Why did Germany lose World War II?

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Jon G.
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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1051

Post by Jon G. » 05 Sep 2010, 23:49

Guaporense wrote:From 75.9% to 160% is a 110% increase in productivity.
Yes, measured from 1941 to 1944 it is. However, as you well know, Abelshauser's original table sets 1939 as index=100. I am well aware of your preference for taking the lowest part of the curve and comparing it to the highest part as the basis for your crazy ideas (why else do you insist on making all comparisons based on Germany 1944??) You haven't seen me make bizarre conclusions based on the apparent dip in war production output from 1939 to 1941, have you?
Oh, I read that.

Well, you didn't exactly make a point there. You just showed your prejudices about the dynamics of productivity change while pointed out to some authors that in your opinion, showed that these statistics are wrong.
As for form, and in as much as I was replying to your false claim that '...Could you point me to some criticism of it? I haven't read anything about it...' you could perhaps just admit that you were wrong in that regard?

As for content, my point was not about 'productivity change', but rather addressing the validity and accuracy of the figures themselves. Measuring volume of end-product at one point in time with ditto volume at another point in time will emphatically not allow you to draw conclusions about per-worker productivity before you draw in other factors, such as the expansion of capacity taking place, roughly, until mid-1942, and also the fact that a much larger part of German war production was done by slave labourers by 1944 than it was by 1939.
I will deconstruct that post.
I suppose I should be looking forward to that...
I have read the objections to my "theories", I have changed my opinion on these subjects by quite a large extend. You can just read what I posted 10 months ago and now and see how my ideas evolved.

I will may not change my ideas in the direction that you wish as well.
Frankly, I don't give a flying fig about how your ideas may have evolved, nor do I have any wishes as to which direction said ideas may go.

My only beef with your posts is your continued, consistent and persistent misrepresentation of data. End of. No more and no less.
And this "showed to be wrong" is quite a large extrapolation in your part.
How can that be an extrapolation? Either you are wrong, or you are not.
His estimates have many problems. But I don't have better ones.
Then you should perhaps be refraining from parrotting his estimates.
I may trust imperfect estimates with greater confidence than you do.
...in which case you deserve all the flak you have been receiving.
You can open it by pasting it's link on your navigator.
Right. I forgot to ask you why you chose July 1941 as your starting point? In order to show a more dramatic increase in production by letting your table start at the lowest point in time production-wise, and ending near the highest point in time production-wise? You are of course aware that WW2 with Germany as a participant had been going on for 22 months by July 1941, and would go on for another 10 months after July 1944?
The Allies continued to produce obsolete types by 1944-45 as well. If you define the Bf-109 as obsolete, 2/3 of the American fighters produced during WW2 were obsolete.
Where do I describe the Bf-109 as obsolete? I was merely telling you that the Germans were building it also when it was past its prime. Yes, the Americans were still building the P-40 in 1944, and the British (or at least the Canadians) were building Hurricanes into 1944, but in both cases these obsolescent types had been relegated to secondary roles and/or theatres, and in both cases production terminated in 1944. Incidentally, 1944 was the year when Bf-109 production peaked.
The concept of economies of scale is actually based on a type of misunderstanding of the concept of optimal scale...
You misunderstood me. German re-armament in general, and specifically aircraft producerement were planned with economies of scale in mind right from the start. German aircraft producers were overwhelmingly serving one and only one customer, namely the German government; some aircraft manufacturers were in fact government owned. It's not like they started serial production of the Ju-88 in Mr. Junkers' garage...
Well, my thesis was that the Germans lost air superiority over the continent because they lacked the pilots and the fuel to use the added fighter production, not because they lacked fighter production.

Single engine fighter losses, total and damaged:

1943 - 10.661
1944 - 16.150
That figure actually seems a tad high. More dispassionate readers may want to refer to this thread http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 78&start=0

...which is also a textbook example of the data you tend to bring to the discussion. I take it your ideas have evolved on this point?
Single engine fighter production:

1943 - 9.626
1944 - 25.860
If your point is that 1944 fighter production surpassed 1944 fighter losses, then I can agree. However, by lumping production together by year, rather than by month as the page you link to does, you're disregarding 1/that fighter production ramped up during that year, from a low of 1,016 in February, to a high of 3,031 in September, and then declining slowly for the rest of the year, and also that 2/ Germany's strategic situation, while overall bleak, was entirely different by Dec 31 than it was by Jan 1 1944.
Aircraft fuel production, thousands of metric tons:

