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Historically, Germany did not start to fully mobilize its economy for total war until 1943, by which time it was too late to change things. So what would happen if the Nazis decided to do this from the beginning (1939)? In a related question, was it realistically possible for Nazi Germany to do this?

Scenario (I appreciate if there are any flaws found and corrected in my attempted analysis):

From 1939 to the spring of 1940 there won't be any real changes, since Germany's victories at this point happened because it had better tactics that the opposition. The Battle of Britain also goes as usual, since Operation Sealion was and remains a product of insanity, as well as the fact that the poor Bf 109E can't go beyond London without crashing down to earth. Maybe the increased number of fighters and bombers means that the RAF's losses increase and the night Blitz becomes deadlier, but Britain won't fold at that. Same with North Africa in the long term (the Desert Fox can't beat his poor logistics).

The big question is Operation Barbarrossa. A Nazi Germany fully mobilized by June 1941 will have more weapons, vehicles (armored or otherwise) and aircraft to send against the Soviet Union. I think it was Stas who mentioned that a fully mobilized Germany invading the USSR will be an even greater menace, since the Nazis would have more resources to throw at the Soviets (still doesn't solve their manpower problem, though). I don't remember if he said that in such a scenario the USSR stood a greater chance of being defeated by a fully mobilized Germany in 1941, but I can bet Stalin will be in deep trouble. The Soviets are going to have to spend even more time trying to kick out the Germans once the sheer distances and logistical overstrech, as well as Hitler's mistakes, wear them down.

The effects on the U.S. will be negligible, since it can outproduce the Nazis at any time. The war, though, might certainly last a bit longer at least. Long enough for Nazi Germany to get nuked and lose.

Anything I missed or had wrong?

Short answer:
They can't, German industry isn't up to it. They never went to a war production comparable to the USA or USSR at any point, since the industry was not geared towards it.

Serafina wrote:Short answer:
They can't, German industry isn't up to it. They never went to a war production comparable to the USA or USSR at any point, since the industry was not geared towards it.

I am not so sure about that. What I am however sure about is that a total war economy was not what the Nazis wanted due to ideological reasons.

Stas Bush can maybe elaborate this a lot better.

Thanas wrote:

Serafina wrote:Short answer:
They can't, German industry isn't up to it. They never went to a war production comparable to the USA or USSR at any point, since the industry was not geared towards it.

I am not so sure about that. What I am however sure about is that a total war economy was not what the Nazis wanted due to ideological reasons.

Stas Bush can maybe elaborate this a lot better.

Probably, but that does not stop me from trying, especially since Stas seems to have been busy lately:

We have to remember that National Socialism was a populist movement that saw itself as the champion of the middle class, farmers and non-socialist workers. Hitler probably saw himself as the embodiment of those classes, which for the Nazis were the equivalent of "the people". Therefore there was great reluctance to implement non-popular measures such as stopping the production of civilian goods in favor of war matériel, or starting 24/7 production in the factories.

The was a sort of naiveté in Nazism in that many of the leading Nazis seem to have genuinely believed that they were doing their best for the German people as defined above. This seems strange to us, because post-modernist political cynicism is so prevalent now, especially in Europe.

There are perhaps some reasons why earlier total war mobilization would not have been as significant as one might think. Germany was subject to many resource constraints, and the shortage of oil was probably the most important of them. There is no way enough fuel could have been supplied to an American style fully motorized army, for example. Even significantly increasing the number of aircraft and armored vehicles from early on would tax the limited fuel reserves heavily. The problem could perhaps be alleviated by building more coal-to-liquids plants, but it's difficult to say how much that could have helped and if coal could be mined and transported to the plants in large enough quantities without depriving the rest of society from heat and electricity, which at the time were generated almost exclusively with coal.

I think what most people mean by war economy is not more motorized forces per se, but less inefficiency in the procurement system and in the production lines. Like using a lot more resources to built comparative tanks to the soviets etc.

Force Lord wrote:Historically, Germany did not start to fully mobilize its economy for total war until 1943, by which time it was too late to change things.

Actually, Germany mobilized for total war from the start. So the point of this tread is on shaky grounds.

Many people believe that Germany didn't mobilize for total war because the production of tanks, explosives, ammunition and aircraft was several times smaller in 1940 than in 1944. However, there are two different explanations for that: 1- The natural tendency was for production to increase later, after several years of mobilization. 2- There was much inneficiency in the early years of the war, with were corrected in later years.

O good reading about that would be Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze and War and Economy in the Third Reich, Richard Overy. Both authors hold the view that Germany became fully mobilized from the start, however, they take different views on how the increase in output ocurred. Tooze said that it was 1, Overy, 2.

So what would happen if the Nazis decided to do this from the beginning (1939)? In a related question, was it realistically possible for Nazi Germany to do this?

Well, rewording your point from total mobilization early to 1944 levels of production of armmaments by 1940, I would say that Germany would probably win. Total war production was 3 times higher in 1944 than in 1940 and 1941, that means that Germany would have several times more equipment by november 1941, when they were trying to capture moscow.

The big question is Operation Barbarrossa. A Nazi Germany fully mobilized by June 1941 will have more weapons, vehicles (armored or otherwise) and aircraft to send against the Soviet Union. I think it was Stas who mentioned that a fully mobilized Germany invading the USSR will be an even greater menace, since the Nazis would have more resources to throw at the Soviets (still doesn't solve their manpower problem, though). I don't remember if he said that in such a scenario the USSR stood a greater chance of being defeated by a fully mobilized Germany in 1941, but I can bet Stalin will be in deep trouble.

