WWII: Germany starts total war mobilization earlier

[Iosef Cross]

Stuart,

Also, while they anticipated the possibility of air raids, they didn't actually prepare for the massive bombing effort of 1943-45. Between 1939 and 1942, Germany actually produced more bombers than fighters, and by early 1943, had quite small fighter wing. They only increased fighter production when it was too late to really make a difference (the real surge in fighter production ocurred between february 1944 and September 1944, when monthly fighter production increased from 1,100 to 3,400 (source:http://wwiiarchives.net/servlet/document/150/215/0)).

If they manage to defeat the USSR in 1941 and manage to multiply their war production during the 1940-1942 period, the increased total production combined with the increased priority to the luftwaffe (since they won't have a eastern front to worry about), wuold mean that by the time that the US and UK try to start their massive strategic bombing effort, every air raid would be intercepted by hundreds or thousands of fighters. It wouldn't be feasible like it was in history.

[Simon_Jester]

First, a specific claim you made, Iosef:

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.

Could you please show me some figures? But the oil issue isn't the really amazing one here. What really blew me away is that you said:

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.

...OK, even I can see the problems with this one.

"If Germany manages to defeat the USSR in 1941..."
How? Does this plan involve Soviet commissars shooting every single Russian and then shooting themselves? Because if the USSR doesn't conveniently commit suicide, there's no way for the German army to knock them out of the war in 1941. They might have gotten a little farther than they did, but you yourself point out that they couldn't have delivered much more in the way of firepower (tanks, planes, etc.) to the front than they did historically. Better tactics would not have gotten them much farther.

The Germans faced unavoidable constraints on operations: the autumn mud, the devastating winter, the fact that the Soviet railroad network was incompatible with German rolling stock while much of the Soviet rolling stock had been destroyed or evacuated in the fighting, and so forth. Therefore, even before you begin with the next sentence, this is already an absurd and impossible fantasy.

"...they would have vast additional resources to pour on the Luftwaffe, the Navy, and their superweapons programes [sic], like development of nuclear weapons..."
What you miss here is a key factor: weapons development takes time. You cannot accelerate it indefinitely by throwing more money at it, and you certainly can't accelerate it by throwing more steel production or untrained manpower at it. The Germans were doing weapons R&D right up until March and April of 1945, by which point enemy troops were physically overrunning the labs and enemy bombers were forcing them to work in underground bunkers all the time. Do you really think they needed high industrial output, or that it would have been helpful?

Regardless of how much money and labor goes into equipping the army, fighter jets still take years to design. The world isn't a hyper-simplistic economic fantasy; you don't just plunk down X dollars and get Y units of research delivered to your doorstep a week later.

"...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..."
And this helps them develop advanced weapons how? They're still limited by the same political and technical problems: building a jet engine does not get easier when you capture the Baku oil fields, even if you have more fuel to feed those engines once you do build them. The Germans didn't start to get the hang of series production of jet engines until 1944-45, and even then they weren't very good at it. So how would such a program be accelerated by a sudden glut of raw materials and slave labor from Russia?

Well, not slave labor, because this scenario requires all Russians to commit suicide in 1941 to explain how the Germans suddenly overran Russia in six months. But now we get to the really daft part:

---

"...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."

This is completely insane, for the following reasons:
1) The German nuclear program failed for reasons having nothing at all to do with lack of funds. The scientists responsible for the very earliest stages of nuclear research (you know, the ones required to prove that a fission weapon can even be made) failed utterly. They made massive technical errors, feuded among themselves, and suffered from incompetent leadership.

Giving them more money would not make giving them money any less of a stupid waste of time, and therefore would not give the Germans a bomb any faster. To give the Germans a bomb fast, you'd basically need to have time travellers go back and explain to them that yes it IS possible and yes it IS a very effective weapon and no they should NOT do this, that, or the other thing and yes graphite IS a neutron moderator and so on.

2) Even if the German nuclear program was not led by idiots (it was), your assertion that they could have a bomb in 1942 is completely laughable. I imagine you've never been involved in scientific research, but when you've got a fundamental question to answer, you cannot accelerate it past a certain point, even with unlimited resources. To develop the first nuclear weapon, a nation had to:
-Recognize that this was a possibility, and one of supreme importance, worth spending vast resources on abstract science and arcane engineering that would be useless for any other purpose.
-Design a working research fission reactor as proof-of-concept and for testing materials.
-Do extensive calculations modeling the subatomic physics behind nuclear reactions
-Do further extensive calculations modeling the behavior of various types of explosives.
-Devise entirely new techniques to separate isotopes in large quantities
-Implement those techniques, bearing in mind that if you do it wrong you're fucking around with fissile materials and they can go bang if you concentrate too much of them in one place
-Design a working bomb using high-precision explosive charges and the aforementioned fissile material
-Design an aircraft that can reliably deliver the bomb over the target (this is a nontrivial step, likely to prove as expensive as several of the others combined; compare the development costs on the B-29 to the cost of the Manhattan Project).

