How could Germany's economy have been better organized in World War 2?

[NoMommsen]

.... He resigned over the realization that war was an inevitability, and Hitler was not pursuing a sustainable rearmament program, but a crash rearmament that could only be sustained by the outbreak of war.

... the highlightend ... rather ... no.

When Schacht entered the govermental circle under the Hitler administration becomming Reichsbankpräsident he was fully aware of the inevitability of a future war - and not only due to Hitler being in charge.
But aside the reason you mentioned - the pace of rearmament and the point-of-time for the upcomming and expected war (anythingelse was/would be attempted white-washing) - it was also that Hitler not fully ... 'served' Schachts not too small ego in NOT making him the omnipotent director of finance and economics. that led him to resign.
In that he misunderstood the 'system' of Hitlers leading esp. regarding people who NOT had fallen under his charismatic spell or were otherwise dependant on him.

 

[RedSword12]

... the highlightend ... rather ... no.

When Schacht entered the govermental circle under the Hitler administration becomming Reichsbankpräsident he was fully aware of the inevitability of a future war - and not only due to Hitler being in charge.
But aside the reason you mentioned - the pace of rearmament and the point-of-time for the upcomming and expected war (anythingelse was/would be attempted white-washing) - it was also that Hitler not fully ... 'served' Schachts not too small ego in NOT making him the omnipotent director of finance and economics. that led him to resign.
In that he misunderstood the 'system' of Hitlers leading esp. regarding people who NOT had fallen under his charismatic spell or were otherwise dependant on him.

Source?

 

[NoMommsen]

Dude who created the mefo bills that able Germany to take on a whole lot of debt which were unsustainable in the first place due to lack of foreign reserves ( which nazis Germany “solved” by seizing other countries foreign reserves)

Why "unsustainable" ?

These bills created only domestic debts well hidden from public in kinda 'black cashiers'.
Therefore they were open to govermental ... 'reforming' as happend IOTL with turning them - at least partially - by unpublished law into another form of domestic debts.
Also these bills were some esp, by the german banks liked way to 'pimp' bilancing.
Despite being officially 'due' to payment from 1938/39 onwards they were to the largest extent kept and NOT asked for being payed. The sum these bills were issued peaked at about 12 billion RM in 1938, by 1940 there were still about 11 billions worth bills still 'around' (nmainly in the vaults of the german banks) and in 1944 even still bills about 8 billion RM worth.
Hope you see that the 'dueness' of the MEFO bills was actually never much of a concern if any for the goverment.

Also : MEFO bills as well as their precursors the ÖFFA bills had no relation to 'foreign reserves'.
These bills were NOT traded on tze open market but a rather 'discrete' market esp. with no connection to forex. ... exactly that was their very reason to create a way to 'pay' for rearmament without consumption of forex.

 

[NoMommsen]

Source?

Hjalmar Schat :

76 Jahre meines Lebens (My First Seventy-Six Years, english edition 1955); 1953. ... kinda autobiography​

Abrechnung mit Hitler (Settlements with Hitler); 1948​

Those two to be read with some rather moonsized grains of salt but nevertheless ...its whatw written between the lines in these works. ;-)

Chjristopher Kopper

Hjalmar Schacht. Aufstieg und Fall von Hitlers mächtigstem Bankier​

Heinz Pentzlin

Hjalmar Schacht. Leben und Wirken einer umstrittenen Persönlichkeit.​

As well as mentions in otherly focussed writings like Brünings remembrances, Carl Silverberg remembrances, numerous other articles about the economical development during Weimar and the 3.Reich.

 

[NoMommsen]

Actually, I have enough imagination to understand the 60 attempts on the Berlin Maniac's life. BUT, I also understand why if not Nazi, then some general form of psychotic, sociopathic political movement, based on a hate ideology, was bound to emerge from the conditions that prevailed in the region. Not just the Germans, either. Different thread subject and requires another thread to cover it, but FASCISM was a rather popular movement among many polities.

... I hope there are only very few with similar "understanding" condemning all of those crazy europeans (ofc "Gods Own Country" and its inhabitans are completly free from such dangers as hate ideology or racism or antisemitism or ...) and the germans probably especially to be nazis ... or some other fascists.

 

[Oda]

Why "unsustainable" ?

These bills created only domestic debts well hidden from public in kinda 'black cashiers'.
Therefore they were open to govermental ... 'reforming' as happend IOTL with turning them - at least partially - by unpublished law into another form of domestic debts.
Also these bills were some esp, by the german banks liked way to 'pimp' bilancing.
Despite being officially 'due' to payment from 1938/39 onwards they were to the largest extent kept and NOT asked for being payed. The sum these bills were issued peaked at about 12 billion RM in 1938, by 1940 there were still about 11 billions worth bills still 'around' (nmainly in the vaults of the german banks) and in 1944 even still bills about 8 billion RM worth.
Hope you see that the 'dueness' of the MEFO bills was actually never much of a concern if any for the goverment.

Also : MEFO bills as well as their precursors the ÖFFA bills had no relation to 'foreign reserves'.
These bills were NOT traded on tze open market but a rather 'discrete' market esp. with no connection to forex. ... exactly that was their very reason to create a way to 'pay' for rearmament without consumption of forex.

The mefo bills were initially a short term solution to conceal Germany rearmament but the nazis were increased using the bills as a permanent solution as The Central bank was printing the bills at an extravagant rate .When Germany central bank issued a stop in printing the bills on 1938, it causes a cash flow crisis leading to Germany stock market to fall and taxes rising. Not to mention the rearmament policy Germany having requires large reserves of foreign currency to back it up something nazi Germany’s lacks
In short, Nazi economic "planning" was not really planning, but a series of short-term schemes strung together past the point of rational sense. By avoiding inflation in the main currency, the Third Reich created a different set of economic problems that were even more damaging than inflation. It was fiscally reckless but also completely in line with Hitler's own poor understanding of economics.
TL DR: The printing of mefo bills by itself isn’t unsustainable but to cover and conceal Germany high inflation from aggressive government spending. The printing of mefo bills is supposed to be a short term solution but has turned to a pernament one due to nazi unsustainable and insane economic policy

 

[McPherson]

... I hope there are only very few with similar "understanding" condemning all of those crazy europeans (ofc "Gods Own Country" and its inhabitans are completly free from such dangers as hate ideology or racism or antisemitism or ...) and the germans probably especially to be nazis ... or some other fascists.

