You seem to be constantly skirting answering my questions - what has the loans and credit made to the UK got to do with the German economy between 1933 and 1945 or how they needed to expand and strip nations to continue to fund their military and public works expansions to prevent bankruptcy - the course they were following was bankrupting the nation.
You are not asking any questions, only stating what you have read in a book, and if you believe what the writer says, then that’s your choice. we could not feed or our country, or arm our troops without the help/ borrowing from other countries, You can’t call this Hitler’s biggest mistake, for not having this!. Germany were building V1 V2 rockets, and were in the process of building electric submarines, of which they did build one, if the war had lasted a couple of months longer, they would have produced more, these would have been more deadlier that the U boat, is Germany still in debt today, did they have to borrow to build these!.
Our Navy, Army and Air Force personnel in WW2, surpassed anything, that Hitler could place against us, this was his Biggest Mistake, he did not have this!!!.
my grandfather had one prior to the occupation. He fired it once whilst retreating with their broken mortar, which shot 3 times (!) before going nuts.
He could talk for hours about “his campaign”, which was 1 day of shooting 3 times and 9 days of carrying a dead mortar. Leaving it behind was out of the question, although the Germans would have ditched it. After the defeat, the first thing the Germans took was his HP pistol and leather belts. The mortar was eventually scrapped in Belgium.
go back to your original statements and re-read from where you said about the extra manpower he could have utilised, my answers are directed to that - you have not once explained how Germany would supply and equip those extra men - I asked questions and gave my reasoning for answers you evaded and kept trying to expand and divert from the original posts.
In the operations you stated (Barbarossa and D- Day) where you assume they would have made a difference I told you that the Germans already had surplus of manpower that was not utilised - Barbarossa had nearly a million man reserve not used in the initial operations - they were fed in later as Divisions got used up although more and more were required to defend the extending, struggling supply lines which suffered increasingly from lack of transport as well.
D-Day in Scandinavia there were around 1/2 million men sitting the war out - they were still there in May 1945 despite the desperation Germany had for fighting manpower. These were not boys and old men thrown together at the last minute but formed and equipped units.
You stated more use could have been made of people from occupied countries - I informed you huge numbers of conscripts and volunteers were used as separate units and part of the general Whermacht, the quality was sometimes lower and sometimes better than organic ethnic German units. Those numbers do not including workers in occupied countries or guest and slave labour producing arms and materiel for Germany.
I told you about one easily obtained, widely regarded as the best book on the German economy during the Nazi period as a bit of information for you to read if you wished. It explains the problems and solutions Germany came up with the whys and wherefores of the economy and how it failed in the task set.
Germany between 1943 and 1945 built 118 type XXI (Electroboats) of which only 2 did 1 patrol each
U2551 - commissioned 29th Sept 1944, first and only patrol 30th April 1945 - 5th May 1945
U3008 - commissioned 19th Oct 1944, first and only patrol 3rd May 1945 - 11 May 1945
There were huge problems with the design and construction of these vessels, many were not even watertight when delivered and definately not sea worthy, the idea was sound the German implementation was not. Post war testing with the reports now public show the flaws with the design and construction - lots of myths abound about just how dangerous they would be as built.
Germany built 61 Type XXXIII (Electroboats) 6 of which did patrols between 29th Jan and May 1945 sinking 4 ships (the first was launched on 17th April 1944 and commissioned 12th June 1944 - U2321)
U-2321, U-2322, U-2324, U-2326, U-2329 and U-2336 -
The XXIII was so crammed internally that she only carried two torpedoes and those had to be loaded externally in harbour, thus they lacked the potential offensive punch of their larger sister, the XXI Elektro boat. Small coastal boat with limited impact and capability but more effective in practice than its more numerous and larger sister class.
Which Electroboat you mean they built 1 of as they built 179 - a few months longer would have made no difference even a year longer would not as by 1945 they were too short of manpower. Doenitz calculated he needed a force of at least 300 U Boats this was only managed for a very brief time (100 rest, refit, training, 100 travel to and from patrol area, 100 in patrol areas). It took 3 years before he had 100 on patrol (8th August 1942 peaking with 159 on 29th April 1943, just in time for the end of the U Boats most dangerous time with 41 U Boats sunk in May 1943.
