What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

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Hanny
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#181

Post by Hanny » 04 Jul 2019, 09:38

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
04 Jul 2019, 00:50

Typical of your tactics throughout this discussion has been to respond to a proposed ATL escalation over OTL by saying that Germany increased production within in the OTL. That's irrelevant to the point and conceptually muddled.

Responding by pointing out what was achieved in OTL, and at what cost, is not irrelevant as it provides context as to what may have been possible to tweek. OTL 18 billion RM and 4 years to raise from 6 to mid 30s Motorised, you want to add another 20, so you want the Nazis to spend 100% more than they did to achieve this, 36 billion RM. The concept of how to roughly cost a thing is certainly not irrelevant. What is irrelevant is using an incomplete and error full spreadsheet of items that dont add up to 20 division equipment of costs and giving it a fudge factor of 5.


TheMarcksPlan wrote:
04 Jul 2019, 00:50
Production should be measured according to strategic goals not based on "effort points" for how far you've come from the beginning.
If you dont know where you started from, you dont know how far you have come, and how much farther it was possible to go from where you started. Another concept new to you. Its simply beyond the German economy to provide another 20 Motorised formations, while at the same time already providing 558k MTV.

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
04 Jul 2019, 00:50
Germany's strategic imperative was to win the European land war; anything it did that distracted from that goal invited defeat.
But Germany had a plan for that it was the motorisation plan that put 558k more MTV into the Heer in 4 years time, what your argument is based on, is hindsight that they needed double that and can win instead of losing in Russia with it.
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
04 Jul 2019, 00:50

From Tooze page 294: "Under the Z Plan the navy’s heating-oil needs were expected to rise from the 1.4 million tons per annum originally envisioned in 1936 to 6 million tons by 1947–8, and its requirements for diesel fuel to rise from 400,000 tons to 2 million tons. Even on the most optimistic assumptions, domestic production was not expected to exceed 2 million tons of oil and 1.34 million tons of diesel fuel by 1947–8. "
In 36 the Reich expanded domestic fuel production and storage by expending 574,000,000 RM in the first year of a 4 your program, this allowed it to accumulate 1,898,000tons diesal naval fuel, wich at a the rate of consumption of the first 3 months of the war, would have meant it could have run the navy for 7 years. LW got the lions share of this plan.

German naval fuel oil Domestic production.In metric tons.
1935 427k
1939 888k

Yes thats from Tooze, yes, in 1936 Naval High Command projected its annual wartime needs as of 1939 at only 1,400,000 tons of fuel oil and 400,000 tons of diesel fuel, all of which it expected would be supplied from domestic production and reserves.

You forgot to mention plan Z was scrapped before any fuel was used to run anything constructed in it. This kind of claim, like your JU 88 saving, simple do not exist in reality.

In tend to agree with other forum posters that you are CM, so im done.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#182

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 04 Jul 2019, 09:57

Hanny wrote:You forgot to mention plan Z was scrapped before any fuel was used to run anything constructed in it.
You contend that Germany wouldn't have built more trucks because of fuel limitations, Z plan proves they didn't constrain themselves to projected fuel supply in deciding what to produce. Whether the plan actually came to fruition is irrelevant to the planning process, which is what we're discussing re setting production levels.

In any event, fuel for trucks can come from the LW's allocation without losing the war. OTOH, shortchanging the Heer guarantees losing the war.
Hanny wrote:OTL 18 billion RM and 4 years to raise from 6 to mid 30s Motorised, you want to add another 20, so you want the Nazis to spend 100% more than they did to achieve this, 36 billion RM.
No cites or disaggregation of this 18bil RM figure. You're probably including personnel salaries over the period and/or using the total Heer figure. I don't buy it. Armaments for the 20 divisions probably wouldn't cost 1bil RM, let alone 36bil. Again, land weapons were relatively cheap.
Hanny wrote:In tend to agree with other forum posters that you are CM, so im done.
Byeeeeee. Thanks for playing.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#183

Post by Hanny » 04 Jul 2019, 10:09

Paul Lakowski wrote:
04 Jul 2019, 01:00

I had to add HANNY to the "ignore list" since he is incapable of discussing with out insulting - and no one needs that.
When you have a long history, as you do, of posting dishonestly, you insult all users of the forum. You also breach the telecommunication act when you do so, making you liable for appearing in court along with the sites owners/moderators for allowing it.


You wrote SU starts 29125, and you claim it losses 20500 so that leaves it with 8625 but your maths turns that to 1927. Why?, because your using totals of on hand to start with, deducting all losses, and then using the number of runners in service, not the number on hand.

