Axis History Forum

TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑

12 Sep 2021, 21:55

Tom from Cornwall wrote: ↑

12 Sep 2021, 20:47

it might throw light on British assumptions about the reducing scale of continued Soviet resistance as the area of the USSR occupied

Thanks, Tom. There is a similar American estimate.

Regarding the proportional impact of territorial loss, this estimate is broadly in line with my estimate that an ATL Barbarossa pushing to a line Lake Onega - Volga - Gorkiy - Voronezh - Don - Blau would reduce Soviet 1942 warmaking potential by ~40%.

Differences between my estimate and the British:

1. Britain underestimated the total level of Soviet force generation measured in divisions, even allowing for smaller OTL Soviet divisions. This doesn't impact the proportional analysis, however.

2. British estimate appears only to consider territorial loss, whereas my estimate considers impact of greater ATL casualties (~2.5mil). Thus I predict ~40% proportional loss of warmaking ability on a line somewhat west of the British Line C (the Volga "salient" extending to Samara isn't occupied in my ATL Barbarossa).

My and the British estimates largely concur because the basic logic of territorial loss is fairly obvious and, though ameliorated by evacuations, largely held OTL: Soviet GDP and material production (steel, coal, etc.) plummeted as Germany took its resources (primarily human resources but some natural as well). Had RKKA stopped Ostheer at the border in 1941, its 1942 incarnation could have been ~40% stronger. Same goes for a no-Barbarossa ATL in which Stalin decides to end Nazism in 1942 or 43.

Tom from Cornwall wrote: ↑

12 Sep 2021, 20:47

it might throw light on British assumptions about the reducing scale of continued Soviet resistance as the area of the USSR occupied

• 1. With LW producing 4x OTL peak during ATL 1944, US and German aircraft production are approximately equal in value - Germany probably slightly ahead. (as discussed here, US peak was ~4.5x German by weight; as discussed here, ~20% value/weight penalty to US peak for building bigger planes).
• 2. Allied fighters are heavier and much more expensive than Axis. The cheapest (P-51) cost ~$51k in 1944; P-38/47 were ~$90k (AAF Statistical Digest). Me-109's cost ~$25k in 1944.
• Obviously any shift from bombers to fighters decreases bombers. One HB will get you ~4 Mustangs or ~2.5 P-38/47's (by price per AAF Statistical Digest).
• 3. Allies are still fighting Japan, which OTL took something on the order of 30-40% of American resources. There is certainly room to divert Pacific resources and still win the war but (1) is that politically feasible? and (2) many/most resources aren't directly fungible with the CBO except on a long time horizon - Hellcats and Corsairs, for example, don't have the range for deep escort duty.
• 4. To what degree can Allies shift resources to air warfare, if at all? IMO they can't; they need bigger armies to hold somewhere in Africa and in the Mideast-India quadrant, plus a very large force watching for Sealion (100 divisions?). If anything, Allied aerial resource endowment will be lower than OTL once more soldiers are drafted and more guns/tanks/etc produced.
• 5. Timing of the Allied shift? OTL US didn't recognize a need for escorts until late 1943 due to the stickiness of stupid doctrine. If that holds in ATL, it's mid-1944 before an Allied production shift begins to tell. By that time, ATL Me-262 will be a major factor or near to being so.
• 6. ATL LW qualitative factor. By 1944 at latest, Germany's fuel resources - thus LW training quality/quantity - will be greatly expanded. In addition, LW should be able earlier to make a switch from Me-109G-6 to G-10/14/6AS and to improved Fw-190's. The G-6 was a particularly obsolete design; later G's with MW50 and other DB605 improvements significantly improved its performance OTL (but by then its pilots were so bad it didn't matter).

Peter89 wrote: ↑

02 Sep 2021, 11:28

Okay, so please just tell me what do you mean by "3-4x LW strength". It seems to be a cornerstone of your argument, so please help me understand it.

• 1. Wallies feed their OTL aircraft/pilot assets into the Battle of Germany as in OTL, losing up to 5x as many AC to German fighters as OTL. In this case, the Wallies run out of heavy bombers rapidly (before 5x losses actually), as I've discussed elsewhere.
• 2. The Wallies abandon or dramatically scale back the CBO. Many possible sub-variations of this case.