You know something? We are an ocean apart on understanding the same history. If my viewpoint came across as anything but data and historical event driven then I failed to make it plain as to what the facts and results showed me as to conclusions.

1. Fascists were and are criminals.
2. Fascists were inefficient because specifically they lacked compassion, empathy, morality or the ability to see the worth of any other human being or any other point of view that was centered on the worth of other human beings, aside from their own selfish selves.
3. The Fascists thought the state was the ultimate center of order and efficiency and of course they rejected evidence of their evil and incompetence in results and ruin as demonstrated in war when they BECAME the state and put their lunatic ideas into practice.

Let me cite me...

That is a data fact by the way. A lot of draftable German men, were singled out and murdered because of their identification as "state enemies" on the basis of a bigot's racist hatred, which was incidentally shared by enough of the polity so that it was accepted as state sanctioned policy.

At least the racist Americans in the war did not waste their own "excluded citizens" by murdering them. Those "excluded citizens" built the Alcan highway and the Burma Road instead. Morality in war equals efficiency.

sociopathic political movement, based on a hate ideology, was bound to emerge from the conditions that prevailed in the region. Not just the Germans, either. Different thread subject and requires another thread to cover it, but FASCISM was a rather popular movement among many polities.

TR is speaking from his radical republican roots. He was a racist, and a big business Republican, too; but he was also progressive, and not the kind of absolute scum the Wilsonian unreconstructed confederate worshipping bastard wing of the Democrat party was.

The Americans had a severe shortage of trained NCOs and competent officers who could troop lead or do the necessary staff work. The oversized divisions were recognized as a bad idea at the time, but it goes straight to Wilsonian incompetence and Baker again, that neither time, nor money was set aside with war looming on the horizon to contingency plan the National Guard to prepare leaders in the numbers required for the 40 division "French style" army that "should" have made the landings in France. That was actually part of the Roosevelt preparedness argument. He knew from experience, that weapons could be built and troops raised quickly. What could not be done was create instant officers and sergeants. Those men have to be taught how. That takes at least a year, preferably two at the minimum with the trained soldiers already to hand and up to four years with inductees.

That accounts for a lot of "simplified" American tactics, the astonishingly high casualties in those stupid Pershing ordered frontal assaults and the generally poor opinion the British and French had of the American army's prowess. It also forms part of why the French and British wanted to use Americans in THEIR formations. They HAD the officers and sergeants who "could" lead and mentor the green Americans and teach them OJT what they needed to learn to survive. The allies were not trying to be malicious about what they wanted to do. They were trying to be "practical" because they had gone through it and wanted to spare the Americans the joys of repeating their own 1914-1916 mistakes.

National pride + Wilson administration incompetence = 115,000 dead+ when it should have been more like 55,000-60,000 lives lost for the amount of fighting actually done.

God damn the Wilson administration.

To debunk the notion that it was just European fascists who were inefficient and incompetent "goddamns" in my opinion. Plenty of my unreconstructed countrymen embraced "fascism", before it ever became "fascism".

Man, and here I thought III disliked ol' Woody

======================================================================

Your logic is full of holes.

America fighting on seven fronts is not saying much. They were fighting all over the pacific, against only 2 powers, which had far inferior industrial strength. It's not remotely comparable to how bad Germany's situation was. Your argument that America had it as bad as Germany is alone enough to discredit you.

One does not not really seriously believe that one, with platitudes and no evidence at all save mere rhetoric, can convince ME of what just the Pacific War alone entailed for the Americans? Nor does one understand what an additional strain lend lease to Russia, Great Britain and equipping and training and then hurling three major groups of armies across five oceans entailed for the Americans? Comparatively speaking, I reject any specious argument that dismisses an industrial, political and economic effort that was equal to 50% of the total allied war effort and which was genuinely waged on moral grounds to prevent Hitlerism and its imitators from over-running the Earth. America had it easy?

One should study Jomini, Clauswitz, both Dennis and Alfred Mahan and perhaps Upton and Root as well.

Easy? When one understands what interior lines means in logistics and the operational art, the 6 to 1 ratio rule for offense/defense, the parity of economic base Nazi Germany actually enjoyed against the Americans (All of Europe's human talent, wealth and resources to plunder and loot.) and the fact that time was not on the American's side to mount the amphibious attacks, the most difficult of sea power operations to mount against a peer MacKinder enemy power operating on interior lines and with short unassailable land lines of communication... to defeat that power quickly before military technology shifted again to make things like OVERLORD impossible, therefore provoking truly awful alternatives (Atomic bombs if one does not get it.). Thank Murphy, the Germans were that totally incompetent and inefficient.

Take a look at Downfall and maybe one will understand. That is when the atomic bombs came in.

That would be against the Japanese... an actually "efficient" (sarcasm) fascist power.

Easy... ?

ENDIT.

 

[RedSword12]

One does not not really seriously believe that one, with platitudes and no evidence at all save mere rhetoric, can convince ME of what just the Pacific War alone entailed for the Americans? Nor does one understand what an additional strain lend lease to Russia, Great Britain and equipping and training and then hurling three major groups of armies across five oceans entailed for the Americans? Comparatively speaking, I reject any specious argument that dismisses an industrial, political and economic effort that was equal to 50% of the total allied war effort and which was genuinely waged on moral grounds to prevent Hitlerism and its imitators from over-running the Earth. America had it easy?

One should study Jomini, Clauswitz, both Dennis and Alfred Mahan and perhaps Upton and Root as well.

Easy? When one understands what interior lines means in logistics and the operational art, the 6 to 1 ratio rule for offense/defense, the parity of economic base Nazi Germany actually enjoyed against the Americans (All of Europe's human talent, wealth and resources to plunder and loot.) and the fact that time was not on the American's side to mount the amphibious attacks, the most difficult of sea power operations to mount against a peer MacKinder enemy power operating on interior lines and with short unassailable land lines of communication... to defeat that power quickly before military technology shifted again to make things like OVERLORD impossible, therefore provoking truly awful alternatives (Atomic bombs if one does not get it.). Thank Murphy, the Germans were that totally incompetent and inefficient.


Take a look at Downfall and maybe one will understand. That is when the atomic bombs came in.

