They intended to though - that was the whole purpose of the Ju-88 programme pre-war.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
They intended to though - that was the whole purpose of the Ju-88 programme pre-war.
The He-111 is far better level bomber than the Ju-88 was, the JU-88 was a dive/level bomber, while the He-111 was a pure level bomber.
The Ju-88 could carry more weight in bombs, and did have 20 50kg bombs and up to 4 500kg bombs on the wings. The He-111 carried typically 6 250kg bombs, and was a lot faster and harder to kill, well relatively speaking, the German never did build a bomber with proper defensive armament or armor.
The 'maths exercise' was for the results of a five month bombing campaign and excluded other German costs. The extrapolation is based on 5.5% monthly increases which was fairly standard, so it's not too whacky to suggest at least that level of increase to continue and the indices are split down into seven or eight components (not got Tooze in front of me right now to check Wagenfeuhr's figures) so they won't be too crazily wrong. If anything I may have understated things.
My gut feeling is that for those five months Bomber Command was well in 'credit', but someone else can do the hard financial figures to prove it
5.5 % a month is a 90 % increase in one year, that is pretty impressive compared with for example normal expansion of industrial capacity a year that is maybe half of the GDP growth so maybe 1% for a normal country... 5.5% a month over the entire war would have been an increase in industrial capacity of 2300% from the start for Germany... That is not exactly the kind of numbers that can be taken for granted...
Read the context of my post again, I assume you are not talking about the Berlin raids...
Last edited:
The He-111 was an early 30s design which relied on the idea of being faster than enemy fighters for defence. It was only kept in service because the Ju-88 was such a turkey due to the rushed development cycle. As the war went on, it was more economical to keep it in production and find other uses for it than stop production entirely. The Ju-88 was intended to be the premier bomber of the LW for the next European war from its inception. High among the priorities which led to it being able to dive bomb effectively was that level bombing was so inaccurate (something the Germans discovered in Spain).
-------
knott - it's an average monthly increase... not a cumulative increase of 5.5% monthly...
Wagenfeuhr's index of armaments production uses a base of 100 = January/February 1942.
1941 = 97 monthly average
1942 = 133 monthly average - 37% increase over 41
1943 = 216 monthly average - 62% increase over 42, 122% increase over 41
1944 = 277 monthly average - 28% increase over 43, 108% increase over 42, 185% increase over 41.
Tooze reckons that using Wagenfeuhr's way of calculating things (figures were estimated by Wagenfeuhr for 41 and not done at all for 40), 1940 should be a 60 average. Which would mean 41 saw a 61% increase in armaments production over it or make for an overall increase in production of some 360% between January 1940 and December 1944. Or 6% average monthly increase.
Ah okay then it makes a little more sense I guess, still I dont see how the numbers above support your point? You said that the production grew very little in 1943?
It didn't between May 1943 and February 1944 - all the [edit: net] growth in 43 and 44 was outside that period (if I get chance I'll type up the monthly index figures Wagenfeuhr gives so you can see it more clearly). Tooze estimates that without the Battle of the Ruhr, February 1944 would have had a production value of 380 on the index. Instead it was 231.
edit:
Wagenfeuhr's Index of German armaments production (100 = January/February 1942)
1940 - estimated at 60 by Tooze
1941 - estimated at 97 by Wagenfeuhr
January 1942 - 103
February 1942 - 97
March 1942 - 129
April 1942 - 133
May 1942 - 135
June 1942 - 144
July 1942 - 153
August 1942 - 153
September 1942 - 155
October 1942 - 154
November 1942 - 165
December 1942 - 181
1942 - 133
January 1943 - 182
February 1943 - 207
March 1943 - 216 (Battle of the Ruhr begins)
April 1943 - 215
May 1943 - 232 (German industry begins to flatline)
June 1943 - 226
July 1943 - 229
August 1943 - 224 (Battle of the Ruhr ends)
September 1943 - 234
October 1943 - 242
November 1943 - 231
December 1943 - 222
1943 - 216
January 1944 - 241
February 1944 - 231 (Last month of German industry's flatline)
March 1944 - 270 (Bomber Command shifted to preparations for D-Day)
April 1944 - 274
May 1944 - 285
June 1944 - 297
July 1944 - 322
August 1944 - 297
September 1944 - 301
October 1944 - 273 (Bomber Command returns full focus to strategic bombing.)
November 1944 - 268
December 1944 - 263
1944 - 277
January 1945 - 227
Last edited:
if you employ slave labor and make them work until death, you can have even a lot more increases in IC over a year.
this is about strategic bombing in general.
Yeah but it doesn't do much for skilled labor. You can't really take a starving slave laborer and expect them to anything other than hard menial labor. Modern weapon building it to sophisticated for that.
Economically speaking, the use of slave labour benefitted German industry. Half the work per person but at half the price. It also solved one of the biggest problems for German industry which was the shortfall in numbers when the Wehrmacht was mobilised (women were already in work before the war so couldn't be 'mobilised' to the same extent as in eg Britain without finding replacements for them in such areas as agriculture). unity100's point is sound. The availability of labour was a huge factor in the growth in production of the German armaments industry from 1942 onwards. Prior to that, even prior to the war, parts of the German economy were reliant on imported labour (eg agriculture pre-war relied upon nearly 1 million Poles crossing the border to work).
Last edited:
There is a very large difference between increases in GDP in a reasonably free economy, which is driven by real increases in capacity; and increases in war production, which is driven by conversion of existing capacity to military purposes. That is how you get 5.5% monthly growth: You take workers and machinery from pre-existing sector.
