Defeat of the Luftwaffe (1 Viewer)

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Hitler was mild by historical standards and far from the maddest of people. Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin were far worse and certainly far worse. If you kept your head down in WW2 Germany or Reich territory you got to stay alive unless you were jewish.

.....or disabled, or gay , or a gypsy or informed against by anyone with an axe to grind you ended up unlucky enough to be sent away encountered a psychopath in charge on a bad day.

Not forgetting the 'mere' brutal incarceration for a host of other so-called offences (like daring to hold different opinions views).

Hitler might get angry, might rant, but he didn't kill anyone unless he had a good reason.

I find it incredible anyone could seriously write this rubbish in this day age after all we know about the nazi regime.

I suppose disability falls under 'good reason' for you does it?
Or being gay?

What exactly is the 'good reason' underlying a war of extermination?
By definition 'reason' has nothing to do with it, you simply are 'the other' must die.

Within that I include laying waste to a village and its inhabitants for being used by or by supporting insurgent/partisan activities (which often involved deliberately provocative atrocities against German soliers)

.....which ignores the fact that war crimes were a habit of the German army (as well as the SS) long before there was a resistance to speak of.

I think this also falls into "Hitler bad" therefore "Stalin the good anti-hero".

Sorry, but I think you're about to employ the classic bad debating technique of framing this in your own way but claiming it is how most see it,

Stalin killed millions probably more than Hitler who gets to carry the can

They are 2 separate individuals.
Both were vile murderous monsters.

Each committed unique crimes but Hitler was the one who began WW2 and so not surprisingly he gets reviled the most (what with it being the most deadly appalling war ever and the genocidal industrial murder machine which was a facet of Hitlers regime unique in modern history).

he sometimes killed them randomely to show his power and broaden fear (somethingn Hitler never did)

Oh really?
So I suppose the deliberate use of an irregular corps during the pre-Gov electioneering was just for fun giggles?
Or the 'Night of the long knives' was a gentle thing?
Or how about 'Kristallnacht' or the Jewish boycott.....yeah sure, no visible weilding of power or attempting to broaden a state of fear in any of that?

Are you serious?

His purging of the Soviet Army is in some quarters motivated by this as well.

I'm not going to excuse Stalin's crimes but this is an interesting one.
Curious as it is documented that Hitler became a fan of the idea of purging the German armed forces the German officers later in the war.

There are plenty of ethnic Russian Historians who believe Stalin was preparing an invasion of Western Europe

Which is an interesting idea but that is all it is.
A claim.
A suggested possibility, from some but by no means all or even a majority.
There is no proof of this and when it comes down to it it basically is a claim to imply that the russians were just as bad if not worse than Hitler's mob and Hitler's mob therefore weren't really that bad, what with the russians being allied to the western powers.

The suggestion is virulently only opposed in certain quarters of the UK and USa by those one would expect because of their political or ethnic leanings. IE it is a case of being closed to an idea because it rationalises and credits some of Hitlers decisions, it would make his fanatic actions somehow rational.

Nope.
It is dismissed by many (from all over the world) because it is a theory without a shred of actual proof.
It also happens to have the distinct disadvantage inconvenience for those wishing to excuse minimise Hitler's record by being utterly at odds with what actually happened.

Ifs, buts, maybes, coulda, woulda, shoulda.....but Hitler did.

This would turn the world upside down for many.

Actually it wouldn't.
It's nothing like the surprise you seem to think.
We do know Stalin's Russia attacked Poland you know.

Here's another one that might surprise you, we also know 'poor little Poland' attacked Czechoslovakia annexed a part of that state......but none of this is justification, reason or cause for Hitler's actions.

Yes, they'll cling to the work of David Glantz who will show that the 25,000 tanks the Soviets had were mostly in disrepair and that the hundreds of T-34 and KV-1 didn't mean anyting, nor did the thousands of T-34s about to come of massive well planed production lines also didn't mean anything.

....whereas those seeking to excuse, justify and apologise for Hitler's wars will ignore the one stark and obvious reason behind those events - events bourne out by the actual history - Hitler was planning to attack Russia and annex a large chunk of it!
That is simply the fact of the matter.

Sadly for the Hitler apologists it is a fact that in those days Russia had a very good spy network operating in Germany and whilst they may not have known all of the minute detail they were under no illusions as to what Hitler was about and what he his Gov planned.