That would be against the Japanese... an actually "efficient" (sarcasm) fascist power.

Easy... ?

ENDIT.

Honestly, if you think the Allies did not have an overwhelming material advantage in World War II, you really have no credibility. Nobody is denying that American operations were extremely sophisticated. You're just making a strawman argument, because your argument that the USA had it as bad as Germany is clearly ludicrous. The fact of the matter is, Germany never stood a chance once America entered the war, no matter how competent they were.

Let's see the American advantages: Lots of manpower, enough oil and other resources to keep the machine of war turning, industry that isn't being bombed like clockwork, politically cohesive alliances with competent countries all around… If you think the US Army and Navy were in as a bad position as Germany's and only won so decisively because the stupid Nazis were utter fools, I don't think I can convince you otherwise.

ENDIT

 

[Sārthākā]

Having a ground level approach for rearmament on a slow and steady basis like Britain wanted otl may have helped the Germans. Britain started their rearmament in 1936 with the intention of being fully ready by 1942. However the war coming really fast did jeopardize them in that regard, however the plan was sound in the case that a steady rearmament was required for a proper economy. And not the rushed rearmament that Germany went through otl that included looting the national banks of Austria and Czechoslovakia to keep their economy alive.

 

[Praetor98]

Having a ground level approach for rearmament on a slow and steady basis like Britain wanted otl may have helped the Germans. Britain started their rearmament in 1936 with the intention of being fully ready by 1942. However the war coming really fast did jeopardize them in that regard, however the plan was sound in the case that a steady rearmament was required for a proper economy. And not the rushed rearmament that Germany went through otl that included looting the national banks of Austria and Czechoslovakia to keep their economy alive.

Unfortunately, Germany's economy was thoroughly looted by the British and Americans after World War 1. Furthermore none of the German firms had much idea about how to build tanks, and other things.

 

[ReconGuy02]

Anyone but Nazis running Germany?

 

[Sārthākā]

Unfortunately, Germany's economy was thoroughly looted by the British and Americans after World War 2. Furthermore none of the German firms had much idea about how to build tanks, and other things.

I'm guessing you mean ww1.
And no despite the popular perception that is not the case.

Historian Niall Ferguson partially supports this analysis: had reparations not been imposed, Germany would still have had significant problems caused by the need to pay war debts and the demands of voters for more social services.[106] Ferguson argued that these problems were aggravated by a trade deficit and a weak exchange rate for the mark during 1920. Afterwards, as the value of the mark rose, inflation became a problem. None of these were the result of reparations.[107] According to Ferguson, even without reparations total public spending in Germany between 1920 and 1923 was 33 per cent of total net national product.[106] A.J.P. Taylor wrote "Germany was a net gainer by the financial transactions of the nineteen-twenties: she borrowed far more from private American investors ... than she paid in reparations".[108] P.M.H. Bell stated the creation of a multi-national committee, which resulted in the Dawes Plan, was done to consider ways the German budget could be balanced, the currency stabilized, and the German economy fixed to ease reparation payments.[109] Max Winkler wrote that from 1924 onward, German officials were "virtually flooded with loan offers by foreigners". Overall, the German economy performed reasonably well until the foreign investments funding the economy and the loans funding reparations payments were suddenly withdrawn after the 1929 Stock Market Crash. This collapse was magnified by the volume of loans provided to German companies by US lenders. Even the reduced payments of the Dawes Plan were mainly financed through a large volume of international loans.[110]

While Germany initially had a trade deficit, British policy during the early 1920s was to reintegrate Germany into European trade as soon as possible. Likewise, France attempted to secure trade deals with Germany.[111] During the mid-to-late 1920s, trade between France and Germany grew rapidly. French imports of German goods "increased by 60 per cent", highlighting the close links between French industrial growth and German production, and the increase in cooperation between the countries.[112]

Max Hantke and Mark Spoerer provide a different perspective on the effect of reparations on the German economy. They wrote that focusing on the reparations and inflation ignores "the fact that the restriction of the German military to 115,000 men relieved the German central budget considerably".[113] Hantke and Spoerer argue that their findings show "that even under quite rigorous assumptions the net economic burden of the Treaty of Versailles was much less heavy than has been hitherto thought, in particular if we confine our perspective to the Reich's budget".[114] They say, "though politically a humiliation", the limitation on the military "was beneficial in fiscal terms" and that their economic models show that "the restriction of the size of the army was clearly beneficial for the Reich budget".[115] Additionally, their economic scenarios indicate that while the Treaty of Versailles was "overall clearly a burden on the German economy", it "also offered a substantial peace dividend for Weimar's non-revanchist budget politicians." They conclude that, "The fact that [these politicians] did not make sufficient use of this imposed gift supports the hypothesis that the Weimar Republic suffered from home-made political failure".[116]

Event	German gold marks (billions)	U.S. dollars (billions)	2019 US$ (billions)
Initial German offer, 24 April 1921	50 (capital value) or 200 in annuities (nominal value)[43][99]	12.5 – 50[Note 2]	179 – 717
London Schedule of Payments, 5 May 1921	132[44]	33[90]	473
A and B Bonds, of the above payment scheme	50[43]	12.5[43]	179
Young Plan, 1929	112[74]	26.35[71]	392
Total German payment made by 1932	19–20.5[92][93]	4.75 – 5.12[Note 2]	89 – 96

@Dorknought put it brilliantly in this post as well:-

The reparation bill presented to the Germans in 1921 added up to a grand total close to 300% of her GNP of 1913. All these reparations were largely, though not entirely, due on top of the seizures of German foreign assets and of deliveries in kind.

Reparation demands came in three portions, denominated as A, B, and C bonds.

The A bonds (ca. 12 billion gold marks) were designed to compensate for direct war damage.
This burden on German GNP would have remained well within the bounds of historical experience. If we calculate the ratio of French public debt of 1871 to French GDP of 1869 as 55- 60%, imposing the reparations bill of 1871 produced a total burden of 75-80%, which is roughly comparable. Had Germany only had to pay the net indemnity after 1920, the whole reparation question would have remained a footnote to European history.

