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Liberating the Warsaw ghetto in 1941 is going to be pretty impressive.
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Nov 9, 2018 06:59
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Imagine this going on concurrently with grays Japan play through. Communist Europe anyone?
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Nov 9, 2018 07:00
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Now that I think about it, is there any reason why the 6th Cav couldn't just camp Elbing for the better part of the war and utterly ruin AGN's supply until they retreat? Or is that not how it works?
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Nov 9, 2018 07:18
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Dr. Snark posted:Now that I think about it, is there any reason why the 6th Cav couldn't just camp Elbing for the better part of the war and utterly ruin AGN's supply until they retreat? Or is that not how it works? you can find alternate rail routes around it, and that unit is going to disintegrate against the first thing that touches it, but in the sense that the AI might never do the latter, yes, you can do that.
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Nov 9, 2018 07:22
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How is that unit still in supply?
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Nov 9, 2018 07:38
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Saint Celestine posted:How is that unit still in supply? It's not "in supply" - it has 85% of its supplies needed, 73% of its fuel needed, and 143% of its ammo needed, but it's still considered Isolated. The amount of supplies/fuel/ammo in a unit can be nominal/acceptable, but if the unit cannot trace a path back to an active rail-head, it's still considered Isolated, which imposes significant combat penalties and will cause surrenders if the unit loses a combat. If a unit is "in supply" but has run out of supplies/fuel/ammo, then it can't move (as much) and will perform worse in combat. If a unit is both Isolated and is low on supplies/fuel/ammo, then both apply.
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Nov 9, 2018 08:00
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Apparently it’s less of an invasion and more of a complete population migration, the units wandering around in Poland and Germany must be scratching their heads wondering where all the people went...
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Nov 9, 2018 09:19
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Could anyone comment on Axis losses compared to what usually happens and history? They are at 1100 AFVs lost, so I imagine slowly grinding Soviet formations depletes their inventory fast.
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Nov 9, 2018 09:46
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I wonder what the domestic German political situation is like. Having thousands of Soviet troops pillaging East Prussia in 1941 is not the best look.
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Nov 9, 2018 10:49
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It's good that "Operation Tempest" is either not coded or has a well made trigger conditions. Otherwise a couple of light brigades of Home Army would spawn between Vilnius, Lvov and Warsaw.
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Nov 9, 2018 11:01
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Grey, why are you worried about the Fins? You can just pull back to their no-attack line and put random garbage guys on the line against them unless you lose Leningrad.
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Nov 9, 2018 20:40
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Yeah. I think I forgot the no attack line for a bit...
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Nov 9, 2018 21:20
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Yeah, but it makes it more interesting anyway. IRL the Soviets didn't know that the Finns weren't going to try to cross into Leningrad proper during the initial invasion. (though after 3 more years of them staying roughly in the same lines they probably guessed)
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Nov 9, 2018 21:34
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Grey also doesn't have too many troops on the Olonets Isthmus, and you need a line of them there to make the Finns stop advancing, right? Granted there's plenty of time to round those guys up.
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Nov 9, 2018 21:41
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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The Finns won't pass the no attack line until the Germans capture Leningrad. Then they can push to a second line further up, but even so they're a huge boon to the Germans because they're an actual competent ally who can win a stand-up fight.
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Nov 11, 2018 15:22
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Zeroisanumber posted:The Finns won't pass the no attack line until the Germans capture Leningrad. Then they can push to a second line further up, but even so they're a huge boon to the Germans because they're an actual competent ally who can win a stand-up fight. They can move past the first line, but if you put even the smallest random guy on the other side of the line they won't attack them to get in there.
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Nov 11, 2018 16:47
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   All may not be quiet on the Eastern front, but it's certainly not going anywhere!
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Nov 12, 2018 06:24
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Man, that's a lot of units vacationing on the Dniepr. Don't they know there's a war on?
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Nov 12, 2018 06:57
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You pushed back the line in the north? This really is Stalin's timeline. Time for him to mess it up by executing these popular generals I guess.
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Nov 12, 2018 07:57
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Hitler: "No, sorry, I think you've accidentally printed some of the maps from three weeks ago here, I need the up-to-date ones." (awkward silence)
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Nov 12, 2018 08:16
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It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to capture a historical German rate of advance into Russia while also giving the Russian player lots of agency and without hitting them with massive (arbitrary?) penalties.