Peter89 wrote: ↑

02 Sep 2021, 11:34

What is a "successful conclusion of the Russian campaign"?

Tom from Cornwall wrote:Is your logic that if the Germans produced 4x the planes this would necessarily have led to 4x US losses in the CBO?

...but I take it you are taking all that into account and your “x planes” is just shorthand.

Tom from Cornwall wrote:Even then, it doesn’t necessarily follow that “4x LW Planes” = “4x US Losses in CBO”. The presence of larger numbers of LW fighters would have kept US fighter pilots busier but not necessarily overwhelmed the US fighter escort; the presence of larger numbers of LW fighters might have impacted on US targeting criteria - shorter range missions, changed bombing policy priorities, etc; the presence of larger numbers of LW fighters might have changed the policy for RAF night bombing as well - British bombers in the Mediterranean were regularly used to target LW airfields and may have been directed to do so in Germany if the need was identified. The US may have changed its tactics - fewer bombers and more fighters in each mission, etc, etc.

Tom from Cornwall wrote:The presence of larger numbers of LW fighters would have kept US fighter pilots busier but not necessarily overwhelmed the US fighter escort

Only the 2nd Bomb Division
penetrated as far as Brunswick, and its B-24s received the undivided
attention of 250 Bf 109s and Fw 190s, which for once were able to
overwhelm the escort.

Tom from Cornwall wrote:War is not math!

Peter89 wrote:In order for me to get fat, it's not enough to eat more.

Peter89 wrote:It is a reflection on source criticism. Originally, I wanted to use Hitler's quote about the last territorial demand, but it's more balanced this way, because FDR was not a "mad" dictator. If someone said something - no matter how high he was in the decision making hierarchy - it doesn't mean that we can take that as a realistic alternative or at face value.

glenn239 wrote:Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, all war production converted to US dollars. The Americans had the Germans 37 to 14, the British added on top of that made it 48 to 14.

• I see German armament having >twice the labor inputs at ~30% higher productivity than OTL. From demob'd domestic and more foreign workers. Total: >2.5 the armaments production.
• Aircraft production would be ~70% of total armaments production vs. ~45% OTL: ~4x OTL aircraft production.

• US armaments production didn't grow in '43-'44, Germany's grew by ~45% between 1943 average and July '44 per Wagenfuehr's index (accurate in this period, as even Tooze would say). That adds 6.3bn to German war production if that category grew similarly to armaments. Say 5bn annualized delta by July '44 levels, now we're at 19bn OTL.
• While US production could have grown OTL, ATL it cannot because US must raise a larger army.
• 2.5x OTL German production at July '44 annualized level is 47.5bn. Now Germany equals the West's production.
• Germany doesn't need to equal the West's production because US was horribly inefficient (militarily) and had to do many things Germany didn't (e.g. shipping and navy took ~1/3 of US war effort, <10% for Germany).

TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑

08 Aug 2021, 06:17

glenn239 wrote:For an air war against the US, Hitler needed a strong friendly USSR as a supply and manufacturing source. Barbarossa killed that too

KDF33 wrote:I must disagree with this. The Germans didn't need to fully reorganize the East: the resources of Europe, plus the compulsory conscription of Soviet workers as well as the rehabilitation of select elements of Soviet industry, would have been sufficient to bring the German war-economy to a level unparalleled historically.

KDF already makes the main point: Soviet workers "recruited" to Germany. Let me say a bit more.

Soviet workforce in industry+transport+construction totaled 10.06mil in 1942:


Source: Accounting for War, Mark Harrsion

I've stipulated 7.5mil additional ATL workers "recruited" to Greater Germany; that's already 75% of the SU's total industrial(+) workforce. This number could be substantially higher because the primary bottleneck in profitably employing unskilled foreigners was having enough skilled Germans to supervise them. As discussed upthread, we have something in the area of 5-7mil more German workers so that's no longer a problem.

What's more, Soviet workers were probably more productive in Germany - even under harsh conditions - than they were under Soviet management. To explain why, let's look at overall Soviet industrial productivity versus German. Here I'll use 1943 for comparison.

Comparative physical quantities of industrial goods.

This table from Accounting for War will be the Soviet source unless otherwise noted.