The B bonds (ca. 38 billion gold marks), Germany should assume the so-called inter-allied war debt owed to the US by Britain and France.
The B bonds backed the reimbursement of inter-allied war credit. The A and B bonds combined thus give us a reparation burden of 99% of 1913 GNP. Together with existing public debt, this would mean a debt burden of some 150% of 1913 GNP. This is clearly more than France’s burden after 1871; however, it is not higher than the total burden borne by France (144% of 1913 GNP) and Britain in 1920 (135% of 1913 GNP). While Germany’s reparation burden of A+B bonds is high the total burden on GNP if we include outstanding public debt is the same as in the victorious countries.

The C Bonds (82 billion gold marks) the largest portion was a more hypothetical burden placed on Germany in order to please parliaments and the public in Western Europe and to have a safeguard against vigorous economic recovery of the former enemy.
Only if we add the propaganda-oriented C bonds to the total brings it to 132 billion gold marks or 2.5 times the GNP of 1913, and the total debt burden produced is equal to 300% of 1913 GNP.

It was communicated to the Germans through diplomatic channels that the C bonds were not likely to be ever be paid.

Nobody ever asked Germany to pay the C bonds, with the possible exception of some backbenchers in the parliaments of London and Paris - and the more important exception of the extreme right in Germany, who welcomed these numbers as a most efficient propaganda weapon.

From Sally Marks,
“Mistakes and Myths: The Allies, Germany, and the Versailles Treaty, 1918–
1921.” The Journal of Modern History 85 (September 2013): 632-659. DOI: 10.1086/670825.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/670825
URL: http://h-diplo.org/reviews/PDF/AR429.pdf
and from @David T :-

"..Sally Marks’s article neatly distills the arguments that she (and other historians who have
carefully examined the relevant primary sources) have advanced in order to challenge the
long-reigning orthodoxy about the 1919 peace settlement. It would take too long to do
justice to all of the points that she makes in this review article, so I will confine myself to
the most salient ones: The first is that the patient archival work of historians in the 1970s
and 1980s, after the British and French records for the period under review had been
opened, has produced a scholarly consensus regarding the status of the 1919 peace
settlement. That consensus rejects the orthodox interpretation in favor of a much more
nuanced assessment of the peace settlement after the Great War. It demonstrates that the
peace treaty with Germany was much less harsh and vindictive than critics since Keynes
and Nicolson have alleged, that the Weimar Republic could have coped relatively easily
with the financial obligations and territorial losses imposed upon it by the peace treaty,
and that the Versailles system collapsed not because of its oppressive features but because
the German public was led by its leaders to believe that it was unjust and therefore should
be resisted at every turn and dismantled at the earliest opportunity.5

"As Marks observes,

“'While the Four [Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Orlando] imposed losses and
constraints upon Germany, many of them temporary, they allowed it to remain Europe’s
greatest state politically, economically, and potentially militarily...” (658). The Weimar
Republic—long before Hitler came to power—refused to accept the fact that Germany had
lost the war because the war had been fought outside German territory and the defeated
German army was permitted to march home in formation instead of scuttling home in
abject defeat. The vanquished power was deluded into believing that it had signed an
armistice rather than a capitulation. In short, the German people were led to believe that
their military forces had fought the French, British, and American armies to a draw in the
west and then signed a truce in the expectation of being treated leniently at the peace
conference on the basis of the liberal principles of Wilson’s Fourteen Points. As Marks
reminds us, the failure of the allies to drive home to the German people the reality of their
army’s total defeat on the battlefield gave rise to the Dolchstoss (“stab in the back”) myth
and the widespread belief—again long before Hitler took power—that since Germany had
not lost the war, the severe restrictions placed upon it by the peace treaty were unfair. This
in turn became the source of bitter resentment and the demand for revenge.

"Marks is at pains to emphasize a number of salient points about the peace settlement that
have been overlooked or deemphasized by the proponents of the “Carthaginian Peace”
school of historiography.

"She points out that the territorial settlement, which deprived Germany of 13% of its
territory, 10% of its population, and 13.5% of its economic potential, in fact involved the
transfer of much German land that “was French, Walloon, Danish, or Polish in population
and culture” (652).” Those forced territorial cessions were much less that the huge swath of
territory that Germany wrested from Bolshevik Russia in the March 1918 Treaty of BrestLitovsk
and planned to force France and Belgium to cede if Germany had won in the west.

"The prohibition of the political unification of Germany and the German-speaking rump of
the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, though clearly a violation of Wilson’s hallowed
principle of national self-determination, was for Marks a perfectly understandable means
of preventing a revival of a Greater Germany. The same was true for the German-speaking
borderlands of the new state of Czechoslovakia that the Germans called the Sudetenland.
The incorporation of these territories into postwar Germany would have had the perverse
effect of rewarding the defeated power with territorial acquisitions that would strengthen
it if it ever sought to reverse the outcome of the war.

"The Reparation clauses of the treaty—on which, as noted, Marks has written extensively—
have given rise to the most egregious and long-lasting myths associated with the peace
settlement. Her main insight about reparations—which has been highlighted by Mark
Trachtenberg6 and others-- is that the Allied leaders in Paris were caught in a terrible
dilemma: they recognized that post-war Germany would be incapable of bearing the
enormous financial burden of rebuilding the territories ravished by its armies during the
war. But they also knew that their publics had been led to expect Germany to pay for the
entire cost of reconstruction and would cashier any head of government who settled for
anything less than full payment. They therefore resorted to a masterly sleight-of-hand:
Under Article 231 of the peace treaty, Germany would be required to acknowledge full
responsibility for the damage done. Article 232 would concede that Germany could not be
expected to pay beyond its capacity. Thus, the Allied publics would have the satisfaction of
knowing that Germany would be required to accept responsibility for the damage caused
by its military forces in northeastern France, Belgium, and elsewhere. The Weimar
Republic should have been relieved to learn that it would it not be required to pay a war
indemnity or the actual costs of the war, as France had after 1871 at the end of a war in
which no German territory had been damaged. Germany should also have been pleased to
note that the reparation bill would be based not on the total amount of damage caused but
rather on Germany’s economic wherewithal to pay. But Marks notes that no amount of
reparation payment would have been acceptable to the leaders of the Weimar Republic
because such payments were erroneously connected in the mind of the German public
with the widespread myth of the “war guilt clause.” As she has reminded us in her earlier
work, the word “guilt” does not appear in the notorious Article 231, and virtually identical
language was included in the treaties signed with Germany’s allies. Yet the myth of the
“war guilt clause” unilaterally imposed on Germany, which was propagated in the early
1920s by Weimar officials and opinion makers, has stood the test of time and continues to
find its way into histories of the peace settlement.

