Germany could not win ww2?

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The axis had control over the whole of Europe, only the Iberian peninsula, Switzerland and Sweden were neutral, and did trade with the Axis, in addition to other neutral countries that did trade with the axis. How, having all this territory, they were unable to extract resources to feed the war machine?

Also agree with CV12Hornet (and Finbarr the Fair )

on top of that, the resource and production capabilities of these conquered countries don't just flip over 100% to the Germans because there's a German flag fluttering overhead. Plus occupying territory also takes resources.
 
A tale of two farmers
Farmer A my great uncle in my moms side
Farmer B my great grand father on my dads side.
these two men were born within a few years of each other. So are give or take contemporary to each other.

Farmer A owned give or take a sq mile of land (it may have been bigger but I know he owned the sq mile the rest was hard to tell who owned what). On which he lived and ran a Dairy Farm. He had relatives whose he sometimes rented property from when he wanted to plant more.
He was mostly a large dairy farm. He planted enough crops to feed the Hurd and the family and to sell off to buy what other food the family needed that he could not raise (so basically swapping say corn for apples). Occasionally n his younger days he would grow extra crops to sell to supplement his income.
His barn for his cows was insulated and heated (well sort of, ) he had as advanced of milking equipment as he could buy All his barns had electric lights (flames were too dangerous). He had a truck he drove. A big truck for hawling farm goods and his milk. And at least two tractors and other powered farming equipment (I am not a farmer so I have no idea what those things are). He bought and used the most advanced technology he could on his farm for everything but his house. His barn had heat and electric lights before his house and his wife paid for (buy selling eggs) the plumbing in the kitch and bathroom. (installed in the mide 40s, it was delayed by the war).
He used motorized everything on his farm and ran it with only a few folks (on average him and three workers).

Now we have farmer B (note this is the same time as Farmer A). He had two large draft horses.... a plow and a wagon. and he worked for the largest landowner/farmer in his area who had one gas powered car and everything else was horse or man powered. The land owner had half the male population of a small town working his land but probably didn’t produce much more then Farmer A) once you suptract the food for the animals and the families that worked the land.

Now another point. In general the US has more “land” so we tend to see larger farms. And as a friend pointed out to me (he was born and raised on a farm). Larger fields are more efficient. Turning a team of horses or a tractor at the end of a run (plowing or whatever) takes up a lot more time then just going straight and it takes up an area at the end of the field (both ends) about twice as wide as your widest equipment you use so if you double the length of the field you are MORE then doubling the area the crops take up as the turning area at the end is not any larger. And you are doing this faster as you did not double the number of turns needed.
He also pointed out a LOT of other ways a bigger farm is more efficient.

So there are VERY good reasons why europe had issues with feeding a large army. Mostly due to efficientcy. But in part because tractors and powered equipment can be ran by younger boys and older men and physically smaller women. So are not as adversely effected when you take all the husky 16-30 year old men and put them in the army.
 
A tale of two farmers
Farmer A my great uncle in my moms side
Farmer B my great grand father on my dads side.
these two men were born within a few years of each other. So are give or take contemporary to each other.

Farmer A owned give or take a sq mile of land (it may have been bigger but I know he owned the sq mile the rest was hard to tell who owned what). On which he lived and ran a Dairy Farm. He had relatives whose he sometimes rented property from when he wanted to plant more.
He was mostly a large dairy farm. He planted enough crops to feed the Hurd and the family and to sell off to buy what other food the family needed that he could not raise (so basically swapping say corn for apples). Occasionally n his younger days he would grow extra crops to sell to supplement his income.
His barn for his cows was insulated and heated (well sort of, ) he had as advanced of milking equipment as he could buy All his barns had electric lights (flames were too dangerous). He had a truck he drove. A big truck for hawling farm goods and his milk. And at least two tractors and other powered farming equipment (I am not a farmer so I have no idea what those things are). He bought and used the most advanced technology he could on his farm for everything but his house. His barn had heat and electric lights before his house and his wife paid for (buy selling eggs) the plumbing in the kitch and bathroom. (installed in the mide 40s, it was delayed by the war).
He used motorized everything on his farm and ran it with only a few folks (on average him and three workers).

Now we have farmer B (note this is the same time as Farmer A). He had two large draft horses.... a plow and a wagon. and he worked for the largest landowner/farmer in his area who had one gas powered car and everything else was horse or man powered. The land owner had half the male population of a small town working his land but probably didn’t produce much more then Farmer A) once you suptract the food for the animals and the families that worked the land.