Why do you this?, because your a dishonest weheraboo and they dont like having their dishonesty exposed, and thats why its best to ignore you and refer the matter to the Ombudsman.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#184

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 04 Jul 2019, 16:09

Hanny wrote:You also breach the telecommunication act when you do so, making you liable for appearing in court along with the sites owners/moderators for allowing it.
So clearly you're not a lawyer.
Hanny wrote:your a dishonest weheraboo
I hadn't heard this wehraboo term but I like it - so long as it isn't overused. Certainly there are folks here - Jesk comes immediately to mind - who believe the Wehrmacht was something like superhuman.
But it doesn't take buying Nazi propaganda to believe the Wehrmacht - the Heer anyways - was qualitatively superior during WW2 and that it had a real chance of conquering Europe. And these explanations have nothing to do with Nazi racial theory either. Ethnically German units in the American Civil War, for example, were no better than other units. In fact, it's likely they were worse as the North was more heavily German than the South while the latter had higher combat effectiveness. When I think of ethnic Germans in America I think of fat Wisconsin oafs not martial supermen.

No, the Heer had a qualitative edge because its organizational philosophy was better suited to combat effectiveness: paradoxically more egalitarian than other militaries (still hierarchical of course), with more emphasis on diffusion of leadership and local initiative. OTOH the Heer was terrible in areas in which the Western Allies excelled, such as logistics and grand strategy. Eisenhower the ethnic German was nothing like his supposed racial kin: operationally/tactically unremarkable, somewhat cautious, but brilliant at organizing and managing his coalition. Eisenhower was the product of one system and Rommel another. Race, as always, had no impact.

Nor does it take being a Wehraboo to have an interest in whether the Nazis could have won. The "tragic worldview" can be tawdry but incorporation of some of its elements is essential. Specifically, one can't have faith that the moral and physical states of the world cohere and that it's impossible for abject evil to triumph. History is replete with victories by pure martial nihilism; just look up "The Mongols."

In the specific instance of ww2, there's a too-pat version of mainstream history in which neoliberal capitalism and the American Way (or some similar BS) was inevitably going to triumph over Nazism because it was bad; same later for Communism. That's just not the way things work. Evil sometimes wins; you don't have to be a Hitler stan to acknowledge that. In fact, being anti-Hitler, anti-ISIS, anti-Trump, anti-evil requires vigilance and a real sense that the bad guys can win if you let them.

We (the broad community of non-evil humanity) nearly let Hitler win via Munich, American isolationism, etc.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#185

Post by Richard Anderson » 04 Jul 2019, 20:34

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
03 Jul 2019, 17:16
Obviously disingenuous comment or else frighteningly obtuse. That an ATL starts prewar doesn't mean everything happens pre-war. Again you're debating the opponent you'd like to have.
Not disingenuous at all. Where do the Germans get those 2.5 million forced laborers from in an ATL beginning in FY 38-39? Do the Germans run a want ad in the local French and Polish papers? :roll: And yes, they did try recruiting foreign labor prewar, without much success, especially given one of the crippling aspects of the Reich's economy was the need for foreign exchange...it wouldn't do much good if they exported German goods, but then had to pay to import foreign workers to build those goods.
Also dude, your 13yo girl's use of emojis is odd for someone who scorns use of the word dude.
I "scorned" the use of the word "dude"? Seriously? I responded to your addressing me as "dude" with "Uh, dude (or is it bro?)". Is that scorning it? Meanwhile, my three sons are sometimes Dude One, Dude Two, and Dude Three.

BTW, a hallmark of poor debating technique is resorting to ad hominum rather than arguing against the points of my argument. If I choose to employ emojis in my argument, then argue that I should have used a 🖕 rather than a :lol: when I replied.

Anyway, if you want to continue to respond like a 13-year old girl, I'll be happy to respond in kind.
Sort of a big hidden premise there. You concede that Polish industrial labor was used only later but imply that it was tied to the Reich going "into extremis." Who knows what you mean by that but the Reich planned for use of forced industrial labor very early and should have ramped this up earlier IN THE WAR (obviously no moral sense to "should" here).
Not a "premise", but a fact. Polish labor in Germany prewar was a major part of the agricultural economy, seasonally about 750,000 workers. The conquest of Poland increased that number: about 200,000 former PW were immediately put to forced labor along with 10,000 civilians rounded up in September 1939. By September 1941, 1 million Polish workers were registered in the Reich. However, of the roughly 2.2 million Polish workers in Germany during the war, only about 110,000 of them were there voluntarily. Foreign labor statistics for other countries are probably similar. It is difficult to see how that could have been "ramped up" much "earlier IN THE WAR" (with or without all caps), especially given that as early as 25 January 1940 they were "ramping up" the role of the Polish labor force in agriculture...to the prewar norm, partly because of the Nazi racial ideology that held the Poles were only suitable for agricultural labor. The use of Poles in industrial forced labor came later as the Reich was forced into contravening its racial prejudices as it went "into extremis"...it was losing the war. Requiring Nazi Germany to do what you think they "should have" done also requires a reset of their leaderships mindset.
No, only if you want to reach 1944 production levels do you need that level of labor. My ATL needs 1-2% higher army production as portion of GDP and the replacement of ~400k Germans. ~1mil should do.
Um, sorry, but Germany was essentially at full employment by FY 38-39, the starting point of your ATL. And it was also facing a shortfall of 700,000 agricultural workers, which was the primary gap the Polish forced labor was supposed to fill (see above)...except that the Polish seasonal workers were already partly filling that gap to the tune of about 750,000 per season. When the Wehrmacht began mobilizing in early 1939, it removed some 2 million men from the workforce, the wartime mobilization to September 1940 took another 2 million. The mobilization for BARBAROSSA? Another 1.6 million. From September 1939 to May 1945 the number of Germans employed in war industry decreased by 6 million. "~1mil" is unlikely to do.
Again you rely on misreading and misrepresentation. Most of the changes are projects never undertaken, not projects cancelled (Z plan, Ju-88 rapid escalation). Otherwise it's cancelling different contracts than OTL (prioritizing and retaining army programs during 1939 financial bottleneck).
Sorry, but is your continued reliance on a non-existent effect from plans that were never fulfilled "misreading" or "misrepresentation"? Both your miss-characterization of the "Z Plan" and "Ju-88 rapid escalation" and their effects have already been addressed.
There were policy levers not used earlier that were used later. E.g. tying German exports (steel, coal) to workers. This worked later when Germany was losing, would have worked earlier. The drawback is it pisses off your allies/neutrals. Berlin judged the price worth it in 42-44 once it appreciated its strategic crisis. Should have seen that earlier.
Um, Italian voluntary labor existed prewar and reached a peak of 250,000 by December 1942. Mussolini requested they be returned to Italian industry in March 1943, but after the Italian capitulation they were forced to remain in Germany and were augmented by an additional 100,000 forced civilians and 600,000 military internees. I do not see how earlier "tying German exports" to the Italian labor program would change things much.