"On the question of Germany’s capacity to pay, Marks is merciless in dissecting and
disproving the various claims of penury. “There are those, not all German, who claim that
reparations were unpayable,” she observes. “After 1871, France, with a much smaller
economy than Germany’s fifty years later, paid nearly as much in two years (by French
estimate) to liberate its territory as the Weimar Republic paid from 1919 to 1932” (644) She
points out that “Germany’s tax rates [in the 1920s] were abnormally low and remained
so….Raising taxes would have provided ample funds, as the Dawes Committee discovered.
Weimar could have borrowed from the citizenry, as France did after 1871.”Moreover the
postwar German economy “was intact, having been spared devastation and denudation
[which the major reparation recipients France and Belgium had experienced.] There were
lavish social subsidies, unmatched by the victors. A fiscal and monetary housecleaning
would have facilitated foreign loans” which were forthcoming with the Dawes Plan in 1924
(645).With American bank loans pouring into Germany during the second half of the 1920s
while the reparation bill was periodically revised downward, the German economy took off
and the German government easily made its reduced reparation payments until the advent
of the Great Depression and the drying up of American loans. In the end, as Stephen A.
Schuker has shown, the Weimar Republic actually paid no net reparations at all,
discharging its reparation bill with the proceeds from American bank loans and then
defaulting on both reparations and foreign debts in the Great Depression.7

"So much for
the claim that the ‘burdensome’ reparations requirement of the peace treaty led to the
collapse of the German economy and the advent of Hitler.
In the end Marks recapitulates what she regards as the two fatal flaws in the way the
victors in the Great War brought that conflict to an end and then attempted to lay the
groundwork for a lasting peace. The first was the failure of the Allies to bring home to the
Germans the reality of the total military defeat they had recently suffered, which enabled
the Weimar leaders to perpetuate the myth that their country had not lost the war and
therefore deserved to be treated as an equal by the other powers in Paris.8 Such a
misconception by the defeated power “depends on its perception of its circumstances, and
that perception partly depends on what the victors do. In 1814-15, the Russian tsar and army
wintered in Paris….In 1870-71 German troops paraded through the Arc de Triomphe and
the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Each time, defeat
was self-evident and accepted” (653). In 1918-19 “the defeated power was not humiliated;
instead, it was able to delude itself about the war’s outcome.” And she clinches her
argument on a caustic note: “An Allied march down the Unter den Linden would have
humiliated Germany briefly, but in retrospect that might have been a small price to pay”

"The second flaw in the peace settlement was the failure to develop adequate enforcement
machinery to give teeth to the stringent obligations that would be forced on defeated
Germany. “[N]either Wilson nor Lloyd George wished to engage in enforcement, and they
prevailed,” she remarks. “Evidently they did not see that imposing a victor’s peace without
the will to enforce it presaged problems (641).” After the (temporary) withdrawal of the
United States and Soviet Russia from the European scene and Great Britain’s reversion to
its prewar policy of focusing on imperial, naval, and commercial concerns outside Europe
while promoting a Franco-German balance on the Continent, the French were left with the
responsibility unilaterally to enforce the peace settlement. This they were in no position to
achieve, particularly after the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 brought down upon them the
wrath of everybody. By the advent of the Nazi regime in 1933, most of the key provisions of
the Versailles Treaty—notably the disarmament and reparations sections—had been
systematically violated. The territorial provisions would fall in the course of the next six
years.

"Time will tell whether what I have called “the demonization of Versailles” will finally
succumb to the archive-based discoveries of scholars and the lucid summary of those
findings in Margaret Macmillan's work.10 But as Marks’s review and her earlier work
suggests, the shopworn image of the 1919 peace settlement as having sowed the seeds for
the next European war is like a cat with nine lives that—to mix a metaphor-- refuses to give
up the ghost.11"

The Paris Peace Conference and its Consequences | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)

This article offers an overview of peacemaking after the First World War from the armistices of 1918 until 1923. It considers the outcomes of the five Parisian treaties (Versailles, Saint-Germain and Neuilly in 1919 and Trianon and Sèvres in 1920) together with the renegotiated settlement with...

encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net

The great depression looted Germany from a proper economy, not the Entente.

 

[McPherson]

General comment.

Let's see the American advantages: Lots of manpower, enough oil and other resources to keep the machine of war turning, industry that isn't being bombed like clockwork, politically cohesive alliances with competent countries all around… If you think the US Army and Navy were in as a bad position as Germany's and only won so decisively because the stupid Nazis were utter fools, I don't think I can convince you otherwise.

ENDIT

Troop-Training Problems of 1940 - United States Army ...​

The Crisis of 1940 - United States Army Center of Military ...​

Pearl Harbor ceremony to honor those killed in 1941 attack ...

Sadly, a lot of Europeans think the Americans just danced their way across the oceans on fairy dust to invade anywhere they wanted and magically made factories churn out a cornucopia of war machines and like Jason produced an army of 12 million men out of the ground by sowing dragon's teeth like in some Ray Harryhausen movie.

BULLSHIT.

The Americans started from ZERO. (^^^)

It was almost a whole year before TORCH got ashore in Morocco with maybe 2 divisions of troops. All that the Americans could lift into that fight. In the 11 month interval between; 1/3 of the professional combat army and navy the US had ready to go on 7 December 1941 had been destroyed. Yes, destroyed to buy time to stop the Japanese.

Allies? Ever hear of the Singapore Bastion Defense or ABDA and how those turned out?

The America the Europeans think about is the one they see in the old newsreels of 1944 June, when a vast power tore into the Marianas Islands in an invasion as big as OVERLORD, two weeks after OVERLORD was mounted. And of course they think about Normandy and or Italy when they think of WWII America, because they are thinking in Eurocentric terms. \\

That is not America's war.

It takes 3 months for a Sherman tank to be made. About the same for a B-17 from ores to roll-out of the factory floors. To train men to maintain and operate the same takes a year. The B-17 was not really produced in any major numbers until the Mid 1942. The Sherman did not exist until about the same time. So make it 1943 until large numbers of both type items start showing up.