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Nov 12, 2018 08:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to capture a historical German rate of advance into Russia while also giving the Russian player lots of agency and without hitting them with massive (arbitrary?) penalties. Yeah the thing is I think IRL Barbarossa went about as well as could possibly be expected and yet it fell short of the mark. Short story is that WWII just was an extremely bad idea by the Germans, what the gently caress were they thinking? Even against Britain, arguably the weakest of the Allied great powers, Germany had practically no chance of attaining an actual military victory. Their only real hope was that Britain and the Soviet Union may have sought a negotiated peace if the Americans weren't going to get involved and Germany had done far better against the Soviet Union than they did (which may not even have been realistically possible) and neither of them had governments that were determined to see the war through to the end. Zeroisanumber posted:The Finns won't pass the no attack line until the Germans capture Leningrad. Then they can push to a second line further up, but even so they're a huge boon to the Germans because they're an actual competent ally who can win a stand-up fight. On that note, how did Finnish forces perform in the Continuation War? I've sort of gotten the understanding that a signficant reason for the incredible performance of the Finns in the Winter War, outside their tenacity and knowledge of the terrain, comes down to the extreme incompetence of the Soviet commanders, especially Voroshilov, once he was replaced by someone (Timoshenko, I believe) who understood how to best apply the superiority of the Soviet forces, particularly in artillery, the Finns actually folded pretty quickly under the onslaught (though the Soviets continued to take heavy losses due to the issues persisting in their armed forces in general and command structure in particular, but at least they were successful). Also having read some memoirs/reflections by Soviet soldiers (there's a Russian site that has some that's pretty good, can't remember it now though) they generally seem to have regarded the Italians and Romanians as lesser opposition (especially since they largely were almost completely lacking in effective AT weapons), many seem to have had pretty high regard for the Hungarians, a Soviet tank commander regarded them as "good warriors" IIRC.
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Nov 12, 2018 15:41
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Randarkman posted:Short story is that WWII just was an extremely bad idea by the Germans, what the gently caress were they thinking? It's almost like they decided to blame World War I loss on the Jewish people rather than learn any lessons from it.
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Nov 12, 2018 16:13
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Randarkman posted:Yeah the thing is I think IRL Barbarossa went about as well as could possibly be expected and yet it fell short of the mark. Short story is that WWII just was an extremely bad idea by the Germans, what the gently caress were they thinking? There's a couple of things that the Germans arguably could have done better, particularly in September and October, that could have lead to them maybe possibly being in a position to take Moscow before the end of 1941, but it's very unlikely that capturing Moscow would have caused the war to "end" - the Soviet leadership were prepared to fight on from Kuybyshev if they had to, and I don't see them giving up as long as they still held onto positions west of the Urals. And even if they did take Moscow, that still means the war passes the Dec 7th 1941 point, and that still means Hitler declares war on the US afterwards, so that still means Germany gets embroiled in a two-front war anyway. So best case, a wildly successful Barbarossa (insofar as historical Barbarossa was already far more successful than it had any right to be) that somehow drives all the way to the Arkangelsk-Astrakhan line and manages to destroy so much of the Red Army that there's no high-intensity combat operations (and I'm already stretching all plausibility here) means most of the German army is still tied up in a horrible occupation+insurgency that they have really no chance of ever ending, and then Germany still has no way of invading Britain, and eventually the Manhattan Project pays off, and the B-29 project pays off, and Berlin gets nuked sometime in 1946/1947. Anything less than that, and the Red Army still fights back, just from a worse starting-line than they historically did, and you're still looking at Zhukov marching into Berlin, just at a later date. And there's no way that Germany doesn't invade Russia either - Hitler's ideology had locked him into it.
