Ammunition production, total tons

this sort of thing appears to be a constant theme with "Guaporense". The exact same statistics are posted on other forums.

Goto:

Axis History Forum • View topic - German GNP vs US GNP, exchange ratios of RM to Dollars

I begin to suspect a Brazilian troll.

 

No. Its proportion was higher than germany because of lack of manpower drained to the front.

Its per capita consumption decreased by the same proportion as the British, about 10%.

You ignore the overall picture by just using raw data like the war-making potential and not looking on other aspects.

So? Posting aircraft production numbers mean something when posted alone now? Anyway, I didn't what to show with this topic that Germany could win.

With barbarossa the allies warmaking potential decreased by about 6-7% of the worlds total.

The conquest of western europe increased axis war-making potential by a lot.

1- They didn't need to project power outside Europe, only survive. Also, Europe has more productive capacity than the US.

2- The soviet union challenged the Western Democracies for nearly 50 years and was inferior economically.

3- How do you explain that: The US used about 100 times as much munitions as North Vietnam and lost the war.

 

That comment indicates to me that you don't even understand the very statistics with which you are trying to support your argument. Manpower doesn'tr affect the level at which a country's economy is committed to war production, except as a percentage of that component.

"United States gross national product grew by 52 percent between 1939 and 1944 (much more in unadjusted dollars), munitions production sky rocketed from virtually nothing in 1939 to unprecedented levels, industrial output tripled, and even consumer spending increased (unique among all combatants)."

"One must not forget, however (and Koistinen does not), that the United States was 'almost alone in increasing rather than diminishing consumer output during the war.'"

HyperWar: The Big 'L'--American Logistics in World War II [Chapter 1]

No, that is not correct. But perhaps you can conjure up some numbers and a citation to support your statement?

That's not true.

The estimates of war making potential cited by Paul Kennedy in his book, "The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers" were calculated taking into account wide ranges of factors affecting military power, including demographic, geographic, and economic issues. Moreover, they were calculated using a consistent basis from country to country and factor to factor, unlike yours.

None of your numbers make much sense or support your logic, even the ones that haven't been cooked.

By what logic? Even if true, which it isn't. six or seven percent doesn't significantly change the disparity between the Axis and the Western Allies.

If anything, Barbarossa increased the disparity between the Axis and the Allies because the 14% of war making potential accorded to the Soviet Union was actually added to the Allies total.

Not really. France was the only country occupied by Germany with any considerable war making potential, and only 4.2% at that. The rest, Poland Czechoslovakia, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, added some marginal productive capacity, but not much. In any case, Germany proved historically unable to take advantage of much of the presumed productive capacity of the occupied territories.

They do if they want to defeat Britain or the US. Germany can't do that with their air force or their navy; it is completely outclassed by the Allies' existing forces and productive potential in both areas. And no, Europe, in the 1940's, even if you include the Soviets, didn't have more productive capacity than the US. That is sheer nonsense.

Longer than that, but only in proxy wars, diplomatic initiatives and economic threats, but they seldom won, and were finally outclassed economically as well as politically.

Different kind of war, poorly planned, and executed. The what if assumes a symmetrical war using conventional, for the 1940's, tactics where raw materials utilization, productive capacity, and superior technology will be decisive.

 

Well, if you take the soldiers out of the front and put them into factories they will produce more.

Friedman, M. and Schwartz, A.J.: A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960.

Yes it is. Because germany greatly increased her warmaking potential from 1937 (the date when the index was made) to 1943, coal production increased by 75%.

They put steel and coal production capacity and took the average out, that's it.

It changes from 3 to 1 to 2.5 to 1. A significant change.

Sure, and that's 7% that remained in the USSR were more important than the 42% of the US to determine the outcome of the war.

Second to the book the economics of ww2, Axis Europe had a GDP of 1.07 trillion, while the US had a GDP of 800 billion.

Certainly.

Show me a paper that shows that the entire continent of Europe had less war making capacity than the US.

The USSR was more powerful than the US in many aspects of the conventional military sphere.

And the USSR fell because of its own internal problems.

That war showed that even with massive advantage in men and matériel you can still lose.

 

Sure. So the US bombed Vietnam to pieces, killed a million of them and they retreated... Well, sure, they could have killed the entire population of north Vietnam, just let 20 times more American boys die.

So, do you think that it is impossible to win against an enemy with 3-4 times superiority in resources? Well, Germany produced 4 times more steel and 5 times more coal and 5 times more aluminium than the USSR (sources: World Economic Survey, 1942-1944 and Economics, Production and Logistics) and still lost the war with the soviet union. In fact, WW2 proved, with the USSR, that you can be economically inferior and still win.

 

sources please

What are you including in this? I'd like to see sources as well. Looking at:
American armored fighting vehicle production during World War II at AllExperts
and
German armored fighting vehicle production during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Your conclusions appear suspect

Only marginally more relevant than "ballistic missiles".
Does the V-2 qualify as such?

 

And your point is? Note that at least some of the German coal production went into synthetic oil produciton which is very inefficient. You also left off other forms of energy generation.