Hungary? Much the same. Prewar, about 40,000 Hungarians worked in Germany...that never increased significantly until Germany pressured the Hungarians into deporting their Jews to Auschwitz and other work camps.

Who else? And how does any of that make up an effective shortfall of about 4 to 6 million German workers? Are the Germans going to think hard for a solution?
At a 3-1 worker/PW exchange rate. Should have been tried earlier. Wasn't because of political calculus. Was when crisis changed political calculus. Crisis should have been seen earlier.
Oh good grief. Are you being facile? Or simply contrary? "Should have been tried earlier"? Seriously? The French Campaign ended at midnight 25 June 1940. At that time tens of thousands of French PW were still in transit. Settling into and establishing PW camps - mostly built by the PW - took the rest of the summer. By fall-winter they were already being employed as "paid" labor on work details...ultimately some 93% of them. So put them into industry, train them up, and get them producing "earlier"? Effectively your earlier is within a time frame of about six to eight months.
Even in advance of Battle of Britain the LW, including Goering, doubted it could win the war. Probably they thought it could have been a war winner with sufficient investment in strategic bombers, but that investment is an obvious war loser for Germany and never was undertaken. Pure strategic drift.
"In advance of Battle of Britain" is effectively July 1940, not your ATL change in FY 38-39, when the Luftwaffe was the darling of the Wehrmacht.
Germany underinvested in Uboats prior to the war, as I'm sure you know (in part because they doubted they remained war winners in light of ASDIC].

Why, yes, which is why there were just 19 sea-going U-Boote in commission in operational flotillas on 1 September 1939. However, once the Germans experienced the "first happy time" between July and October 1940, the illusion that the U-Boote was a war-winner (WRT Great Britain) took firm hold. Of course, none of that has any effect on an ATL starting in FY 38-39. Unless they do some more hard thinking.
Most - 90%? - of KM spending went to the surface fleet; being "co-equal" with Britain and France was obvious strategic folly.
But my ATL allows Hitler that strategic folly as I don't scrap any actually-constructed capital ships.
Um, they never expected "co-equality"...that is a straw man. It may have been strategic folly, but it was political capital for Hitler, which was more important.

Oh, but wait, you don't scrap any ships? Where is your "savings" by "not constructing the Z-Plan" then?0
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#186

Post by gracie4241 » 04 Jul 2019, 20:59

Well, again you know better than Stalin? Anyway, the Soviet Union DID NOT LOSE the Ukraine in toto in 1941.By early December the germans were back at the Mius river line in the South and the Russians in the Izyum bulge were just south of Kharkov.A great deal of the productive Ukraine was still in Russian hands, as was the entirety of the Caucasus.You're wrong.The undisputed facts are that Maikopf, Grozny and Baku in that order amounted to 85-88% of soviet oil production.Had it been blocked off(NOT SEIZED) the Russians would have been down to 4-5 million tons annually(less than germany had available.)Soviet steel production dropped to as low as 8,000,000 tons in 1942(3) as compared to german 30,000,000-because of loss of iron and coal from the Ukraine-and the industrial Donbass part of the Ukraine wasn't even lost until 1942,The food situation would probably have been theworst and most immediate crisis.The majority of your food can't be lost too long without catastrophe, and that the Ukraine and North Caucasus were the 2 largest food producing areas is not in dispute. In fact in the Stalin Decree I mentioned food (he called it "Bread") was his first concern.Germany itself kept producing into February 1945 because of inventories on hand and in the pipeline of raw materials.Same for the Soviet Union, but had germany held a barrier line across the North Caucasus, and the Ukraine/Donbass into 1943 there is no doubt the Soviets would have been on their knees.My point was the EXISTING forces, assuming Army Group A had not been foolishly committed INTO the Caucasus were sufficient to have done that and the battlefield results appear to indicate that.Thus the mythical 20 extra motorized divisions which I thought was the topic, although HUGELY welcome , were not essential as long as german strategic deployments and force allocations made sense