Mid 1943 was the time Germany needed to have new better boats in service and operational in large numbers.
Maybe you mean the Walter boats - the V80, 4 x XVIIA, 2 x XVIIB, or the 2 unfinished XVIII.
V1 and V2 were not really war winning weapons and could not do anything to turn the tide of the war.
It could have been that his biggest mistake/mistakes, was to send the German Jews to the concentration camps, instead, why didn’t he allow them to join his war machine, and the men of military age to join his army, (has they did in WW1). I don’t know how many more men this would have given him, but it would have given him a greater fire power, then when he went into Russia, and allowed the Russians who wanted to fight on his side, this then would have given him a even greater, greater fire power. all depending then on the outcome in Russia, on D-Day we could have ended up fighting the German’s, German Jews, and the Russian’s. "who know’s
This his one of my original post, It could have been that his biggest mistake/mistakes. You are stating all what you have said on a novel, you have read, if Germany where bankrupt, as you say, they would have been unable to have produced rockets, electric sub’s, and had plans to bomb America, they were way ahead of us, which is proven when Russia and America used their scientists. What I am saying, this country was in no better situation, and we also made mistakes.
Which Electroboat you mean they built 1 of as they built 179 - a few months longer would have made no difference even a year longer would not as by 1945 they were too short of manpower. Doenitz calculated he needed a force of at least 300 U Boats this was only managed for a very brief time (100 rest, refit, training, 100 travel to and from patrol area, 100 in patrol areas). It took 3 years before he had 100 on patrol (8th August 1942 peaking with 159 on 29th April 1943, just in time for the end of the U Boats most dangerous time with 41 U Boats sunk in May 1943.
I’m only stating what I have been told my learned people on this subject, and not from a writer of a novel!.
Yes, but no nation has been willing to use them since August 1945, and even then they weren’t war winning weapons but just one of the last few straws that broke the Japanese camel’s back.
However, improvements since 1945 make it possible to obliterate an enemy nation or at least render it incapable of resistance. This also tends to make it incapable of occupation.
Add in Winning Hearts and Minds and similar plans and desires to do civilian good instead of fighting an all out war as stupidly devised by the Americans in Vietnam and even now in Afghanistan where they, and their allies, think that building a well or school or hospital can overcome the elements which support opposition to the invader.
The problem with, or perhaps good thing about, wars since WWII is that none of them have been total wars, so all of them have been failures in one way or another, whether it’s the Americans and allies in Vietnam / Iraq / Afghanistan or the Soviets in Afghanistan / Chechnya and so on.
The reason that there hasn’t been a total war is that the nations with the greatest capacity to wage total war have been constrained by political considerations from doing so, as with America and allies holding back in Korea because of the fear of bringing the by then nuclear capable Soviets in to back the Chinese communists with more than the support already provided by the Soviets.
Unless it’s a total war, as with WWII when Allied atomic weapons were developed to use on Germany which inconveniently surrendered before the weapons were ready but available to help finish Japan off, the big bang ain’t gonna happen.
The war losing weapon is strategic and political stupidity by large nations which confuse their potential to deliver war winning weapons with the limited wars they choose to embark upon with conventional weapons which cannot obliterate or even subjugate their opponents within the political constraints which hamstring them from waging total war. With the exception of Gulf War 1, which was a perfect demonstration of what should be done to subjugate an enemy without getting into the pointless misery of Afghanistan and Iraq post-9/11.
The loss of Jews and others was not so much a manpower loss but more a loss of intellect and skill in so many areas which would have contributed to better war weapons and just about everything else which would have improved Germany’s capacity to fight. A lot of the loss was from scientists and other highly skilled people who fled the Nazis and Fascists, such as Fermi, Szilard and Bohr who made major contributions to the development of the atom bombs.
But there was no way that Hitler could have used Jews when his virulent political philosophy was based on presenting them as Untermensch hostile to and unworthy of everything for which his perverted version of Aryan superiority stood as the foundation of Nazism.
