@CWO:
@Zhukov_2011:
Um, the Germans lost the war and in the process perpetrated the most evil, disgusting and unforgettable atrocities in all the long and brutal history of mankind. Who cares if someone “slams” the German Army? Good God, man. You don’t wish the Nazis had won the war, do you?
Like Zhukov, I’m wondering what larger point – if any – is being made in what might otherwise simply be a discussion of the state of German technology during the Second World War. Since this is Stanley Cup playoff season, let me use a hockey analogy to explain (in abstract terms) what’s puzzling me. Assume that Team X has just defeated Team Y in the last game of the playoffs and has won the Stanley Cup. The coach of Team Y is being interviewed after the game, and he tells the sports reporters something along these lines:
"Yes, well, it’s true that the other team won…but that’s an overly simplistic way of looking at the situation. Just look at the hockey equipment that our side was using, or was developing, and you’ll see that we were way ahead of the other team.
I’d like to address the points you’ve made in this post, beginning with Zhukov’s quote from the first paragraph. He asserted that the Nazis perpetrated “the most evil, disgusting and unforgettable atrocities in all the long and brutal history of mankind.” While those terms are fairly subjective, it is worth noting that during WWII, the Allies were responsible for a far greater number of illegally/immorally perpetrated deaths than were the Axis. These deaths include, but are not limited to, the millions which were caused by the Anglo-American food blockade of Germany, the various genocides the Soviets perpetrated during and after the war, and the bombing raids directed against German and Japanese cities and their people. The Allies were not the knights in shining armor that their propagandists worked so hard to portray them as. This is not to suggest that the Axis nations had avoided illegal killings–they most certainly had not. Examples of unjustifiable Axis actions include the following.
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The Anglo-American food blockade had created a food crisis in Germany. To prevent starvation of its own people, the German government gave a higher food priority to its own citizens than to the residents of occupied Poland and other territories. This was legal. A government has a greater moral responsibility to feed its own citizens than the non-citizen residents of territories it occupies. The millions of Poles who starved to death as a result of the food shortage were the sole responsibility of the Allied governments whose actions had caused starvation. In addition, the Nazis decided that Jews were less deserving of scarce calories than anyone else. Therefore, Jewish caloric consumption was to be eliminated. This singling out of the Jews was illegal and unethical.
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Communist guerrillas in France and in some Eastern European countries would appear, kill some German soldiers, and then fade into the general populace. This habit of fighting out of uniform was illegal. The reason this behavior is forbidden is to avoid creating an incentive for the victim of such attacks to retaliate against local civilian populations. Germany did engage in such retaliatory behavior: it killed large numbers of local civilians for each of its soldiers who had been illegally killed. The theory was that such retaliations would turn the local populace against the communist guerrillas. But whether that theory was correct or inaccurate, the retaliation killings were still illegal.
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The Japanese behavior in China was clearly an Axis atrocity.
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The German bombing of civilian targets in Britain and elsewhere was illegal. (Though the German raids were on a much smaller scale than the Allied bombing raids.)
None of the above, however, even comes remotely close to justifying the Allies’ atrocities during WWII. The communists in particular were murderers, and showed no hesitation about mowing down columns of German refugees, or raping and killing German women and girls during and after the war. The Soviet occupation of Germany has been described as the largest mass rape in human history. It is also worth noting that the British forbade significant Jewish entry into Palestine or their other colonies, even while adopting a food policy designed to starve Germany. Just which group did the British expect Hitler to select as the first victim for the starvation the British had chosen to create?
Prior to WWII, the Soviet communists were responsible for tens of millions of mass murders. These include the Ukrainian famine, the murder of non-communists and anti-communists, random killings of “enemies of the people” intended to weed out potential opposition, murders of kulaks and others based on economic class, the murder of the Russian intelligentsia, the murder of Christians and Christian clergy, the murder of a large number of Red Army officers in a Purge, and more. In contrast, the Nazis’ pre-war illegal killings included (and were more or less limited to), the non-judicial execution of a few hundred SA members in order to prevent a coup. Despite these track records, the major Western democracies consistently sided with the communists, and against the Nazis, in the cold war that had developed between Germany and the Soviet Union. The pro-communist atmosphere which existed inside FDR’s administration, in the American media, in France, and elsewhere strongly influenced the course of events. This pro-communist attitude was not based on concern about past mass murders, as shown by fact that the communists had a much worse pre-war track record than did the Nazis. Nor was it based on concern for avoiding future mass murders, as demonstrated by the fact that, in 1938, both Chamberlain and Daladier rejected Hitler’s offer to relocate Germany’s Jewish population to some remote British or French colony. (Hitler personally favored French Madagascar, but indicated he wasn’t picky.) The pro-communist policies of the Western democracies were not the result of sound moral conviction: they were the result of complete moral failure. This same moral failure would lead to resistance to anti-communism in the postwar era, a lack of concern for the victims behind the Iron Curtain, and a general willingness to look the other way while the communists committed whatever atrocities they felt like.