Steel
Germany: 30.6mil tons
USSR: 8.48mil tons
Germany/USSR ratio:
Sources: Germany

Coal
Germany: 347.6mil tons
USSR: 93.14mil tons
Germany/USSR ratio: 3.7:1
Source: Germany

Aluminum
Germany: 354k tons
USSR: 62.2k tons
Germany/USSR ratio: 5.7:1
Source

Electricity
Germany: 47,300 MW-h
USSR: 32,228 MW-h
Germany/USSR ratio: 1.47:1
Source

Armaments

This is the only area where German and Soviet production were roughly equal in 1943, per Goldsmith's very rough estimate. While armaments were obviously important, they represented only ~20% of German GDP in 1943 [See Tooze Statistics and the German State]. Soviet armaments factories underwent their own "production miracle" during WW2 and might have been as productive as Germany's. Still, even for the SU armaments were only ~33% of defense expenditure, therefore ~19% of GDP [for calculation of defense as % of GDP, see Harrison's table here - "hypothetical" table excluding Lend Lease].

Oil is a domain of superior Soviet productivity but that owes to geography rather than economic fundamentals. In any case, ATL Germany would possess Soviet oil deposits.

-----------------------------------

In the (non-armaments) fields doing the vast bulk of value creation, Greater Germany produced multiples of Soviet output with a workforce only ~36% larger (14.7mil vs. 10.8mil). Among other factors, Lend Lease enabled the Soviets import much of their capital and basic materials requirements.

It's beyond the scope of this post to estimate Soviet:German total industrial(+) productivity; suffice it to say German was significantly higher in 1943 even with much of the workforce being unskilled, half-starved foreigners.

----------------------------

So how did the productivity of Soviet zwangsarbeiter compare to German? The data varies across occupations and fields but 70-80% of German productivity seems ballpark accurate. From Foreign Labor in Nazi Germany by Homze:



As you can see, female forced workers were more productive than male - multiple sources attest to this.

Regardless of whether the productivity ratio is 70% of 80%, there's little doubt that Soviet zwangsarbeiter were at least as productive working for Germany as they would have been working the SU.

------------------------------------------------------

But that's not all...

As I've discussed elsewhere, Germany got ~20% of its domestic calorie supply from the SU in 1942-43. I often get an obviously bad response to this argument: most of that food was eaten by Ostheer. While that's true it's an obviously bad point because it supposes that Germany would simply have given back its looted food had Ostheer not been nearby. Clearly they wouldn't have - that food would have been sent to German soldiers or workers elsewhere. ATL Germany gets at least twice as much food from the occupied SU.

In addition, it is true but simplistic to state that Germany got little industrial output from the occupied SU. After Barbarossa failed, Germany began the "Iwan Program" to rebuild Ukrainian industry. The fruits of this investment were very near to coming online when Germany lost in latter '43 the Dniepr-Donets industrial regions in which Iwan operated. Iwan factories were to produce, among other things, ~12,000 tonnes of ammunition monthly by late '43.

ATL Germany institutes the Iwan Program in 1941 because Barbarossa isn't a quick smash-and-grab. From Rolf-Dieter Mueller's Enemy in the East, here's some background on Hitler's thinking pre-/post-Moscow and the failure of Barbarossa:

for Hitler, the initial priority was to fill the Reich commissar posts with
uncompromising party officials or Gauleiters whose ‘pistols sat lightly’ and
who could promise to plunder the territories under their control with total
ruthlessness. All the new order’s other political, racial and resettlement
objectives, which were so important to Rosenberg, were secondary
considerations for Hitler. But because Rosenberg, like the military, counted
on the collaboration of the non-Russian minorities, particularly the
Ukrainians, he was involved in some fragmentary coalitions of interest that
attempted – albeit only after the blitzkrieg had failed – to persuade Hitler to
accept some modifications to this plan. These concerned the agricultural
majority and dissolution of the collective farms, efforts towards an at least
partial reconstruction of the economy, food supplies for the civilian
population, the deployment of prisoners of war and volunteers (Hiwis) as a
labour force and the mustering of local military units.
In March 1941, Hitler was not interested.

