Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

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ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#196

Post by ljadw » 06 Apr 2021, 07:15

The influence of Fromm was going down ;he was considered as out of touch, as having no notion about the weapons needed for a modern war. That was one of the reasons why a man with front experience was appointed as his chief of staff; Fromm had no front experience and was only a bureaucrat with a powerful enemy at Rastenburg = Keitel ..He should have been replaced already before 1944 as Chef der Heeresrüstung .

ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#197

Post by ljadw » 06 Apr 2021, 07:29

KDF33 wrote:
05 Apr 2021, 16:50
ljadw wrote:
05 Apr 2021, 13:43
You said on post 153 that the aim of the Goering Program was far more specific and you gave 3 points ,one of which was an aircraft production of 3000 in May 1942 .
Dietrich Eichholtz OTOH said the following in his authoritative Geschichte der Deutschen Kriegswirtschaft im Zweiten Weltkrieg (sadly marred by Marxist propaganda ) :
1 Der Goering Programm war keinerwegs ein bloßes Flugzeugbauprogramm .
2 Der Kern dieses Programs bildete eine Vervierfachung der Stärke der Luftwaffe in Zwei bis Zweieinhalb Jahren .
Dietrich Eichholtz didn't say anything "OTOH". My source is that very book by Dietrich Eichholtz.

Go read pages 13-14 for aircraft production targets, page 14 for light metals production targets, and page 16 for avgas production targets.

Again: you're losing it, trying to cling to your absurd notions, not even understanding the sources you cite.

It is a sad spectacle.
ljadw wrote:
05 Apr 2021, 13:43
But an increase of the Flak strength would have more chance to increase the strength of the LW .
Citation needed.

All these targets would not increase the strength of the LW by 400 % .More aircraft would not increase the strength of the LW, unless there were also more pilots, technicians,spare parts, etc available ,and this was not so .Besides : the strength of the LW did not depend only on what the Germans could do, but also on what the allies would do .If Britain and the USSR were out in 1941, the LW would not need the Goering Program, if not ,the Goering Program would be insufficient .
Citation needed :
1 The Flak was responsible for more than half of USAAF losses and for 40 % of RAF losses
2 From ''The Aviation Geek Club " :Allied Heavies vs German Flak :why allied bombers never defeated Nazi's Flakwaffe .


KDF33
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#198

Post by KDF33 » 06 Apr 2021, 08:35

ljadw wrote:
06 Apr 2021, 07:29
All these targets would not increase the strength of the LW by 400 % .More aircraft would not increase the strength of the LW, unless there were also more pilots, technicians,spare parts, etc available ,and this was not so .Besides : the strength of the LW did not depend only on what the Germans could do, but also on what the allies would do .If Britain and the USSR were out in 1941, the LW would not need the Goering Program, if not ,the Goering Program would be insufficient .
The Göring-Programm aimed at increasing German aircraft strength, not Flak. This is clear when reading Eichholtz. I bolded the sections you previously misquoted, as part of your dissembling.
The thick bundle of papers of the "Göring Plan" or "Göring Program", as that special air force armament program was christened, dated June 23, 1941, which, according to the intentions of its creators, was to be the focus of all wartime economic efforts of German imperialism for years to come. The Göring program was by no means a mere aircraft construction program. It included extensive plans for the production of light metal and aviation fuel as well as for the production of powder and explosives, especially for purposes of aerial warfare, and included huge plans for the expansion of corresponding production capacities, especially for aluminum. It was easy to predict that in the end all areas of the war economy would be affected by the effects of the "Göring Program".

The core of this program was a quadrupling of the strength of the air force in two to two and a half years. The heads of air armament assumed a monthly production of 1200 machines, since the total German production of aircraft, including training and transport aircraft, had reached 1184 at its preliminary peak in March 1941. By the summer, however, it had dropped again by over ten percent. The first intermediate goal was a "doubling by 1,200 fighting machines (" elk program "). On June 1, 1942, two and a half times the "current production" - that is, 3000 aircraft per month - should be reached. [...]
Eichholtz, Geschichte der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1939–1945, pages 13-14

Please give me one quote linking the Göring-Programm to Flak.

