decisive battle debate

There were no decisive battles on the Eastern Front,nor elsewhere .

No serious historian is defending this old theory from the fifties.

 

336000 is nothing compared to the 20 million potential purchasers of a car,it isalso nothing compared to the enormous investments which were needed :if only 336000 cars were sold,the whole thing would result in a catastrophe .

 

Wishful thinking from Hitler:not for the first time he was taking his desires for reality :saying :what's possible in the US is possible in Germany,was wrong .Germany of 1936 was not US of 1936.It was not possible to import the American way of live to Europe ..
To paraphrase Kipling : Germany was Germany and the US were the US and they never would meet each other .

 

They only had sold in excess of 2 years of production.

Besides,it's meaningless :it does not mean that they would sell 336000 cars in 2 years,because it took 3/4 years till a potential purchaser had saved enough money to buy his car :those who started to save 5 $ a week in 1937,could receive their car only in 1940/1941,those who started in 1938 in 1941/1942,etc.

Wolfsburg had a production capacity of 150000 and could only sell less than 100000 which means that the choice would be to produce at 60 % of its capacity or to produce every year 60000 cars to much .In both cases,the future was cery grim .

To be successful,not 336000 prospective buyers were needed in the lead time,but several millions .

 

According to you, there was no need. Suddenly, you are talking about 20 million potential purchasers? Which is it? Do you really think you are making any sense whatsoever?

Show me another business that had 336,000 actually committed to purchasing the product, prior to its actual production facility being built, that turned into a catastrophe, excluding unforeseeable disasters.

 

In theory there were some 20 million potential purchasers for the VW : all male men between 20 and 60 :thus,338000 was less than 2 %


Reality was that there were maybe a few million,maybe: from those 20 million one must subtract

the farmers: there was no need for farmers to buy a car,they never would use him .

the workers : Germany (as the other European countries) was a class society and for the workers only the rich /bourgeois were using a car ,thus :the enemy,a worker buying a car would be ostracised,he would be considered as a traitor .

Remaining were the middle-classes and the rich,the latter would prefer to die than to buy a VW.

And from these,one should subtract those who had already a car (some 1.5 million)

The conclusion is that after the 336000 had their car, it is more than doubtful that there would be a reserve of potential purchasers that would be sufficient to avoid the bankruptcy of the whole enterprise .

Before the war,Germany (and the rest of Europe) were not ready for a mass production of cars/trucks/tractors . This would require a total transformation of the European society which happened only after (far after) WWII .
There were to much obstacles,not only economic but also cultural .

 

Show me another business that had 336,000 actually committed to purchasing the product, prior to its actual production facility being built, that turned into a catastrophe, excluding unforeseeable disasters.

 

Why ?

 

Wages of destruction (P 156) :

Even if the war had not intervened,developments up to 1939 made clear that the entire concept of he "people's car" was a disastrous flop .


I think that this is definitive .The VW was a non sequitur.

 

No, as you have not expressed those developments.

Regardless, it does nothing to explain away the need.

 

Oh yes ,I did .

I will not copy P 156,but,the 336000 candidates (in fact 270000 at the start of the war) belonged at 95 % to the wealthier classes,workers counted only for 5 %.

The market was to small : the majority of the German people could not afford a VW,and,of those who could,1.5 million had already a car ,thus,they did not need one = no need .

To not to loose money,yearly 450000 cars had to be build/sold,which was out of the question .

To be able to afford a car was a condition,not a reason to buy one .If a farmer could afford a car,but would use him only once a week,he would not buy a car,because there was no need to buy one .


I think we can agree that the whole VW story can be buried,the same for the claim that the German industry could build in a few months hundreds of thousand of cars extra for the Ostheer,that the Ostheer would need these cars,and that if the Ostheer had these cars,the result would be very positive for Germany .

 

I think we can bury your preposterous claims.

"There was no need" If there was no need, why did 1.5 million cars already exist?

If there was no need, why had 5% of the those already signed up the car belonged to the working class already signed up for a vehicle, before the factory was even built?