...so again OTL Hitler has a short-war strategy and therefore short-war emphasis on smash-and-grab. The Nazi/Wehrmacht hierarchy, however, contained many who viewed economic reconstruction and partial enlistment of ethnic minorities a good idea. ATL Hitler listens to these groups and something the Iwan Program begins in 1941, coming online in latter 1942.

Note also the concern to use PoW's as a labor force. OTL Barbarossa's farcical planning and logistics made no practical consideration for this (only nugatory theoretical consideration); ATL Barbarossa ensures that at least most Soviet PoW's are sufficiently healthy to work (this would not have been hard, which is why failure to so was reckless homicide).

------------------------------------------------------

In summary, Germany could have captured most of OTL Soviet armaments production simply by stealing workers. ATL Germany would also have rebuilt at least partially the economy of at least Ukraine and would have derived enormous benefits from it.

The argument that Germany got nothing economically from Barbarossa is wrong as a matter of historical fact, is simplistic regarding why industrial output was so low, and is entirely inapplicable to ATL conditions involving a minimally competent Barbarossa.

As with everything Barbarossa, most commentary on economic exploitation fails to connect Barbarossa's planning and outcomes. In any other analytical field this would be flagrant incompetence; re Barbarossa it's standard.

TMP bookmark: ATL economic exploitation of the SU

glenn239 wrote:For an air war against the US, Hitler needed a strong friendly USSR as a supply and manufacturing source. Barbarossa killed that too

KDF33 wrote:I must disagree with this. The Germans didn't need to fully reorganize the East: the resources of Europe, plus the compulsory conscription of Soviet workers as well as the rehabilitation of select elements of Soviet industry, would have been sufficient to bring the German war-economy to a level unparalleled historically.

for Hitler, the initial priority was to fill the Reich commissar posts with
uncompromising party officials or Gauleiters whose ‘pistols sat lightly’ and
who could promise to plunder the territories under their control with total
ruthlessness. All the new order’s other political, racial and resettlement
objectives, which were so important to Rosenberg, were secondary
considerations for Hitler. But because Rosenberg, like the military, counted
on the collaboration of the non-Russian minorities, particularly the
Ukrainians, he was involved in some fragmentary coalitions of interest that
attempted – albeit only after the blitzkrieg had failed – to persuade Hitler to
accept some modifications to this plan. These concerned the agricultural
majority and dissolution of the collective farms, efforts towards an at least
partial reconstruction of the economy, food supplies for the civilian
population, the deployment of prisoners of war and volunteers (Hiwis) as a
labour force and the mustering of local military units.
In March 1941, Hitler was not interested.

TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑

05 Aug 2021, 00:34

glenn239 wrote:The only way I see the Axis getting anywhere near what you're suggesting is in alliance with the Soviet Union. Anything else seems fantastical.

Wondering whether I'm running into a point where you'll never consider contrary arguments quantitatively. It's fine if so, we all have those points. Maybe just let me know if so.

I'll give you an abbreviated version of the argument that German aircraft production could have been 4x its OTL peak and then will separately address ATL US production.

OTL conditions:

• First data point is German industrial+transport labor force in OTL 1944. Including transportation and encompassing Greater Germany, there were no more than 15mil people producing all of Germany's armaments, basic military equipment, and general industrial goods.
• Next data point is Germans drafted into military: 13mil by Sept. 44.
• Next data point is foreign laborers: 7.5mil in Sept. 44.

ATL conditions:

• Instead of 13mil Germans in the Wehrmacht (or KIA/MIA/disabled), ATL Germany needs only ~100 active divs to defend beaches. Germany would place soldiers on "temporary" armaments leave as it did in '40-'41 and call up a much larger army the Allies somehow secured a beachhead. Payout is only ~6mil Germans on active service and 7mil more German workers.
• Having conquered the SU, Germany has millions more workers to "recruit." Outside the SU, its better war fortunes encourage greater compliance with German "recruitment," whereas in OTL that Germany was going to lose made it harder to ensure compliance by workers who'd rather hide out until Germany was defeated. Doubling foreign labor supply would not have been hard under ATL conditions, especially given ATL specification of earlier foreign labor drive and consequently ensuring most Soviet PoW's didn't die or become too sick/malnourished to work. Payout: +7.5mil foreign workers.