I suspect I missed a few steps; it doesn't really matter. The point remains that all these things are prerequisites. Some of them are necessary conditions for later steps: you cannot possibly design a nuclear bomb without knowing the material properties of the things you build it out of.

Now, bear in mind that the two really critical physics questions here involve neutron absorption and fission. Fission was discovered in 1939; virtually nothing was known about it until the wartime bomb projects got a blank check to research it. You can't go from "nothing" to "we understand this" in six months, not in quantum physics.

Then there are engineering issues that revolve around neutron capture cross-sections and such. The neutron was discovered in 1936, only six years before your proposed German bomb. Again, virtually nothing was known about how materials interacted with neutrons until wartime research using early atomic piles was performed.

The point being, we know how long it took to invent a nuclear bomb starting from nothing: about four or five years. This was in a country that had the pick of practically all the world's leading physicists (the Manhattan Project roster reads like a Who's Who of physics from 1925-1970). A country with enormous, unmatched industrial and financial resources that were completely immune to enemy attack. A country with an efficient, organized government that gave the program top priority and appointed brilliant administrators to run it.

So it is contemptibly foolish to propose that a nation with a smaller talent pool, fewer resources, and less efficient government management could do the same thing in two years.

What were you thinking?

[Stuart]

Also, while they anticipated the possibility of air raids, they didn't actually prepare for the massive bombing effort of 1943-45. Between 1939 and 1942, Germany actually produced more bombers than fighters, and by early 1943, had quite small fighter wing. They only increased fighter production when it was too late to really make a difference (the real surge in fighter production ocurred between february 1944 and September 1944, when monthly fighter production increased from 1,100 to 3,400

Od what possible relevence is that to the subject under discussion? I was specifically referring to the way German industry would absorb the results of bombing and the way their damage control was organized to restore production from the mobilized portion of the economy by cannibalizing the unmobilized section. Fighter production is utterly irrelevent to that, all the more so because no fighter in the German inventory could possibly reach a B-36.

If they manage to defeat the USSR in 1941 and manage to multiply their war production during the 1940-1942 period, the increased total production combined with the increased priority to the luftwaffe (since they won't have a eastern front to worry about), wuold mean that by the time that the US and UK try to start their massive strategic bombing effort, every air raid would be intercepted by hundreds or thousands of fighters. It wouldn't be feasible like it was in history.

Since the chance of Germany defeating Russia in 1941 (or any other time) is absolutely nil, the rest of your comment is also irrelevent.

[Iosef Cross]

Also, while they anticipated the possibility of air raids, they didn't actually prepare for the massive bombing effort of 1943-45. Between 1939 and 1942, Germany actually produced more bombers than fighters, and by early 1943, had quite small fighter wing. They only increased fighter production when it was too late to really make a difference (the real surge in fighter production ocurred between february 1944 and September 1944, when monthly fighter production increased from 1,100 to 3,400

Od what possible relevence is that to the subject under discussion? I was specifically referring to the way German industry would absorb the results of bombing and the way their damage control was organized to restore production from the mobilized portion of the economy by cannibalizing the unmobilized section.

If you don't remember, the point in this tread was about the consequences of Germany fully mobilizing their industrial potential in the beginning of the war. This could have long range consequences, such as a much more powerfull luftwaffe.

Because if the Germans are prepared to defend their airspace, they would inflict much greater damage on the enemy airforces, decreasing their capability of inflicting damage on their industry. If you don't see any relevance in that argument, well...

Fighter production is utterly irrelevent to that, all the more so because no fighter in the German inventory could possibly reach a B-36.

Considering that German fighters were developed 5 to 10 years before the B-36, the aircraft that didn't participate in WW2.

If they manage to defeat the USSR in 1941 and manage to multiply their war production during the 1940-1942 period, the increased total production combined with the increased priority to the luftwaffe (since they won't have a eastern front to worry about), wuold mean that by the time that the US and UK try to start their massive strategic bombing effort, every air raid would be intercepted by hundreds or thousands of fighters. It wouldn't be feasible like it was in history.

Since the chance of Germany defeating Russia in 1941 (or any other time) is absolutely nil, the rest of your comment is also irrelevent.

Many historians would disagree with your opinion on this subject.

Also, in this scenario, the total ammount of equipment available to the Germans for Barbarossa would be several times the historical inventory. That would greatly change the odds of sucess in this operation.

