce only 4,500 tanks in 1941 when just one of Germany's three major enemies produced 24,000. A war effort which makes bad choices of this magnitude is by definition a badly run war effort.
I don't think so. Because there was no demand for more tanks and expectation of demand for more tanks than that level. Indeed, in January 1942 the Wehrmacht had about the same number of tanks than in January 1941. Even though they destroyed 20,000 Soviet tanks in 1941, their own losses in tanks were much smaller at 2,758 tanks.

Overall their mistake was to not expect the Soviet Union to fold like a house of cards. That expectation was based on WW1 when Russia folded because it's backward economy couldn't handle total war. However, the USSR managed to hold itself together. I would say that they were rational in believing the USSR was weaker than it was (the USSR was a third world country with a first world military) but arrogant in not planning for the contingencies that could have occurred, such as the failure of the USSR's collapse.
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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#44

Post by Boby » 03 Sep 2016, 09:37

Guaporense wrote:
Boby wrote:I have a lot of problems with your views. You quotes many statistics but never provided what experts in the field said, planned, expected, asked, etc.
I quoted Despres in the first post he said that Germany's problem was not lack of weapons, the problem was the lack of manpower. He comments that weapns are not a problem was the opinion of German commanders.
No, I mean your comments of the underutilized German industry because of lack of manpower. The "single shift" story, the millions of foreign workers available, etc

The "experts" of military production: Luftwaffe, Speer ministry, HWA, Zentrale Planung...

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Re: Was the German war effort badly run?

#45

Post by Stiltzkin » 03 Sep 2016, 13:05

If they reduced the manpower of the armed forces a little bit they could have increased the labor force for these industries by a huge margin. Why didnt they? Simple, because they needed men at the front and more equipment wouldn't have made any difference in 1943.

As Emile Despres noticed there was no general problem with equipment for the Wehrmacht. The problem was the lack of manpower to use additional equipment. I conjecture the the manpower problem was fundamentally caused by the racist ideology of the Nazis
I understand the allocation and flexibility issue, I know that. The weapon production is equivalent to the armoured forces size. The tank production is also linked to the allocated investment and has to cover the losses (German tank losses are actually replaced, contrary to Soviet losses which sometimes exceed their production values). I was just confused why Jentz was talking about "strains". Especially is they did not exceed their maximum capabilities. This makes no sense.
However, under the circumstances that were present (as Rich stated), I doubt that the output could have been that large, or lets say switching from one to another wouldn't necessarily equate in the same productivity efficiency, I find that hard to believe (not to metion the difficulties that were present with the different tank types).
Lets assume the following: Germany has a higher labour/manpower pool and decides to make more tanks, surely the value would go up, but can they outproduce the US with the given (ardent) methods? Perhaps it might be too oversimplified to just look at the macroeconomical scale, other than the details at hand.
It basically sounds like the Nazis industrial productivity was solely limited by labour scarcity (and usually oil). Is that really the case? Why did prolific researchers like Harrison or Tooze perpetuate the old "outproduction" story, there must be something to it.
However, given that they had this ample supply of free equipment they saved billions of RM from producing the equipment.
There are certain problems attached to utilizing looted equipment, especially tanks, so in hindsight they are never totally "free" (tools, upkeep, maintenance, especially Soviet T-34s were difficult to implement into the forces).
Because the USSR focused more of their vastly smaller resources into producing tanks
True. They had to cover the losses and it was part of their doctrine that was developed in the 20s-30s.
Is that hard to understand? If you wish to prove they didn't produce many tanks because they lacked the basic resources to do so
I do not think that this was his point (this isn't even about quantity vs quality), it was more about the ability to convert that potential aka did Germany have the facilities to make that happen, if they chose to invest more. The Soviets created gigantic tank facilities on Henry Fords example way before the war. The US created gigantic factories in a short amount of time. German factories could never exceed a certain size because of their vulnerability to bombardment (see Walter S. Dunn). Factory floor is a good key word. The Nibelungenwerke were the only ones close in dimensions and relatively safe but never fully utilized.
The Sherman looked like a WW1 tank in terms of design
Actually it was an overall good weapon system which improved substantially during the war, the negative remarks were usually politically motivated (tommy cookers, airpower saved them etc., actually it was leftist propaganda).

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