1943 - 1.917
1944 - 1.117
Ditto as above re yearly vs. monthly figures. Also, the fuel production figures, while interesting, do not take stockpiles (also carry-over stockpiles) into account. If you flip to the next page of the site you linked to, you will discover that German avgas stocks were in fact the highest since August-September 1940 in the spring of 1944.
1) The potential for the exertion of air power given by the increased fighter production couldn't be harnessed due to lack of fuel and trained pilots. 2) The fundamental cause was the lack of oil reserves in Europe, with clearly bounded fuel production to low levels, impossibilitating decent training of fighter pilots and good fuel supply for a large air force capable of challenging allied air power.
1) You can't measure any potential before you make an attempt at measuring the Allies' output of aircraft, fighters and trained pilots too.
2) What an earth-shattering conclusion. The Germans knew full well that they didn't have access to sufficient oil sources themselves. That's why they embarked on a gargantuan synthfuel programme; a programme whose output increased as the war went on as can also be read clearly from the figures you linked to. The Allies hit synthfuel production hard in the summer of 1944; however, the full effect of that was only felt gradually by the Luftwaffe, in major part thanks to the stockpiling of fuel I mentioned above.
Average number of hours of training for fighter pilots:

mid 1942 - 240 hours
mid 1943 - 200 hours
early 1944 - 160 hours
late 1944 - 110 hours
Not quite. According to the table you link to, the average training times stated are for pilots of all kinds. You could argue that since the Allies were training more multi-engine types, and for longer-range missions, they also needed to spend more time training pilots in disciplines such as blind and instrument flying, night flying, navigation, formation flying and so on.

From the table below the one you took your numbers from, it will appear that the Luftwaffe's lowest point in pilot hours spent on fighter engines was from Oct 1942 to June 1943; after that it seems to have increased a little (if still much less than the Allies spent training their fighter pilots)

(On productivity)
Output per head in German Industry, 1939-1944
year -------------- 1939 ---- 1940 ---- 1941 ---- 1942 ---- 1943 ---- 1944
Primary Industry - 100 ---- 104.1 ---- 114.6 --- 113.5 --- 108.7 --- 87.6
Arms Industry ---- 100 ---- 87.6 ----- 75.9 ----- 99.6 ---- 131.6 --- 160.0
Consumer Industry 100 ---- 115.9 ---- 133.3 --- 121.1 --- 124.7 --- 132.3

source: Overy, R., War and Economy in the Third Reich, page 367

The productivity in the primary industry stagnated, while in the arms industry it increased greatly from 1941 onwards and in the consumer industry we had a small increase.
Measured per-head, a leap by 32.3% is anything but small.
The productivity of the coal industry didn't increase while the armaments production increased greatly. Why? Simple, the coal industry was old, and had already matured. The opportunities for fast learning were exhausted.
Anything but. American coal digging was massively more productive than European coal mining was; in turn, German coal mining was more productive per-head than both French and British (not to mention Belgian and Soviet) coal mining was, largely due to efficiency gains from increased mechanization.

For that reason - high mechanization demanding a more specialized workforce - per-capita German coal mining declined more than other warring countries' coal industries did; developing a new coal seam from the moment you put your spade into the ground and until you had a fully developed mine running was estimated to take no less than seven years; the Germans knew already in 1939 that they did not have that kind of time on their hands.
While the production of munitions was a new sector of the German economy, that sprang from the war. In this new sector millions of workers were suddenly allocated. The industry wasn't very organized and the workers didn't have much experience.
You are disregarding that Germany had been rearming head over heels since Hitler came to power in 1933. That largely renders the rest of your post irrevelevant: you can speculate all you like over the development of the German armaments industry from 1941 to 1944. It wasn't a case of a stable workforce meandering around on factory floors as they picked up the skills they needed. Rather, it is a case of an industry in massive fluxus - crudely put, German workers out, slave workers in - along with increased orders and increased input of raw materials.

I am still not convinced how the German armaments industry could advance a full 60% in per-worker productivity from 1939 to 1944; your theoretical exercise does not explain how either, sorry.
...In the US productivity increased greatly between 1940 and 1944, the time it took to make a B-17 airframe decreased from 55.000 hours to 17.000 hours. The cost of production of a T-34 also declined greatly, from ca 250.000 rubles in 1941 to nearly half of that number by 1944.
Interesting how you use (man-) hours for the B-17 and rubles for the T-34. How many B-17s would 250,000 rubles buy you, and how many man-hours would it take to build a T-34 in 1941?