[Stuart]

If you don't remember, the point in this tread was about the consequences of Germany fully mobilizing their industrial potential in the beginning of the war. This could have long range consequences, such as a much more powerfull luftwaffe. Because if the Germans are prepared to defend their airspace, they would inflict much greater damage on the enemy airforces, decreasing their capability of inflicting damage on their industry. If you don't see any relevance in that argument.

Which is not relevent to the comment of mine to which you were responding,

Considering that German fighters were developed 5 to 10 years before the B-36, the aircraft that didn't participate in WW2.

It would have been around by 1947. And the Napkinwaffe couldn't reach it either

Many historians would disagree with your opinion on this subject.

No reputable ones would. Suggesting the USSR could be defeated in 1941 shows monumental lack of understanding of logistics.

Also, in this scenario, the total ammount of equipment available to the Germans for Barbarossa would be several times the historical inventory. That would greatly change the odds of sucess in this operation.

No, it wouldn't. What determines things is logistics. Piling more equipment into the battle simply means the fuel runs out earlier and the supplylines snap earlier.

[Iosef Cross]

First, a specific claim you made, Iosef:

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.

Could you please show me some figures?

About? Well, the fact that the US produced 130 million tons of oil per year during the years before WW2, while for Germany a few tens of million tons of oil in stock by the start of WW2 would make a large difference.

"If Germany manages to defeat the USSR in 1941..."
How? Does this plan involve Soviet commissars shooting every single Russian and then shooting themselves? Because if the USSR doesn't conveniently commit suicide, there's no way for the German army to knock them out of the war in 1941. They might have gotten a little farther than they did, but you yourself point out that they couldn't have delivered much more in the way of firepower (tanks, planes, etc.) to the front than they did historically. Better tactics would not have gotten them much farther.

If you understood what I said you would see that I said that if Germany had 1944 war production levels in 1940 and 1941, then they could have defeated the USSR in 1941. I also said that they probably couldn't have 1944 production levels in these years. And that they wouldn't have the fuel to use the additional equipment as well. So I was assuming away these factors.

Also, you should note that every kilometer advanced by the Germans would reduce the manpower base of the USSR, and make then weaker in the war of attrition. While it is true that it would be impossible to any army to occupy the 20 million square kilometers of the USSR, to defeat the USSR would mean to make an armistice were the USSR gives to the Nazis most of their European lands. That could be done if they managed to occupy Moscow and Leningrad, advance further and inflict perhaps 2 million extra casualties on the Red Army in 1941.

What you miss here is a key factor: weapons development takes time. You cannot accelerate it indefinitely by throwing more money at it, and you certainly can't accelerate it by throwing more steel production or untrained manpower at it. The Germans were doing weapons R&D right up until March and April of 1945, by which point enemy troops were physically overrunning the labs and enemy bombers were forcing them to work in underground bunkers all the time. Do you really think they needed high industrial output, or that it would have been helpful?

If they managed to defeat the USSR in 1941, they would have 4-5 years for the added funds to make a difference in research.

You are making a fallacy here, while it is true that they couldn't linearly accelerate research by simply increasing the funds available (i.e. double the speed of research by doubling the money), this doesn't imply that money won't make any difference.

Regardless of how much money and labor goes into equipping the army, fighter jets still take years to design. The world isn't a hyper-simplistic economic fantasy; you don't just plunk down X dollars and get Y units of research delivered to your doorstep a week later.

It is also not true that the volume of research doesn't have any relation to the volume of money poured into it.

2) Even if the German nuclear program was not led by idiots (it was), your assertion that they could have a bomb in 1942 is completely laughable.

I said that they could START a serious nuclear program in 1942. You clearly didn't even try to understand that.

The fact is that you would want for me to say something as stupid as that while at the same time considering anything said by the user with the label "Iosef Cross" to be wrong and making the most uncharitable interpretation possible of my points.

[Iosef Cross]

If you don't remember, the point in this tread was about the consequences of Germany fully mobilizing their industrial potential in the beginning of the war. This could have long range consequences, such as a much more powerfull luftwaffe. Because if the Germans are prepared to defend their airspace, they would inflict much greater damage on the enemy airforces, decreasing their capability of inflicting damage on their industry. If you don't see any relevance in that argument.

Which is not relevent to the comment of mine to which you were responding,

Not directly. But I was disgressing. It is in the forum rules that a user cannot make general comments below a quote mark (even if it is 2-3 paragraphs below)?

Considering that German fighters were developed 5 to 10 years before the B-36, the aircraft that didn't participate in WW2.

It would have been around by 1947. And the Napkinwaffe couldn't reach it either

Considering the different strategic situation in this scenario, the historical development of weapons would be different.

Many historians would disagree with your opinion on this subject.

No reputable ones would. Suggesting the USSR could be defeated in 1941 shows monumental lack of understanding of logistics.

