The great escape.....effect on german war effort real?
The great escape.....effect on german war effort real?
The great escape....The Book on the movie...trying to disrupt the german war effort.....by trying down thousands of germans...did it really make this much of a difference...? For example there were mass escapes from KZ Auschwitz; KZ Treblinka KZ Sobibor......yet within weeks many of those escaping were killed by the Germans,,,,,
Re: The great escape.....effect on german war effort real?
Of course not. It wasn't like German workers pursued the escapees.
The result usually was that the usual internal security forces got less sleep.
The result usually was that the usual internal security forces got less sleep.
Re: The great escape.....effect on german war effort real?
Mostly those who escaped KZ's at Poland were killed by SS And Polizei units in a short period of time. So they got less sleep than usual because of this...
:roll:
"Befehl ist Befehl"
Re: The great escape.....effect on german war effort real?
All this is somewhat related to the so-called "Endphaseverbrechen" in the year 1945:
Link: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endphaseverbrechen
The article is only av. in german and spanish language.
Hans
Link: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endphaseverbrechen
Source: Above.Final phase crimes or crimes of the final phase are defined as National Socialist crimes committed in the final weeks and months of World War II; the final phase is usually understood as the period between January 1945 and the locally different end of the hostilities. The term was coined in connection with the prosecution of these crimes in Germany and Austria after 1945. In the collection of court judgments on the judiciary and Nazi crimes, 410 judgments on the crime complex “crimes in the final phase” are presented.
The article is only av. in german and spanish language.
Hans
The paradise of the successful lends itself perfectly to a hell for the unsuccessful. (Bertold Brecht on Hollywood)
Re: The great escape.....effect on german war effort real?
One of several thousand sources: "Murder On The Doorstep"Der israelische Historiker Daniel Blatman beschreibt in seinem Werk, wie im Winter 1944/45 mehr als 700.000 KZ-Insassen über Straßen getrieben wurden und wie rund ein Drittel von ihnen starb: Verhungert, erschossen von den Wachen, ermordet von braven deutschen Bürgern, die die Häftlinge jagten.
In his work, the Israeli historian Daniel Blatman describes how more than 700,000 concentration camp inmates were herded across the streets in the winter of 1944/45 and how around a third of them died: starved, shot by the guards, murdered by good German citizens who died prisoners hunted.
Link: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/mord-vor ... r-100.html
Hans
The paradise of the successful lends itself perfectly to a hell for the unsuccessful. (Bertold Brecht on Hollywood)
Re: The great escape.....effect on german war effort real?
Hi Lastry
Your question seems entirely parallel to debates on personnel costs between various schools of thought among economists (such as healthcare economists). To give a real-life example, should we invest in better beds in a hospital, which reduces the amount of time nurses spend moving patients manually? At one extreme of the opinion spectrum (let's call it 'A'), some economists would argue that such a move would be pure expense because the nurses are there anyway so there would be no net financial saving if their patient-moving worlkoad is reduced. They would simply do something else or enjoy more 'downtime'. This, I would suggest, is closely analogous to WMs position that escapes of prisoners had no impact on the German war effort because the job of catching them was done by forces already present for this purpose and they were there whether a prisoner escaped or not.
The problem with this argument (A) is that if we take it to its logical conclusion, nothing nurses do costs anything because individually you can apply the same argument to everything they do and therefore employing nurses does not cost anything. This is clearly absurd. The opposite extreme, (B), is that if we spend x on new beds and save y on staffing costs, then the overall budget will be y-x better off. This seems to be quite analogous to the argument of those suggesting that escapes had a big impact on the German war machine because of manhours spent on hunting them down and the disruption it caused.
I don't think anyone in healthcare believes either A or B. Therefore most economists' views lie somewhere inbetween (C) and the concept of 'opportunity costs' comes in. That is that if nurses are doing one thing they cannot do another. Thus if you spend money on nurses doing something that can be done by a machine, the opportunity is lost for them doing something more valuable - in other words you are losing the opportunity of a better return for your investment in a more expensive resource (it costs hugely more to train and pay a nurse than to build and maintain a specialised bed).
The reason I raise this whole thing is because if you are serious about a meaningful answer to your question, there are plenty of economic models in the healthcare economy field to help calculate something concrete. It also gives a useful framework even for a superficial analysis. Clearly resources were expended and opportunities lost. I am sure the foillowing is an incomplete list but
- communications: the costs of circulating information to internal security organs, telephone calls, printing leaflets, mugshots etc.
- manhours spent on increased patrolling
- manhours spent on organised manhunts
- interruptions to transport as trains etc are searched, rodblocks imposed, etc (opportunity costs)
- diversion of investigative effort results in harm not being prevented (eg partisan unit not caught, railway therefore blown up!) (opportunity costs)
- etc
Furthermore, one has to bear in mind that it is not just actual escape that is relevant, but also (and probably more so) the threat of escape. This means POW camps need significant investmnent in 'escape proofing', guard establishments and is one reason why internal security forces exist. Any escape (even a failed one) often results in increased investment in these facilities and therefore increased cost.
