Discussion: Comparing British and German industries 1900-1940

Redbeard

Banned
They could only achieve that output with imported machine tool from Lend-Lease. Btw, German production was plagued by Nazi inefficient management. In ww1, they did not suffered much from Nazi-style management but from blockade.

Besides wartime, we should also look at the periods of 1900-1914 and 1919-1938, German chemical and engineering industries significantly outperformed Britain.
Chandler's Scale and Scope had a detailed description of how British engineering industries lagged behind German and American, especially high-tech industries before 1914. Their light, consumer goods and other non-engineering industries performed well and even competed well against the US. But the story was different for engineering and science-based sectors.

The potential of importing important equipment to boost your production is of course an asset of an industry/economy - not an excuse. And no matter how you rank various subjects more or less objectively, the bottom line is what counts, and here British industry served its country much better than the German did to Germany.

And yes German chemical industry was world leading and this went back to napoleons continental blockade prohibiting the import of dyes. You could also find other areas were German industry excelled, but it is far complicated to compare industries and economies than your agenda driven posting shows.

An aspect which has only been superficially touched in this thread is productivity. But it is often assumed that the British were far behind in productivity, especially when compared to the modern Americans or disciplined Germans - and the example of the Liberty ships is often brought forward. And yes the Liberty ships were built in record breaking time, but actually cost much more in money or man-hours to build than a British built ship of comparable capacity. Building things fast is not necessarily the same as building them effectively. In short you could say that on an US yard loads of unskilled workers waited for the materials to pass by while on a British yard the materials waited for the relatively few skilled workers to pass by and work them. In warship construction US ships usually cost much more than comparable British ships (IIRC about factor 2, I'm away from my books). I haven't access to as comprehensive benchmarkings to German productivity, but considering their extensive use of forced and enslaved labour I'm quite sure they would be rock-bottom in a productivity benchmark.

Sure there are a lot of brilliant examples from the German industry, Tigers and Me 262s are indeed fascinating, but actually I'm much more impressed about how the always hard pressed industry utilised obsolescent production lines and designs to produce 2nd rate but good enough materiel. Like turning the Pz III into a very capable StuG III or the Pz 38 into Marders or Hetzers. The British had similar methods but didn't get 2nd rate materiel - they got the Mosquito. The Mosquito originated in a wish to avoid using aluminium (aluminum to USians) and instead utilise the extensive furniture industry which could make wonders in plywood and besides by being spread out in numerous small factories and workshops was quite resilient to bombing. Now that is ingenuity!
 

Thomas1195

Banned
The potential of importing important equipment to boost your production is of course an asset of an industry/economy - not an excuse. And no matter how you rank various subjects more or less objectively, the bottom line is what counts, and here British industry served its country much better than the German did to Germany.

And yes German chemical industry was world leading and this went back to napoleons continental blockade prohibiting the import of dyes. You could also find other areas were German industry excelled, but it is far complicated to compare industries and economies than your agenda driven posting shows.

An aspect which has only been superficially touched in this thread is productivity. But it is often assumed that the British were far behind in productivity, especially when compared to the modern Americans or disciplined Germans - and the example of the Liberty ships is often brought forward. And yes the Liberty ships were built in record breaking time, but actually cost much more in money or man-hours to build than a British built ship of comparable capacity. Building things fast is not necessarily the same as building them effectively. In short you could say that on an US yard loads of unskilled workers waited for the materials to pass by while on a British yard the materials waited for the relatively few skilled workers to pass by and work them. In warship construction US ships usually cost much more than comparable British ships (IIRC about factor 2, I'm away from my books). I haven't access to as comprehensive benchmarkings to German productivity, but considering their extensive use of forced and enslaved labour I'm quite sure they would be rock-bottom in a productivity benchmark.