Of course, the chance of you being defeated increases with the increased resources available to your opponent. In this case the material resources available to the Wehrmacht would be several times the historical levels. I think that the USSR couldn't survive the innitial blitzkrieg, considering that they lost 35% of their population in the historical Barbarossa.

The effects on the U.S. will be negligible, since it can outproduce the Nazis at any time. The war, though, might certainly last a bit longer at least. Long enough for Nazi Germany to get nuked and lose. Anything I missed or had wrong?

If Germany wins in the Eastern front, they would control all of mainland Europe, with the exception of Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, with would become satellite countries. This European empire, with access to the vast natural resources of the USSR, would be very hard to defeat. Second to Wages of Destruction, the GDP of the area under direct and indirect German control before Barbarossa, was 30% larger than the GDP of the US.

The only way of the Allies forcing Germany to an unconditional surrender would be a nuclear holocaust.

The most probable outcome would be a Nazi regime dominating europe for decades to come. However, that wouldn't happen, because Germany simply couldn't produce 40,000 aircraft and 20,000 tanks per year in 1940/1941. Unless they started mobilizing for total war in ~1935, i.e. in peacetime.

Thanas wrote:I think what most people mean by war economy is not more motorized forces per se, but less inefficiency in the procurement system and in the production lines. Like using a lot more resources to built comparative tanks to the soviets etc.

The fact is that, since the Allies controlled nearly then entire oil production of the world during WW2, the Germans simply couldn't supply the fuel required to use all the additional equipment produced in this what-if. They couldn't train the additional pilots to fly the additional combat aircraft, couldn't fuel the additional combat aircraft, the additional tanks, trucks, etc.

Only the increased supply of ammunition and artillery pieces could be fully used. And in these basic itens, the German army actually had a decent supply during the first 3 years of the war.

In my post above, I would assume that Q magically gives all the fuel that Gemany needs. To make the scenario possible.

Iosef Cross wrote:

Force Lord wrote:Historically, Germany did not start to fully mobilize its economy for total war until 1943, by which time it was too late to change things.

Actually, Germany mobilized for total war from the start. So the point of this tread is on shaky grounds.

I'm not sure what you count as total mobilization. German mobilization was relatively limited during the early phase of the war. I'm not sure how "Wages of Destruction" shows that Germany had employed total mobilization; it specifically deals with the unsustainable character of the German military buildup which was fuelled in a large part by looting, trophies and capture of vital resources from other nations.

In any case, the mobilization can only be estimated in comparison. What we need is a comparable look at the share of resources, labour pool and GDP devoted to war in all nations in 1939-1941. I'm pretty sure we could see that in Harrison's "Economics of World War II". I'll look into that.

EDIT: Hmm... looking into the issue, Germany's war spending in 1939 was ~22% of GDP, which is similar to Japan. However, Germany mobilized slower than the USSR, which had a similar proportion in peacetime, but shifted 44 percent of GDP from civilian to military spending in 1940-1941 (Harrison, "Economics of World War II", p.20). The British shift was similar, too - 38% of GDP from civilian to military in 1939-1941. But Germany's top GDP shift from civilian to military during the same period was only 29% (the rest was covered by looting, etc.). Japan and the USA mobilized late into the war and are thus outside the scope of discussion.

So the problem is not the scale of German mobilization, but the speed. In essence, Germany should have mobilized faster. If it displayed a shift of 38-44% (a-la Britain or the USSR), perhaps that would yield greater successes in Germany's major wartime goals.

The German plunder is detailed in most books dealing with the German war effort; suffice to say that Germany managed to extract 30-40 percent of national wartime products of France, Netherlands and Norway. This is what Germany used to cover it's deficiencies.

Iosef Cross wrote:If Germany wins in the Eastern front, they would control all of mainland Europe, with the exception of Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, with would become satellite countries. This European empire, with access to the vast natural resources of the USSR, would be very hard to defeat. ... The only way of the Allies forcing Germany to an unconditional surrender would be a nuclear holocaust.

The German nuke program was pathetically bad. So nuking Germany would be an option, certainly. I wouldn't call it a "nuclear holocaust" - you could nuke several industrial centers and then watch Germany collapse on the inside. I'm pretty sure Stuart has a rationale when he says only a large nuclear strike could work against Germany, but in his scenario the German political stability and it's rigidity is in my view overestimated.

Iosef Cross wrote:However, that wouldn't happen, because Germany simply couldn't produce 40,000 aircraft and 20,000 tanks per year in 1940/1941. Unless they started mobilizing for total war in ~1935, i.e. in peacetime.

Germany could have started mobilizing in 1938-1939, and achieve this result. They woudl also have to devote a greater portion of their military spending to land forces as opposed to naval buildup (the latter was futile anyway, Britain and the US totally outclassed Germany here). In 1938-1940 Germany and other WWII combatants had similar levels of military spending. So it's a matter of using resources at hand and choosing priorities.

Iosef Cross wrote:The fact is that, since the Allies controlled nearly then entire oil production of the world during WW2, the Germans simply couldn't supply the fuel required to use all the additional equipment produced in this what-if.

Well, their best case scenario is capturing the Baku oil fields. This would solve their problem, to an extent.

I'm just going from Overton's "Why the Allies Won" here.... so my POV may not be entirely accurate. However, Overton certainly depicted the Nazi's production system being... pure chaos.

Basically, whereas the US and Soviet economies focused on mass-production, the German war economy specialized in providing custom kit to whatever the frontline generals (or Hitler) wanted. Which is why German tank production ran only to the thousands with a dizzying number of different marks, while the Americans and Russians were known for building tens of thousands of tanks - mostly of the same type.