The statement has been made that the Germans did nothing while the Jews were being gathered up and placed in concentration camps. What, precisely, did the American public do to stop the Japanese living in the U.S. from being gathered up and placed in American concentration camps? It could be pointed out that, while conditions in both camps were very bad, and produced skeletal people, the concentration camps for the Jews were significantly worse even than those for the Japanese. But it is not exactly as though the average American personally visited (or was allowed to personally visit) the concentration camps for Japanese to see the conditions for himself. Therefore, it’s hard to blame the average German for having failed to have done the same with respect to his own nation’s camps. Similarly, the British people did not prevent their government from building concentration camps, or using them against the predominately Dutch settlers of South Africa, during the Boer War. These camps also resulted in living skeletons for people. The idea that the German people are uniquely and collectively guilty is Allied propaganda; and has about as much truth and justice as you’d expect from propagandists at their very worst.
Having addressed the first point, I’ll move onto the second. “Like Zhukov, I’m wondering what larger point – if any – is being made in what might otherwise simply be a discussion of the state of German technology during the Second World War.” That is a fair and legitimate question.
In the early 1930s, the international communist party regarded fascism as the penultimate in a series of steps which would ultimately lead to communism. Therefore, the German communist party did not align itself with the mainstream parties in an effort to keep the Nazis out of power. But the rise of the Nazi Party did not help move Germany towards communism. Instead, communist leaders were placed in concentration camps, sources of communist influence were dissolved or taken over by the Nazi government; and the German people gradually became united. Jails were empty, unemployment was largely eliminated, the workforce had decent wages and a decent standard of living, and patriotism was strong. Germany was proving largely immune to the communist virus.
Therefore, the international communist party would change tacks. In the future, it would focus on “anti-fascism,” which in practice meant encouraging the Western democracies to oppose Germany. Stalin regarded both the Nazis and the democracies as equally enemies. He hoped for a long war between the two sides–a war which would bleed them both white, and cripple both Nazi and Western democratic resistance to a Soviet move westward into the heart of Europe. His hope was therefore to remain neutral in the sought-after war between Germany and the western democracies.
Communist and pro-communist influence within major western democracies was very strong. Thus, the Nazis could not necessarily hope to maintain their government through diplomacy alone–at least not over the long term. If a solid core of influential people pushes in a specific direction long enough–as the French Communist Party and other like-minded organizations could be expected to do–that group can often achieve its objective over the long run.
In 1935, France signed a defensive alliance with the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia also sided with the Soviets. These developments meant that the Soviets’ diplomatic policy was picking up steam; and that the Western democratic governments were becoming increasingly pro-Soviet and anti-German in policy.
The Nazis had relatively little control over political forces in France or elsewhere–much less influence than, for example, the Soviet Union had. If the Soviet Union was pursuing a war against Germany by proxy (using or influencing Western democracies to achieve its own ends), Germany would respond by becoming militarily and economically stronger. This strategy involved the building up of Germany’s military (so as to increase its negotiating influence), the re-acquiring of territory taken by the Versailles Treaty, and other tactics. In 1938, Germany successfully annexed Czechoslovakia–an act which both strengthened Germany’s industrial base and sent a message to other Eastern European governments which might otherwise have been tempted to side with the Soviets.
In 1939, Poland adopted a foreign policy that was both anti-German and anti-Soviet. It did so largely because of France’s (false) promise to launch a general offensive against Germany if Germany went to war with Poland. Polish foreign policy therefore reflected the wishes of France (which wanted to foster disagreements between Germany and Poland), rather than the best interests of Poland.