Sure there are a lot of brilliant examples from the German industry, Tigers and Me 262s are indeed fascinating, but actually I'm much more impressed about how the always hard pressed industry utilised obsolescent production lines and designs to produce 2nd rate but good enough materiel. Like turning the Pz III into a very capable StuG III or the Pz 38 into Marders or Hetzers. The British had similar methods but didn't get 2nd rate materiel - they got the Mosquito. The Mosquito originated in a wish to avoid using aluminium (aluminum to USians) and instead utilise the extensive furniture industry which could make wonders in plywood and besides by being spread out in numerous small factories and workshops was quite resilient to bombing. Now that is ingenuity!
Edgerton did mention what you said about shipbuilding. But what I have read from various other economic historians is that British shipbuilding industry was terribly obsolete and this was the cause of its fall during 1970s. Look at its shipbuilding these days, just a zombie relied on RN orders. Modern shipbuilding post war used American methods.

As I said, nazi management style was a major factor that kept German production far below its potential. Therefore, I often prefer comparison during and before ww1 and during most of interwar, when no blockade or nazi slave labour occurred. And during ww1, Germany outproduced Britain in most weapon categories, except for ships, tanks and planes, despite being blockaded, under a disadvantaged condition.

Regarding peacetime, do you know that during 1890s-1910s, while British market was flooded by American machinery, German producers competed well and successfully beat them off? And it is a clear fact that British electrical and electronic industry overall was retarded and lagged far behind Germany during the whole period from 1900s to 1930s. Or Britain's big reliance on optics from Jena before ww1 nearly screwed up their war effort. Finally, British military buildup in ww1 would have failed without imported American machine tool.
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
Let us not forget this rather broad statement ...

... about a country that between 1910 and 1940 invented or discovered, stereo sound, television, penicillin, the analogue computer, the cavity magnetron, the folding carton, Stainless Steel, polythene, vitamins, Sonar, the Tank, X-ray crystallography, atomic numbers, isotopes, protons and neutrons, that was the first to split the atom, the Jet Engine and the crossword puzzle.

Truly shockingly anti-intellectual.

Don't forget the new Leg before wicket law introduced in the 1930s.

And does Bodyline count as a weapons system?:openedeyewink:
 

Redbeard

Banned
Edgerton did mention what you said about shipbuilding. But what I have read from various other economic historians is that British shipbuilding industry was terribly obsolete and this was the cause of its fall during 1970s. Look at its shipbuilding these days, just a zombie relied on RN orders. Modern shipbuilding post war used American methods.

As I said, nazi management style was a major factor that kept German production far below its potential. Therefore, I often prefer comparison during and before ww1 and during most of interwar, when no blockade or nazi slave labour occurred. And during ww1, Germany outproduced Britain in most weapon categories, except for ships, tanks and planes, despite being blockaded, under a disadvantaged condition.

Regarding peacetime, do you know that during 1890s-1910s, while British market was flooded by American machinery, German producers competed well and successfully beat them off? And it is a clear fact that British electrical and electronic industry overall was retarded and lagged far behind Germany during the whole period from 1900s to 1930s. Or Britain's big reliance on optics from Jena before ww1 nearly screwed up their war effort. Finally, British military buildup in ww1 would have failed without imported American machine tool.

Post 1945 there is no doubt that British just-about-everything apart from popmusic declined drastically. IMHO because most Brittons felt that now the war had been won the times of hard work were over and better strike for higher wages than get richer. You could easily argue that the clear British lead in ship building was lost somewhere between WWI and WWII and the USN took over but still there is no doubt that British naval design and construction was not far behind and ahead of the rest. I can recommend D.K. Brown's "From Nelson to Vanguard" about British naval design and construction from 1923-45. Brown is very critical towards his own kind (as Brittons often are) but have some very interesting facts and views on naval design and does a lot of benchmarking to USN.

I haven't got production figures at hand right here for WW1, but I recall that after Spring offensive in 1918, where the 5th Army took heavy casualties in the initial assault, all losses were replaced before the offensive was over. Anyway Germany by WWI had almost double the population of the UK. Germany actually tried to outbuild Britain in the naval race up to WW1 - but failed utterly.

And yes of course the British lost relative position from early/mid 19th century when they were the only industrialised nation and IIRC German industry is usually considered "bigger" by about 1890. You could basically say the same about USA after 1945. In 1945 they were just about the only intact industrialised country, today they're not and the rest are hastily closing. Is that because of an inefficient, lazy, incompetent US industry or because the others have improved? BTW just before WWI Russia and Austria-Hungary had the biggest industrial growth of any major nation.