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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#187

Post by ljadw » 04 Jul 2019, 21:34

You still don't get it : about the oil : what was important was not the production, but the consumption/needs .And the fact is that the USSR needed less oil during the war than before and that most of the war consumption was not done by the military .
In 1943 some 5 million ton of oil was going from Baku to the front , while the production was 18 million .
From the authorative Germany and WWII (German edition ) Tome 6 , P 808 :
''Erst die Besatzung Groznyis,vor allem aber Bakus ,könne diesbezüglichzu einer wesentliche Störung führen. Durchaus ungewiss war freilich,wie wesentlich diese Störung sein würde ."
Only the capture of Grozny, but especially of Baku, could create real problems .But it was unknown how real these problems would be .

It was all speculation, as the Germans knew that before the war the Soviets produced more oil than they needed.Other points were that the loss of the Caucasus oil could be replaced by new oil fields ( Baku 2 ) and by substituting wood and coal for oil .The well known Soviet energy mix .During the war the Soviets used less coal and less oil,replacing it by more wood .
Soviet oil production ( im millions of tons )
1940 31
1941 33
1942 22
1943 18
1944 18
1945 19,5
The less oil the Soviets were producing, the closer they became to Berlin .
You are also wrong about the Ukraine food production : the USSR could ( and did ) survive without the grain from the Ukraine . Today Russia survives without the food of the Ukraine: tell me why Russia does not need the Ukraine today and why it would need the Ukraine in WWII .

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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#188

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 04 Jul 2019, 21:54

RichardAnderson wrote:it wouldn't do much good if they exported German goods, but then had to pay to import foreign workers to build those goods.
No the point is to extract more workers for the exports rather than sending the exports as soon as they were able to after fall of France. Hitler chose to display strength to allies/neutrals because, again, he didn't perceive his strategic crisis.
RichardAnderson wrote:I "scorned" the use of the word "dude"? Seriously? I responded to your addressing me as "dude" with "Uh, dude (or is it bro?)". Is that scorning it? Meanwhile, my three sons are sometimes Dude One, Dude Two, and Dude Three.
Misreading. My bad dude.
RichardAnderson wrote:Anyway, if you want to continue to respond like a 13-year old girl, I'll be happy to respond in kind.
Like, whatever...
RichardAnderson wrote:The use of Poles in industrial forced labor came later as the Reich was forced into contravening its racial prejudices as it went "into extremis"...it was losing the war. Requiring Nazi Germany to do what you think they "should have" done also requires a reset of their leaderships mindset.
The Birkenau-Auschwitz industrial complex started building early in the war with the explicit purpose of using forced labor, at least some of which would have been Polish. So I don't see the Germans as having a categorical aversion to Polish non-ag labor.

Regardless of their level of aversion - categorical or preferential - this too should have been marginalized given apprehension of the crisis. This is not, as you say, a reset of mindset. Nazi leadership showed a great deal of ideological flexibility throughout the war, not just when they were clearly losing. Hitler termed the Japanese "honory Aryans" (lol) before Barbarossa; he allied with Slavic Bulgaria, (briefly) Yugoslavia, and Croatia. Worked with Stalin. All of these steps came when Hitler realized their strategic necessity; the heart of my ATL is earlier realization of Soviet strength with attendant steps to address that. More Poles should have been working in industry earlier.
RichardAnderson wrote:From September 1939 to May 1945 the number of Germans employed in war industry decreased by 6 million. "~1mil" is unlikely to do.
The relevant point is the ATL>OTL level. To repeat, I'm replacing ~400k Germans by 1941 and increasing production by 1-2% of GDP. I'm not fast-forwarding mobilization or production to late-war levels. ~1mil should do, minus those workers freed by earlier cuts to domestic consumption.
RichardAnderson wrote:Um, Italian voluntary labor existed prewar and reached a peak of 250,000 by December 1942. Mussolini requested they be returned to Italian industry in March 1943, but after the Italian capitulation they were forced to remain in Germany and were augmented by an additional 100,000 forced civilians and 600,000 military internees. I do not see how earlier "tying German exports" to the Italian labor program would change things much.
Hit a higher peak earlier by telling Mussolini no steal/coal unless we get the workers. What was the 1940 figure? IIRC it was low ten-thousands. Dare him to complain or to relieve the Wehrmacht of the logistical burden of some of his forward-deployed troops.
RichardAnderson wrote: So put them into industry, train them up, and get them producing "earlier"?
No. Immediately use the PW's as leverage against French provision of (already trained) foreign labor at an exchange rate of at least 3-1. Tie the demands to exports. Play hardball more than Hitler did in 1940 because, again, he knows he's in a crisis rather than thinking he's about to take a leisurely stroll to Russia's oil wells.
RichardAnderson wrote:"In advance of Battle of Britain" is effectively July 1940, not your ATL change in FY 38-39, when the Luftwaffe was the darling of the Wehrmacht.
What the LW knew in 1940 about strategic bombing can't have been less favorable than what it believed in 39. Nothing in 39-40 had diminished the salience of strategic bombing. Quite the opposite (e.g. Rotterdam).
RichardAnderson wrote:Oh, but wait, you don't scrap any ships? Where is your "savings" by "not constructing the Z-Plan" then?0
I scrap a cruiser and aircraft carrier but that's not the real point.
We've already beaten the real point to death. Z plan priority forced Heer program cuts during 1939 financial crisis. You don't think financial crises "real" and refuse to see that funds are fungible. Little hope of progress on that front.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#189