You are, in both cases, mentioning weapon systems which were only just entering mass production in 1940 and 1941, respectively. As I've been trying to point out to you upthread (multiple times), the Germans attempted to capitalize on economies of scale right from the start. Sometimes it worked (Ju-88); sometimes it didn't (Me-210)

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1052

Post by Guaporense » 07 Sep 2010, 01:35

Jon G. wrote:
Guaporense wrote:From 75.9% to 160% is a 110% increase in productivity.
Yes, measured from 1941 to 1944 it is. However, as you well know, Abelshauser's original table sets 1939 as index=100. I am well aware of your preference for taking the lowest part of the curve and comparing it to the highest part as the basis for your crazy ideas (why else do you insist on making all comparisons based on Germany 1944??) You haven't seen me make bizarre conclusions based on the apparent dip in war production output from 1939 to 1941, have you?
I have made "bizarre" conclusions: That the decrease in worker productivity between 1939 and 1941 was due to the conversion of the industrial capacity to the production of armaments. In other words, as industry was reorganized to produce armaments, with millions of workers being "drafted" into the war effort, industrial productivity fell naturally.

I still don't understand why you do find bizarre that worker productivity dropped in 1941.
Oh, I read that.

Well, you didn't exactly make a point there. You just showed your prejudices about the dynamics of productivity change while pointed out to some authors that in your opinion, showed that these statistics are wrong.
As for form, and in as much as I was replying to your false claim that '...Could you point me to some criticism of it? I haven't read anything about it...' you could perhaps just admit that you were wrong in that regard?
Well, my impression was that I never really understood what Tooze was trying to say in his book and his paper, Arming the Reich. Because I didn't see exactly a point by point refutation of the theory that labor productivity greatly increased between 1941 and 1944.
As for content, my point was not about 'productivity change', but rather addressing the validity and accuracy of the figures themselves. Measuring volume of end-product at one point in time with ditto volume at another point in time will emphatically not allow you to draw conclusions about per-worker productivity before you draw in other factors, such as the expansion of capacity taking place, roughly, until mid-1942, and also the fact that a much larger part of German war production was done by slave labourers by 1944 than it was by 1939.
The points:

Slave labor should have decreased productivity. Without slave labor productivity would have been higher.

The expansion of capacity was much smaller than the expansion of output. The valued of industrial capital stock didn't increase much during the 1939-1943 period, if compared to output.
I have read the objections to my "theories", I have changed my opinion on these subjects by quite a large extend. You can just read what I posted 10 months ago and now and see how my ideas evolved.

I will may not change my ideas in the direction that you wish as well.
Frankly, I don't give a flying fig about how your ideas may have evolved, nor do I have any wishes as to which direction said ideas may go.

My only beef with your posts is your continued, consistent and persistent misrepresentation of data. End of. No more and no less.
Misrepresentation of data? I really don't understand.
And this "showed to be wrong" is quite a large extrapolation in your part.
How can that be an extrapolation? Either you are wrong, or you are not.
Well, I didn't understand how it was show that I was wrong.
His estimates have many problems. But I don't have better ones.
Then you should perhaps be refraining from parrotting his estimates.
In other words, we are better of without any estimates than with Goldsmith's.
I may trust imperfect estimates with greater confidence than you do.
...in which case you deserve all the flak you have been receiving.
I presume that you are a historian?
You can open it by pasting it's link on your navigator.
Right. I forgot to ask you why you chose July 1941 as your starting point? In order to show a more dramatic increase in production by letting your table start at the lowest point in time production-wise, and ending near the highest point in time production-wise? You are of course aware that WW2 with Germany as a participant had been going on for 22 months by July 1941, and would go on for another 10 months after July 1944?
Of the 5,6 years of WW2, I had data for a central period of 3 years. I used this data from the USSBS report on the German aircraft industry.
The Allies continued to produce obsolete types by 1944-45 as well. If you define the Bf-109 as obsolete, 2/3 of the American fighters produced during WW2 were obsolete.
Where do I describe the Bf-109 as obsolete? I was merely telling you that the Germans were building it also when it was past its prime. Yes, the Americans were still building the P-40 in 1944, and the British (or at least the Canadians) were building Hurricanes into 1944, but in both cases these obsolescent types had been relegated to secondary roles and/or theatres, and in both cases production terminated in 1944. Incidentally, 1944 was the year when Bf-109 production peaked.
Spitfire production peaked in what year?
The concept of economies of scale is actually based on a type of misunderstanding of the concept of optimal scale...
You misunderstood me. German re-armament in general, and specifically aircraft producerement were planned with economies of scale in mind right from the start. German aircraft producers were overwhelmingly serving one and only one customer, namely the German government; some aircraft manufacturers were in fact government owned. It's not like they started serial production of the Ju-88 in Mr. Junkers' garage...
Alright.
Well, my thesis was that the Germans lost air superiority over the continent because they lacked the pilots and the fuel to use the added fighter production, not because they lacked fighter production.