No wonder they moved their factories.
No wonder they ordered vast numbers of tanks.

This is just a most outrageous case of blaming the victim.
Stalin 'made' Hitler attack eh?

Hitler certainly had affinity to the idea of Lebensraum having seen the defeate of Germany in WW2 as a result of food and resource blockade and deeply resentfull of the enlargement of slavic territory at the expense of ethynic Germans due to the French desire to cut up Germany (implemented via the treaty of Versailes).

Well sadly for Germany she had just lost a major war......and as events were to prove (and how!) when the boot was on the other foot losers don't usually end up doing too well.
Especially when Europe had just gone through the blood-letting of WW1.

Even so after WW1 France never treated Germany as cruelly as Germany did France after 1940.

If Hitler had been serious there were many in the UK USA who felt that Germany had been treated badly at Versailles and better agreements could have been reached.
But Hitler's pre-war 'diplomacy' was not at all about reaching agreement.
It was one extended series of intimidation threat and in several cases ending up in murder.


Reading Hitlers table talk on the German colonisation of the Ukrain is interesting. Its clear he wasn't interested in 'ethnic cleansing'.

No.
What is clear to anyone who has read much about Hitler is that his so-called 'table talk' is just idle shooting the breeze in mixed company and we know Hitler was fastideous about what he would say in mixed company.
His (in fact rather banal) wandering musings are however no substitute for the reality on the ground.

As was pointed out earlier, regardless of what idle chit-chat over the cream cakes in front of the ladies might have been, the Germans were unbelievably brutal in the east and were dumb enough to talk idiotic rubbish about 'race' and treat so many people under their occupation appallingly.

There is a stunning irony here.
I am fully aware of just how awful Stalin his gang were - it just surprises me that those who would spend so long trying to compare contrast Stalin Hitler, so as to claiming Stalin was so much worse can't seem to understand the logic that the people on the ground experiencing this flocked to Stalin's side once they got a fair idea of what Hitler's side had in mind for them.

He was interested in seperating Germans from Russians etc as he felt Germans would be too inclined to organise and fix the problems of the locals and then become of them.

"Seperating"!?
Well that's one way to describe a policy of extermination I guess.

He seemed to have an impression the territory was so vast its resouces were unlimmited.

The irony here being that the nazi ideal of the farming German scraping a living on some freezing stepp is about as unappealing to modern Germans as could possibly be.

Siegfreid

I am all for a rounded discussion of the nazi era and I am quite happy to agree that not every facet of German life under the nazi regime was dreadful.
I'll even agree that for many Germans at least to begin with it sort of made sense given the previous prospect of a slide towards anarchy or communism.
But we now know far too much to be letting slide comments like "Hitler might get angry, might rant, but he didn't kill anyone unless he had a good reason".
Come on, you know better than that.

Apologies to the board but I just couldn't let this one go without rebutting it point by point.
 
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Unbelievable. im speechless. the depths of historical revisionism here are staggering
I don't necessarily follow the party line , I'm not an expert but in my 50 years of unofficial research I'm never shocked at what I learn > we've been given to understand over the years the LW was unaware of RAF radar whereas the opposite it turns out to be true the RAF the United Kingdom did not admit to the Germans having radar until Feb 24 41 although they had been given much evidence to the opposite. Including the Radar mast of the Graf Spee As for the invasion of the UK how were the Germans supposed to get prime movers (horses) over the Channel.
 
Unbelievable. im speechless. the depths of historical revisionism here are staggering

The word 'revision' comes from re vision ie to look again. Nothing wrong with that. History is written by the domination that victors have achieved and they want a version in which they are the heroes and the other guy is the villain. Black and White. That is the current version of history.

However I offered no revision, no new facts. All the things I said are commonly accessible.

The Spannish communists were going around killing Nuns and Priests, going a bit far isn't?, and they were talking of Soviet style purges and gulags in Spain as they invited in Soviet support. Suprise the suprise forces within spain and built up against them, the Nazis helped. They got killed in the hundreds of thousands: exactly what they would have done had they been victorious.

These kind of odd people now get called 'freedom fighters' by revisionists.

The Germans, the Nazis may just have saved much of europe from the kind of lunacy Stalin inflicted on the various peoples of the former Tsarist empire and that we saw Bella Kuhn inflict on Hungarians. The ideas that Mao, Pol Pot latter copied.