P.S.: Yet again, you fail to acknowledge your dissembling pertaining to mutilated officers or Britain's female AA gunners.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#199

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Apr 2021, 11:58

Hi ljadw,

No, Stauffenberg did not start Walkyrie. Fromm ordered the Ersatzheer to prepare the Walküre I contingency plan to create four emergency divisions while the shrinking Ostheer was still advancing, and even before it had met its first major defeat at Moscow in December 1941. Their timely arrival led Hitler to call Fromm "The Strong Man of the Home Front". If I remember correctly, Walküre units had been created on three other emergency occasions by mid 1944. Walküre/Valkyrie was a hijacking of a well proven plan started by Fromm. This hijacking was to be triggered by Stauffenberg's bomb and ordered by Olbricht, if Fromm wouldn't do so. When Fromm declined to commit himself, Olbricht ordered it and Fromm was briefly replaced as head of the Ersatzheer by Hoepner.

Fromm has a lot of enemies, not just Keitel. Himmler loathed him because he wouldn't release manpower to expand the Waffen-SS. Goebbels was annoyed that the very tall Fromm towered over his diminutive figure in the propaganda photos and films at the victory parade in Berlin in July 1940. Bormann had grudges going back to 1918 when he had been an orderly in Fromm's artillery regiment. He angered Goering by publicly drawing Hitler's attention to the excess manpower on the Luftwaffe's books.

Though an early tank sceptic, Fromm was actually remarkably progressive regarding weapons development, because he knew better than anyone the limitations of Germany's material resources. That was one reason why Speer liked him and took him to his own early meetings with Hitler, "Fromm knew how to present a problem clearly: he had presence and had diplomatic tact. Sitting there, his sword pressed between his knees, hand on hilt, he looked charged with energy; and to this day I believe that his great abilities might have prevented many a blunder at the Fuhrer’s headquarters. After several conferences, in fact, his influence increased."

In October 1941 Fromm became the first senior German military leader to grasp the possibilities of an atomic bomb. In April 1942 he informed the recently appointed Speer of its potential and offered to release hundreds of skilled technicians from military service to help speed development. Fromm also oversaw the V2 programme.

After Stalingrad, Fromm wrote to OKW recommending that peace be sought. This reached Hitler, who did not want to hear it, so Speer was instructed not to bring him to their further meetings. Thereafter Fromm attended OKW meetings only when necessary, which was why Stauffenberg represented him on occasion. He was punished by the panzer arm being subordinated to Guderian and being obliged to allocate more manpower to the Waffen-SS.

Yup, Fromm was essentially a bureaucrat in uniform, but that is what his post required. That is essentially what staff officers are - office managers for field commanders. He was a Colonel General, the highest rank he could achieve in his post, because the rank of Field Marshall was reserved to field commanders. However, he was arguably more important to Germany than any Field Marshall, because he was the one who gave every one of them the men and materiel with which to do their jobs.

The fact that, having advised Hitler and OKW in the winters of 1941/42 and 1942/43 to seek peace and made so many senior Nazi enemies, Fromm was still in his job in July 1944 shows just how important he was believed to be.

Fromm's responsibilities were massive. He may be the most important WWII German not to have a biography in English. By comparison, Stauffenberg was a military nonentity, known only because of the Bomb Plot.

Cheers,

Sid.

ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#200

Post by ljadw » 06 Apr 2021, 14:09

Who appointed Stauffenberg as chief of staff of Fromm,and why ?
What was the reaction of Fromm when he heard the news about his chief of staff ? Why was Stauffenberg's predecessor replaced .
It is with hindsight so that Stauffenberg's appointment was the beginning of the end of Fromm .
Keitel was a Field Marshall but not a field commander. The same for Blomberg and Goering .
One of the missions of Schmundt as head of the Heerespersonalamt was to rejuvenate the senior officer corps and for this he had carte blanche .

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#201

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Apr 2021, 15:55

Hi ljadw,

Keitel's predecessor was a Field Marshall and, at least nominally, Keitel shared command of all the armies in the field. So there was wriggle room to legitimise both their promotions to Field Marshall. There was no such wriggle room for Fromm whose command specifically covered the parts of the German Army not in the field.