Single engine fighter losses, total and damaged:

1943 - 10.661
1944 - 16.150
That figure actually seems a tad high. More dispassionate readers may want to refer to this thread http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 78&start=0

...which is also a textbook example of the data you tend to bring to the discussion. I take it your ideas have evolved on this point?
Well, when I created that thread I didn't have comparative single engine fighter losses for 1943 and 1944 grouped in the same category. I don't see the problem with this data as well, as it is apparently fully consistent with Rich's data in that thread.

If this statistic is right, I don't see how the claims made in that thread can be justified. If fighter losses increased 55% and production increased 190% and they lost air superiority them it cannot be due to lack of available supply of fighters.
Single engine fighter production:1943 - 9.626 1944 - 25.860
If your point is that 1944 fighter production surpassed 1944 fighter losses, then I can agree. However, by lumping production together by year, rather than by month as the page you link to does, you're disregarding 1/that fighter production ramped up during that year, from a low of 1,016 in February, to a high of 3,031 in September, and then declining slowly for the rest of the year, and also that 2/ Germany's strategic situation, while overall bleak, was entirely different by Dec 31 than it was by Jan 1 1944.
These losses include damaged, total losses were about 8.400, or 1/3 of production.

My point was that the Allies had a much better control of the airspace in 1944 than in 1943, while German fighter production tripled, while fuel production decreased. As result, fuel consumption greatly decreased as well.

From, Strategy for Defeat, the Luftwaffe 1933-1945, Murray, page 345:

Loss rate of heavy bombers of 8th airforce, 1944

January - 3,8%
February - 3,5%
March - 3,3%
April - 3,6%
May - 2,2%
June - 1,1%
July - 1,5%
August - 1,5%

Note that flak was probably responsible for a fixed 1% loss rate, while additional losses were inflicted by fighters. In 1943, the loss rate of heavy bombers was 5,1%, 3-4 times higher than the loss rate they suffered in late 1944 and yearly 1945.

Compare to fuel production/consumption:

January - 171.000 / 122.000
February - 179.000 / 135.000
March - 185.000 / 156.000
April - 173.000 / 164.000
May - 157.000 / 195.000
June - 56.000 / 182.000
July - 45.000 / 136.000
August - 29.000 / 115.000
September - 17.000 / 60.000

Fuel consumption peaked in May 1944, while in subsequent months, consumption decreased 3 fold. It followed production given the time to consume the existing stocks of fuel. Stocks in May 1944 were 574.000 tons of aviation gasoline, enough for 3 months of high consumption.
1) The potential for the exertion of air power given by the increased fighter production couldn't be harnessed due to lack of fuel and trained pilots. 2) The fundamental cause was the lack of oil reserves in Europe, with clearly bounded fuel production to low levels, impossibilitating decent training of fighter pilots and good fuel supply for a large air force capable of challenging allied air power.
1) You can't measure any potential before you make an attempt at measuring the Allies' output of aircraft, fighters and trained pilots too.
German fighter production clearly increased in relation to allied production between 1943 and 1944. In 1943 the Western Allies produced 35.600 fighters, while Germany produced 11.700 fighters (including 2 engine fighters). In 1944 the Wester Allies produced 49.300 fighters, while Germans produced 29.000. German production went from 30% of Allied production in 1943 to 60% in 1944.

German production plans pointed to 70.000 fighter production in 1945. 140% of the combined Anglo-American fighter production.
2) What an earth-shattering conclusion. The Germans knew full well that they didn't have access to sufficient oil sources themselves. That's why they embarked on a gargantuan synthfuel programme; a programme whose output increased as the war went on as can also be read clearly from the figures you linked to. The Allies hit synthfuel production hard in the summer of 1944; however, the full effect of that was only felt gradually by the Luftwaffe, in major part thanks to the stockpiling of fuel I mentioned above.
Yes. Probably the main reason why the Germans lost the air war was lack of oil resources.
Average number of hours of training for fighter pilots:

mid 1942 - 240 hours
mid 1943 - 200 hours
early 1944 - 160 hours
late 1944 - 110 hours
Not quite. According to the table you link to, the average training times stated are for pilots of all kinds. You could argue that since the Allies were training more multi-engine types, and for longer-range missions, they also needed to spend more time training pilots in disciplines such as blind and instrument flying, night flying, navigation, formation flying and so on.

From the table below the one you took your numbers from, it will appear that the Luftwaffe's lowest point in pilot hours spent on fighter engines was from Oct 1942 to June 1943; after that it seems to have increased a little (if still much less than the Allies spent training their fighter pilots)
The report on the strategic air war makes it quite clear that it was about fighter pilot training hours, not average training hours for all pilots. Below is the statistic on the number of training hours in combat types, with are fighters because this statistic is comparing average training hours of fighter pilots.

