The economical buildup of Germany in the 30s

[Simon_Jester]

Which seemed to imply that you disagreed with "the germans having the greatest tanks of WWII" being propaganda. Then you continously repeat parts of that propaganda to back up your claim.

No, I meant to say (and maintain) that the German tanks were "pretty impressive." As in they impressed people. Which they did, or the propaganda wouldn't have worked. It's not as if the Allies blasted their way through the entire Wehrmacht and only then started buying the hype about German tanks being better than they really were.

Or, you could interpret it as saying that the tanks impress me, which they do. However, this does not mean that they are the only tanks which impress me, or the tanks that impress me most, or that I maintain that these tanks which impress me are superior to all others.

But if I'd meant to say that the Germans made the best tanks of the war overall* by any significant margin, I'd have come out and said it far more explicitly.

*Where "overall" is defined to include logistics and strategy, as well as tactics.
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So imagine what could have happened if the nazi politicians had ordered a simpler, easy to mass produce, effective tank instead of the prestige projects.

It would have been ugly. But I am not trying to say that the German tanks were optimal, only that they were effective enough in combat to earn a well-deserved reputation for being effective in combat. This reputation was enhanced by the fact that their 'best' designs were heavy tanks being overrun using larger numbers of lighter tanks... which meant unfavorable casualty ratios for the guys in the lighter tanks.

But the reputation in question is not pure myth, not just hot air. It is based in large part on the very real experiences of people going up against German tanks and having to fight very hard, often dying in large numbers, to win.

So think how it felt to be a part of the übermensch where you know that you are better trained, better equipped and just simply better than the untermensch you are facing. Now you have finally received word that the new überpanzers the Tigers and Panthers have arrived in sufficient numbers. All the elite divisions are here. Now is the time to return to the offensive, it is time for Operation Citadel. So you pop into your Panzer IV which is such an impressive tank and you drive of. Then you realise that for every panzer IV they have a T-34. (Slight exaguration here but you get the picture)

I'd be thinking "oh shit this is going to be a long day" at best and "oh shit I'm going to die" at worst. And rightly so.

Please try to understand that I am not claiming the logistic superiority of the German tanks. I am trying to claim only that they were in some ways formidable, that they were not a negligible enemy or one whose force was to be despised. The Germans naturally sought to exaggerate their tanks' reputation and to make their enemies look weak*, but that does not mean that the tanks' reputation was entirely fictional, or entirely undeserved.

On a side note, I feel that trying to downplay just how dangerous German armor could be tactically demeans the people who had to fight it, on both fronts.

*Compare the German propaganda version of battles between German tanks and Polish cavalry, where Polish cavalry fought using lances, to the real ones, where they fought using concealed AT guns!
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I don't think it's propaganda to say something like "T-34s had a mean time to failure in combat of 16 hours, and some T-34 crews went into battle with entire spare engine blocks strapped to the back of the tank in anticipation of a breakdown." It may not be true, or it may be equally true of both sides, but it's not propaganda. And unless it is true of both sides (which I'm quite prepared to believe), it's relevant to the quality of the tanks.

It is the effect of propaganda that you know that the soviets had quality problems but that you do not know that the nazis had just as much problems.

I know quite well the Nazis had maintenance problems, such as half their Panzers breaking down on a route march to Vienna during the Anschluss; I just don't know how the German problems match up to the Russian problems. Hence my comment "it may be equally true of both sides... which I'm quite prepared to believe."

The guy who pointed out the Russian problem to me was actually comparing Russian tanks to American tanks; he wasn't even talking about the Germans.
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The best propaganda is always that which puts a useful spin on existing, irrefutable facts, not on outright lies. The quality of German tanks as seen by popular culture is an example of this- it's an exaggeration, but it isn't a lie by any stretch of the imagination.

I think that the non-existing jewish population of most of central and eastern europe would disagree with you.

I think you're misunderstanding me very, very badly.

My contention is that propaganda is more effective when it has some basis in reality. I'm not sure where your point of disagreement comes from, to tell the truth. I do not contend that all propaganda has a basis in reality, nor do I see how my statement could be honestly interpreted as such.

[Spoonist]

Hi Simon_Jester, As I said before, I think that we mostly agree and I see what you are saying in regards to the nazi panzer divisions having a fierce reputation during the war by those facing them and rightly so. Also my jewish comment even if true was out of line, but it was to prove the point.
However if you are asking this:

I'm not sure where your point of disagreement comes from, to tell the truth.

Then I'd say that it is not really the propaganda thingie, but rather that all of your explanations contains things like these:

But the Soviet armored corps did not stand out quite so much because the Soviets did not manage to stage stunning upset victories over entire national militaries by the use of tanks. Thus, they did not manage to impress the world quite as much as the Germans- with reason.

The Germans used tanks primarily; what they did could not have been done if not for their highly effective use of tanks. For the Soviets, the use of tanks was less outstanding; the Soviet tanks were quite competent and important to the war effort, but were not famously more effective or important than, say, the Soviet artillery.

So insofar as the Germans achieved impressive results on the battlefield, much of the credit has to go to their tanks, and that is a lot of credit when you add it all up.