...that's easily enough to double the entire industrial labor force.

-----------------------------------------

What implications from doubling industrial labor force?

First, far from all of German industrial production went to armaments. A great proportion went to basic equipment: ~1/4 of military labor force engaged producing it during '40-'41. Basic common sense tells us that this was overwhelmingly concentrated on the army, as it's field soldiers who need basic military equipment. With the the number of ATL field soldiers drastically slashed, the basic equipment requirements would drastically decline as well.

Second, not all German industrial production went to armaments and basic equipment. Among other things, Germany had to maintain basic civilian needs, poured millions of tons of concrete for fortifications and (in '44) underground factories.

The long and short is that doubling total industrial labor force would easily 2x total armaments labor inputs.

----------------------------

From total armaments inputs let's move to distribution of such inputs.

In mid-44, aircraft's share of armaments output was 46.3%. ATL it would be ~70% if nearly all ATL:OTL input deltas went to LW [ 1.463 / 2 = 73% ].

Payout: at least 3x the production input to aircraft manufacture.

---------------------------------

Now let's move from aircraft inputs to aircraft outputs by including productivity of inputs.

As KDF33 has shown in his tables here, the ratio of German:US productivity in aircraft manufacture (by weight of airframes) declined by 45% percent between February '43 (when RAF's Battle of the Ruhr started seriously damaging the war economy) and July '44 (when bombing damage/dispersal had become immensely disruptive and drafts of skilled aviation workers had taken a deep toll).

Given these massively deleterious effects on German aviation industry, it would be conservative to project 33% higher German productivity in ATL conditions where skilled aviation workers aren't drafted and when daylight strikes on specific factories in 1944 are largely stopped (as I think glenn239 concede would have been possible).

Combining 3x the inputs with 33% greater productivity gives us 4x the aircraft production.

Payout: 4x OTL German aircraft production.

Hopefully it's clear that in each of the foregoing analytical steps I have adopted very conservative parameters. 4x OTL German aircraft production is a conservative estimate, IMJ.

--------------------------------

I recognize this is a surprising result and understand perceptions that it's fantastic. But I'm following the numbers and would encourage that approach to the issue.

What one should realize is there's a historically unique - superficially fantastic and morally terrible - dynamic underlying all of this: Germany's ability to "recruit" millions of foreigners into armaments production. The only historical analogue is colonial powers' ability to create a world-changing sugar/tobacco/cotton industry by enslaving millions of Africans, but even that took centuries whereas Germany was able to do it in a couple years.

While most people correctly intuit that the American economy was much larger than the German, what they usually miss is:

• The prewar continental European economy was significantly larger than America's and Germany possesses basically all of it in this ATL.
• Germany put more men under arms than the U.S. in WW2; soldiers have a production opportunity cost.

------------------------------

On the issue of greater-than-OTL American aircraft production my answer will be summary for now but, IMO, is sufficient to limit its feasible scope. Main points:

• US/UK almost certainly need larger land armies. US industrial labor force in 1944 was ~18mil. As US division slice was ~60k, raising another 50 US divisions would cost ~3mil men or >15% of US industrial labor force (agriculture can't be cut because soldiers need more food than workers). As a percentage of industrial production after civilian minimum, removing 3mil Americans from industry would cut armaments production significantly more than 15%.
• Because US/UK need larger armies than OTL, the proportion of (smaller) arms production going to aircraft would have to decline.

Taking those two factors together, it is extremely unlikely that US/UK could have produced more aircraft (by value) than it produced OTL. Indeed it is likely they would have produced less value.

As referenced upthread, I concede it would have been possible for US/UK to match German fighter production and total frames by abandoning the CBO.

TMP bookmark: argument summary on ATL German aircraft production

• 1. Absence of Eastern Front.
• 2. Qualitative factors.

TheMarcksPlan wrote:Combined with your net 3mil, that's 6.5mil additional German workers.

glenn239 wrote:The only way I see the Axis getting anywhere near what you're suggesting is in alliance with the Soviet Union. Anything else seems fantastical.

• First data point is German industrial+transport labor force in OTL 1944. Including transportation and encompassing Greater Germany, there were no more than 15mil people producing all of Germany's armaments, basic military equipment, and general industrial goods.
• Next data point is Germans drafted into military: 13mil by Sept. 44.
• Next data point is foreign laborers: 7.5mil in Sept. 44.