Actually it was from July 1943 to June 1944 that the number of training hours in combat types reached rock bottom.Afterwards perhaps the increased fighter production enabled the luftwaffe to give more fighters to flying schools. But the decreased fuel supply implied in a reduction of total flying hours.
Last edited by Guaporense on 07 Sep 2010, 01:42, 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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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1053

Post by Guaporense » 07 Sep 2010, 01:39

A good example of increased productivity due to learning was this graph from Bussing NAG Flugmotorenwerke GmbH, aero engine plant.

Number of hours worked per engine:
http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/1199/32/0
Productivity tripled from 1938 to 1944.
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

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Post by phylo_roadking » 07 Sep 2010, 02:23

Slave labor should have decreased productivity. Without slave labor productivity would have been higher.
There are MANY mistakes commonly made when discussing "slave labour"...

1/ the Germans made clever use of "pure" slave labour; production processes were broken down as far as possible so that a relatively unskilled set of hands could carry out each action; the semi-skilled level took care of the assembly of those individual manufactured pieces;

2/ They moved slave labour about as necessary; they didn't waste those tens of thousands of Jewish munitions workers from around Berlin in the soap factories...!

3/ Commonly, people assume the term "slave labour" includes only the untrained, unskilled mass of Jewish transportees; they tend to forget the term includes those tens of thousands of highly skilled manual/industrial workers transferred from conquered nations to Germany's factories :wink:

4/ Even within the ranks of Jewish transportees there were tens of thousands of highly skilled individuals - how many skilled artisans, opticians etc. ended up at the Mittelwerk building V2s as opposed to tanners or builders or streetsweepers??? :wink:
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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1055

Post by phylo_roadking » 07 Sep 2010, 02:27

Number of hours worked per engine:
http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/1199/32/0
Productivity tripled from 1938 to 1944.
Interesting chart...

"Jahr 1939 vil not exist by order of ze Fuhrer!" 8O

Looking at the chart, I would guess that the production hours per engione stayed relatively flat through the whole of 1939...only a very slight fall at best during all four quarters.
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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1056

Post by phylo_roadking » 07 Sep 2010, 02:33

Yes. Probably the main reason why the Germans lost the air war was lack of oil resources.
IIRC I believe you've been referred to AHF member Kurfurst's site before now. There you'll be suprised to find that Germany actually had quite large stocks of various types of aviation fuel remaining by May 1945!

What the Germans lacked in the last months of the war were ways of getting it safely to where it was needed...
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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1057

Post by RichTO90 » 07 Sep 2010, 03:44

Guaporense wrote:From, Strategy for Defeat, the Luftwaffe 1933-1945, Murray, page 345:

Loss rate of heavy bombers of 8th airforce, 1944

January - 3,8%
February - 3,5%
March - 3,3%
April - 3,6%
May - 2,2%
June - 1,1%
July - 1,5%
August - 1,5%

Note that flak was probably responsible for a fixed 1% loss rate, while additional losses were inflicted by fighters. In 1943, the loss rate of heavy bombers was 5,1%, 3-4 times higher than the loss rate they suffered in late 1944 and yearly 1945.
Something is a bit odd here, since I cannot get the figures to match these calculations. Oh, there it is, it's G being G again, that is the losses to sorties, not losses to strength.

Anyway, taking the monthly ETO heavy bomber strength (i.e., Eighth Air Force) and the monthly heavy bomber losses I get the following (total loss/loss to enemy aircraft/loss to flak/other):

Jan 11.2/7.6/1.5/2.0
Feb 13.6/8.5/4.1/1.0
Mar 15.0/7.8/4.9/2.4
Apr 15.9/11.9/4.0/0.0
May 12.0/6.7/3.9/1.4
Jun 10.3/3.6/5.2/1.5
Jul 10.1/2.3/5.8/2.0
Aug 9.0/1.7/6.5/0.9
Sep 10.2/3.7/5.7/0.8
Oct 4.6/0.9/2.9/0.8
Nov 5.5/1.3/3.8/0.3
Dec 3.2/0.8/2.0/0.5

Monthly loss rate to aircraft strength in 1943 averaged 9.9% and 10.1% in 1944. Loss to enemy aircraft in 1943 averaged 7.3% and to Flak 1.7%. In 1944 monthly loss to enemy aircraft averaged 4.7% and to Flak 4.2%.

Monthly loss rate per sortie was actually 5.9% (Professor Murray apparently did not include "other" losses in his calculation) and of that loss to enemy aircraft averaged 4.7% and to Flak 0.8%. In 1944 monthly loss per sortie was 2.4% and the loss to enemy aircraft averaged 1.2% and to Flak 0.9%.

