1- Of the 200.000 combat aircraft that the US produced, 40.000 were sent to Britain and the USSR. An increase in 25% of combat aircraft would sure make the USAF more powerful. But, they would have to train more pilots (the fuel sent to the USSR could be used by themselves).

2- Anyway, lend lease consisted in 10 billion dollars in 1944, of the 87 billion dollars military budget. This would not make a huge difference against Germany. Instead of 7 Fw-190 for every B-17 we would have 6 Fw-190 for every B-17.

1- China would have defeated Iraq using less money. Maybe Russia. Sure, modern Europeans are not good at war either...

2- In the case of Normandy, the difference in numbers and materiel was the same as the difference between Germany and Poland in 1939!

In the case of Germany vs Poland, the Germans defeated Poland in 35 days, with a force of 1.5 million men agaisn't 950.000 Poles, the germans lost 40.000 men (KIA, WIA) while the Poles lost 200.000. The Germans had 3 to 1 superiority in tanks and 6 to 1 in aircraft.

In the case of Normandy. The Allies defeated Germany in 77 days, with a force of 2.9 million men agaisn't 1.000.000 Germans. The Allies lost 218.000 men (KIA, WIA) while the Germans lost 90.000 (KIA, WIA, they had 180.000 captured, but that doesn't count). The Allies had a 3 to 1 superiority in tanks and 8 to 1 in aircraft.

Se the diference in operational effectiveness?

I calculated that from the GDP estimates of "The Economics of WW2" book plus the military mobilization I took from a article named "Resource mobilization for World War 2, Economic History Review".

Computing the two I derived some interesting numbers.

Based on the data that I have encountered in the tread about the GNPs of the belligerent countries and the data in two books (The Economics of WW2 and War and Economy in the Third Reich), I have produced some statistics in terms of 1939 dollars for the URSS, Germany and the US:

Military outlays:

USA:
Converted to 1939 dollars:
1941: 12.97 billion dollars
1942: 41.99 billion dollars
1943: 63.76 billion dollars
1944: 69.92 billion dollars

Germany:
(1939 dollars)
09/1940-08/1941: 22.47 billion dollars
09/1941-08/1942: 29.47 billion dollars
09/1942-08/1943: 34.65 billion dollars
09/1943-08/1944: 39.96 billion dollars

Soviet Union
(1939 dollars)
1941: 12.24 billion dollars
1942: 20.077 billion dollars
1943: 22.414 billion dollars
1944: 23.21 billion dollars

Note: I used the exchange rate of 0.2 for the ruble/dollar.

Ratio to US/German outlays:
1941 – 1.73
1942 – 0.702
1943 – 0.543
1944 – 0.5715

Military outlays per person in the armed forces:

US:
1944: 6,128 dollars

Germany:
1941: 3,074 dollars
1942: 3,504 dollars
1943: 3,655 dollars
1944: 4,242 dollars

URSS:
1941: 1,724 dollars
1942: 1,770 dollars
1943: 1,890 dollars
1944: 1,898 dollars

Military outlays per front:

Eastern front (axis/allies):

1941: (67% Germany vs 90% URSS)
15.06 billion/11.02 billion, ratio: 1.37

1942: (80% Germany vs 100% URSS)
23.576 billion/20.077 billion, ratio: 1.174

1943: (63% Germany vs 100% URSS)
21.83 billion/22.414 billion, ratio: 0.974

1944: (62% Germany vs 100% URSS)
24.775 billion/23.21 billion, ratio: 1.067

When the Germans had the strategic initiative in the eastern front, they had about 25% more resources allocated there than the soviets. When the volume of expenditures decreased to parity with the soviets, they lost the strategic initiative. That's because of the larger number of soldiers per dollar in the soviet side.

Historically the US is a poor fighter, in the sense that the Americans need to spend much more money in relation to their enemies to win. In terms of fighting power per dollar the Germans and the Soviets were more efficient (specially the Soviets).

Now I will stop posting here since I need to work. But I hope that my arguments should be good enough to convince people that bigger GDP doesn't implies in "win".

1- In combat aircraft the US produced about 2-2.5 times the Soviet production in terms of value (note that bigger aircraft have lower costs per ton).

2- In all ground items, except vehicles, the USSR outproduced the US (by about 1.5 times).

3- In naval vessels, the US outproduced the rest of the world combined (true, but a the cost of lower production in ground forces).

Alright guys, I'm a bit late in getting into this.

I see a lot of numbers flying around. I need to see some sources for all these claims.

I also see a claim of Berlin being taken in Oct 1944. How do you propose this occurs?

__________________
Best Regards,
JW

Ya think? How many armored vehicles could be built from one Essex-class carrier? And how many Essex-class carriers would have been needed in the Atlantic?

