The worst moment for Germans on the Eastern front

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Jesk,

1) I did not write about "small Germany", so I don't have to address that point.

2) By contrast, you conspicuously failed to address anything in my post that I actually did write. Will you be doing so?

Cheers,

Sid

[jesk]

Hi Jesk,

1) I did not write about "small Germany", so I don't have to address that point.

2) By contrast, you conspicuously failed to address anything in my post that I actually did write. Will you be doing so?

Cheers,

Sid

In your conclusions empty logic. From July 1943 to March 1944, the size of Germany’s eastern front decreased from 3.1 million to 2.4 million. Germany could easily compensate these losses, for example, by forcing women and adolescents to work as in the USSR. The Soviet model freed up a large number of men, replacing them in industry with women and children. Germany did not do this. It was believed that a woman in the factory had a negative psychological effect on the soldiers. Almost as in Saudi Arabia, with some differences in attitudes towards women among the Nazis.

[Hanny]

Tooze wages of destruction

Over the course of the war, labour was to emerge as a critical constraint in the German war economy. 110 The initial shock was sharp enough. On 31 May 1939, according to the Reich Statistical Office, the German workforce consisted of 24.5 million working men, 14.6 million working women and 300,000 people labelled as 'foreigners and Jews'; 39.4 million in total. A year later, the number of German men had been cut by 4 million to 20.5 million. The number of German women in work had also fallen slightly to 14.4 million. These reductions were offset to some degree by the addition of 350,000 prisoners of war and an increase in the number of foreigners working in Germany to 800,000. But the total workforce had fallen to just over 36 million people. This basic pattern continued for the rest of the war. The number of German men fell. The number of German women held steady. The share of prisoners of war and foreigners in the workforce rose from year to year.

The fact that more women were not mobilized for war work is some times taken as one more symptom of the inability of the Nazi regime to demand sacrifices from the German population. In this respect it has often been contrasted to Britain, where an increase in female partici pation in the workforce was the key to sustaining the war effort. Such comparisons, however, are completely misleading, since they ignore the fact that the labour market participation of German women in 1939 was higher than that reached by Britain and the United States even at the end of the war. 111 In 1939, a third of all married women in Germany were economically active and more than half of all women between the ages of 15 and 60 were in work. As a result, women made up more than a third of the German workforce before the war started, compared to a female share of only a quarter in Britain. A year later, the share of German women in the native workforce stood at 41 per cent, compared to less than 30 per cent in Britain.

[Boby]

Why do you quote Tooze without sourcing it?

[jesk]

some clarifications here
https://paul-atrydes.livejournal.com/83957.html

Thus, women in the German industrial labor force increased from 37 percent in 1939 to 51 percent in 1944, but it was not German women who were employed.81 In May 1939, 14,626,000 German female citizens were employed in industry but, by September 1944 that number had only increased to 14,897,000.82 It was foreign women who were taking the jobs of the German men who had left to go to war. This was the case because foreign women were cheaper to employ and factory owners were not forced to grant them the same benefits as German citizens.

[Hanny]

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstre ... sequence=1

Women in Soviet workforce.

The proportion of women in the total labor force rose from 38% in 1940, to 53% in 1942, reaching 55% by 1945.

[jesk]

Means labor force in the village did not consider. Only 3-5% of recruits, fit on medical indications, exempted from service. In the cities of Western Siberia 28%, in Moscow 45%.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Jesk,

You post, "From July 1943 to March 1944, the size of Germany’s eastern front decreased from 3.1 million to 2.4 million. Germany could easily compensate these losses."

Certainly, but only by sending under-trained men to the front. In 1941-42, this worked, just, for the USSR, which had far more manpower available, but it couldn't work for Germany, which had half the manpower and other enemies to engage.

The Soviet model couldn't work for Germany for other reasons. The USSR had had conscription throughout its history and had 20 years of more-or-less trained manpower available in 1941. By contrast, Germany had not been able to have conscription between 1919 and 1935, and so had only about five years of fully trained reservists in 1941.

