A Comparison of American and German economies in WW2

[Guaporense]

What is worse : glorification of fascist regimes grounded on wrong data or on correct data ?
Tough question ....

Two sides to a coin really. But there is only one side to guaporense's coin as he has already quickly proven.

"Different opinions" are one thing. When that "different opinion" is glorification of totalitarian regimes - I probably shouldn't have said fascist, except strictly WRT World War II - is when I get irritated. When that glorification is masqueraded as a condemnation of the "evil Allies" for contravening "laws of war" that didn't exist and then boo-hooing over all the poor dead German civilians is when I get angry.

I have made no glorification of the Nazi regime, where did I say it would have been a good thing if they won the war? That they should have killed more people than they did? How is my criticism of their inneficiency glorification of the regime?

I think that it was incredible that we actually managed to free Europe from the Nazis, considering their very strong strategic position after June 1940 and that we also didn't have to let the Soviets bring western europe inside the iron curtain. To aknowledge the greatness of these feats requires also to aknowledge the formidable enemies which had to be defeated. While I don't exactly glorify the allied fighting power, though partly because I lash out on the arrogance regarding the western allies. Though dropping millions of tons of bombs over civilian heads wasn't exactly a good thing the allies did.

Finally, you claim you never insult me but now you call me a glorifier of facist regimes. Though I don't know the reason why you would think so, not being a huge fan of the anglo-american countries, though, doesn't make me a glorifier of facist regimes.

OTOH, misuse of data is simply misuse of data. And when that misuse is calculated, ignores corrections, and simply repeats the same nonsensical litany of bad data and claims for simple correlation "proving" causation is also when I get angry. As has already been demonstrated by his most recent return, guaporense sheds crocodile tears over being "insulted", while claiming "sorrow" over having "in the past" used bad data, something that, oh no my goodness, never, will he do it again. And then promptly posts bogus "casualty statistics", which he was long ago corrected on, in another thread here at AHF, requiring yet another correction.

The 90,000 wounded and killed in the first 3 months of the western front is the correct number. I don't understand what's the problem with using it, I don't think that many of the 200,000 MIA in the same period were KIA and WIA and I wasn't convinced by the arguments provided that the use of this data is wrong.

[RichTO90]

I have made no glorification of the Nazi regime, where did I say it would have been a good thing if they won the war? That they should have killed more people than they did? How is my criticism of their inneficiency glorification of the regime?

I think that it was incredible that we actually managed to free Europe from the Nazis, considering their very strong strategic position after June 1940 and that we also didn't have to let the Soviets bring western europe inside the iron curtain. To aknowledge the greatness of these feats requires also to aknowledge the formidable enemies which had to be defeated. While I don't exactly glorify the allied fighting power, though partly because I lash out on the arrogance regarding the western allies. Though dropping millions of tons of bombs over civilian heads wasn't exactly a good thing the allies did.

Finally, you claim you never insult me but now you call me a glorifier of facist regimes. Though I don't know the reason why you would think so, not being a huge fan of the anglo-american countries, though, doesn't make me a glorifier of facist regimes.

So then you are saying you didn't really mean that snide comment of yours in reply to David Thompson correcting you to sound as dismissive as it was?

The 90,000 wounded and killed in the first 3 months of the western front is the correct number. I don't understand what's the problem with using it, I don't think that many of the 200,000 MIA in the same period were KIA and WIA and I wasn't convinced by the arguments provided that the use of this data is wrong.

No, it is not "the correct number", it is a number, pure and simple, whether it is more or less correct is another question. The casualty figures reported in November were actually:

KIA - 19,554
WIA - 61,008
MIA - 66,326
UNKNOWN* - 187,349
Total - 334,237

In January those figures were revised to (but appear to have only included ground combat elements):

KIA - 23,019
WIA - 67,060
MIA - 198,616
UNKNOWN - 0
Total - 288,695

* UNKNOWN was given as nicht aufgeschlüsselte (literally, “not keyed”, that is, not categorized according to type of loss)

Yes, it is incorrect to exclude missing in action when comparing casualties, especially when we find that Allied missing in action during the period who were actually prisoners of war of the Germans were a few thousands at most, but for the Germans exceeded two hundred thousand. Those figures are for permanent losses to the German military, either way they are counted, whether or not you understand or are convinced by that argument is a different matter and only reflects upon your inability to process these data.