For instance, one of the best German vehicles of the war was the Stug III - a cheap assault gun that maintained an excellent kill ratio and reputation throughout the war. Yet instead of mass-producing the Stug III, the Germans delved into making all kinds of different assault guns and tank destroyers - including such utterly useless messes like the Elefant (which had no MGs to fend off infantry), or the Jagdtiger (engine too weak for the weight, resulting in frequent breakdowns).

Stas Bush wrote: Well, their best case scenario is capturing the Baku oil fields. This would solve their problem, to an extent.

If we assume a very optimistic scenario from a Nazi point of view, it's perhaps possible that they could capture the Baku fields by the end of 1941, but surely not intact. The Soviets would blow them up and the long distance to Germany and lack of oil industry experts and equipment would make repairing the facilities slow, not to mention that the wells would first have to be extinguished. It would be like Kuwait after 1991, but with less resources and much more primitive tech available for the job. Realistically it would be at least 1943 before the Germans could get anything out of Baku and reaching full production would take even more time, probably at least an additional year.

Zinegata wrote:I'm just going from Overton's "Why the Allies Won" here.... so my POV may not be entirely accurate. However, Overton certainly depicted the Nazi's production system being... pure chaos.

Basically, whereas the US and Soviet economies focused on mass-production, the German war economy specialized in providing custom kit to whatever the frontline generals (or Hitler) wanted. Which is why German tank production ran only to the thousands with a dizzying number of different marks, while the Americans and Russians were known for building tens of thousands of tanks - mostly of the same type.

For instance, one of the best German vehicles of the war was the Stug III - a cheap assault gun that maintained an excellent kill ratio and reputation throughout the war. Yet instead of mass-producing the Stug III, the Germans delved into making all kinds of different assault guns and tank destroyers - including such utterly useless messes like the Elefant (which had no MGs to fend off infantry), or the Jagdtiger (engine too weak for the weight, resulting in frequent breakdowns).

To be fair, this ignores the tech race that was developing in these two decades. What was overwhelming good in 1940 would had been outclassed in 1945. The need to thus bring in new models to replace the old was there.

What should have been faulted was the ineffective way German R&D brought replacement models to production.

At the end of the day the Germans did not have the raw materials and transportation capacity to do very much more then they already did. They could have used personal a damn lot more effectively though, not forming Luftwaffer field divisions and other insanity, but this is an empire that was fucking based around murdering millions of its own workers anyway. The Germans did have a huge late war surge in production of a few kinds of weapons, mainly tanks and single engine fighters, but this came at the cost of neglecting to expand production of all or kinds of weapons like anti tank guns and ammo. This production surge was the result of major investments made into more machinery and plant in the late 30s and early 1940s, not any decision in 1942 or 1943 to suddenly 'mobilize'. The Nazis already were mobilized in 1939, that's why they could overrun people so easily. That also meant they had little slack left over, and certain civilian living standards had to be kept up as long as possible to avoid a repeat of 1918. The moment you go to true total war footing a clock is ticking until your economy and population implodes.

Course killing the V-2 can always free up some extensive light industrial resources, but more planes in mid 1944 will hardly matter since they don't have any fuel or pilots. The V-1 is basically worth keeping in my opinion since it could inflict at least some damage on ground targets, while Luftwaffer bombing by that point of the war was

PainRack wrote:To be fair, this ignores the tech race that was developing in these two decades. What was overwhelming good in 1940 would had been outclassed in 1945. The need to thus bring in new models to replace the old was there.

Yes, but the Germans went about it all wrong: trying to replace old models with bleeding edge ones. It was perfectly logical for them to do things like keep upgrading Panzer IV's; if they'd stuck to doing that they might well have done a lot better, I suspect.

Sea Skimmer wrote:At the end of the day the Germans did not have the raw materials and transportation capacity to do very much more then they already did.

How about concentrating on land warfare and ignoring a mostly futile naval race with Britain? That way they could have solidified their land empire before trying to wrestle for the seas.

Sea Skimmer wrote:This production surge was the result of major investments made into more machinery and plant in the late 30s and early 1940s, not any decision in 1942 or 1943 to suddenly 'mobilize'.

I wouldn't say total mobilization is that simple. You do shift your labour force and investment from one sector to another, that includes moving people to plants, creating new plants and machine tools for war production, etc. Germany made a lesser shift to war produce than Britain or USSR in 1939-1942, but it was significant. However, other nations mobilized more rapidly.

Total mobilization includes drawing females into the labour pool in the factories, centralizing and upping military investment and ignoring pretty much the entire civilian sector. The drawing of slaves into the labour process in Germany in 1943-onwards was quite an indicator.

Stas Bush wrote: How about concentrating on land warfare and ignoring a mostly futile naval race with Britain? That way they could have solidified their land empire before trying to wrestle for the seas.

Prior to 1940 that is not a very realistic choice of action since it would mean giving up the chance to take Norway. Killing off the Bismarck class and the last 500 U-boats would be nice, but I just can't see how the Nazis or even much more rational governments would abandon that campaign. The U-boats became pretty worthless late in the war, but until then they did place a serious curb on the allies ability to transport war material and build up for the invasion of Europe. Huge allied resources were consumed in building vast swarms of escorts and merchant ships that would directly convert into far more invasion ships. Thousands of ASW planes are now bombing Germany, supplied by fuel sent in unescorted tankers.

Without the U-boats around a US-British invasion of France in 1943 is far more feasible too. Really I can't see the US not getting its way with that decision at that point, we insisted on France in 1943 pretty heavily as it was.