Post by Paul Lakowski » 05 Jul 2019, 00:11

Germany did not need to build more trucks , they just had to raid the civilian economy for the vehicles. They did this through out the war. As far back as 1936 Bloomberg and Fromm were advising the Wehrmacht, the Nazi would commandeer up to 120,000 trucks if war exploded unexpectedly. By 1937 103,420 trucks [load capacity of 2-7.5 tons] "were classified as completion vehicles for the Wehrmacht". [Trucks of the Wehrmacht .Reinhard Frank, pp 26.]

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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#190

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 05 Jul 2019, 00:30

Paul Lakowski wrote:
05 Jul 2019, 00:11
Germany did not need to build more trucks , they just had to raid the civilian economy for the vehicles. They did this through out the war. As far back as 1936 Bloomberg and Fromm were advising the Wehrmacht, the Nazi would commandeer up to 120,000 trucks if war exploded unexpectedly. By 1937 103,420 trucks [load capacity of 2-7.5 tons] "were classified as completion vehicles for the Wehrmacht". [Trucks of the Wehrmacht .Reinhard Frank, pp 26.]
Raiding the civilian economy undercuts the ability to wage war. Food was a problem throughout the war, limiting coal production especially (coal miners need a lot of food to be productive). Further truck requisitions would disproportionately impact agriculture. You could ask the ag sector to substitute horses for trucks but then you're just shifting a shortage of horses to the army.

Far better for Germany to just build more trucks. Compared to planes and ships, trucks are pretty cheap. And they get cheaper the more of them you build.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#191

Post by Richard Anderson » 05 Jul 2019, 01:27

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
04 Jul 2019, 21:54
No the point is to extract more workers for the exports rather than sending the exports as soon as they were able to after fall of France. Hitler chose to display strength to allies/neutrals because, again, he didn't perceive his strategic crisis.
Um, no, you seem to be missing the point. German needed foreign exchange throughout the 1930s and it became especially critical during 1939...it was one cause of the financial crisis. Germany was resource poor, except for coal and Nazis, and needed foreign exchange to purchase the resources they needed. However, importing foreign workers doesn't do any good...their remittances are in RM leaving Germany and are not foreign capital coming into Germany.

Yes, all that changed when the war began. For a while, Germany simply took what resources it required by looting resource stocks of Poland, the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, and France. As one poster once put it, "the Germans were like a plague of locusts". That helped alleviate the problem...forcing France to pay indemnities and cede territory and goods was a pretty fair exchange of foreign capital in Germany's favor...but how to count in that in FY 38-39 when your ATL begins? Prescience? Or simply thinking hard about it?
Misreading. My bad dude.
No prob bro.
Like, whatever...
So stop acting like a 13 year-old valley girl bro.
The Birkenau-Auschwitz industrial complex started building early in the war with the explicit purpose of using forced labor, at least some of which would have been Polish. So I don't see the Germans as having a categorical aversion to Polish non-ag labor.
Bro, you need to start doing that research. Asuchwitz began as a place to house political prisoners...its first inmates were German transfers from Sachsenhausen, not Poles. Its first Polish prisoners were political prisoners and arrived later. It was not until IG Farben built its synthetic rubber plant at Monowitz in April 1941 before Auschwitz inmates were used regularly as industrial labor.
Regardless of their level of aversion - categorical or preferential - this too should have been marginalized given apprehension of the crisis. This is not, as you say, a reset of mindset. Nazi leadership showed a great deal of ideological flexibility throughout the war, not just when they were clearly losing. Hitler termed the Japanese "honory Aryans" (lol) before Barbarossa; he allied with Slavic Bulgaria, (briefly) Yugoslavia, and Croatia. Worked with Stalin. All of these steps came when Hitler realized their strategic necessity; the heart of my ATL is earlier realization of Soviet strength with attendant steps to address that. More Poles should have been working in industry earlier.
How do they "apprehend" the crisis? The German economy was more or less in crisis from the day Hitler took control...no nation can sustain an average of 70.6% of its public expenditure on military goods for over five years without being in crisis. Especially a nation so resource poor and in such financial bad straits as Germany was. So which "crisis" do you mean? The FY 39-40 crisis? They had full apprehension of that crisis, since they had just been through a similar one in FY 37-38.