The people whose version of history you seem to support were people like Roosvelt who along with the New York times and similar press were doing their utmost to hide or downplay the Ukranian genocide. That's about 4.5 million people. If a peasant women hid away some food, just soak her skirt in gasoline and set it alight. She might die of infections from the burns but she'd have starved anyway. Mostly inflected by 'cosmopolitan communists of different ethnic groups. Throw in at least twice as many casualties around the rest of the USSR. Throw in soviet expansionism in the Sth around Rommnia and in the North around the Baltic states.

Stalin and Lenin (a mass murder of massive proportions) did this years before WW2, years before 'the holocaust'. Some folks America were doing their damdest to hide this. If it weren't form Malcolm Muggeridge they might have succeded even more.

Do you think the Germans had reason for concern? It seems in a certain lunar world uncle Jo Jo as the Beatles called him, was and still is a well meaning angel intent on world peace most of the time. No need for concern.

The true revisionists were and still are in New York. Walter Durante gets blamed but too many were behined him.


You only need to look at Soviet production plans, which were truely massive, and the incredible surge of high quality armour and aircraft that had already started before Barabarossa to see something was going on. Non of the soviet types were inferior in any substantial way to German aircraft. Had Hitler not invaded when he did the Soviet Army and its airforces would be of massive proportions within 9 months as the tens of thousands of experienced tankers and pilots converted to the new types. That certainly would have solved Stalins Polish problem perhaps all the waay through to Jutland.
 
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Siegfried, I like from many of your revisionists approches, and will add a video with a testimonal from a KGB defector about the political modus operandi of the USSR expansionism:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE38dLxapVo

However, even if Stalin was planning to invade Europe, I don't think Hitler "saved" it, since he defeated many European countries that were also in serious modernization process of their armed forces. Many of those countries had effective plans against the USSR, such as Britain, France and Poland. If the goal of Hitler was just save Europe from Communism - which definately wasn't - then he logically would only need to need enter in an alliance with them. Italy and Japan plus US support for many of those countries also would be present. That probably would be enough to desincourage any Communist agression.
 
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I don't necessarily follow the party line , I'm not an expert but in my 50 years of unofficial research I'm never shocked at what I learn > we've been given to understand over the years the LW was unaware of RAF radar whereas the opposite it turns out to be true the RAF the United Kingdom did not admit to the Germans having radar until Feb 24 41 although they had been given much evidence to the opposite. Including the Radar mast of the Graf Spee As for the invasion of the UK how were the Germans supposed to get prime movers (horses) over the Channel.

I didnt learn anything friom siegfrieds post except he is delusional in his opinions of hitler.

With regard to radar, are you being dliberately obtuse here? it would seem so. britain knew of German developments in radar (in a military application sense) since at least 1936. germany was also aware of british radar. What they failed to understand or indeed approeciate was the organization behind its use....how it had been integrated into a comprehensive air defence system. They may well have had the beginnings of their own in 1940, but such technique, and its effects on air battles had not been absorbed by the LW commanders. They utterly failed to realize what the network of radar stations was there for, or how it worked, or how the network of stations could make a force of 300 fighters have the same effect as 600 without radar 9roughly speaking.

Lets say you are right, and the germans knew about radar, knew about the way the british had employed it. That just serves to underline even furthe the utter stupidity of the LW leadership, since their approach in the Battle utterly failed to take the effects of radar and its importance into account. They utterly failed to developed either strategy or tactics to counter radar.

so, in your defence of the germans, you are faced with a choice. either they didnt appreciate the impacts of the british network (ne "the Germans didnt "know" about radar", to put it in its most kind form) or they knew about it, and were stupid because they didnt do anything about it. Im happy with either conclusion, because I happen to think both applied.
 
I didnt learn anything friom siegfrieds post except he is delusional in his opinions of hitler.

With regard to radar, are you being dliberately obtuse here? it would seem so. britain knew of German developments in radar (in a military application sense) since at least 1936. germany was also aware of british radar. What they failed to understand or indeed approeciate was the organization behind its use....how it had been integrated into a comprehensive air defence system. They may well have had the beginnings of their own in 1940, but such technique, and its effects on air battles had not been absorbed by the LW commanders. They utterly failed to realize what the network of radar stations was there for, or how it worked, or how the network of stations could make a force of 300 fighters have the same effect as 600 without radar 9roughly speaking.