[Guaporense]

Good morning Guaporense,

I can only speak for myself ("you guys") as to my development of inferences to understand your point of view.

US Government labor allocations was, indeed, consciously pursued. The pursuits met political resistence.

Many of your arguments requires a comprehensive grasp of economics and not "some experience".

Guaporense, on an advanced-level history site, at the economics section, you wrote "centralized direction characterized all the nations in both world wars".

On your second decade of economic studies, glance at what US General Joseph ("Vinegar Joe") Stillwell said about the consignee of US Lend-Lease shipped to China. Do note that "China" had more than one government at the time.

Do the same or similiar analysis for France. In the Great War, Part II, "France" also had more than one government at the time.

Was there a centralized direction for Russia on its initial participation in World War I and the later Soviet government's "centralized direction" ?

No country has ever achieved completely centralized direction (in such state, all economic activity would be directed by a single agency and there won't be prices for any goods, as there isn't trade itself as all property is owned by the government, such a state of extreme centralization is not feasible in practice), the closes example would be the Soviet Union during Lenin's period, right after WW1. During wars states naturally increase the proportion of resources confiscated inside the territories they rule, for some reason that I still don't understand, they also tend to increase the degree of centralized direction. when fighting wars. In fact, Germany's mobilization for WW1 represented proof for the Russian revolutionaries that you could direct a country's economic activity.

However, this is not the most efficient way to mobilize resources. In Germany's case I believe this central planning was specially hurtful because the price system Germany used through the war, by freezing prices in 1939, reflected the relative scarcities of Germany in 1939, and wasn't allowed to be updated with information regarding the relative scarcities of goods in Europe under the British blockcade (that would be incorporated by the price system through the decentralized actions of millions of decision makers), hence resulted in catastrophic economic collapse in occupied territories.

After completion of a second decade of economic studies, you'll (hopefully) see that Central Banks augmented taxes and bonds with other financial mechanisms. Recall famous terms such as President Wilson's "elastic money".

I read this on monetary theory a couple of months ago
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr218.pdf

You are trying to teach an algebraic topologist the definition of a triangle.

[Guaporense]

I have made no glorification of the Nazi regime, where did I say it would have been a good thing if they won the war? That they should have killed more people than they did? How is my criticism of their inneficiency glorification of the regime?

I think that it was incredible that we actually managed to free Europe from the Nazis, considering their very strong strategic position after June 1940 and that we also didn't have to let the Soviets bring western europe inside the iron curtain. To aknowledge the greatness of these feats requires also to aknowledge the formidable enemies which had to be defeated. While I don't exactly glorify the allied fighting power, though partly because I lash out on the arrogance regarding the western allies. Though dropping millions of tons of bombs over civilian heads wasn't exactly a good thing the allies did.

Finally, you claim you never insult me but now you call me a glorifier of facist regimes. Though I don't know the reason why you would think so, not being a huge fan of the anglo-american countries, though, doesn't make me a glorifier of facist regimes.

So then you are saying you didn't really mean that snide comment of yours in reply to David Thompson correcting you to sound as dismissive as it was?

I wasn't consciously trying to sound dismissive. I only said what he was saying in a short and precise way. Also, in Brazil we generally do not have the strict black and white view that the English speaking world has: Allies = good guys, Axis = bad guys, we don't hold everything that the allies did in high regard and examples such as the atomic bombings are used to illustrate how WW2 did not have any "good guy", a professor in the university where I had my undergrad in a lecture cited the strategic bombing of residential areas in Axis countries in the same sentence as the holocaust.