To defeat the USSR wouldn't mean the occupation of the entire country. It would mean the persuasion of the Soviet leadership to make an armistice in terms favorable to Germany.

But it is true that it would be nearly impossible to occupy 20 million square kilometers of land.

Also, in this scenario, the total ammount of equipment available to the Germans for Barbarossa would be several times the historical inventory. That would greatly change the odds of sucess in this operation.

No, it wouldn't. What determines things is logistics. Piling more equipment into the battle simply means the fuel runs out earlier and the supplylines snap earlier.

Supplylines are determined by the production of supplies, ammunition, trucks, trains, etc, I also assumed the increased production of all munition related itens, from aircraft to ammunition and trucks. I also assumed that they would have additional fuel stocks.

Are you making the (absurd) statement that Germany's production of munitions itens, from trucks to ammunition, wouldn't improve their logistics situation?

[Stuart]

To defeat the USSR wouldn't mean the occupation of the entire country. It would mean the persuasion of the Soviet leadership to make an armistice in terms favorable to Germany. But it is true that it would be nearly impossible to occupy 20 million square kilometers of land.

There's no indication that a ceasefire-in-place was ever contemplated by the Russians. They were well-prepared to keep on fighting east of Moscow and all the way up to the Great Bend of the Volga.

Supplylines are determined by the production of supplies, ammunition, trucks, trains, etc, I also assumed the increased production of all munition related itens, from aircraft to ammunition and trucks. I also assumed that they would have additional fuel stocks. Are you making the statement that Germany's production of munitions itens, from trucks to ammunition, wouldn't improve their logistics situation?

What determines the logistic support of the armies is the capacity of the rail-lines carrying those supplies. In fact, what determined the locations of Army Group North, Army Group Center and Army Group South and the axes of advance adopted by those army groups was the Russian railway network in those areas. Russian railways are a different gauge from German ones. Therefore, the Russian lines had to be converted to German gauge. The rate at which those lines could be converted is fixed. The capacity of the lines is fixed. No amount of equipment can change that. All that happens is the extra equipment stacks up behind the railhead. So, the total tonnage of supplies that an be delivered to a specific point is fixed. If there are twice as many assets using that railhead, then they use the volume of supplies twice as fast and therefore get half the distance. As it was, the Germans ran out of supplies well short of Moscow. It doesn;t matter how much they had stockpiled because they couldn't get it up to where it was needed.

This is called logistics. It determined everything an army can achieve.

[Simon_Jester]

Thanks, Stuart. I'd figured you'd bring up something like this, but since I wasn't sure exactly which logistics issue it would be, I just went with the simplified version:

To get a German victory in 1941, the Russians would pretty much have to all commit suicide. In that case, the Germans could "occupy" the resulting deserted wasteland much, much quicker, because they wouldn't need significant forces, just a few platoons to raise flags over abandoned government buildings. Then their rate of advance wouldn't be so critically tied to the need to supply hundreds of thousands of men over a limited number of rail lines.

That's the only way I can imagine for Iosef to get his German victory in 1941; what I don't understand is why he thinks that's a likely outcome.

[Sea Skimmer]

Not only did Russia have limited rail lines in the directions the Germans needed, those lines that existed also tended to be short of auxiliaries like water towers, signal boxes, coal storage and loading and plain sidings. This was because the Russians had expanded the system so massively between 1922 and 1941, and no everything had caught up yet. The Russians of course blew up as much of what the tracks did have to offer as they could, and the Germans themselves bombed the rail system heavily. Missions like that were what the Luftwaffe was designed for. This all meant not only could only so many trains roll east, but it was also very hard to get them unloaded, reconfigured and sent back west. The lack of signals forces down speeds and make it very risky to densely pack trains. As a result many chunks of rail line would basically operate as one way only for a day, then only the other way the next day rather then shuffling trains back and forth constantly.

[Marcus Aurelius]

It would have been around by 1947. And the Napkinwaffe couldn't reach it either

This has been thrown around here quite a lot, but according to my sources the service ceiling of the B-36A was slightly less than 40,000 feet, whereas the service ceiling of the Ta 152H-1 (which wasn't even a "Napkinwaffe") was around 48,000 feet. Now, even if we consider that the fighter probably could not operate very well close to its ceiling, an 8,000 feet playroom would indicate that the Ta 152H-1 could indeed intercept the B-36A. Are you assuming that the B-36A would be skipped and something equivalent to the much improved B-36B introduced from the get-go, or are my sources full of it?