Once the war began, Germany found itself at a severe disadvantage to Britain and France, especially in terms of access to raw materials and industrial capacity. Also, Britain and France could rely on weapons purchases from American factories. Initially, Germany was able to offset this strategic disadvantage with good tactics, and the skill and courage of its military. But the fall of France did not solve Germany’s problems. Germany was still at a disadvantage to Britain in terms of military production capacity–especially when the Lend-Lease Aid was added in. Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union was (among other things) a bid to rectify that imbalance–to gain for itself the manpower, raw materials, and industrial capacity necessary to balance out the aircraft being built in British and American factories.
However, Germany did not have the same weapons manufacturing capacity as did the Soviets. Moreover, its prewar population was 69 million people–as compared to 169 million for the Soviet Union. Germany could only field an army a fraction the size of its Soviet counterpart. Initially, Germany made up for this by a very one-sided exchange ratio. But at the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviets succeeded in killing or capturing almost as many Germans as they themselves lost. While the Germans later returned to attaining one-sided exchange ratios–Kursk is a good example–it was not enough to protect the German homeland against the strength of the Red Army.
Prior to WWII, the Western democracies and the communists were each stronger than Germany. The major Western democracies liked the communists much more than they liked Germany. (Though it is worth noting that the democratic government of Finland was not pro-communist, and fought against communism during WWII.) The story of the war in Europe is therefore a story of Germany’s ultimately unsuccessful efforts to overcome the economic and military weakness which Hitler’s government had inherited from the Versailles Treaty. Pre-war, those efforts involved sacrifice–Germany spent 20% of its GDP on its military. Early in the war, Germany’s efforts for survival revolved around quick conquests–on starting and ending wars quickly, before the other side’s economic advantage could force a decision against Germany. Blitzkrieg allowed Germany to quickly conquer Poland, France, and the western portion of the Soviet Union.
But blitzkrieg could only achieve so much. By the fall of ‘41 it had become clear that the German plan of quickly destroying the communists’ military strength had failed. Everything which occurred from '42 onward–and especially from '43 onward–represents a subsequent phase of the Nazi government’s attempt to survive.
In 1942, the Allies produced four times as many military aircraft as did the Axis. While both sides increased military aircraft production over the next two years, the Axis increased it more. In 1944, the Allies produced only twice as many military aircraft as did the Axis. (Military aircraft production is a somewhat reasonable proxy for overall military production.) Germany produced nearly three times as many military aircraft in '44 as it had in '42. But at no point after it invaded the Soviet Union could it have hoped to achieve victory by outproducing its enemies. Even before Barbarossa, the large numbers of U.S.-made military aircraft and other weapons being sent to Britain meant that it would have been virtually impossible for Germany to match the Allies on quantity.
While large-scale production increases had to be part of any successful German strategy for victory, Germany would face large numerical disparities no matter how successful it was in mobilizing its own industrial strength. Therefore, a substantial qualitative advantage was also required. Its infantry had such an advantage: a study I saw indicated that German infantry were, on a man-for-man basis, three times as combat-effective as their Soviet counterparts. American and British infantry were 80% and 50%, respectively, as effective as the Germans.
Assuming the Allies were able to maintain their 2:1 - 4:1 advantage in weapons manufacturing, German weapons would have to be twice to four times as effective as their Allied counterparts to give Germany a chance. The fact that Germany was in the process of developing a number of such wonder-weapons when the war ended is therefore highly interesting. Had those weapons been developed two to three years earlier, and had Germany’s production increase also occurred earlier, a plausible Axis victory scenario could be created. Once Germany was at war with both Britain and the Soviet Union (with American industrial strength turned against it as well through Lend-Lease), the only plausible Axis victory scenarios absolutely require Germany to attain a significant qualitative advantage over its enemies. The fact that so many advanced forms of weaponry were being developed in late-war Germany means that a significant qualitative advantage could have formed the basis for a German war strategy. However, that advantage would have needed to be attained soon enough to matter. (Or, conversely, the war would need to have been delayed to give Germany enough time to put that qualitative advantage into effect.)
I realize these are history forums, and that they will tend to attract people who wish to discuss what did happen (the Allies won), and not necessarily what could have happened. The larger point of any technology-based “what if?” scenarios may or may not interest you personally. I enjoy such discussions, in large part because of how they tie in to the question of the larger strategic options available to the Axis.