Yes, I do not personally approve mass killing of civilians of enemy countries: dropping thousands of tons of incendiary bombs on residential areas made of wood, burning the civilian population in a firestorm, as happened in Japan several times, is not something I personally regard as morally justifiable. And Japan was bombed in 1945, when the outcome of the war was not hard to see (well, most people here say the outcome of the war was crystal clear already in July 1941 when Barbarossa was proceeding slightly more slower than initially planned).

For another example, the 1943 bengal famine, killed a couple millions of Indians of hunger while the resources of the Western allies were being used to keep the UK well feed. Same way, a couple million jews died of hunger in concentration camps, while the resources of Germany were being used to keep Germany well feed. The ethnic group running the colonial empire takes priority, right?

The Nazis were essentially a extreme application of ideological elements existing in the western world during that time. These elements also existed in the Allied countries, however, to a much smaller degree in the western allies. While the Soviet Union, the frontline player in the allied side, showed equal or less respect to general human life/individual rights than Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy did.

WW2 happened essentially because Nazi Germany wanted to get a colonial empire, like the ones France, UK, US and the USSR (exp. Ukraine) had. However, to implement that desire it would be required to exterminate much more people in a much smaller amount of time than their role models. It's no coincidence that soon after WW2 the concepts of racism and colonial empires were abolished.

Finally, if one argues that the allies were not so morally superior it does not mean necessarily that one is an advocate of fascism. Since, well, that doesn't mean that one thinks the allied government were not evil in the first place. The US government, after WW2, turned into a powerful organization that managed to interfere much more on civil society and on the world as whole, establishing military bases all over the world, it maintain's a "colonial" presence in many countries, in essence, it became closer to a fascist government in many aspects compared to the minimal US state of the 1920's.

The 90,000 wounded and killed in the first 3 months of the western front is the correct number. I don't understand what's the problem with using it, I don't think that many of the 200,000 MIA in the same period were KIA and WIA and I wasn't convinced by the arguments provided that the use of this data is wrong.

No, it is not "the correct number", it is a number, pure and simple, whether it is more or less correct is another question. The casualty figures reported in November were actually:

KIA - 19,554
WIA - 61,008
MIA - 66,326
UNKNOWN* - 187,349
Total - 334,237

In January those figures were revised to (but appear to have only included ground combat elements):

KIA - 23,019
WIA - 67,060
MIA - 198,616
UNKNOWN - 0
Total - 288,695

* UNKNOWN was given as nicht aufgeschlüsselte (literally, “not keyed”, that is, not categorized according to type of loss)

Yes, it is incorrect to exclude missing in action when comparing casualties, especially when we find that Allied missing in action during the period who were actually prisoners of war of the Germans were a few thousands at most, but for the Germans exceeded two hundred thousand. Those figures are for permanent losses to the German military, either way they are counted, whether or not you understand or are convinced by that argument is a different matter and only reflects upon your inability to process these data.

I understand that they are worse than wounded from a strategic point of view as they represent permanent losses. In terms of permanent losses of personnel Germany fared far worse than the western allies did in the western front in 1944 (like you said, 800,000 POWs plus several tens of thousands of KIA). I perfectly understand that.

[Guaporense]

On accounting for military outlays

The data on military expenditures that I posted 2 years ago are interesting because they attempt to solve the puzzle the discrepancy between Germany`s potential economic resources and munitions output relative to the US and other Allied countries. The puzzle is how that the Nazis controlled most of Europe, areas that corresponded to around 1/3 of the world's industrial production in pre-war years but only managed to produce only slightly greater quantities of combat related munitions than the UK (around 5/4 of UK`s output), actually a smaller discrepancy than between Germany and the UK manufacturing output before the war and restricted to Germany's pre-war borders (estimated at around 4/3 of UK's). Now that I have somewhat better data, including price data for the respective countries in the 1930's (from 2 papers: Germany, http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2009_18online.pdf and US`s http://gpih.ucdavis.edu/files/Fukao_Ma_Yuan.pdf), I produced some relatively crude numbers because it uses only prices for 11 goods (the PPP`s produced in the papers use price data for 20-25 goods instead, but I was only able to match 11 goods used in both papers, which try to compare living standards/income between first, Germany and UK, second, between US, Japan and China). I obtained the following PPP exchange rates using British, German and US data (but only German and British weighs used as proxy for US weighs):