What Germany really needed was to have 300 U-boats in 1939 by magic. Then starving out the British might have been possible.

I wouldn't say total mobilization is that simple. You do shift your labour force and investment from one sector to another, that includes moving people to plants, creating new plants and machine tools for war production, etc. Germany made a lesser shift to war produce than Britain or USSR in 1939-1942, but it was significant. However, other nations mobilized more rapidly.

Yeah but they had already been heavily spending on armaments all the way since 1934, and drawing a huge portion of the workforce into the armed forces while they did so. The British and Russia had panic responses and it worked, the Germans were trying to make a long push. The Germans couldn't have just neglected the civilian economy all the way from 1938 until 1945. The US meanwhile just didn't mobilize on the level anyone else did, considerably more resources could have been wrung out if required and many production programs were curtailed in 1944-45 when it became apparent we just wouldn't be able to use the shear mass of equipment that was going to come out.

Total mobilization includes drawing females into the labour pool in the factories, centralizing and upping military investment and ignoring pretty much the entire civilian sector. The drawing of slaves into the labour process in Germany in 1943-onwards was quite an indicator.

The Germans had a huge army by that point, millions of losses, and needed millions of workers just to clean up after the air raids, its no surprise they resorted to massive slave labor. They could have used more women earlier, I did say they could use personal more efficiently, but they need to scale up the entire economy to do anything. That means increasing production of materials from food through copper ores, and they need more energy to make it all work as they already had chronic coal shortages. Iron and coal shortages prevented most captured industry and much of the Italian industrial base from being used for anything. Even with more materials, all nations in WW2 invested little in railroad equipment and track conditions usually deteriorated through the war. The Germans combined that with a rail system which was regularly bombed.

If the Germans mobilize harder earlier to try to do to do that I am very skeptical it would generate any significant result. The allies won by too large of margins in the end. Part of the trouble is the Germans had finite food and it wasn't enough, to they can't even throw shear physical effort at many problems like mining more coal. Most of the nations the Germans captured only made the food problem worse, all the more so since fishing in places like France and Norway was largely cut off by the war and lack of fuel for the boats.

PainRack wrote:To be fair, this ignores the tech race that was developing in these two decades. What was overwhelming good in 1940 would had been outclassed in 1945. The need to thus bring in new models to replace the old was there.

Replacing old models with new ones is fine. The problem is that most of the German vehicles were simply doing the same thing. A Stug III (upgraded to a long 75mm) was practically the same compared to most of the other Panzer Hetzers in terms of function, firepower, and armor protection.

The Wermacht could really have lived on just two vehicles - the Mk IV and the Stug, and the latter even had a version that used the Mk IV chassis. Instead, we get a dizzying array of tanks (many with really short runs in the low hundreds), as opposed to the US and Soviet method of just building tens of thousands of one tank type and refitting that to whatever purpose (i.e. Sherman 105mm for assault gun purposes, 76mm for anti tank, etc...).

Zinegata wrote: The Wermacht could really have lived on just two vehicles - the Mk IV and the Stug, and the latter even had a version that used the Mk IV chassis. Instead, we get a dizzying array of tanks (many with really short runs in the low hundreds), as opposed to the US and Soviet method of just building tens of thousands of one tank type and refitting that to whatever purpose (i.e. Sherman 105mm for assault gun purposes, 76mm for anti tank, etc...).

There was a good reason for some of those other models. For example the Hetzer was designed around the Pz 38 chassis, which was manufactured in the Czech factories. Retooling those production lines for Pz III or Pz IV chassis production would have taken longer than designing a relatively simple turretless tank destroyer on the Pz 38 chassis. The Nashorn / Hornisse was a reasonably inexpensive way of giving the long 88 mm gun some mobility and it worked very well especially in the East.

Then there was the Panther, which made sense in the way that the Pz IV was an older design than the T-34 or M4 Sherman and preparing to replace it early enough made a lot of sense. The Pz IV pretty much reached its full potential already in 1943 with the model H. Of course a lot can be said about the design decisions of the Panther, not nearly all of it good, and it was clearly rushed to production too soon, but on the other hand the manufacturing costs of the Panther were actually not that high compared to the Pz IV. Of course they were higher because it was a heavier vehicle, but they were not proportionally much higher.

I also kind of understand the original Tiger, since at the time of its design and fielding the Germans could really use heavy breakthrough tank. The Soviets never get as much flak for fthe KV-1, which took nearly two years to fix and once the KV-1S reached production, it was already somewhat outdated for a heavy tank. The earlier KV-1 models achieved some spectacular tactical successes during the fighting in 1941 and early 1942, but in general the original KV-1 design (including the up-armored submodels) was unsatisfactory with barely acceptable cross-country mobility and low mechanical reliability (in Finland captured KV-1 tanks were called "road tanks"). In contrast the Tiger was reasonably reliable and had a good mobility, even if it was a maintenance intensive vehicle.

In terms of standardisation, the Germans started the war really deep in the hole with six main tank chassis types - Panzer MK I to Mk IV, and the two Czech tanks. This number for the most part did not go down during the war, and actually went up at some points. Needless to say, this is a logistics nightmare in the making, and horribly inefficient from a mass production standpoint. Factories can't share parts amongst themselves if they're building entirely different tanks.

And this does not yet include all of the captured tanks that were habitually pressed into service.

The Soviet, by contrast, started with a ton of different chassis types (T-34, KV, T-35, BT, T-70, T-80, and a whole bunch of others), but ended the war with essentially two main chassis types - the T-34, and the JS series - in production.