The 43-44 miracle has to be qualified. The Italian Armistice greatly enhanced German production as Italy was dependant on Germany totally for her raw materiels. Bomber production, Surface Ship and conversion work ceased. Marques like the 109 and the III+38 chassis were cranked out like hot cakes and the IV became the mass production tank. Even the pzII remained in production to 43. There is @ 5000 increase in tank production between 43 and 44 but only 2000 are Panthers.
The fact that Germany was not defeated in 1944 has more to do with the Western Allies strategic failures than German production.
The fact that Germany was not defeated in 1944 has more to do with the Western Allies strategic failures than German production.
I hope this thread doesn't get locked because of this but.........
Like I said skilled labor was in dire short supply, something you can't do too well on people being worked to death. The only jobs I know with skilled labor was Jewish forced labor on V-1s and V-2s. The situation there was inhuman until Albert Speer visited and demanded that living conditions for the Jews were improved, and guess what? The production number went up. I know they wanted to kill of the labor force, but god what a wasteful and inefficient way of doing things, they guy dies before he even gets good at what he does, and starving workers are not the most productive either. You get to a point where being shot sounds nicer than continuing to work for your inevitable executioner.
The mods usually allow us some leeway providing we don't behave like idiots. Sometimes looking at things from a 'let's try to understand what was going on perspective' can result in it seeming like one is minimising the evil nature of the Nazi regime. So I'll say it here and now, anything I do say must be taking from the perspective of 'this is what they were thinking and why' and does not represent my deep loathing for the decisions the Nazis made.
Let's take the Speer myth about inhuman living conditions and how he improved them head on. Speer lied. Speer was fully aware of the conditions that eg Kammler's slave labour were working in for the project Speer was primarily responsible for pushing (ie the V2 rockets). We know this because we now have the letter Speer sent to Kammler after visiting the tunnel complex in which he congratulated Kammler on a job well done and makes no mention of the fact that he and his ministry team were stepping over dead corpses on their tour. Many of his staff took time off after the tour, so shocked were they by the conditions.
Speer claims to have increased rations. That's kind of true. What actually happened was that the rations increased for the most productive third. This increase came from decreasing the rations for the least productive third.
There was a shift in emphasis in how Nazi Germany treated eg Soviet PoWs and also the Jews. This wasn't down to Speer's kind hearted, generous and generally wonderful nature however. It was driven by industry who started to complain that there was little point in them being given this slave labour by Saur if the slave labour was not going to be around long enough to learn the job.
The shortage of labour within Germany was the prime factor in switching the policy from working people to death to keeping them alive enough to toil in the factories next to their concentration camps. It was an economic rationale for some sectors of industry. Keep the economically productive alive, if barely, kill the rest. And barely does mean barely alive - these people were having their lives extended by only months by the addition of the bare minimum of sustenance to their diets.
Goebbels gave a speech on this issue in which he praised Speer for not protecting the Jews too much from the SS and instead working with the SS to help both kill Jews and aid the German economy (Speer says he'd left the hall before Goebbels spoke - which is odd because Goebbels addresses him directly). I think that speech kind of sums up the balancing act going on - when Germany didn't think that it would need so much of its work force in the factories, the 'sub-humans' were killed. When it realised that they needed workers, they killed those who could work more slowly.
Slave labour made up something like 40% of Germany's labour force by 1944. Most of the main armaments factories in Germany (if not all?) had a labour force camp next to it for their slave labourers. eg Messerschmitt's factory at Regensburg was reliant for 35% of its output on slave labourers by 1944. 20 000 of the poor souls died in the associated concentration camp and its satellite camps.
Tooze's The Wages of Destruction has a lot of research on this aspect of Germany's economy if it interests you. Anyways, will shut up now
This is not a HoI-forum but the history-forum and this happened in history. So people are allowed to discuss this, unless of course they act like total idiots.
On Speer:
Speer's argument was, although I was one of the leader's of the third Reich, although I was one of Hitler's closest confidants, although I was given a leading role in the supervision of the German economy, I didn't notice that the Nazi party was a party of racist murders, I didn't notice that Germany was involved in mega scale slave labour and genocide and it was only right at the end that I noticed that Hitler had a nasty murderous, uncaring side to his personality.
The reason that Speer was able to pedal this ridiculous drivel was the desperate desire of people after the war to hold to the "few bad men" view of history. Obviously the whole Nazi episode was a unique event in history, however the modern Liberal anti racist anti nationalist, anti tribalist western consensus morality has not been the norm through out history.
Speer's argument was, although I was one of the leader's of the third Reich, although I was one of Hitler's closest confidants, although I was given a leading role in the supervision of the German economy, I didn't notice that the Nazi party was a party of racist murders, I didn't notice that Germany was involved in mega scale slave labour and genocide and it was only right at the end that I noticed that Hitler had a nasty murderous, uncaring side to his personality.
The reason that Speer was able to pedal this ridiculous drivel was the desperate desire of people after the war to hold to the "few bad men" view of history. Obviously the whole Nazi episode was a unique event in history, however the modern Liberal anti racist anti nationalist, anti tribalist western consensus morality has not been the norm through out history.
That in no way reduces the impact airpower has on the overall war.
you dont need skilled labor for a production item that is suitable for mass production.
i think Zebedee made a good account of the german economic miracle of 43-44 under strategic bombing.
Not if there is welding involved. Even mass production lines often have welding, especially on war machines.
Welding is a skill that takes time to learn, and not all are up to the task. If you have seen the difference between a skilled welder and non skilled one, it's radically different quality.
Anyways to relate this to the OP, the Allies found it far more effective to kill the workers than try and destroy the factory.