Goering commanded the Luftwaffe in the field.

The beginning of the end for Fromm was the splitting off of the panzer arm from his command in early 1943. Who knows when his end would actually have been? All we can say is that his ambiguity over the Bomb Plot advanced it.

Cheers,

Sid.

ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#202

Post by ljadw » 06 Apr 2021, 17:45

The difference between Blomberg and Keitel was that Blomberg was minister of war and nominally commander in chief, without a general staff,while Keitel was only the de facto minister of war.The OKW was only the ministry of war with an other name .The successor of Blomberg in his two functions was Hitler, but Keitel did the job of minister of war .
Goering was already a Field Marshall in 1938, before the war .
About Fromm : the rule in all armies is that in peace time appointments and promotions are decided by seniority and in war time by competence, success,luck .
Fromm became chief of the Ersatzheer in 1939 because of the function he occupied before the war .

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#203

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Apr 2021, 18:24

Hi ljadw,

That was why I wrote, "at least nominally".

You post, "the rule in all armies is that in peace time appointments and promotions are decided by seniority and in war time by competence, success,luck ." This is not a "rule" and professional armies go out of their way to avoid this becoming true. The officer corps is a pyramid. If what you say were true, every officer would retire as a Field Marshall in peacetime!

There is not room at the top for everyone, or even very many. In peacetime most officers get "passed over" at some stage, meaning that they have failed to gain promotion by a particular age. They then have the choice of continuing in service at the rank in which they have been passed over, or retiring to civil life. Usually there is a financial incentive (in the UK called a Golden Bowler) to retire rather than clog up the army with unneeded, passed-over officers. Another key cut off is staff college training. If you don't get a place on a staff college course, your career is as good as over outside regimental soldiering.

Thus, even in peacetime, there is still a severe natural selection within a professional officer corps. This becomes less true the more politicized an officer corps gets.

In wartime promotion is heavily influenced by the degree of military expansion undergone. Only then does the natural selection of the battlefield kick in. Rommel had eight promotions in ten years under the expanding Wehrmacht, having had no promotions at all in 14 years in the constricted Reichswehr.

Cheers,

Sid.

ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#204

Post by ljadw » 06 Apr 2021, 20:13

Rommel had no staff college training.
Eisenhower remained 16 years major, because promotions happened by seniority,and he had to wait till the older majors had become colonel .
The old men who commanded in 1940 were quickly fired, because they were not competent enough : the Belgian, Dutch and French commanders.
Without the outbreak of WWI and the dismissal of Moltke ( who was 66 ) ,Falkenhayn would not have become German chief of staff at the age of 53 .
Without the outbreak of WWII,Marshall who was 58 and still colonel,(temporarily brigade general )would not have become chief of staff and general of the army .
Without WWII, Slim,who left the army in 1946,would not have become CIGS in 1948 .
Peace time demands are different from war time demands .

ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#205

Post by ljadw » 06 Apr 2021, 20:26

KDF33 wrote:
06 Apr 2021, 08:35
ljadw wrote:
06 Apr 2021, 07:29
All these targets would not increase the strength of the LW by 400 % .More aircraft would not increase the strength of the LW, unless there were also more pilots, technicians,spare parts, etc available ,and this was not so .Besides : the strength of the LW did not depend only on what the Germans could do, but also on what the allies would do .If Britain and the USSR were out in 1941, the LW would not need the Goering Program, if not ,the Goering Program would be insufficient .
The Göring-Programm aimed at increasing German aircraft strength, not Flak. This is clear when reading Eichholtz. I bolded the sections you previously misquoted, as part of your dissembling.
The thick bundle of papers of the "Göring Plan" or "Göring Program", as that special air force armament program was christened, dated June 23, 1941, which, according to the intentions of its creators, was to be the focus of all wartime economic efforts of German imperialism for years to come. The Göring program was by no means a mere aircraft construction program. It included extensive plans for the production of light metal and aviation fuel as well as for the production of powder and explosives, especially for purposes of aerial warfare, and included huge plans for the expansion of corresponding production capacities, especially for aluminum. It was easy to predict that in the end all areas of the war economy would be affected by the effects of the "Göring Program".