Your examples of this-or-that imported from USA as a precondition for a given level of British production is not something you can blame the British industry for - on the contrary it is 1st class utilisation of available assets. Like the US Army was mainly equipped with British and French gadgets in WWI or the (British) magnetron was a precondition for one of the most innovative weapons of WWII - the proximity fused AA shell or foreign scientists in bundles of five being needed to build the nuke. BTW the early US industry to a large degree was financed by British capital. British dependence on food imports was not new, had been so for centuries. It is very rare for advanced economies to be self-sufficient and is even more rare that is a good idea to go for self-sufficiency if you want an effective economy.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Post 1945 there is no doubt that British just-about-everything apart from popmusic declined drastically. IMHO because most Brittons felt that now the war had been won the times of hard work were over and better strike for higher wages than get richer. You could easily argue that the clear British lead in ship building was lost somewhere between WWI and WWII and the USN took over but still there is no doubt that British naval design and construction was not far behind and ahead of the rest. I can recommend D.K. Brown's "From Nelson to Vanguard" about British naval design and construction from 1923-45. Brown is very critical towards his own kind (as Brittons often are) but have some very interesting facts and views on naval design and does a lot of benchmarking to USN.

I haven't got production figures at hand right here for WW1, but I recall that after Spring offensive in 1918, where the 5th Army took heavy casualties in the initial assault, all losses were replaced before the offensive was over. Anyway Germany by WWI had almost double the population of the UK. Germany actually tried to outbuild Britain in the naval race up to WW1 - but failed utterly.

And yes of course the British lost relative position from early/mid 19th century when they were the only industrialised nation and IIRC German industry is usually considered "bigger" by about 1890. You could basically say the same about USA after 1945. In 1945 they were just about the only intact industrialised country, today they're not and the rest are hastily closing. Is that because of an inefficient, lazy, incompetent US industry or because the others have improved? BTW just before WWI Russia and Austria-Hungary had the biggest industrial growth of any major nation.

Your examples of this-or-that imported from USA as a precondition for a given level of British production is not something you can blame the British industry for - on the contrary it is 1st class utilisation of available assets. Like the US Army was mainly equipped with British and French gadgets in WWI or the (British) magnetron was a precondition for one of the most innovative weapons of WWII - the proximity fused AA shell or foreign scientists in bundles of five being needed to build the nuke. BTW the early US industry to a large degree was financed by British capital. British dependence on food imports was not new, had been so for centuries. It is very rare for advanced economies to be self-sufficient and is even more rare that is a good idea to go for self-sufficiency if you want an effective economy.

Self sufficient is not possible for a small island. The problem for Britain was that its industry mainly produced light, consumer goods and low tech, outdated goods (like steam engines, steam locomotives, or 19th century telegraph) in case of engineering products, while its high-tech, new industries like chemical, precision instruments, machine tool, and especially electrical and electronic industries were retarded and lagged very far behind Germany, its archenemy. A deficiency in textile or tobacco industries would never be as serious as a backwardness in high-tech engineering industries like steel, electrical and machinery, because the latter are directly related to military power. It's about the quality and composition aspect.


I would assert that if the US somehow had a neutrality act in ww1, not selling anything to both factions, Britain would have lost the ww1 because it could not get loans or import superior American steel or machine tool to manufacture high quality shells, guns and rifles (no one in the world would dare to say that British machine tool were better than Amerivan and German). Imagine Britain in ww2 without Lend Lease.

American soldiers in ww1 were equiped with Britah and French weapons, but many of them were made in America.

British money did not fund American industrial wonders like GE, Carnegie, Remington, McCormick, Westinghouse, Du Pont or Ford.
 
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I would assert that if the US somehow had a neutrality act in ww1, not selling anything to both factions, Britain would have lost the ww1 because it could not get loans or import superior American steel or machine tool to manufacture high quality shells, guns and rifles (no one in the world would dare to say that British machine tool were better than Amerivan and German). Imagine Britain in ww2 without Lend Lease.

The problem with this is that it requires the US to self-impose the Great Depression on itself. This hurt badly enough when it occurred by accident, how much worse do you think the impact would be if done deliberately? How long would America be willing to endure the pain for Germany's gain? Because what you describe is not neutrality it is placing the US under embargo to help a potential enemy with ambitions in the Western Hemisphere that America had moved to thwart in the recent past.