Now another point. In general the US has more “land” so we tend to see larger farms. And as a friend pointed out to me (he was born and raised on a farm). Larger fields are more efficient. Turning a team of horses or a tractor at the end of a run (plowing or whatever) takes up a lot more time then just going straight and it takes up an area at the end of the field (both ends) about twice as wide as your widest equipment you use so if you double the length of the field you are MORE then doubling the area the crops take up as the turning area at the end is not any larger. And you are doing this faster as you did not double the number of turns needed.
He also pointed out a LOT of other ways a bigger farm is more efficient.

So there are VERY good reasons why europe had issues with feeding a large army. Mostly due to efficientcy. But in part because tractors and powered equipment can be ran by younger boys and older men and physically smaller women. So are not as adversely effected when you take all the husky 16-30 year old men and put them in the army.
It’s a good summary, I will, however, add the caveat that different conditions and types of produce do require different methods of production and different levels of labour. A dairy is a life sentence, so to speak, in that the cows need milked rice (sometimes 3 times) a day, every day. But it gives a relatively consistent and steady pay check and requires fewer bodies, and long as you have no other plans. A crop operation, for example, can be much larger and allow for a guy to have either leisure time or an off farm job in off season. But it requires more land, is less consistent in payout and during harvest and seeding is more labour intensive. So there is an element of context involved in agricultural mechanization.
 
Yeah it varies by what you are farming. But the point is that farms are larger more efficient (in general) and used a LOT more automotive equipment then in Europe so they could produce more food for the man power.
Keep in mind that my relative did do a LOT of conventional farming so he had what he needed to feed the Hurd.
But even his neighbors used a LOT of the same things. The is just jumped on the bandwagon faster then Europe did
 
Yeah it varies by what you are farming. But the point is that farms are larger more efficient (in general) and used a LOT more automotive equipment then in Europe so they could produce more food for the man power.
Keep in mind that my relative did do a LOT of conventional farming so he had what he needed to feed the Hurd.
But even his neighbors used a LOT of the same things. The is just jumped on the bandwagon faster then Europe did
Very true. And good post. In that case, my only criticism is that it is herd, not Hurd. 😉
 
2 - The French could have resisted for some time, but given the context of the time, they could not resist for long.

3- Without the air campaign against England, they could build an ever greater force, since the factories would be unharmed, they would not be losing fighters and infrastructure, so they would be able to undertake a much stronger air campaign against Germany eventually.

If Germany did not attack the Soviet Union, there would inevitably be war, it was only a matter of time before Stalin attacked, and the longer he waited, the stronger the Soviet Union would be, which would strengthen in a way that Germany could never keep up with, so , Operation Barbarossa came at a good time, when the Soviets had their army weakened by the purges, completely unprepared and poorly supplied. The longer you waited, the stronger the Soviets would be.

5- Submarine campaigns cost millions of tons of sunk equipment for the allies, so they were vitally important.

According to your answer, did Germany win the war doing nothing?
I just do not see Stalin aggression attacking such a warlike country as Germany unless the allies were in germany. Stalin's not a crazy risk taker like Hitler. For the cost of tanks not destroyed on the eastern front, the Germans can buy grain, oil and cotton from the Soviets. It's a long game strategy for sure, and a democracy would be better at it, but it's really Germany's best chance.
 
And I don't disagree with you. POL or any item (weapon, resource, or personnel) doesn't help if it isn't where it is needed. But Germany was affected by local shortages early in the war and it got progressively worse as they lost their cushion of importing oil from the Soviets and after they burned through the POL they captured in the West. And when your plan involves capturing the US POL dumps in the Ardennes to sustain an advance across the Meuse, you are not really providing enough oil to sustain offensive combat operations.

Yes, Ardennes was a blitzkrieg without gas and air superiority, the things who guarantee the success of this strategy in the past. With no Oil or air superiority, blitzkrieg simply don't works
 
Yep. If Nazi Germany didn't waste so many resources carrying out the Holocaust and had limited war goals and didn't have a massive bureaucracy where so many underlings worked against each other to appease Hitler then maybe they could have won.

Of course, if they had all that stuff they wouldn't have been Nazi Germany so it is kind of a moot point.