The loss of Jews and others was not so much a manpower loss but more a loss of intellect and skill in so many areas which would have contributed to better war weapons and just about everything else which would have improved Germany’s capacity to fight. A lot of the loss was from scientists and other highly skilled people who fled the Nazis and Fascists, such as Fermi, Szilard and Bohr who made major contributions to the development of the atom bombs.
Hi Rising Sun
But this is only what I said/trying to say: “German Jews to the concentration camps, instead, why didn’t he allow them to join his war machine”,
The problem with, or perhaps good thing about, wars since WWII is that none of them have been total wars, so all of them have been failures in one way or another, whether it’s the Americans and allies in Vietnam / Iraq / Afghanistan or the Soviets in Afghanistan / Chechnya and so on.
I agree 100%, it what you are saying, the outcome of these will not make any difference to Britain or America, Russia, my Father probably fought the ancestors of the ones they are fighting in Afghanistan today, only thing different then, back in the 1930s, it was called the North West Frontier, and he earned two medals for serving out there, although he did not receive them, he passed away in 1976, I don’t think he would have wanted them, after a research by me, I was issued with them in 2006,
When he came home, like many others, they went strait into WW2.
Because Hitler as the author of Nazi doctrine and the Nazis as believers of it would have had to accept Jews were equal to Aryans, which would have necessitated removing Jews as the cause of all that was ruining Germany from the 1918 ‘stab in the back’ armistice to everything before and since.
Add in widespread European, and I include in that British, suspicion of or hostility to Jews which was fuelled by the prominence of Jews in various communist movements from Russia westwards which threatened the established order between the wars.
The problem with creating a super race based on, among other things, creating a race of craven rats gnawing at the vitals of society and the economy, being the Jews, is that you can never allow the Jews to be anything but a cancer on your society. The last thing you’d do is let that cancer into your armed forces in pursuit of principles which included the elimination of Jews.
How could any Nazi who believed that persecution of the Jews as odious residents of the Reich, such as in Kristallnacht, was justified accept those vermin as soldiers, sailors and airmen in pursuit of the Nazi cause? Although undoubtedly there were many Jews who served unnoticed in the German armed forces in WWII, as did many in WW1, as Germans rather than Jews.
Not that the Nazis were entirely unique in formally excluding Jews from military service. The Americans had a similar attitude towards Negros in their armed forces as being hopelessly inferior to white people, although Negros didn’t suffer the same sort of horrors that Jews and others such as Gypsies and homosexuals and communists did in Nazi concentration and death camps.
The loss of Jews and others was not so much a manpower loss but more a loss of intellect and skill in so many areas which would have contributed to better war weapons and just about everything else which would have improved Germany’s capacity to fight. A lot of the loss was from scientists and other highly skilled people who fled the Nazis and Fascists, such as Fermi, Szilard and Bohr who made major contributions to the development of the atom bombs.
I don’t know where you are going?, your statement, as above, states:The loss of Jews and others was not so much a manpower loss but more a loss of intellect and skill in so many areas which would have contributed to better war weapons and just about everything else which would have improved Germany’s capacity to fight. A lot of the loss was from scientists and other highly skilled people who fled the Nazis and Fascists, such as Fermi, Szilard and Bohr who made major contributions to the development of the atom bombs.
People with special intellect and skills are a fraction of any given number of men.
For example, one doctor is worth perhaps a thousand infantrymen because he or she can keep many more healthy to fight and return many more injured to battle compared with a single grunt who can’t do either.
The likes of Fermi, Szilard and Bohr as refugees from Nazism, not to mention the likes of Oppenheimer (the descendant of a German Jew who emigrated to the US long before WW1), were worth incalculable numbers of grunts. As were many others whose names are not known but who contributed to various intellectual developments in logistics, ordnance, and manufacturing of materiel. And others whose names are known, such as Robert McNamara, who never got anywhere near the front but who made significant contributions to the war effort by introducing various efficiencies into war production and military operations.
I think we are now going off topic, Hitler’s Biggest Mistake, I stated, instead of getting rid of the German Jews, he should have used them in his war machine, IE:
The loss of Jews and others was not so much a manpower loss but more a loss of intellect and skill in so many areas which would have contributed to better war weapons and just about everything else which would have improved Germany’s capacity to fight. A lot of the loss was from scientists and other highly skilled people who fled the Nazis and Fascists, such as Fermi, Szilard and Bohr who made major contributions to the development of the atom bombs.