[Stuart]

This has been thrown around here quite a lot, but according to my sources the service ceiling of the B-36A was slightly less than 40,000 feet, whereas the service ceiling of the Ta 152H-1 (which wasn't even a "Napkinwaffe") was around 48,000 feet. Now, even if we consider that the fighter probably could not operate very well close to its ceiling, an 8,000 feet playroom would indicate that the Ta 152H-1 could indeed intercept the B-36A. Are you assuming that the B-36A would be skipped and something equivalent to the much improved B-36B introduced from the get-go, or are my sources full of it?

This is a very complicated story, made so by subtle disinformation out of the USAF and the peculiar characteristics of the B-36 itself. Your sources aren't full of it; they're probably quite accurate in as far as they go but they are only telling a small part of the whole story,

On the aircraft first. One of the fun things is that the B-36 actually predates the B-29. It goes back to mid-late 1940 when the work that was to produce AWPD-1 started. Essentially, it was a transoceanic bomber and had enormous range and payload for its day. Flying high was always a part of its repertoire, not to evade defenses but to get up where the air was thin so drag was cut down. Anyway, the B-36 had quite high priority for a few months until AWPD-1 was replaced by AWPD-42 and work on the B-36 more or less stopped (except for some brief revivals) until late 1944/early 1945. During that time, the B-24 and the B-32 had priority. In other words for two and a half years nothing was done with the B-36. The B-29 took its place in the priority lists. However, it's not likely to happen in that way where Germany is doing much better than it did historically (the switch from AWPD-1 to AWPD-42 was by a relatively narrow margin). So we can assume that the B-36 ran according to its original schedule and the aircraft first flew as the B-36A in early 1944. The B-36B would have followed by the end of the year. It's likely that the early jet-boosted B-36s would have had J-35 jets and the later ones J-47s which were only modified J-35s after all.

On altitude, there is a lot of misleading data out there. The first thing to note is that the USAF had two definitions of service ceiling, one of which specified a 500 ft per minute climb rate under one set of weight restrictions and another a 100 feet per minute under a different set. These get mixed up all the time - quite deliberately and both are inappropriate. For example, the quoted figures are for the aircraft carrying 2/3 or 3/4 fuel and a 20,000 or even a 30,000 pound bomb load (the B-36 actually maxed out at 85,800 pounds of bombs). So the birds are way loaded. The average bomb load carried by a B-36 in The Big One is 4,000 pounds and the aircraft have roughly 50 percent fuel. That may not sound like much of a difference but with the huge amount of fuel the B-36 carried, 15 - 25 percent is a lot. In fact its between 35,000 and 60,000 pounds. So, the aircraft in actual combat conditions is around 60,000 - 90,000 pounds lighter than the weight at which the official figures were made. That's pretty close to the all-up combat weight of a B-29.

Another factor is that the B-36 had lots of time. This is an aircraft that measured its flight time in days. 44-hour missions were not unknown. So, the aircraft climbed slowly but steadily. Over 12 hours steady climbing at 100 feet per minute an aircraft can gain a lot of height. Anyway, put all these factors together and the B-36 flew a lot higher than the book figures suggest. That is documented; Mark S will give you some pretty unimpeachable sources including Saint Curtis himself. In fact, I came across one figure which stated that the sustained cruise altitude of a featherweight B-36J was 51,500 feet. By the way, be careful of speed data as well. A lot of figures from the USAF give the B-36 speed in knots but let the reader assume its mph by giving comparative figures for other aircraft in mph. (The phrase usually goes something like "the B-29 did 360mph and the B-45 did 506 mph but the B-36 did 345.") There are lots of tricks like that. The effect of all this is that the B-36 performance is consistently understated.

So time is OK and performance is OK. Now we come to the Ta-152H. It's 48,500 foot performance is absolute ceiling. It's the height where it hangs on its prop and stalls. By the way, stall a Ta-152H and you die. The aircraft will pick up speed and do through compressibility before you can pull it out. You will dive straight into the ground. That is very important because it means pilots will not push that aircraft to the edge of its envelope. Also, that 48,500 feet of altitude can only be obtained using GM-1 and MW-50 boost. The aircraft has around 5 minutes of boost using them. Without them, its maximum ceiling is barely 43,000 feet. Without its boost, the Ta-152H is actually outperformed by most other 1945 piston birds and even with its MW50/GM-1 it can barely hold its own. So, the Ta-152H is no threat to a B-36. It's hanging on its prop, watching the B-36 cruise past 3,000 feet above it with the crew making rude gestures out of the windows.

A few other stories floating around. One is about British fighters intercepting B-36s. Yes, they did, what the stories don't tell you is that teh B-36s were rumbling around at 30,000 feet, far below their attack altitudes. The same applies to teh much-vaunted U.S. Navy intecepts. Yes, a Banshee could get up to 48,000 feet stripped down. That's still short. The truth is the navy didn;t know how high the B-36 could fly (the USAF kept it a very close secret) and the Navy was told to shut up when some quiet briefings were held.

