Gearing up for War!!!

[ileonu]

WW2 truly started as a TOTAL WAR just after Stalingrad. At that point Germany went to a full economic mobilization as USSR did during 1941-1942. Only in 1943 Germany produced more tanks than between 1939 and 1942. They did that because they felt for the first time they could lose the war... German Tank Production During WW2

In older version of HOI there is no way to simulate the reasons for a nation to fully mobilize for war. Normally in HOI games Germany starts fully mobilized right on day 1... and Russia had some scripted events....

So it would be great to limit the IC available to how war is going... why produce more tanks if we are winning easily? And of course the more threatened the bigger the war effort...

Not sure how to simulate it (maybe if warscore goes under XXX rise XXX% the IC), but im sure its an important part of wars that so far hasn't been simulated correctly...

Blame my bad english to my mom for not sending me to a bilingual school... =(

 

[seeds24]

WW2 truly started as a TOTAL WAR just after Stalingrad. At that point Germany went to a full economic mobilization as USSR did during 1941-1942. Only in 1943 Germany produced more tanks than between 1939 and 1942. They did that because they felt for the first time they could lose the war... German Tank Production During WW2

I remember reading a document wich explained that the german industry underproduced during the first years of the war not because they felt they had already won, but because of management problems (Goering was involved in planes production problems) and a tedency to prefer quality rather than quantity wich led to problems of overengeneering and multiple versions of the same models, ill-suited for mass production. These problems were solved but too late

 

[Mjuice]

Seems to me the way to simulate this is an added wartime consumer goods demand modifier deriving from political considerations.

 

[Bullfrog]

Like HoI3, there may be laws that unlock the "better" war economy effects. Their triggers should still be determined by obvious factors like government type, national unity, neutrality (if these remain intact in HoI4) and of course, whether or not the nation is at war. But total war economy is certainly a different matter. Each major nation gradually geared up to their maximum output at different stages of the war depending on its particular circumstances (the Soviets peaked at 1942, the UK in 1943, the US in 1944 and Germany likely in 1943). These nations did not always do so as a last ditch effort to save their own skin. The US mobilized fully without suffering defeats on the scale of the USSR or Germany, or even the UK for
that matter.

The economic mobilization should be a curve, in other words it should rise and peak, whereafter it begins to slowly fall as labor becomes an issue relative to military size. All the major powers struggled with labor shortages as their economies focused on war production. It was a huge problem determining the proper ratio of worker to soldier.

Therefore I believe that total economic mobilization is fluid and should peak at the point that manpower is entirely consumed by the military in war time. After that it begins to fall slowly.
If the game includes a mechanic for relating labor to manpower, this concept would be modeled correctly. Perhaps a slider of some kind, along with slow consumer goods conversion into military production?

 

[ileonu]

Seeds24, i agree that Germany improved its production thru the war, but the great leap you can see in 1943 in its production cannot be explained by that only... IMHO is explained by the conviction of German leaders that war could only be won if Germany entered in "TOTAL WAR" mode, why not doing that right away on Sept 1 1939?

Bullfrog im not sure if US peaked its production as Germany did... in the same link about tanks (German Tank Production During WW2) you can see the car production prior to WW2:

United States 77.2%
Britain 7.8%
Germany 4.8%
France 3.5%
Canada 3.4%
Italy 0.9%
All others 2.4%

With these numbers its not crazy to estimate the production capacity of the US was at least 15 times bigger than Germany's capacity. But if you check total numbers of WW2 you will see that at least for tanks the ratio was 3 to 1 in 1943 (US Tank Production). Even if the war effort of the US was what won the WW2 and was huge i bet that if needed the US could have produced several times more than what it did...

We as HOI players, know that this is THE war, and that the best way to win is to maximize your production right away in order to destroy your enemy ASAP... but Hitler didnt do that.... im not sure if it can be simulated or modelated but i think its an important part of the war that hasn't been addressed in the right way as a dynamic not scripted system...