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Nov 12, 2018 16:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:And there's no way that Germany doesn't invade Russia either - Hitler's ideology had locked him into it. Not just Hitler really. Occupying Eastern Europe and using it to feed a blockaded Germany was an idea that many German officers had gotten into their heads after the defeat of Russia in WW1, though Hitler's idea of Lebensraum went much further. Germany really could not have stopped expanding if it was going to fight Britain who given time would be able to strangle and starve Germany if the Germans did not conquer and plunder other countries to feed their people and war machine. gradenko_2000 posted:Anything less than that, and the Red Army still fights back, just from a worse starting-line than they historically did, and you're still looking at Zhukov marching into Berlin, just at a later date. The Western Allies invading France might still have happened at some time even with the Soviets weakened or knocked out (which really I think would have meant an uneven truce with the Soviets licking their wounds and rebuilding their forces with their own evacuated factories and American Lend-Lease. The Germans likely would have had to had to garrison a million men or more (possibly more) to watch the border and fight partisans. The Western Allies likely still would have achieved air superiority and achieved the destruction of the Luftwaffe as an effective airforce (though without an active war in the East it might take longer as there would simply be more of it to destroy and bombers might suffer higher losses, though in reality too the bulk of the Luftwaffe was deployed to defend Germany when Allied bombing really started to step up in intensity in 1942 and 1943, by early 1944 the Luftwaffe was a spent force. The Allies might very well be able to knock out Italy and distract the Germans there and as I said invade France, though possibly later (the British especially would probably be very reluctant without the Russians constantly pressuring and guilting them to do something). Leveraging their air superiority to deny the Germans strategic mobility would likely be able to make up for any numerical inferiority they might possibly have, though Germany doing this well would likely have resulted in a stronger impetus for Germany First in America, and Germany could not hope to match the US military when it really got going. It is worth remembering thta "knocking out" the Soviets or seizing Moscow and effectively much of Western Russia in 1941/42 in all likelihood means the enactment of Generalplan Ost and the deaths of countless millions in the coming winter. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Nov 12, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 19:16
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Randarkman posted:On that note, how did Finnish forces perform in the Continuation War? I've sort of gotten the understanding that a signficant reason for the incredible performance of the Finns in the Winter War, outside their tenacity and knowledge of the terrain, comes down to the extreme incompetence of the Soviet commanders, especially Voroshilov, once he was replaced by someone (Timoshenko, I believe) who understood how to best apply the superiority of the Soviet forces, particularly in artillery, the Finns actually folded pretty quickly under the onslaught (though the Soviets continued to take heavy losses due to the issues persisting in their armed forces in general and command structure in particular, but at least they were successful). They did ok. The first year of the war, they took Karellia, and tried, but failed to take Murmansk. 1942 and 1943 turned into trench warfare, because the Finns, having taken back Karelia, didn't really have any other strategic goals, and the Soviets couldn't really spare the men for an major assault. In 1944, the Soviets launched a major offensive, smashed the Finnish lines, and took Karelia back, although the Finns were able to stabilize the lines and stop them from moving into the rest of Finland. Ryti resigned, and the new government negotiated a peace treaty.
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Nov 12, 2018 19:53
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Those panzers not being isolated is a weird bug. Grey got cheated. The units around Pskov remind me of one unit per tile games like civ. Just a slow moving carpet of soldiers as far as the recon planes can see. Is there a mechanical advantage to spreading units out like that instead of stacking them?
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Nov 12, 2018 21:11
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LLSix posted:The units around Pskov remind me of one unit per tile games like civ. Just a slow moving carpet of soldiers as far as the recon planes can see. Is there a mechanical advantage to spreading units out like that instead of stacking them? Units use up movement points both for moving and for carrying out attacks. Rolling out the carpet/defense in depth is your best bet for bogging down a breakthrough attempt when you can't guarantee to outright stop attacks against your frontline.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:10
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This game does a pretty good job at showing how necessary defense in depth is.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:17
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  Just me stalling Hitler and burning his cities....
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Nov 13, 2018 06:14
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Grey Hunter posted:
Gdańsk is ancient Polish clay!  And on a serious note: Grey's raiders liberated Konzentrationslager Stutthof.
