Still working on my reply to Wiking, although this covers
part of it, but I guess I’ll throw out my reply to you.
This is the only point I disagree with you on, mostly because Tooze shows pretty convincingly the German economy actually was going flat-out by 1940 and didn't really slack off in the interim.
You need to reread Tooze closer. Tooze very much states that Nazi Germany operating with perfect hindsight could have committed its limited stocks of strategic resources to maximize production in 1942/43, rather than in 1944/45 when it was too late. What Tooze really says is that the argument that the Germans failed to mobilize isn’t so much incorrect as it was incomplete. The issue was the Germans had a tightly time limited window in which they could go to maximum production due to limited stocks of resources, wear on machinery, and allocations of manpower. Had Hitler made the decision to industrially go for broke years earlier than he did, the Soviet materiel advantage in 1942/43 could have been significantly offset or pre-empted.
Of course Hitler's reason for
not doing so was that it would have drained the German war economy, which as you say was already under serious pressure, and he was hoping for a quick war against Russia allowing Germany to then turn back and deal with the British Empire and America. Essentially, full commitment of resources against the Soviets would have meant a tacit admission that Germany would be unable to beat to the Western Allies, which wasn't the game Hitler wanted to play.
EDIT:
Most of whom were conquered by the Germans and quite hostile to them, requiring occupation and draining of resources.
I’m 1941, only Poland and Yugoslavia were actively hostile and even there the partisan movements were still being garrisoned. Other occupied territories were, at the least Western Europe. As far as being net drains... in the long-term, yes, what with Germany’s massively destructive looting. But in 1940-41 the occupation of Western Europe combined with the not-quite-extortion of raw materials from the USSR provided Germany with the foundation with which they would attempt, and fail, Barbarossa and then ultimately fight the entire rest of the war after that. Had Germany not acquired the resources of Western Europe, they would have lost the war by mid-1942 at the latest.
They were a net loss of manpower to the Germans, as not only did they have to be occupied, but also defended from the Brits, which meant if anything they contributed to making the manpower disparity worse, not better.
In 1941 the territories did not have to be occupied with substantial combat troops as the British lacked the forces to threaten them yet and local partisan groups were not yet organized enough to be a consideration. Most of the draining part of the drains came substantially later.
They were already mobilized for war against the UK.
Correction: they were mobilizing for the war against the UK.
I'm not sure what extra resources you think were sitting around,
The same resources that they would subsequently use over the next four years losing the war with.
And duh, this would come at the expense of the war with the British. Hence why Hitler didn’t do it.
There was no chance preempt Soviet material superiority given that Germany was already outnumbered before the invasion by Soviet artillery, armor, and aircraft in raw numbers,
Yes, there was plenty of chance. By the end of 1941, the Soviet air, artillery, and armored park were completely shattered. The German armored park, of course, was only in a somewhat better state but that means that even
at worse their armored park would halve maintained parity with proper mobilization rather then falling behind like it did OTL. Their air and artillery parks, on the other hand, should have outstripped the Soviets by far. But in the end the Germans didn’t equal the crippled Soviet aircraft production until 1944 and they
never matched the Soviets artillery production.
The Germans meanwhile ended the year with less men under arms than they started with.
At the start of 1942, and hence the end of 1941, the Heer had 5.2 million men with the field forces accounting for 4 million of that. At the start of 1941 those numbers were 5.2 million and 3.8 million, respectively. Not sure what mathematical system declares that 4 million is
less then 3.8 million.
[quots]In the sense that the Soviets chose to focus on a few categories of weapons and make a lot of cheap versions of them, while the Germans were fighting on multiple fronts, being forced to make equipment in categories that would not have made sense to the Soviets or they couldn't make (Uboats, variety of cruise/ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, handheld rocket launchers, APCs, massive amounts of locomotives and rolling stock, all sorts of rail equipment to rebuild Soviet rail to European standards, all sorts of advanced electronics, huge amounts of heavy AAA, etc.) .[/quote]
That the Soviets chose to make a few categories of low cost but effective weapons was based on the insight that they needed to make a few categories of low cost weapons if they were to survive and they couldn’t afford to waste resources. Had they not had that insight, they would have been more like the Germans and manufactured too many different models, and variants of the same model, and wasted resources on stuff they didn’t need... and subsequently would have lost the war. Meanwhile, a few of the things you listed there (namely the cruise/ballistic missiles and strategic bombers) were precisely cases of the Germans wasting resources on things they didn’t need, sometimes at the expense of things they did. One is an example of good strategic insight, the other isn’t.
Also, Soviet rail standards never reached European level during the war, whether under German or Soviet control.
Depends on whether those economic assets were war material capable.
There is no question there. In heavy artillery ammunition alone, the losses to Soviet chemical and munition plants amounted to the equivalent of 100 million rounds annual. Similarly, the destruction of plants, loss of raw materials, and dislocation would set back the Soviet aircraft industry two-three years. In both of these cases, Soviet industry didn’t recover in these sectors until the end of 1944.