Note the usual Guaporensisms 5.9 is "3-4 times higher than" 2.4 (or, if you want to use Murray's figures 5.1% is "3-4 times higher than" 1.9). :roll: :roll: :roll:

This just keeps getting better and better. :lol:
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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1058

Post by Jon G. » 07 Sep 2010, 09:45

Guaporense wrote:...
I still don't understand why you do find bizarre that worker productivity dropped in 1941.
:roll: Read my post again if you please. As I wrote '...You haven't seen me make bizarre conclusions based on the apparent dip in war production output from 1939 to 1941, have you?'
Well, my impression was that I never really understood what Tooze was trying to say in his book and his paper, Arming the Reich. Because I didn't see exactly a point by point refutation of the theory that labor productivity greatly increased between 1941 and 1944.
That's okay, Tooze (pp438-440) is mostly concerning himself with the apparent slump in productivity in 1939-1941.

My point throughout has been my serious misgivings about Abelshauser's table (The Economics of World War II p 150) which claims that per-worker productivity in German munitions production was a throbbing 160% of 1939 per-worker productivity. Particularly because the table which Abelshauser produces for Ruhr coal mining and machine tool industry (p. 157) shows an exact opposite tendency, namely one of decreasing output per worker.

To all intents and purposes, Abelshauser's figures aren't even second hand - they're handed down from Eicholtz, who in turn based his calculations on Wagenführ.
The points:

Slave labor should have decreased productivity. Without slave labor productivity would have been higher.

The expansion of capacity was much smaller than the expansion of output. The valued of industrial capital stock didn't increase much during the 1939-1943 period, if compared to output.
I guess that's why capital stock investment apparently peaked in 1943?
...
...My only beef with your posts is your continued, consistent and persistent misrepresentation of data. End of. No more and no less.
Misrepresentation of data? I really don't understand.
I hope you can appreciate the irony of being caught red-handed mis-representing data yet again in the very post which I am replying to? To wit, your confusion of 8AF losses-to-sorties vs. losses-to-strength as pointed out by Rich, above?
...In other words, we are better of without any estimates than with Goldsmith's.
Yes. I prefer no estimates to wrong estimates.
I presume that you are a historian?
Not really, although my degree is in History. Which matters squat. You could be a janitor for all I care, you still have to back your claims and stop mis-representing data if you want to be taken seriously. There are no free lunches to be had on claimed academic credentials.
Spitfire production peaked in what year?
Spitfire became obsolescent when?
Well, when I created that thread I didn't have comparative single engine fighter losses for 1943 and 1944 grouped in the same category. I don't see the problem with this data as well, as it is apparently fully consistent with Rich's data in that thread.
See above regarding consistency of data.
If this statistic is right, I don't see how the claims made in that thread can be justified. If fighter losses increased 55% and production increased 190% and they lost air superiority them it cannot be due to lack of available supply of fighters.
No, but then I think it would be hard to find anyone who made that claim in that thread.
...(snip false loss rate data and insane conclusions derived from it. Thank you, Rich)...
Yes. Probably the main reason why the Germans lost the air war was lack of oil resources...
...relative to their opponents, yes. On the other hand, you certainly can't claim that Germany's aerial war fortunes followed her avgas stocks.
The report on the strategic air war makes it quite clear that it was about fighter pilot training hours, not average training hours for all pilots. Below is the statistic on the number of training hours in combat types, with are fighters because this statistic is comparing average training hours of fighter pilots.
The paper you link to uses the term 'operational types' Of course the average German pilot in 1944 would have been a fighter pilot; the average USAAF pilot would probably go through much training before it was even decided which type of aircraft he was most suited for.

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1059

Post by The_Enigma » 07 Sep 2010, 14:24

Anyway, taking the monthly ETO heavy bomber strength (i.e., Eighth Air Force) and the monthly heavy bomber losses I get the following (total loss/loss to enemy aircraft/loss to flak/other):

Jan 11.2/ 7.6/ 1.5/ 2.0
Feb 13.6 /8.5/ 4.1/ 1.0
Mar 15.0/ 7.8/ 4.9/ 2.4
Apr 15.9 /11.9/ 4.0/ 0.0
May 12.0/ 6.7/ 3.9/ 1.4
Jun 10.3/ 3.6/ 5.2/ 1.5
Jul 10.1/ 2.3/ 5.8 /2.0
Aug 9.0/ 1.7 6.5/ 0.9
Sep 10.2/ 3.7/ 5.7 0.8
Oct 4.6 /0.9/ 2.9/ 0.8
Nov 5.5/ 1.3/ 3.8/ 0.3
Dec 3.2/ 0.8/ 2.0/ 0.5
The bomber will always get through!