And, yet again since you keep dodging the question, how does Germany force any other nation to do anything about sending Germany masses of workers without occupying them first? Without bleeding Reichmarks out of the economy without getting the critically needed foreign exchange credits in return? What is the leverage besides "I'll happily pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"?

And how does Hitler apprehend Soviet strength - or does he "realize" it" - earlier? What is the mechanism for that apprehension/realization that is diametrically opposite the apprehension/realization the Germans did have prior to about December 1941?
The relevant point is the ATL>OTL level. To repeat, I'm replacing ~400k Germans by 1941 and increasing production by 1-2% of GDP. I'm not fast-forwarding mobilization or production to late-war levels. ~1mil should do, minus those workers freed by earlier cuts to domestic consumption.
The relevant point is the Germans proved incapable of finessing their labor market so adroitly and "solved" their problem by simply throwing masses of forced laborers at it. You are not "replacing" anything, to field an additional 20 divisions at a divisional slice (at the time) in the Feldheer of about 22,000 is 440,000 - in the Feldheer. However, it also requires a build up of the supporting Ersatzheer. In the first three years of the war, for every three soldiers in the Feldheer there was on in the Ersatzheer supporting them. Then, in 1942 the ratio increased to nearly two for one, then was just under two for one in 1943 and 1944, before abruptly plummeting in 1945. So you need to divert about 600,000 into the Heer in fall 1940 and spring 1941 to achieve your end goal...at the same time as the actual requirement was not training more soldiers, but releasing trained soldiers back into industry to keep production going.

I gave the end state to demonstrate what the Germans were up against, but if you believe you can generate 600,000 men for the Heer, while also getting a million plus more into industry, then who am I to gainsay your fantasy?
Hit a higher peak earlier by telling Mussolini no steal/coal unless we get the workers. What was the 1940 figure? IIRC it was low ten-thousands. Dare him to complain or to relieve the Wehrmacht of the logistical burden of some of his forward-deployed troops.
Huh? Italy entered the war in May 1940...and its armaments industry expenditures and commitments grew from that point, not FY 38-39 when your ATL begins. Hitler had no stick to use with Italy until then...much of the post-Munich German international diplomacy was to bring Italy into the fold...the Tripartite Pact was signed 27 September 1940, not 27 September 1938.
No. Immediately use the PW's as leverage against French provision of (already trained) foreign labor at an exchange rate of at least 3-1. Tie the demands to exports. Play hardball more than Hitler did in 1940 because, again, he knows he's in a crisis rather than thinking he's about to take a leisurely stroll to Russia's oil wells.
Time. To quote the immortal Jim Croce:

"If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
'Til eternity passes away"

Germany did not have 'til eternity, it had, roughly, from August-September 1940 to January-February 1941...call it six months, in which to leverage the PW, exchange them for trained French workers, allocate those workers in industry, and get them hard at work producing tanks and other stuff.

Of course, by thinking hard the Germans are going to figure this all out in the ATL in FY 38-39, so why worry?
What the LW knew in 1940 about strategic bombing can't have been less favorable than what it believed in 39. Nothing in 39-40 had diminished the salience of strategic bombing. Quite the opposite (e.g. Rotterdam).
What does strategic bombing have to with it other than another straw man? Rotterdam was not strategic bombing, it was an accident, and is totally irrelevant to this argument. What the Luftwaffe saw was Guernica, where its analysis saw its interdiction campaign as a success (again, the town was just in the way). It saw Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and France...all "validations" of its aerial doctrine.
I scrap a cruiser and aircraft carrier but that's not the real point.
We've already beaten the real point to death. Z plan priority forced Heer program cuts during 1939 financial crisis. You don't think financial crises "real" and refuse to see that funds are fungible. Little hope of progress on that front.
Eugen? What a waste...launched 22 August 1938 she was mostly complete by the outbreak of war and completed fitting out and commissioning 1 August 1940...not much of a savings. Seydlitz and Lützow? Your ATL needs to begin in FY 37-38 if you want much of a savings on them, Seydlitz was launched 19 January 1939 and Lützow 1 July 1939.

Zeppelin? Launched 8 December 1938 and she was 85% complete by 1 September 1939...again to get significant savings to divert elsewhere, you have to start your ATL before she was laid down i28 December 1938.