Lets say you are right, and the germans knew about radar, knew about the way the british had employed it. That just serves to underline even furthe the utter stupidity of the LW leadership, since their approach in the Battle utterly failed to take the effects of radar and its importance into account. They utterly failed to developed either strategy or tactics to counter radar.

so, in your defence of the germans, you are faced with a choice. either they didnt appreciate the impacts of the british network (ne "the Germans didnt "know" about radar", to put it in its most kind form) or they knew about it, and were stupid because they didnt do anything about it. Im happy with either conclusion, because I happen to think both applied.
th e Brits thought they had the only Radar until the Oslo report and even thenn the Admiralty thought it was a hoax
 

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.....or disabled, or gay , or a gypsy or informed against by anyone with an axe to grind you ended up unlucky enough to be sent away encountered a psychopath in charge on a bad day.disabled, or gay , or a gypsy.

I take you are aware of that castrating the "unfit", gays and gypsies were more or less common in Europe both before and after the Second World War? This is not something that can be atomized to Germany, even though many people do this for political resons.

Saying they killed the disabled is utterly wrong. Old people are disabled and they were not massacered. Goebbels himself was disabled with his by a clubbed foot which hindered his ability to walk

.....Not forgetting the 'mere' brutal incarceration for a host of other so-called offences (like daring to hold different opinions views).

Yes, Nazi Germany persecuted political opposition, but if we are to compare her with what other regimes did at the same time or even after the war the brutality of the Nazi regime should be put into perspective.

.....I find it incredible anyone could seriously write this rubbish in this day age after all we know about the nazi regime.

I suppose disability falls under 'good reason' for you does it?
Or being gay?.

I'm afraid your view seem to be a bit black and white, and what we are beginnig to see is that much of the rubbish about the Nazi regime comes from people with this black and white perception of WWII - as if it was a moral crusade between good and evil.

Persecution of gays and the "unfit" is not so much related to Hitler. Hitler was not the most prominent advocator of this in Germany and it happened in many other countries, for example among the victors of WWII. To your information, there were several nazi officials that were Gay. Erns Röhm being one of them. Being gay did not imly you would be killed.

.....What exactly is the 'good reason' underlying a war of extermination?
By definition 'reason' has nothing to do with it, you simply are 'the other' must die. ?.

Reason had very much to do with it. More precisely if you were for example gay or Jewish but the nazi administration found you usefull, you would live. Thousands of men of Jewish descent and hundreds of what the Nazis called 'full Jews' served in the German military with Adolf Hitler's knowledge and approval, including two field marshals and fifteen generals. Hitler's automobile driver was also jewish.

..........which ignores the fact that war crimes were a habit of the German army (as well as the SS) long before there was a resistance to speak of.

As for the war in the east, there was harsh brutality on all sides. Are you saying the Germans somehow started it?

.....Sorry, but I think you're about to employ the classic bad debating technique of framing this in your own way but claiming it is how most see it,?.

Bagatalizing Stalin and demonizing Hitler is the consequence of a black and white thinking in regards to the Second World War.

.....They are 2 separate individuals.
Both were vile murderous monsters.

Each committed unique crimes but Hitler was the one who began WW2 and so not surprisingly he gets reviled the most (what with it being the most deadly appalling war ever and the genocidal industrial murder machine which was a facet of Hitlers regime unique in modern history).

Saying Hitler started WWII is an exageration, an extremely typical one for that matter. Japan had already waged war in Asia for for three years before Hitler attacked Poland. Italy had already conquered Ethiopia. Stalin had attacked Finland, annexed the Baltic countries and Besarabia AND did indeed attack Poland days after Hitler did. For some reason, the allies chose not to declare war against USSR as they did when Germany did the very same Poland.

For the record, all western powers fought colonial wars in the same period with a level of cruelty comparable to that of the Germans in the east, against people who saw the Western colonial powers as illigitmate occupiers.

.....Oh really?
So I suppose the deliberate use of an irregular corps during the pre-Gov electioneering was just for fun giggles?
Or the 'Night of the long knives' was a gentle thing?
Or how about 'Kristallnacht' or the Jewish boycott.....yeah sure, no visible weilding of power or attempting to broaden a state of fear in any of that?

Yes, it was also part of a political campaign. Widespread antisemitism in Europe was something Hitler knew how to exploit politically.

.....I'm not going to excuse Stalin's crimes but this is an interesting one.
Curious as it is documented that Hitler became a fan of the idea of purging the German armed forces the German officers later in the war.