 

[mursolini]

The harsh reality is actually that Germany intentionally didn`t use a lot of it`s production capacity for a simple reason: fuel.

It had only so many horses for regular supplies, trucks were used at the minimum to preserve fuel, and German armor and aviation forces already stretched it`s fuel supply thin.

German production went hand in hand with the expansion of fuel supply, as both Romania and domestic synthetic oil production was expanding.

Stalingrad in that regard was irrelevant, as German production expanded 50-70% every year from 1939 to 1944.

Seeds24, i agree that Germany improved its production thru the war, but the great leap you can see in 1943 in its production cannot be explained by that only... IMHO is explained by the conviction of German leaders that war could only be won if Germany entered in "TOTAL WAR" mode, why not doing that right away on Sept 1 1939?

Bullfrog im not sure if US peaked its production as Germany did... in the same link about tanks (German Tank Production During WW2) you can see the car production prior to WW2:

United States 77.2%
Britain 7.8%
Germany 4.8%
France 3.5%
Canada 3.4%
Italy 0.9%
All others 2.4%

With these numbers its not crazy to estimate the production capacity of the US was at least 15 times bigger than Germany's capacity. But if you check total numbers of WW2 you will see that at least for tanks the ratio was 3 to 1 in 1943 (US Tank Production). Even if the war effort of the US was what won the WW2 and was huge i bet that if needed the US could have produced several times more than what it did...

We as HOI players, know that this is THE war, and that the best way to win is to maximize your production right away in order to destroy your enemy ASAP... but Hitler didnt do that.... im not sure if it can be simulated or modelated but i think its an important part of the war that hasn't been addressed in the right way as a dynamic not scripted system...

US couldn`t produce more as it was already short on manpower, to the point it not only used most women in industry, but also imported hundreds of thousands of mexicans to grow food.

Any larger scale deployments would take even more labor from factories, reducing the output.

 

[seeds24]

so oil was the bottleneck ? it should be made more important than in HOI3 then.

 

[ingwe]

so oil was the bottleneck ? it should be made more important than in HOI3 then.

Agreed. I rarely ran out of oil in HOI3.

 

[ileonu]

I agree that oil was a major bottleneck for both production and usage of vehicules... but it wasn't the reason for Germany to "underproduce" during the initial years of war.

Here are the numbers of GUNs (any sort of artillery) built by Germany during WW2 ( Source: FELDGRAU.COM)



As you see again the production in the first 3 years of war is WAY lower than what was built later on... my point is that Germany didn't truly commited in the first half of the war, or at least had more capacity than what was used. You could say that was a mistake, and you as a leader will not fell into it, but a big part of that "underproduction" was caused by social and political reasons...

 

[AluwihaR]

I recommend Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction." What you are describing is the so called "blitzkrieg-thesis." In his book, Tooze explains why this older thesis is not correct. It's pretty complex stuff, but make no mistake - Germany did not "underproduce" intentionally.

 

[Bullfrog]

Germany is a special case because of Hitler's fear early in the war that any affect on the civilian economy would impact morale and support for the war at home, largely due to the experience of WW1. Only after the failure of "Lightning War" in the USSR did he give in to the brutal reality of a contracted war effort and the resulting effects on German industry. They're also special because of their "imported" labor, which is obviously not modeled in game.

However, they could afford to be lax up until 1942 because of consistent and not inconsiderable military investment leading up to the war, a factor that certainly wasn't shared by the Democracies, though it was to some extent in the USSR. This pre-war buildup is modeled well in HoI3. What isn't modeled at all is the time it took to fully gear up (by any nation) after the war starts. It's an immediate option to overnight transform the economy to a full war footing as soon as the nation gets involved.

Instead of a law with immediate and unrealistic IC transformation, a mechanic that introduced a gradual gear up based on the slow process of economic mobilization should work better.

- A separate manpower pool for labor that provides a boost to IC the larger it is... It gains monthly from your national MP gain (shared with the military gain) and eventually caps just as the military manpower pool does, the rate of which is influenced by many similar factors (war footing, govt type, laws, neutrality, NU, threat, warscore, etc). This pool could be borrowed from for military use at your own risk (taking from it would reduce IC).