Do you have the actual figures that match up with the percentages? I don’t know if you can help but the stats beg some additional questions.

Flak seems to take a steady toll on the planes but increases during the summer months; a shift towards more heavily guarded targets i.e. Berlin etc? The bomber losses dramatically fall towards the end of the year, would that be due to few sorties being launched due to the overall heavy losses or attacks on targets that were defended less?

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LWD
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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1060

Post by LWD » 07 Sep 2010, 15:34

The_Enigma wrote:...
Flak seems to take a steady toll on the planes but increases during the summer months; a shift towards more heavily guarded targets i.e. Berlin etc? The bomber losses dramatically fall towards the end of the year, would that be due to few sorties being launched due to the overall heavy losses or attacks on targets that were defended less?
I did see a detailed break down somewhere. One of the interesting things is that FLAK was damaging a lot more planes and a lot of the planes that fighters shot down were already damaged probably by FLAK.
There are several breakdowns of losses off this page: http://www.usaaf.net/digest/operations.htm
Some of the data I'm talking about is mentioned here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=zAnFla ... th&f=false
but I can't seem to find the tables with all the data. I think they were broken down for both the 8th & 9th Air forces.

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1061

Post by RichTO90 » 07 Sep 2010, 17:35

The_Enigma wrote:The bomber will always get through!

Do you have the actual figures that match up with the percentages? I don’t know if you can help but the stats beg some additional questions.

Flak seems to take a steady toll on the planes but increases during the summer months; a shift towards more heavily guarded targets i.e. Berlin etc? The bomber losses dramatically fall towards the end of the year, would that be due to few sorties being launched due to the overall heavy losses or attacks on targets that were defended less?
The astonishing thing to me is that that our resident Brazilian Germanophile is apparently still unaware that his “revelations” are either nothing new or have been completely demolished by better scholarship and better data than has “best estimates”. This is a prime example since much of the USAAF studies, including the original data collections, are readily available online.

For example, he misquotes from Williamson Murray’s Strategy for Defeat, so go here: http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/digital/p ... Defeat.pdf to find it in full, albeit absent the oddly-colored filters employed by Guaporense.

Now if you want the original data resource that Dr. Murray utilized to develop his percentages, go to the USAAF Statistical Digest, Part III http://www.afhra.af.mil/shared/media/do ... 08-043.pdf for effective sorties (what Dr. Murray termed “credit sorties”) and losses and Part II http://www.afhra.af.mil/shared/media/do ... 08-042.pdf for strengths. Insert data into an Excel spreadsheet and go to town with it.

Of course, once you have done so you will immediately notice what is obvious to all but the most obtuse…the actual tipping point for the Luftwaffe in general and the Jagdwaffe in particular was not the fall of 1944 when German AVGAS (and POL) resource availability collapsed, it was May1944, when USAAF heavy bomber loss rates to enemy aircraft fell to the same level as losses to Flak. Of course, the reason why it did so is part and parcel with why airpower was important and what its strategic effects, beyond plant damage and production outputs, actually were.

Also, if you would like the unfiltered German accounts of what happened, I suggest that you try http://www.afhra.af.mil/studies/index.asp, which has online much of the von Rohden collection of Luftwaffe studies. See especially Number 159, The German Air Force versus the Allies in the West, The Air War in the West, by Josef Schmid and Walter Grabmann and Number 164, German Air Force Air Defense Operations, also by Grabmann. If you are interested in the details of the German synthetic fuel projects and the effects of Allied bombing on the German fuel situation, you could consult http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/.

Have fun!
Richard Anderson
Cracking Hitler's Atlantic Wall: the 1st Assault Brigade Royal Engineers on D-Day
Stackpole Books, 2009.

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1062

Post by The_Enigma » 07 Sep 2010, 17:54

Cheers for that info and anyalsis Rich and Michigan Viking! I will be taking a look through those links, its very intresting - as you say Rich the air war outside of the bombing played a very important stratetgical role.

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1063

Post by doogal » 10 Sep 2010, 02:36

If Hitler Read (as we know) Carl von Clausewitz he did so without the proper eyes:

"The political object is the goal ,war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose" (p99 Book One Chapter one On War Howard and Paret)

Hitlers means and way of waging war were completely in-line with (his) ploitical purpose, so Hitler believed he had harmonised these elements.
It never occurred to him that politics was not a simple tool he could keep in his pocket for occasions when he decided it was neccessary.

