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.