 

What ballistic missiles?
Should experimental aircraft even be a consideration? Rliability of the German jets was so low they wouldn't even have been considered for operational status by the US or Britain.
According to:
German armored fighting vehicle production during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Germans produced something less than 2,000 heavy tanks.
however according to:
Soviet armored fighting vehicle production during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Soviets produced around 9,000 so how did the Germans produce more than the Soviets+British+US?

 

You keep saying things like this and it's very misleading. A US division with all it's attachments in 44 or 45 was signficantly stronger on paper than a German division of that time. If you looked at combat power of actual units the average US division was probably worth several German average German divisions.

 

That's a non-sequiter.

In a war-effort situation, labor is a zero-sum game; drain off manpower from the military in order to produce more material, and you reduce the manpower available to utilize that material against your enemies.

For example, my mother was employed at Curtiss-Wright in Ohio from 1939 to late 1942. Then, after receiving the news that her first husband, a B-17 pilot, had been killed in action, she joined the Navy. The Navy had been actively recruiting women to fill non-combatant positions in order to free up men to man the combatant ships which were being constructed as part of a massive Navy expansion. But her friends at Curtiss-Wright wrote and informed her that she had been replaced there by a man. The total labor force cannot be increased except as children mature to the point where they can be employed productively.

The link you have provided in no way constitutes refutation of my assertion that the US was the only belligerent country during WW II in which consumer spending increased.

It links to a page of the the Princeton University Press website which lists for sale, a book by Milton Friedman. Nowhere in this link is any authoritative refutation of the claim that US consumer spending increased during WW II.

Apparently, in your desperation to disprove my claim, you have resorted to randomly listing scholarly sounding titles and hoping I would neglect to check them. My statement stands.

No, Germany's increased coal production does not change her war making potential.

You need to understand that the term "potential" refers to a future state; i.e. what may be possible for an entity to achieve in the future. Since Germany was obviously NOT at peak production of coal in 1937, the future expansion of coal production falls under general term of "potential".

And once again, I must point out, you are taking a single statistic and jumping to a conclusion that is in no way justified by the data you represent.

That certainly does not describe Kennedy's methodology as I understand it. Perhaps you could cite the source for your information on how the war-making potential was calculated? And please, if you are citing a publication, please include the page numbers where the data is to be found.

Well, it seems you are fabricating numbers again. The initial ratio calculated in Kennedy's book against the Axis is 3.43:1. Assuming that what you say is true, the Allies war-making potential would fall from 70.1% to 63.1%. If the total Axis war-making potential remains at 20.4%, the new ratio will be 3.09:1, not 2.5:1 as you claim. I do NOT consider the actual change in the ratio significant change in favor of the Axis.

Obviously, you have no grasp of the historical situation. The USSR's war-making potential did not decline after Barbarossa, it increased. With the aid the Soviets began to receive, and the ramp-up in their own productive capacity. What you do not seem to understand is that the US, though technically neutral, was already throwing the weight of it's productive capacity behind the Western Allies.

Again, a non-sequiter; occupied Europe's combined GDP is irrelevant as Germany was unable to take immediate advantage of the productive capacity of occupied Europe. In any case, you are leaving out the GDP of the British Commonwealth. The numbers you pick and choose are meaningless unless you are comparing them on a consistent basis, a concept you seem to have trouble with.

No problem. I refer you to "The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy. In that book he lists a table showing that the US had 41.7% of the world's war-making potential in 1937. The only significant war-making potential held by any European countries was Germany with 14.4%, France with 4.2%, and Italy with 2.5%. Britain is excluded because it became an ally of the US, and The Soviet Union is also excluded because, in this scenario, it remained neutral. That's a total of 21.1% for Europe and 41.7% for the US, a ratio, in favor of the US, of 2.02:1.

A larger, but certainly less capable, army and that's about it. Of course, that varied over the the course of the 72-year life-span of the Soviet Union, as the US de-militarized in the 1930's. In any case, it's pretty much irrelevant as only proxy wars were fought.

And your point is?

Yes, that's often the case with asymmetrical warfare which is why it has become so popular. World War II proved that symmetrical warfare gives an enormous advantage to countries with more material and manpower and that country, since WW I, has been the US. That why Germany was so foolish to plan, and engage in symmetrical warfare.

 

Well, in that book, cited in The Economics of WW2, they calculate that consumer spending dropped by 10% between 1940 and 1945.

 

My point is that without the 10 million soldiers lost or put in the Eastern front, much more resources would be available to Germany.

Yes, It does. Coal is the basic resource from were industrial production came, before the 1960's, when oil became the main energy resource.

That depends on the fact that this increase of more than 2/3 in coal production came from an increase in CAPACITY.

Also, production of MACHINE TOOLS increased from 1936 to 1942 by about 100% in Germany. Machine tools are future state oriented goods.

Source: war and economy in the third reich

Energy represents the single most important statistic in a country capacity to wage war for the time period considered.

And at that period, COAL was the main source of energy. Germany's energy came in 90% from coal.

Today it is quite different.

It would fall to 53%, without the USSR and France.