The USAF kept B-36 performance very quiet for a long time. It;s only in the last decade or so that the truth started coming. Oh by the way, in one intercept trial a B-36 out-turned a F-86 and ended up chasing it around the sky. In another, a US-piloted MiG-15bis that tried to intercept a B-36 stalled out and damned nearly spun in. For just a few years, the B-36 was queen of the skies. We'll never see her like again.

[Thanas]

For the future, can we please keep discussions of WWII to just the historical facts and not refer to TBO? It is quite easy for laymen to get confused by it. There must be a way to go "B-36B can go to X feet while carrying Y tons" without using TBO as a reference or referring to it. I mean, we do not reference Germanicus or any other Roman AH in debates, so let us keep to that standard.

If people want to make a huge thread in this forum to debate the merits of the TBOverse, fine, but let's not refer to it in actual debates here.

[MKSheppard]

Comrade Stas:

But in his scenario the German political stability and it's rigidity is in my view overestimated.

Here's the problem.

The rationale behind waiting until you have a decisive number of nuclear weapons to hit Germany with is the same rationale that led to the US deciding on DOWNFALL to end the Pacific War.

At this point in humanity, nobody had ever surrendered to an opponent that was pounding them with aerial bombardment and/or blockading them at sea ALONE.

The WWI blockade of Germany led to some pretty grim conditions in Germany, but they held on. Likewise, 30 years later, despite bombers and fighters flying over Germany at will and burning down cities or blowing up industrial infrastructure; Germany didn't collapse or sue for peace.

So the US High Command was not very optimistic over the concepts put forth by the US Navy and USAAF of winning the pacific war by bombing/blockading Japan into submission -- because the Japanese could just suck it up and eventually reach a population equilibrum in line with the growing capacity of the home islands; and just wait us out -- do we want to continue the draft into 1947 to maintain the blockade of Japan with a billion US Navy ships and USAAF aircraft pounding it?

Plus, there was also the feeling that unless the country was actually occupied by US forces; something similar to the 'stab in the back' myth would be invented, leading us to another go-around with Japan in the 1950s or 1960s after they had recovered enough.

In the TBOverse; they have some limited experience in the lack of efficiacy of aerial bombardment; due to some early tries by the USAAF B-17s and B-29s trying to operate out of Russia; and due to the much closer relationship they have with the Soviet/Russian government due to US troops operating in large numbers in Russia; they have a much better and clearer idea of how much the Russians lost in the early months of the invasion.

Earlier History thread on Industro-Military Production in WWII



Data is from from Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden 1940-1945; and are normalized with 1.0 standing for that industry's output in 1940.

You can see how the Soviets pretty much crashed in 1942, but did not collapse.

So this sets the bar fairly high for nuclear operations against Germany.

You can't just atom bomb a few cities and sit back and expect them to collapse. You need to hit at least several dozen targets at the same time; and once you factor in possibilities, such as aircraft having engine problems and having to abort, aircraft being shot down before bomb release; and the number of bombs needed easily can go up to 75-100; and you can assign the extra bombs secondary targets in case their primary is already bombed.

There's another factor in play -- there have only been a few atomic tests in the TBOverse by the time of the Big One; and weapons effects will be very much an unknown -- the primary aim of the few atomic tests at that point will be to proof test the bomb designs being put into mass production.

So there will be overtargeting -- does berlin really need to eat 240-480 kilotons from 12 bombs?

[MKSheppard]

In fact, the official USAF history of strategic bombardment refers to the "unanticipated ascendancy of the large piston-engined bomber".

Do you have the history's full title?

[Simon_Jester]

First, a specific claim you made, Iosef:

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.

Could you please show me some figures?

About? Well, the fact that the US produced 130 million tons of oil per year during the years before WW2, while for Germany a few tens of million tons of oil in stock by the start of WW2 would make a large difference.

Was it practical for them to stockpile such a large amount? Did suitable tankage and distribution infrastructure exist? Germany's peacetime oil consumption was 44 million barrels per year, or roughly seven million tons. You're talking about them storing a quantity equivalent to several years of their peacetime oil consumption. And presumably not all in one or two very large facilities, either, because such facilities would then be painfully vulnerable to enemy bombing raids.

Could they do that?

"If Germany manages to defeat the USSR in 1941..."How? Does this plan involve Soviet commissars shooting every single Russian and then shooting themselves? Because if the USSR doesn't conveniently commit suicide, there's no way for the German army to knock them out of the war in 1941. They might have gotten a little farther than they did, but you yourself point out that they couldn't have delivered much more in the way of firepower (tanks, planes, etc.) to the front than they did historically. Better tactics would not have gotten them much farther.