Now, while some of the conversions were really just trying to give more life to certain chassis types (i.e. creating the Marder by adding a captured Soviet anti-tank gun to a Skoda tank chassis), the Germans should really have been standardizing their kit. Heck, the 38 (t) was produced until 1944. While it was an admittedly very reliable light tank (unlike most German vehicles), there's no real reason to keep producing the Panzer II alongside it since they essentially shared the same tasks.

Sea Skimmer wrote:

Stas Bush wrote: How about concentrating on land warfare and ignoring a mostly futile naval race with Britain? That way they could have solidified their land empire before trying to wrestle for the seas.

Without the U-boats around a US-British invasion of France in 1943 is far more feasible too. Really I can't see the US not getting its way with that decision at that point, we insisted on France in 1943 pretty heavily as it was.

Wait, I've heard that one labeled as "Another Churchill Bad Idea." My source must be bad; what's the story?

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

Zinegata wrote:The Wermacht could really have lived on just two vehicles - the Mk IV and the Stug, and the latter even had a version that used the Mk IV chassis. Instead, we get a dizzying array of tanks (many with really short runs in the low hundreds), as opposed to the US and Soviet method of just building tens of thousands of one tank type and refitting that to whatever purpose (i.e. Sherman 105mm for assault gun purposes, 76mm for anti tank, etc...).

There was a good reason for some of those other models. For example the Hetzer was designed around the Pz 38 chassis, which was manufactured in the Czech factories. Retooling those production lines for Pz III or Pz IV chassis production would have taken longer than designing a relatively simple turretless tank destroyer on the Pz 38 chassis. The Nashorn / Hornisse was a reasonably inexpensive way of giving the long 88 mm gun some mobility and it worked very well especially in the East.

Some of the variants, yes. Especially the ones that reused existing hardware in new ways. Those, I do not have a problem with. The problem is the variants that consumed resources without producing comparable payoff: rushing "advanced" tanks into production when the materials needed to operate them would be better spent elsewhere, for instance.

Of course, given insurmountable problems imposed by strategic conditions (like fuel shortages) the Nazis were in trouble anyway, but problems like iron shortages were surely exacerbated by spending so much steel on things that weren't needed or weren't a cost-effective use of existing resources.

The Soviets never get as much flak for fthe KV-1, which took nearly two years to fix and once the KV-1S reached production, it was already somewhat outdated for a heavy tank. The earlier KV-1 models achieved some spectacular tactical successes during the fighting in 1941 and early 1942, but in general the original KV-1 design (including the up-armored submodels) was unsatisfactory with barely acceptable cross-country mobility and low mechanical reliability (in Finland captured KV-1 tanks were called "road tanks"). In contrast the Tiger was reasonably reliable and had a good mobility, even if it was a maintenance intensive vehicle.

True, but the Soviets weren't operating on such a shoestring as the Germans. They had the luxury of spending resources on some things that weren't as good as they should be. Germany did not.

Zinegata wrote:In terms of standardisation, the Germans started the war really deep in the hole with six main tank chassis types - Panzer MK I to Mk IV, and the two Czech tanks. This number for the most part did not go down during the war, and actually went up at some points. Needless to say, this is a logistics nightmare in the making, and horribly inefficient from a mass production standpoint. Factories can't share parts amongst themselves if they're building entirely different tanks.

And this does not yet include all of the captured tanks that were habitually pressed into service.

The Soviet, by contrast, started with a ton of different chassis types (T-34, KV, T-35, BT, T-70, T-80, and a whole bunch of others), but ended the war with essentially two main chassis types - the T-34, and the JS series - in production.

Now, while some of the conversions were really just trying to give more life to certain chassis types (i.e. creating the Marder by adding a captured Soviet anti-tank gun to a Skoda tank chassis), the Germans should really have been standardizing their kit. Heck, the 38 (t) was produced until 1944. While it was an admittedly very reliable light tank (unlike most German vehicles), there's no real reason to keep producing the Panzer II alongside it since they essentially shared the same tasks.

Exactly. To some extent that's inevitable (especially things like the use of captured tanks), but the Germans took it to extremes- and did the same thing in many other areas, with massive proliferation of types.

Stas Bush wrote: The German nuke program was pathetically bad. So nuking Germany would be an option, certainly. I wouldn't call it a "nuclear holocaust" - you could nuke several industrial centers and then watch Germany collapse on the inside. I'm pretty sure Stuart has a rationale when he says only a large nuclear strike could work against Germany, but in his scenario the German political stability and it's rigidity is in my view overestimated.

In mine too. However, I wanted to give Germany the best plausible position to emphasize the fact that doing as well as they could marginally realistically be expected to do doesn't help them at all. In fact, the better they do, the worse it is for them. I gave the Germans their superweapons (the Go-229, the Ta-152, the Ta-183, the He-162, the Hs-132, Wasserfall, V-1, V-2, missile-firing Type XXIs, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft rockets etc) and none of them to them any good at all.

The Big One itself is based on the U.S. warplan AWPD-1. This delineated a total of 200 targets in Germany that had to be destroyed in order to implode German warmaking ability. AWPD-1 was written around the B-36 bomber since it was written in the belief that no foreign bases would be available so the aerial attacks would have to be mounted from the USA. In the event, when it became obvious that foreign bases would be available, AWPD-1 was replaced by AWPD-42 that was based around the B-29 but retained the 200 target list. Interesting to note that the force levels projected for AWPD-42 were met to the letter (types differed; for example P-51s replaced P-63s and so on) but the actual force structure was implemented to the letter.