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Nov 13, 2018 10:41
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Randarkman posted:Not just Hitler really. Occupying Eastern Europe and using it to feed a blockaded Germany was an idea that many German officers had gotten into their heads after the defeat of Russia in WW1, though Hitler's idea of Lebensraum went much further. Germany really could not have stopped expanding if it was going to fight Britain who given time would be able to strangle and starve Germany if the Germans did not conquer and plunder other countries to feed their people and war machine. Interesting thought. Considering the havoc wreaked upon Japan, it’s hard to see a German victory that doesn’t begin with them knocking Great Britain out of the war and negotiating a peace treaty in Western Europe before the middle of 1941. This would have had several important effects: it would have released German forces from France, Norway and Africa, it would have reduced the manpower needs of air defence, it would have freed up the Luftwaffe and allowed it to grow into a more effective ground-attack force, it would have allowed for greater access to strategic resources (if trade could be established), and possibly it might have put quite the crimp on lend-lease (more for logistical reasons, because I bet everyone would still want to have done it). I give that particular timeline because I strongly believe that, in the absence of Barbarossa, Stalin would have attacked Hitler at some point instead. And, barring that, with the Americans involved the war likely becomes unwinnable for simple logistical reasons. Similarly he would need to have attacked Stalin first because a defensive war was probably even more unwinnable than an offensive one. The big problem for Hitler, of course, is that Sealion was a total impossibility. Without Sealion or the sort of total, overwhelming aerial supremacy the United States had over Japan in 1945 - including the bomb - I cannot imagine how he might have compelled the British to surrender. And with Britain, the Commonwealth, and the United States still in the war, even with the Soviets out, it becomes a totally unwinnable aerial war that ends with Hitler being couped after n German cities vanish in atomic fire. E: the more interesting counterfactual to me is where Hitler has a sudden bout of insight and leaves Poland alone. Whether the man was constitutionally capable of that sort of restraint is another question entirely, particularly in light of irredentism and the desire for lebensraum. Maybe he has a heart attack and dies right after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia or is subject to a military coup after signing Molotov-Ribbentrop or something. I for one would like to have found out which European totalitarian regime collapses to its internal contradictions first: the Nazis or the Soviets. David Corbett fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 12:58
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David Corbett posted:E: the more interesting counterfactual to me is where Hitler has a sudden bout of insight and leaves Poland alone. Whether the man was constitutionally capable of that sort of restraint is another question entirely, particularly in light of irredentism and the desire for lebensraum. Maybe he has a heart attack and dies right after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia or is subject to a military coup after signing Molotov-Ribbentrop or something. I for one would like to have found out which European totalitarian regime collapses to its internal contradictions first: the Nazis or the Soviets. That's about as likely as Hitler not attacking the Soviet Union. You have to remember that the conquest (and destruction) of Poland was very much the first step on the road towards Lebensraum which was the overall objective for the entire war in the East. Then you have to remember to that Hitler, like most Germans probably, saw the creation of Poland as one of the greatest (if not the greatest injustice) of Versailles. Poland was never really given the chance to negotiate or agree to any German demands, in fact they never really got the demands in any details before the Germans said the deadline was up and war was declared. This was precisely the point, Hitler did not want to be cheated out of his war again, he wanted and needed war, now and not later when he would be old and posssibly dead. There's also the fact that the German economy had almost been running on empty for several years fueling the Nazis' military expansion, without war and the infusion of foreign resources and slave labor it's unclear how much longer it could have kept on going (again war was the aim). Hitler does seem to have been surprised that the Western Allies actually did declare war on him over Poland, though as he counted on them backing down again. This may have held true if it was France alone, but Hitler either did not count on or was ignorant to the old British commitment to upholding the European status quo and their horror at any one country disturbing this or possibly establishing hegemony. So yeah, after having been deceived at Munich the chances were slim indeed that the British and by extension their allies the French were going to allow any more aggression by Germany and without aggression and expansion the German economy and the Nazi regime would have been in trouble. There's the question of what the Germans might have done if, unlikely as it was, France and Britain had not declared war over Poland. Though with their Eastern flank secured by M-R, it seems likely to me that the Germans still would have launched the war in the West in order to secure their backs and avoid a two front war for when they move against the Soviet Union. They were deluded enough to think that they could secure a quick victory by conquering France, which would bring Britain to the negotiating table. This wasn't completely out of the picture really, there were those who were arguing in favor for it after the fall of France, but with Churchill maintaining power and being supported in his obstinacy not to ask for terms by leading politicians of the Labor Party for isntance, this did not come to pass. On a side note I personally don't believe Stalin would have attacked Hitler without