__________________
Best Regards,
JW

My sources are:

The Economics of WW2

War and Economy in the Third Reich

Economic mobilization for WW2

World Economic Outlook

Well, if the US was so good, why they took 11 months of large scale ground combat to defeat 25% of Germany's armed forces?

I mean, in terms of numbers and claimed quality of their equipment, they should have defeated Germany in a smaller space of time!!! The US was several times more powerfull than Germany wasn't? Them defeating 25% of their armed forces should have been easier than the case were Germany defeated Belgium em 6 days!!!

Also, Italy never happened! They (US and Britain) fought 8% of Germany's armed forces and took almost 2 years to go from naples to venice! That never should happen... I mean, they were so good! Weren't they?

In fact, the operational performance of the American and British forces against Germany in ww2 were pathetic considering the parameters of the campaigns. Operating against a small fraction of a much smaller enemy, with worse equipment, technology, logistics and training, they managed to lost more personnel (in KIA and WIA)...

between 500-1000 AFV for and Essex.

Ok on some more questions...
1. US produced 200,000 aircraft??/ Try more like around 300,000+ for one thing trainers and cargo types.The US supplied alot of the trainers used by both the RAF & VVS.

2. According to Richard Overy's 'Why the Allies Won" the US produced DURING the war 297,000 aircraft(this doesn't include commercial types which countries abadoned construction of during the war) ,193,000 artillery pieces(probably not including naval guns or even the light AA types on naval vessels),86,000 tanks, 250,000+ half tracks(how many of those did Germany or the SU produce??), and several million trucks. These figures are only for the time when the Us was in the war from 12/7/1941 till 9/2/1945 remember some countries entered the war from a few months to a couple of years earlier.. The USN launched 8,800 naval vessels & 87,000 landing craft. On gun production figure how many 8", 6", 5",3" 20mm & 40mm AA along with their far more complicated FC sytems compared to tanks & aircraft were produced in addition to 193,000 artillery pieces.

3. On LL the US supplied over 1/4 of the SU's machine tools I imagine that helped their production output quite a bit .

4. Tank production numbers can be deceptive too the Germans produced 1800 Tigers but only about 1/10 of that number for spare engines/transmissions the same probably goes for other types of spares and I don't think the Soviets produced that many spare parts whereas the US Army lavishly produced spares for their tanks and virtually all weapon systems.

5. You listed the US only producing 86,000 tanks to the SU's 90,000 but what your leaving out is the US also produced the cargo ships to get them overseas,train the crews to man those ships,the AA guns on the ships along with escort vessels protecting them, and the landing craft to get them ashore . Now as to the numbers themselves according to "WW2 Tanks" by Eric Grove the SU produce 87,200 tanks,25,300 SU-SP vehicles, maybe a few thousand up to around 50,000 Half track type vehicles, and maybe around 300,000 trucks ,at least those are the numbers I remember. The US meanwhile produced 88,276 tanks(in a shorter time span), 43,481 SP vehicles,over 250,000+ half track type vehicles, and several million trucks. These figures don't include , locomotives, rolling stock,bulldozers,and other construction equipment which the US also sent in LL.

Ok then figure how many tanks for 10 modern fast BB's, 15 Essex's, 9 Independence CVL's, 100 CVE's, probably 60+ cruisers, 300 DD's, 400-500 DE's, and hundreds of auxiliiries?

You make the common mistake of confusing 75% of the CULMULATIVE total of men who served in the German Army with the overall numbers who served in the 3 services, Army, Navy and Air Force. 75% of the Army is not 75% of the German Armed Forces. There were actualy MORE panzers in Normandy in June 1944 than on the entire Eastern Front.

It did not take 11 months to defeat Germany in the West. She was defeated in 1944 but the mad dog was still twitching and needed to be beaten to death. A common sense capitulation would have prevented the needless death of over 1 million Germans in 1945 and prevented the total destruction of most of Germany.
Are you seriously claiming that the utterly stupid 'fight to the last' mentality is something we should admire?
Do you think the millions who died for nothing would share your slack-jawed admiration?


Why so?
Germany needed Russian help to subdue Poland.
Germany never occupied all of France until 1942
Germany faced Britain on her own in 1940-41 and failed to conquer her.
Germany failed to conquer Russia.

Can you tell me how many German POW's the Western Allies took and how many the Soviets took?
Why are the totals more or less the same?
Oh and once again it was not 25% of German ARMED FORCES.

I will let you brag about Belgium. Great victory Adolf!




Shucks there you go again. Can you give me the number of Axis troops (not just 'Army') in Italy and the number of Allied troops?
How may times did you say the Allies outnumbered the Axis?

In what respect was the German flight from France not a crushing defeat?


There you go again. You DELIBERATELY exclude POW totals. Why? Perhaps because they show that German soldiers surrendered (i.e.gave up) in their MILLIONS to Allied Force. They gave up in droves and could not surrender fast enough.