You can date the beginning of the expeditionary American armies (about 20 divisions about the time of HUSKY) around the same mid 1943.

Out in the Pacific, the United States Navy and Marine Corps is outnumbered and outgunned 3 to 2 by the Japanese at the points of contacts, clear into most of 1943 because "Europe First" for every available soldier and airman and so there's all that fighting and dying AGAINST SUPERIOR NUMBERS just to hold the Japanese at bay.

How are things going in Russia and for the UK?

Well Burma is a mess (Burma Road and the US is trying to keep the British and Chinese fighting and is fighting there themselves.)

North Africa? Ehhh. NTG.

Mediterranean? Pedestal is a thing, but the British cannot close the deal until Montgomery fixes what the Royal Navy simply cannot do, which is cut the Germans and Italians out of North Africa and HE saves Malta, thereby. American trucks and tanks by then are what his army uses.

Russia is starving, so there is all that American wheat, American steel, American machine tools, American trucks, American aviation gas, and in 1944 about 1 in 4 American SHERMAN TANKS going to Russia, plus many thousands of American fighters, because Russian planes are no damn good at TACAIR, and let us not forget the plant managers and factory organizers, and logistics experts and railroad experts and that specialist equipment for Russia's rebuilt railroads that make the late 1943 and early 1944 Russian offensives possible?

Of the 45,000 remaining Sherman tanks that American factories produce in 1943-1944 and 1945... HALF go to the British and Commonwealth armies. The Americans keep the other half.

SWPOA? Thank Murphy for the ANZACS. Reliable allies. But MacArthur is MacArthur, so that is a mess.

The glorious WWII US Navy? Where is it?

In 1942 and 1943 it is still building. That is correct. Those South Dakotas, Iowas and Baltimores and Clevelands and Essexes and Fletchers and Gatos and Cimarrons and whatnot are on the weighs or in graver's docks still being assembled. You will not see most of them wet until around September 1943 at the earliest. They trickle out starting in March `1943.

BTW, most of the Liberty Ships and the naval forces that will slide down the 1943 weighs go to LANTFLT first and will join the Canadians in throttling the U-boats and securing the SLOCs to the UK and Russia. "Europe First".

It takes a year to train a ship's company. A YEAR. Parity with the Japanese afloat happens around September 1943. In the air after losing between 5,000 and 6,000 AIRCREW in 1942, the parity is reached in March 1943. Torpedo crisis is still ongoing.

Did you know 1/4 of the US sub fleet is back in the US having their fucked up diesel engines replaced? Thank you, goddamned Harold Stark. Should have been shot, that bastard. And they still managed to sink more tonnage in 1943 than the Germans did with only 1/3 the boats. Amazing.

That is just a snapshot of America's War; the real war.

So...

If you think the US Army and Navy were in as a bad position as Germany's and only won so decisively because the stupid Nazis were utter fools, I don't think I can convince you otherwise.

WTF.

 

[Praetor98]

I'm guessing you mean ww1.
And no despite the popular perception that is not the case.

Shoot. Need to fix that. But what I'm talking about is that they didn't have the factories necessary to produce all the stuff they needed since they'd been beaten in the war, and much of their war-making potential had been stripped from them or forcibly dismantled.

 

[RedSword12]

General comment.

Troop-Training Problems of 1940 - United States Army ...​

The Crisis of 1940 - United States Army Center of Military ...​

Pearl Harbor ceremony to honor those killed in 1941 attack ...

Sadly, a lot of Europeans think the Americans just danced their way across the oceans on fairy dust to invade anywhere they wanted and magically made factories churn out a cornucopia of war machines and like Jason produced an army of 12 million men out of the ground by sowing dragon's teeth like in some Ray Harryhausen movie.

BULLSHIT.

The Americans started from ZERO. (^^^)

It was almost a whole year before TORCH got ashore in Morocco with maybe 2 divisions of troops. All that the Americans could lift into that fight. In the 11 month interval between; 1/3 of the professional combat army and navy the US had ready to go on 7 December 1941 had been destroyed. Yes, destroyed to buy time to stop the Japanese.

Allies? Ever hear of the Singapore Bastion Defense or ABDA and how those turned out?

The America the Europeans think about is the one they see in the old newsreels of 1944 June, when a vast power tore into the Marianas Islands in an invasion as big as OVERLORD, two weeks after OVERLORD was mounted. And of course they think about Normandy and or Italy when they think of WWII America, because they are thinking in Eurocentric terms. \\

That is not America's war.

It takes 3 months for a Sherman tank to be made. About the same for a B-17 from ores to roll-out of the factory floors. To train men to maintain and operate the same takes a year. The B-17 was not really produced in any major numbers until the Mid 1942. The Sherman did not exist until about the same time. So make it 1943 until large numbers of both type items start showing up.

You can date the beginning of the expeditionary American armies (about 20 divisions about the time of HUSKY) around the same mid 1943.

Out in the Pacific, the United States Navy and Marine Corps is outnumbered and outgunned 3 to 2 by the Japanese at the points of contacts, clear into most of 1943 because "Europe First" for every available soldier and airman and so there's all that fighting and dying AGAINST SUPERIOR NUMBERS just to hold the Japanese at bay.

How are things going in Russia and for the UK?

Well Burma is a mess (Burma Road and the US is trying to keep the British and Chinese fighting and is fighting there themselves.)

North Africa? Ehhh. NTG.

Mediterranean? Pedestal is a thing, but the British cannot close the deal until Montgomery fixes what the Royal Navy simply cannot do, which is cut the Germans and Italians out of North Africa and HE saves Malta, thereby. American trucks and tanks by then are what his army uses.

Russia is starving, so there is all that American wheat, American steel, American machine tools, American trucks, American aviation gas, and in 1944 about 1 in 4 American SHERMAN TANKS going to Russia, plus many thousands of American fighters, because Russian planes are no damn good at TACAIR, and let us not forget the plant managers and factory organizers, and logistics experts and railroad experts and that specialist equipment for Russia's rebuilt railroads that make the late 1943 and early 1944 Russian offensives possible?

Of the 45,000 remaining Sherman tanks that American factories produce in 1943-1944 and 1945... HALF go to the British and Commonwealth armies. The Americans keep the other half.