From 67% to 53%? It is indeed. Considering the strategic position.

1- The warmaking capacity of the USSR declined after Barbarossa.

Take a look at that:

Soviet Industrial Production 1940-1945

2- Lend-Lease did not influence the war before 1943 (source: The Handbook of the Eastern Front).

No. Germany did tax the occupied Europe's.

I am only showing that the material superiority of the western allies is not that great.

Maybe it is you that does not understand what I am saying.

1- Considering that Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Finland, Czech Republic and other countries are not included, and considering that Germany's increased her warmaking potential between 1937 and 1943 (source: war and economy in the third reich, the economics of WW2), that figure you cite is worth nothing.

2- Second to the book, the economics of WW2, the total product of Axis Europe was 1.07 trillion, while the US had 800 billion and UK had 280 billion.
The entire British empire had ~550 billion.

In WW2 the Red Army was way more powerful than the combined armies of all western allies. Prof?

1- Read any decent book about the eastern front.

2- Read that:

"Operation Unthinkable: 'Russia: Threat to Western Civilization,'" British War Cabinet, Joint Planning Staff [Draft and Final Reports: 22 May, 8 June, and 11 July 1945], Public Record Office, CAB 120/691/109040

You say:

Richer country = militarily more powerful country

I say:

Richer country =/= militarily more powerful country

Facts:

1- The USSR was poorer than the US.

2- The USSR was at least equal to the US in the military sphere (at least equal).

Well. Germany was not defeated by the US, but by USSR. And the USSR did not have more material resources than Germany.

Second to Richard Overy:

"Economic size as such does not explain the outcome of wars... If we qualify the explanation to cover only the product of industrial powers then there remains the awkward evidence that Germany had greater industrial capacity than Britain in 1940, and access by 1941 to a good deal more than Britain and the Soviet Union together, and yet was unable to bring either power to defeat."

"The history of war is littered with examples of smaller, materially disadvantaged states defeating a larger, richer enemy."

source: Why the allies won.

Germany was not foolish to plan and engage in symmetrical warfare with the US, since the US inflicted about 4% of the combat casualties suffered by the Wehrmacht. The main direct contribution of the US to the war was strategic bombing, with did not have a great impact on the outcome.

Source for the 4% number: Feldgrau.com - The German Armed Forces 1919-1945

 

Second to the book, The Economics of WW2:

United States real personal consumption: estimates based on alternative deflators:

Friedman, Schwartz:

$ and 1939 prices,

1941 - 555
1942 - 533
1943 - 529
1944 - 537

A modest decrease.

However, second to the same book, the potential decrease in consumption was massive:

"the result of this computation, the sum of the last coluumn in table 3.17, is a cost of the war amounting to about $148 billion at 1940 prices, or about 2.27 years of consumption in 1941." pp. 115

 

In reality you can make consumption increase or decrease depending on the set of prices that you use to compute consumption.

 

The Balance of Economic Power in Europe in 1942:

1- In 1942 the axis countries in Europe controlled a GDP of pre war level of 1,034 billion dollars (the 1,07 trillion that I cited before include Sweden, with was neutral). However, with the territory of occupied USSR, this GDP increased to 1,181 billion dollars.

2- However, we need to compute the current GDP of these countries, for 1942, not the pre war data. I have current data only for France, Germany, Italy and Austria, with shows an agregate increase of 2% for the total GDP of all these countries. So, extrapolanting, this means increasing total Axis Europe's GDP by 2% we get 1,055 billion dollars. With occupied USSR territories, we get 1,205 billion dollars.

3- While the GDP of the USSR in 1942 was: 274 billion dollars (a 34,3% decrease from 417 billion in 1940). The Lend-Lease aid was about 9% of the USSR GDP's, or 24.6 billion dollars. Total GDP of the USSR + Lend-Lease = 298.6 billion dollars.

4- In 1942 the USSR was facing the combined armies of Germany (with had soldiers of other nationalities), Finland, Italy, Rumania and Hungary. Britain and the US weren't a factor in the European theater (I would say that they were never a factor in the European theater, but, only to not disagree by much with you guys...). So, the total Axis/Allies ratio of GDP is: 1,055/298.6 = 3,533 to 1 for the axis in Europe. With increases by 4,035 to 1 considering the GDP of occcupied USSR.

5- For comparison, in 1940 the US's GDP was 943 billion (a massive increase from 800 billion in 1938, due to recovery from the depression), while Japan's GDP was 192 billion. A ratio of 4,91 to 1.

As you can see, the USSR managed to defeat an enemy with much more economic resources than itself. In fact, the ratio of steel production in Europe, 1942 was about ~40 million tons for all occupied europe (~30 million tons for Germany only) vs 8.1 million tons for the USSR. Coal production ratio was about ~650 MT for the axis (~500 MT for Germany only) vs 75.6 MT for the USSR.

Sources:

The Economics of World War 2

The USSR and total: Why didn't the soviet economy colapse in 1942?

Economics, Production and Logistics

World Economic Survey: 1942-1944

Economic Mobilization for World War 2