The core of this program was a quadrupling of the strength of the air force in two to two and a half years. The heads of air armament assumed a monthly production of 1200 machines, since the total German production of aircraft, including training and transport aircraft, had reached 1184 at its preliminary peak in March 1941. By the summer, however, it had dropped again by over ten percent. The first intermediate goal was a "doubling by 1,200 fighting machines (" elk program "). On June 1, 1942, two and a half times the "current production" - that is, 3000 aircraft per month - should be reached. [...]
Eichholtz, Geschichte der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1939–1945, pages 13-14

Please give me one quote linking the Göring-Programm to Flak.

P.S.: Yet again, you fail to acknowledge your dissembling pertaining to mutilated officers or Britain's female AA gunners.
Das Elch Programm was NOT das Goering Programm .
And, a quadrupling of the strength of the LW is totally different from the production numbers of aircraft . A doubling of this production would not increase the strength of the LW,because the strength of the LW is much more than the number of available aircraft ,as is the strength of a PzD totally different from the number of available tanks : a PzD with 300 tanks is not stronger than a PzD with 200 tanks and an air force with 6000 aircraft is not stronger than an air force with 3000 aircraft .
The number of men in the Flak units was going up between June 1941 and May 1942 . That's why the Flak units were a part of the Goering program that was much more than the 3 points you are using .

KDF33
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#206

Post by KDF33 » 06 Apr 2021, 20:37

ljadw wrote:
06 Apr 2021, 20:26
Das Elch Programm was NOT das Goering Programm .
The text indicates that it was a sub-component of the wider Göring-Programm.
ljadw wrote:
06 Apr 2021, 20:26
And, a quadrupling of the strength of the LW is totally different from the production numbers of aircraft . A doubling of this production would not increase the strength of the LW,because the strength of the LW is much more than the number of available aircraft ,as is the strength of a PzD totally different from the number of available tanks : a PzD with 300 tanks is not stronger than a PzD with 200 tanks and an air force with 6000 aircraft is not stronger than an air force with 3000 aircraft .
Eichholtz makes obvious that the Göring-Programm aimed to provide the underpinnings for that expansion, both in terms of airframes and engines, as well as the fuel for operations and the training of additional pilots.
ljadw wrote:
06 Apr 2021, 20:26
The number of men in the Flak units was going up between June 1941 and May 1942 . That's why the Flak units were a part of the Goering program that was much more than the 3 points you are using .
There is no logical link between your first and your second sentence. Again, I'll repeat: provide one quote linking the Göring-Programm to the expansion of Flak.

P.S.: You still have to acknowledge being demonstrated wrong regarding:

1. The use of women by the United Kingdom for AAA.
2. The service of mutilated officers in the British military.

Boby
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#207

Post by Boby » 06 Apr 2021, 22:11

Thomas memo on his discussion with Milch et al on 26.6. is printed in KTB OKW

https://archive.org/details/Oberkommand ... ode/2up?q=

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#208

Post by Sid Guttridge » 07 Apr 2021, 00:05

Hi ljadw,

I posted, "In wartime promotion is heavily influenced by the degree of military expansion undergone."

What have Rommel, Eisenhower, Marshall, and Slim all got in common?

Their armies went from small regular forces of between 100,000 and 200,000 to overwhelmingly conscript forces of many millions in only a few years.

Cheers,

Sid.

ljadw
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#209

Post by ljadw » 07 Apr 2021, 12:29

They got more in common : in peacetime,they were waiting on the death/pensioning of their superiors to be promoted .In peacetime, they were certain to be promoted, but not when .
As long they were not making in peacetime publicly a fool of themselves, their career was not hurt . I say publicly .That's why in peacetime all armies are swarming with people who are incompetent and unfit for war .
In war time, one mistake, one setback,and you were out .Fredendal was fired for the defeat of Kasserine .

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Vulnerability of Soviet population, agriculture, and industry to German occupation

#210

Post by Sid Guttridge » 07 Apr 2021, 15:32

Hi ljadw,

You post, "..... in peacetime all armies are swarming with people who are incompetent and unfit for war."

No, just bad armies.

Cheers,

Sid.

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