The real problem was that the Germans had anticipated air attacks and planned their response accordingly. Briefly, they divided up their industry into a series of priority tiers. If a factory in a high priority tier was bombed out, experts would descend upon it and determine what machinery removed from lower-tier factories would be needed to restore it to working condition. Then, those lower-tier factories would be stripped accordingly. So, the "unmobilized" portion of German industry shouldn't be seen as wasted or useless but as a reserve that would be used to keep the high priority portion running.

The effect of this is that the mobilized portion of industry can support an army of given size and any damage to it can quickly be fixed by stripping the unmobilized portion. So, the effect of bombing is severely impeded. If, however, there is total mobilization, the increased size of the mobilized portion can indeed support a larger army. But, if any portion of that mobilized industry is destroyed by bombing, it can't be fixed quickly so bombing has an immediate detrimental effect on army force structure. So, total mobilization increases vulnerability to strategic bombing.

OK, back to the AWPDs and The Big One. What German plans meant was that there weren't any critical bottlenecks in German industry, to implode it, everything had to go more or less at once. Otherwise its a race between the Germans running out of industry before the allies run out of bombers. Two other factors. One is that the German atomic bomb effort was worse that pathetic; it would take a major infusion of skill and intelligence (and money) to raise it to the level of being pathetic. They gave the job up as impossible in 1943. But, the first atomic bomb dropped would tell them that it was possible and give them a lot of clues how to do it. From that point on it's only a question of time before they get their own. Also, the key to delivery is the B-36 with its superb high altitude performance. The Germans didn't know that the US was redefining high altitude from its existing meaning of "over 30,000 feet" to "over 50,000 feet". Once that secret was blown, solutions would also be found. The B-36 nuclear attack was a one-shot trick pony. It had to work first time. Hence the single sledgehammer blow in The Big One.

The rag-bag of German equipment was inevitable. They couldn't support the Army they had so they were scrabbling around trying to find every vehicle they could use. Lot of armies end up that way.

Zinegata wrote:In terms of standardisation, the Germans started the war really deep in the hole with six main tank chassis types - Panzer MK I to Mk IV, and the two Czech tanks. This number for the most part did not go down during the war, and actually went up at some points. Needless to say, this is a logistics nightmare in the making, and horribly inefficient from a mass production standpoint. Factories can't share parts amongst themselves if they're building entirely different tanks.

And this does not yet include all of the captured tanks that were habitually pressed into service.

I don't know what else they could have done at that point... Perhaps they could have discarded the Pz II in favor of the Pz 38(t) like you suggested, but that's about the only "easy" rationalization possible. The Pz I was pretty much out of production by 1940 (although there were some silly experiments like the Pz I F inspired by the Matilda I). However, modified Pz I running gear was used to produce the SdKfz 4 "Maultier" half-tracks, which was a kind of vehicle that the Germans could have used even more.

The Soviet, by contrast, started with a ton of different chassis types (T-34, KV, T-35, BT, T-70, T-80, and a whole bunch of others), but ended the war with essentially two main chassis types - the T-34, and the JS series - in production.

Actually four: you forgot the very important T-60/T-70 chassis, which continued in production as the SU-76 until the end of the war, and in late 1944 the T-44, which had a completely new chassis, was being introduced to production. The Soviets were also lucky that in 1941 the T-35, T-28 and the BT-7 were already being phased out; in fact the T-35 (which was a colossal failure) had not been manufactured for some time and the T-34 was replacing both the T-28 and the BT-7 in the production lines. The T-40/T-60 line of course continued. The T-26 was phased out after the relocating of the factories to Urals, although a small number of T-50 light tanks, its suggested replacement, were actually produced in Leningrad.

Heck, the 38 (t) was produced until 1944. While it was an admittedly very reliable light tank (unlike most German vehicles), there's no real reason to keep producing the Panzer II alongside it since they essentially shared the same tasks.

Not really. Until 1943 the Pz 38(t) was used in a fashion similar to medium tanks, since it had a better gun and in later variants, much better armor than the Pz II. Also, where do you get that the production as tanks continued until 1944? My sources say that the last Pz 38(t) Ausf. G tanks were produced in summer 1942. Production of the chassis of course continued until the end of the war.

Stuart wrote:OK, back to the AWPDs and The Big One. What German plans meant was that there weren't any critical bottlenecks in German industry, to implode it, everything had to go more or less at once. Otherwise its a race between the Germans running out of industry before the allies run out of bombers. Two other factors. One is that the German atomic bomb effort was worse that pathetic; it would take a major infusion of skill and intelligence (and money) to raise it to the level of being pathetic. They gave the job up as impossible in 1943. But, the first atomic bomb dropped would tell them that it was possible and give them a lot of clues how to do it. From that point on it's only a question of time before they get their own. Also, the key to delivery is the B-36 with its superb high altitude performance. The Germans didn't know that the US was redefining high altitude from its existing meaning of "over 30,000 feet" to "over 50,000 feet". Once that secret was blown, solutions would also be found. The B-36 nuclear attack was a one-shot trick pony. It had to work first time. Hence the single sledgehammer blow in The Big One.

I still think that's supposed to be "one-trick pony" or "one-shot," not both...

That said, how long would it take them to prepare a nuclear deterrent of their own, given that they'd scrapped their own program in 1943? Even given all the clues in the world, I'd imagine they'd be looking at two to three years, by which time the war would be over if the nuclear attacks had done any real damage at all.