Anyway, we may have beaten it to death, but the beatings evidently need to continue...there was no "Z plan priority" other than on the paper signed on 27 January 1939. Only "H" and "J" were laid down as part of that program. The financial crisis of 1939 meant that despite any priority pretty much bupkis got done of the Z Plan before 1 September 1939 when it was consigned to the dustbin of history.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#192

Post by Richard Anderson » 05 Jul 2019, 02:36

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
05 Jul 2019, 00:30
Paul Lakowski wrote:
05 Jul 2019, 00:11
Germany did not need to build more trucks , they just had to raid the civilian economy for the vehicles. They did this through out the war. As far back as 1936 Bloomberg and Fromm were advising the Wehrmacht, the Nazi would commandeer up to 120,000 trucks if war exploded unexpectedly. By 1937 103,420 trucks [load capacity of 2-7.5 tons] "were classified as completion vehicles for the Wehrmacht". [Trucks of the Wehrmacht .Reinhard Frank, pp 26.]
Raiding the civilian economy undercuts the ability to wage war. Food was a problem throughout the war, limiting coal production especially (coal miners need a lot of food to be productive). Further truck requisitions would disproportionately impact agriculture. You could ask the ag sector to substitute horses for trucks but then you're just shifting a shortage of horses to the army.

Far better for Germany to just build more trucks. Compared to planes and ships, trucks are pretty cheap. And they get cheaper the more of them you build.
Yep. The 103,000 "completion vehicles" along with the 84,172 trucks completed for the military comprised the total LKW pool for the military as of the outbreak of war. Requisitioning the completion vehicles left the civilian economy with roughly 170,000 trucks, which apparently remained at about that level for the rest of the war, attrition in the civilian economy being made up by the 60,865 produced specifically for that purpose until civilian production shut down in 1943. The situation with "cars" (PKW) was similar, 62,000 were produced for military use up to the outbreak of war and large numbers of the more than 1 million produced for the civilian sector were impressed into service. Civilian car production plummeted with only 30,000 more built after the outbreak of war for civilian use.

Everything else, roughly 300,000 motor vehicles by BARBAROSSA, were requisitioned from occupied territories.

BTW, German agriculture was barely motorized, there were only 57,700 tractors in Germany in 1939, a substantial increase from 1933 when there were 25,100...in the US in 1935 there were 1,048,000 tractors, increasing to 1,567,000 in 1940. If similar ratios of trucks to tractors applied in Germany as in the US, then German agriculture may have used about 39,000 trucks.

The problem of course was labor...much of the German auto industry, expensively built up to highlight Nazi prestige 1934-1939 was effectively shuttered on the outbreak of war. Framo, Hainichen was converted to armaments manufacture in 1943 after its Einheitstyp was cancelled as too complicated a vehicle. Vomag, Plauen converted to producing Panzer IV in early 1941. O.D. Werke Willy Ostner, Brand-Erbendorf built all of 4,000 vehicles (800 of them for export to the Hingarian Army) 1937-1942 before it to began manufacturing arms. Henschel built 11,000 Einheits vehicles 1934-1943 before suspending manufacture in 1943 to concentrate on tank production. And, famously, VW Fallersleben, completed in 1939, did not produce vehicles until 1940...and then completed 65,979 vehicles of all types by the end of the war...about 9% of its planned production capacity.

Of course, given that the labor force was "only" 179,000 (including 14,000 women) in 1939, lost 31% of its male workers by 1943 (51,150), but managed to replace about 30,000 of them from foreign labor. So, you only need to keep 30,000-51,150 workers out of the Heer and - hey presto! - the German motor vehicle industry remains at its 1939 capacity.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#193

Post by Paul Lakowski » 05 Jul 2019, 04:19

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
05 Jul 2019, 00:30
Paul Lakowski wrote:
05 Jul 2019, 00:11
Germany did not need to build more trucks , they just had to raid the civilian economy for the vehicles. They did this through out the war. As far back as 1936 Bloomberg and Fromm were advising the Wehrmacht, the Nazi would commandeer up to 120,000 trucks if war exploded unexpectedly. By 1937 103,420 trucks [load capacity of 2-7.5 tons] "were classified as completion vehicles for the Wehrmacht". [Trucks of the Wehrmacht .Reinhard Frank, pp 26.]
Raiding the civilian economy undercuts the ability to wage war. Food was a problem throughout the war, limiting coal production especially (coal miners need a lot of food to be productive). Further truck requisitions would disproportionately impact agriculture. You could ask the ag sector to substitute horses for trucks but then you're just shifting a shortage of horses to the army.

Far better for Germany to just build more trucks. Compared to planes and ships, trucks are pretty cheap. And they get cheaper the more of them you build.
The civilian economy needed to be undercut ,it took years to rain in civilian consumption. The civilian economy also had 3.5 million vehicles at the start of the war, and 120,000 trucks was manageable, until occupied territories are exhausted. The pressure would force them to rationalise production.

All motorized vehicles should be accumulated into motorized units as possible. Likewise all horse/wagon units would be collected into wagon/infantry divisions and fill a second echelon to occupy and be brought forward to fill defensive positions and Building and manning fortification all through the main theaters of combat -at the expense of ATLANTIC WALL.

Strictly speaking each Wagon divisions would still need couple hundred vehicles each to provide power for signals/medevac/hospital etc. In addition ALL KORPS/ARMY/GROUP formations would be still be fully motorized.