Germany could only win by maintaining a qualitative advantage over the USSR, which could not be achieved by sending masses of under-trained men to the Eastern Front.

Cheers,

Sid.

[jesk]

Hi Jesk,

You post, "From July 1943 to March 1944, the size of Germany’s eastern front decreased from 3.1 million to 2.4 million. Germany could easily compensate these losses."

Certainly, but only by sending under-trained men to the front.

I strongly doubt that Germany could not prepare people. Unfortunately for the Germans, Hitler focused on the creation of new divisions, instead of sending to the front of recruits. Time for this really required more.

[doogal]

I strongly doubt that Germany could not prepare people. Unfortunately for the Germans, Hitler focused on the creation of new divisions, instead of sending to the front of recruits. Time for this really required more.

They engaged in both creating new divisions and building older divisions, amalgamating others.

For Instance:
The 272nd VG Division formed middle of September 1944, went into combat in early November 1944 this was the amalgamation of the 575th VG and the 272nd Inf Div (which arose from the disbanded 216th Inf Div): The 272nd performed fairly well as it had a good cadre of experienced nco`s and officers. But they still needed six weeks to adopt organisational and tactical changes.
So you are right they could prepare people but just not on the scale that was required.

The way they used there man power was wasteful but that manpower was clearly running out. And as Sid said

[quoteCertainly, but only by sending under-trained men to the front. In 1941-42, this worked, just, for the USSR, which had far more manpower available, but it couldn't work for Germany, which had half the manpower and other enemies to engage.
][/quote]

Germany could not afford to use such methods:

[jesk]

I strongly doubt that Germany could not prepare people. Unfortunately for the Germans, Hitler focused on the creation of new divisions, instead of sending to the front of recruits. Time for this really required more.

They engaged in both creating new divisions and building older divisions, amalgamating others.

For Instance:
The 272nd VG Division formed middle of September 1944, went into combat in early November 1944 this was the amalgamation of the 575th VG and the 272nd Inf Div (which arose from the disbanded 216th Inf Div): The 272nd performed fairly well as it had a good cadre of experienced nco`s and officers. But they still needed six weeks to adopt organisational and tactical changes.
So you are right they could prepare people but just not on the scale that was required.

The way they used there man power was wasteful but that manpower was clearly running out. And as Sid said

[quoteCertainly, but only by sending under-trained men to the front. In 1941-42, this worked, just, for the USSR, which had far more manpower available, but it couldn't work for Germany, which had half the manpower and other enemies to engage.
]

Germany could not afford to use such methods:

By June 1944, Hitler assembled 70 divisions in the west + Italy + Balkans. There was an opportunity to send all these troops to the east. As replenishments for divisions it worked out much more effectively.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Jesk,

You post, "By June 1944, Hitler assembled 70 divisions in the west + Italy + Balkans. There was an opportunity to send all these troops to the east."

Certainly, if Hitler wanted the Western Allies to overrun an undefended western and southern Europe in a few weeks.

It doesn't matter whether Hitler created new divisions or sent their manpower to the existing divisions - if they weren't trained, they were, in either case, mere cannon fodder incapable of providing the qualitative advantage Germany had to have to withstand superior Soviet numbers on the Eastern Front.

Cheers,

Sid.

[jesk]

Hi Jesk,

You post, "By June 1944, Hitler assembled 70 divisions in the west + Italy + Balkans. There was an opportunity to send all these troops to the east."

Certainly, if Hitler wanted the Western Allies to overrun an undefended western and southern Europe in a few weeks.

It doesn't matter whether Hitler created new divisions or sent their manpower to the existing divisions - if they weren't trained, they were, in either case, mere cannon fodder incapable of providing the qualitative advantage Germany had to have to withstand superior Soviet numbers on the Eastern Front.

Cheers,

Sid.

Wrong. Germany was supposed to smash the enemy in parts, instead of Hitler's scattering of troops across Europe.