My own opinion is, if the German Jews, or say German Citizens, were not under threat from the Nazis, thus would not have fled their Germany. thus would have contributed to their Germany. and its no good in just saying, they didn’t have the finance or they were bankrupt, this is not a Hitler’s Biggest Mistake, we were bankrupt, and had the luck to borrow. In the end we won, you have only to look at state of Germany today, then look at the state of this country today (Britain).
The British won many of their post WW2 small wars by the hearts and minds method, the difference was that the British moved into an area imposed strict laws and had the manpower to enforce them, the insurgents were denied access to the civilian support they needed so had to move, the rules would be relaxed, infrastructure built, local defence force equipped and trained. They would be made responsible for the area around the village - insurgents come back all restrictions back in full - they made it worth while to change sides and support the goverment.
Those captured were offered money to turn over others, many actively went and brought in others or took part in operations.
An area would then be left to the local forces to protect -
The failure in Iraq and Afghanistan was underestimating and not understanding insurgents - not sending enough troops to do the job then half heartedly tried to make up for earlier blunders (mainly politicians getting stupidly involved).
In NI the politicians took a hard decision to bring in internment - the world was in uproar - it did its job though - nearly all players took off the streets allowing a rule of law to be re-imposed, outcry meant it was stopped but with the players being released slowly they never gained their strength to the extent they had, no longer were whole areas no-go and players openly carrying weapons on the streets manning checkpoints.
Expecting a quick hit and then hand over is pointless, Britain sent 3000 troops to an area the soviets had 30000 in and failed to control, this was later raised to 15000 troops in a so called surge - settling down to 9000 - unfortunately they allowed the insurgents to move back into the areas and then failed to provide sufficiet resources to shift them, no good clearing a town then walking out of it, the locals need to feel secure most locals don’t care who runs the place they just want to be left alone - whoever provides the security gets supported.
Even the British in WW2 were against Jewish units and only allowed one Brigade to fight in Italy in late 1944/45.
Even during the darkest days in North Africa and a ceasefire being called by the Jewish insurgents Britain had a sizeable military force in Palestine - this led to many uprisings by the Jews there (not to mention many who were escaping German treatment were ending up in British internment camps in Cyprus)
Britain was bankrupt in 1941 after 2 years of war, hence the destroyers for bases then lend lease - Germany would have been bankrupt long before without any war - it funded the country by stealing from all those countries it occupied, from the Jews that were allowed to leave (had to give up all posessions and buisnesses) and from all those undesirables in exectuted or worked to death.
This was your original quote that sparked my reply
It could have been that his biggest mistake/mistakes, was to send the German Jews to the concentration camps, instead, why didn’t he allow them to join his war machine, and the men of military age to join his army, (has they did in WW1). I don’t know how many more men this would have given him, but it would have given him a greater fire power, then when he went into Russia, and allowed the Russians who wanted to fight on his side, this then would have given him a even greater, greater fire power. all depending then on the outcome in Russia, on D-Day we could have ended up fighting the German’s, German Jews, and the Russian’s. “who know’s”
These were the points I hoped you could come up with answers to
How would he have utilised those extra bodies when he already had more men under arms than he used on Barbarossa (not just Germans either) - no need for them here then they make no difference.
Germany could not equip the units it actually had during WW2 never mind needing to supply its allies as well (including utilising captured equipment and production) so more manpower does not equate more firepower - just dilution of the existing firepower in effect making units weaker.
As I pointed out huge numbers of POW as well as people from occupied nations joined in fighting for the Axis. Many were poorly armed and equipped but still fought well - German had neither the materiel or the inclination to equip them properly.
Wages of Destruction really despite your dismissing as it being a ‘Novel as in story’ when it is in fact @Novel as in New’ is and excellent book that really does explain the problems Germany had and when, why it took certain courses of action as well and disproves many common myths.