Neither you nor Tooze have not shown that 450,000 cars were needed to be produced to be profitable. He claims that, but he fails to provide any evidence.

Tooze himself is very slack here, spouting figures without providing reference, and yet handily drops "In 1936 cars of the sub 1.5 litre class accounted for 70% of the new registrations in Hitler's Germany, and, of the 150,000 cars sold in this class, almost half were produced by GM's affiliate." (pg 152). These were not purchased via loans, or saving schemes.

It appears that Tooze here is too eager for his own good; he has already decided what outcome he foresees, and anticipates it, rather than providing sufficient evidence to reach his conclusion.

Even Tooze, however, states the issue as being one of cost (affordability), which you repeatedly fail to recognize, not need (pg 150).

Lastly, it is not clear at all to what extent the factory was expected to make a profit over the immediate future, as the German Labour Front (DAF) was making 130 RM interest savings from each car sold via the investor scheme.

The Soviet Union did not achieve it's rapid rate of industrialization, by ensuring that every factory was a profit making venture. The Nazi's had shown themselves to be every bit as much driven by ideas and ideology.

 

My point was the VW was started by Hitler as a copy of Ford. The fact that the war and Nazi incompetence interfered with the development is not relevant. The Bug became a very popular car in the 60's, which proves the concept was good. So Ljad you have never heard of a business convincing people there was a need. ??

 

Of course I did : Vance Packard : the Hidden Persuaders .But,this happened in the US AFTER the war, it could not happen in Europe /Germany before the war,because the depression was still present and could easily return,the result was that people were very reluctant to open their purse and would buy only that what was absolutely needed.

Hitler wanted to copy Ford (as most Europeans he was fascinated by the US) but Ford would fail in Europe .It would take WWII ,the destruction of Germany and the almost destruction of Europe and an other 20 years before the American consumption society would move in with Europe .

"From all major participants in WWII,only the US had a mature mass production system in place"

Source : Myth versus reality:the question of mass production in WWII :summary and conclusion .


If the European countries had no mature mass production system in place in WWII,they had also not such thing before WWII .

 

??? Just why do you think it has any impact on the queston at hand whether or not anyone in Europe had a "mature mass production system"? Note that your souce above doesn't claim they didn't have a mass production system just not a mature one. I rather thought I remembered Tooze's talk about the VW pointing out that it was part of Hitler's Ponzi scheme and not addressing the need or desire for it.

 

Privately,Porsche admitted that the VW would cost not 1000 RM but 1600 RM,the loss would thus be 336000 X 600 RM= 201,6 million of RM ,and there was also the little question of the new factory,which,following Adolf would cost 80/90 million RM,following Porsche : 200 million RM .And we all know what to think of official estimates.

 

On what argument are you basing theory? It is impossible to reply to a completely unsupported assertion. If you want to provide some evidence to back up your conviction, that would be fine.

 

LJAd believes the history of WW2 is one long chain of pre-ordained events, where the actions of the participants, high or low, have no meaningful impact on the inevitable outcome.

In such a view, there can be no decisive battle, as the war was already predetermined.

"Serious historian", would of course, be those approved by LAd.

 

there can be only one decisive battle on the Eastern fron,that's obvious : if Moscow was decisive,Stalingrad could not .

Moscow was not decisive,because if Moscow had fallen before the winter,the outcome would still be the same : defeat of Germany . Besides,the aim of the battle "of Moscow" was not the capture of Moscow .

Stalingrad : what would have changed if Stalingrad had fallen ?


Kursk : idem :the Soviet counter-offensive started already DURING the battle of Kursk (also called Citadel)


Even Bagration was not decisive :it costed the Germans less than 400000 men,while for the whole of 1944,they lost 2 million men in the East .


As WWI,WWII was a war of attrition and none of the "decisive battles" had a decisive effect on the outcome .

I know that in the fifties it was fashion to talk about decisive battles and to argue that Germany had lost the war on point X and day Y,but no historian is today defending this theory .

And the reason why the historians were talking in the fifties about decisive battles is also obvious