Yes. In a strictly technical and cold view, the holocaust was a waste of resources.

If Germany had used them for slave labor, for example, or to assist the army's logistical issues by forming armed militias at the rear with fanatical collaborators, it might have had some impact on the war (not that it would completely change its outcome).
 
Many many of them Where used in slave labor. Just not all that Useful of labor,
My fathers friend wrote a book about his (the friends) time in a concentration camp it was very enlightening (in a very unpleasant way).and discussed in part what the prisoners did during the day.
 
And I don't disagree with you. POL or any item (weapon, resource, or personnel) doesn't help if it isn't where it is needed. But Germany was affected by local shortages early in the war and it got progressively worse as they lost their cushion of importing oil from the Soviets and after they burned through the POL they captured in the West. And when your plan involves capturing the US POL dumps in the Ardennes to sustain an advance across the Meuse, you are not really providing enough oil to sustain offensive combat operations.

We also need to remember of the scorched earth policy, the soviets evacuate or destroyed the resources when they was retreating, this also include burning the oil fields.
 
I don't think Panzers in Detroit is conceivable, no. But Germany could win on the terrific bluffs they made headway with when it did seem like Europe had all fallen to the Nazi troops. Germany was on thin ice, and went to war when it did because it literally couldn't afford to wait. The Allied powers thought Germany was in a stronger position than it really was, and perhaps had there been an organized war effort over Czechoslavkia, the Germans would have collapsed like a house of cards. The German war was like a Mongol horde, overwhelming the underprepared. On that basis, they could have won. If Moscow falls, if Dunkirk is a bloodbath, etc. The collapse of the USSR was not so inconceivable (Stalin almost evacuated Moscow), and what that means is a Britain alone. London does not need to be occupied for the Germans to have won; only sidelined.

britain would still fight, the only solution was occupying the country
 
Yes. In a strictly technical and cold view, the holocaust was a waste of resources.

If Germany had used them for slave labor, for example, or to assist the army's logistical issues by forming armed militias at the rear with fanatical collaborators, it might have had some impact on the war (not that it would completely change its outcome).

Germany totally did use Jewish slave labour. The V2s, for example, were built by slaves. (With predictable results on their reliability since the Germans could never find all the little acts of sabotage.)

In general, slavery wouldn't help the Germans much at all. What they need is eager converts who will work for victory with diligence and passion.

The axis had control over the whole of Europe, only the Iberian peninsula, Switzerland and Sweden were neutral, and did trade with the Axis, in addition to other neutral countries that did trade with the axis. How, having all this territory, they were unable to extract resources to feed the war machine?

Because Europe wasn't self-sufficient and things like food and oil and rubber and tungsten and nickel and chromium are all bottleneck resources. And because the Nazis are Nazis and thus have certain limits on how well they can mobilize the manpower of the continent.

fasquardon
 
I don't think Panzers in Detroit is conceivable, no. But Germany could win on the terrific bluffs they made headway with when it did seem like Europe had all fallen to the Nazi troops. Germany was on thin ice, and went to war when it did because it literally couldn't afford to wait. The Allied powers thought Germany was in a stronger position than it really was, and perhaps had there been an organized war effort over Czechoslavkia, the Germans would have collapsed like a house of cards. The German war was like a Mongol horde, overwhelming the underprepared. On that basis, they could have won. If Moscow falls, if Dunkirk is a bloodbath, etc. The collapse of the USSR was not so inconceivable (Stalin almost evacuated Moscow), and what that means is a Britain alone. London does not need to be occupied for the Germans to have won; only sidelined.

Even if Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow had fallen, it is very likely that the Soviet Union would continue to fight, but in fact, its ability to resist and morale would fall considerably.
 
Yes. In a strictly technical and cold view, the holocaust was a waste of resources.

If Germany had used them for slave labor, for example, or to assist the army's logistical issues by forming armed militias at the rear with fanatical collaborators, it might have had some impact on the war (not that it would completely change its outcome).

The problem with that is that you have to feed them and food that is going to your slave labor is food that is not going to your armies and civilians, who are already short on food, and who really don't want a repeat of the starvation of WWI.
 
Exactly, what doesn't help is various post war memoirs that are all variations of "we'd have won if it wasn't for that meddling Hitler" did like to go with the idea that if only certain dashing, energetic panzer commanders had been allowed to show their true awesomeness it would have been quite different (also "war crimes, what crimes").
 
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