However, it has to be accepted that a paranoid totalitarian state will have a comparatively massive internal security apparatus because it views its entire population as potential enemies - all the more so if its administration extends over captured territories - very much the scenarion of 'The Great Escape'. Thus the effort it expends on hunting escaped POWs is proportionally tiny compared to its internal security, anti-saboteur and anti partizan activities etc and often can be incorporated into day-to day activities without significant additional cost. If a patrol is out looking for Jan Kowalski (the Polish partisan) the additional cost of it also looking for John Smith (the escaped British POW) at the same time is negligible. In addition, let us not forget that this particular regime was investing vast amounts of resource into rounding up and murdering millions of its own citizens and those of coutries it administered, ultimately harming its own war effort. The diversion of a tiny amount of resources from some of these, often self-harming rather than useful, activities would have made little impact on the overall internal security operation. Sadly, therefore, I think one has to conclude that while WMs estimation is not 100% on the mark, it is not far off. Or otherwise put, in this instance C is far closer to A than it is to B.
Your question seems entirely parallel to debates on personnel costs between various schools of thought among economists (such as healthcare economists). To give a real-life example, should we invest in better beds in a hospital, which reduces the amount of time nurses spend moving patients manually? At one extreme of the opinion spectrum (let's call it 'A'), some economists would argue that such a move would be pure expense because the nurses are there anyway so there would be no net financial saving if their patient-moving worlkoad is reduced. They would simply do something else or enjoy more 'downtime'. This, I would suggest, is closely analogous to WMs position that escapes of prisoners had no impact on the German war effort because the job of catching them was done by forces already present for this purpose and they were there whether a prisoner escaped or not.
The problem with this argument (A) is that if we take it to its logical conclusion, nothing nurses do costs anything because individually you can apply the same argument to everything they do and therefore employing nurses does not cost anything. This is clearly absurd. The opposite extreme, (B), is that if we spend x on new beds and save y on staffing costs, then the overall budget will be y-x better off. This seems to be quite analogous to the argument of those suggesting that escapes had a big impact on the German war machine because of manhours spent on hunting them down and the disruption it caused.
I don't think anyone in healthcare believes either A or B. Therefore most economists' views lie somewhere inbetween (C) and the concept of 'opportunity costs' comes in. That is that if nurses are doing one thing they cannot do another. Thus if you spend money on nurses doing something that can be done by a machine, the opportunity is lost for them doing something more valuable - in other words you are losing the opportunity of a better return for your investment in a more expensive resource (it costs hugely more to train and pay a nurse than to build and maintain a specialised bed).
The reason I raise this whole thing is because if you are serious about a meaningful answer to your question, there are plenty of economic models in the healthcare economy field to help calculate something concrete. It also gives a useful framework even for a superficial analysis. Clearly resources were expended and opportunities lost. I am sure the foillowing is an incomplete list but
- communications: the costs of circulating information to internal security organs, telephone calls, printing leaflets, mugshots etc.
- manhours spent on increased patrolling
- manhours spent on organised manhunts
- interruptions to transport as trains etc are searched, rodblocks imposed, etc (opportunity costs)
- diversion of investigative effort results in harm not being prevented (eg partisan unit not caught, railway therefore blown up!) (opportunity costs)
- etc
Furthermore, one has to bear in mind that it is not just actual escape that is relevant, but also (and probably more so) the threat of escape. This means POW camps need significant investmnent in 'escape proofing', guard establishments and is one reason why internal security forces exist. Any escape (even a failed one) often results in increased investment in these facilities and therefore increased cost.
However, it has to be accepted that a paranoid totalitarian state will have a comparatively massive internal security apparatus because it views its entire population as potential enemies - all the more so if its administration extends over captured territories - very much the scenarion of 'The Great Escape'. Thus the effort it expends on hunting escaped POWs is proportionally tiny compared to its internal security, anti-saboteur and anti partizan activities etc and often can be incorporated into day-to day activities without significant additional cost. If a patrol is out looking for Jan Kowalski (the Polish partisan) the additional cost of it also looking for John Smith (the escaped British POW) at the same time is negligible. In addition, let us not forget that this particular regime was investing vast amounts of resource into rounding up and murdering millions of its own citizens and those of coutries it administered, ultimately harming its own war effort. The diversion of a tiny amount of resources from some of these, often self-harming rather than useful, activities would have made little impact on the overall internal security operation. Sadly, therefore, I think one has to conclude that while WMs estimation is not 100% on the mark, it is not far off. Or otherwise put, in this instance C is far closer to A than it is to B.