But he did not. And he could not. Hitler never assumed the same amount of power as Stalin.

.....Which is an interesting idea but that is all it is.
A claim.
A suggested possibility, from some but by no means all or even a majority.
There is no proof of this and when it comes down to it it basically is a claim to imply that the russians were just as bad if not worse than Hitler's mob and Hitler's mob therefore weren't really that bad, what with the russians being allied to the western powers.

The number of historians who support this view are increasing. USSR was in an alliance with Germany at the time Germany started Bararossa.

.....Actually it wouldn't.
It's nothing like the surprise you seem to think.
We do know Stalin's Russia attacked Poland you know.

Here's another one that might surprise you, we also know 'poor little Poland' attacked Czechoslovakia annexed a part of that state......but none of this is justification, reason or cause for Hitler's actions.

It depends upon what you mean by Hitlers actions. The fact that Poland was extremely antisemitic at the same time and central men within the Polish government (for example Piludski) wanted war with Germany is seldom justified.

.........whereas those seeking to excuse, justify and apologise for Hitler's wars will ignore the one stark and obvious reason behind those events - events bourne out by the actual history - Hitler was planning to attack Russia and annex a large chunk of it!
That is simply the fact of the matter.

Sadly for the Hitler apologists it is a fact that in those days Russia had a very good spy network operating in Germany and whilst they may not have known all of the minute detail they were under no illusions as to what Hitler was about and what he his Gov planned.

No wonder they moved their factories.
No wonder they ordered vast numbers of tanks.

This is just a most outrageous case of blaming the victim.
Stalin 'made' Hitler attack eh?

Most importantly, Stalin did not believe Germany would attack, and he refused to admit they had done so long after they actually did.

.....Well sadly for Germany she had just lost a major war......and as events were to prove (and how!) when the boot was on the other foot losers don't usually end up doing too well.
Especially when Europe had just gone through the blood-letting of WW1.

Same logic can be used to justify German victory over France in WWII right here.

.....Even so after WW1 France never treated Germany as cruelly as Germany did France after 1940.

Well, thats depends how you look at it. The Germans were more or less allowed to rule themselves politically but not economically. The French were not allowed to rule themselves politically, but more or less economically.

.....If Hitler had been serious there were many in the UK USA who felt that Germany had been treated badly at Versailles and better agreements could have been reached.
But Hitler's pre-war 'diplomacy' was not at all about reaching agreement.
It was one extended series of intimidation threat and in several cases ending up in murder.

How come Germany just finished paying the World War One reparations 92 years later then?.

In any case, provide the data that suggest there were many in the UK USA who felt that Germany had been treated badly at Versailles and better agreements could have been reached.
 
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There is a stunning irony here.
I am fully aware of just how awful Stalin his gang were - it just surprises me that those who would spend so long trying to compare contrast Stalin Hitler, so as to claiming Stalin was so much worse can't seem to understand the logic that the people on the ground experiencing this flocked to Stalin's side once they got a fair idea of what Hitler's side had in mind for them.

This argument can be used both ways so it is not so ironic. Many Ex-Soviet soldiers joined Nazi-Germany. Even a general!

.....No.
What is clear to anyone who has read much about Hitler is that his so-called 'table talk' is just idle shooting the breeze in mixed company and we know Hitler was fastideous about what he would say in mixed company.
His (in fact rather banal) wandering musings are however no substitute for the reality on the ground.

As was pointed out earlier, regardless of what idle chit-chat over the cream cakes in front of the ladies might have been, the Germans were unbelievably brutal in the east and were dumb enough to talk idiotic rubbish about 'race' and treat so many people under their occupation appallingly.

"Seperating"!?
Well that's one way to describe a policy of extermination I guess.

War of extermination against who? The slavs? In case you mean the slavs, it is exagerated. If the Nazi administration were really that eager to exterminate the slavs they would not have allied with Slovakia and Bulgaria would they?

.....The irony here being that the nazi ideal of the farming German scraping a living on some freezing stepp is about as unappealing to modern Germans as could possibly be.

The USSR was not exaclty some freezing steppe. For example, the black soil of Ukraine made it one of the most (if not the most) valuable farming lands in the world.
 
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@ Gixxerman

I agree with most of your statement. But two points I want to pick out.