Moreover, the Soviet victories of 1945 were not "stunning upsets" by any stretch of the imagination, given that the Soviet armies were far larger than those of their enemies by that time, and that their enemies' industrial base had been badly damaged.

overwhelmed what were once thought to be powerful nations. And did so quickly, mostly by using their tanks. That is a fact.

The quality of German tanks as seen by popular culture is an example of this- it's an exaggeration, but it isn't a lie by any stretch of the imagination.

The best propaganda is always that which puts a useful spin on existing, irrefutable facts, not on outright lies.

I'd claim that all of them are false. (Not in their entirety and sometimes depending on if you are refering to the whole war or just specific parts of it, but still generally false).

This reputation was enhanced by the fact that their 'best' designs were heavy tanks being overrun using larger numbers of lighter tanks... which meant unfavorable casualty ratios for the guys in the lighter tanks.

This has always struck me as strange. When comparing other machines of war, the military of the day usually presented the stuff correctly to the media. Like ships, regardless of how many smaller ships where spent sinking a large one it was a victory. Or airplanes, downing big bombers by spending lots of cheap fighters was a victory. But destroying one heavy tank by spending lots of light/medium tanks was not? That is just strange.

The Sherman was not a crappy tank when properly equipped and utilized, if the Easy Eight Shermans all had 17pdrs equipped on them for example they could kill King Tigers at the same stand-off range. The Russians used the Shermans alongside the T-34 and thought quite well of it, to keep in mind.

Agreed. I lost the message I was trying to push because of the soundbite being too good to pass on. What I was trying to convey was that the US could have designed a 'bettter' tank but that it was better strategically to build a 'shitty' tank if that tank could be more effectively mass produced. It is the mass production quality that makes the tank easier to adapt. So even if you design a tank knowing that it will get beaten in a 1-1 situation if you will always have more than that you will still win the battle.

[Simon_Jester]

• I'd claim that all of them are false. (Not in their entirety and sometimes depending on if you are refering to the whole war or just specific parts of it, but still generally false).
  
  OK, let me consider a few of these:

  The best propaganda is always that which puts a useful spin on existing, irrefutable facts, not on outright lies.

  I believe this to be true. I do not believe that all effective propaganda qualifies; some propaganda is outright fiction and works anyway. But if nothing else, it is always easier to present something that is approximately true and twist it as needed than to make something up out of whole cloth.
  

  The quality of German tanks as seen by popular culture is an example of this- it's an exaggeration, but it isn't a lie by any stretch of the imagination.

  Again, I think this is true. The perceived quality of the tanks is exaggerated, but they were not shitty tanks. They could be used effectively in battle, and there were enough of them that while they did not decide the war in Germany's favor, they had a major impact on the outcome. On the tactical level they were quite dangerous. It is not as if, say, the Japanese had claimed to have the toughest tanks in the war; that would be an outright lie.
  
  I agree that (especially) Soviet tanks were in many ways better than their German counterparts (not least the ease of production), but I don't think they were so transcendently much better that the Germans could not honestly say "we had pretty damn good tanks."
  

  overwhelmed what were once thought to be powerful nations. And did so quickly, mostly by using their tanks. That is a fact.

  Here, I admit that I was simplifying a bit too much, but it is not as if the tanks were irrelevant to, say, the spring 1940 campaign. The Germans might have won anyway, but it is difficult to believe that they would have won so quickly or so handily were they limited to the musclepowered forces that made up most of their non-panzer units.
  
  Of course, the light (well-handled) German tanks of 1940 were a far cry from the heavies of the late war, but they did legitimately help to build up a reputation for competent armored warfare.
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  Say what you will, but by the time that the Germans reached their peak extent they had managed to subdue or enlist nations with a combined population of several times their own, largely by force of arms and promises that could only be delivered by force of arms. They were not pushovers, and pretending that they were because their weapons were too expensive to be made in sufficient quantity to let them keep fighting enemies that outnumbered them badly is absurd.
  
  All I have been trying to express here is that among the many absurd and despicable lies the Nazis made, the one that was closest to truth, the one that can reasonably be described as a "partial truth," perhaps even a "near truth," is the one about their combat ability. Their claims about combat ability came closer to truth than the others, not that this is saying all that much. They managed to win a number of campaigns that no one expected them to win (certainly not so quickly and easily), and they managed to put up a fairly resilient defense against very tough opposition. If they were misrepresenting their combat power as badly as they misrepresented, say, the Jewish community, they could not have done that. In fact, they'd have been conquered within a week if they'd lied about it that much.
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  This has always struck me as strange. When comparing other machines of war, the military of the day usually presented the stuff correctly to the media. Like ships, regardless of how many smaller ships where spent sinking a large one it was a victory. Or airplanes, downing big bombers by spending lots of cheap fighters was a victory. But destroying one heavy tank by spending lots of light/medium tanks was not? That is just strange.