1 mark = 0.37 dollars in 1937 (compared to 0.4, official exchange rate, mark was overvalued by 10% by this estimate)*
1 pound = 5.1 dollars in 1937 (compared to 5 official exchange rate)

In the UK, as the exchange rate fluctuated freely and wasn't subject to manipulation, since the UK and the US were similarly developed economies, their price levels tended to be the same so official exchange rates were very close to PPP estimates.

*previously in that threat I did only the laspeyres index using the German weights (arrived at 0.41), I used fisher index this time, which is regarded as better/less distorted. It's impossible to construct a definitive price index because relative prices are always different and also, a pint of beer in Germany in 1937 is not the same good as a pint of beer in the US in 1937 (or a pint of beer in Hamburg is not the same as in Berlin), so one is in a way always comparing apples to oranges when doing this kind of statistic. I will post data though only over the next several weeks.

[RichTO90]

I wasn't consciously trying to sound dismissive. I only said what he was saying in a short and precise way. Also, in Brazil we generally do not have the strict black and white view that the English speaking world has: Allies = good guys, Axis = bad guys, we don't hold everything that the allies did in high regard and examples such as the atomic bombings are used to illustrate how WW2 did not have any "good guy", a professor in the university where I had my undergrad in a lecture cited the strategic bombing of residential areas in Axis countries in the same sentence as the holocaust.

Oddly enough, I don't have a black or white view either, but it sounds like I had better professors than you. Strategic bombing and the holocaust are two very different events. Mentioning them in the same sentence, unless it was to say how different they were, is at best facile, and facile professors are perhaps the worst.

Yes, I do not personally approve mass killing of civilians of enemy countries: dropping thousands of tons of incendiary bombs on residential areas made of wood, burning the civilian population in a firestorm, as happened in Japan several times, is not something I personally regard as morally justifiable. And Japan was bombed in 1945, when the outcome of the war was not hard to see (well, most people here say the outcome of the war was crystal clear already in July 1941 when Barbarossa was proceeding slightly more slower than initially planned).

I am glad you don't approve of mass murder or genocide, which is what I think you meant, but strategic bombing in war is not mass murder or genocide. And hindsight makes everything crystal clear, unless you happen to have your insights generated by bad professors.

For another example, the 1943 bengal famine, killed a couple millions of Indians of hunger while the resources of the Western allies were being used to keep the UK well feed. Same way, a couple million jews died of hunger in concentration camps, while the resources of Germany were being used to keep Germany well feed. The ethnic group running the colonial empire takes priority, right?

The Bengal famine was also not an act of war, and little different from the famine's that plagued the world for years after the war. They were a consequence of the war. And I doubt any Britain that lived through the war's rationing would ever describe it as a period when they were "well fed"...do you know when rationing ended in Britain? Hint: it wasn't on 8 May 1945...anyway, you are simply voicing a variation on the moral equivalency argument.

The Nazis were essentially a extreme application of ideological elements existing in the western world during that time. These elements also existed in the Allied countries, however, to a much smaller degree in the western allies. While the Soviet Union, the frontline player in the allied side, showed equal or less respect to general human life/individual rights than Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy did.

Did the Soviets, British, Americans, French, Dutch, Belgians, Italians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Greeks, etc engage in systematic mass murder? Even for the Japanese it was chaotic mass murder, although that is hardly an excuse either.

WW2 happened essentially because Nazi Germany wanted to get a colonial empire, like the ones France, UK, US and the USSR (exp. Ukraine) had. However, to implement that desire it would be required to exterminate much more people in a much smaller amount of time than their role models. It's no coincidence that soon after WW2 the concepts of racism and colonial empires were abolished.