Likewise I'd expect that figuring out how to intercept the B-36 would be a multi-year challenge. Given a Nazi Germany that's actually good enough at aeronautical engineering to build the Napkinwaffe and make it fly, they could probably build interceptors capable of engaging it, but how fast? I'd expect that to take at least one full design cycle.

So while nuclear-armed B-36 attacks may have been a one-trick pony, I can understand Stas's argument that a massive, simultaneous attack on every target in Germany was not absolutely necessary to make that trick work- the trick should have had a life expectancy of many months.

Simon_Jester wrote: I still think that's supposed to be "one-trick pony" or "one-shot," not both...

No, it's a trick pony because it can do something one wouldn't normally expect. The ability of big piston-engined bombers to perform so well high up was completely unexpected. In fact, the official USAF history of strategic bombardment refers to the "unanticipated ascendancy of the large piston-engined bomber". It was one-shot because it relied on the element of surprise to pull of a devastating strike without serious opposition. So, one-shot trick pony.

That said, how long would it take them to prepare a nuclear deterrent of their own, given that they'd scrapped their own program in 1943? Even given all the clues in the world, I'd imagine they'd be looking at two to three years, by which time the war would be over if the nuclear attacks had done any real damage at all.

We know that now but at the time it was rather different. We know now how bad the German research on nuclear devices was but it wasn't so obvious back then. After all, we'd hidden our nuclear program very well, suppose the Germans had been that successful and had a nuclear program that was simply behind ours rather than being a derisory joke. Might we not give them the clue they needed to finish the development off quickly?

Likewise I'd expect that figuring out how to intercept the B-36 would be a multi-year challenge. Given a Nazi Germany that's actually good enough at aeronautical engineering to build the Napkinwaffe and make it fly, they could probably build interceptors capable of engaging it, but how fast? I'd expect that to take at least one full design cycle.

Historically of course it did. The B-36 was virtually invulnerable until 1953 and was so in night missions until 1955. The problem was, when it became vulnerable, it did so with scary speed. It went from invulnerable to a sitting duck in about 18 months - and that was in peacetime conditions. It's possible something could have been kludged together quickly. In some ways, this is another "if the Germans get their wish, more fool them" situation. I gave them a napkinwaffe fighter, the Go-229. Now this is one the napkinwaffe-lovers really adore so I included it. In reality, it was unpowerable and unflyable. It's highly unlikely it would have been worth a damn even if it was flyable. However, I gave it the performance its designers claimed, unlikely as it was, and that makes it a threat to the B-36. So, by getting their wish, the Germans make the sledgehammer even more likely.

So while nuclear-armed B-36 attacks may have been a one-trick pony, I can understand Stas's argument that a massive, simultaneous attack on every target in Germany was not absolutely necessary to make that trick work- the trick should have had a life expectancy of many months.

[/quote]

In retrospect probably yes, but through the eyes of the time, one sledgehammer blow was the only way to go. Also remember the character of the man in charge - Saint Curtis. He was a great believer in single massive blows.

Stas Bush wrote:

Iosef Cross wrote:

Force Lord wrote:Historically, Germany did not start to fully mobilize its economy for total war until 1943, by which time it was too late to change things.

Actually, Germany mobilized for total war from the start. So the point of this tread is on shaky grounds.

I'm not sure what you count as total mobilization. German mobilization was relatively limited during the early phase of the war. I'm not sure how "Wages of Destruction" shows that Germany had employed total mobilization; it specifically deals with the unsustainable character of the German military buildup which was fuelled in a large part by looting, trophies and capture of vital resources from other nations.

Actually, Richard Overy, in several books, including the already cited War and Economy in the Third Reich, states that in 1940, 50% of the German industrial labor force was already working for the armed forces, in 1941 the proportion increased to 55%, and in 1943, it increased to 60%. Overall, the great increase in the prorpotion of the industrial labor force devoted to war production ocurred between 1939 and 1940, when the proportion of the industrial labor force employed for the armed forces increased from 20-25% to 50% (I don't have the book with me right now, so I don't know the exact number). While the increase in industrial mobilization between 1941 to 1943, when war production increased by 130%, was quite small.

Tooze makes the point that Germany's low levels of equipment production during the first 2 years of the war weren't due to undermobilization of resources, but for other reasons. He refutes the notions that Germany could have produced several times more equipment than they did produce in the early years of the war.

In any case, the mobilization can only be estimated in comparison. What we need is a comparable look at the share of resources, labour pool and GDP devoted to war in all nations in 1939-1941. I'm pretty sure we could see that in Harrison's "Economics of World War II". I'll look into that.

In proportion of the industrial labor force employed on orders for the armed forces, Germany always maintained a greater proportion than UK.

I found the book right now in the internet: http://books.google.com.br/books?id=yz ... &q&f=false

Unfornatately, the page where he compares the proportion of the industrial labor force working for the orders of the armed forces is not in the google version of the book.

However, the index of per capita consumption comparing Germany with UK shows that Germany's per capita consumption decreased more rapidly, in for 100 for Germany and Uk in 1938:

---------Germany (1939 area)----- UK
1940 ---- 88.4 ------------------- 89.7
1941 ---- 81.9 ------------------- 87.1
1942 ---- 75.3 ------------------- 86.6
1943 ---- 75.3 ------------------- 85.5
source: Page 278, War and Economy in the Third Reich, Richard Overy

The proportion of GNP allocated to the military was higher in Germany as compared to UK:

---------Germany (1939 area)----- UK
1940 ---- 36% ------------------- 31%
1941 ---- 44% ------------------- 41%
1942 ---- 52% ------------------- 43%
1943 ---- 60% ------------------- 47%

Source: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econo ... tprint.pdf, page 16.