I'm not a fan of the preventative war theorie for Barbarossa and I don't believe that Stalin planed an invasion at 1941. But from a military viewpoint the Sowjet Troups had a massive focal point of armed vehicles at their Westfront, far more then necessary to defend and the arrangement of the Troups wasn't only to defend from the strategy. So I believe Stalin planed an invasion but perhaps 1942 or 43.

Even so after WW1 France never treated Germany as cruelly as Germany did France after 1940.

This is rubbish. France did all to humiliate Germany after WWI. The invasion of the Ruhrgebiet wasn't only to get their reperations, they wanted to occupy the Ruhrgebiet for themself, that was the goal! They did all to get revenge on germany take a look at the votes at Poland at 1919/1920 about parts of Schlesien. Only Britain and USA avoid that France did with Germany and the Ruhrgebiet what they wanted and by the way they executed hundreds of civil people who fight passivly against the occupation (don't work to pay the reperations).

Every political party in the 1930's would have had the total support of the german people to get in a war against France and Poland. Revenge was the dominated feeling of the german people after the Versaille Treaty and especially against France.

Edit: The Versaille Treaty and the humiliation from France after the war, is one major reason why the Nazi Party and Hitler could get popular by the german people in the 1930's
 
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DonL for once we are in near total agreement....i am even more speechless given our past. well done and a good summary

My opinion is that the Soviets were getting ready to take punitive action into Rumania, not Poland. they had massed most of their armour in the southern sector, and were building an inordinate number of airfields. The germans had wanted Soviet action to the South, against turkey, but the the Soviets wanted to gain control of the balkans.first step, overrun Romania
 
Thank you,

and I totaly agree with your analysis about Romania, but at the same time this was Hitler's most feared action because the 3. Reich was absolutely in need of the Romanian Oil fields! Without Romanian Oil no war!

Edit:
That was one reason for the dircet order from Hitler to occupy the Krim, which is to my opinion not necessary because you could close off the Krim with far less Troups compare with the needed Troups to occupy the Krim, Kertch and Sewasterpol.

The Romanian Oil fields played a very major part in Hitler's thinking all through his gouverment.
 
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th e Brits thought they had the only Radar until the Oslo report and even thenn the Admiralty thought it was a hoax

Ive seen this stuff before. Some oficers of the RN and the RAF dismissed the Oslo Report. The scientists did not. RV Jones mentions British knowledge of german radar in his book ("Most Secret War"), and research into countering Freya and Wurzburg had begun alsmost from the beginning of the war, with a conspicuous lack of success.

Britain began planning commando raids to capture a German radar set (I think it was freya) in brittany almost from the immediate aftermath of the BOF. I believe this attack actually occurred April 41. It is as untrue to claim the british did not know about german radar as to claim the british invented radar or that the germans did not have radar pre-1939. There are many, many untuths from both sides about radar technology which people routinely seize upon for some sensationalist purpose or other.

what is undeniable is that the germans failed to appreciate the importance and effect of the British radar development as part of their air defence system.

Its a bit like your earlier statements about Britain being broke from December 1940. "being broke" suggest insolvency, similar to the situation faced by the Greeks today. It suggests that even with all their incomes and no real expenditures they could not pay their bills. But England was not insolvent in 1940. As part of the lend lease agreement, the british Government had to demonstrate they lacked the on hand cash to continue the 'cash and carry" agreement. this lack of gold reserves.....ready cash lying round doing nothing, was necessary in order to secure the line of credit that is now known as "Lend Lease". Thats not being broke. Thats being politically savvy to secure a vital agreement. Cash reserves were drying up, but the British were anything bu broke. They were still substantially balancing their budgets and churning out (and paying for) large amounts of equipment indigenously.
 
Ah, that's an unfair judgment in my view. If not for the RAF (and overall British) resistance, perhaps the US and the USSR would not have a Luftwaffe to defeat, but rather to be defeated. This was specially the case of the Russians.
Maybe.. maybe not. And the opposite could also be argue. Anyway, this is not relevant to the point I was addressing.



Of course it did for most of the war, check in any industrial table. Only in 1944 Germany was capable of match the Soviet production in key areas such as armored vehicles and aircraft production.

Wrong:

Captura.JPG




Also, as it can be see, for all the talk about the British preparedness and efficiency, Großdeutschland outproduce the UK by a great margin for most of the war.
 
That's an odd claim to make. The RAF probably destroyed more Luftwaffe aircraft than the USAAF and RAF victories early in the war meant losses of higher quality German pilots.