Er, nonsense. Hitler and the Nazi's didn't give two hoots about a "colonial empire" except as Lebensraum in the East and a subjugated West. Perhaps similar to the Belgian treatment of the Congo...so the Belgians were brutes, does that mean the Germans were justified in even worse brutality? And the purification of the "German race" and expulsion/destruction of "undesirables".

Finally, if one argues that the allies were not so morally superior it does not mean necessarily that one is an advocate of fascism. Since, well, that doesn't mean that one thinks the allied government were not evil in the first place. The US government, after WW2, turned into a powerful organization that managed to interfere much more on civil society and on the world as whole, establishing military bases all over the world, it maintain's a "colonial" presence in many countries, in essence, it became closer to a fascist government in many aspects compared to the minimal US state of the 1920's.

Oddly enough, you seem to be the only one arguing morality and who was superior to whom.

I understand that they are worse than wounded from a strategic point of view as they represent permanent losses. In terms of permanent losses of personnel Germany fared far worse than the western allies did in the western front in 1944 (like you said, 800,000 POWs plus several tens of thousands of KIA). I perfectly understand that.

No, they aren't "worse than wounded", since wounded involve a whole another set of problems. They simply are permanently gone. So if you understand that you won't make the error again?

[Guaporense]

GNP proxies

It was only around the 1950's that we had a standardized system of national accounts that enabled the precise measure and comparison of GNP or GDP or any other aggregate measure of national income. Before that period people usually compared manufacturing production or proxies such as physical quantities of coal, steel, etc, produced. While there are estimated figures for national incomes for the 1930's, for most countries (including UK, Japan, Germany, USSR, Italy) such estimates are not very precise, for others (India, China, any Asian country outside of Japan) they are just educated guesses (Maddison's numbers for China and India during WW2 period reflect his definition of minimum subsistence level at 400 1990 dollars, his more recent estimates of income and growth, regressed back 60 years, others project wages measured in a single city to national income).

A good proxy of national income is the total mass of wages earned. Labor costs in all countries tend to correspond to 60-70% of national income, and in WW2 period, labor costs were basically wages as non-wage forms of labor costs (health insurance) weren't popular in that period. So the total aggregate ammount of wages is a good proxy for

In 1939, these were the civilian employed labor force sizes of each country, thousands of workers:

US ------------ 45,738
Germany ---- 39,415
UK ----------- 18,460

I know average wages for Germany and UK in 1937, 1,850 RM and 126.3 pounds, respectively. For the US I know average manufacturing wages for 1935, which were 1,023 dollars. In the UK average manufacturing wages were 137.5 pounds, 10% higher than, US manufacturing wages were probably even higher than average, thanks to much higher manufacturing productivity relative to the rest of the economy so I would guess average wages there were around 15% higher than average, so average wages were perhaps about 890 dollars, maybe less. Wages in 1939 probably weren't very different from wages in 1935.

I also note that the PPP's I made compared prices in Germany, UK in 1937 with prices in the US in 1934-6, so we can use them to compare wages.

The PPP's were 1 RM = 0.37 dollars and 1 pound = 5.1 dollars. So total mass of wages is in millions of 1935 dollars:

US ---------------- 40,707
Germany --------- 26,976
UK ---------------- 11,891

With the US indexed by 100, we have:

US ----------------- 100
Germany --------- 66.3
UK ---------------- 29.2

Notice, however, that for Germany, bread and milk, goods with 25% of the weigh in the basket of goods used to measure the PPP's, were heavily subsidized, so their real costs were higher than measured. The "real" PPP might have been like 10% lower, 1 RM = 0.34 dollars.

[RichTO90]

In 1939, these were the civilian employed labor force sizes of each country, thousands of workers:

US ------------ 45,738
Germany ---- 39,415
UK ----------- 18,460

Not knowing the source for these figures I can only comment that I am unclear how Germany with a population of 69,622,500, 53.14% of the USA's 131,028,000, could generate 86.18% of the "civilian employed labor force"? Unless we are comparing apples and onions again?