Also you might want to check where the specialist tools used in British munitions factories actually came from...just saying.
 

Deleted member 1487

When are we talking about?
1960s and on. I don't mean it was the direct reason for the failure of the British auto industry, rather than the German auto industry in general outcompeted the Brits after WW2 and since current Volkswagen is the largest auto manufacturer in the world, I threw their name out there; also the VW Beetle was their most famous car and that was designed pre-WW2, but didn't get into mass production until after the war (unless you consider the Kübelwagen a derivative) when it became more popular with British occupying forces than their own vehicles. So arguably the seeds of German automotive competitive advantage were then laid pre-WW2.
 

Deleted member 1487

the (British) magnetron was a precondition for one of the most innovative weapons of WWII - the proximity fused AA shell or foreign scientists in bundles of five being needed to build the nuke.
The proximity fuse had nothing to do with the magnetron. It entirely relied on US micro-vacuum tubes and had nothing to do with British designs or technology. As I said before the cavity magnetron helped inspire US designs, but the British gadget was a laboratory design that required major redesigning and improvements before it could actually be turned into a production model that could work in a radar system, which Bell Labs did. The Brits couldn't end up building the nuke on their own, the US scientists did all the heavy lifting their, and it was the German-Jewish nuclear physicists that actually were the critical component of the British contribution to the project, as there would never have been a bomb project without the Fritsch-Pierls memorandum that proved it was possible and was the research that got the British to start their atomic bomb project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_contribution_to_the_Manhattan_Project
 

Thomas1195

Banned
The problem with this is that it requires the US to self-impose the Great Depression on itself. This hurt badly enough when it occurred by accident, how much worse do you think the impact would be if done deliberately? How long would America be willing to endure the pain for Germany's gain? Because what you describe is not neutrality it is placing the US under embargo to help a potential enemy with ambitions in the Western Hemisphere that America had moved to thwart in the recent past.

Also you might want to check where the specialist tools used in British munitions factories actually came from...just saying.

Alfred Herbert Ltd and the British Machine Tool Industry, 1887-1983
Page 67: British imports of machine tool surged by 7 to 8 times between 1914 and 1918, mainly from USA.
The problem is not just about quantity, but also bout quality, as it is a well-known fact that American machines were superior.

Before the war, British machine makers tended to copied American designs rather than innovated, except for some of the largest like Alfred Herbert.

Without American steel and machines, British war effort in ww1 would have been doomed to failure
 
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hipper

Banned
The proximity fuse had nothing to do with the magnetron. It entirely relied on US micro-vacuum tubes and had nothing to do with British designs or technology. .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_contribution_to_the_Manhattan_Project

Britain had a working proximity fuse in 1940 you just could not fire this out of a gun

the Americans paid royalties to the UK after the war for the design of the proximity fuse so I suspect British designs or technology had something to do with it.
 
Britain had a working proximity fuse in 1940 you just could not fire this out of a gun

the Americans paid royalties to the UK after the war for the design of the proximity fuse so I suspect British designs or technology had something to do with it.

Shush!
You'll confuse the german fanboys with the facts...:p
 

Deleted member 1487

Britain had a working proximity fuse in 1940 you just could not fire this out of a gun

the Americans paid royalties to the UK after the war for the design of the proximity fuse so I suspect British designs or technology had something to do with it.
Germany had a working proximity fuse in 1940 that you couldn't fire out of a gun either and the Brits were given a descriptin of it via the Oslo Report. So what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Report#Electric_fuzes_for_bombs_and_shells

Got a source on the claim that the US paid the Brits royalties for their design?