Not trying to detract from the success of such policies, but when one compares the British and Australians against the communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s with the Americans and Australians (‘Americans’ for short as they were by far the main force in Vietnam, although hardly anyone knows about the significant South Korean contribution) in Vietnam shortly after, the British in Malaya had a number of advantages denied the Americans in Vietnam, notably:
Previous long standing British presence in Malaya, from civilians to government administrators, where the Americans in Vietnam had none. This gave the British connections and intelligence denied to the Americans in Vietnam. It also had locals, such as British planters, with a vested interest in British success where in Vietnam there were no American equivalents, albeit some, once removed, being the French colonialists who remained in South Vietnam.
Malayan communist insurgency primarily by Chinese who were very much a minority in Malaya and lacked support from ethnic Malay majority, where in Vietnam the communist insurgency in the south and the aggressors from the north were one ethnic group, albeit with sharply opposed political opinions.
Malayan communist insurgents lacked logistical and other support from USSR and China which was provided to Vietnam insurgents and northern aggressors. e.g. WWII bombers used by British in Malaya didn’t face Russian SAMs able to down latest American planes in Vietnam.
Malayan communist insurgents were a trivial part of the population compared with the numbers of southern insurgents and northern aggressors the Americans had to face in Vietnam.
5 While both Malayans and Vietnamese had been affected by Japan’s demonstration that the European colonial powers weren’t capable of holding their South East Asian colonies, which in turn gave rise to significantly increased local desires to throw off the colonial shackles, in Vietnam the Vietnamese did this convincingly in ousting the French by the mid 1950s but there was nothing even remotely comparable in Malaya. This resulted in a level of confidence in Vietnam about their ability to resist and overthrow a major European power which was absent in Malaya, where any hope of that confidence was destroyed by the British success in suppressing the Malayan communists. In Vietnam there was a morale building victory over the French, but in Malaya a morale sapping defeat by the British.
Has the British been the major force in Vietnam and given the same resources as the Americans, and had the British used the policies you mention, I doubt it would have produced a different result in the end.
The Americans in Vietnam managed to undermine their heavily promoted but scantily resourced hearts and minds program of inserting small forces into villages and hamlets to build up local relationships by major military operations, notably search and destroy aimed at small villages and hamlets. The locals rapidly worked out that the Americans weren’t likely to stay in the long term and that it wasn’t to their advantage to throw in their lot with a transient military exercise viewed against the retribution which could be expected from the Viet Cong in both the short and long term. There was no shortage of Vietnamese purporting to be aligned to the Americans as testament to the success of hearts and mind campaigns, yet found dead after combat engagements with American or South Vietnamese forces or otherwise compromised.
I don’t know to what, if any, extent this influenced Americans in Vietnam, but in WWII and subsequently America pursued a strong, not necessarily public, policy of opposing, or at the very least doing nothing to support, European colonies in Asia and Africa where it did not affect American interests. This might have put the Americans at odds to some degree with the remnant French colonists in South Vietnam, compared with the unity of purpose between British military forces and British colonists in Malaya. Regardless, the Americans as foreign forces in Vietnam were in a very different position to the British as a colonial power re-asserting its authority in Malaya.
As an aside on the stupidity of limited operations, at one stage the Australian forces in their area of operation in Vietnam were ordered not to undertake operations which could damage the rubber trees on a (I think French owned) plantation as the Australian military leadership / government didn’t want to pay compensation for the damage. No such rule applied to setting fire to the locals’ villages.
‘Novel’ is an adjective describing something new, which gives rise to the noun ‘novelty’, being a new item or process, such as the invention of railways, steamships, and electricity.
Novel in the adjectival sense is usually used to mean something quite different to that which previously existed, as in an original invention such as the gramophone or mobile phone, or a new interpretation of previous theories or understanding, such as the germ theory replacing previous ideas about spirits and miasmas etc.
(“Wages of Destruction” Penguin Books, by Adam Tooze, is a (novel) account. Of the Third Reich Wages?. I have not read this book, so I can only make my own interpretation. I ask myself, is it a (novel) account, meaning, a new look as to what did happen, or is it a (novel) fictional account on what did happen).
This all I could find on it, and it uses the word (novel) account). IE, a book length story. A fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters. A fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism:
After the defeat, the first thing the Germans took was his HP pistol and leather belts. The mortar was eventually scrapped in Belgium.