According to the 1940 Census, the USA population was 131,669,275 of which the labor force comprised 52,789,499, of which 45,166,083 were employed, excluding public emergency work, which employed another 2,529,606. There were 5,093,810 seeking work, of whom 4,326,469 were experienced and 767,341 were "new" workers.

I should be able to supply a similar series for British employment - what is the source for the German?

[ljadw]

During the war,only the US had a mature mass production system in place .


Source : myth versus reality:the question of mass production in wwii :summary and conclusion .


Before the war,Hitler tried to parrot Ford with the VW,but the result would be a disastrous flop (the Wages of destruction P 156)

[RichTO90]

During the war,only the US had a mature mass production system in place .


Source : myth versus reality:the question of mass production in wwii :summary and conclusion .


Before the war,Hitler tried to parrot Ford with the VW,but the result would be a disastrous flop (the Wages of destruction P 156)

Interesting, but Ristuccia and Tooze, The Cutting Edge of Modernity: Machine Tools in the United States and Germany 1930-1945 is considerably more in depth and draws the interesting inference that the usually accepted belief that the "US had a mature mass production system in place" is actually incorrect. Rather, the US had a immature and aging mass production system in place compared to Germany at the beginning of the war, but invested massively into developing and expanding it during the war. In other words, the war matured US mass production systems, which in turn led to victory in the war, rather than the mass production system was in place at the start of the war, which in turn led to victory. A subtle distinction perhaps, but significant.

[South]

Good morning Gusporente,

Re: "...soon after WW2 the concepts of racism and colonial empires were abolished";

Review the Treaty of San Francisco, 1951. Ever hear of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands?

Re: "around the 1950's...precise measure and comparison of GNP or GDP".

I have no intent to insult; only to contribute to an apex quality forum..............


Warm regards,

Bob

[Guaporense]

In 1939, these were the civilian employed labor force sizes of each country, thousands of workers:

US ------------ 45,738
Germany ---- 39,415
UK ----------- 18,460

Not knowing the source for these figures I can only comment that I am unclear how Germany with a population of 69,622,500, 53.14% of the USA's 131,028,000, could generate 86.18% of the "civilian employed labor force"? Unless we are comparing apples and onions again?

According to the 1940 Census, the USA population was 131,669,275 of which the labor force comprised 52,789,499, of which 45,166,083 were employed, excluding public emergency work, which employed another 2,529,606. There were 5,093,810 seeking work, of whom 4,326,469 were experienced and 767,341 were "new" workers.

I should be able to supply a similar series for British employment - what is the source for the German?

Germany had 80 million people in 1939, with annexations, labor force of 40 million was 50% of the population, unemployment was near zero, in most countries today that's the usual size of the labor force at 50%. US's labor force was smaller proportion of the population at 40%, partly because most women did not work, in Germany already in 1939, many women worked, also they counted the kids in families living in rural areas as part of the labor force (http://www.wwiiarchives.net/servlet/act ... e/149/39/0). Though even if we exclude agricultural employment the German labor supply wasn't that much smaller: at 30 million workers compared to ca. 37 million for the US.

Interestingly, considering that German and British workers worked more hours than US, the total number of hours worked in Germany was comparable to the US's. Productivity per hour in the US was 70% higher than in the UK and Germany, if we use hourly wages as proxies for remuneration.

Same source for all data:Harrison, The Economics of WW2, German labor force data is from chapter 3 of the book.

Read this as well: http://www.wwiiarchives.net/servlet/act ... e/149/41/0

[Guaporense]

During the war,only the US had a mature mass production system in place.

True. While in 1938, Western Europe as a whole had a bigger economy than the US, estimated at 1.35 trillion dollars versus 0.8 for the US according to Madison's data, US manufacturing productivity was much higher than in Western Europe, estimated at 227% of the UK's in 1935, compared to Germany at 107% of the UK's in 1936. Weirdly, UK had the same level of per capita income as the US in the 1930's.