Edit:
looks like as with the cavity magnetron the Brits had a nice lab toy that they delivered via the Tizard Mission and the US turned it into a working production design, because the Brits couldn't figure out it for themselves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
British military researchers Sir Samuel Curran and W. A. S. Butement invented a proximity fuze in the early stages of World War II under the name VT, an acronym of "Variable Time fuze".[2] The system was a small, short range, Doppler radar. However, Britain lacked the capacity to develop the fuze, so the design was shown to the United States during the Tizard Mission in late 1940. The fuze needed to be miniaturized, survive the high acceleration of cannon launch, and be reliable.[3] Development was completed under the direction of physicist Merle A. Tuve at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL).[4] Over 2000 American companies were mobilized to build some 20 million shell fuzes.[5]

Much like the Germans, the Brits had issues turning their 'wunderwaffen' into working production designs. Without the Americans, just like with the German proximity fuse projects, the Brits would never have actually turned it into a working production device for the war. Unlike the Germans the Brits were enormously lucky to have access to the American electronics industry and their development teams (who figured out independently what the Brits were working on in 1940 when they ordered micro-tubes in mass quantities from US industry before the Tizard Mission).

Effectively without US help the Brits would not have turned their cavity magnetron, atomic bomb, or proximity fuse into working devices during the war on their own resources, they needed the US industrial and scientific establishment to make that happen. Britain on her own even with LL would have been SOL trying to develop those technologies.

Shush!
You'll confuse the german fanboys with the facts...:p
In this case it's more of an American fanboi-ism. Bell Labs and the MIT Rad Lab were the pinnacles of human electronics achievement in the 1940s and beyond. I mean the SCR-584 that defended the Brits from the V-1 and was in use with multiple nations well into the 50's came out of American WW2 developments.
 
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Thomas1195

Banned
Post 1945 there is no doubt that British just-about-everything apart from popmusic declined drastically. IMHO because most Brittons felt that now the war had been won the times of hard work were over and better strike for higher wages than get richer. You could easily argue that the clear British lead in ship building was lost somewhere between WWI and WWII and the USN took over but still there is no doubt that British naval design and construction was not far behind and ahead of the rest. I can recommend D.K. Brown's "From Nelson to Vanguard" about British naval design and construction from 1923-45. Brown is very critical towards his own kind (as Brittons often are) but have some very interesting facts and views on naval design and does a lot of benchmarking to USN.

I haven't got production figures at hand right here for WW1, but I recall that after Spring offensive in 1918, where the 5th Army took heavy casualties in the initial assault, all losses were replaced before the offensive was over. Anyway Germany by WWI had almost double the population of the UK. Germany actually tried to outbuild Britain in the naval race up to WW1 - but failed utterly.

And yes of course the British lost relative position from early/mid 19th century when they were the only industrialised nation and IIRC German industry is usually considered "bigger" by about 1890. You could basically say the same about USA after 1945. In 1945 they were just about the only intact industrialised country, today they're not and the rest are hastily closing. Is that because of an inefficient, lazy, incompetent US industry or because the others have improved? BTW just before WWI Russia and Austria-Hungary had the biggest industrial growth of any major nation.

Your examples of this-or-that imported from USA as a precondition for a given level of British production is not something you can blame the British industry for - on the contrary it is 1st class utilisation of available assets. Like the US Army was mainly equipped with British and French gadgets in WWI or the (British) magnetron was a precondition for one of the most innovative weapons of WWII - the proximity fused AA shell or foreign scientists in bundles of five being needed to build the nuke. BTW the early US industry to a large degree was financed by British capital. British dependence on food imports was not new, had been so for centuries. It is very rare for advanced economies to be self-sufficient and is even more rare that is a good idea to go for self-sufficiency if you want an effective economy.
https://books.google.com.vn/books?i...q=artillery production in world war 1&f=false
artillery and shell production in ww1
http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/rifles
rifle production
 

BooNZ

Banned
Depending on the machinery you use

Based on your references, taking into account Britain was a naval focused power with a far smaller population base than Germany, its industry (presumably a collection of small cottages) competed in the construction of armaments quite closely with continental Germany with its "super factories". Indeed, in relation to genuinely new weapon systems like machine guns, aircraft and tanks, the "shed-based" British machinery production performance appeared relatively superior...
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Based on your references, taking into account Britain was a naval focused power with a far smaller population base than Germany, its industry (presumably a collection of small cottages) competed in the construction of armaments quite closely with continental Germany with its "super factories". Indeed, in relation to genuinely new weapon systems like machine guns, aircraft and tanks, the "shed-based" British machinery production performance appeared relatively superior...
Thanks to superior machines imported from the US, because british machinery industry sucked compared to US and germany.
 
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