SWPOA? Thank Murphy for the ANZACS. Reliable allies. But MacArthur is MacArthur, so that is a mess.

The glorious WWII US Navy? Where is it?

In 1942 and 1943 it is still building. That is correct. Those South Dakotas, Iowas and Baltimores and Clevelands and Essexes and Fletchers and Gatos and Cimarrons and whatnot are on the weighs or in graver's docks still being assembled. You will not see most of them wet until around September 1943 at the earliest. They trickle out starting in March `1943.

BTW, most of the Liberty Ships and the naval forces that will slide down the 1943 weighs go to LANTFLT first and will join the Canadians in throttling the U-boats and securing the SLOCs to the UK and Russia. "Europe First".

It takes a year to train a ship's company. A YEAR. Parity with the Japanese afloat happens around September 1943. In the air after losing between 5,000 and 6,000 AIRCREW in 1942, the parity is reached in March 1943. Torpedo crisis is still ongoing.

Did you know 1/4 of the US sub fleet is back in the US having their fucked up diesel engines replaced? Thank you, goddamned Harold Stark. Should have been shot, that bastard. And they still managed to sink more tonnage in 1943 than the Germans did with only 1/3 the boats. Amazing.

That is just a snapshot of America's War; the real war.

So...


WTF.

I never said things were easy, but it was obvious in the industrial game, America would come out on top in the end. The IJA was quite incompetent in comparison to the Americans, so while it was far from a cakewalk, the Americans when fighting on even terms, were not losing. While Germany was lowering the quality of its machinery to cope with shortages of materiel and skilled laborers, and also having to deal with periodic bombing raids, America was able to use its industry unmolested. Honestly, you bring in such unrelated things, and act as if America's position was remotely as bad as Germany's in 1943. It is actively an indefensible position. You make strawman claims that I said America just churned out tanks from the beginning, when I said no such thing. Your spurious claims that America's position in the war was as bad as Germany's, is plainly ludicrous. In a war between an alliance of world powers, against two nations trying and already showing signs of failing to become world powers, it is clear which side is in the better position.

 

[Sārthākā]

Shoot. Need to fix that. But what I'm talking about is that they didn't have the factories necessary to produce all the stuff they needed since they'd been beaten in the war, and much of their war-making potential had been stripped from them or forcibly dismantled.

to a point. Germany remained an exporter of weapons, (just not tanks or planes) throughout 1921 to 1929. They did therefore have the industry, though not at appropriate levels for full rearmament. However i do get your point, and merely pointed out that the depression had more to do with Germany's economic problems than the aftereffects of ww1 on the germany economy

 

[McPherson]

I never said things were easy, but it was obvious in the industrial game, America would come out on top in the end. The IJA was quite incompetent in comparison to the Americans, so while it was far from a cakewalk, the Americans when fighting on even terms, were not losing. While Germany was lowering the quality of its machinery to cope with shortages of materiel and skilled laborers, and also having to deal with periodic bombing raids, America was able to use its industry unmolested. Honestly, you bring in such unrelated things, and act as if America's position was remotely as bad as Germany's in 1943. It is actively an indefensible position. You make strawman claims that I said America just churned out tanks from the beginning, when I said no such thing. Your spurious claims that America's position in the war was as bad as Germany's, is plainly ludicrous. In a war between an alliance of world powers, against two nations trying to become world powers, one thinks it would be obvious which side is in the better position.

One needs to really learn the topic... RS. I simply know because I put in the work for my timelines, plus I am a Pacific War researcher.

The first indication that the Germans were incompetent...

Germany was lowering the quality of its machinery to cope with shortages of materiel and skilled laborers, and also having to deal with periodic bombing raids, America was able to use its industry unmolested. Honestly, you bring in such unrelated things, and act as if America's position was remotely as bad as Germany's in 1943.

Starting a war that cannot be won is the FIRST indication of incompetence.

BTW, when the Japanese cut off American access to China and Indonesia, that meant the Americans were short of wolfram, molybdenum, catalytic chemicals needed for oil refining, rubber, base natural sources for antimalarial drugs and a host of other things that impacted everything from soldiers' health to anti-tank projectiles to armor plate, to turbochargers for aero-engines; etc, etc, etc. , So cry me a river. No sale American on that "poor Germany can't make Inconel" argument.

The Americans figured out their work arounds, accepted sick soldiers, and invented synthetics to replace or substitute.

Lacked skilled workers because they were needed to fight with the fleet and air farce? Machine tools with primitive punch card numeric control. Solve it in the machine.

Cannot fight German Maneuver Warfare style? Controlled Methodical Battle instead with LOTS of artillery and that same kind of industrial process, that is solve fire control with numeric procedures so good, as was applied in factories so that semiskilled workers can turn out better aero-engines than the best German craftsman, a simple fire control process that even Joe Infantry coached on his superb radio, can use to kill those Wehrmacht bastards in front of him by calling his friends Arty and Rupert on that wonderful radio and giving them a grid number after he is coached how to do it by the fire director back at the battery on that same wonderful best in the world radio?

American factories cannot be bombed and Germans ones were? So what? British factories and British civilians were murdered by the Luftwaffe. Same LW treatment for France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg and Russia. Expect the whirlwind in the form of Bomber Command and Eighth Air Force. Expect to DIE for waging crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, for terrorism, genocide, mass enslavement, for starting the goddamned war the Germans cannot win in the first place. Morality in war; remember? The efficient ones (FDR) understand how it works better than the Germans (HITLER and his goons.) did. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, death for death, atrocity for atrocity. Until the Germans QUIT. Incompetence. German incompetence that is.

 

[Lucius Verus]

Well let's get in depth:

Talent: the Nazis were distrustful of basic science, different opinions, and legislated accordingly; from 1933-1939 there was a general exodus of skilled workers, designers, and scientists.

1933-1945: Laws, violence, social pressure, and economic incentives firing teachers and restricting the rest, political education and physical exercise was emphasized in the curriculum. As early as 1936 Wehrmacht officers and industry leaders were complaining about the poor technical and industrial skills of the fit but incompetent and incapable recruits, this problem only got worse as the younger kids with more political and physical education entered the workforce down the line. Its hard to change this with them being Nazis.