During the next decade the difference in manufacturing productivity between US, UK and Germany decreased. The industries developed in WW2 such as aircraft, tanks, etc, were all new for all countries so they used updated technological/technical standards. German aircraft industry productivity was similar to the US's in 1942-1943 period, while in 1935, average manufacturing productivity was ca. 50% of the US's, productivity in the German motor vehicle industry in the 1930's was probably a small fraction of the US's.

The greatest difference in productivity was the Japanese chemical industry versus the US's, in 1944, US output of explosives was 25 times higher while labor employed was slightly higher. Germany, Italy, Japan greatly improved in terms of manufacturing productivity after WW2 relative to the US, by the 1980's they all were on US's level. Japan was the most dramatic: in 1939, Japan was ca. 3% of the world's manufacturing output, in 1994, it was 20%, comparable to the US's share.

The US's peak in economic size relative to the rest of the world was in 1929, when they corresponded to 42% of the world's manufacturing output, and in 1946, just after WW2, thanks to the destruction of much of Europe, the US corresponded to 2/3 of the world's manufacturing output. After that their fraction declined continuously as the rest of the world was/is catching up, today it is 17% and will be less than 10% by 2050.

[RichTO90]

Not knowing the source for these figures I can only comment that I am unclear how Germany with a population of 69,622,500, 53.14% of the USA's 131,028,000, could generate 86.18% of the "civilian employed labor force"? Unless we are comparing apples and onions again?

According to the 1940 Census, the USA population was 131,669,275 of which the labor force comprised 52,789,499, of which 45,166,083 were employed, excluding public emergency work, which employed another 2,529,606. There were 5,093,810 seeking work, of whom 4,326,469 were experienced and 767,341 were "new" workers.

I should be able to supply a similar series for British employment - what is the source for the German?

Germany had 80 million people in 1939, with annexations, labor force of 40 million was 50% of the population, unemployment was near zero, in most countries today that's the usual size of the labor force at 50%. US's labor force was smaller proportion of the population at 40%, partly because most women did not work, in Germany already in 1939, many women worked, also they counted the kids in families living in rural areas as part of the labor force . Though even if we exclude agricultural employment the German labor supply wasn't that much smaller: at 30 million workers compared to ca. 37 million for the US.

Interestingly, considering that German and British workers worked more hours than US, the total number of hours worked in Germany was comparable to the US's. Productivity per hour in the US was 70% higher than in the UK and Germany, if we use hourly wages as proxies for remuneration.

Same source for all data:Harrison, The Economics of WW2, German labor force data is from chapter 3 of the book.

Sorry, but no, you are mixing figures again and shading definitions. According to German sources, as of 1939, the total population of the Reich was 79.38-million of which the total labor force was 41 million. However, indeed the German labor force included 6.75 million "unpaid family helpers" (kids) of whom 5.8-million were in agriculture. Further, the labor force also included 1.4-million in the active Wehrmacht, neither of which categories are included in the U.S. Census statistics (USA military strength was 315,069). If you deduct those you will find that the active civilian labor force in Germany comparable to the U.S. statistic was actually about 33 million. (Data from BBSU and USA Census) BTW, the U.S. Census statistics for the labor force did indeed include women - both in the total labor force and in terms of those employed.

Civilian Employment Was:
Germany 33/79.38 = 41.6% of the population was employed in the civilian sector
USA 45.17/131.03 = 34.5% of the population was employed in the civilian sector

The Total Labor Force Was:
Germany 34.4/79.38 = 43.3% of the population
USA 53,104,568/131,669,275 = 40.3% of the population

I'm surprised that given you are an "economist" you have such a difficult time understanding the difference between who is employed and what the size of a labor pool is.

[Guaporense]

Always with your personal insults.

I think you need to cite your source for 6.75 million family helpers. Because that would mean German paid agricultural labor force would be only ca. 4 million, which would be rather small.