And they don't need to make up all of them,
They did if the Soviet economy was too
match the German economy.
What difference is there with that statement? As a basic fact Hitler had poor strategy, which gave the Soviets a chance to win.
Poor strategy versus poor strategy means the loser is that with inferior tactical-operational capabilities, which in 1941-43 describes the Soviets more then it does the Germans. It was not enough for the Germans strategy to be poor, the Soviets also had to be good.
Sure, the Germans inordinately benefited from the mistakes of their enemies until late 1941 when the Allies had their chance to turn the tables given Hitler's mistakes. The structural material factors favored the 'haves' vs. the 'have nots' trying to take from the 'haves'.
More like “late-‘42”, but yes.
Debatable. Even with an intact economy they lacked certain capacities to make things like sufficient quality electronics, which is why they had such a dearth of radios, not to mention radar, in 1941.
There is little evidence that the pre-war lack of radios was a result of lack of pre-war productivity as opposed to lack of priority or enough personnel with adequate technical skills to use them in the field. Indeed, those units which the Soviets had authorized to have radios generally had radios.
They could have had a lot more manpower/labor, AFVs, and food without losing all that territory.
And trucks. And aircraft. And ammunition. And trains. And rolling stock. Just to name a few of many.
They didn't really use their resources better than the Germans,
Had that been the case, they wouldn’t have been able to match the German output in any category of war material, let alone surpass them.
which is the entire point I'm making, they had a one front war to fight and very powerful allies drawing off the critical edge of German resources.
Which, irrespective of the factual veracity of any of the claims (true or false), says
nothing about the quality of Soviet strategic insight compared to the Germans.
The Soviets were able to persevere due to...
All of which could have been squandered had the Soviets, and the WAllies, not had a good strategic decision making process. The only power for which this wasn’t true was the United States.
German war industry was largely destroyed by the ToV, which meant 1933-35 was spent rebuilding foundational industry to get to the point where they could focus on specific outright military production;
While some of German war industry was brought down by the ToV, much of it was preserved inspite of the treaty
No, I’m very much factoring them in. In fact, factoring them in rather proves my point.
It wasn't 100% of German production and manpower dedicated to the East, rather more like 50% dedicated to the East.
Even leaving aside that you are pulling that number from thin air, that still means the Germans should have been able to at least match what the Soviets put out. They did not.
In 1942-43 the Germans were fighting a naval war, a strategic air war, fighting in the Mediterranean, spending manpower to occupy and defend Europe, and fighting resistance movements all over Europe.
None of which demanded remotely as much of Germany’s attention and resources as the war in the east until well into 1943, long after the Soviets had achieved material superiority.
In no way can you look at the entire German economy and compare that to the entire Soviet economy and say you're making a fair comparison; you also need to factor in the Wallied contributions and economies.
Sure, and even with them factored in the raw economic data suggests the Germans should have been able to at least match the Soviets, if not surpass them. Yet they did not.
His generals were telling him not to go to war period.
There is no real evidence for this. Even the likes of Beck couched his objections to Hitler (although not to others) on the basis of timing for the war instead of whether war was a good idea. And he was the exception, unable to get anyone else in the high command, or the army leadership at large, to go along with him. Most were outright unwilling to deal with such higher issues at all and supported Hitler when he drove Beck out. As Megargee notes when discussing Manstein’s letter of 1938 which basically admonishes Beck to quit trying to be obstructionist and tow the line:
"Manstein's letter underscores the futility of Beck's efforts to inspire resistance against Hitler's plans. In fact, Manstein managed to encapsulate, in just a few pages, the main problem with officers of the high command: their inclination to deal with operational and organizational details instead of broader issues of "politics"; their unwillingness to let go of personal power for the sake of unified leadership; and their complete obliviousness to the dangers of Germany's strategic position."
-Inside Hotler’s high Command, Pg 50-51
That exchange showed the fatal flaw in the thinking of most of the German officer corps: they preferred to focus on tactical and operational levels and only bothered with the strategic level in so far as it let them play power politics with other factions in the Reich's hierarchy. The Generals believed their duty was to support Hitler in his decisions as best they could and in fact to be so loyal that they won Hitler's trust and became his primary source of advice, over other factions in the Nazi hierarchy.
As for Hitler, he knew the war was a huge gamble but he was convinced this was the best and only opportunity to remake the world order in Germany's favour before an apocalyptic global conspiracy gained the power to snuff out German ambitions forever. For him the issue wasn’t so much his read of the odds as it was how his world view set his goals and, by extension, warped his decision making.
Hitler only went to war in 1939 because he thought the Allies wouldn't declare war on him for invading Poland.
There isn’t any evidence for that one way or the other outside of “he said, she said”.