If you understood what I said you would see that I said that if Germany had 1944 war production levels in 1940 and 1941, then they could have defeated the USSR in 1941. I also said that they probably couldn't have 1944 production levels in these years. And that they wouldn't have the fuel to use the additional equipment as well. So I was assuming away these factors.

Ah. So if the Saudi fields suddenly relocated to the Black Forest in the 1930s, then the Germans could beat Russia in 1941. Somehow, I fail to see how this is more plausible than the Russians all spontaneously deciding to commit suicide.

Also, you should note that every kilometer advanced by the Germans would reduce the manpower base of the USSR, and make then weaker in the war of attrition. While it is true that it would be impossible to any army to occupy the 20 million square kilometers of the USSR, to defeat the USSR would mean to make an armistice were the USSR gives to the Nazis most of their European lands. That could be done if they managed to occupy Moscow and Leningrad, advance further and inflict perhaps 2 million extra casualties on the Red Army in 1941.

What makes you think they could do this? Even with nigh-unlimited supplies of fuel from God, the Germans would still be faced with the same problem with captured Soviet rail infrastructure. How would they support an army powerful enough to overwhelm the Soviet forces facing them in the way you describe?

Also, the "two million casualties" figure you throw about so lightly is roughly half the total casualties the Soviets already suffered during 1941, a year of total military disaster for them, as it is!

How would greater tank production help them cause such massive Soviet losses while avoiding getting tied down in battles of annihilation that delay them and render them unable to capture key cities?

If they managed to defeat the USSR in 1941, they would have 4-5 years for the added funds to make a difference in research.

You are making a fallacy here, while it is true that they couldn't linearly accelerate research by simply increasing the funds available (i.e. double the speed of research by doubling the money), this doesn't imply that money won't make any difference.

This is disingenuous. You implied great increases in speed, enough to allow them to begin rapid production of advanced weapons by 1945-46, when many of the weapons in question hadn't even reached the prototype stage and still had crippling engineering weaknesses at that time historically.

They already had every available brain working on these problems, and many of the projects in question (like the V-weapons) had priority over other war production as it was. How would freeing up funds and resources from things like tank production help?

2) Even if the German nuclear program was not led by idiots (it was), your assertion that they could have a bomb in 1942 is completely laughable.

I said that they could START a serious nuclear program in 1942. You clearly didn't even try to understand that.

The fact is that you would want for me to say something as stupid as that while at the same time considering anything said by the user with the label "Iosef Cross" to be wrong and making the most uncharitable interpretation possible of my points.

Aah. I see. I misunderstood.

Instead of making the insane claim that the Germans could have a bomb in 1942, you merely made the irrelevant claim that they could have started a bomb program in 1942. They surely could have; in fact, they did have one at that date It was a complete cluster-fuck.

And in that case, the relevant point for you was not "...starting in late 1941, early 1942. Over 3 years before the first American nuke is tested." That's what misled me, because it made me think you thought it somehow mattered that this would be happening before the Trinity test. It wouldn't, if all you meant was that the program started at that date... because the relevant point wasn't "over three years before the first American nuke is tested." It's "No earlier than the American nuclear program began." And since the German program would be less competently led and staffed, in a country with fewer assets, that was still being bombed at the time from Britain... they're still not going to be the ones to build the bomb first. Or even a close second.

[Patrick Degan]

I said that they could START a serious nuclear program in 1942. You clearly didn't even try to understand that.

Big deal. That means, starting in 1942 at what essentially would be from ground-zero (pun intended), and assuming that somehow the Nazis magickally recruit a team of actual competent scientists instead of the clown-squad who were running what they thought was a serious nuclear R&D effort —who then have to backtrack through the previous team's fuckups to put the project on the proper course, and assuming that the programme remains free from the usual Nazi organisational chaos— then going full-bore they maybe get a prototype bomb by 1947 at the earliest.

Too bad several of their cities would already have been treated to dosages of instant sunshine from the Americans by 1945 and 1946.

[K. A. Pital]

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.

Hmm - Iosef, isn't that what we're essentally discussing? Not the lower scale of mobilization, but an earlier term they start mobilizing their labour force? If their productivity increases with time as they learn war production, it's only natural that an earlier start in 1938-1939 would yield earlier results, since the workers will learn and in a few years (1940-1941) will have more productivity.

But I can agree that this wouldn't yield some sort of wonder-results (like magically transplanting 1944 levels of production to 1940), although some result may be present (quite possibly only make the war bloodier and longer). Essentially, as Stuart correctly noted, Germany would hit the logistics issues during their Soviet assault even if they had more war produce.

However, some impact still will be there. It's just too difficult to estimate correctly, because the system has a great many factors to evaluate.