I think that this estimate is better than the estimate in Economics of WW2.

So the problem is not the scale of German mobilization, but the speed. In essence, Germany should have mobilized faster. If it displayed a shift of 38-44% (a-la Britain or the USSR), perhaps that would yield greater successes in Germany's major wartime goals.

Second to the article already quoted, resource mobilization for WW2, mark harrison, the USSR mobilized faster than everybody, increasing the proportion of GNP mobilized from 20% in 1940 to 66% em 1942. But Germany couldn't do the same, because the monetary value of GNP mobilized is a reflection of the productivity of workers employed in orders to the armed forces.

The lower proportion of GNP mobilized in 1940 was the result of the lower productivty of the munitions workers if compared to the rest of the economy. With the passage of time, their productivity increased due to learning in their new professions (since most munitions workers didn't work on production of war related materials in peacetime). The USSR managed to avoid these problems by having an industry geared for war in peacetime. UK, US and Germany, by constrast, had to develop their war industries during the war.

The German plunder is detailed in most books dealing with the German war effort; suffice to say that Germany managed to extract 30-40 percent of national wartime products of France, Netherlands and Norway. This is what Germany used to cover it's deficiencies.

That increased the total available product to mobilize for war. For example, in 1943 Germany spent 60% of the total resources available both in national income and revenue from conquered territories, on their military. German GNP in 1943 was 160 billion RM, while occupational revenues were 24 billion RM, giving a total of 184 billion RM, 60% of these were allocated to military expenditures.

Foreing contributions were small, around 10-15% of German GNP, and had some impact on Germany's resources. This is partly caused by the collapse of the economies of western europe during the German occupation, because they became isolated from the global market, and couldn't import natural resources.

Iosef Cross wrote:If Germany wins in the Eastern front, they would control all of mainland Europe, with the exception of Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, with would become satellite countries. This European empire, with access to the vast natural resources of the USSR, would be very hard to defeat. ... The only way of the Allies forcing Germany to an unconditional surrender would be a nuclear holocaust.

The German nuke program was pathetically bad. So nuking Germany would be an option, certainly. I wouldn't call it a "nuclear holocaust" - you could nuke several industrial centers and then watch Germany collapse on the inside. I'm pretty sure Stuart has a rationale when he says only a large nuclear strike could work against Germany, but in his scenario the German political stability and it's rigidity is in my view overestimated.

If Germany manages to defeat the USSR in 1941, they would have vast additional resources to pour on the Luftwaffe, the Navy and their superweapons programes, like development of nuclear weapons. These resources would be freed from the eastern front and also would represent the contributions of the vast natural resources available to Germany in this scenario, with would mean the increase in GDP for all occupied Europe.

It is not improbable that they would make a serious nuclear program with these additional resources, starting in late 1941, early 1942. Over 3 years before the first American nuke is tested.

However, I do agree that if Germany doesn't develop nukes by 1945, the Allies would probably start to drop nukes on German cities, instead of making peace.

Iosef Cross wrote:However, that wouldn't happen, because Germany simply couldn't produce 40,000 aircraft and 20,000 tanks per year in 1940/1941. Unless they started mobilizing for total war in ~1935, i.e. in peacetime.

Germany could have started mobilizing in 1938-1939, and achieve this result. They woudl also have to devote a greater portion of their military spending to land forces as opposed to naval buildup (the latter was futile anyway, Britain and the US totally outclassed Germany here). In 1938-1940 Germany and other WWII combatants had similar levels of military spending. So it's a matter of using resources at hand and choosing priorities.

It takes time for mobilizing resources for war, for mobilized workers to learn their new trades and for building up the industrial infraestrutucture (much of Germany's industrial plant by 1944 were build after 1939). If Germany started to mobilize in early 1938, ~18 months before historical mobilization took place, they could have 1944 levels of production in late 1942-43, it could make a serious difference in Stalingrad and Kursk.

Iosef Cross wrote:The fact is that, since the Allies controlled nearly then entire oil production of the world during WW2, the Germans simply couldn't supply the fuel required to use all the additional equipment produced in this what-if.

Well, their best case scenario is capturing the Baku oil fields. This would solve their problem, to an extent.

They could also build a large oil stock in the 30's, before the war started. Oil was quite cheap in those days, and Germany could have imported oil and raw materials before the war started, to avoid the problems that ocurred historically.

Stuart wrote:The real problem was that the Germans had anticipated air attacks and planned their response accordingly.

The other problem was that air raids weren't really very effective in knoking out factories. That's because while bombs worked wonderfully to destroy roofs, they didn't work when they were used with the intention of destroying industrial machinery.

The guys from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, with investigated the effects on strategic bombing on the German war economy, noticed that only 6.5% of the German machine tool stock was damaged or destroyed during air raids, and most damaged machines could be repaired on site. As result, bombing over industrial targets only managed to disrupt production, and in a few weeks they cleaned up the plant and resumed work.

So, the "unmobilized" portion of German industry shouldn't be seen as wasted or useless but as a reserve that would be used to keep the high priority portion running.

Germany had a very large stock of machine tools. Second to the USSBS, in 1943 they had 3 times the stock of the UK and the same stock as the US (see: http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/149/240/0), with much lower levels of employment per machine. Uk had 5.7 workers per machine tool in machine tool using industries, while Germany had 2.3, see page 54 of the volume on the German War Economy: http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/149/53/0.

Actually, they never had to use this vast inventory with the same intensity as the Allies used their inventories of machine tools. That was because they didn't have the same labor force and natural resources to feed into their industrial processes.