- A slider or law that gave you control of said MP gain, allowing more or less to be allotted to military vs labor pools. Also dependent on the same factors given above.

Then we would have to judge for ourselves whether MP was to be used in military units or for IC. Obviously having limitations and consequences. For instance, if I ran out of military MP, I could borrow from labor, but this would severely affect both dissent and IC, as well as perhaps resource gains.

Edit: this would also mean that gear up would follow a curve and peak, just as it did in real life for each belligerent. After taking enough losses, and the likely ensuing rebalancing of MP from labor to the military (i.e., national MP has been exhausted) we'd see that slow decline- also very realistic.

I think all interested should read this very informative article:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/e...rison/public/ehr88postprint.pdf&embedded=true

 

[mursolini]

I agree that oil was a major bottleneck for both production and usage of vehicules... but it wasn't the reason for Germany to "underproduce" during the initial years of war.

Here are the numbers of GUNs (any sort of artillery) built by Germany during WW2 ( Source: FELDGRAU.COM)



As you see again the production in the first 3 years of war is WAY lower than what was built later on... my point is that Germany didn't truly commited in the first half of the war, or at least had more capacity than what was used. You could say that was a mistake, and you as a leader will not fell into it, but a big part of that "underproduction" was caused by social and political reasons...

Well, there is always a transition from peace time economy to wartime.

What I say is, for tanks and planes, Germany would never outproduce US or SU, because it is pointless, it didn`t have oil supplies to afford a tank force of similar size.

As you can see, artillery and tank production scales absolutely differently, a huge spike in 1940 and the slow build up. For tanks, that was much more gradual, and more or less coresponds the pase of fuel supply expancion.

I recommend Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction." What you are describing is the so called "blitzkrieg-thesis." In his book, Tooze explains why this older thesis is not correct. It's pretty complex stuff, but make no mistake - Germany did not "underproduce" intentionally.

Well, Wages of destruction more or less makes the case for lack of resources.

Oil was the bottleneck of armor and plane production. Other materials were bottleneck for other things.

 

[ileonu]

AluwihaR, thank you for the recommendation, bought it!!!! I don't think this "underproduction" was intentional, i think that Bullfrog describes it way better than me...=)

Well, there is always a transition from peace time economy to wartime.

What I say is, for tanks and planes, Germany would never outproduce US or SU, because it is pointless, it didn`t have oil supplies to afford a tank force of similar size.

As you can see, artillery and tank production scales absolutely differently, a huge spike in 1940 and the slow build up. For tanks, that was much more gradual, and more or less coresponds the pase of fuel supply expancion.

Well the Soviet Union peaked its war capacity on 1942, there wasn't any transition. You can say it was a centralized economy under a dictatorship, i prefer to think it was the risk of destruction what forced them into a full economical mobilization right away. SU produced almost the same numbers of guns and tanks each year since 1942( Source: WW2WEAPONS.COM)

I think what i would love to see is a dynamic system where if you lose more than X victory points in a month your nation will gain awareness and comitement for war... rising your IC output for example. It's what SU had with its Great Patriotic War events but with way less hard scripting (it shouldn't be needed to lose an exact province to trigger it) and much more relative triggers.

Great article Bullfrog!!

I would love to quote it on page 21

The German economy, in contrast, passed almost directly from undermobilization
of labour to overmobilization in 1944. Until D-Day the Reich Labour Office successfully
resisted all pressures to impose centralized controls and national service obligations
on German workers, preferring the option of importation of slave labour from
Germany’s occupied territories; after D-Day Wehrmacht conscription of German
armament workers began.

Of course you could say this was a mistake, but to what extend was a mistake that could be avoided with the political and social situation of Germany.