BTW, Iosef, you ran away from the population growth thread. I expect you to return and back your claims up.

[Thanas]

Was it practical for them to stockpile such a large amount? Did suitable tankage and distribution infrastructure exist? Germany's peacetime oil consumption was 44 million barrels per year, or roughly seven million tons. You're talking about them storing a quantity equivalent to several years of their peacetime oil consumption. And presumably not all in one or two very large facilities, either, because such facilities would then be painfully vulnerable to enemy bombing raids.

Could they do that?

Maybe. However, it would involve pulling money from the military budget, because one needs a lot of foreign credit to do that. In which case, I really doubt the Nazis, being behind the western powers and the soviets, would have sacrificed a battleship for it. (Just as an example).

As to Stas, I really doubt the Nazis could have gotten near Baku. Not on their own.



No, the only way I think the Nazis might be able to pull of a win here is if
a) They manage to overhaul their production process and produce a lot of stuff earlier while scrapping Hitler's pet projects (e.g. Bismarck)
b) If they had gotten popular support. A lot of the Soviet population, to my understanding, were actually very glad to have gotten rid of Stalin. Ths of course means the Nazis would have to act sane and not like genocidal maniacs, it would also mean that plundering the east for food etc. is not possible (which means the Reich population will have to switch to rations and war economy sooner). That might have given them more manpower and also a better economy to wage the war with.

But either of those things is simply not possible because it would essentially require another power than Hitler and his ilk in charge. Maybe a Reichswehr led government instead, but with such a Government you would most likely not see WWII happening (or at least not on this scale. Most likely they would have tried to launch a giant anticommunist crusade, isolate Poland from the west and then crush it before trying to get to Russia. No war with France).

[Zinegata]

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.

I'm looking at the wiki, which states the chassis was in production until 1944. Still, there's really no role that Panzer II can do that the Panzer 38 (t) can't. Heck, the 38 (t) was even as good as the Mk III in virtually all tasks until the Mk III got the 50mm guns.

[Thanas]

I'm looking at the wiki, which states the chassis was in production until 1944. Still, there's really no role that Panzer II can do that the Panzer 38 (t) can't. Heck, the 38 (t) was even as good as the Mk III in virtually all tasks until the Mk III got the 50mm guns.

The Chassis, not the tank itself. The chassis was used for anti-tank weapons like the Marder III, the Hetzer or AA tanks.

[Samuel]

A lot of the Soviet population, to my understanding, were actually very glad to have gotten rid of Stalin.

They found support in the Baltics and Ukraine. I don't know about the rest of the Soviet Republics

[Marcus Aurelius]

I'm looking at the wiki, which states the chassis was in production until 1944. Still, there's really no role that Panzer II can do that the Panzer 38 (t) can't. Heck, the 38 (t) was even as good as the Mk III in virtually all tasks until the Mk III got the 50mm guns.

Wiki probably means the original Pz 38(t) chassis, which formed the basis of the Marder III. The chassis was somewhat modified for the Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer, but there was no re-tooling needed, so essentially the chassis production continued even after the war, because the Czechs made some for their army. Production for the Wehrmacht continued until the factories were overrun by the Red Army in May 1945.

The Pz 38(t) was a good little tank, but I wouldn't call it as good as the Pz III. It had only a two man turret and the armor was never as good as contemporary Pz III models, even if the last production versions of the 38(t) did have more armor than some early Pz III models. It also had no great reliability advantage over the Pz III, which was mechanically the most reliable of the German medium tanks. I agree that the Pz II was not better in any way than the Pz 38(t), but it was made in German factories, whereas the latter was made in the captured Czech factories. The Pz II Ausf. L Luchs, however, was a true reconnaissance tank which had no equivalent model in the Pz 38(t) series.

[Pelranius]

A lot of the Soviet population, to my understanding, were actually very glad to have gotten rid of Stalin.

They found support in the Baltics and Ukraine. I don't know about the rest of the Soviet Republics

The Nazis were also pretty popular with the Cossacks and Turks, at least initially.

[Iosef Cross]

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.

Hmm - Iosef, isn't that what we're essentally discussing? Not the lower scale of mobilization, but an earlier term they start mobilizing their labour force? If their productivity increases with time as they learn war production, it's only natural that an earlier start in 1938-1939 would yield earlier results, since the workers will learn and in a few years (1940-1941) will have more productivity.

I said before that they could have 1944 levels in 1940 if they started mobilizing in 1935-36. However that would be a bit strange for a country in peacetime to have 50% of their industrial workforce working for the armed forces. Considering the problems that they faced in WW2, that would be a correct route to take.

BTW, Iosef, you ran away from the population growth thread. I expect you to return and back your claims up.

Ok, I will.