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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#194

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 05 Jul 2019, 04:35

RichardAnderson wrote:Um, no, you seem to be missing the point. German needed foreign exchange throughout the 1930s
but how to count in that in FY 38-39 when your ATL begins? Prescience? Or simply thinking hard about it?
As you've done a couple times now, you're being slippery about timelines.
Nothing about an ATL starting in 1939 implies that it ends there.Everything about my heartland alteration - apprehension of true strategic situation - means Germany takes pre- and in-war steps to address its situation.
One of these steps is prioritization of the army, another is a urgency to mobilize factors of production once the war has begun.
There is not even a hint of tension, contradiction, or inconsistency about these points.
RichardAnderson wrote:So stop acting like a 13 year-old valley girl bro.
OMG you are SUCH a lame dad - what McKenzie? No I'm looking at instagram not posting on a history website - lame. Does this picture look cute?
RichardAnderson wrote: It was not until IG Farben built its synthetic rubber plant at Monowitz in April 1941 before Auschwitz inmates were used regularly as industrial labor.
Investment for that plan began several years earlier though.
What's your argument that Hitlerian pragmatism re Bulgarian/Bolshevik alliance/pact is ideologically "kosher" while using Poles is not, provided that the strategic rationale for the latter move becomes apparent?
RichardAnderson wrote:How do they "apprehend" the crisis?
As I say pages ago in the setup, better intelligence, analysis, staff work by OKH, and advocacy by Halder et. al. to apprise national leadership of the actual military situation. Instead the institutional Heer went along with the most facile Nazi conceptions of Soviet/Slavic capabilities.
RichardAnderson wrote:The German economy was more or less in crisis from the day Hitler took control...no nation can sustain an average of 70.6% of its public expenditure on military goods for over five years without being in crisis
That's military as portion of public spending; I'm talking military as portion of national spending. The latter increased as Germany apprehended its strategic crisis, would have and should have happened earlier. Hitler had political room to demand more of the German public, especially after France when he was arguably the most popular German ever.
RichardAnderson wrote:yet again since you keep dodging the question, how does Germany force any other nation to do anything about sending Germany masses of workers without occupying them first?
It's you who's dodging my answer. THere's no compulsion, just harder negotiations. If Italy/Hungary/etc. want steel and coal they have to give Hitler more workers. OTL Hitler chose to strut rather than admit - more like acknowledge - his strategic desperation. Accordingly he exported ~8mil tons of steel in 1940 IIRC for very little return from Europe in terms of workers and commodities. Far less than he got later in the war when Germany's goose was obviously cooked.
RichardAnderson wrote:The relevant point is the Germans proved incapable of finessing their labor market so adroitly and "solved" their problem by simply throwing masses of forced laborers at it.
Fair point but I don't need finesse. I need increased army production equivalent to 1-2% of GDP; putting the screws to Europe and domestic economy could have yielded orders of magnitude greater results as happened later in the war. My goal at this stage is to prove feasibility rather than fine-grained detail. Achieving 12% of the labor recruitment later achieved gets the million workers. Taking the administrative/political steps earlier towards that recruitment should easily achieve that 12% by 1941
RichardAnderson wrote:Germany did not have 'til eternity, it had, roughly, from August-September 1940 to January-February 1941...call it six months, in which to leverage the PW, exchange them for trained French workers, allocate those workers in industry, and get them hard at work producing tanks and other stuff.
I don't need the French to accelerate production; I just need them to replace Germans inducted into the Heer from early 41. So that timeline is fine. Increased recruitment of Poles, Italians etc plus cuts to domestic consumption gets the added army equipment.

To quote Jim Croce, your riposte is bad, bad.
RichardAnderson wrote:What the Luftwaffe saw was Guernica, where its analysis saw its interdiction campaign as a success (again, the town was just in the way). It saw Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and France...all "validations" of its aerial doctrine.
Fine. And yet the LW you see as validated in its prewar beliefs (I agree) held scant hope for winning war via Battle of Britain. So nothing has changed in LW worldview since 38/39.
RichardAnderson wrote:Eugen?
Seydlitz and Zeppelin. I haven't even included any of these savings in, for example, my spreadsheet. There's enough room not to worry about it.
RichardAnderson wrote:Zeppelin? Launched 8 December 1938 and she was 85% complete by 1 September 1939
ATL starts in 38 so we're good.
RichardAnderson wrote:the beatings evidently need to continue...there was no "Z plan priority" other than on the paper signed on 27 January 1939.
pretty much bupkis got done of the Z Plan before 1 September 1939 when it was consigned to the dustbin of history.
This poor fucking horse. Once again, point isn't work done on Z plan pre-war, it's investment plans cut in early 1939.
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Re: What if: Hitler wins the war due to slightly stronger Barbarossa forces

#195

Post by ljadw » 05 Jul 2019, 07:00

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
04 Jul 2019, 16:09


OTOH the Heer was terrible in areas in which the Western Allies excelled, such as logistics and grand strategy.



We (the broad community of non-evil humanity) nearly let Hitler win via Munich, American isolationism, etc.
1 Nonsense

2 Nonsense

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