It's called the inherit advantage of the defence. Now answer me this how come US units,Middleton's Corps , in the Battle of the Bulge were able to hold up a German army 6 times it's size for as long as they did? Furthermore that corps included one brand new green division along with 2 others that had been beaten up in the Hurtgeen Forrest amongst it's 4 divisions,they were facing 26 divsions of the 7th Army,5th Panzer Army and 6th Panzer Army. Italy??? Well Italy is extremely good defensive country The Eastern Front was much more conductive to offensive/blitzkrieg/armored warfare then the Western Front.. Also the German army didn't stop the Allied armies the 300 mile rule in logistics did. Once you drove around 300 miles in WW2 you basically had to pull up and allow one's logistic's train to catch up. As far as your 25% figure for the German Army in the West well I've seen it posted elsewhere that the % of German tanks in the west was much,much higher then 25%.
As far as your reference are concerned I've seen other people in other forums come to completely different conclusions.

One quirk is that Germany provided the Soviets with more of their machine tools than the US. The pre-war detente saw a massive influx of German technology into the USSR 1939-41.

Just looked at a map it seems the Allies drove from Normandy to the Siegfried Line (which is what over 400 miles???) in the period from 6/6/1944 to 9/16/1944 . Remember the Allies were conducting an amphib operation ,a very,very difficult type of operation and the bocage country didn't help matters any otherwise the actual dash across France took from late August till mid-September. In other words a dash of 350+ miles in around 4(???) weeks.Notice what type of country the Allies then came up against when they reached the Siegfried Line??

Well I was just talking about the time when the US was in the war,I think the US provided the SU 27% of it's machine tools.

It seems according to some the Italians saved the German's rear a couple of time in North Africa but boy the Germans are just so good!!!! Read posts # 95 & 100.

Erwin Rommel as a Military Commander - Tanknet.org

Simple observation about some points being made by you fine gentlemen....

Regarding Italy verses Russian Fronts. As horendous as these battles were, in many parts of Russia you could watch your dog run away for 3 days with the expansive flat terrain.

In Italy it was a defensive wet dream.... Allies facing one mountain to the valley floor to the next mountain to the next valley floor to the next mountain, so on and so on.... Again both fronts were brutal battles.

I won't even get into the handicap the Allies had in Italy with Clark and Alexander.

Best Regards

Your numbers, and your logic, are extremely suspect.

Comparing Japan's chances against the US in WW II, with Britain's chances against Germany is absurd.

The US had at least ten times the resources of Japan and more importantly was far more competent in applying them militarily. Britain was almost equal with Germany in terms of resources and slightly better off industrially. But the huge disparity between British naval resources and German naval resources meant that Germany could never hope to force Britain to surrender

Actually, the US had more industrial capacity than all of Europe combined. Furthermore, the US was far more efficient in mass production of the weapons of war than Germany could ever hope to be. Germany proved singularly inept at employing the industrial capabilities of the nations it occupied in military endeavors, and even wasted much of it's own industrial capacity in militarily useless schemes. The "vengeance" weapons come to mind; the resources wasted on the militarily worthless V-1 and V-2 programs could have been put to far better use.

So your saying that, because historically the US had never won a war against a great power, it never could? This completely ignores changing conditions over time, and is completely illogical. It's not money that wins wars but the intelligent application of resources and mobilization of productive capacity. In that sense, the US had Germany badly beaten from the get go.

Bruce,

I don't know about the US not being able to outproduce all of Europe in this time frame well at least any of the top 3 European Powers that is . In ships the US certainly could and if (repeat if) the US wouldn't have had to build so much merchant shipping & landing craft to project power across both the Atlantic & Pacific there output of aircraft & tanks would have been much greater. What I'm saying is have the European Powers have to build a merchant fleet plus amphib capability to project power to the New World and see how many tanks & aircraft they could build then . Oh and also build a large ASW force.

The original poster here is making the fatal assumption that the War in Europe, minus the contribution of the Soviet Union, would be fought the same way as it was historically with the Soviet Union as a belligerent. That is simply a very questionable assumption.

Actually, the situation, as posited by the original poster would resemble more the situation which prevailed during the Napoleonic Wars when France, a great land power, challenged Britain, the premier sea power of the time. In modern terms, the question would be, how would Germany bring it's army into play? It might occupy most of Europe, but this, in itself, contributes nothing to the defeat of the Allied coalition. Germany's navy is obviously seriously outclassed by the combined Anglo-American Navy, and would not be a factor; it can't possibly hope to do any more than defend Germany's coasts.

Germany has a powerful air force initially, but it gradually gets worn down by the superiority of the Anglo-American air force backed by the combined productivity of the US and British aviation industries. Eventually, the Anglo-American air force achieves air supremacy and can then bomb targets throughout German-occupied Europe. But given the limited resources of continental Europe, even that might not be necessary to defeat Germany.

