Guaporense wrote:
Well, the fact is that German controlled continental Europe had 3.5 times the GDP of Britain and a GDP 30% bigger than the US's. German stock of machine tools alone was 2.5 times Britain's while their labor force was twice the size. Therefore, with a much smaller economic and industrial resources Britain produced strategic bombers. Although they had oil supplies Germany did not have.
Which miraculously gave Germany almost no production value whatsoever. No significant weapons system was ever produced in France (for instance) aside from a small trainer aircraft.
What did Germany gain from your uncited, tossed out figures? GDP based on what? Prewar figures prior to the devastating German attack that destroyed economic output?
Labor? LOL Can we talk about the windfall of coal production German got from France? Again, please cite the above...
While Britain and the US did not field large ground armies capable of directly engaging the enormous 280 divisions of the German army. The UK only had 35 divisions in Europe by June 1945, compared to well over 100 in WW1. In fact in WW1 British production of artillery was over 3 times higher than in WW2, demonstrating the change in focus from ground forces to air forces.
LOL Again with the "fake news". What sort of Heer/SS "divisions" were these? One thousand men a piece? Can you please provide clarification?
The conclusion is clear: Germany focused its resources on the ground forces while the US and UK focused their resources on air force and navy.
Which explains why the Americans vastly outproduced them in AFV's alone, how? Or the Wehrmacht was still reliant on horse transport for logistics and was a rail bound army while both the British and US, and most of their allies, were completely motorized. This despite the seizing of French trucks in 1940....
This is clear from the composition of military expenditures as expenditures on aircraft were a much larger fraction of British and American expenditures than Germany's (in terms of aircraft, in 1943 the US spent 15% of their budget on aircraft, Germany spent 5%). While German output of artillery shells was 4 times greater than Britain's in WW2 (in WW1 when both powers focused on ground armies Germany produced 350 million shells, the UK, 220 million shells and Germany had 240 divisions to the 110 divisions of the UK).
Where are you getting this tripe?
Divisions? So what? I have 100 men and I'm renaming them from Company D to the 80th Armored Division!
Germany was essentially a third world economy that was largely agrarian...
The reason was strategic: Germany wanted to dominate Europe, to do so required ground forces, the US and the UK were supporting the USSR through the sea and air and in the end of the war with a small amphibious attack force. Germany was a ground army based power while the UK and the US were island nations.
No, the above statement shows you have no idea what you are talking about and certainly didn't read Tooze. There was no "strategic reasoning" at all. Germany's Wehrmacht was meant largely to take on the French with little thought given to what was next. The German conquest of France was hardly planned that way and was as surprising to the Germans as anyone else. Germany's (the Wehrmacht's) "strategic reasoning" was to avoid war until 1948, 1945 at the earliest when they could achieve some sort of naval and industrial parity...
So you're saying they planned never to lose the war to Britain?
Anyway, the strategies of the US and UK failed:
They failed by winning the war?
...airpower couldn't substitute for ground power and in the end the USSR won the war almost singlehandedly by inflicting 90% of German Kia and 90% of the ground combat.
Mainly because Germany was dumb enough to invade them. They didn't "singlehandedly" do anything and only did so by becoming a highly mobile force based on Lend Lease US trucks. Germany also expended a great deal of airpower against the Soviets and killed more Soviets citizens via bombing than did the US/UK combined...
The US/UK defeated the Wehrmacht in every theater they fought. While certainly the scale was not as great as in the USSR, the localized actions were often every bit as intense and there were times when tactically the US and Brits were facing more and better Heer/SS divisions in Normandy than, say, Heer Army Group Centre could muster against the Soviets...
The Wehrmacht surrender in the Middle East/Africa was every bit as devastating as the surrender at Stalingrad!
Still, in the end, the US/UK managed to salvage most of Europe from a Soviet occupation. Getting best of both worlds: winning the war and suffering low casualties by allowing the USSR to take on Germany virtually alone for 3 years.
That wasn't by design, the US/UK were also fighting a two-front war against Japan sapping much in the way of naval assets and slowing the ability to make landings in Europe...
WW2 and WW1 were caused by the same reason: Germany was to big and powerful for the rest of Europe to easily contain it. Luckily for the Allies they managed to win both wars at tremendous costs (mostly borne by the USSR in WW2).
Germany had an economy on par with present day South Africa or Iran prior to WWII. But then, you would have had to actually read Tooze to have caught that!
Now, you shouldn't treat a book like Tooze's as "the Holy Bible" of WW2.
I don't. You mentioned him first, but you also can't cherrypick the validating parts what you want then denounce what you don't like...
I found that book very ideological and biased. For instance, it's plain incorrect to claim Germany was an "agrarian society" in 1938, in fact Germany was a large industrialized country, the second largest industrial power in the world and the foremost in Europe, with one of the highest life expectancies in the world (actually higher than the US or France) and the highest number of Nobel prize winning researchers in the world, being the world's foremost scientific power.
Why? Based on what? Tooze lays out specific statistical basis, unlike your random, cherrypicked "facts"...
Of course, compared to 21st century countries, Germany in 1940 looks underdeveloped, but that's obvious: Living standards in Mexico or Iran in 2017 are much better than in the US in 1940. However, that doesn't mean that the US in 1940 was an "agrarian country", because standards back then were lower.
They were underdeveloped in comparison to the United States in nearly every benchmark despite the US suffering greatly from the Crash of 1929!
Car ownership. Industrial output. Access to materials, etc...
Also you shouldn't insult people with a different opinion than the one contained in your precious holy bible. History is not religion. You should learn to respect people with a different opinion.
You're opinions are bizarre and not based on actual facts or context and seem to reveal a questionable ideological bias...