1933-1938: Laws, social pressure, and economic incentives discouraging women from seeking the workplace and to give men more jobs. Then schizophrenically reversed/deepen at the same time from 1938-1945 as job shortages gave way to manpower shortages from crash rearmament and war. Job skills deteriorate the longer one's unemployed/differently employed, teens got knocked up/raped at Reichsbräuteschule camps won't be effective workers given the derailment of teen mothers, the expectation that one quits their job once pregnant, plus being a generational and cultural matter it was only getting worse. Given the Nazi view that the primary role of women was in the home supporting her husband and popping out future soldiers its hard to change this with them being Nazis.

1933-1945 (1928-1945): The alliance with industrialists that resulted in graft for large corporations at the expense of economic efficacy as many smaller corporations were stamped out and corruption ran rampant. While the alliance began early and gave the Nazi party much needed cash during the depression the policies only came once they were in power. Not only were their future workers getting dumber, their future management/policies were getting more corrupt. This was a policy accommodation and could've been changed but anything here will definitely affect the SA which were leftist Nazis and so early that it'd make things hard to predict.

1933-1945: Laws, violence, social pressure, and economic incentives against dissent and scapegoats. Less workers, less talent, less innovation as the economy reoriented away from economic performance towards loyalty. Its hard to change this with them being Nazis.

1939-1945: The loyalist Waffen SS was created and gradually supplemented the more professional Wehrmacht. Given the constant threats of coups and assassinations this was warranted. Not only was the manpower pool getting smaller from oppression, dumber from political education but it was being used more poorly in the military as well. Its hard to change this with them being Nazis.

In summary the Nazis inherited a nation with a decent sized economy and military, tried to ruin it but went to war before their corrupt, oppressive, and idiotic policies managed to bear fruit and Germany became another Zimbabwe.

 

[RedSword12]

One needs to really learn the topic... RS. I simply know because I put in the work for my timelines, plus I am a Pacific War researcher.

The first indication that the Germans were incompetent...



Starting a war that cannot be won is the FIRST indication of incompetence.

BTW, when the Japanese cut off American access to China and Indonesia, that meant the Americans were short of wolfram, molybdenum, catalytic chemicals needed for oil refining, rubber, base natural sources for antimalarial drugs and a host of other things that impacted everything from soldiers' health to anti-tank projectiles to armor plate, to turbochargers for aero-engines; etc, etc, etc. , So cry me a river. No sale American on that "poor Germany can't make Inconel" argument.

The Americans figured out their work arounds, accepted sick soldiers, and invented synthetics to replace or substitute.

Lacked skilled workers because they were needed to fight with the fleet and air farce? Machine tools with primitive punch card numeric control. Solve it in the machine.

Cannot fight German Maneuver Warfare style? Controlled Methodical Battle instead with LOTS of artillery and that same kind of industrial process, that is solve fire control with numeric procedures so good, as was applied in factories so that semiskilled workers can turn out better aero-engines than the best German craftsman, a simple fire control process that even Joe Infantry coached on his superb radio, can use to kill those Wehrmacht bastards in front of him by calling his friends Arty and Rupert on that wonderful radio and giving them a grid number after he is coached how to do it by the fire director back at the battery on that same wonderful best in the world radio?

American factories cannot be bombed and Germans ones were? So what? British factories and British civilians were murdered by the Luftwaffe. Same LW treatment for France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg and Russia. Expect the whirlwind in the form of Bomber Command and Eighth Air Force. Expect to DIE for waging crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, for terrorism, genocide, mass enslavement, for starting the goddamned war the Germans cannot win in the first place. Morality in war; remember? The efficient ones (FDR) understand how it works better than the Germans (HITLER and his goons.) did. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, death for death, atrocity for atrocity. Until the Germans QUIT. Incompetence. German incompetence that is.

Classic debating tactic: When you make a poor argument, just change the subject! When you cannot prove the German Army was wholly incompetent, you widen the argument to the administration, which was incompetent. When you cannot prove Germany in 1942 was in as good a state as America, you argue that America had a lot of challenges and used its resources effectively. See where the problem is? Whenever your arguments start looking like colanders, you change the subject so you're right, and then act as if you were right all along.

And mind you, the same video source you used to argue the Germans were 100% stupid and ineffective, also says this:

 

[McPherson]

This is getting absurd, frankly. When you cannot prove the German Army was wholly incompetent, you widen the argument to the administration, which was incompetent. When you cannot prove Germany in 1942 was in as good a state as America, you argue that America had a lot of challenges and used its resources effectively. See where the problem is? Whenever your arguments start looking like colanders, you change the subject so you're right, and then act as if you were right all along.

One refuses to admit that starting a war one cannot win is the first sign of incredible stupidity and utter military and economic incompetence?

Okay. I am done here. There is a fundamental block I cannot get past to show where this (^^^) "analysis" of what I wrote is wrong.

For the rest of us...

Grand Strategy... the Germans were incompetent as to what they wanted. They wanted to pick off their victims one at a time. What they got was... They got themselves into a multi-front war they could not win and picked on the one enemy who was out to get them and would.
Operational art ... That is the implementation of military and economic means to obtain the goals set by grand strategy. Germans could not cross a 30 kilometer stretch of water and never even planned for it. Their major enemy (FDR's America) had worked out how (PLAN BLACK/ORANGE/RAINBOW) so the Germans could expect that THEY would be invaded. And of course the Germans had not figured out Russia either.
Tactics. German Maneuver Warfare with a tank/dive bomber gimmick added. Poland... weak. Norway and Denmark... weak. Benelux... weak. France? Incredibly lucky at Sedan, I mean pure dumb luck. Britain? That channel got in the way. Tanks can't swim... unless they are LVTs or Shermans. Air Campaign? How did the BoB turn out? Kind of fucked that one completely. Russia and North Africa proves the Germans are BETTER at fighting than the Russians and British. Uhhh, no it does not. Stalingrad sure was a corker and El Alamein shows that with a little patience and application, controlled methodical battle will beat German maneuver warfare statistically every time. Funny how the tank/dive bomber gimmick disappears, too, when an enemy air force learns or applies TACAIR?

Did the Germans learn anything at all? Mannstein 2.0 in December 1944.

"He has stuck his snout in the meatgrinder and I have got the handle." George Patton, that would be.

Nope. Not a thing. Turns out the AMERICANS were better at German Maneuver Warfare than the Germans.

US Army cavalry tradition. TACTICS.