• Instead of 13mil Germans in the Wehrmacht (or KIA/MIA/disabled), ATL Germany needs only ~100 active divs to defend beaches. Germany would place soldiers on "temporary" armaments leave as it did in '40-'41 and call up a much larger army the Allies somehow secured a beachhead. Payout is only ~6mil Germans on active service and 7mil more German workers.
• Having conquered the SU, Germany has millions more workers to "recruit." Outside the SU, its better war fortunes encourage greater compliance with German "recruitment," whereas in OTL that Germany was going to lose made it harder to ensure compliance by workers who'd rather hide out until Germany was defeated. Doubling foreign labor supply would not have been hard under ATL conditions, especially given ATL specification of earlier foreign labor drive and consequently ensuring most Soviet PoW's didn't die or become too sick/malnourished to work. Payout: +7.5mil foreign workers.

• The prewar continental European economy was significantly larger than America's and Germany possesses basically all of it in this ATL.
• Germany put more men under arms than the U.S. in WW2; soldiers have a production opportunity cost.

• US/UK almost certainly need larger land armies. US industrial labor force in 1944 was ~18mil. As US division slice was ~60k, raising another 50 US divisions would cost ~3mil men or >15% of US industrial labor force (agriculture can't be cut because soldiers need more food than workers). As a percentage of industrial production after civilian minimum, removing 3mil Americans from industry would cut armaments production significantly more than 15%.
• Because US/UK need larger armies than OTL, the proportion of (smaller) arms production going to aircraft would have to decline.

TheMarcksPlan wrote:If we multiply OTL LW strength by 4 then USAAF loses 900 bombers during Big Week [lost 226 OTL]. That either ends strategic bombing or renders it plainly bad military strategy.

glenn239 wrote: ↑

03 Aug 2021, 18:27

TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑

29 Jul 2021, 08:24

A 4x stronger [LW]?

under no concievable circumstances could Germany's production and deployment rate come close to the Anglo-Americans.

“We must definitely decide on priorities. That
means the 109, the 190 and the 110.” Other more advanced types, such as
the jet projects, would take a lower priority. The answer was clear; in the
short term at least, quality had to give way to quantity.

The manpower shortage affecting the Me 262 program was not solved even after the
Jägerstab took over. Friedrich Wilhelm Seiler, Messerschmitt’s chairman, later estimated
that at that time only 30 percent of the necessary manpower was supplied, but this figure
looks far too low.

Surprisingly, even with its ultra-high status, the Me 262 program could not escape
emergency call-up drives initiated in late 1944 in order to fill the ever dwindling ranks of
the Wehrmacht. Conscription was not the only reason for the loss of workers. By May 1944
Messerschmitt declared the loss of around 500 workers since 25 February 1944 due to
Feindwirkung (enemy action), health problems and social needs.
Only a limited number of replacements arrived to replace them.

During the same month [March 1944]
Messerschmitt lost several hundred of its workers to the Wehrmacht and was left
short of the 2,700 workers it required, especially for Me 262 production. This requirement
was only partially covered by the delivery of 1,400 concentration camp inmates.

Towards the end, a
large proportion of the German workforce was unskilled too, composed of elderly men unfit
for military service, unskilled women of all ages, and Hitler-Jugend boys, as one slave worker
observed at Junkers’ jet-engine factory in Zittau.

glenn239 wrote:the Germans have no ability to strike the United States while the US can strike Germany at will.

glenn239 wrote:oil targets represented a vulnerability that the LW could not effectively defend against the weight of attacks the Anglo-Americans were able to achieve by 1944.

glenn239 wrote:Your ATL conditions apply to 1942, but fall off from there. By 1944 or 1945 at the latest Germany cannot hold Africa against the Anglo-Americans. By these dates all the shipping restrictions you mention fall away because by 1944 the US shipping production

glenn239 wrote:If the Germans get the Turkish rail network intact (as per your scenario), then sure.

glenn239 wrote: if Stalin does not surrender and Hitler is forced to contemplate a series of operations to try and reach the Urals against Red Army resistance.