"if the state is thought of as a person and policy is the product of its brain then among the contingencies for which the state must be prepared is a war in which every element calls for policy to be eclipsed by violence" (p100)
You would think with hindsight that he took this to heart:

One can go on: and this forms a fair basis for why Germany lost the war, it was a war lost before it started.
For no matter how many battlefield victories the Wehrmacht would of scored and possibly deservedly so the political heart of the regime which sponsored it was a corps of luddites without a reasonable policy or frame work outside of a German overlord ship of continental Europe and beyond.
For the Nazis war was "a continuation of there policies by other means" and that is why the lost:there was no winning:

D :idea: :milsmile: :lol:

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1064

Post by bf109 emil » 10 Sep 2010, 10:04

German fighter production clearly increased in relation to allied production between 1943 and 1944. In 1943 the Western Allies produced 35.600 fighters, while Germany produced 11.700 fighters (including 2 engine fighters). In 1944 the Wester Allies produced 49.300 fighters, while Germans produced 29.000. German production went from 30% of Allied production in 1943 to 60% in 1944.
are you including the FW190 in the fighter numbers Germany produced as the majority use of this plane was a fighter bomber on the Eastern front and hence replaced the Stuka :idea:
.relative to their opponents, yes. On the other hand, you certainly can't claim that Germany's aerial war fortunes followed her avgas stocks.
more so to poor logistics relating to the training of sufficient and aptly qualified aircrew...simply as vetrans where lost, new pilots trained by the Reich where marginally inferior to their allied counterparts...sure Germany had a handful with an artificially and falsely claimed high number of kills but for the most part Luftwaffe pilots where easy pickings by vastly superior and properly trained Allied crews...and as for inflatted Luftwaffe claims...Galland states that Germany and the Luftwaffe used this system...The German obsession with precision elminated controversy by a simple set of rules. Where more than one pilot was involved in the downing of an aircraft, the piltos had to decide between themselves who was to get the kill credit. hmmm wonder how many planes old Hartmann got a pot shot in at, while his wingman would have downed or another, but yet bowed to his aura and allowed his total to inflate rather then be credited with a 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 kill as was more accurately used by RAF and IIRC USAAF fighter pilots
Monthly loss rate to aircraft strength in 1943 averaged 9.9% and 10.1% in 1944. Loss to enemy aircraft in 1943 averaged 7.3% and to Flak 1.7%. In 1944 monthly loss to enemy aircraft averaged 4.7% and to Flak 4.2%.
wonder how low the percentage would be if we discounted aircraft lost to fighters as a result of previously being damaged by Flak...as IIRC the vast amount of USAAF bombers lost to fighters came only after they had initially received damage by Flak and returning from after dropping their bombs as opposed to the inflated number posted which alleges that 9.9% and 10.1% planes lost might be scene as done so without firstly flattening a German town, city or putting the pickle :wink: in the barrel
Actually it was from July 1943 to June 1944 that the number of training hours in combat types reached rock bottom.Afterwards perhaps the increased fighter production enabled the luftwaffe to give more fighters to flying schools. But the decreased fuel supply implied in a reduction of total flying hours.
good point as Germany simply got it backwards, thus an inefficient airforce...i.e. perhaps a smaller contingent of pilots, but ones that would and could be effective or have the ability to fly as opposed to being rushed through training and ending up a cannon fodder for allied planes/airforces
My point was that the Allies had a much better control of the airspace in 1944 than in 1943, while German fighter production tripled, while fuel production decreased. As result, fuel consumption greatly decreased as well.
fuel production or fuel imported was lower as the main reason for lack of fuel as simply Germany had no sources other then importing and a pittance amount of synthetic fuel which had no hope of supplying an army, navy and airforce along with logistic needs, civilian needs etc....but in essence the much better control of airspace was the result more so of lacking an ample enemy to refute this as a German airman was an unworthy opponent by late 1944...and the fact that now fighter ability to escort bombers meant that crippled ones from Flak could not be lost or picked off by waiting Luftwaffe pilots...

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Re: Why did Germany lose World War II?

#1065

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 12 Oct 2010, 12:01

Because of the following:
1) Hitler declared war against the USA.
2) Hitler failed to issue winter clothing in the battle of Moscow.
3) Hitler neglected Rommel in reinforcements in the battle of El Alamien.
4) Hitler failed to capture Stalingrad the soonest as possible.
5) Hitler failed to capture the French Fleet at Toulon.
6) Hitler never started the 'Z-Plan'.
7) Hitler never realized the importance of the Sturmgewehr assault rifles.
8) Hitler stopped the production of the reliable Panzer Mark III tanks in December 1943.
9) Hitler disagreed with his generals.
10) Hitler never used the V-weapons against the Normandy beachheads.

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