  Probably because the tonnage ratios weren't so obvious. One 1500-ton destroyer is obviously no match for a 30000-ton battleship, but it's less clear that one 30-ton tank is no match for one 56-ton tank, especially when some of the relevant statistics are classified or imperfectly known. If I, some random GI in France, don't know that a Tiger outweighs a Sherman by almost two to one, I'm going to be pretty impressed when every Tiger accounts for two Shermans. Even if I do know, I'll be pretty impressed when it accounts for four or five.
  
  Moreover, in a number of cases (such as the one I mention above) the tonnage kill ratios were in the Germans' favor, too; if their industry hadn't also been less efficient and less productive than the combined output of their enemies things could have been uglier.

[Spoonist]

Now that you have explained further, I think that we agree on most issues and we have a much more nuanced view from both sides.
My last comment regarding propaganda is that I agree that it is easier to create propaganda on something which has some existing value. But I still think that the best propaganda seems to be big lies. Look at the political climate in the US for instance. There are so much "good" propaganda there that it is no longer possible to discuss issues.
My last comments regarding WWII (unless some of our resident experts come along and beat me with better facts). Is that nazi germany excelled at doctrinal advances especially combined arms warfare, their moral proved to be higher than anyone elses except Japan and maybe Finland. So they as a whole where decidedly impressive and what they accomplished was mindboggling at the time. But much of their percieved image was a result of them knowing the propaganda value of things, something which the allied failed to equal. In several cases the nazis did not posses the "best" equipment while everyone else thought they did, instead their primary advantage was the indoctrination & training that their officers and troops had.
As an example the wehrmacht used a lot of horses (link in german) as a compliment but that is usually never mentioned. Because the nazi propaganda was very keen to portray themselves as the most modern in the world. So when taking film or pictures from "the front" they censored reports of horses to increase the illusion of them having more motorized infantry than they did.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, the Wehrmacht was horse-heavy, but it was more motorized than some of it's adversaries (namely RKKA; I'm also relatively sure that they were more motorized than France); critically important was the fact that the Wehrmacht's mobile forces had a high degree of motorization. The Wehrmacht's motorization was low in the overall army, but it was used very efficiently as support; etc, something the RKKA failed to do, for example. And of course, the Germans milked their photos and edited them for all they could. After all, Goebbels didn't get (in)famous for nothing, right?

[Simon_Jester]

Now that you have explained further, I think that we agree on most issues and we have a much more nuanced view from both sides.
My last comment regarding propaganda is that I agree that it is easier to create propaganda on something which has some existing value. But I still think that the best propaganda seems to be big lies. Look at the political climate in the US for instance. There are so much "good" propaganda there that it is no longer possible to discuss issues.

OK. You have a point. I will reduce the ambition of my claim:

I now claim (and still believe) that the most effective long lived propaganda is based on spin, not on big lies. A big lie tends to last only as long as you can keep cognitive dissonance from setting in, and that is a difficult challenge, especially for governments that are no longer in power. This is why no one except part of the lunatic fringe and a few confused old geezers still believe the Nazi propaganda regarding the Jews: it was an outright lie, and eventually the lie became blindingly obvious.

Whereas many people still believe that German tanks were all-dominant and greatly superior to those of their enemies... because there is enough real evidence for German tanks being good that honest historians* can still be fooled by it. A small lie with a basis in the facts lasts longer than a big lie, even if it isn't always as effective at the moment it is spoken.

*Not necessarily good ones, but honest ones, who are really trying to do research and find the truth. As in, not the ones churning out utter dreck like the Holocaust deniers.

My last comments regarding WWII (unless some of our resident experts come along and beat me with better facts). Is that nazi germany excelled at doctrinal advances especially combined arms warfare, their moral proved to be higher than anyone elses except Japan and maybe Finland.

Nitpick: "morale," not "moral." "Moral" is an adjective, and one seldom applied to Nazis. "Morale" is a noun, and one that can apply to anything with a mind.

As an example the wehrmachtused a lot of horses (link in german) as a compliment but that is usually never mentioned. Because the nazi propaganda was very keen to portray themselves as the most modern in the world. So when taking film or pictures from "the front" they censored reports of horses to increase the illusion of them having more motorized infantry than they did.

Yes. You might recall my reference to "the musclepowered forces" of the German army; that was what I was talking about.

Also, another nitpick: "complement," not "compliment." A "compliment" is a positive statement*; I might "compliment" Stas Bush on the depth of his historical research, for instance. Whereas a "complement" is a thing that goes well with another thing**; I could never "complement" Stas Bush on the depth of his historical research, because I lack the skill and knowledge base to do corresponding research.

Now, if I could do extensive research at the Library of Congress while he did extensive research in the Moscow archives, with the goal of collaborating on a paper about, say, the Cold War military, and if we got along well and contributed equally to the paper, and if our work built on itself to reach heights neither of us could reach alone... then I would be "complementing" Stas Bush's work. As it is, I can merely "compliment" it when it impresses me.

The Wehrmacht's horses were a complement to the motorized forces and transport units, not a compliment.

*Or a verb for the act of making a positive statement.
**Or a verb for the act of going well with another thing.

[Spoonist]

Hehe, horse 'compliment', seems like a freudian slip.... Since english isn't my first language I usually put long posts through a spell checker. But that doesn't help when its almost right... Thanks for pointing them out.