I don't think so (about the first point). Anyway, German aircraft/aircrew losses losses during pre-Barbarossa times (not all to the Bristish), while heavy, did not produce a decline in its overall effectiveness, proved by the fact that the years 1941-42 (especially the former) would witness the peak of Luftwaffe effectiveness during the war.
The eventual arrive of considerable USAAF elements would gradually tip the scales.

Oh, and those early RAF victories came at a more critical time in the war, too.
Critical for whom?
 
Hoju, this is GPD, not armament production. Russia produces much more armament than Germany today, but it's GDP is inferior. In WWII Germany only achived a serious military competition with the USSR industry in 1944, check in any source. But even then the vacuum from the previous years, the Lend-Lease, improvements in the Soviet combat capability and the now open front in Normandy made the situation for Germany simply hopeless.
 
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Hmmm, if you study American politics and Congress make up in 1940-41 you will see clearly that FDR was NOT going to be successful in expanding Lend Lease nor was he going to lead America into war. Only the Japanese succeeded where his leadership failed. The isolationist mood was far too strong in the US.

Really? Do you think that the US policy pre-Pearl Harbour qualifies as isolationist?

As to "Germany finding itself" at war? Did Germany just kind of 'stumble' into conflict or in fact move boldly because they believed they would prevail?

Was just an expression. And, well, Hitler definitely was really surprised (shocked actually) when the Allied declared war on 3 September.
 
Hoju, this is GPD, not armament production. Russia produces much more armament than Germany today, but it's GDP is inferior. In WWII Germany only achived a serious military competition with the USSR industry in 1944, check in any source. But even then the vacuum from the previous years, the Lend-Lease, improvements in the Soviet combat capability and the now open front in Normandy made the situation for Germany simply hopeless.
Perhaps you should pay more attention? Let me remind you Parsifal's ridiculous claim:

here are reasons why a country like Russia, with a prewar industry about 70% that of prewar germany (and then also losing about 30% of its prewar capacity to German occupation) could nevertheless outproduce the germans by factors of 2, 3, 4 to 1.

Now, as I said before, a country need much more that "armaments" to wage war. Such division is meaningless.
But, let's play it: show me that the Soviets produced "much more armament" than the Germans. I have no idea how that could be quantify: how many tanks is worth a submarine? how many artillery shells an aircraft? This should be interesting...
 
But, let's play it: show me that the Soviets produced "much more armament" than the Germans. I have no idea how that could be quantify: how many tanks is worth a submarine? how many artillery shells an aircraft? This should be interesting...

I think Parfisal is considerating everything in the historical context of the war. The Soviet Union outproduced Germany for most of the war certainly because Germany needed to built things such as submarines and AA shells for the war in the West, and also because it had the Lend-Lease, the naval blockade of Germany and other factors in it's favour. But the fact is that Germany lacked equipment (including primarily logistics) in the Eastern Front, a front that was part from a global conflict.
 
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Wrong:

View attachment 194469



Also, as it can be see, for all the talk about the British preparedness and efficiency, Großdeutschland outproduce the UK by a great margin for most of the war.

Your attachment, which i have not cross checked, but which looks about right, illustrates in spades why the germans were outproduced by both britain and the USSR. And serves to underline the gross inefficiency of the German war economy. Despite the obvious potential strength of the German economy this did not translate to enhanced military outputs. They lagged badly in all the major categories. Reason....well ther are many, but in amongst it is the cost per unit of their equipment, the innefficiency and sheer corruption of the regime....too many leaks in the bucket to be a modern economy too many snouts in the trough. Of course there were legitmate reasons like a shortage of raw materials and shortages of manpower, but still, your claim is that they 9the germans) outproduced the Russians. They had more resources, as your little graph show, but they did not outproduce them

here are some basic figures on military outputs for Germany/USSR

Tanks SPGs
67425/105,251

Artillery (inc mortars)
159,147/516,648

Trucks
345914/197,100

Aircraft
119,307/143,145

The breakdown of GDP for Germany/USSR in the period 1938-45 was as follows

1938:351/384
1939:384/366
1940:384/417
1941:387/359
1942:412/274
1943:417/305
1944:437/362
1945 :310/343
Total; 3124/2810

So with 88% of the GDP the Soviets managed to produce 156% of the tanks, 325% of the artillery, 57% of the trucks, and 120% of the aircraft.
 
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