One obvious error in OTL's Washington Naval Treaty was the limitation on cruiser guns to 8 inches, a hole which the pocket battleships and other vessels were intended to exploit.
One obvious error in OTL's Washington Naval Treaty was the limitation on cruiser guns to 8 inches, a hole which the pocket battleships and other vessels were intended to exploit.
Nope.
Not even close.
Read the Wages of Destruction, it destroys a load of the myths concerning German production.
I read it and I'm afraid not. Its just another book in the on going dialetic. There are alot of problems with the data his math formula is based on. resent German publications have altered the landscape considerably.
Do you know for instance that the socall resource crunch of the late 1930s was fabricated by the traditional peace time steel consumers, themselves as they hoarded steel well into the war, leaving insufficent quantities to carry out the various armaments building programmes.
The last thing they wanted to do was to lose their traditional market shares , for some short term industrial boom that 'if Hitler was correct' , would all be over in a matter of a year or two anyway. So they refused to mass produce anything military, if it upset there traditional industrial product line and kept putting the governement off.
When Hitlers governement put pressure on them, they reliqiushed a little bit and agreed to build weapons only if it fit into their existing factory structure. This was Speers main contribution because he finaly was able to [with Hitlers enabling], wrestled control over these companies and force them to devote the bulk of their factory space to the armaments programme of his choosing.
read more in...
Christoph Buchheim, "German Industry in the Nazi Period" , 2008. ISBN 978-3-515-09150-3
Hmm, quite a few factual errors in your comments there.
'refused to mass produce anything military'. Like what? They certainly tried to plan mass production of aircraft, and u-boats...tanks too, with less success.
I'm also more than a little dubious about all this hoarded steel (it isnt exactly inconspicuous, you know, a big pile of steel...) when it was needed. One would have suspected that anyone from the military or government visiting the factories would have become just a trifle suspicious (and if you dont think such people visit, and crawl all over, regularly, you've never been in industry..they're a bloody nuisance...).
Traditional market share? Of WHAT, exactly? It wasn't consumer products...or are you referring to their export markets? certainly Germany did export during the war, as did Britain, for similar (although different) realpolitik reasons.
And while you claim errors in the math, the data in WoD does match up with the figures for German production.
In Fact the Brooklyn Class CL was build to hunt down the Pocket Battleships and destroy it in Gunfire with 15 x 6 in naval Guns . with a rate of fire of about 4 rounds off to the Pocket Battle ships 1 .
I belive Germany was still makeing autos for the Civilian market up untill 1943 .