first having secured an alliance with Britain. e: On a completely different note, an old (well 10+ years or so) GURPS sourcebook, Infinite Worlds focused on travelling to different timelines, included several different "German victory" scenarios. All named "Reich". They aren't necessarily terribly realistic but some of them are at least kind of interesting, number 2 is probably my "favorite" of those, though number 5, the all-nazi world with occult science is one most detailed in the book and intended as a possible "villain world". Reich-1, 1953 - Britain agrees to harsh peace terms after the Germans destroy the BEF at Dunkirk. Germany defeats the Soviet Union and the United States destroys Japan. Himmler seizes power after Hitler dies in 1949 and purges the party and invades Britain provoking a war with the United States. Neither power has developed nukes, but the Americans are blockading all of Europe and are assembling a gigantic invasion force in Iceland (sounds like a logistical nightmare). Reich-2, 1962 - Lord Halifax succeeds Chamberlain after the Norway fiasco. With the Fall of France, Halifax negotiates an armistice with Germany but immediately takes to expanding the military. Lord Halifax also agrees to sell oil and rubber to Japan and agrees to their conquest of Indochina, the Dutch East Indies and China. The Japanese don't declare war on the US due to the oil embargo having been broken, and the United States does not enter the war. Germany and the Soviet Union fight to a stalemate in 1943, with the Germans holding onto the Baltics and part of Ukraine and Belarus. After this the world settles into a five-sided cold war with unsure and shifting alliances. Reich-3, 1970 - Japan attacks Vladivostok in 1941 rather than Pearl Harbor. US remains isolationist and does not fund much nuclear research. Germany and Japan divide Eurasia between them. In addition to being isolationist the US has been diplomatically isolated as fascist regimes have been propped up in South and Central America by Germany and Japan. Tensions are building between Germany and Japan. Reich-4, 1988 - Germany wins the war in the East after conquering Leningrad (and presumably other cities I would hope) in 1941. In 1945 Germany and Japan develop nuclear weapons and use them to cement their victory. US investment in AA defences is subverted by German ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. After the surrender of the US following the destruction of much of its industrial and miltiary infrastructure, North America is split between the Axis powers, with Japan providing the bulk of occupation forces. Conflict over oil in the Persian Gulf in 1979 leads to nuclear war, which Germany "wins". Reich-5, 2010 - FDR is assassinated in 1933, the US stays isolationist and the New Deal is never implemented, and the country wallows in depression. France falls as IRL, and Britain succumbs to unrestricted submarine warfare without American aid. Barbarossa is launched in May 1941 and is wildy successful, the Germans secure victory by 1942. Japan eventually prevails in the east, seizing Australia in 1943 and attacks the US in 1944, striking the Phillippines, Guam and Hawaii simultaneously. American democracy collapses under the pressure and Silver Shirts seize power, but are opposed by anti fascist forces and nearly toppled, but Germany sends military aid to secure the fascist regime and crushes the anti-fascist forces with nuclear weapons. Heydrich succeeds Hitler, the entire world is facist with Germany, Japan and America being the great powers (with Germany by far the strongest, and large parts of America a nuclear wasteland). Everything is pretty horrible, the SS operates their own state within a state in Burgundy and conduct lots of crackpot occult research and rituals. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 14:05
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David Corbett posted:E: the more interesting counterfactual to me is where Hitler has a sudden bout of insight and leaves Poland alone. Whether the man was constitutionally capable of that sort of restraint is another question entirely, particularly in light of irredentism and the desire for lebensraum. Maybe he has a heart attack and dies right after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia or is subject to a military coup after signing Molotov-Ribbentrop or something. I for one would like to have found out which European totalitarian regime collapses to its internal contradictions first: the Nazis or the Soviets. "What if the Nazis weren't insane racists obsessed with Lebensraum" is one of the gayest, blackest Hitlers I've ever heard so yeah this is really conterfactual. Even if Hitler dies, as long as the Nazi party in general is still in charge they're still invading Eastern Europe.
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Nov 13, 2018 15:46
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Slovakia is a Slav nation formally in Axis, so Czech or Slovak kind of deal to former Russian controlled part of Poland isn't that much far-fetched. Hitler could probably wring 10-15 divisions for Barbarossa too, but he had a massive hate-crush for Poland.
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Nov 13, 2018 15:56
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I don't know if it's kosher to talk in such deterministic fashion, but Nazi Germany was always going to invade Poland, which means it was always going to end up in a war against Britain, which means it's always going to end up a war that it can't end because it has no way of forcing Britain to submit. Meanwhile, they're always going to want to invade Russia because the German economy can only sustain itself through loot-and-plunder.
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Nov 13, 2018 16:16
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I keep hearing that about the Nazi economy. Surely it hadn't changed fundamentally from previous generations. There were still bankers and merchants and factory workers and farmers, etc. Nazism was inherently capitalist. So what was different that it was being propped up by plunder, and why couldn't the domestic economy and trade sustain their level of spending in the way that other major powers successfully managed wartime economies and full mobilization?