Nor would the Normandy landing necessarily be required. The Allies could win simply by containing the Germans in Europe, cutting off any access to the world outside, and using the atomic bombs, when they became available, to convince the Germans that there is no point in further resistance.

So yes, the answer is that, given the proper strategy, the Western Allies could easily defeat Germany without the USSR and without the bloody historical ground campaign.

You have any proof for 'Europeans are better in war then Americans ' ????? And what is the meaning of 'better ' ?????

Well, if you remove Japan from the equation, and remove the need for Lend-lease to the Soviet Union by making the USSR a neutral, you change the whole strategic dynamic of the war. I can see no way that Germany, even if allied with mighty Italy, has any chance of beating the Anglo-American alliance.

What it would come down to would be that Germany would be confined to continental Europe with no way to project the power of it's most effective force, the German Army. The US and Britain would, over time, out produce the Luftwaffe, and eventually overwhelm it, achieving air supremacy over Europe. The German Navy was never strong enough to challenge the British Navy, let alone a combined Anglo-American naval force of the size possible if there is no Pacific War. The Western Allies would gradually tighten the noose around Germany by cutting off and defeating in detail the German contingents in the Med, Norway, and possibly the Balkans. Once that is completed, Germany, though still with a lot of military potential, is more or less helpless outside of Europe.

Given that Germany can't control any land mass other than Europe, it's not even necessary to invade; simply wait until the atomic bombs are operational and test them on Berlin.

I think you are exagerating (like Guaporense in the opposite sense )
1)You are assuming an automatically entrey of the US in the war
2)If the Normandy landing was not necessary,why did the Allies land in 1944
3)If the SU was eliminated,Germany wold have all the raw materials and food it needed,thus the allied blockade would be useless .
4)Concerning the ABomb:you assume the US would use it against Germany,without considering the risk of German reprisals with poison gas against Britain (and that Germany would be unable to use poison gas is irrelevant,because the allies had no knowledge of the German ability to use poison gas ) .If Japan had the means to attack LA and San Francisco with poison gas, would Truman have used the A Bomb ? The US knew that they were safe from Japanese reprisals when they decided to use the A Bomb .

At the time we produced 40% of the world's Aluminum while exporting bauxite. In Vanadium & Molybdenum we were basically the Saudi Arabia's" of the world at the time.In copper we produced half the copper while exporting the ore. In steel well over 50% of the world's output. Phosphates??? Same as per steel. Sulfur(for explosives)??? Same as Phosphates. Zinc??? Well over 50% plus we exported the ore. Nickel??? Well we didn't have large ore supplies but we smelted 67% of the worlds finished metal. Chromium??? Same as Nickel not much ore but we smelted 50-70% of the world'sd supply.

Historical Statistics for Mineral Commodities in the United States, Data Series 2005-140

Much has been made of German Tabun & Sarin BUT the US in Terre Haute,Indiana had a bilogical warfare facility larger then all other facilities in the world at the time while the US to the best of my knowledge had the 2nd & 3rd largest facilities also. Sarin was used in a Japanese subway a few years ago and it wasn't very effective at least it seemed that away. Those older nerve gases just didn't seem for the technology of the time very easy to use. The US also had by far the largest chemical warfare industry in the world at that time. Nobody would want to tangle with the US in chemical,biological or nuclear war in the 40's.
Let's remember one thing as per the US army if Japan is out of the war then we'd probably see the army that was planned originally something in the order of 160+ maybe even 200 divisions instead of the historical 90+ ,it was reduced downward by so much because of the want to build a bigger airforce & navy. A European War only means the US doesn't need near as many naval ships with their large crews.
Everybody seems to think that if Hitler didn't invade the SU that there would be no war in the East BUT it seems there is quite clear evidence that if Hitler hadn't attacked Stalin ,Stalin would have attacked Hitler probably in 1942 or 1943 so this whole thread is probably mute.

[QUOTE=Guaporense;437918]1- You mean Americans? Well, Americans are bad at war. That was proven many times. Including in WW2, were they could have occupied Berlin by October 1944, a few months after D-Day. Complete incompetence and lack of fighting skills of the American soldier explained why they took 11 months to defeat only 30% of Germany's armed forces (with a superiority in numbers of 3 to 1 in men, 4 to 1 in vehicles and 10 to 1 in aircraft).

The Iraq war today: The US spent more money in it than the entire GDP of Iraq several times over. The US is very inefficient in war.



QUOTE]

In case you don't know this is an American forum with a majority of Amercan members. Are you here for a mature discussion or just trying to pick up a fight because with such statements you are insulting Amercan Veterans? In this case, I doubt you 'll have many friends here and may not last long on the forum.

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