 

[mursolini]

Well the Soviet Union peaked its war capacity on 1942, there wasn't any transition. You can say it was a centralized economy under a dictatorship, i prefer to think it was the risk of destruction what forced them into a full economical mobilization right away. SU produced almost the same numbers of guns and tanks each year since 1942( Source: WW2WEAPONS.COM)

I think what i would love to see is a dynamic system where if you lose more than X victory points in a month your nation will gain awareness and comitement for war... rising your IC output for example. It's what SU had with its Great Patriotic War events but with way less hard scripting (it shouldn't be needed to lose an exact province to trigger it) and much more relative triggers.

SU moved it`s industry in 1941. Obviously there was no transition, since there was no economy to transition, as most of it was lost, and territory was occupied, and thus, it did got to almost unchangeable level of production. That said, Soviet equipment largely went from emphasis on quantity in 1942, to emphasis on quality in 1944.

Su lost all it`s industrial centers, bar Moscow and Stalingrad (Leningrad was blocaded), and most or it`s resources mining. Basically what was evacuated or build from scratch became Soviet industry in 1942.

As you can see from this beautiful table, SU didn`t get to pre-war iron production even in 1945.

http://www.mysteriouscountry.ru/wiki/index.php/Народное_хозяйство_СССР/1941-1945/Черная_металлургия
As you can see, Soviet production of iron and steel in 1942 was at best half of 1940, and basically stayed pretty similar in 1942-1944.

That would be the reason for SU having more or less constant production from 1942 to 1945.
SU never managed to recover it`s oil production as well.
It, again has to do with resources.

 

[mursolini]

Also, oil production and consumption
http://ww2-weapons.com/History/Production/strategic-raw-materials.htm

Germany was air-tight on fuel for the duration of war.

 

[ileonu]

Nice table im guessing its iron coal oil production... impressive how it went down!

But it doesnt invalid my point. SU builded all it could since the beginning of Barbarossa while Germany didn't build everything it could since Fall Weiss (Sept1). You can think of many reasons to explain why, and i guess there is no "right" answer for it. But that needs to be modeled ingame, there are parts of it already considered in other HOIs but once the war starts everyone goes full on "economy mobilization".. and thats not how it was, at least for Germany.

 

[Secret Master]

so oil was the bottleneck ? it should be made more important than in HOI3 then.

Yes, it should.

But there are all kinds of problems with HOI3's model of fuel usage. (Keep in mind that fuel in HOI3 covers all POL stuff, not just gas you burn moving vehicles around). Think about all those ships and planes, with fully trained crews and pilots, that never have to use a single unit of fuel to train at all. And think about all those panzers that never use a drop of fuel until they roll against the Allies.

I hope that in HOI4, planes, ships, and land units that consume fuel will, in fact, consume some fuel even at peace and when they aren't being used. I also hope that naval crews and pilots require fuel to train.

There's a reason both Japan and Germany ran short of pilots, and it wasn't because they lacked planes to put them in.

 

[mursolini]

Nice table im guessing its iron coal oil production... impressive how it went down!

But it doesnt invalid my point. SU builded all it could since the beginning of Barbarossa while Germany didn't build everything it could since Fall Weiss (Sept1). You can think of many reasons to explain why, and i guess there is no "right" answer for it. But that needs to be modeled ingame, there are parts of it already considered in other HOIs but once the war starts everyone goes full on "economy mobilization".. and thats not how it was, at least for Germany.

It is iron, steel, metal rolls and pipes.
Coal actually recovered, while oil remained around half of pre-war.

What i meant by that it that SU didn`t mobilize it`s economy similar to how Germany or US or UK did, by slowly decreasing civilian and boosting military production.
SU`s economy basically shrinked due to occupation, with only the military part pretty much remaining due to it`s priority for evacuation and supplies.
SU`s economy was very heavily build on construction and it actually used more resources of oil, steel and so forth in peace time, compared to wartime. While other economies were opposite, with strong agriculture, service sector and light industry, that were re-tooled for military production.
Germany, US, UK, saw their overall industrial output grow. SU`s overall industrial output decreased sharply and only started recovering after SU recovered the lost land.