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Nov 13, 2018 16:22
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Flavius Aetass posted:I keep hearing that about the Nazi economy. Surely it hadn't changed fundamentally from previous generations. There were still bankers and merchants and factory workers and farmers, etc. Nazism was inherently capitalist. The other major powers didn't successfully manage wartime economies and full mobilization, Britain and France after WW1 owed so much money to America in war credits, and America was so intransigent in its insistence that they repay those loans, that it was a major factor in the collapse of international trade in the 1930s. It was even worse for Britain after WW2, when they were basically completely bankrupt and US loans were the only things keeping them out of total insolvency
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Nov 13, 2018 18:25
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Flavius Aetass posted:I keep hearing that about the Nazi economy. Surely it hadn't changed fundamentally from previous generations. There were still bankers and merchants and factory workers and farmers, etc. Nazism was inherently capitalist. Germany started re-arming sooner and on a larger scale than Britain and France, which is a large part of why they were so effective in the early years. While this helps the economy start to recover, this is still the Great Depression and the magic only works as long as the state can keep spending massive sums on armaments. That level of spending wasn't going to be sustainable for them in peacetime, and it only got less sustainable when the war started and the blockade came down. German GDP was sizable, but the British have their empire to lean on (even if that will contribute to its dissolution post-war) and, the U-Boats notwithstanding, are not blockaded. Then there's the stream of material aid from the US, which itself will be light-years ahead of Germany once it mobilizes. And then there's the problem where Germany just isn't efficient. There's a great talk that the mil-hist thread loves about how lovely their tank production was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ&t=1606s. That video is pretty representative of German war production. They haven't adopted Fordism nearly as much as the other powers and their factory design hasn't advanced much since the 19th century. Nazi politics keep getting in the way and making a mess of their procurement process. There are a billion little fiefdoms all backbiting and sabotaging each other so they can scavenge each other's resources. The German penchant for over-engineering has free reign and so Wehrmacht equipment is generally optimized for performance, with manufacturability being a distant criterion if they consider it at all (even a relatively modest German tank, the Panzer IV, was an absolute nightmare to produce compared to Shermans and T-34s). The Germans could rarely make themselves stick to consistent designs in order to reap the benefits of large-batch production; on average the Tiger I was modified every fourth or fifth vehicle. Someone in mil-hist has talked about how the German agricultural sector was pretty backwards too, and so was part of the motivation for Lebensraum in the first place. Also, the Germans often just don't have a good sense of what their strategic priorities are. They dumped vast resources into capital warships only to still be hopelessly outclassed by the Royal Navy (to say nothing of the British+Americans). They could never stop trying to develop strategic bombers that they would have never been able to use anyway. The V2 was enormously expensive and like the battleships did absolutely nothing to help Germany. They dabble just enough with nuclear weapons for it to be a useless drain but not have any chance whatsoever of producing a practical weapon. So the short answer is that while German economic capacity was large, it was still dwarfed by that of their combined enemies, and they weren't effectively using what they had either. And even then it's not like the allies didn't have to stretch themselves. The Soviets suffered unimaginable sacrifices but survived by grasping what industrial war is and masterfully managing their resources with a clear view of their strategic priorities. The British were in a relatively good position but still ended themselves as a great power to win the war. Nobody leaves the war in good shape except the US because oceans and because US production and manpower is just loving ludicrous.
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Nov 13, 2018 18:26
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Flavius Aetass posted:I keep hearing that about the Nazi economy. Surely it hadn't changed fundamentally from previous generations. There were still bankers and merchants and factory workers and farmers, etc. Nazism was inherently capitalist. The short answer is that other major powers were also in unsustainable wartime economies. The UK didn't end rationing until 1954, ended the war in a huge amount of debt to the US, and spent themselves into a hole that spelled the end of their empire. The US (AFAIK) was not "fully mobilized" in the sense that it barely dipped into its full manpower for manning its armed forces, and even then it still had to impose rationing until 1946. Russia suffered immensely from having lots of its industry wrecked, losing large swathes of its population, and arguably was only able to survive in this respect because of the particulars of its centralized command economy. Germany wasn't insulated from the destruction of the war (that it started), didn't have centralized control over its industries like Russia (or even the US) did, did not enter into a full war-time footing until 1944 (because Hitler was wary of rationing and deprivation of the civilian population inciting dissent), but then also didn't have an extensive colonial empire like the UK did, and no longer had access to international trade. The only way this was going to "work" was by using the resources of everyone else that Germany had conquered, to "feed" Germany.
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Nov 13, 2018 18:50
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